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Weddings For Real is a top-rated wedding industry podcast packed with expert tips, actionable strategies, and relatable stories. For over 6 years, we've interviewed the leading voices in the wedding industry, covering everything from client experience and team building to social media, SEO, branding, and the real-life lessons learned as an entrepreneur. With over 280 episodes and 250+ 5-star reviews, we guarantee you’ll find the insights you need to grow your wedding business and thrive.

wedding industry podcast
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280+ Episodes

5 star reviews

Over 250+ five star reviews

Podcast downloads

350,000 Downloads

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290

10 Life Hacks for Squirrel Brain Entrepreneurs


239

219

279

What You Need To Know About Growth + Burnout (Part 1)


Use This Strategy For Standing Out In A Crowded Market


5 Truths Every Business Owner Needs To Hear

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Megan Gillikin Megan Gillikin

106: Racism, Inclusion, and The Keys to Change, with Terrica

About Terrica:

With over fourteen years in the wedding industry, award winning wedding planner and designer Terrica Skaggs has been creating exquisite weddings and events in the Golden Isles. As the Chief Wedding Planner and Designer of Cocktails & Details®, she leads a team of talented wedding planners and event managers in creating unforgettable destination Southern weddings. She also launched The White Lounge, an intimate wedding planning studio in Historic Downtown Brunswick that brings couples and wedding professionals together. Maintaining a deep connection to her peers under the premise of “each one, teach one”, she created the largest and most diverse online community for wedding planners and designers– bringing together the best and brightest from every corner of the globe for collaboration and connection. She is extremely passionate about elevating and encouraging female entrepreneurs. A featured expert for many TV, print and digital publications, she is known for keeping her finger on the pulse of all wedding and business trends. Traveling across the States and internationally, shares her breadth of knowledge at both national and regional wedding industry conferences and groups, with this year being named a 2019 Knot Pro Educator. Her speaking engagements are always highly anticipated as she is known for her humorous, yet blunt down-to-earth approach. Terrica uses her experience and knowledge of the wedding industry to translate real-life concepts into workable business models.

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Megan Gillikin Megan Gillikin

105: How to Work with a Virtual Assistant, with Julie Painter from Dallas Girl Friday

Julie Painter (aka Dallas Girl Friday) is a virtual assistant who specializes in the wedding industry, and today she gives the inside scoop on what a VA does, when you should think about hiring a VA, and how to work best together. Weddings for Real is brought to you by The Planner's Vault, a membership site for wedding planners who are hungry to grow, ready to hustle, and actively seeking community and education. In the vault, there will be guest experts on many topics relevant to growing and cultivating a successful event planning business with new content added consistently, plus all of my templates that I have built out over the years like How to Get on Preferred Vendor Lists, The Client Experience, and more. The mission with the vault is to elevate the industry (along with some amazing experts and fellow entrepreneurs) and I want it to be affordable so it's possible to stay invested in the community and yourself for the long haul. 

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Megan Gillikin Megan Gillikin

104: Defining Luxury on Your Own Terms, with The Flower Guy Bron

Have you ever felt the pressure of keeping up with what looks "elegant" or "luxurious" on Instagram? Why? Why do we care about matching what we see on the cover of The Knot or Martha Stewart Weddings? Isn’t it more important that our clients are happy and we’re and we’re running a profitable business? Isn’t that why we all got into this?  The Flower Guy Bron  had this exact realization a few years ago and is on a mission to let wedding vendors know that winning Instagram shouldn’t be your goal. And as we move into a post-COVID-19 world where we’ll probably be experiencing more intimate weddings, that message will become more important.  Weddings for Real is brought to you by The Planner's Vault, a membership site for wedding planners who are hungry to grow, ready to hustle, and actively seeking community and education. In the vault, there will be guest experts on many topics relevant to growing and cultivating a successful event planning business with new content added consistently, plus all of my templates that I have built out over the years like How to Get on Preferred Vendor Lists, The Client Experience, and more. The mission with the vault is to elevate the industry (along with some amazing experts and fellow entrepreneurs) and I want it to be affordable so it's possible to stay invested in the community and yourself for the long haul. 

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Megan Gillikin Megan Gillikin

103: Setting Boundaries with Your Clients, with Executive Coach Kathleen O'Grady

Ok, so raise your hand if you feel like you are setting firm boundaries with your clients, and you almost always stick to those boundaries while working with them. No hands? It's a struggle for everyone, but we all need to be better at setting boundaries because it’s not fair to our teams, our families, and ourselves. So on today's episode, we brought on an executive coach Kathleen O'Grady to help.

Raleigh Coaching Academy

Authenticity is Contagious Podcast

Weddings for Real is brought to you by The Planner's Vault, a membership site for wedding planners who are hungry to grow, ready to hustle, and actively seeking community and education. In the vault, there will be guest experts on many topics relevant to growing and cultivating a successful event planning business with new content added consistently, plus all of my templates that I have built out over the years like How to Get on Preferred Vendor Lists, The Client Experience, and more. The mission with the vault is to elevate the industry (along with some amazing experts and fellow entrepreneurs) and I want it to be affordable so it's possible to stay invested in the community and yourself for the long haul. 

