Dana Watts - Getting Hitched on Sustainability

[00:00:00] Dominique: Hello, welcome to another episode of Green Champions.

[00:00:14] Adam: Thanks for joining us in a conversation with real people, making real environmental change in the work that they do. I'm here with Dominique, the sustainability expert.

[00:00:22] Dominique: And I am so glad to be here alongside Adam, the social enterprise extraordinaire. We bring you guests who saw the potential for impact in their job or community and have done something about it.

[00:00:32] Adam: From entrepreneurs to artists, scientists to activists. This podcast is a platform for green champions to share their stories and plant new ideas.

[00:00:40] Dominique: So whether you're tuning in today during a walk with your dog, listening along at home, maybe taking a drive, today, Adam and I are joined by the Dana Watts. 

[00:00:51] Dominique: She is a sustainability advocate and a pretty amazing event planner. Dana is here today as the founder of Thyme & Details. I really enjoy your mission statement by the way. Thyme & Details specializes in creating whimsical, romantic eco-conscious events that don't fit the wedding industry mold.

[00:01:10] Dominique: Dana has also studied sustainability, has a passion for event planning, and really saw a gap right there in the middle. That being said, today we're diving into the world of event planning and wedding planning. And our green champion today is Dana Watts. Welcome Dana.

[00:01:24] Dana: Hi, thank you. Happy to be here.

[00:01:26] Adam: So excited that you're here. Yeah.

[00:01:28] Dominique: Before getting into Dana's story, you're both married, correct?

[00:01:32] Dana: Yep.

[00:01:32] Adam: Not to each other. Yeah. 

[00:01:35] Dominique: Good clarification. Adam, what was your wedding like?

[00:01:39] Adam: I got married in India, so I got to march through the streets of India wearing, it's kind of like a, basically like a sheet wrapped around you. And then sit through a very complex series of rituals for their village in the Hindu tradition that involve things like breaking up a coconut to release all the evil spirits all over an open flame inside of a building.

[00:02:02] Dana: I'm just curious, what region was that in?

[00:02:05] Adam: It was in Chennai. We were in the south.

[00:02:06] Dana: Note to anybody who's listening, the fun weddings are in the north where they drink and party and dance, and the south are more religious, where they are much more centered around the rituals and traditions.

[00:02:16] Dominique: But both had the coconut part?

[00:02:18] Adam: Uh, those vary by village.

[00:02:20] Dominique: Okay. That's just cool. I love that.

[00:02:22] Dana: That's why I was wondering. I was like, I know they, each area has their own traditions and customs, but it's hard to just know if someone's having an Indian wedding, what they're gonna wanna include and what doesn't mean something to their region.

[00:02:34] Dominique: What was your wedding like?

[00:02:35] Dana: Okay. 

[00:02:36] Dana: My wedding was right before Covid, like two months before. The first case of Covid was January 19th, 2020, at least what's in the records. But that was our wedding day, so literally right before Covid. I always knew I wanted to get married at Franklin Park Conservatory, and I had just worked weddings there before and it's just, it spoke to who we are as a couple. But I also knew that most of the year it's very hot and we do not like to be warm 'cause our faces get all red. So we picked like the coldest time of the year, January 19th, and it was our half anniversary. We had been dating for eight and a half years, so we were like, let's do the half. So it was beautiful. It was like sparkly, snowy day and people came in from all over. It was just really nice. But we were surrounded by plants in the middle of the winter.

[00:03:20] Dominique: That's cute. 

[00:03:20] Dominique: And you said you were doing event planning before that. So like, tell us the timeline of like event planning and your own event. Like, were they tied together in terms of like, "Oh, I've, I had a wedding and I was good at it. I want do this for other people" or you already had been involved in events and wedding planning before?

[00:03:35] Dana: Yeah, I'd already been involved in it for about eight or nine years. I thought I wanted to do wedding planning and event planning. It just was something that I felt tied to since I was little. I would always plan like fun theme parties and I was like, "I feel like this is what I have to do." So I started working with different event planners and vendors to see like, what is it actually like to do the work? Like besides J-Lo at the wedding planner, like what is it actually like? 

