This blog post is SO overdue but your going to love it and it was definitely worth the wait! I promise! Chris and I just recently got married October 14, 2017 and we hired ALL of our vendors via their Instagram profiles for our Asheville, NC wedding.

I guess being the owners of a Marketing Agency, in our eyes, your social media speaks louder than your website. In no way did we want a traditional wedding and I was looking for how these vendors insta feeds made us feel.

I remember looking for our wedding photographer and I would go on some accounts and be like mehh but then I would come across others, and it would give me all the feels.

I wanted my vendors to give me ALL the feels. I also wanted my guest to experience the vibe I was trying to set also.

If you are a business in 2018 and you are NOT using social media to connect with your ideal client, you are doing yourself a HUGE disservice to your business. Social media is king in establishing your brand authority and Instagram has made it so easy to connect with your audience and make it a home for literally millions of people that could potentially be your client.

Pro Tip: Check out this blog post I wrote here on my top three favorite ways that you can connect with your ideal client on Instagram.

 All photography by Sheila Nolt Photography

So when Chris proposed to me, the first thing I did was head to Pinterest and start whipping up our mood board for our wedding. (Of courseee)

Here is the final mood board I came up with:

I treated the vibe and aesthetic of our wedding the same way I would treat a design project. I couldn’t help myself and although we were definitely hiring a wedding planner, I wanted the design to be 100% us.

After we finalized our colors, we picked a date! We knew we wanted to get married the same year we got engaged, Asheville, NC was one of our favorite cities, we wanted a small intimate wedding, and we wanted it to be FULL of romance.

So we picked the peak time for the changing of the leaves in Asheville and dove head first into finding our vendors!

I wanted our guest to be wowed by every detail and to really feel the emotion we wanted to encapsulate on our wedding day. So while looking on Instagram, I really wanted to be wowed and feel the emotion behind the brand’s story as soon as I came across their feed.

Pro Tip: Every brand has a story, including yours and it should be clearly showcased on your social media profile.

Here are some things I looked for:

• Does the brand/vendor have high-quality graphics on their feed?
• Is the account curated nicely and on brand or is it all over the place?
• Is their website in the URL box?
• Is their website mobile friendly?
• Do they showcase photos of their work consistently?
• Do they respond to comments and engage with their audience on social media?

Pro Tip: I was NOT looking for how many followers the vendor had because that does not matter in social media anymore. I have learned some of the best business owners and small businesses to work with have micro accounts on social media. They are not necessarily the ones that have a million followers.

First I started looking for our wedding photographer. The photography was the most important element of our wedding to me. If we didn’t have beautiful photos then nothing else really mattered. I wanted gorgeous photos that beautifully captured our love as organic as possible. I did NOT want a posed wedding album, yuck so 2001. I wanted our wedding photos to be moody, emotional and show the raw emotion behind our wedding day. When I came across Sheila Nolt’s insta feed, I knew she was the one! Instantly. I cried scrolling through her photos and I knew I wanted her on board for our wedding day.

Here is a sample of Sheila’s Instagram Feed (ALL the feels, right!) @sheilanoltphotography

She was SO amazing to work with and I literally want her to photograph every single important event for us. She is an incredible photographer!

Next came our catering company. The FOOD! Being Hispanic, the food was the next most important thing on our list. When I was searching for our catering company, I had no idea what type of food we wanted to serve but we did want the food to be locally sourced and cooked on site. On Instagram, I came across the picture of the cutest food truck evaaaa! Not only was Smash Events a catering company cooking their food on site in their food truck but they were also a full-service event planning company AND their feed was filled with gorgeous floral arrangements. I was SO excited to work with them. I got on a call with the owner Ashley and at first, I was hesitant to hire one company to do it ALL but they were literally THE BEST wedding event company I have ever worked with.

My mom is a wedding planner and I have had my fair share of experiences with wedding vendors. She was definitely hesitant to give up control of our wedding planning but we didn’t want to put that pressure on her for my wedding, (or kill her in the process LOL) so we definitely needed a third party to assist.

After speaking to the owners of Smash Events on the phone, I was so sold on working with them. She then connected me to her wedding planner on staff, Dominique and I fell in love ALL over again. At this point, we already had the dream team on board. We went to Asheville a few months before the wedding and stuffed our faces at our tasting with them and we devoured errrrthing they made for us. Literally everything! They helped us put together the most incredible menu and our late night snack was a taco truck, donut bar and hot chocolate bar! Smash Events also created all of my beautiful florals!

Next was Hair and Makeup. Equally as important. I found my dynamic duo beauty queens on Instagram and here is the email I sent them:

As you can see, when I found her feed on Instagram it was EXACTLY what I had envisioned on my wedding day. They made all of the ladies in my family look and feel like queens. The day of my wedding, I decided that the look we did at the trial just wasn’t a look I was feeling anymore and Liz handled my last minute makeup changes like a champ. I felt like a mother effin supermodel on my wedding day thanks to Liz and Amy!

Amy was my hairstylist and she is the owner of AE Studios @amyelizabethsnips

Look at these goddess hair vibes on her insta!

My makeup was flawless all day and night thanks to the incredible Liz Black @liz_black

As you can see, making sure your social media profiles speak directly to your ideal client is so important in monetizing your accounts. I LOVED every single one of the vendors we worked with. Not one ounce of stress on my wedding day, I was in no way a bridezilla, our food was DELICIOUS, cooked to perfection AND did you see my floral bouquet!? Dreamy! Perfect weather, Sunset glow, Candlelit dinner, romantic ceremony. I got every single thing I wanted on our wedding day and I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect day.

Our vendors helped us create the perfect day that before it was even over I was asking about booking them for our vow renewal and future kids birthdays!

How do you feel about selecting your wedding vendors from social media?

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