Texas Wedding Podcast

Texas Wedding Podcast
  • 5.0 (5)
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Updated Weekly

Candid conversations with the people moving & shaping the Texas wedding market.

  1. Aug 7

    Julian Leaver Events | A Decade of Luxury Weddings, Finding the Yes Through the No’s & Reinventing Event Power

    Julian Leaver of Julian Leaver Events (Dallas) marks 10 years in the business with a conversation on hospitality, delegation, rebuilding a team in under a year, and finding the yes through the no. He also breaks down LOO Power, his silent solar alternative to event generators, and previews his WIPACon breakout session. Part of our WIPACon series.

  2. Aug 4

    Kate Turner of Kate and Co | Three Wedding Businesses, Radical Transparency, One Very Old Horse & The Year That Almost Killed Me | Texas Wedding Podcast

    Kate Turner is the founder of Kate and Company, Marinelle Event Co., and cofounder of Landlocked Luxury, a wedding industry education conference built for vendors in mid-sized markets. Based in St. Louis with nearly 17 years in the wedding industry, she in absolute icon of the global wedding industry..In this episode: how she built and right-sized Kate and Company, the origin story of Landlocked Luxury, a Biltmore wedding with a very old horse and a severe storm pivot, and a preview of her WIPACon breakout session she has never spoken on publicly before.Part of the Texas Wedding Podcast WIPACon series.Follow Kate: kateandcollc.com | @kateandcompanyLandlocked Luxury: landlockedluxury.com | @landlockedluxuryMarinelle Event Co: marinelle.co | @marinelle.coTexas Wedding Podcast: texasweddingpodcast.com718 Creative: 718creative.com

  3. Jul 28

    Rebecca Martens of Belle Events | Scaling a Team, Feedback as a Gift & Everything in Between

    Rebecca Martens of Belle Events joins Kevin Cochran on the Texas Wedding Podcast as the second guest in a series leading up to WIPACon, where she'll speak on a panel about knowing when to scale your business. Rebecca brings more than 20 years of industry experience, starting at Disney's Fairy Tale Weddings in Orlando, where cast members go through a training class called Traditions before ever stepping on stage, before returning to Houston as event manager at River Oaks Country Club. She joined Belle Events as a planner in 2015 and purchased the company just four years later. Today she leads a team of 13 planners and 20 event day assistants, a scale she never anticipated when she started, and describes her role as managing a team of planners the way a ringmaster runs a circus, where every vendor on a wedding day has their own act to perform and her job is making it all come together. Much of the conversation traces back to her Disney training, including the phrase that still shapes how she runs her business: feedback is a gift. Rebecca explains why she personally delivers every piece of constructive feedback to vendors rather than letting her planners do it, the nightly check-in system her team uses after every wedding so she's never caught off guard, and why she believes in second chances over punishment when something goes wrong. She also opens up about a harder lesson: hitting six figures in revenue and realizing it didn't bring the sense of accomplishment she expected, a conversation with her therapist that reshaped how she now defines success around her team's wellbeing rather than client budgets or luxury tier status, even after managing more than thirty million dollars in client investment over the years. That philosophy gets tested directly in the story at the center of this episode: a large Houston tented wedding where torrential rain pooled inside the tent's clear top, forcing her team to cut and replace panels, drill drainage holes through the floor, and rally an army of vendors, servers, and even her own husband with mops and squeegees, all in the few hours before guests arrived. The bride, stranded by flash flooding on her way to see a newborn niece or nephew, had no idea any of it happened until Rebecca accidentally showed her the wrong photo on her phone. Rebecca also traces her instinct for this work back further than her career, growing up in a family that celebrated everything and earning the nickname Bossy Becky as a kid for how naturally she took charge. She talks about it with a laugh now, joking that she once considered forging her friends' parents' signatures as a side hustle before finding a more legitimate outlet for that same take-charge energy. She and Kevin also talk through her upcoming WIPACon panel on scaling a business, part of a series featuring the people speaking at, designing, or helping put on this year's conference. Belle Events: https://www.belleevents.comRebecca on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/belleevents https://718creative.com https://www.texasweddingpodcast.com

  4. Jul 20

    Jordan Fatheree of Rosewood Mansion on Turtle Creek | Luxury Weddings in Dallas & WIPACon 2026 | Texas Wedding Podcast

