Emma’s Wedding Journey Ep 1

Come on a journey with Partyologist and event planner Emma De Jong as she starts to plan her own wedding. In this episode you will meet Emma and how she is going with her wedding planning. We start to discuss her wedding journey and everything that is involved.Listen to how someone who helps plan weddings and events for a living decides on her own wedding suppliers and her mindset around her wedding.

Marcus (00:00):

Hi guys, welcome to the Partyology Experience podcast. My name’s Marcus. I’m the owner of feel-good events and I’m here today with Emma the general manager of feel good events. Emma’s silly enough to be getting married in about eight, nine months time, I think 10 months time. Not that she’s counting and we thought it would be a great idea to talk about Emmas planning process and everything that she’s going to go through in planning for her wedding and the good and bad points. We will look at the highs and the lows of all her planning and everything, that anxiety that comes around and planning a wedding. Emma does planning weddings and events for our living, but it’s different when you’re doing it from start to finish for yourself. So we thought it’d be a great experience for her to talk about what she’s learned, what she knows based on her own experience. And hopefully you get some tips and ideas on what to do and what not to do. So, welcome Emma. Thank you for joining me on the podcast today. So first of all, we have to ask you why you’re getting married. I mean, why would you want to do that? All the experience, the pain, the anxiety. Why would you want to do that.

Emma (01:02):

Oh, no, no. I’ve been with my partner for a long time and I think, you know, it’s something we’ve always wanted to do. We’ve always wanted to sort of follow the path of, you know, buying our first home, then getting married and having children. So it’s just the way that we decided we wanted to do things. So my partner is Ben, I call him BJ. most people will know him as BJ. He has just finished six years in the Australian army and now is currently working full time renovating our home , we’re very crazy in the fact that we are planning a wedding as well as renovating our home and working. So it’s pretty busy for us at the moment.

Marcus (01:38):

So you must be absolutely crazy to, you know, to do a renovation together and then, spend all this money on a wedding and a renovation all at the same time. You must be one, you must be cashed up and two you must really love each other to put yourselves through this torture. It’ll be a good test to see if you’re going to make it to the wedding.

Emma (01:56):

It’s been a definitely a test for our relationship. We’ve been through a lot of things now, in our long relationship, but this is a whole another ball game. It’s, you know, making decisions on tiles and where rooms are gonna be and we have different sort of thoughts on what we want to do. So yeah, it’s definitely hard. We’re definitely not loaded, I can tell you that, but we’ve worked it out so that we could get married and renovate the same sort of time. So renovations clearly happened by the end of this year and then we’ll get married next year. So it’s all happening. How long have you been engaged for? So we’ve been engaged for a year and a half. I had to think about it cause I actually had forgotten how long it had been. It’s gone so quickly. So you’re a year and a half.

Marcus (02:30):

And how much planning have you done in that time?

Emma (02:32):

Not a huge amount to be honest. Actually, I’ve only sort of just started in the last couple of months. I sort of thought I’ll leave it up until about a year before and then I’ll start getting a bit more serious. Probably in the last two, three weeks I’ve started really getting my head around it. Yeah, it’s, it’s just trying to get what I wanted to do and work out and I sorta saw it probably should get my head into gear and start organizing it.

Marcus (02:55):

So do you think because you work in events and you do this all the time, you’re a bit more relaxed about it and you know that timeframe’s a lot better and, you know potentially who you could use for supplies. Do you think you’ve sort of given it a bit more time because of that reason or you’ve just been busy and haven’t been able to fit it in?

Emma (03:12):

No, it’s not that. I think because I feel a bit more confident in the choices I make because I already know the suppliers. I know what their work is like. I trust them a hundred percent, and I feel like I don’t need to do too much more research. I think being in the field already, you kind of understand how long the lead times are. I think some people think they’re a lot longer than they need to be ,there is lots of suppliers out there. But yeah, it’s, it’s of course we weddings it’s if you want a particular date you really do need to lock the people you want it on for that date , that’s probably the hardest thing. It’s definitely hasnt been stressful for me at this stage ,so yeah, it’s not been too bad.

Marcus (03:49):

And so have you been looking forward to the planning of doing your own wedding or like is this something you’ve been, you know, for years, I can’t wait to plan my wedding because you do it for so many other people or are you sort of just another wedding?

Emma (04:00):

I haven’t, I’m not one of those girls that was like growing up at 10 or 12 and going, Oh, I just want to get married. This is what I’m going to do for my wedding. I’ve never been sort of like that. I guess I was sort of more sort of focusing on trying to find someone to marry first that actually planned the wedding. It’s probably been the last sort of couple of years. I think I sort of waited because we’ve actually been together for 13 years this year, so it’s been a long time in the waiting to get married. So I didn’t want to get too excited and plan it before we even got engaged. So I think, you know, one step at a time. Yeah. So do you know what sort of wedding you want? We’re both pretty relaxed , individuals , we’re pretty low key.

Emma (04:36):

We just loved to spend time with their family and friends. We don’t like to be like overly formal. So it was never going to be a formal affair for us at all. It was always going to be really chilled. And it’s funny because some people I think thought we were going to do this huge, massive wedding and I was going to be out of control. It’s just not us. Like I don’t like being center of attention. That is the worst thing for me. Like even walking down the all gives me anxiety. Like I just, I even think about it. I don’t do this as a job, but I’m always behind the closed doors. I’m never in front of it. So it gives me, that’s my only stress for this is to do with walking down the aisle. Well, depending on how the renovations go, you could be go down the aisle in a coffin because your partner may of killed you by then ,Who knows? So you won’t have to worry. No, I don’t have to worry at all. But yes it is. That’s the only thing that I find, yeah, a bit stressful about, but we’re going to be pretty lucky with this.

