Katherine Miles Jones joins Megan to talk about her career start in New York City, how she started in the wedding photography business, an amazing and breathtaking engagement shoot at the Rockefeller Center (see image below), the biggest regret of her wedding, the community of vendors and developing friendships with her competition, how she makes…

“It was a hobby that turned into an obsession that turned into a business.”  That’s how Jared Plummer, the owner of Two Roosters Ice Cream, describes his start in the ice cream business.  He was experimenting and developing crazy concoctions of ice cream flavors in his apartment and bringing them to dinner parties, and then…

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” This quote, attributed to Maya Angelou, is how Ginny Corbett of Ginny Corbett Photography remembers what’s important on the wedding day. She wants to make sure that her clients are…

Amanda Scott with A Swanky Affair sat down with Megan to go over the Top Ten wedding planning mistakes couples make.  Both Megan and Amanda are wedding planners in the Triangle area and have seen just about every mistake possible.  In going over them, they get to share some of their stories usually reserved for…

Phil McInnis from 21 Films Videography in Raleigh came on the show to talk about how he has built up his business from just Phil and his wife Jess to a team of 6 filmmakers and editors, what differentiates the 21 Films style of videography from other wedding videographers, what motivates Phil, how to work…

Cydney English, owner of The English Garden, has been in the flower business for literally her entire life and runs a florist shop in Raleigh where about 60% of her business is weddings.  She does over 120 weddings per year, and she employs 10-20 people at a time depending on the season. Actually, Cydney and…

Jenna Parks is the co-owner of Southern Bride and Groom Magazine of the Triangle. Jenna’s mom Donna started the magazine back in 1986, and Jenna came on board in 2010 to advance it into the  digital age. To have any sort of impact in the wedding magazine space – which features some huge names like…

This episode is with the one and only Joe Bunn from Bunn DJ Company of Raleigh. Joe has been DJing for over 30 years and has built his business up so he now has 15 DJs working with him in Raleigh, plus three other divisions, in Charlotte, Charleston, and Richmond, with multiple DJs at each of…

In the first episode (!) of Weddings for Real, Megan sits down with fellow planner Grace Beason to talk about her career start at The Knot, planning her first weddings with her mentor Marcy Blum, how weddings have evolved over the years, how anyone can say they’re a planner with an Instagram account, being a…

Welcome to the Weddings for Real Podcast, hosted by Megan Gillikin, the owner and lead consultant of A Southern Soiree Wedding and Event Planning. On this podcast, we’re going to talk to wedding professionals about the crazy industry that is weddings.  We all have some amazing stories, and we all have some of those, “OMG…