Today we’d like to introduce you to Jocelyn Carlson.
Hi Jocelyn, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I actually never thought I would be in a creative industry, let alone the wedding industry. I actually went to school for business and got my master’s degree in business administration in 2018. During that time, I got engaged, planned a wedding, got married and graduated all in the same year. Our engagement was short because of an opportunity that presented itself to us that we wanted to take advantage of. So we planned a wedding in two months and got married! It was beautiful and went by way too fast. I had no previous knowledge about weddings or the industry itself. I loved the entire experience and it was the experience of being a bride myself that birthed the beginning of my wedding videography business. We loved our wedding day, but as someone who had very little knowledge about weddings, I didn’t know what I didn’t know. We had a large 400+ person ceremony. My husband’s father and grandfather planted and pastor a large nondenominational church in Moreno Valley, CA.
In addition to inviting our own friends and family, we decided to open up our ceremony for anyone in the congregation that wanted to attend. Later in the evening, we had a private reception at the Mission Inn Hotel in Riverside. So, to say the least, the day was wild and chaotic. The timeline was packed and we were overwhelmed by the amount of people there were. We love and appreciate everyone that came; we just had no idea what to expect when we planned our wedding day because we both had very little knowledge. After our wedding day, I felt like I missed it. There were so many people I wanted to see, thank, spend time with, etc. My biggest question was, “where was I?” Was I even present at my own wedding? It was a blur, obviously with a few highlighted parts. So when we got our wedding video back, I had no idea how valuable it would be to me. I had several regrets about not being more present but I felt like I got back and got to relive important moments that I missed.
What other major milestones can you say that about?! My mind was blown. I had completely underestimated the value my wedding video would have to me and I sat there watching it in tears, thinking, “yes, this is how every bride should feel!” It was that very emotional experience where I realized I wanted every bride to feel the same way I did in that moment. So shortly after I graduated from my master’s degree, I decided that before I went to get a “big girl job,” I wanted to give myself a shot at filming weddings. I gave myself a six-month window to see how I liked it and if this was something I could make a living with. 2019 was my start-up year and my business really took off. Prior to that, I had never picked up a professional camera in my life. I purchased a course called Full Time Filmmaker and taught myself how to use a camera.
I filmed about 15 weddings in 2019 and had 30 weddings scheduled for 2020, as well as several international weddings lined up; Italy and Germany. So 2020 was my first full year of an up and running business. I was very excited and had high expectations for the kinds of places and couples I’d be serving. Then the pandemic happened and we all know how that’s gone. I decided to pivot and focus on filming elopements since large gatherings were no longer allowed. This is how we broke into the destination intimate wedding and elopement niche. My husband has been working from home as of March 2020. This provided the perfect opportunity for us to travel and film weddings together. Because of this, we recently launched our photography packages to better serve our destination wedding and elopement couples so that they only have to pay one team to travel. We’ve since rebranded and have officially added my husband Titus to the business. We are now a husband and wife team who offer both photo and video packages for weddings and elopements all over the world.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
Good things take time and hard work so yes, there have definitely been some struggles along the way, but that’s just life! The pandemic has probably been the biggest. We were pretty successful in being able to pivot. We were able to take on new bookings and last-minute destination elopements and weddings. However, we had about 27 of our previously booked weddings reschedule. That has rolled over to our 2021 calendar. This year we have 60 weddings on our calendar because of the weddings that rescheduled from last year. Our weekends right now look like double and sometimes triple header wedding weekends; Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Elopements make for great middle-of-the-week events, so right now, we are traveling a lot during the week. What makes this most difficult is what we call our “backlog.” That’s the actual list and editing process of each of these weddings. We have found a process that has worked for us so that we can deliver our clients’ photos and videos in a timely manner. It’s just the two of us, so it’s been pretty stressful trying to get through it, but we’ve had amazing couples who have been nothing but patient and kind.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
In addition to delivering a quality product, what I’m most proud of and focus a lot of my business on is the experience of working with us. A wedding and especially an elopement is a very intimate day. There are raw emotions, sentimental value, and large investments, on multiple levels, made by the couples and their families. I don’t take being hired as a complete stranger to witness a day like this lightly. Especially since the pandemic, we have served many couples who couldn’t decide which family members to tell that they couldn’t attend their weddings due to capacity requirements/covid restrictions and ended up choosing to elope just the two of them so that it was fair for the entire family. There has been a lot of heartache surrounding weddings in the current situation. This should be the best experience of someone’s life and instead, couples have lost family members, thousands of dollars in deposits, and have spent hours and hours crying as they have to plan their weddings for the fourth time. It’s hit me hard each time I’ve realized that a couple’s family could not be present at their wedding/elopement and we are.
Because of this situation, I’ve signed several marriage licenses as the main witness. As complete strangers, we are the last people who should be present, however, people choose us to be there to capture it and to me, that is one of the biggest honors to be ever given. To me, it’s a privilege to capture and witness a day as intimate as these, so a lot of our efforts go into investing in our couples. I want this to be fun and exciting for them, regardless of what the day may look like. We are intentional on how we engage and communicate with our couples throughout our time together. I send out welcome gifts, Starbucks gift cards for birthdays, Christmas cards for the holidays, text them when I see they’ve posted about new milestones and accomplishments and even set up double date nights. My favorite term to use when people book us is the term “friend-or” instead of “vendor.”
I ask our couples to think of us as “friend-ors who are excited for the beginning of this new friendship.” When we show up on a wedding day, I want our couples to know us and feel comfortable around us. Wedding days are full of nerves and adding a camera shoved in your face doesn’t exactly help. Getting to know our couples and building authentic friendships with them is our favorite part of how we run our business. We have many previous clients who we still meet up for dinner, have game nights with, and make time to show up for baby showers and later on meet their new babies as they are welcomed into the world. We are friends and I value that. When my husband and I first got married, finding “young couple” friends was hard for us. Now we get to be that “young couple” type friends for our couples. We love investing our time, money, and energy into our couple and their marriage and not just their wedding day. Some of my favorite friendships are those that started out with them filling out our inquiry form. I think this is the biggest thing that sets us apart from others.
What does success mean to you?
I define success by the feeling of being fulfilled. I believe I’m successful because each day, I wake up and love what I do. There are days that are hard but every job and every situation has hard days too. I’m fulfilled by the work that I do and I believe that’s true success.
Pricing:
- Elopements $3,200
- Weddings $4,500
Contact Info:
- Email: hello@titusandjo.com
- Website: www.titusandjo.com
- Instagram: @titusandjo
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2xSeiz6CBmbHvq-ewIKjjA
- Other: https://g.page/titusandjo?share
Image Credits
Titus and Jocelyn Carlson
