Vendor Spotlight: Wedfully Yours
This week I had the privilege of speaking with Linda Whitten, owner, and creative director of Wedfully Yours Events & Design, a DFW based Boutique Floral + Event Coordination company. Linda is one of our preferred vendors here at Knotting Hill Place because of her team’s unique, creative, and versatile designs and superb client relationships. She has worked with three clients at Knotting Hill Place so far and we look forward to partnering together for even more weddings this year. Stay tuned until the end of this post to see details about our next giveaway!
Brandi Allyse Photography
About Linda. I loved getting to talk to Linda today and learning even more about her. Something I find very interesting about her company is that she is not only a wedding planner, but she is also a florist. She can do up to three weddings a day with the team that she has, and they all turn out so beautifully. I think that having the option to do planning and florals through one company helps brides tremendously. As Linda told me on the phone, planning, and floral design go hand and hand. When being a planner you show up the day of and start getting all the décor and items set during the pre-wedding time. Adding in florals to this is perfect as she is already there to set up the décor. She has two separate teams, one for coordination and one for floral design and set-up. As I said before one of the main things, we love about Linda is that she is so versatile. She has her own way of making things unique and on-trend while executing the client’s vision perfectly!
Planner experience. Linda has worked as a wedding planner and florist for over 7 years now with 300 events under her belt. This is what makes her the vendor she is today. She says that she has always wanted to be a wedding planner, well really, she has always wanted to be a bride, but once her own wedding was over, she realized this was definitely the career path for her. Her satisfaction comes from helping others and knowing that they will have amazing memories to look back on. Linda loves the rush of the wedding days and the feeling of when things are all over, knowing that she has made someone’s wedding day successful. I asked her what the craziest thing she has had to do as a wedding planner and her answer was definitely crazy! She told me a story about when Hurricane Harvey hit, the father of the bride got stuck in his neighborhood in Houston. She had to arrange a canoe close by to get him out of the neighborhood and to his daughter’s wedding. Her craziest story for floral design was getting frequent request to put flowers on animals, Donkeys were the animals she had the hardest time with! She will stop at nothing to make sure that her clients have the most perfect day.
“There is always love to celebrate.”
How Knotting Hill Place chooses our preferred vendors. As a wedding venue, we get many clients that ask us for vendor recommendations. We are happy to help our clients find vendors that fit their personal style and price point. All of the KHP staff have experience in the wedding industry and have loved getting to know the vendors we have worked with. Everyone on our list has worked an event at Knotting Hill Place multiple times and exceeds expectations of service delivery, as well as formed an essential working relationship with our mutual clients and our staff. It is always nice to hire a vendor that has worked in the space and knows the policies and procedures that the venue has in place. We are always open to new friend-ors though! (vendor friends!)
The Basics
Linda and her team start out with a phone interview followed by a face-to-face meeting if requested. Linda says that she starts by getting to know her clients. Forming a relationship is very important. She lets them chat about what their dreams and wishes are for their wedding day then goes on to talk about her packages and what she can do for them. Wedfully Yours Events & Designs offers Month-of Coordination, Full-Planning, and Full-Service Event Florals. She takes on about 40 – 50 events per year. I asked Linda what it is like to do Full-Planning and she said that she handles everything for them and because this is such a huge task, she only does one full-service client per year.
Pre-wedding. Being as I use Pinterest for everything and already have my wedding design down, I wondered if she has many clients come to her needing full design help or if her clients usually have a full design in mind. She said that it completely depends on the client, each bride is totally unique. Most of her full-planning clients need more of a guide and her month-of clients have more of an idea of what they want.
Day-of. There is no doubt that wedding planning is known to be a stressful career, but Linda handles it with ease and holds herself professionally through the whole event. After her first full-planning client at Knotting Hill Place, I remember asking her how she stays so calm, overseeing every aspect of this event. She told me that a lot of experience is how she can do this job so gracefully! She has seen and lived through so many different situations and learned how to handle things when they do not go as planned. Staying calm and collected under pressure is such a huge deal when being a wedding planner. Your clients are looking to you to make sure that everything is going well and as planned. If the wedding planner is running around frantically, then the bride and groom could be affected. Linda always has a smile on her face, and you would never know if things were not happening as planned. She told me today that she makes sure that everyone knows the main goal is to get the client married and make sure the client, their friends, and family are having an amazing time. She says that if everyone is focused on the goal then any issues that may come up are manageable and can be solved.
Behind the scenes of a wedding day. We have had countless rehearsals at Knotting Hill Place and I think it is so interesting to watch the wedding planners run the rehearsal. Usually attending the rehearsal are the Bride, Groom, immediate family, and wedding party, so you can imagine that it could be difficult to take control of the room and make sure that everyone is listening to the directions they need to follow in order for everything to run smoothly the day-of. Linda said that the rehearsal is the time that she speaks with everyone and lets them know that the Wedding Day is all about the Bride and Groom’s wishes. Everyone needs to be focused on the couple. The Wedfully Yours Team is great at rounding everyone up and making sure everyone is clear on what to do and when. Linda said that she usually keeps everyone ten minutes ahead of schedule. Speaking to the vendors and making sure that they are all aware of the timeline and on the same page is essential to making the wedding day run flawlessly. She admits that things happen, and her team will have to accommodate whatever situation may arise. Linda says that she is always around to make sure that anyone that has questions will be able to speak with her directly.
How to handle both planning and florals. Linda will bring two separate teams if a client hires her for planning and florals. Although both of her teams are interchangeable in the case that one side needs more help. She says that they have found a good rhythm with it. Like she said before planning and florals go hand and hand very naturally.
Working with Knotting Hill Place.
Linda has worked three weddings at Knotting Hill Place thus far and has multiple clients coming up soon. I asked Linda a few questions about working with us here at Knotting Hill Place. She said that she really liked the fact that we require a month out meeting before the event. We always like to sit down with our clients and their planners to make sure that we are all in sync to ensure that the client’s event runs smoothly. Overall, this has been very helpful and essential to making sure that we know what we can do as the venue to help the client’s dream come to life. Linda also mentioned our client portal is very helpful to keep track of all the documents that we share throughout the planning process. She let me know that every time she has been onsite everything was set up exactly as discussed in each. Being able to rely on a venue to do a great job always makes the planner’s job easier if they can come in and get straight to work with no delays. Linda spoke with me about how important it is to have a good relationship between vendors. She said that her team can relate well to our staff and that makes working together easier and fun, and we couldn’t agree more!
Meraki Tribe Photography
!Giveaway information! We will be posting a KHP trivia question to our Instagram story on Monday April 27th at 5PM central! The winner will receive a Wedfully Yours floral arrangement! Good luck!
Stay Fresh
Thank you so much, Linda, for speaking with us today and always being a pleasure to work with! Check out Wedfully Yours online here!
