Transcription of Kate Martin for the show Celebrating Love #125
Dr. Lisa: You’ve got to like a person who owns a business called Beautiful Days and I think that the people who hire this person, Kate Martin who is the owner and creative director of Beautiful Days, really find that their days specifically their wedding days are made more beautiful by having her around so thanks for coming in and making our day beautiful, Kate.
Kate: Thanks, happy to be here.
Dr. Lisa: When we were talking about doing our show about weddings which is sort of in homage to the wedding issue the Maine Magazine does every year, they said, “You know, you really have to have Kate Martin in. She is got to be one of the best of the state. We have her represented in magazine all the time and plus, she just has this amazing energy.” I suspect that you use that amazing energy to try to create really wonderful experiences for your brides.
Kate: You need to always kind of be excited about what you’re doing and embracing everyone’s most special day and I’m the first one to admit that sometimes you don’t have that energy so you can’t be creative all the time but my clients inspire me. Their stories inspire me. Our setting inspires me so that really is what keeps me going. It’s not necessarily about the wedding itself. It’s about the people and where they’re getting married. I love Maine. I love the spaces and places and people who work in Maine and how creative we can get and hopefully show that Maine weddings are fun and elegant and classy and flirty and everything all at once without being too contrived or too trendy.
Dr. Lisa: But you’re not really from Maine.
Kate: No. I grew up on Nantucket. My parents moved from New York City in 1971 when I was just about three, moved us to the beach which is great so one of the reasons why I love working in Maine especially coastal Maine is just my love of the ocean and the seaside and also just the architecture and the feeling of New England. I’m a lover of all things New England and classical architecture but also modern architecture as well and I love being able to see kind of especially in Portland, Maine kind of fusing growing cities and traditional architecture and so yeah, growing up on the beach, I continue to be thankful every day for that life I was given and my appreciation for being by the ocean and living in New England and a good, healthy life.
Dr. Lisa: Why did your parents originally decide to move from New York City to Nantucket? Did they share that with you?
Kate: I think that they went there shortly after they were married or just before they were married just for a weekend and they fell in love. They were both working in New York City. They both grew up around New York City within their lives but I think that they were just drawn to this funky little island which at the time was just a bunch of kind of fishermen and funky folks and I think they just fell in love and I think that they thought that it would be a great place to raise a family and they were right.
Dr. Lisa: Is that similar to the reason why you ended up then kind of hopping from Nantucket to, I know you went elsewhere but then came up to Maine?
Kate: Yeah. When my husband and I decided to kind of stick together, we moved out to California for a while which was fantastic. We were in Marin County working in San Francisco and just having a fantastic time but as soon as we got out there, we knew that we would end up back East at some point. California is fantastic as it was and there’s many opportunities as it had for us. It just didn’t feel like home.
As soon as we got to California, my dad would say, “Well, Kate. When you move back to New England” My sister would say, “When you come back, you should come check out Portsmouth, New Hampshire.” In our transition back, we started trying to sort out where we would land knowing then that we would like to buy a home and start our family. My husband has a connection with Bethel, Maine and we just found the right place and we love being in Maine.
My husband goes back. His family goes back, generations into Maine and I think that we had considered Nantucket but we felt that that might be limiting for us and I continued to be thankful about the choice that we made especially now. It’s been about 12 years and we really feel like we’re part of our community in contributing both with our own businesses to offering people certain levels of service and we’re really happy with what we do. I mean we’re both self-employed so it has its challenges to say the least but we love it.
Dr. Lisa: Kate, you shared with me a story about your family that seemed sort of a foundational reason for having gone into the wedding business. You said you went through some very difficult times with your parents who died when you were relatively young and after that, it seemed like every day was a beautiful day. You had been through this really hard, hard time with your siblings and you knew that life was pretty precious.
Kate: Yeah. In my early 30s, unfortunately, our family found ourselves challenged by the sudden illness of my mom and then shortly after was my father as well and I truly believe that one of the reasons why I’m here in general in the larger picture of here was to kind of be there for my parents when they were going through these challenges and be there for my family and then coming out of that, I learned so many positive lessons and I attribute that to my parents and how they kind of related to us and our family about what was going on and how to move forward with it.
Fortunately, my family, we all love each other. I’m the oldest of four and me and my siblings get along great. I can’t imagine my life without them. I chose to look at these challenges as something as empowering instead of defeating and something that for me, if I could go through what I went through with a certain level of grace if there’s such a thing, at least for me personally and thoughtfulness and full of love that I could do just about anything which I think helps keep things in perspective when I work in the wedding world.