[00:04:01] Dana: So I started working with other planners, yeah, about eight years before our wedding. And then I did some work with different florists and caterers, just trying to understand the work and the industry. And I ended up working for two planners primarily. They're both now retired, but one of the planners is more my mentor and she coordinated our wedding. So I took a little pause around the time I was getting married because I was trying to finish up my degree and I had her, she coordinated my wedding. And then I said, "Okay, once I get married myself and I've been through the personal side of it, then I'll go off on my own." So that was the plan, and I launched Thyme & Details and then Covid happened. But 

[00:04:41] Dominique: Of course, 

[00:04:42] Dana: I feel like everything happens the way it's supposed to. And it was, it actually turned out like totally fine. And it was, it was fine.

[00:04:48] Dominique: What did you get a degree in?

[00:04:49] Dana: I got my degree from Ohio State University. It's called EEDS. So environment, economics, development, and sustainability. My specialization was sustainability and business. Thought I wanted to go to school for hospitality and that's why I was interviewing and working with and shadowing different vendors. But I was like, maybe that's not what I wanna get my degree in 'cause I think there's a lot of opportunity to do something with sustainability, but I don't know how those two things could work together.

[00:05:15] Dana: So I thought maybe I'll spend my time getting my education focused around sustainability and environmental science and business management 'cause I know I wanna own some sort of business. So I found EEDS and that was the perfect fit.

[00:05:27] Adam: What did you learn in the program?

[00:05:29] Dana: I would say it's like, it's so broad. There's a lot of different areas and it's hard to break it down into just a few, but balancing people, profit and planet. Like for me, my focus was more so in trying to reduce waste and just how does waste affect our world and our communities? But it's so broad and I learned a lot of different areas, whether that's energy and water, economics, business and since that was my specialization, it was cross-disciplinary between like Fisher College of Business and Ag School and a couple different areas. But it was just so broad, it's kind of hard to break it down, but I think generally sustainability is that way too. So that's, that's where I spent my focus, like in my research in different areas there. 

[00:06:14] Adam: Why sustainability?

[00:06:16] Dana: I honestly feel like I found sustainability through weddings because I was seeing how much, again, we waste, how much there is for like opportunity to do better, and there's a lot of flowers that get left at the end of the night. There's a lot of hungry people in the world and there's food left over, so how, how do we bring these things together?

[00:06:34] Dana: Was there like a catalyst for you to switch from like an awareness of the problem to actually doing something about it when it comes to like sustainability with events? 

[00:06:43] Dana: I started out with those doors opening and realizing there's a lot to sustainability. I think the EEDS degree and all of the different, I hate to say problems in the world, but you see all the problems and it's easy to be like doom and gloom about the world when you get that, when you go into that degree. And because it is so broad, there's just a lot of area to see problems. 

[00:07:04] Dana: But for me I was, I try to be optimistic. It's not easy but I just wanted to look at it from a standpoint of there's opportunity. So then I thought back to. Okay. I'm a planner, so I'm thinking like, "What does the next year look like? What are the next five years, 10 years, 20 years?" Like I wanna have a solid plan for what I'm going to be doing. And as I'm trying to figure that out, I'm like, it's so cliche, but how do you like leave the world a better place? 

[00:07:28] Dana: So as a college student, you're thinking about the whole life you have ahead of you. So I think just part of that process was I'm trying to make a solid plan and foundation and how do I do what I like to do and weddings, of course, are always a central focus on that. But how on earth do you bring those things together? So I think there wasn't a particular aha moment other than just seeing the result at the end of the night with what's left at a wedding 'cause you're there from start to finish and you see all the things that come in and it's like, where do all those things go at the end?

[00:07:58] Dana: So I think there were just little pieces that slowly came together. And when I'm ready to graduate and decide, okay, what am I actually going to do? Am I gonna go like with all my, you know, colleagues at school and different students, they're all trying to find jobs and apply to corporate places or, you know, go off to another state, whatever. Like they're making these grand plans and I'm like, that doesn't feel like me, but what do I wanna do? And how am I going to bridge what I enjoy? Like how am I gonna be happy, but how am I also gonna make a difference? So I think it was just the life planning of realizing, "Oh my gosh, I'm graduating. what am I gonna do with my life?" 

[00:08:31] Dana: I think that in itself is very special like not everybody I think has that like entrepreneurial push that I think it was just innately inside of you.

[00:08:39] Dana: My dad, he's an entrepreneur. He had an architecture firm from when I was born until I think maybe 2012. I don't remember the exact years, but all of my time growing up as a kid, like up until, at least through high school, he was an entrepreneur and had an architecture firm, and we were there after school we would go to the firm, we have our own little offices. Whoever's office was empty at the time, and my sister and I would make up pretend businesses and we just, we could use all this different office supplies and we'd have little filing cabinets and be like, "Okay, this is for receivables." Like, we learned all these different things from like my dad and his staff, and it was, so I think that, that

[00:09:19] Dominique: So cute.

