Today we’d like to introduce you to Skylar Caitlin.
Skylar, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
How I got started in weddings is actually kind of silly. I was sitting in my high-school senior English class after exams, completely bored, surfing the brand new Internet craze – Pinterest. A friend of mine said she wanted to plan weddings like she saw on Pinterest and I thought for a second and said, “me too!” Seven years and over 50 weddings later, I’m running the Houston location for a national brand. If you get into the nitty-gritty of it, though, I went to Auburn University for a degree in Hospitality Management and spent weekends driving two-hours one-way to Atlanta, Georgia to get hands-on experience with the industry’s best. It was a lot of long hours and road trip playlists.
Has it been a smooth road?
Every wedding is an adventure. Even the “easy” ones come with their own set of challenges and struggles. And the hard ones… well they really make you question if this is what you want to be pouring your heart and soul into. As planners and coordinators, sometimes we get taken for granted and/or are blamed for a lot of things that are out of our control – I was once asked why I couldn’t make it stop raining.
I don’t think wedding planning will ever be smooth-sailing. While you learn to process and tricks to streamline, each couple is different and they are always, understandably, charged with emotions. My husband once explained my job like this: “What brides don’t understand is that when you say you’re offering a ‘stress-free’ wedding day experience, it’s because you’re personally taking on her stress for her. You’re dealing with all the little fires, cranky guests, and unresponsive vendors. And, you’re doing that for seven other brides at the same time!”
So, as you know, we’re impressed with Chancey Charm Weddings, Houston – tell our readers more, for example, what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
The clinical version is this: Chancey Charm was started a little over 7 years ago by our founder and creative director, Sarah Chancey. About four-ish years ago, she decided to launch the associate licensed planner program and open up locations across the US. Now, we have 10 girls in 13 locations providing our clients with fresh designs and a stress-free planning experience. The description I like to tell people is that we’re a collective of small business-women who have joined together to provide each other with support and a community. It’s really special in the entrepreneurship world because there are no “trade secrets” between us. When one of us succeeds it bolsters us all up so having community above the competition is uniquely true with our team.
Chancey Charm specializes in full-service wedding planning and design. On the planning side, we lean on a cloud-based software to help our couples to plan from wherever they are and stay organized throughout the wedding planning process. On the design side, I go very in-depth with my couples to create a wedding day aesthetic that reflects who they are as a couple instead of the latest trend. Our founder started with hand-drawn sketches and I’m proud to say, I’ve undergone training to offer them to our couples here in Houston, as well. Sketches and online mock-ups can help get their minds out of the copy and paste world of the internet and start envisioning something that is all their own.
Let’s touch on your thoughts about our city – what do you like the most and least?
I love the diversity of Houston. I grew up in a small college town that put an emphasis on our international community, but it was still small-town Alabama so a lot of the diversity was whitewashed. Here, cultures are boldly celebrated and displayed through food, through art, through music in a way I hadn’t experienced before.
The number one thing about Houston I’d change if I could is walkability. As much as I love our foodie town, I need the extra steps to work off all that goodness. Plus, there’s something so energetic about a bustling walking town like New York or Paris. But our public transit isn’t quite there yet and it’s just not built to be friendly to pedestrians.
Pricing:
- Full-Planning & Design – starts at $4,500
- Month-of Coordination – starts at $1,500
Contact Info:
- Address: Mailing ONLY
2450 Louisiana Street
Suite 400 #435
Houston, Texas 77006 - Website: www.chanceycharmweddings.com
- Phone: 832-930-7383
- Email: skylar@chanceycharmweddings.com
- Instagram: http://instagram.com/skylar_caitlin/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chanceycharmweddings/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/ChanceyCharm
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/chancey-charm-atlanta?osq=chancey+charm+weddings (but we don’t really use this one)
- Other: https://www.pinterest.com/ChanceyCharm/
Image Credit:
Skylar fixing Dress – KVC Photography, Skylar sketching – Smith House Photography, Table close up of wine – Courtney Leigh Photography, Kissing Couple, ceremony – Katy Cox Photography, Formal pose, chapel – Kati Hewitt Photography, Wide table shot – Breanna McKendrick Photography, Kissing couple, classic car – Davy Whitener Photography, B&W reception shot – Dana Fernandez Photography, Headshot w/ flowers – Smith House Photography
Getting in touch: VoyageHouston is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