    Jordan Fatheree of Rosewood Mansion on Turtle Creek joins Kevin Cochran on the Texas Wedding Podcast to open a series leading up to WIPACon, WIPA's first-ever national conference, coming to Dallas August 9th through 11th. Jordan is the director of catering and events at Rosewood Mansion on Turtle Creek, the birthplace of the Rosewood brand, and sits on the WIPA National Board as director of programs. His path there started in a tiny Texas town, Rockdale, where he was a dairy food judge and student body president before enrolling at Austin Community College undecided, until a meeting and event planning pamphlet on a hallway wall changed everything. A mentor there got him into hotels by eighteen, he opened the W Austin downtown, then moved to Las Vegas to study at UNLV's hotel school while interning at the Four Seasons on the strip at the same time. He landed in Dallas for a relationship, worked catering shifts to get by, and met Julian Leaver by chance in a suite at a Rangers game, a conversation that turned into a Rosewood job within days, back in 2014. Jordan talks about what he loves most about life at the mansion: leading site tours and sharing the hotel's history, the camaraderie across departments working toward the same client, legacy staff members who have been there for decades, and the rare luxury of walking to work every day in Turtle Creek. Jordan also talks about the Rosewood World of Weddings, an event he co-produces bringing destination resort teams and wedding planners together, moving this year from Dallas to Palo Alto. He also shares one especially meaningful wedding from the past year, a bride who was badly injured by a distracted driver months before her big day and made a full recovery in time to get married on the original date, a story he keeps intentionally light on detail out of respect for the family's privacy. The conversation traces Jordan's full run through WIPA Dallas leadership, from vice president to president to immediate past president, part of a leadership lineage that includes two past guests of this podcast, Mary Wright Shah and Paula Ewers, before he moved on to the WIPA National Board. He previews his own WIPACon breakout talk, Video 101 for Non-Videographers, built to give non-videographers a real blueprint for using video in their marketing, and gives a look at the rest of the program: Caitlin Fulton of Fulton Events hosting the kickoff party, Todd Events and its sister brands designing the main stage, Kate & Co leading a Monday night experience, and Julian Leaver's gala concept built to honor the craftspeople behind every wedding. Damon John and Augusta Cole headline the speaker lineup. With ticket availability shrinking fast as this episode goes live, Jordan and Kevin close with a direct reminder: if you've been meaning to register for WIPACon, don't wait. https://www.rosewoodhotels.com/en/mansion-on-turtle-creek-dallas https://718creative.com https://www.texasweddingpodcast.com

  5. Jul 8

    Katie Hubbard of My Wedding Wardrobe | Bridal Styling, Wedding Day Disasters & Why You Need a Stylist There | Texas Wedding Podcast

    Katie Hubbard of My Wedding Wardrobe joins Kevin Cochran on the Texas Wedding Podcast to talk about building a bridal styling business during COVID, nearly losing it during a difficult pregnancy, and the wildest on-the-job saves most guests never know happened. Katie launched My Wedding Wardrobe in April 2020, styling brides for everything except the wedding dress itself, engagement photos, bridal showers, bachelorette weekends, rehearsal dinners, all built around custom, click-to-shop lookbooks for clients across the country. The business grew well beyond what she expected, and eventually expanded into in-person day-of styling too. At her business's peak, Katie got seriously sick during pregnancy and had to shut things down almost entirely, losing her only employee and handing clients off to competitors in the process. After having her daughter, her very first intern from years earlier, Grace, happened to reach out asking if Katie was hiring. Grace now runs much of the day-to-day, which has let Katie build a working rhythm around nap times and nights so she can be present with her daughter. Katie and Kevin first worked together on a wedding planned by Luke Wilson and Emily Clark of House of Clark, and Katie tells the story in detail for the first time publicly, including to the planners themselves. Twelve seconds after the bride put her dress on, before a single photo had been taken, her lipstick shattered and streaked red down the entire front of the gown. Katie stayed completely calm, deployed an emergency fix, and had it resolved in under a minute, so smoothly that Luke and Emily never even found out it happened. She shares another close call from a different Luke Wilson wedding, where a bride's last-minute backup dress turned out to be completely see-through. With no backup plan and the ceremony hours away, Katie tracked down the bride's grandmother, who produced a vintage Christian Dior slip, and cut and sewed it into the dress on the spot with the grandmother's blessing. Katie also reveals just how often bustles break during a first dance, including at her own wedding, and how her team quietly repairs them under the table during dinner without guests ever noticing, part of a broader philosophy that staying visibly calm is what keeps a bride calm too. The conversation also covers styling wedding vendors themselves for industry conferences and client meetings, including a session Katie's team ran for a Dallas planning company on what to wear to a venue walkthrough versus a travel day versus the wedding itself. She and Kevin talk through how social media has reshaped what couples spend money on, why videography went from optional to essential in the years Katie has been in business, and why she thinks Dallas bridal style, classic, a little conservative, but never boring, is unlike anywhere else she could do this work. My Wedding Wardrobe: https://www.myweddingwardrobe.comKatie on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/myweddingwardrobe https://718creative.com https://www.texasweddingpodcast.com