[00:09:19] Adam: I'm looking at Dominique. I'm like, "Okay, this is like who as a kid gets to play like business in their like parents' office where they're like, yeah, these are receivables. This is my deliverable. This is my project." 

[00:09:32] Dominique: My siblings and I, I have three siblings. We played like, market basically. And we would like, we called it store, but it very complex. We played like this market basically where we'd all make a little stand. But we were in our basement with like tiny tables or whatever we could find like a stool and putting our stuff on it. My sister just sold rocks she found from outside. But like you had a lot of exposure to what it looks like to be like a business owner. That feels like a huge part of how you saw yourself doing what you're doing.

[00:10:07] Adam: Yeah. Yeah. I feel like I had a good foundation for understanding the basics and people that, you know, have great ideas and wanna start a business sometimes don't know how to run a business and their great idea, like their mission may suffer because they don't know how to do that. So I feel that I was lucky that I had that foundation going into it where maybe I was able to be more successful because I had access to that background. Very much. The seeds that get planted when you're a kid and quite often come to fruition decades later, so I love that.

[00:10:33] Dana: Bringing it back to the waste in the wedding industry. Can you paint a picture of like what this actually looks like after a wedding in terms of the waste problem?

[00:10:42] Dominique: Yeah. I always go back to the perishable goods because those items are easily wasted because they have a small lifespan. So food and typically floral. Florals are, I mean, they can be shipped in from all over the globe and they are shipped in on typically like refrigerated units and they only have this small window of shelf life. But if you care for them properly afterwards, like they can be extended. So I just, I see typically the end of a wedding, probably like depending on the size of the wedding, let's say it's like 200 guests and there's 8 people per table. 

[00:11:17] Dana: So that's what like quick math, like 24 tables or so. So you have 24 tables of floral arrangements, and then you have maybe 6 bridesmaid bouquets and a bridal bouquet, even though normally they keep that one. But you end up with this huge, you know, when the lights come on at midnight and dancing's over and everybody's leaving, they're gonna want packed up their card box, their personal items, like a guest book, different things like that. Maybe their bridal bouquet and maybe one arrangement for mom, maybe an arrangement for the couple. But at that point, they're just like, "The wedding's done. I just wanna go sleep or go to my after party, and I don't want a car full of stuff." 

[00:11:54] Dana: So I would say at the end of the night, there's boxes of candles. If you're supplying your own or other decor elements, those items aren't perishable. So those, you know, maybe they'll sit in your garage for 10 years. And that's another element of, you know, you're buying all these things, they could be wasteful. How can we do better? Maybe you resell them. Maybe you, you know, there's other routes for that. 

[00:12:15] Dana: But my focus is on perishables because they're so time sensitive. Typically though, what's left over, if you have a buffet, for example, if they usually overestimate food 'cause they don't wanna run out. That looks pretty bad on the cater. If they have say like one pan of everything. Sometimes there's not a pan of everything. Sometimes there's two pans of one thing and everybody loved, you know, the green beans, there's nothing left for that. Where does that go? The caterer's not gonna have a bunch of leftover containers in the back that they're passing out to your guests, because that's just not the vibe, right? 

[00:12:49] Dana: But if the staff can't eat those, that food, then where does it go? So, I just noticed a lot going in the trash. Another component is the food that isn't safe to be consumed after a wedding. So maybe it's a half pan that had been sitting out at a buffet that can't necessarily be donated because it's, someone could have sneezed on it or mishandled it, right? 

[00:13:10] Dana: But if there's leftover food that can't be consumed, you don't want that to go in the trash either. So composting it is a great option. So I have a friend that owns a farm down in Groveport and she will take food from events and feed them to her chickens or to her lambs. Like there are some farms that will take stuff and donate to their pigs. So trying to figure out the lifecycle for where these things go is just something that I try really hard to make sure it doesn't go in the trash at the end of the day.

[00:13:38] Dominique: Do you feel like you're uniquely poised to be good at this job, or do you think experience has got you here? Like were you always just such a calm wedding planner and like a put together human? 

