Rising Stars: Meet Shelby Weir of Boston

Today we’d like to introduce you to Shelby Weir.

Hi Shelby, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
Wedding by Weir, as a business designed for love stories was founded on the same exact beautiful romantic premises.

I was in Florida as a music director for an orchestra and Jonathan was 1500 miles away in Boston. As with most modern love stories we met online. Our church had this amazing platform to meet single Christians all over the world. It all started with ” Do you know the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 3? I adore it” Naturally, being one of the most difficult piano concertos in the repertoire, Jonathan’s reply only enticed me further. He could and would play it for me, I would just need to wait and be patient signifying our relationship had a trajectory. Eventually that led to a surprise visit from Florida to see the Boston Symphony Orchestra perform a concert. A life defying concert that was written in the stars for Jonathan and I. On this program was not Rach’s 3rd piano Concerto, but Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, a piece Jonathan held very dear as he envisioned his future wife ascending the aisle towards him. This concert. It wasn’t even two months after that when I made the trip for 3rd time to Boston but this time, there would be no more parting. After a beautiful Phantom of the Opera ” All I ask of you” proposal over a bubbling brook with swans floating around, a wedding indeed was in the full works. With no time to waste our wedding details wove themselves around a central theme, one we didn’t fully realize until it was almost wedding day itself. The venue was to be in Jonathan’s hometown with a beautiful winding staircase. The music was to be all live with musicians that have touched our lives through. A met opera singer from New York, colleagues and roommates we arranged and transcribed all the music ourselves for our orchestra to perform. Every piece we chose had serious emotional entanglement that would allow us to relive each moment from our relationship on the best day of our life all the while creating a new memory of the wedding day itself. Prokofiev to ascend to aisle, Nessun Dorma for the first kiss, Giorno per Noi for a choreographed first dance, Rach for when we cut the cake which had the sheet music for the piece itself printed on each side of the cake, of course “All I ask of you” was to be included as a duet we would sing together and lastly Mahler 2, Resurrection Symphony for the conclusion of the wedding ceremony. Not a single moment of our day was going to feel rushed but we would take our guest on a transcending experience with our love story on full display, to see the beginning, to invite guest to feel what we felt falling in love and to give them excitement as we felt preparing for wedding day. As it was getting closer to day, itself as any bride knows our part time job of wedding planning was coming to a close. Everything had come together in not 2 years or even a year, not even 6 months but 3 months. We started looking back at how the fabric of time wove together a wedding celebration for the ages. A Romeo and Juliet vision with Prokofiev from Jonathan’s early exposure to classical music, a venue with the description “Juliet balcony” Later when I was working on the programs for the Giorno Per Noi translations to be printed on our dinner menus, I was delighted as the rich language of the song in English. “A Day for us”. A quick Google search had my jaw dropped. Giorno Per Noi the 1968 original Romeo and Juliet film theme song. Not only did our love story write itself but the author and creator of love itself had tipped his hand and and revealed all the cards used in designing our wedding. And what a wedding it was, Our guests approached us at the end of the night inquiring why we hadn’t charged tickets to our “wedding show.” A wedding show, a production, a cinematic journey. Weddings were no longer 2 dimension timelines but a 3rd dimension that had every effect of the makings of a Nicholas Sparks movie. The transitions carefully tailored and music embedded at every turn, after all music is the cornerstone of a memory, physiologically so. The guest experience maximized and blown out. At the end of the night Jonathan helped me into the car decorated with tin cans and carefully tucked away all 10 layers of my ball gown before closing the door. We drove off into the night to an Inn in Marblehead. I turned to gaze at my new husband and shared my thoughts. I can’t wait to watch our wedding movie. My only regret from today, the most amazing day of our lives, is simply that it is over and my desire for design had consumed me from inside out. And then another thought, there were millions of weddings a year and what if, what if a handful of them were designed by Weir. Yes! A Wedding by Weir! Designed and curated by Shelby and custom arrangements from professional pianist Jonathan.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Starting a business with your spouse is the most amazing gift in the world. Of course it also meant starting and launching a business with a baby on the way and then relaunching once we moved from Florida back to Massachusetts. With musical brains, we had to aquire business skills and bookkeeping skills. Finding ways to streamline processes always designed with client experience in mind asking ourselves if we were to book ourselves how would we experience the process.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
As a professional woodwind specialist, I play the clarinet, saxophone and flute. I have surprised a few of my couples with busting out the sax on the dance floor and its always so fun because sometimes they don’t realize that I’m a professional musician and also planner and designer! Being an artist means that I view the wedding as a blank canvas as a music score without any music composed. Every vendor that I connect clients with carefully imbeds the notes into the score and soon once the details are chosen and curated, a whole symphony has been composed. I often interview couples on how they met multiple times and from each of their prospectives because I am searching for a common theme and sometimes as it was with ours, an undiscovered theme. I make it my job to find any loose intriguing threads that may start as frays of a fabric but in its end are the very chords woven together to make a strand or a braid that is one unbreakable. This becomes the foundation of the wedding production. That’s how I view the weddings we design, it has little to do with wedding trends or status quo but fully represents the couple’s innate love story. Having a personal musician at my disposal to help bring the couple’s production to life is my favorite part! Having a wedding designed by Weir or two Weirs for that matter is an all hands on deck, maximizing each potential idea and sculping and carving and chipping away until all that’s left is a masterpiece. A cinematic experience with the perfect amount of detail not overly painted but tailored to each love story.

Where we are in life is often partly because of others. Who/what else deserves credit for how your story turned out?
Our love story was designed by God long before we met and the establishment of Wedding by Weir especially after very abruptly leaving two full time incomes with a baby on the way was the biggest trust fall in the history of jumping. And not once have we gone under financially, We also owe a lot to Dan Goode and the amazing network of professional Luxury Musicians community. I also was so inspired by my college roommate and dear friend Maggie Karanja or Maggie Karanja Photography in Atlanta who captured our wedding so beautifully. I saw how diligently she worked to brings clients joy and I wanted to also bring clients joy on the planning, design and music side of the weddings!

Contact Info:

• Website: weddingbyweir.com; weirthemusic.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/weddingbyweir?igsh=bjRkeGpwcjlmbWN4
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@weirthemusic?si=W4Q6Nux242F9kyCM
• Other: https://www.instagram.com/weirthemusic?igsh=NnhtZHNxOTJrM3do