As fabulous as everybody’s wedding day should be and it is a beautiful day no matter if it’s an intimate party for 20 under a little tent out on a field or a big grand affair for 200, it’s only one beautiful day out of many that that couple or that family are going to have as they grow up and grow old together and have children. I mean the birth of my son was one of the most beautiful days I’ve ever had and I love keeping up with my clients and seeing that they’re having babies and I write them a little note and say, “See, here’s another beautiful day for you.”
Those beautiful days don’t have to necessarily be big life events. They can just be those little captured moments of making a decision to not work at all and take a day off with your family and go skiing or sit in the house in the snow day and do puzzles instead of bills. I guess that’s how I try and approach just my larger perspective and kind of what empowers me in what I do.
Dr. Lisa: What are some of the things that people come to you concerned about, with regard to weddings? It seems as though everybody always says, “Well, the wedding is the most important day of your life,” which seems very singular but it’s really not just about the couple as much as we would like to believe that it is, it’s really about the couple and the family and the community and friends so what are some of the things that you help people through?
Kate: Most of my clients are from away so they are planning a wedding from New York, Boston, California and everywhere in between. I think one of their challenges is trying to wrap their head around putting on a fabulous celebration when they can’t be here on the ground making sure everything is under control or the mother of the bride can’t be here. If they are, maybe they’re here part time. I think for a lot of couples, that’s challenging and that’s one of the reasons why I think they pick up the phone and track down someone like me to help them wrap their head around how can they produce and execute a fabulous celebration.
I think another challenge is, especially for a mother and brides and grooms and must-be brides, is that they’re so bombarded with images of gorgeous weddings happening all over the world that it gets a little overwhelming and I think they start to think that they feel the pressure to kind of have it all which one of the first things I say is you don’t have to have it all. Let’s focus on what’s most important to you, which is why I really like to get to know my client first.
I send them a little questionnaire and I ask about the bride and groom as individuals, the bride and groom as a couple, what they love to do, their perfect date night, their engagement story and that just helps me kind of get a sense of really what’s important to them and I loop back with those little snippets and remind them down the line when they’re maybe fretting over a certain detail or if they should do a menu versus a thank-you card or something and I’ll loop back and I’ll say, “Well, remember back when we first started working together, you really want to share pieces of you and to make sure that you let your guests know how thankful you were that they showed up.”
We just try and loop back and remember what’s really important. I’m all about the details. I’m all about getting the right color. I’m all about if you want to go nap n’ wrap, we’ll make it work, whatever you want to be but if it’s not important to you, we don’t have to do it so it’s just trying to find that balance of what you truly want, what you truly want to reflect out of your day, how you truly want to bring together all your nearest and dearest, what you want to share with them and also finding that balance with their spending too, not spend what you want but what your budget can afford too.
I think some couples will quickly kind of say, “Oh, our ceremony will be about 20 minutes and it will be quick and it will be great.” I’ll loop back and I’ll remind them, “Don’t forget. That’s why you’re here. That’s why you’re having everyone get together for you is for that 20 minutes, for that 30 minutes.” Regardless of how short it is, it does need to be thoughtful whether you’re being married by a friend who got one day in their mind or if it’s in your family’s church or whatever it is, make sure that you do invest thoughtfulness and care into it because you can have a party any day. You only get married in one day.
Dr. Lisa: What do you do with families that are a little bit more complicated? Say the bride has a set of parents who are divorced or say there’s some family enmity, just somebody doesn’t want to sit next to somebody and it threatens to kind of overshadow all of the joy and happiness of the day.
Kate: That definitely happens. It breaks my heart because it is amazing how sometimes little family emotions get stirred up and sometimes people get a little selfish and you just want to say it’s about your bride and groom. You have to put aside those differences that maybe you had from 20 years ago. I’m 100% honest with my clients when I say you can use me as a buffer because the bride especially, they’re making decisions along with family members that not only are decisions about their day but have emotional weight to them and sometimes, when a mom or an aunt, everyone who has every good intention behind it gives an opinion and you may not agree with it, it may be hard to say no because there’s an emotional connection to it.
I have always told my clients you can use me as the “professional.” Well, the person we’re working with this, this isn’t really as important or we’ll work it out because that comes from a non-emotional connection even though I’m emotionally invested in all my clients and you do sometimes act as a sounding board because there are issues that come up.
There are seating issues you wouldn’t believe, the family, emotional politics that come up when you start assigning personal flowers, putting your corsages that stepmothers are in the mix or someone, dad, girlfriend for 20 years. Do you give her a corsage? and so it is interesting. We do our best to navigate it as that comes up and ideally, I just kind of hold my client’s hand and say we’ll get through it and whatever you want, I will stand up for you and I will say “This is what my bride wants and let’s work together to make it happen.”
