We’re bringing in a new addition to our One on One series. This week it’s about inspiration, direction and the “next” step. Enter Lara Casey. This is a woman of success and heart. As the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Southern Weddings magazine, she has created a niche market that celebrates today’s southern bride. Full of inspiration, details and emotion, this publication is the perfect juxtaposition of creative professionals and unique brides who crave more than the traditional wedding. A wedding photographer’s heaven? Very much so! And if successfully creating a go-to guide for the wedding industry isn’t enough, Lara is also known for launching the “Making Things Happen” tour, a workshop created to help people gain perspective and brand their business. Oh, and did we mention, a big congratulations is in order for Lara and her team (Katharine & Emily). They just wrapped up their third print edition of Southern Weddings Magazine, V3, in stands now. We recently received a copy, and I have been raving about it ever since. Its plush with inspirational content, phenomenal photography and delicious details. They did such an amazing job, I had to order extra copies for all my friends! Stop by Southern Weddings and order a copy today. Or let us send you one for free. Check out our Southern Weddings, V3, Giveaway going on right now.

A big thanks to Lara for letting us interview her! We couldn’t be more excited to share this with everyone!

Lara Casey Blog:
http://laracasey.com/blog/
Lara Casey Media:
http://laracaseymedia.com/
Southern Weddings Blog:
http://www.swsmag.net/

You are given one week to travel anywhere. Leaving today where would you go and why?
As a travel buff, this answer changes every day. Today, I’d pack up my family and head for the slopes. Nothing better than time with my bro and black diamonds. We all love skiing and getting cozy in the snow. Being in a cabin in the Colorado mountains reminds me of Christmases and laughs in the hot tub with snow falling all around us.

What’s your Eat? Pray? Love?
Eat: Anything my mom cooks. She is a French chef, teaches cooking classes and writes a food column. It took us years to get her to buy a microwave. Total cooking purist.
Pray: I pray all day. I mostly pray to surrender. To kick my ego to the curb and just do the work God wants me to do. I pray to have my eyes, ears, and heart open to that at all times.
Love: I love God, my husband and family, my friends, my life’s work, the ocean, creativity, working out and McDonald’s ice cream. In that order.

As the Editor-in-Chief and creator of Southern Weddings Magazine, who or what is your inspiration behind the magazine?
I am incredibly moved by great imagery. I always wanted a place to showcase what fired me up. This all started when we launched the Southern Weddings daily blog in 2008. It was a place for me to share what I loved in weddings, what was inspiring me and to show Southern brides that there was more to telling their unique love story than tulle and chocolate fountains. The blog caught on like wildfire, and people got so excited about a modern look at weddings in the South. The print magazine was born out of the incredible feedback from the blog. I am so grateful for the work we do because our job is to tell these authentic love stories. I love my “work.”

What is the ideal Southern Weddings reader like?
Our audience is young and modern, yet rooted in tradition. Our readers are so varied it’s hard to say more than that. You will see in V3 (Volume 3 of Southern Weddings that hits newsstands October 5th) that our demographic is all over the board. The grace and charm of the South appeals to so many! One of our biggest audiences is actually in Australia, interestingly enough. Everyone wants a little Southern hospitality in their lives!

Getting published in a magazine like Southern Weddings (SW) is a huge honor to photographers and vendors alike. What do you look for in the ideal candidate?
It’s all about the imagery, but we also love to work with people who share our vision. Great branding goes a long way. I just did a live intensive on this (www.livewithlara.com) and got incredible feedback because we get asked that very same question all the time. How you interact with us as editors is a reflection, to us, on how you would treat a client. So, we really do look at everything in a person’s brand. If we publish you – aka endorse you – it is a genuine recommendation to however many hundreds of thousands of brides we reach. Editors look at it all: your tweets, your image quality and consistency, your interaction with others, the first few blog posts on your blog, your bio and photo, everything. What do those things currently say about you? What would I learn about you from your first 10 tweets?

