Today we’d like to introduce you to Dakota Bogner.
Dakota, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I fell in love with weddings as a kid. My mom has always been involved in weddings, from catering to photography to officiating… and I was always her little helper. In hindsight, it makes perfect sense that I’d end up with a career in the event and wedding industry, but I never would have guessed it back then. I never realized that events could even be a career path until college when I got an internship as a Conference & Event Assistant at Colorado State University. That job introduced me to a whole new world, that I instantly knew I belonged in.
I stayed in that internship for three years and gradually gained the confidence to venture into wedding planning a bit. Weddings are very, very different from the work I was doing on campus, but at the same time, events are events and I knew the transferable skills were there. I fell in love with wedding planning more instantly than anything else in my life. A dear friend of mine trusted me to plan her wedding, my first ever, and Premier Events was born. And I haven’t stopped since.
Has it been a smooth road?
Overall I would absolutely say that I am very fortunate to have the support and encouragement that I have had along the way, and I have also been extremely blessed with the best clients that I could have ever asked for. It’s not easy to trust someone with one of the most special days of your life the way that my clients trust me with their weddings, and I’m so grateful. But starting your own business with no professional wedding planning experience to back you up is not the easiest of adventures. I truly started with a “fake it ’til you make it” mentality. I was providing advice and help make decisions based on my skills and my opinion, but not on actual experience.
And it was SCARY. There was some fear that I wasn’t providing the best guidance, or that my recommendations might not be right, but the only thing I could do was remain confident, do really thorough research, and let every opportunity teach me something new. Now, five years in, I’m still learning something new with every client and with every wedding, but I have really good quality experience to back me up. That has made all the difference, but the biggest struggle up until now was just gaining that experience.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Premier Events story. Tell us more about the business.
Premier Events is primarily a wedding planning and design company. We provide everything from full service planning to day-of coordination and everything in between. We are based in Fort Collins, but serve the greater Northern Colorado area, having worked in Denver (and surrounding areas), Colorado Springs, Berthoud, Loveland, Windsor, Fort Collins, Sterling, and even west into the mountains.
I am so, so proud of how we go above and beyond every time. The feedback that we get the most is, “I can’t believe how much you did for us.” And that warms my heart so, so much. Our entire purpose is to ensure that our clients enjoy the wedding planning process, free of the stresses that are so negatively associated with it, and MOST importantly, that they enjoy every little moment of their day, and that it represents them in a meaningful way. There is nothing I love more than clients telling me that we made their day special and stress-free, that they enjoyed all the moments and details, that they couldn’t have done it without us. It reminds me that the work I’m doing matters, and makes it worth it every single time. And I definitely could not provide this for clients without the extremely hard work that my team provides for me so consistently.
How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
The wedding industry is constantly and consistently evolving. Something that was trendy yesterday probably won’t be trendy anymore tomorrow. Couples are always trying to find new details and personal touches that will set their wedding apart from the rest. As amazing and helpful as Pinterest is, couples also don’t want “Pinterest weddings” that look like everyone else’s. So I’m always keeping my eyes on the trends and trying to pay attending to up-and-coming ideas before they’ve been all used up and we’re on to the next thing.
Weddings are also becoming less and less traditional. I still get asked all the time, “What’s the traditional way to do this” or “What’s the standard order for this?” And while there are many, many standards that I can provide to help guide decisions, a lot of times my answer is, “Well traditionally, it worked like this, but people aren’t really doing that anymore.” There’s an interesting balance of long-standing traditions and shiny, new ideas that can be difficult to navigate. But that also makes my work really fun, because I can encourage my clients to do whatever they want that suits them best.
Pricing:
- Full planning starts at $3,000
- Mid-level planning starts at $2,000
- Day-of coordination starts at $1,500
Contact Info:
- Website: www.apremierevent.com
- Phone: 970-571-3002
- Email: dakota@apremierevent.com
- Instagram: @apremierevent
- Facebook: @apremeirevent.colorado
Image Credit:
Rhema Faith Photography
ML Photo & Film
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