Marcus (05:20):

I think that’s pretty common, isn’t it? Like so many. I mean, you know, doing events and parties for so many years, I’ve spoken to so many brides and their stress about being the center of attention and there’s lots of people like that and you know, just because of getting married, there’s going to be that element of being center of attention. But you can, there’s ways around that so you don’t have to be in front of everyone all the time.

Emma (05:41):

We’ve done that. Yeah. And I think most of the day we probably won’t be the center of attention. It will just be for that split second of getting married and that half an hour of the ceremony. And then after that it will just be about spending time with our family and friends and having a good time. That’s really the main goal. Yeah, for sure.

Marcus (05:55):

Okay. So, and how many people have you got in your bridal party?

Emma (05:58):

so we’ve got three, actually, we’ve got three each. So I’ve actually got two little cousins, a different Sydney and they’re too old to be flower girls and they’re too old, sorry too young to be bridesmaids. So we’ve decided to call the mini bridesmaids, which they’ll absolutely love, actually haven’t asked them yet. So I need to do that soon. so there’ll be my three main bridesmaids and then the two mini bridesmaids and then the three groomsmen. So was that, was that a hard decision to choose those people or easy choice? It was hard for me. I’m actually have a very big group of girlfriends from high school. There’s 10 of us in the group and I’ve also got other friends like friendship groups as well , So it was a bit hard. Like I have three girlfriends that I’ve been best friends forever and they’re the ones that I’ve loved forever and , you know, I get along with them the most and that sort of thing.

Emma (06:49):

And it was quite easy to pick those three ,but you do feel bad not picking everyone. Because of course you always do have more that you like while you could have four or five and you’re like, once you get to four or five its like , then we could have 10 and then it is expensive to, you know, have to pay for all those things as well. I don’t want to have a huge crazy bridal party either. It was just sort of our three favorites and lets sort of called a day. It’s true though, like you always do. It is what it is and it is a hard situation. But I think the people that haven’t been chosen understand, and it is what it is. Another way around that is you can some of those other people that you maybe were on the cusp of should or shouldnt I maybe you can get them involved in something else at your wedding you’re wanting to makes them feel special.

Emma (07:33):

Some people, you know, they’re not first, they’re just happy to be there, but of course, you know, they might be happy to do it or do something else that’s important and makes a contribution. And we probably will do that with some of my other family and that sort of thing and getting people involved that we love. Both of us have really good friendships and family members. So yeah, we’ll, we’ll find spots where we can definitely have people involved as well, but just not sure on what they are at the moment. We haven’t really worked that out. So I guess thinking about your overall wedding, you know, you’re in the early stages now. You’ve obviously, you’ve been thinking about it, I’m sure for a little bit of time. What would you say are the three most or couple of the most important things that you really want to happen at your wedding?

Emma (08:15):

Well, three things that stand out to you that you go I definitely got to have that or I definitely want to do that. I want fun to be a really big one. I find that there’s nothing worse than going to a wedding and you do get a bit bored. I want fun in the fact that I want people dancing and I want to have some sort of entertainment. The things that keep people entertained during the night. Were having a cocktail style style wedding , So it’s not a sit down like it’s a formal setting where you know what’s happening. I want to fill some of those spots with things that are gonna make fun , but saying fun. I also want it to be quite relaxed and I don’t want anything to be too formal as such. So we wouldn’t be doing anything crazy in regards to formalities.

Emma (08:51):

Yeah they’re probably the two main things. The third one is I do want things to look nice. I think every bride wants things to look nice. Yeah. I noticed that with so many Instagram posts that people post and accounts and stuff like that, it is all about what it looks like, but I also do really want it to function properly too. That is one of the main sort of highlights for me. Yeah, we will be focusing on that alot. I think coming from events, it’s sort of, I already know that already. So I sort of, it’s easier for me to sort of work out how on a work around that. So yeah. And so, you know, if you were to interview some of your guests in a year, five years, something like that, how would you like them to describe your wedding?

Emma (09:27):

Looking back at it, how would you like to describe your wedding? Looking back at it. And that’s a hard question to be honest. Okay. I want people to say it was really fun. I want people to say it was really us. I don’t want people to go there and go, it wasn’t really like them to do this. It was a bit out of the ordinary for them to do that. I really want people to go there. Oh, this was so Emma and BJ like it’s so, it was so nice. Everyone had a great time and that is the main thing for me. So when all your friends to come from the nudist club, theyll go, that was Emma and BJ. Okay, well that’s good ,So basically with these podcast this is the initial get to know us, and get to know Emma and where she is in her planning. So this is just a general info on when she is getting married, all that sort of stuff. What we’ll be doing over the coming weeks and months is, I guess highlighting some of the more specifics, talking about venues and things like invitations , flowers , decor and entertainment and much more. Lots to discuss to detail. So yeah, stay tuned. We’ll be hopefully having a podcast at least once a week, maybe more because there’s so much to talk about. But thanks for tuning in today and we hope to see you soon. Thank you.