The wedding industry is ever evolving and always challenging. What keeps SW Magazine current?
Authenticity. We’re not corporate or owned by some big publishing house. We (Emily, Katharine and I) do the layout, write the editorial, organize the advertising – and everything else – ourselves. We have a couple other people who help us, but it’s really just the three of us in the office every day. We are self-published, which is a rarity nowadays. We’re really, really small. This allows us to keep the vision for our brand in control. We never want to grow to the point where we can’t give personal attention to things. In our case, small is what makes us successful. We have a niche. We continue to grow daily. We are really grateful for that.

What advice would you give to the photographers and vendors that may be starting out and new to the wedding industry?
Get educated. There is no governing association in weddings like there is in law. There should be. You have to keep yourself in check. If there was a Bar Association for the wedding world I think its top six rules would be:

1. Get educated about the back-end of business. Some people find it hard to grasp that you are a business person first, photographer second.
2. Hone your craft daily and learn from others who do it right. I love Nick Onken’s ABS theory – Always Be Shooting. As with any art or discipline, active practice is the best way to make mistakes, learn from them, and find out who you are as an artist.
3. Once you’ve learned skill, be authentic. Do what you love, shoot what you love, but do it with a clear strategy and mission behind every action.
4. Build an authentic brand the right way – use professionals to help you.
5. The client experience is the most important aspect of successful business. Strive to OVER-deliver. Be responsible. Be professional. Period.
6. Rinse and repeat. The market is always changing. You have to re-evaluate and evolve at a higher pace or you will get lost.

This year you have brought something new to the wedding industry: Making it Happen 2010. Tell us three things we should know about this workshop.
It is not for the faint of heart. If you are ready to be challenged, to re-frame your thinking, to face your fears and to make big changes, then MTH is for you. I can’t take credit for what the MTH Alumni have accomplished since MTH this year, but what they have done has blown me away. They genuinely lived what I said: Feel the fear and do it anyway. You can read about their experiences and what they have done here: http://www.laracasey.com/mth2010/page-buzz.php

There is a lot of mystery and buzz about MTH, but it’s pretty simple. If you want to make things happen in your life, you have to DO something about it. In order to do the right things you have to know WHY you are doing them. In order to find out the heart of why you do what you do, you have to face your fears and let go of what holds you back. Feel the fear and do it anyway. The Making Things Happen intensive isn’t the final answer to all that, but it can be a big catalyst… if you are up for the challenge.

Touring around with “Making it Happen 2010″ keeps you busy and constantly on the move. What’s a travel must-have?
Food. I pack most of my own food on the road – Luna Bars, Forze bars, Greens Plus, oatmeal, protein powder, and whatever else I can fit into my other travel must-have: my Zurich travel bag. With a side pocket for my laptop, expandable shell and a load of other features, it is an essential for me. I have two.

Any mistakes you have made that ended up changing your life for the better?
How many words can fit into a blog post? Yes! A hundred times, yes! Every “failure” has brought me clarity. I used to fear making mistakes. Now I relish them.

What keeps you motivated?
God. Yes, that sounds like a cheesy esoteric answer, but seriously, my relationship with God keeps me focused on what is right, focused on doing good, comforted when things go wrong and joyful in the face of major challenges. My innate way-of-being is to stay in bed and watch “When Harry Met Sally” all day. I get up and go after life because I want to live the joy I know is possible.

I’ve learned the most from…
Failing. It’s the times I’ve been humbled and brought to my knees that I have learned the most and grown the most. Sometimes it takes going to the very bottom to see what the top is supposed to look like. The top for me is anywhere God wants to take me. I just pray daily that I will listen. His plans are way better than mine.

What’s the best decision you made when you first started out as an entrepreneur?
To go for it. To never settle for something I’m not excited about. Our office rule is: If you’re not excited about it, no one will be. You have to love what you do and everything you put out to the world has to reflect the authentic you. If it doesn’t, just stop. Another best decision was hiring Katharine and Emily. I hadn’t even met them in person before I took them on. It was a huge risk that teaches me every day to follow my gut. Best business decision ever. They make me strive to be a better, happier, more whole person every day.