Avail Weddings Owner Ashley Taylor Finds Her “Something Good” in Wedding Planning
By Rosa Linda Fallon
Owner and visionary of Avail Weddings Ashley Taylor says wedding planning was never the career she dreamed of. “It was never my dream to do this as a career; it was just something I did for fun; for me, it was just a break from day-to-day office life.” The seed of her passion, and what would soon become a blossoming career in wedding planning, was planted at a young age. At fourteen, Ashley began working events with her aunt – setting tables, decorating, and serving guests, which ignited her interest in the event planning industry. For her senior project in high school, she developed a wedding planning guide for WNC and fell in love with the process. “It was an industry that I felt like there was so much to learn from,” she says. “There are so many creative ways to bring a client’s vision to life.”
Ashley’s creativity eventually merged with her newfound ability to build relationships and her passion to empower women. She became a Mary Kay Consultant during her junior year of college at Western Carolina University (WCU). What she didn’t realize was how achievement-motivated she was. She jumped headfirst into Mary Kay and before she knew it, she had earned her Pink Cadillac and her team became a Top-Recruiting Unit in their national area. But being in front of crowds wasn’t always easy for Ashley. She describes herself as “a really shy extrovert” because she draws energy from being around people, but prefers not to be the center of attention.
Despite her shyness, Ashley persisted. Her time at Mary Kay helped her discover that she felt truly fulfilled when she was helping others. “I learned that I needed to help people,” she says. “I thrive on that. Helping others makes me feel like my cup is full.” She later went on to create the Stuff the Bus program for Jackson County Public Schools. The program was centered around serving the basic needs of students by connecting them, anonymously, with amazing people in the community who were eager to help. She says, “God placed it on my heart to take an active role in serving others,” and she emphasizes the importance of being a good steward in her community.
In 2018, before launching Avail Weddings, Ashley had been doing wedding planning on the side under the name of Taylor Wedding Company. At the tail end of the COVID-19 pandemic, wedding bookings started picking up, and Ashley could no longer keep up with her daytime office job. In January 2021, she took a leap of faith, quit her job and officially launched Avail Weddings. The company provides wedding planning services for full-service planning to elopement planning and coordination, and everything in between. Depending on the package level, brides can choose Avail’s level of involvement. Within the company’s coordination and planning team, it also has venue managers who fully operate on location. Additionally, Avail has an on-staff officiant, esthetician, calligraphy artist, professional photographer, and a full team of insured bartenders.
The company has expanded exponentially – last year, they successfully booked and planned 100 events. Although she is no longer with Mary Kay, Ashley attributes the company’s success to the values and principles she learned while she was a consultant. She says, “All of that training, and all of those little tidbits of life advice that I got from their organization has poured over now into my own; it has really shaped the way that we work as a team, how we treat our clients, and how we treat each other. We work a lot like a family.” She emphasizes that she cannot do any of this without her team, particularly her Chief Operating Officer and Lead Coordinator, Teresa Vreeland, who she calls ‘her human sticky note’. “I could not do this by myself, and I wouldn’t want to,” she says. “I don’t want our success to be about me. I want people to see how great my team is, and how lucky I am to get to do life with them.”
Photos by Brooke Parker Photography
While Ashley attributes most of the credit to her team, she admits that she is the one who puts most of the fires out. “If there’s a disaster, you get me. If there is a cake on the floor or burned food, I get the call,” she says. But for Ashley, perceived chaos is clarity, thanks to her natural gift of problem-solving. “Somehow, in those moments, things are just clear. It doesn’t feel like chaos at the time. It feels like an opportunity to fix a problem before it gets to the bride.” That’s something the Avail team is known for. Ashley says, “we talk with wedding party groups during every rehearsal to make a special request — if something goes wrong behind the scenes, call us, not the bride or groom.” The goal is to allow couples to live in a state of bliss on their wedding day, creating memories that will be treasured forever.
Ashley has built her business as a single mom. While she loves being a wedding planner, she says her children come first. She has a seven-year-old daughter and a five-year-old son, who are both active in sports and love to go on adventures. They have a daily routine of sharing their “something good” as a family, because even on bad days, there are things to be happy about. Ashley is engaged to her best friend and biggest supporter, Kevin, and is excited that the combining of their families gives her two more daughters to love. Ashley shares that Kevin’s oldest daughter loves working weddings with her and has been interning with the team to learn coordination skills. For their 2023 wedding, Ashley’s team at Avail Weddings will handle most of the planning phase, but she plans to delegate the day-of coordination to allow her team to take the day off and be fully present with her, “because that’s where family should be on a wedding day.”
As for the future of Avail Weddings, Ashley says they are continually building the team. By the end of 2023, their goal is to add five more coordination positions and further grow their east coast division. Every single day, Ashley awakes with a grateful mindset and a positive attitude. She says, “Finding your something good is what’s going to get you up the next day to do it again.”
PO BOX 254
Cullowhee, NC 28723