We have a new associate at Five Grain Events! Please join me in welcoming coordinator, Sara Balsom. Sara will be my assistant at most weddings but will also be lead-coordinating a wedding in June at Salvage One (LUCKY girl! I’m jealous!). Sara is a fabulous gal with great skills–which were proven when she coordinated MY wedding last November! Clearly I’d entrust that job only to the best.
To help you get to know Sara, I’ve asked her to answer a few fun questions, so here they are…and HUGE thanks to Jaclyn Simpson for snapping some new pics of us:

Jaclyn Simpson Photography
Tell us a little bit about how you got into the wedding industry.
I have always loved planning and I was the social chair for my sorority in college. Once my friends started getting married, I was asked to be a bridesmaid or help out with their weddings in different ways. The more weddings I was involved in, the more I started picking up what worked and what didn’t. I then started assisting a wedding planner I knew and eventually started running weddings on my own.
If your “emergency bag” could only have 5 items, what would they be?
I have cheated a little bit but I would have pins (safety pins and bobby pins), a long lighter or matches, duct tape, peppermints, and a tide bleach pen.
What’s your favorite wedding trend right now?
I love the vintage influences that are resurfacing, whether it is in wedding bands, hair accessories, veils, or other elements.
If you could do your wedding all over, where would you have it and what would it be like?
That’s a hard question to answer!! There are several places I see and think “I would have loved to get married here!” so I don’t know if I could pick a place, but the main thing I would change would be the number of people I invited. I think if I could do it all over again, I would have trimmed my guest list down so it was more of an intimate crowd, making it more of a really fun party with my family and closest friends.
What’s the best advice you can give to a bride and groom?
The best advice I can give a bride and groom is to hire a day-of wedding coordinator. Too often, on the wedding day, the bride (and sometimes the groom) can get caught up in the details of the event rather than focusing on the specialness of the day. A day-of coordinator can take care of all of the details for a bride and groom so they can focus on enjoying the day with each other, family, and friends.

Jaclyn Simpson Photography