[00:13:50] Dana: I don't know. I feel like on a personal level, maybe I'm not that way, but I've wanted to do this for I feel like so long and felt like I was meant to do it that I, I'm a perfectionist. I feel like I have to do it right. So if I can't keep it together, I'm failing or something.

[00:14:07] Dominique: Well, you're doing a very good job. 

[00:14:09] Adam: is there a subtext to this question?

[00:14:10] Dominique: Well, I've not been married. Which I'm like, also, I feel like I've lost context for some of the wedding stuff, but my sister got married in the last year or so, and I just got to see how crazy it all is and how much there is. And I think about you managing multiple of these and I've heard you like express things that are going on that like, to me feel like a fiasco. Like you gotta just like fix something that was a mistake within a couple days and I want to put this in our next episode. 

[00:14:37] Dominique: I will get into some of the examples of things that you've had to deal with, but I'm just curious if you are just like so good at managing that chaos or if you just feel like you have the toolkit now and that's what helps?

[00:14:52] Dana: I would say just a little bit of both. Over time it's gotten easier, but my favorite part of the job is, well, two, I mean, it's twofold. Honestly, my favorite part of the job is seeing all of the like floral and food donations. I love seeing the impact. I'd say the other like equal favorite part of the job is problem solving. Like, I just love to solve these puzzles. I'm not the kind of person that's like on a Sunday night doing puzzles on my coffee table, but I like to solve real problems and like fix 'em. 

[00:15:19] Dana: So I think it's more of like you have a certain time limit, like you have 10 minutes to figure this problem out and you're gonna have to figure out the best solution possible. I think there are a lot of people out there like that and they get their outlet somewhere else, like maybe video games. Like they're on like a really fast timeline. Like they gotta figure it out. They have the situation that they're dealing with and it's like an adrenaline sort of like rush or whatever. Like you have to figure it out. Like, okay, this person do that, this person do that. Like how are all the pieces gonna fit together? And I just find that so fun.

[00:15:48] Dominique: I'm happy for you.

[00:15:49] Dana: Thank you.

[00:15:50] Adam: That is super cool. I would love a, you know, a story of a crazy thing that you had to solve on the fly in a wedding. What's a good story for us?

[00:15:59] Dana: I would say, although I was not necessarily the person that figured it out, I helped manage the situation. I would say we had a snake in the wedding reception. It was outside, mind you, it was a tent wedding, but never had that happen before. I've had like, you know, ants and things like that, that we have to end up dealing with, but we were just about to let the guests in and release them. The groom explicitly has expressed that he hates snakes. So of all the things to show up on his, like dance floor, like weaving between the dance and tables. 

[00:16:33] Dominique: In Ohio?

[00:16:33] Dana: This is in Ohio, in Grandville. And one of the caterers said "There's a snake by table 13." and I'm like, "Oh. That's great." Okay, so we ended up, I don't remember the exact like way we managed the guests. I think we just kind of let them be and said, "Hey, we're gonna be seating in about 10 minutes. 

[00:16:53] Dana: If you wanna get in line for the bar, now's a great time to do that." Because guests, depending on the crowd, typically are gonna waste a half hour anyways when you ask them to sit down to go get a drink. So it's like, "Okay. Well, we could tell people now to go ahead and get their drink and we're gonna have to figure out this snake situation." 

[00:17:08] Dana: So we ended up calling like animal control or some like local place. And I don't know what happened to the snake. I don't really wanna know, but I would say that was probably one of the most like time sensitive issues that we had to deal with off the top of our heads.

[00:17:22] Dominique: That is not what I expected. 

[00:17:23] Dana: No. 

[00:17:24] Dominique: Also, probably not what you expected. 

[00:17:25] Dana: No, I didn't expect 'em to be like, "Hey, there's this snake that you have to deal with." I'm like, "I don't. That's one thing in my Mary Poppins kit that I don't have." I don't have like one of those. Yeah.

[00:17:36] Adam: Snaker charmer

[00:17:36] Dana: Whatever those loop things are.

[00:17:39] Dominique: Oh 

[00:17:40] Dana: yeah. 

[00:17:40] Dominique: Yeah. Flutes. You wanna mesmerize it and get it into the box.

[00:17:45] Adam: Dancing on top of the table around the flower arrangement too. 

[00:17:48] Dana: And start dancing. 