  6. Jun 30

    Maggie Peterson, Florist | From Facebook Marketplace to Italy | Texas Wedding Podcast

    Maggie Peterson of By Maggie Peterson joins Kevin Cochran on the Texas Wedding Podcast to talk about building a floral business from scratch during the pandemic, and the vendor team chemistry that led to her first international destination wedding in Italy. Maggie's path here wasn't a straight line. She grew up between Park City, Utah and Connecticut, went to boarding school in Massachusetts, spent a gap year sailing from Italy to the Caribbean, and eventually landed in Austin working as a legislative assistant in political lobbying, representing transportation clients like the Associated General Contractors of Texas. She got married in Cabo in January 2020, flew to Asia for her honeymoon right as the world was shutting down, and came home to a career that had ground to a halt. With time on her hands, and a lifelong love of flowers inherited from her mother's own gardens, she started arranging flowers from a subscription box her mom had gifted her, posting the results on Facebook Marketplace. What started as a way to pass the time turned into a full business within the year, and she left her lobbying job to pursue floral design full time, with her dad's blessing and her husband Jeremy's full support. Maggie and Kevin look back at the wedding that first brought their teams together, a full property buyout at Commodore Perry Estate, where she met floral designer Shiloh and instantly clicked with the whole vendor team despite it being everyone's first time working together. Her husband Jeremy, who has a day job outside the wedding industry, built one of her signature floral arches for that day out of wire closet shelving and chicken wire, a piece of behind-the-scenes engineering Maggie and her team doubted right up until he finished it. Maggie shares two hot takes from years of hands-on experience: florists should be brought in far earlier in the planning process than most couples think, since flowers are present at every part of the day, getting ready, ceremony, cocktail hour, dinner, dancing, in a way other design elements simply aren't. And every bride should plan for two bridal bouquets, since a single bouquet rarely survives Texas heat and a full day of photos looking as fresh as it did that morning. She and her team also always bring extra boutonnieres, a habit she traces back to her husband's fraternity mantra: prior proper planning prevents piss poor performance. Her broader advice to couples: talk to your planner about who they love working with, since your floral team is with you the entire day, not just for a single moment. The episode closes with Maggie's first international wedding, held outside Lucca, Italy, for a bride who serves as head of brand at the fashion company Eddie, planned by Val of LBV Design House. Maggie had long wanted to break into destination work, and the wedding will be featured exclusively on Over the Moon. She's already eyeing Portugal as a possible next stop. By Maggie Peterson: https://bymaggiepeterson.comMaggie on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bymaggiepeterson https://718creative.com https://www.texasweddingpodcast.com

  7. May 26

    Devin Swick - Vendor Dress Codes, Wedding Design & Finding Your Voice | Texas Wedding Podcast

