“Think outside the box and go for it!”
Dallas Vickers is an event and wedding planner working from Myrtle Beach. She attended Stephen F. Austin State University in Texas, but she sought out an internship in Myrtle Beach because of family connections. While event planning can be a high-stress and high-pressure business, Vickers focuses on a healthy work-life balance and the importance of knowing your professional community.
Interview
Transcript
00:03 | Emma Plutnicki
Okay, so to start off, what do you do for work and where are you currently working from?
00:09 | Dallas Vickers
So, I’m currently in our office in Myrtle Beach. So, we have a big office, kind of near the airport area, and I am a wedding and event planner.
00:19 | Emma Plutnicki
Amazing and how long have you been working there?
00:21 | Dallas Vickers
I actually did my internship here in 2020, and then I moved to Arizona, and now I’m back. I’ve been back for almost three years doing wedding and event planning for Stunning & Brilliant Events.
00:35 | Emma Plutnicki
Amazing, so what is one thing that you love about working in South Carolina?
00:40 | Dallas Vickers
I love the community. I feel like everyone knows everyone, and no matter what city you’re in, we’re close enough and know each other well enough that we can help each other out. So, if there’s a shortage on a certain type of chair here in Myrtle Beach, you know they have contacts in Charleston that can bring them down, and it’s not a big deal. And I love the connection we all have as like wedding vendors. It’s very tight knit.
01:05 | Emma Plutnicki
Yeah, so how would you describe the local professional community within South Carolina?
01:11 | Dallas Vickers
Again, very tight knit. Everyone knows everyone. We all help each other out. I know, you know, in the wedding planning world, there’s a lot of people who have interned for Sara (McCall) and may have done their own thing afterwards, like, you know, moving to a different city and doing their own thing. Or, like the DJs here, they all trained and, like, worked with each other and helped each other out. So, it’s all like very, “teamwork makes the dream work” around here. It’s, yeah, it’s great.
01:38 | Emma Plutnicki
Yeah amazing. So, in terms of, I don’t know, in a creative career, it can be a little tough sometimes to figure out like, success, I guess. So, how do you define success in your career, both professionally and personally?
01:56 | Dallas Vickers
Money, right? I mean, I think it’s just success is returning clients, continuous events and for us, it’s, you know, expanding. So, Sara, the CEO of our company, started this 14, 15 years ago after her own wedding and from there, she now has, I think, 14 franchises all around the US. And so, within the creative space, I think that our success is definitely measured in like how far our reach can go, and like how many clients we acquire, and, you know, people we meet.
02:34 | Emma Plutnicki
Yeah, makes sense. And did you have any fears before you entered this profession at all?
02:38 | Dallas Vickers
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Um, there’s always the fear of, like, another COVID happening or, you know, social events being, you know, limited or not at all. There’s always a fear of, like, a slow season or something. But I think that we’re very innovative in what we do, I mean, down to, like, if we have a slower time in December, we’re going to offer gift wrapping. We’re going to offer designing your birthday or your party, or Christmas party, we send out. A lot of marketing goes into what we do and keeping ourselves busy, and, like, ever evolving, really helps the business.
02:39 | Dallas Vickers
For sure. So, nowadays, what is a typical workday look like for you? What’s expected of you on a daily basis, and what do you get into?
03:00 | Dallas Vickers
Yeah, so I have 16 clients right now. So that ranges from anywhere from birthday parties to full weekend getaways that I’m planning for people to, of course, weddings, obviously a majority is weddings, and even like corporate events and events like that. So, all ranges. So, I come into office, 9am, a little coffee, and sit down on my computer. We all are in our cubicle, we’re all in the same area, there’s multiple planners in our office. We, you know, I get on my email, I check what, what I need to see, and then I kind of start on my checklist. So it could be, again, my days are so different every single day. If it’s a Friday before an event then I am prepping people, putting batteries into late night items for like glow sticks or whatever, or going to rehearsal an hour away, or going to a meeting with a florist. Or I’m sitting here at my computer all day making a layout, matching linens to whatever, to florals, you know, making a timeline, it could be anything like that. Or I’m doing math and creating a detailed budget for someone’s dad. It just depends. It’s always changing.
04:45 | Emma Plutnicki
That makes sense. And throughout your career, has there been a significant event or project or anything that you’ve worked on that like, stands out in your mind and has had a significant impact on you?