[00:17:49] Dominique: That is very cool. Okay. Well just kinda like to recap for us a little bit. So I feel like it's awesome that you kind of began with an education and sustainability. I think that like, probably is true for a lot of people, but maybe some were debating like if that's a good route for them. But you know you took that education and this love you had for events such like a knack for it. If somebody else is out there who has a knack for something and wants to see that bridge with sustainability because they care about sustainability and don't connect to that thing they do yet. Do you have any advice for someone like paving that path that doesn't exist that you did?

[00:18:28] Dana: Well although I am grateful for my degree, I feel like explore more about what specifically you love. I think education's important and it helps you become an expert on something. I loved my degree, but it was so broad. 

[00:18:43] Dana: So if you have something specific you really care about, focus on that. And you can always learn from other people along the way and bring different people on your team or other colleagues in the community, like leaning on them for their expert opinion or their expert work where maybe it isn't yours. Like find that balance instead of trying to be like the master of everything, like be really good at something and figure out what that is. And even if it is your education, decide what's most important to you. 

[00:19:13] Dana: And I mean, I love EEDS but I feel like if I did it over again, I would've either focused on environmental science specifically, or just a business degree with maybe like a minor in EEDS or something like that because I would've liked to have really have dived into something a little deeper and been more of an expert in that.

[00:19:34] Adam: Cool. So really going into the depths of something and getting the details as opposed to a big, broad overview because you can kind of generally get that overview from different sources.

[00:19:44] Dana: I would say too, like from the very beginning of learning wedding planning, I wanted to understand what the job was really like. And so even if you're, you know, I don't like the idea of unpaid work, but just like learn as much as you can. So for me it was, even though I wanted to be a wedding planner, I was going to work at flower shops. I wasn't getting paid, but I was just trying to understand what they did and working with different venues and caterers, like seeing all the sides, and maybe that'll help you decide where you want to be the expert or where you wanna focus. 

[00:20:14] Dana: But maybe don't just pick something arbitrarily like, "This sounds fun," but explore it a little bit, pick it and really commit to that and be the best that you can instead of putting your hands in too many places. 

[00:20:25] Dana: I think that's one thing I wish I would've done a little bit better. So although it helped me, if I feel like I had done more, I think that that would've been like a key to success.

[00:20:35] Adam: Well, and I love this whole journey that you painted from starting, you know, as a kid and just that experience of going into your dad's office and playing business, right? Letting those seeds plant and then having that insight as you were working in the wedding planning industry to notice, "Hey, here's something which is a lot of waste that we need a way to deal with this". So noticing, "Hey, here's a gap that exist" and able to learn around that.

[00:20:57] Dominique: Yeah, and understanding what it feels like to be a vendor of a wedding. 

[00:21:00] Adam: Yeah. I mean, if you're listening to this and you have a curiosity about something, yeah, explore it from all angles that you can, and pretty soon you'll be a superstar in whatever you're doing.

[00:21:10] Dominique: I feel like that's always a cool story about like, people who've created impact in an area is usually they worked some like odd jobs 

[00:21:16] Dana: Yeah. 

[00:21:17] Dominique: On the outskirts of that industry and that's how they know it so well. It's just like getting their hands dirty and doing it, which is easier and different depending on what you're doing. But I like the way that you did it with your industry. I think that's really cool.

[00:21:29] Dana: We're really glad you were on today going through all this. If you're listening, we'll dive into part two next week, talking about Thyme & Details and really the work that you're doing there to educate and implement more sustainable solutions.

[00:21:42] Adam: With that said, how can people connect with you or be an advocate for what you're doing?

[00:21:46] Dana: I do my best to stay active on Instagram. I feel like that is such a key. It's thymeanddetails. So T-H-Y-M-E, like the herb or the plant. I'd say that's the best or my website which is www.thymeanddetails.com.

[00:21:59] Dominique: Amazing. Thanks for being here. You're fantastic. Thank you.

[00:22:02] Adam: Next time we'll dive into the success that Dana has managed to have in Thyme & Details and we're so glad that you're carving out new territory for sustainability in the event space. 

[00:22:12] Dominique: As always, our guests have found a unique way to champion sustainability. We are here to put real names and stories behind the idea that no matter what your background is, your career or your interests, you really can contribute in the fight against climate change.

[00:22:25] Adam: If you know a green champion, that should be our next guest, email us at thegreenchampions@gmail.com. You can find our show notes on thegreenchampions.com. Our music is by Zayn Dweik. Thanks for listening to Green Champions, and we'll dig into another sustainability success story in our next episode. 

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