011: Real Planner: Kimberly Rhodes of Hitched Events

Hey planners! Today you’ll be hearing from Kimberly Rhodes of Hitched Events. Kimberly got into the marketing and event management industry early on in her career. After having her own wedding, she had the idea of becoming a wedding planner. In this episode, we talk about the first steps to take as a wedding planner (you may be surprised but it isn’t necessarily finding your first client!) She talks about why she made the move back to Texas to start her company, how she quickly learned to charge her worth and why she decided to scale back on the number of weddings she did per year. You’ll hear her advice for making shifts in your business as you learn what you do and don’t love, how building community has helped her and the process of starting her podcast, This Week in Weddings.

What’s in this episode:

• Why she moved from Dallas, TX to New York and her background of working in event management and marketing
• How Kimberly got into wedding planning after her own wedding
• Why they decided to move back to Dallas, TX to start her company
• Their advice on the first steps to take as a wedding planner
• How her first client and wedding client met her
• What she learned from her first wedding event
• Their tips on charging your worth
• Kimberly’s experience of realizing she took on too many clients and how she combatted this 
• Why you need to do a yearly self-evaluation
• The reasons she’s scaled-down on events to serve fewer clients
• Their focus on the DFW market and why she isn’t a fan of destination wedding planning
• How she’s learned to make tweaks in her business based on what she does and doesn’t enjoy 
• How building a planner and vendor community has helped her 
• How her podcast, This Week in Weddings, came about
• Kimberly’s thoughts on adapting the “never stop learning” mindset
• Her advice for other wedding planners

About Kimberly:

With more than 20 years of event planning experience, ranging from corporate conferences to non-profit galas, Kimberly Rhodes found her love for weddings while planning her own in 2011. Now in its ninth year, her award-winning event planning company Hitched Events focuses on beautifully-detailed weddings and other celebratory events in the Dallas area. Kimberly is also the current President of the Dallas-Fort Worth Chapter of the National Association of Catering & Events. In 2016, Kimberly launched This Week in Weddings, one of the first wedding industry podcasts for entrepreneurs, now enjoyed by event professionals all over the world. 

Connect with Kimberly at Hitched Events:
Website | Instagram 

This Week in Weddings
Website | Instagram

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