05:01 | Dallas Vickers
Yeah, I think every event comes with a learning curve, but there’s definitely when you’re working so closely with people and such a high wedding, specifically, it’s such a high emotional and energy event that there’s been some times where I’ve learned a lot about how I handle conflict and how to properly handle conflict, and also you know how to do it in the future. So, I think that my biggest event is learning.
05:32 | Emma Plutnicki
That makes sense, and along the way, when you have kind of those conflicts, have you received any advice throughout your career, like what’s the best advice?
05:40 | Dallas Vickers
Yeah. Sara McCall, our CEO that I was talking about earlier, she’s been around the block with almost everything that could possibly happen in an event or in event planning. We’ve done it, and she has the best advice on how to respond, and a lot of it is turn off your emotions and you remember that. You’re here for your job as well, and like you were people pleasers, but only so long.
06:07 | Emma Plutnicki
And is there any bad advice that you’ve received that you don’t think would…
06:31 | Dallas Vickers
From other people, like people that aren’t in the industry that’s like bad advice would be: well, just tell them that you’re busy with other clients. And I’m not just saying that to a bride who’s like, a few months away. You know what I mean?
06:30 | Emma Plutnicki
And so, with events, I would assume that a lot of times these happen at night. So how do you balance work-life balance in your life, because you also, you know, you want to do things too outside of work. So how do you balance?
06:46 | Dallas Vickers
That’s another reason why I love this job. It’s not corporate, we don’t have, you know, the strictest schedule in the world. If I need to work from home, for A, B and C, reason, I can work from home. And this is also, like, special to us, because we have an amazing company. But, if I’m going to go on a trip for a couple of weeks, it’s encouraged. I mean, the more that you travel, the more you learn, and our clients want to see that we’re fun people. They want to see that we’re going on vacation and experiencing things and doing creative things, we’re seen as these creative beings, and people want to see that as well. So, work-life balance is a big deal. If we have a Saturday event, then we get our Mondays to ourselves, so we still have our two-day weekends. And really just trying to, like, keep it at work and that’s really a personal adventure everyone has to go on. It was definitely a learning curve after I got out of college. So, yeah, it’s been a good transition, but it’s it gets easier with time.
07:49 | Emma Plutnicki
Yeah, amazing. Well, thank you so much. Just as we wrap up, is there anything else you’d like to add about your career, or anything you wish I might have asked that I missed?
08:00 | Dallas Vickers
No, I mean, I think that it’s not advertised. A lot of creative jobs like this I never thought would be a choice. So, whenever you know college kids are looking into what they’re doing for their internships, think outside the box and go for it.
08:17 | Emma Plutnicki
How did you find out about this career? How did you get into it?
08:23 | Dallas Vickers
Yeah, I was a hospitality student. I’m from Texas originally, so I was at school in Texas, and I knew I wanted to do my internship out of state, and my grandparents live here. So, I was looking around the area, I reached out to a venue, and I was like, “Do you guys have any internship opportunities? I’m interested in event planning or event catering, you know, that kind of world.” And they were like, “Well, we don’t, but here’s a list of event planners that might” and Sara was top of the list. So Stunning & Brilliant Events was top of the list and once I worked with her and saw exactly what they do, I was like, “This is the perfect balance of like, business and creativity,” which is, like, I didn’t even know existed.
09:04 | Emma Plutnicki
Yeah, amazing. And where did, where did you live in Texas? What school did you go to?
09:08 | Dallas Vickers
Austin yeah. Well, I went to school at SFA, which is East Texas.
09:13 | Emma Plutnicki
Yeah, nice my sister lives in Texas or in Austin. Yeah, she lives in Austin. My gosh.
09:19 | Dallas Vickers
Wait, that’s so cool. What part?
09:22 | Emma Plutnicki
Somewhere in Austin. She lives in like that, like outside suburbs, maybe like Southwest, I guess maybe. But I love Austin, very cool place. Well, amazing. So if you I don’t know if you know anybody else like a creative that would help us be interviewed, but if you can think of anybody that you want to nominate for a Creative Careers interview like this, just to get the word out to young kids, I’ll send you a link to the website that these will be put on. It’s called the Creative Careers Studio. With the South Carolina Arts Commission. So it’s a super cool website, but yeah, that’s, that’s basically all I got.
10:07 | Dallas Vickers
Yeah, thank you awesome. Thank you so much, Emma. It’s nice to meet you.
10:12 | Emma Plutnicki
Nice to meet you too. Hope you have a great day.