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Planning a Sun Valley Wedding

Wedding Planning Tips from Taylor

Spring is in the air in the Valley and following closely behind the melting snow and the chirp of the chickadees is another wedding season!  Taylor Sturges, of Taylor’d Events is an expert in the art of wedding planning in the Valley and she sat down to give us her tips on planning the ultimate Sun Valley wedding.
Taylor grew up in Ketchum and learned to “do flowers” when she worked for a small florist in Los Angeles to help pay her bills. Taylor quickly learned that she not only had a passion for creating floral arrangements, but that it was passion that would bring her back to the Valley. She would return and start Bella Flora in Ketchum in 2003 and, shortly thereafter, realized that wedding planning was a natural progression for a florist.

Taylor launched Taylor’d Events in 2005 and has since planned about 300 weddings (she says that she doesn’t keep track). Taylor typically plans and executes 30 or so weddings a year and has planned everything from 20 person weddings (including the bride and groom) on a shoestring budget, to weddings with 500 people the cost over a million dollars. With her wide-ranging experience in wedding planning, Taylor is certainly an authority on the subject and she graciously shares with us her top six tips for planning a beautiful and stress-free wedding in Sun Valley—whether at a private residence, local restaurant,outdoor field, top of the mountain or Sun Valley Resort.

1) Pitch a Tent

Taylor’s most important tip for wedding planning in the Valley is to absolutely include a tent in your wedding.  As we all know, mountain weather is unpredictable and Taylor says that the rogue rain or hail-shower will most certainly ruin not only a wedding and leave the bride in tears, but will cost you financially as well.  When all of your rented wedding accoutrements such as linens get wet, you’ll be responsible for paying for them, which is definitely not something that couples plan to include in their budget.

     

2) Serve Alcohol After the Ceremony

Typical weddings are incredibly long days for guests and can add up to 10 hours of pre and post-wedding partying. Encourage your guests to pace themselves so that they last until the end of the wedding and don’t end up like the token guy passed out at the back of the reception hall. Taylor cautions against serving alcohol before the ceremony because many summer weddings are hot and sitting in the sun during a particularly long service after a cocktail or two can be a recipe for disaster. 

3) Trust your Florist

This tip comes from a wedding planner, who is first and foremost a florist, so listen carefully—trust your florist. Taylor says to give your florist an idea of color schemes, flowers that you absolutely love and cannot live without and flowers that you really don’t like, and then let your florist do her job. This ensures that your florist can chose the freshest flowers and what will look best in your arrangements.

             

4) Listen to your Vendors

Tip number four follows suit with Taylor’s tip about flowers—listen to the people who are experts in their fields and let them do their jobs. “Wedding vendors aren’t in this business for fun, they are in it because they know what they’re doing,” says Taylor. You’ll get lots of unsolicited advice about planning your wedding from family and friends, but Taylor says to stick with the guidance of your vendors because they know what they’re talking about.

5) Include your Personal Style

Taylor advises to really know who you are as a couple and to make sure to imbue all the details of your wedding with your personal style. “People don’t want to go to a cookie-cutter wedding, because they are boring and we have all been to that wedding dozens of times,” says Taylor.  She suggests adding little touches that reflect you as a couple, like the wedding that she did for a fly-fishing fanatic in which they had tied flies as boutonnières.

           

6) Have Fun!

Taylor is adamant that couples should be guests at their own wedding and shouldn’t have to be worried about permits, heaters or running out of toilet paper in bathrooms.  Brides and grooms should be as stress-free as possible so that they can enjoy their wedding and remember the important parts, and not whether or not they ran out of ice. Taylor says that for that exact reason she will hire a wedding planner for her own wedding when that day comes—it’s either that or a Vegas wedding … but don’t tell her mom!