Meet Arianna Peffer

My work ethic comes from learning the importance of a job and the impact you can have within the workforce at a young age. My parents had me go on my first interview when I was just 14 years old. It was for a small diner in the town I grew up in, and I am almost positive that the manager knew she wouldn’t hire me from the start. But it taught me what questions I could expect in an interview and how to handle rejection too. I then went on my second interview for another local diner and got hired!

Although it took me quite a few years to gain the experience I needed to know what an excellent employee looked like, I eventually got the hang of it. I learned the more you applied yourself, the better benefits you received, such as higher wages and promotions. More importantly, it was the connections and positive feedback from the patrons. Yes, it was great to receive the higher pay, but it was even better to know that a simple conversation I took the time to have with a customer could turn their day around. When I took these two valuable lessons and applied them to my attitude in the office, it improved my work ethic and made me into the strong worker I am today.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

I am currently focusing on the industry of wedding coordination! While this is not the career that I saw myself doing when I was newly out of high school and planning to become a preschool teacher. Things quickly changed when I landed a job as a banquet server for a wedding venue.

While half of my current role in the world of weddings focuses on planning and coordinating, the other half is geared toward managing and operating the coordinating company as a whole. I feel like I truly have the best of both worlds to be able to not only plan what some consider the most exciting day for our couples but to also help build the packages and systems for the company as well. That responsibility is something that I do not take lightly, and it pushes me to help give each one of our clients the best experience from the second that they look at our website, to the grand exit on their wedding day.

The world of events is always over-glamorized. We see movies like The Wedding Planner or attend over-the-top birthday parties with balloon arches and Instagram-worthy place settings. But we often overlook the literal sweat and tears that were necessary to organize and execute the day. One wedding I coordinated this year required 200 cups, 300 pieces of silverware, 100 plates and napkins, 34 charger plates, 7 farm tables, and about 5 totes of decor to be set up by me and my assistant within 4 hours, and then broken down and repacked within 1 hour at the end of the night. We were a shining example of what it meant to hustle that day, and we were so proud of how it all turned out!

This brings me to the last quality/skill, which is to be open to learning new things. I originally went into my career thinking that I had it all figured out when it came to coordinating. I was quickly humbled when some follow vendors took the time to point out my areas of naivety. Although it was a tough pill to swallow, it opened my eyes to the different viewpoints from each vendor that I was missing the mark on. I promised myself from that day forward that I would always look for and welcome new ways of thinking and learning in my career.