    Devin Swick joins Kevin Cochran on the Texas Wedding Podcast as his first-ever in-person guest, the person who helped convince him to start the show in the first place, for a wide-ranging conversation on finding a design voice, rethinking networking culture, and the freelancer resource planners are now treating as required reading. Devin is a Denton, Texas based wedding designer and freelancer who calls her own path the backdoor into the wedding industry. She started in floral design, and what began there evolved into event production and eventually lead planning, not out of desperation but out of genuine hunger to understand every moving part of a wedding. Once she felt she had mastered the logistics side, timelines, transportation, vendor coordination, she found herself missing the aesthetic and craving an actual design voice, work she now calls director of production and design. She and Kevin get into what she calls the need for a mature decision-making bride, couples with great taste who still struggle to commit to choices, and her hot take that younger brides in particular often have the hardest time executing basic decisions, offered with the caveat that this comes from having been one herself. Her fix is encouraging couples to trust the story they are trying to tell rather than chasing trends. The conversation turns to networking culture in the wedding industry, and Devin is candid about both sides of it. She has seen how valuable it has been in her own life, and also how the culture of constantly showing up to every event can quietly become more damaging than helpful, especially for anyone without the flexibility or budget to keep pace. She points to a widely respected, highly visible vendor who still ended up filing for bankruptcy as proof that constant networking was never the missing ingredient, and makes the case for smaller, cheaper, more genuine gatherings instead of chasing every high-profile event. Much of the episode centers on Devin's Vendor Dress Code Guide, born out of watching a young assistant get publicly humiliated by a well-known planner over an inappropriate cape at a December wedding. Devin built the guide so nobody else would have to learn a wedding's dress code expectations through public embarrassment, covering formality levels, what to wear on site, and why looking the part is about representing the brand and client you are there to serve, not personal style. The guide has already been adopted by planners as required reading for their teams before booking freelancers. Devin also shares what she's exploring next: branding and styling work for other wedding professionals, an area she admits she's a little nervous to say out loud, but one she clearly lights up talking about. Devin's Vendor Dress Code Guide: https://www.devinswick.comDevin on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/devinswick https://718creative.com https://www.texasweddingpodcast.com

  8. May 19

    Heather of EPOCH Co. | Texas Wedding Podcast

    Heather is the founder and lead planner of EPOCH Co. (think Tupac, not epic - though she'd argue the weddings are both), a hospitality-led event planning and design company based in College Station, Texas. With roots in the DFW market and a portfolio that stretches from Texas ranches, to the mountains of New Mexico, to all over the world Heather has built a reputation for planning events that feel nothing like what you'd expect, and everything like who you actually are. In this episode, Heather shares the wild story of how she became a planner: a Sunday brunch wedding north of DFW, a no-show planner, a storm rolling in, soaking wet ceremony chairs, and a mad dash to Fort Worth to find tent walls. That day — zip-tying walls, hunting ship anchors from a grandfather's garage, and chucking towels at a planner who said "I wasn't paid to do this" — is the day EPOCH was born. From there, Kevin and Heather get into what it actually means to plan off-script: weddings that open with sound ceremonies, ayahuasca retreats in New Mexico, couples getting married standing in a spring-fed creek, and a festival wedding so elaborate it required clearing copperhead-infested land, flying in a Guatemalan priest, and learning what naturally composting toilets are. They also walk through a standout corporate event in Austin — an international crowd from South and Central America, chocolate guitar desserts guests smashed with tiny mallets, LED cowboy hats, a New Orleans-style second line, and breakfast tacos at midnight — that beat out simultaneous events in Dubai and Milan. But the heart of the conversation is Heather's design philosophy: she doesn't start with wedding inspiration. She starts with people. Her "story to space" method asks couples to pin images of things that pull at their heartstrings — not weddings, life — and builds the entire event design from there. Because the point of a beautiful event, she says, is human connection. A giant centerpiece that blocks the person across the table isn't design. It's a conversation killer. Heather also opens up about growing up in Houston, her mom's serious illness in seventh grade, losing everything and moving her family into her grandparents' home, and how those years of watching what actually matters shaped everything about how she plans today. About the Guest: Heather is the founder and lead planner of EPOCH Co., a wedding planning and event design company based in College Station, Texas, serving the DFW Metroplex, Austin, Houston, and beyond. EPOCH specializes in hospitality-led, off-script events for couples and corporate clients who want their celebration to feel like them — not like everyone else's wedding. Shoutouts from this episode: Leslie Rodriguez Photography | Ruet Photo | Shannon Rose Events | Katie Hubbard, My Wedding Wardrobe

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5
out of 5
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About

Candid conversations with the people moving & shaping the Texas wedding market.

Information

  • Creator
    Texas Wedding Podcast
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    19
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Texas Wedding Podcast
  • Show Website
    Texas Wedding Podcast

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