Planning the Dream Texas Wedding From the Other Side of the World - Monica Millington - Bride Interview
Monica Millington, a Texas fashion designer and content creator now based in Singapore, joins Kevin Cochran on the Texas Wedding Podcast as its first-ever client guest, sharing the real story behind planning a three-day Texas wedding from the other side of the world.
Monica and her husband Tom met on a family vacation in Mexico in 2005, lost touch for over a decade, and reconnected on a phone call that turned into a four-hour conversation and an engagement soon after. Eight years and one toddler into marriage, they finally threw the celebration their friends and family had been asking for. Monica walks through hiring her planner, Krista Seekely of Belle Events, choosing her photo and video team, budgeting lessons learned the hard way, and the traditions she and Tom cut entirely in favor of a milk and cookies dessert and a tequila cart. She also announces her newest venture, a modular bridal-week fashion label called West of Sloane.
Follow Monica on Instagram, and hear more from the people shaping the Texas wedding market on the Texas Wedding Podcast.
Monica's photographer for the weekend was Gracie Byrd Jones, who also has her own episode of the show.
The Texas Wedding Podcast is hosted by Kevin Cochran of 718 Creative, a Texas wedding videographer.
Full Transcript (condensed)
Meet Monica Millington
Monica Millington: I'm Monica Millington. I'm a Texas fashion designer and lifestyle content creator living in Singapore. Thanks to a crazy love story, after eight years of marriage with my husband living abroad, having a toddler, we finally decided to renew our vows in October of 2025. That's how I got back into the wedding industry and met Kevin. We got this crazy fun experience of planning a destination wedding from across the world in my actual home state.
A 14-Year Love Story
Monica Millington: It's 2005 in Mexico. My sister and I are walking through the lobby and there's this very tall, gorgeous guy floating on a pool raft. I swim up, bump into his raft, and say sorry, hi, I'm Monica. He says, oh hello, I'm Tom, and I'm sold the second I hear the accent. We spend the whole week sneaking out past our 10pm curfew, sharing a first kiss on the beach. This is 2005, no social media, barely any international phone plans, so we exchange addresses, have this teary goodbye, and I genuinely thought I'd never see him again.
We stayed in touch on and off through Facebook messages for years, mostly him messaging me every year on my birthday. Then in 2016, on my birthday, he finally got a little braver. We ended up FaceTiming, and that call turned into three or four hours, both of us missing plans we'd had later that day. Within the first fifteen minutes he told me I was his first love and he'd never fallen out of love with me. I said the same thing back before I even realized I was going to say it.
We decided almost immediately we needed to see each other again. I planned what was supposed to be a three-week trip through Asia, ending with a couple of days visiting him in Singapore, where he'd been living for years. I kept extending my flight. By the end, I'd stayed a month longer than planned, and I flew home engaged, telling my family I was moving to Singapore. There wasn't even a ring yet. He just said, we're getting married, when would you like to get married. I said October. We eloped once I moved out there.
Why They Waited Eight Years to Celebrate
Monica Millington: I was never that motivated to do a big wedding after our elopement, our friends kept getting married in the meantime, every summer was three or four destination weddings for us. We kept saying we'd renew our vows eventually. Then COVID hit and everyone was catching up on delayed weddings and COVID babies, so we still felt like we couldn't just insert ourselves into the schedule. Then I had our son, and while we were talking about a second baby, I realized we were in our thirties, this was the moment, our whole friend group had finally had their weddings, and our calendar had actually opened up. So before baby number two, we decided this was our window.
My sister got married in the Texas Hill Country in 2023 and used Krista Seekely as her planner. Everyone at that wedding was asking who Krista was. I asked my sister what she thought about us using her too, and she said if you don't use Krista, I'd be mad. That's really how the whole thing got started, Krista set the date, found the location, and ran with it.
Finding a Wedding Planner
Monica Millington: My biggest advice for anyone starting this process: hire a wedding planner first, unless you're doing something fully self-contained like an all-inclusive Italy venue. Even if we'd been based in Texas the whole time, I still would have hired one. I've worked in this industry, I understand it, and the greatest luxury in the world was letting another expert carry the weight so I could just be a bride instead of a worker bee trying to manage everything myself.
I've had friends who paid top dollar for the most celebrity planner in their market and had appalling experiences regardless of the price tag or the reputation. If you can get Krista, get her, that's my biggest plug, she's the reason the day worked the way it did.
Choosing Photo and Video
Monica Millington: I looked at a lot of people on Instagram first to figure out the aesthetic I wanted, candid and editorial, not overly posed. Some incredibly talented photographers with huge followings were clearly shooting for magazine placement first, which is a valid goal, just not mine. I didn't want my husband forced to pose all day when his best friends and family were flying in from the UK, Australia, and Asia.