Dr. Lisa: One of the more recent weddings that I went to was for one of the art directors at Brand Co which works with Maine Magazine and the Maine Media Collective here and we were standing in a field near, I believe it was in a canoe that was standing upright and then we went under a tent and listened to a band but it was at a camp in the summer in Maine and I’m seeing more and more of this kind of desire to go back to simpler settings, simpler times, reminiscent of maybe growing up. Is this something that you’re seeing and why?
Kate: For a lot of bride and grooms, the appeal of Maine comes from summers spent at grandma’s house on the coast, summers spent at camp. I’ve done a couple of camp weddings where actually they’ve been boys’ camp’s weddings where the groom went to the camp and has this great connection maybe from New York City but he spent his summers in Maine and had such a great connection to that and that feeling of kind of carelessness or kind of freedom as it’s summer and wanted to kind of share that with his bride and with their families.
I think that there’s a kind of trend towards wanting farm, barn. Everyone always loves being by the seaside but having something that feels more grounded maybe or easy but that doesn’t mean it can’t be elegant so Maine does offer so many fantastic venues to create something that is easy yet elegant, rustic yet somewhat refined. It doesn’t have to be all roll out the mason jars, which are great, I think that trend is moving along but I think that people are drawn to Maine for its classic architecture, for its feeling of kind of carefree summers at camps along the ocean.
Some people are drawn to Maine because they’re starting maybe a new family tradition. Maybe they live in Boston and New York and they’ve started traveling up to Maine in the summer times and they see this is some place we want to continue to come to and we want to bring our kids here and let’s get married. Let’s start it now.
Dr. Lisa: It’s February and obviously, February is the month that we associate with Valentine’s Day and with love and that’s one of the words that we haven’t really bandied about too much in this conversation but how do you help the people that you are working with, how do you help them keep the love alive while they’re planning their wedding? I know it seems like an interesting and ironic sort of thing that there might be so much stress that it could actually impact a relationship negatively but I’m wondering … I mean we know that planning an event can be stressful.
Kate: I’m pretty realistic with my clients. When they say, “I just don’t have the time for this right now,” or, “Is this really important?” or, “I’m working 80 hours a week and he is in business school and we’re living in two different cities right now.” I’ll always say, “Don’t worry. We’ve got it. We’re here for you. If something comes up, give us a call. If you’re just not sure about what invite to choose and you’re having a hard time and you’re not getting the feedback that you want, just send it to us. We’ll give you our honest opinion. We’ll do our best to keep you grounded about what’s important.”
This kind of goes back to us getting to know our clients early on and reminding them about what’s important so if there’s kind of concern about you want this fabulous dessert table, you may opt for a DJ so you have a little bit of your budget leftover. Then, I’ll kind of remind them just to step back, take a deep breath. We’ll figure this out. Tell me what I can do for you.
I tell them that I know that they’re busy and one of the first things I say to prospective clients is that I’m just continue to be amazed at how accomplished and driven and smart, so many of my clients are and I recognize that they’re super busy so I try and keep it real. Try and keep things in perspective and just kind of try to move it along and remind them about really what’s the most important and probably fussing over how to word a menu isn’t worth fussing over. Let’s work it out. Let’s figure it out right now and move forward because there are going to be other decisions too that you make down the line that you may end up fussing over.
Dr. Lisa: Kate, how do people find out about your business, Beautiful Days?
Kate: Word of mouth. A client is a great … the fabulous vendors that I’ve had the privilege to work alongside of now going into our tenth year which I just can’t believe. It kind of blows me away. Word of mouth, I get really fabulous referrals from some great vendors. Social media I think is becoming a really big piece of it, a little bit of advertising here and there. I always get great sponsors from being in Maine Magazine, I will be honest and at this point, word of mouth.
It’s been an interesting evolution of kind of trying to sort this out because when we started, it was basically having a website and putting ads in select magazines or papers. Everything has evolved so quickly between Facebook and social media and Twitter and blogs just in the years I’ve been doing this that as a self-employed business owner, the amount of work you have to put in to this additional level of marketing is pretty intense but we make it work. I mean we got to grow with the time and also Google. They search for me. Hopefully, Beautiful Days pops up and …
Dr. Lisa: Your website is?
Kate: Beautifuldaysevents.com.
Dr. Lisa: We’ve been speaking with Kate Martin who is the owner and creative director of Beautiful Days. We thank you for coming in and speaking with us today about creating the beautiful days that you do.
Kate: Thanks. It’s been fun.