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Megan Gillikin Megan Gillikin

102: Bringing Your Clients, Vendors, and Team Into the Digital Age, with Nora Shiels

Today we’re talking all about how to get your clients, your vendors, and your team on board with the digital age. Sometimes it’s super frustrating when clients can’t figure out how to sign a contract, or a vendor is ridiculously slow to respond, or a team member doesn’t respond the way you want them to. Well our guest today, Nora Shiels from Rock Paper Coin and Bridal Bliss Wedding Planning in Portland Oregon, gives some great tips on how we can all get on the same page. If you're interested in checking out Rock Paper Coin, subscriptions are free right now while it's in beta if you use the code "WED20" at checkout. Weddings for Real is brought to you by The Planner's Vault, a membership site for wedding planners who are hungry to grow, ready to hustle, and actively seeking community and education. In the vault, there will be guest experts on many topics relevant to growing and cultivating a successful event planning business with new content added consistently, plus all of my templates that I have built out over the years like How to Get on Preferred Vendor Lists, The Client Experience, and more. The mission with the vault is to elevate the industry (along with some amazing experts and fellow entrepreneurs) and I want it to be affordable so it's possible to stay invested in the community and yourself for the long haul. 

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Megan Gillikin Megan Gillikin

101: Building Business Stability through Email Marketing, with Aleya Harris

To be honest. Is email marketing something you do for your business? Are you bringing future clients into your sales funnel and giving them content every week?  (Do you really even know what a sales funnel is?) If you’re like me, you  have 100% NOT been using email marketing to generate leads from engaged couples, and I’m really just not sure how to do it.  So I brought on an expert, Aleya Harris from Flourish Marketing, and asked her all the questions. Aleya mentioned two great links to help. For an email list building roadmap and marketing funnel overview, go to FlourishMarketing.co/email-guide, and for even more freebies, go to FlourishMarketing.co/freebies. THE PLANNER'S VAULT: On February 27, 2020, Megan launched The Planner's Vault, a membership site for wedding planners who are hungry to grow, ready to hustle, and actively seeking community and education. In the vault, there will be guest experts on many topics relevant to growing and cultivating a successful event planning business with new content added consistently, plus all of my templates that I have built out over the years like How to Get on Preferred Vendor Lists, The Client Experience, and more. The mission with the vault is to elevate the industry (along with some amazing experts and fellow entrepreneurs) and I want it to be affordable so it's possible to stay invested in the community and yourself for the long haul. 

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Megan Gillikin Megan Gillikin

100th Episode Awards Show Extravaganza

Welcome to the Weddings for Real 100th Episode Extravaganza! On this special episode, you'll hear who won the awards for: Toughest Interview Easiest Interview Funniest Episode Best One-Liner Most Referenced Episode Topic Megan Thought Would Suck But Was Actually Great Biggest Impact Personally Person Most Likely to Become Insta-Famous Favorite Episode That Had Nothing to do with Weddings Guest You'd Most Like to Have a Beer With Most Boring Episode Fan Favorite Weddings for Real on Social Media:

Instagram: @weddingsforreal

Facebook: @weddingsforreal

Twitter: @weddingsforreal

The host of the show is Megan Gillikin, owner and lead consultant at A Southern Soiree Wedding and Event Planning.  She's also available for wedding and hospitality business consulting and can be reached at megan@weddingsforreal.com.

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Megan Gillikin Megan Gillikin

99: Multicultural Wedding Do's and Don'ts, with Petronella Lugemwa

Some of the most lavish and exciting weddings to work are the ones where culture plays a big part in the wedding. And today we talk to someone who specializes in multicultural weddings, , and she gives us the do's and don'ts of multicultural weddings.

THE PLANNER'S VAULT: On February 27, 2020, Megan launched , a membership site for wedding planners who are hungry to grow, ready to hustle, and actively seeking community and education. In the vault, there will be guest experts on many topics relevant to growing and cultivating a successful event planning business with new content added consistently, plus all of my templates that I have built out over the years like How to Get on Preferred Vendor Lists, The Client Experience, and more. The mission with the vault is to elevate the industry (along with some amazing experts and fellow entrepreneurs) and I want it to be affordable so it's possible to stay invested in the community and yourself for the long haul.

About Petronella:

Petronella Lugemwa is an international wedding and marriage proposal photographer, speaker, writer and storyteller based out of the New York area who specializes in helping multicultural couples celebrate their love in a modern way and believes that what makes you different makes your beautiful. She photographed the November 2018 cover of Rangefinder Magazine and was named 1 of 30 Rising Stars in wedding photography worldwide in 2018. Petronella Photography has been featured in Essence, Martha Stewart Weddings, The Knot, New York Magazine Weddings and MunaLuchi Bride.

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