We narrowed it down to three finalists each for photo and video, had a call with each, and it wasn't close, it was Kevin and Gracie Byrd Jones. It wasn't just the work, it was the vibe. I needed people who'd feel like part of the family on the most important weekend of my life, not an awkward production crew standing off to the side. On the honeymoon, Tom and I kept saying how natural it felt having Kevin right there in the dance crowd, and how Gracie knew exactly when to be in our space and when to disappear.
Budgeting Lessons
Monica Millington: Expect everything to cost three times more than you think. You get caught up in the moment, adding things like the on-site hat maker we brought in last minute, which ended up being everyone's favorite detail. I kept a spreadsheet tracking every quote, and about two weeks before the wedding Tom and I sat down on a date night to review it. I told him we'd come in under budget. He looked at the sheet and realized I'd only summed half of one column. Once he redid the math, we'd actually tripled the budget. I told him I needed another martini.
The other lesson: get vendor payments handled one to two months out instead of the week of the wedding. That final week is already full of hair and makeup trials and family flying in, and Tom and I ended up doing emails and deposits every night before we could relax, which we wouldn't do again.
The Morning-Of Breakdown
Monica Millington: Excitement and stress run on the same chemical, cortisol, and I did not know that going in. The morning of the wedding I couldn't physically get out of bed, I hadn't eaten enough, and my body just registered all that excitement as stress. Krista's fix was calling in an IV drip right there in the room. Tom has a photo of me getting an IV in full hair and makeup prep. It's the only reason I got into a satin ball gown in the Texas heat and walked down the aisle. The difference in the photos from that morning to a few hours later is wild.
Building In Moments to Breathe
Monica Millington: Kevin, Krista, and Gracie built real downtime into our schedule, actual scheduled moments to just be still. They'd pull us aside during the reception and ask if we wanted a moment alone while the sun was setting, and we'd say yes every time. Those sunset photos are some of our favorite images from the whole day. Without that, we would have blinked and it would have been 12:30am with everyone leaving, and we'd have felt like we never even started. Building that into the timeline on purpose is what let us actually take mental snapshots instead of losing the day to logistics.
Rewriting Wedding Traditions
Monica Millington: It's your day, there are no rules. We skipped a bridal party entirely, we didn't want the hierarchy of deciding who made the cut. We skipped the mother-son and father-daughter dances, they weren't us. We skipped a big wedding cake and served milk and cookies from our favorite restaurant in Singapore instead, with just a small cake for photos. What actually mattered to us was bringing out sparklers and a tequila cart, that was worth more to me than a cake.
Since everyone was flying in from out of town anyway, we put our big, wild welcome party on Thursday night, when most guests were already landing, so nobody had to worry about being hungover for the actual wedding. Friday was quiet recovery and an intimate 30-person family rehearsal dinner. By the time Saturday came, everyone was well rested. We also did physical paper invitations with wildflowers sprinkled inside, since we wanted black tie formality and a specific mood, but that's optional too, spend money where it actually matters to you.
A Content Strategy That Let Her Be a Guest at Her Own Wedding
Monica Millington: My actual job is content creation, so my luxury for the weekend was not touching my phone once. I hired Kevin and Gracie for all three days specifically so I never had to think about capturing anything myself. We also brought in a separate content creator, Somi, just for raw iPhone-style behind-the-scenes footage, which gave me extra material without pulling my attention away from the day itself.
I'm the first person to say don't skimp on videography. People think content is expensive and just get a photographer, but you're paying to be able to relive one of the most important days of your life. We watch our wedding video constantly, and someday our kids and grandkids will get to watch it too, in a way our own parents' generation never could.
From D Magazine to West of Sloane
Monica Millington: I started my career as a receptionist at D Magazine in Dallas, sitting in on creative meetings and shooting blogs on the side to get my foot in the door. I eventually moved to Canada, started a wedding planning and rental business there, then relocated to Singapore, where I built a resort and lifestyle wear brand, Sette, sourced and produced in Bali.
When it came time to plan my own wedding fashion, nothing off the rack felt right, so I met a couture wedding dress designer, Elizabeth Grace, through the Singapore fashion industry and we co-designed a piece together instead. My wedding weekend ran three days, so I wanted one dress that evolved rather than several unrelated looks, a high-neck ball gown for the ceremony, something more fitted for dinner, and a mini with gloves for the party. When we designed it, nothing like it existed yet, no reference photos, nothing on Pinterest. By the time our wedding happened, Vogue had run something with a similar silhouette, which told us we were onto something.
After the wedding, I found myself mourning the end of that design process. Elizabeth reached out with the idea of building modular, couture-quality party pieces for the rest of the bridal week, not gowns, and not another basic party dress brand either. We named it West of Sloane, after Sloane Square in London, the same square where Tom and I met up on the day we reconnected in person, and where Elizabeth built her early career. The brand blends Southern drama, big sleeves, ruffles, volume, with a more restrained London sensibility, built for welcome parties, bachelorette weekends, rehearsal dinners, and after-parties. Our first collection samples are finished, and we're aiming to go live by the end of May.
Connect with Monica Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/monicamillington West of Sloane: https://www.instagram.com/westofsloane
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
