For couples navigating the complex world of wedding planning, finding a partner who combines meticulous detail with genuine support is key. Enter Madison Payne and Hawthorne Creative, a full-service wedding planning and design company that is setting a new standard for luxury and personalization in the St. Louis market.
Photo: Sophie Axie Mae
Inspired by Home, Driven by Love
The name Hawthorne Creative is deeply personal for Madison, reflecting a grounded, heartfelt approach to her work. Named after the street she resides on, Hawthorn Creative is a nod to family and community and the love they bring. After moving to St. Louis, Madison spent four years working in venues and catering, taking time to learn the intricacies of the St. Louis wedding industry before launching her company in 2022. She credits the kind, supportive, and inclusive community of St. Louis wedding vendors with making the leap possible.
The core philosophy of her brand is simple: Celebrating the madly in love, exclusively. Madison is dedicated to working with couples who are deeply in love and focused on having a fantastic wedding, regardless of the guest count.
The Hawthorne Creative Advantage: Meticulous Planning and Personalized Design
Hawthorne Creative stands among the top St. Louis wedding planners with a two-pronged approach: meticulous planning and personality focused design.
Meticulous Planning and Execution
Madison’s planning and management style is intensely detail-focused, aiming to leave “no stone left unturned.” Madison insists that providing a high level of service requires a team, not a “one-woman show.” For this reason, all her services—whether full, partial, or management—are treated as full-service, backed by a team of three or more staff members on the wedding day.
Every couple, whether working with the team for 10 weeks or a year and a half, receives a meticulous run of show listing every detail of their wedding day and weekend events. The team is on-site for up to 12 hours, handling everything from coordinating vendor arrivals and managing transportation to setting up and taking down all client décor. This ensures that the couple is the priority, while the team handles every logistical detail.
Uniquely, Hawthorne Creative includes in-house content creation with all partial and full planning packages. The team gathers all the behind-the-scenes footage and shares these videos with the couples, usually within a week, providing a fun complement to their professional videography.
Personality-Focused Design
The couple’s personality drives Madison’s design style. Madison believes half the fun of design is getting to know the couple personally and pulling inspiration from their lives to ensure the wedding truly screams “them”.
To achieve this, Madison uses a questionnaire for planning and designing clients. It goes beyond simple color preferences, delving into favorite books, music, home décor style, family traditions, and even favorite restaurants. She is also flexible, willing to adapt her planning process to the couple’s preferred communication style, whether that’s text or email, to help alleviate stress and avoid overwhelm.
Photo: Alyssa Reine Photography
St. Louis Trends and Essential Advice
Madison loves the current trend of couples moving away from tradition simply for tradition’s sake. She encourages couples to do what they want, noting one couple who cut a deep-dish Chicago-style pizza instead of a cake. She sees a significant trend in experiential aspects of the wedding. Couples are prioritizing the guests’ experience and fun over décor, recognizing that guests remember how the wedding made them feel. A favorite recent coordinated experience was having espresso martinis passed on the dance floor while the Sabrina Carpenter song “Espresso” played.
Madison’s single most significant piece of advice is to stay grounded by finding little moments leading up to the day, such as having monthly wedding-themed date nights to keep the focus on the relationship and not just the planning stress.
The one item Madison recommends couples splurge on is a wedding planning team. While it may seem like a luxury, she argues it’s a necessity to ensure the couple spends the day “living in the moment” instead of answering a thousand questions or putting out fires. After that, a dance-floor prop moment, like the current tambourine trend, is a fun experiential splurge.
If you are planning your wedding in the area and seeking a meticulous St. Louis wedding coordinator who ensures your day is stress-free and reflective of your unique love story, Hawthorne Creative is ready to help you celebrate.
