Welcome to Mind Over Matrimony

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Hello friends, welcome to Mind Over Matrimony. And you know, I’ve been thinking a lot about why this show and why this show now. People always ask me kind of what my hobby is, and I always jokingly laugh and say, “Haha, it’s mental health.” And interestingly, this show is actually about mental health and figuring out how to be what I actually like to call the dapper diplomat.

Which is kind of this name that was given to me at the beginning of my career because I used to wear a bow tie and a suit and I was very buttoned up. But then there’s also this other real side of me that is funny and laughs and definitely has the mouth of a sailor. And I’ve been kind of my whole professional career trying to figure out how to have a balance of those two.

So what can you expect really from being here? I think you can expect an honest, real conversation about the wedding industry, about trauma, and about how to use your data in the best possible way. Those three things kind of seem a little disconnected, but in all reality, they each run through the other all the time. And we don’t as an industry talk about that.

I’m just going to take you back to how it all started. I’ve been doing weddings and events really since 2003 basically. I clearly don’t have any hair left. I’ve been doing this a long time, but I’ve seen it from every different side of the story. And really, I actually started in sorority parties.

I was in Oklahoma at the University of Oklahoma. I looked around and there were kind of a couple of options: Arby’s, Old Navy, or the college library. I tried Old Navy and also Arby’s, but I realized I didn’t love those jobs. And I looked around and all of my friends were going to sorority and fraternity parties. And I realized, you know, I could maybe plan these parties.

So I went to my friend who was the social chair of one of the sororities and she said, “Okay, sure. We’ll give you a shot.” And that started my career as a sorority party planner. I started a business called Method Events. What that really did for me was I learned that I loved events, that I loved the rush of events, that I loved guiding people through an experience altogether. Once you kind of get into that space, you’re hooked.

If you have a heart for hospitality, then you really understand taking care of people is something that is so necessary and a part of your life. And then once you bring it into your life, you really can’t let go.

After that, I went to work for the parent company of USA Today in corporate events. And then I made my way into hotels. As a little kid, my dream was really always to work for the Queen of England. And as I grew up, I understood that Americans really can’t go work for the Queen. But I found the next best thing, which is America’s four and five-star hotels—America’s castles. So I found myself in Dallas at Rosewood Hotels and Resorts.

The thing about hotels is that it is one of the hardest jobs in the event industry. You sit at the fulcrum of a lot of elements that you cannot control. You’re learning how to bob and weave. You’re learning how to communicate effectively. You’re learning how to take criticism effectively.

That led me to working for a large production firm here in Dallas where I learned a lot about rental, floral, decor, and how to run a business. That really introduced me to destination weddings, which fascinated me. It was so much more difficult, complex, and more of a challenge.

And then now almost 10 years ago, this business of Julian Leaver Events. The thing for me is the other 364. If you have a year-long wedding planning process, the other 364 is actually where the wedding is planned. If you make the right decisions in those 364 days, then the outcome of the wedding is pretty much guaranteed to be a success.

The second pillar is mental health. In the wedding industry we don’t love to confront mental health head-on. But I am always saying that we are #childrenoftrauma and we want to please people. We want to make sure that everyone is happy all the time. We stay up at night worried if the client didn’t like something. And I am 100% a child of trauma.

In the wedding industry, we’re also kind of all trauma bonded. Doing an event is like putting yourself through trauma because there’s so many moving pieces. Everybody comes—if you’re a human, you have trauma. I think we don’t talk about that enough.

Pillar three is data. There is an account that most wedding professionals follow called Nancing Naring and they did a poll about Google Analytics. The result was kind of shocking. The person who runs that account was actually very angry about why are not more people looking at the data.

I think the reason is because a lot of people in this business are not in this business as business owners. They are in this business as a florist, a cake decorator, or a stationer. But doing stationery and owning a business are two very different things.

I call it tinkering on my business because you can’t change everything overnight. Data is not going to solve every single problem, but it is going to let you twist a little dial here and twist a little dial there and then see what the hell happens. Because if you’re not working on your business, then your business is going to be dead in the next six months because everything in our space is changing so rapidly.

So we’re going to figure this out together. We’re going to have some fun while we do it.