Founder's Story
If you haven't already experienced the hell that is searching for a wedding venue, I'm hoping to save you from it.
I only spent maybe a month looking for a venue before I started losing it. My coffee shop basically runs itself, which meant I could focus on it full time. I felt a little obsessed and I couldn't understand why at first. I looked at hundreds of venues. Contacted dozens. Spent entire days doing nothing but this one thing.
Why was I getting so upset? Why was this so difficult? Why was I spending so much time on this?
I'm an older bride. Fifty, to be exact. I've been a self-employed business owner for three decades. I am pretty competent. I know how to deal with wholesalers and distributors. How in God's name did one month of searching for a venue break me so completely?
They wouldn't tell me what anything cost. I'd send emails and ask questions and get back boilerplate responses. Congratulations on your engagement! How exciting! Tell us about your vision!
It felt like walking into a store where the sales associate is overly eager and friendly — but you know it's not because they actually like you.
After falling in love with a half a dozen venues only to find out in the very, very small print that it didn't meet my requirements, I started to feel like: "Bitch, just tell me what it costs and can I have candles or not, because at this point I might just elope."
But then I remembered everyone says to hire a planner. So I hired a full-service planner. I thought to myself: Ah-ha! I'm being savvy now! I'm going to get this handled! She'll know the tricks. She'd be my co-conspirator and shield me from all this nonsense.
Instead I got someone who moved slowly, sent generic information, and ultimately didn't find my venue for me. When I told her I wanted a photographer who was proficient in low light photography, she told me — in the tone of someone explaining difficult news to a child — that flash and spotlights were just how it was.
I ended up finding a multi-award-winning photographer proficient with low light myself. (Shout out to AJH Photography)
The moment everything changed
But the moment I actually snapped was when I trusted her with something personal.
I gave her a loose profile of one guest who for my own mental health would need a full time handler for the reception. I was unable to elaborate further because she jumped straight into referring to our contract's clause about "a threat or implied threat of injury or harm" and said she wasn't going to put herself in an uncomfortable situation. She took my typical, garden-variety, annoying family dynamic and turned it into a dangerous and frankly disgusting liability.
She was the wedding industry in miniature.
Why is everyone treating me like I was dumb? Why is information so hard to get? I'm competent and smart. Why am I being treated this way? Why am I being treated like a child?
And then, three months in and already over budget, it hit me: I am not a repeat customer. My desire to create a beautiful, magical day was being used against me. My excitement and joy, the weapon used to bleed my savings account dry.
Once all that really sank in, I was pissed. But I'm probably also going through menopause, so yea...
Planning a wedding should be fun, shouldn't it?
We are planning what everyone says is going to be the best day of our lives. It should feel fun and exciting; We're creating something beautiful for the people we love. Instead it's a gauntlet of withheld information, predatory pricing, and an industry-wide assumption that brides are too overwhelmed, too naive, too stupid to figure it out.
Turns out, at the time of this writing, I am still planning my wedding. I am still planning my wedding and I am so pissed off I didn't even want to wait one more day to build this thing. My goal is that not one more bride who comes after me has to go through what I did. I'm going to use this anger and leave this place better than when I got here.
The wedding industry needs to be brought into the light. I spent two months fighting for information that should have been freely available. I hired someone to help who'd been indoctrinated into the system. I have been handled and placated at every turn by people who saw my wedding as dollar signs and me as the soft target in the middle of it.
We deserve to know what things cost before we fall in love with a venue.
We deserve someone actually on our side. We deserve to plan the most beautiful day of our lives without feeling like we're being played.
Welcome to Unveiled.