Devin Swick - Vendor Dress Codes, Wedding Design & Finding Your Voice
Devin is a wedding designer and freelancer based in Denton, Texas and she was Kevin's first ever in-person podcast guest. She also helped talk him into starting the show.
Devin Swick, a Denton, Texas wedding designer and freelancer, joins Kevin Cochran on the Texas Wedding Podcast as his first-ever in-person guest, the person who helped convince him to start the show in the first place.
Devin calls her own career the backdoor into the wedding industry, starting in floral design and working her way through event production into lead planning before finding her real calling in design. She and Kevin get into what makes couples struggle to commit to decisions, why she thinks networking culture in the industry can do as much harm as good, and the story behind her Vendor Dress Code Guide, a resource born out of watching a young assistant get publicly humiliated over an inappropriate coat, now used by planners as required reading for their teams.
Follow Devin Swick on Instagram, and hear more from the people shaping the Texas wedding market on the Texas Wedding Podcast.
The Texas Wedding Podcast is hosted by Kevin Cochran of 718 Creative, a Texas wedding videographer.
Full Transcript (condensed)
Meet Devin Swick
Kevin: I'm honored that your very first podcast is with me here. And you deserve the first in-person one, honestly, since this was kind of borderline your idea. You told me to do this podcast, you pushed for in-person.
Devin Swick: This was an idea I'd mentioned to my wife and maybe two other friends over a year ago, tweaked and refined since. So you've known about this longer than anybody.
From Tomboy to Designer
Devin Swick: Being stylish and fashion forward is actually a pretty new part of my life. I grew up with five brothers, rode horses bareback, and I don't even know if it's PC to say tomboy, but that was me. I didn't wear makeup until maybe 17. We also grew up very poor, so there wasn't room to be materialistic. I started knitting at 16 because I saw a sweater and wondered if I could make it myself, and that spiraled into figuring out how to make things on my own. But I really didn't let myself have opinions or taste until I was 25 or 26. I was very involved in my church, very determined to serve everyone around me, and I had my first kid at 22 or 23, so it took a long time before I asked myself what I actually liked.
My own wedding reflected that. I hired a great photographer, James Moes, back when that whole deep evergreen, lakeside, peak Pacific Northwest photography era was just taking off. We spent maybe three or four thousand dollars total. It was about as simple and inexpensive as it gets.
The Backdoor Into the Wedding Industry
Devin Swick: I started in floral design, and it evolved into whatever I was offered to do, not out of desperation, but because I was hungry to understand everything about events. It quickly became less about the florals and more about the design holistically. I always call it the backdoor into the industry, because I didn't just show up one day and start planning with no working knowledge of the moving parts. After a few years in floral and event production, I had the foundation to step into lead planning with real confidence.
But once I felt like I'd mastered planning, I missed the aesthetics. I'd become someone credible with timelines, transportation, and logistics, but I was craving a design voice. That's the tension every planner and designer wrestles with: is it what the client wants, or is it your brand? At the end of the day, they're paying you to give them what they want. My last role was director of production and design, which sounds fancier than it is, a lot of vendor coordination, rentals, what time something gets dropped off, what shade of velvet we're using. But if I had to zero in on my favorite part of any of it, it's making all those tiny details come together into something that reflects the mood board without feeling static.
On Decisive Brides and Storytelling
Devin Swick: There's a real need for a mature decision-making bride right now. A lot of couples have genuinely great taste, they just can't make decisions. What's helped me most is encouraging people to trust that they can make a choice confidently because it fits the story they're trying to tell, rather than chasing what's trendy. I'd much rather deliver a meaningful presentation of who a couple actually is than a trendy, fashion-forward, clicky kind of wedding.
My hot take, and I say this with no shade since I was one myself, is that I'm a little tired of really young brides. As you get older you get a more grounded sense of who you are, and you're just not able to make decisions as readily or confidently until you're more settled into yourself. There are plenty of self-assured 20 to 25 year olds out there, but looking at my own client base, the youngest ones tend to have the hardest time with even basic decisions, worrying more about what their friends will think of the invitation than what they actually want. It can feel like we've lost the plot a little.
Rethinking Networking Culture
Devin Swick: Networking has genuinely changed my life. A lot of us have a pretty lonely business, so there's a constant need for connection that clients and vendor meetings don't provide. I see real value in it. But I also see people bouncing between every event because of this feeling that if you're not there, you're missing out, that your business would be further along if you'd said yes to every room. I think what we're perpetuating might be a little more damaging than helpful.
I feel bad even saying that, because I've been to ITC and it was so valuable. But if I did that constantly, my kids would be homeless, and I'm not alone in that. Everyone's in a different place in the industry, and the normal middle-market vendor just isn't capable of doing all of it financially. I do love the smaller, more underground networking groups that are popping up though, and honestly, I'd love to just host dinner in my backyard with my favorite people once a year. It doesn't have to be expensive to be valuable.
It's worth saying both things can be true. Networking matters, genuinely. But there's this buildup in the industry that if you're not at every single one of these things, you're falling behind. I actually saw a very well-known, highly visible name in this industry file for bankruptcy recently, someone at every event, with real clout and genuinely excellent craftsmanship. It wasn't a lack of networking that got them there. That stuck with me.
The Vendor Dress Code Guide
Devin Swick: The industry always says it's sink or swim, and I wanted to make it easier for people to swim, because there were embarrassing moments I could have been spared. I've seen horrible moments firsthand. One time, working for a very well-known planner, an assistant showed up on a freezing December wedding day without a proper coat, just a cape that didn't work for the setting at all. The planner chewed her out in front of everyone, made a real spectacle of it. I remember thinking there's a standard nobody wants to actually talk about, and it takes people down hard when they find out about it the wrong way. I've seen the same thing with photographers whose slit is too high to climb a ladder, or people showing up in trendy combat boots that clash with the whole event.
So I built a guide. It covers formality levels with real visual examples, because if you're representing a company on-site, there's a way to present yourself, and there's no shame in having made that mistake before, everything in that guide I've done the opposite of at some point. It's meant to be one less thing for a freelancer to worry about, and it also gives planners a resource to hand off instead of a last-minute "just wear black" text a week before the event, which is its own problem, since black sticks out just as much at an all-white wedding as anything else would. One business owner, Mike Via, has already made it required reading for anyone who wants to work with him, read the guide, then we'll shoot the event together. It's available on my website.
What's Next: Exploring Branding
Devin Swick: I never actually attended a formal event until I worked one, so I had zero context walking in, and I think people assume that if you work weddings, you automatically know how they go. It takes years to feel comfortable. That's part of why I built the guide, being comfortable in your own clothes matters. Looking ahead, I'd love to explore branding and styling coaching more seriously, helping other wedding professionals figure out their own voice the way I had to. I'm a little nervous to say that out loud, but it does seem like where things are heading for me, and I get real joy from styling people.
Connect with Devin Vendor Dress Code Guide: https://www.devinswick.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/devinswick
Connect with Kevin // 718 Creative https://718creative.com | https://www.instagram.com/718.creative
Connect with the Podcast https://www.texasweddingpodcast.com | https://www.instagram.com/texasweddingpodcast
