Meet Nine Morrison of WedLocks Bridal Hair & Makeup in Downtown Denver!

Today we’d like to introduce you to Nine Morrison.

Nine, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
The idea for WedLocks originally came, as most great ideas do, over a round of drinks with friends, after work one day. Wedlocks originally started as a sweet little side hustle, but I quickly realized that it was a full blown company within its first year as I had to start hiring contractors for help. Before, I really went head first into WedLocks, I started by writing a business plan and designing my own website. With business plans, I had heard that if 90% of all businesses fail in the first five years, the ones that had a business plan were 17% more likely to succeed, and I thought, “Dang! I need all the help I can get. I better write one.”

When I started designing the website, I had absolutely NO idea what I was doing, but I knew what I liked aesthetically and that it needed to be a site that I, as a consumer, would want to look at. So one Youtube video at a time, I learned how to make my website look the way I wanted it to. I remember spending what felt like 18,364 hours working on the website and my husband would constantly ask me, “How much time are you going to spend on this ‘side hustle?'” To which I would always respond, “I’m building my empire.” He used to laugh every time I would say it, but I also think that he knew, deep down, that I was 100% serious. After I launched the website, I asked some past clients and brides that I had worked with, to go onto Yelp and Google and write reviews. From that moment on, we were in business! My goal for the first year was to do 25 weddings. We did 46!

The next year was 2017. I was killing it in the salon, super pregnant with baby #2, and booking more weddings than I had ever even heard of anyone else doing. 2017 was a fabulous year! I had some of my lowest lows and highest highs, but most importantly, it took us to another level because that was the year that I left my salon life behind and started doing WedLocks full-time. In that year I had to juggle so many new changes all at once that I still don’t even know how I got through it without having a nervy B. Within an eight week time frame I had wait the salon, given birth to a 9 lbs. bowling ball moved into an office, fired the contractor who was taking over for me while I was on maternity leave (long story), and was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease. Like what?! It sounds absolutely crazy when I say that all out loud, but I have always said that I thrive in chaos! But by the end of the year, I found that we had blown our 100 wedding goal out of the water with a whopping 167 weddings.

By year three, all the fears I had had just a year before were gone. I had proven that over 100 weddings were possible and that, most importantly, this could really be a full-time job! If you couldn’t tell by now, I am a big believer in goals, so when it came time to figure out our 2018 goals, I was a little stumped. We had already crushed my five-year plan after our second year and I didn’t really know where to go from there. I thought, “What the heck, let’s throw a crazy number out there like 250!” There it was, 250 weddings. I had heard of only one other company doing that many weddings in a year that only have 1 location and they had been in business for seven years. I’ve always been a cautious optimist and if we could even get close to that number, it would be a win, so you could imagine that we celebrated pretty hard when, at the end of our 3rd season, our final count was 333 weddings.

Right now, we are expanding our empire and currently opening our first official retail space in Downtown Denver, that is essentially, a salon exclusively dedicated to event hair and makeup and nothing else. Over the past three years, we have built an incredible team of some of the most talented professionals in our industry and without them, there’s no way we could do what we do. Oh! And remember that nagging husband of mine? Yeah, he works for me now! Remember, a diamond is just a lump of coal that did well under pressure.

Has it been a smooth road?
Sweet lord, no! It has been an absolutely crazy road! One of the hardest decisions I ever had to make came just after WedLocks celebrated its first birthday. Let me set the scene here. It’s March 2017, I am 9.5 months pregnant with baby #2, in what we lovingly call the supernova stage of pregnancy, and it’s my last week in the salon before I take my maternity leave. I’m called into a meeting with the salon owner and manager and to put it simply, they informed me of a policy change that they were making that would effectively make it impossible for me to work there after I had the baby.

So there I was, hormonal, emotional, about to go into labor, basically jobless, and I had the scariest decision to make. Do I find another salon to work at and move my clientele, or do I abandon a clientele that I’ve spent seven years building and run my little side hustle full time? At the time, WedLocks was booming and we even had a small team of amazing professionals that we had hired out for larger weddings, but by no means did I think it could sustain me and replace my salon income.

Luckily, my incredibly supportive husband Ryan told me to go for it! In that month, I quit the salon, gave birth to a 9 lbs. baby made my side hustle into my full-time hustle, found a small office, and moved in. That year we did 167 weddings and I made more money than what I was making in the salon. There are always minor crises happening at any given moment when you are a business owner, but I now know that right when you get to that point of “OMG if one more thing goes wrong, I am going to lose my mind and lose everything,” just beyond that, there is an amazing opportunity about to happen!

So, as you know, we’re impressed with WedLocks Bridal Hair & Makeup – tell our readers more, for example, what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
WedLocks is Colorado’s #1 bridal beauty company. I think the thing that I am the most proud of is our team of incredible professionals! When I sat down to write our business plan, I knew that the first thing I wanted for WedLocks’s mission statement was for it to be the best company a beauty professional could work for. Since day one, we’ve put our primary focus into the team because we know that if our team feels respected, empowered, and supported, then that will automatically translate into our brides’ experience with our company.

Let’s be honest though, WedLocks is not the first bridal beauty company, and we offer the same services to our brides and at similar prices to our competitors, so we aren’t reinventing the wheel here. But when you are planning the biggest (and most expensive) party of your life, it gets overwhelming, and a lot of things boil down to convenience. Who is responding to you quickly? Is there pricing on their website or do I have to fill out a contact form? How much time will it take? Do you come to me or do I have to come to you? Is it a company with multiple professionals or someone who works solo? These are all factors that go into everyone’s decision making when planning their wedding. Over 70% of our brides don’t live in the state of Colorado. That means that they are solely going off of the information that they find online about you like reviews, Instagram, and your website. This is the millennial bride we are talking about here. She wants her information and questions answered and she wants it now! And we appreciate that about her!

Let’s touch on your thoughts about our city – what do you like the most and least?
Denver is one of those cities that is truly one of a kind! The thing that I love the most is the amount of local love Denver has for its people and local businesses. When given the choice of big corporate chain vs. local business, Denverites will always choose the local business every time! We love to stick together, celebrate each other’s accomplishments, make the city a better place, and brag about all of the incredible companies and people that come for our city. The local love here is amazing!

Then there is the issue of homelessness. When you drive up to our studio space in downtown, you will notice a bright open space, incredible wall murals on both sides of our building, and new businesses popping up everywhere. What you may also notice are our homeless friends scattered throughout the area. Homelessness is an issue in any large urban city and has more to do with mental health than drugs than most people realize. One of my longest friends has a brother, who just a few years after high school found himself living on the streets struggling with severe mental illness. As a Denver business, we feel it is our duty to take pride in our community and support it in whatever ways we can. While we alone may not be able to “fix” the issue, we can treat our neighbors with kindness and compassion and give back to them the essentials many of us take for granted.

Contact Info:

• Address: 921 21st St. Denver, CO, 80205
• Website: www.wedlocksbridalhair.com
• Phone: (720)292-3177
• Email: info@wedlocksbridlahair.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wedlocksbridalhairandmakeup/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wedlocksbridalhairandmakeup/

Image Credit:
Cassie Rosch, Lindy Hickman Photography, Gillespie Photography, KJ & Rob, Valerie Heine, Steve Stanton Photography

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