About

Traveling around from place to place provides wonderful, exciting adventures, and memories. However, with so many options to choose from, the actual planning process can seem overwhelming. If the thought of planning quickly in the moment is something that causes you stress or keeps you from seeing what is out there, I would like to become a helpful resource to you. To introduce myself, I am a travel planner that began my career in planning twelve years ago with events.

During college part-time and upon graduating, I worked full time planning social events for college students. This was a fast paced career, but I loved it! College students can be quite picky, honest, and opinionated when it comes to how they spend their time. They need variety. Planning events within the month and sometimes even within the same week, confirmed for me just how possible it is to create and plan pretty much anything in any timeframe. When planning these events, my goal wasn’t to get the most students possible to every event, it was to fill the semesters with various styles of events every Friday and Saturday that catered to all interests. From those more focused on athletics to video game enthusiasts, musicians, social butterflies, studious, and even those focused on the latest trends, my hope was that everyone felt welcomed and included throughout the semesters. I wanted the students to feel like they could find an event every couple of weeks or so that interested them to attend on campus. 

Upon moving to a different location, I created my own event planning business. I wanted to continue the exciting and quick planning that I had been doing with the college only now on my own. It seemed like outside of the college world many worked off of a structured plan. When it came to planning weddings specifically, I noticed that most wedding vendors have higher prices specifically for weddings and a structured timeline for when and how things should be done. It is completely fine to have a suggested timeline to help an inexperienced person figure out how to plan a big event on their own, but what about smaller weddings, or couples that just want to have a nice wedding within a few months? This led me to find a niche for my planning business. I was able to combine my joy for finding ways to achieve a quality event for a reasonable price and to plan it all within a shorter time frame.

As I have continued to plan with and for my clients, I have found that actually going against the traditional timeline, and planning within a shorter timeframe, actually makes it easier to make decisions. It involves saying no to certain elements that would take longer to get in time and then looking for different ways to accomplish the overall design vision without sacrificing quality. Whether it be a wedding, vacation, or a special celebration, you can still have it all, a beautiful venue or destination, an intimate gathering of friends and family, your favorite foods, and decorations, without the pressure and all on your timeframe. Sound unrealistic? I promise, it is doable. It just takes an ability to trust, to let things unfold, and the ideas and solutions naturally come to you.

Ultimately, being a wedding planner with wedding service prices continuing to rise, I was starting to find it more and more difficult to charge couples for a service they could handle themselves with a little online guidance. When everything came to a quick stop during the early 2020s, I felt it was time to re-evaluate what I would truly like to do. This time of thinking led me back to considering what I enjoyed most when I was younger and the type of planning that I had imagined myself one day doing.

Growing up, I loved to spontaneously plan. I wanted to do something special for every holiday and I was determined to make a family party happen. I would create a basic itinerary for the evening and the celebration would just branch out from there. They were usually small and simple gatherings, but each one was unique and even spontaneous. Our family travels were pretty similar. I would be in the back of the car excitedly looking through travel brochures from the visitor centers and dreaming about working in a visitors center someday helping travelers map out their trips and locate the best sites to visit. Each of our trips would be filled with adventure and spontaneity. On these road trips my mom and dad would put emphasis on exploring new places. Many times we would try to drive through different states or different areas of the states. If we needed to take the same route, we would try to see something new. This allowed us each to find our favorite places. Fast forward to today, and that same excitement to plan remains in me. I absolutely love and value each time spent traveling. Whether it be a weekend trip, a longer trip, or even an experience close to home, these travels are special time dedicated to exploring and appreciating my surroundings. Through travel, I continue to meet wonderful people with similar interests and a similar excitement to explore. This excitement has led me here.

Most of my travel experience has been done through road trips. I grew up in the middle of the United States and my parents felt it was important to explore the country by car to better see our surroundings. I have continued to explore mostly by car or camper on my trips today, with the occasional airplane trip depending on the travel time frame. By car, I have traveled about 100,000 miles through the 48 continental states and into some of Canada. A quick list of the road trips that I have memories from include 13 roadtrips to Florida, 3 roadtrips to California, 2 roadtrips specifically to Yellowstone & Glacier National Park regions in Wyoming and Montana, an additional roadtrip to Yellowstone and on to the upper Northwest corner of the United States in Washington State, Vancouver, and Victoria Island in Canada, 2 roadtrips to Maine, one of those Maine trips we drove to Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island in Canada, 2 roadtrips to Washington D.C., 3 roadtrips to New York individually, 1 roadtrip to Massachusetts, 1 road trip to Montreal and Quebec City in Canada, 4 roadtrips to Michigan, 11 roadtrips to Wisconsin, and 1 roadtrip specifically to explore some of the cities of Texas. With all of the experiences, research, and photos I have collected over the years, I am excited to have this new career to help others explore their interests and feel a similar joy in their travels. I have created this place here where I can help and encourage you to be your own travel planner by sharing my experiences, and ideas.

While it is great to have a general plan or outline for both events and travel, you can plan spontaneously on any time frame. Regardless of what the planning professionals may advise, specifically when it comes to their advice for needing a structured itinerary or a back-up plan, we can let that pressure go and enjoy each moment without stress and just let the moments unfold peacefully. Let’s face it, we can find pretty much anything we need online. There are people to advise us on how to live better lives, do tasks easier, set our trends, and teach us new things. We are inspired from this immediate access, but if we rely on this information too much, we can also be left feeling overwhelmed, stuck creatively, afraid of making a mistake, and ultimately not going forward with the ideas that naturally come to us. Amidst all of the pressures to pre-plan to the finest detail, when seeking help, we want to feel encouraged, which has led me to bring my business here.

I am here to encourage you to be more present in the moment, confident in your destination choices, and less reliant on what someone else says. I acknowledge that what I just said here may sound contradictory to what I am trying to do. Technically yes, I am sharing with you my thoughts on how to travel plan, but, I am making it less stressful for you. I am here to help you better sort through the information available online and give you a simpler perspective to plan a trip with.

We are always continuing to search for a new adventure and even though our immediate surroundings and routines may change, we still desire to find a new way to adapt, grow, discover, and explore. From personal experience, whenever I let go of the pressure to plan every detail and remove the worry about specifics of what I may or may not miss out on, things naturally fall into place. The good situations seem to present themselves and options come naturally and freely. 

I invite you to let go of your fears and become inspired to search, to share ideas, and to create unique moments for your own travels.