Have you heard the news?! It’s been quite an exciting couple of months here at Perfectly Posh Events. We are proud to announce that we are now offering Portland wedding planning services! Our southern-raised, PNW-at-heart wedding planner Bridget has landed in the Rose City to start a new chapter in her life and for our company! We are all so excited for this new journey and ready to hit the ground running. Our inboxes have been flooded with questions and congratulatory emails about this new adventure, so we want to share a few more details, backstory and our excitement with you…
GET TO KNOW PORTLAND WEDDING PLANNER BRIDGET
Bridget got her southern hospitality and charm from her hometown of Charleston, SC. This is where her love of weddings and giving great service all started!
Bridget, like most undergrad students who are uncertain of where their path will lead, began studying architecture and then dentistry before she realized her dream career of wedding planning was staring her right in the face! She had worked several years at an elegant wedding venue to pay her way through college and discovered that she absolutely loved everything about weddings. Bridget made the leap from studying to be a dentist to going elbow deep in the hospitality and event industry by enrolling in the Culinary Institute of Charleston and working for a local wedding planning company in Charleston. Fast forward a few years, the opportunity to move to a new city was handed to her on a silver platter…Boulder, CO – look out! Bridget worked in the events department at the Marriott, which is a great way to perfect the level of service that all clients deserve. At a hotel that never says “no” to a customer request and has a policy to always respond with “I’d be delighted”, this was the place where Bridget excelled in the hospitality industry. Colorado is a beautiful state, however little miss Goldilocks decided this wasn’t where she will settle down. Once again, Bridget packed her bags and continued to head west to Los Angeles where she landed a job as an event coordinator at a high-end and celebrity-heavy party planning company. Here she quickly learned that the standards and expectations from most celebrities was quite the challenge and she continued to perfect her event planning skills to meet the needs (and demands) of her high-profile clientele. Let’s just say, she has quite the stories about her adventures in LA (but we’ll save that for another time)!!
Bridget decided that the big city wasn’t a good fit for her so it was time to break out the boxes and suitcases again and check out the Pacific Northwest! The stars aligned and Perfectly Posh Events was on the hunt for a new wedding planner to join our team. What timing! Bridget absolutely has a niche and passion for weddings with plenty of experience in catering, corporate event planning, and special event planning. With her natural southern hospitality, attention to detail, proactive planning, and roll-with-the-punches attitude, Bridget has been a great addition to our wedding planner team, my right-hand-gal, and a wonderful bride’s best friend! So when it came time for Bridget to find her next home, it was without a doubt that we were going to keep her on board and expand to a new city rather than parting ways!
HOW OUR PORTLAND EXPANSION CAME TO FRUITION
After several years of traveling the country, there is no doubt that the moss grew on Bridget’s bones. The PNW is her forever home so it’s time to get serious about purchasing a home and let’s face it, home-buying in Seattle is cray-cray right now. Anytime there was a time to unplug, Bridget vacationed in Portland and it quickly became her second (or 5th!) home. Simultaneously we were receiving a good handful of wedding inquiries in Oregon but the cost of travel and accommodations usually (and understandably) did not fit in the couple’s overall budget. Again, the timing was right and it was clear that we should talk about an expansion! We needed feet on the ground in Portland and who better to send but our lovely and adventurous planner Bridget?! Bridget and I took out our laptops, brought up our calendars, made lists of lists, set goals, and picked a date. Voila! We are officially open for business in Portland and excited to get more Oregon weddings in the books!
Portland Wedding Planner Bridget with Perfectly Posh Events having local coffee while designing and planning weddings.
WHY PORTLAND?
In our recent team retreat, we talked about what our ideal wedding scene would be and we found that we all have different styles, ideas, and visions. It is so wonderful to have a wedding planner team with such beautiful and different design-styles! When Bridget described her ideal style, she was equally torn between elegant, timeless, vineyard weddings and industrial, edgy, dark, and moody weddings. With Portland’s endless options of a natural backdrop, it was an obvious fit for her to be our Lead Wedding Planner + Designer in Portland. There are so many charming, historic, industrial venues downtown and gorgeous vineyards with breathtaking views in the Willamette Valley. Plus, Portland has that small hometown feel that reminds her of her Charleston home – bonus!
Huoy Chen Photography
NOTE FROM PORTLAND WEDDING PLANNER BRIDGET
My personal approach to planning is to really get to know the couple so I have their best interest in mind when making design decisions and putting out any potential fires. The wedding should really reflect the couple and I love doing that by adding details throughout the wedding that would be so special to them. During the planning process, I am very communicative with the full vendor team so that everyone is prepared and on the same page leading up to the wedding. It is very important to me to also have those vendor relationships so that we can tackle the day as a team – and have fun doing it! On the wedding day, I like to always think 2 steps ahead by making sure all of the vendors and VIP guests are ready for the next item on the timeline before guiding the couple towards cake cutting, first dance, etc. We have one chance to get it right so I always make sure the photographer is ready before starting. I like to be prepared for anything that comes my way on a wedding day but as much as we plan, things always come up. It’s how these fires are put out is what’s important – stay calm, handle it behind the scenes (usually), keep the couple happy!
In a nutshell… I’m a southern girl living in the PNW, food is the way to my heart, my whole life has been about planning fun events, I love meeting new people and forming relationships, popping some bubbly for an exciting event, all while having fun along the way!
I am beyond excited to get our Portland branch up and running! If you are an Oregon vendor, I would love to meet you! Let’s get these weddings in the books and create one of the best experiences a couple will ever have!
Always a pleasure,
Bridget
Clockwise: Barbie Hull Photography | Barbie Hull Photography | J Tobiason Photography | Mike Fiechtner Photography
We are currently booking 2018 + 2019 weddings in Portland and the surrounding area. Fill out our inquiry form so we can discuss how we can make your planning experience and wedding day perfect and posh! Our team is so excited for this new journey and even more excited to meet our new Portland family and friendors (aka wedding vendors who we love to partner with)!
Cheers!
Holly
