Car­ol Quash

JG Sig­na­ture Wed­dings has tak­en its own­er, wed­ding and events plan­ner Jen­nifer Gob­erd­han around the world—New York, Paris, Rus­sia, Las Ve­gas, Lon­don, Kuala Lumpur, to name a few—some­times to learn, oth­er times to show­case her skills.

The busi­ness of­fers a range of ser­vices, in­clud­ing wed­ding plan­ning and co­or­di­na­tion, de­sign and pro­duc­tion, and bridal bou­quets, main­ly for des­ti­na­tion wed­dings.

“Eighty per­cent of my busi­ness comes from abroad…We han­dle every­thing. There’s a seam­less tran­si­tion from plan­ning to pro­duc­tion be­cause one un­der­pins the oth­er in all in­stances,” Gob­erd­han told Busi­ness Guardian.

She said her work speaks for it­self, as she has done a num­ber of style shoots with de­sign­ers from all over the world, for mag­a­zine pub­li­ca­tions, and her cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is glob­al­ly recog­nised. She is es­pe­cial­ly proud of her ex­pe­ri­ence study­ing wed­ding de­sign flo­rals and con­struc­tion in­stal­la­tion with New York-based event de­sign­er Pre­ston Bai­ley.

“And I re­cent­ly won an award for Events De­sign­er of the Year 2026, at the Des­ti­na­tion Wed­dings and Hon­ey­moons Abroad Awards in Dorch­ester, Lon­don. So many years ago they picked up on my work here in Trinidad, es­pe­cial­ly at the Hy­att and those sea­side cer­e­monies that I planned and de­signed.”

She has a spe­cial love for work­ing with flow­ers, hav­ing stud­ied flo­ral de­sign at the Covent Gar­den Acad­e­my of Flow­ers in Lon­don.

“Flow­ers have the abil­i­ty to make peo­ple hap­py. Even if it’s a fu­ner­al, you could get some joy out of them.”

Gob­erd­han start­ed the St Au­gus­tine-based busi­ness ap­prox­i­mate­ly two decades ago on the strength of cred­it union loans, which were prompt­ly re­paid.

“I had a re­la­tion­ship with the cred­it union, plus the in­ter­est rates were bet­ter than the bank’s. So I paid it off quick­ly, and when­ev­er I did a wed­ding and I made the mon­ey from that. I rein­vest­ed it be­cause I had an­oth­er job. I was a teacher at St Fran­cois Girls’ Col­lege.”

One of the rules she lives by, is to nev­er spend a client’s mon­ey be­fore the job is done.

“I may use some to buy ma­te­ri­als, but I al­ways re­mind my­self that if some­thing hap­pens, I have to give these peo­ple their mon­ey back. Dur­ing COVID I had three wed­dings booked. And of course the wed­dings couldn’t go on. I gave back my clients every sin­gle cent.”

Gob­erd­han de­scribes her­self as a good mon­ey man­ag­er, who doesn’t live be­yond her means and doesn’t have ex­trav­a­gant tastes.

“But I like ex­trav­a­gant ex­pe­ri­ences, which means that I have to spend a cer­tain amount of mon­ey. But I pay my­self a salary from the busi­ness, and that is what some peo­ple in this type of busi­ness don’t do. They feel when they make the mon­ey they could just use from it. No! You have to pay your staff, you have to pay for things like trans­porta­tion, and you have to pay your­self a salary, be­cause you are work­ing for the busi­ness; you are not the busi­ness. The busi­ness has to sup­port it­self and go on.”

JG Sig­na­ture, she said, doesn’t rent to and from any­one. Every­thing she and her staff need to cre­ate any type of wed­ding ex­pe­ri­ence is stored at their Curepe ware­house.

“I have a lit­tle con­nec­tion to the things be­cause I sourced them my­self; bought, wrapped and shipped. My things are ex­clu­sive—flo­rals, linens, nap­kins, all kinds of charg­er plates, can­dles, can­de­labras, chan­de­liers of all dif­fer­ent types and de­scrip­tions, cen­tre­pieces, back­drops; we have every sin­gle colour un­der the sun, all cat­e­gorised. Our ware­house is very or­gan­ised, be­cause you have to be or­gan­ised in a busi­ness, es­pe­cial­ly like this one.”

Food, mu­sic and hard­scape things such as tents, chairs, ta­bles and floor­ing, she ex­plained, are pro­vid­ed by oth­er ven­dors who bill the client sep­a­rate­ly.

“When I am plan­ning a wed­ding, I con­tact all the sup­pli­ers to get a quo­ta­tion. I send a quo­ta­tion to the client, and the client pays the sup­pli­er. We have our sup­pli­ers who have been tried and test­ed and vet­ted. I have found that that was al­ways the best way for trans­paren­cy. I don’t do my wed­ding plan­ning on per­cent­age. I know how much work it en­tails to plan a wed­ding so I give you a flat fee for that.”

She re­called a wed­ding she had done about 15 years ago which paved the way for the de­vel­op­ment of the ser­vices she of­fers to­day.

“It was with clients from Lon­don who had con­tract­ed me to do just the dé­cor. But they had no wed­ding plan­ner. When I checked af­ter I was fin­ished with that wed­ding, I had 126 emails be­tween my­self and this cou­ple, and I re­alised what I did for them was plan the en­tire wed­ding for no charge.”

She vowed to nev­er do that again and got cer­ti­fied in wed­ding plan­ning.

“Mov­ing for­ward my ser­vices evolved in­to wed­ding plan­ning, de­sign and pro­duc­tion…Now, if I’m not plan­ning your wed­ding, I’m not de­sign­ing it,” un­less it is be­ing planned by the bride and groom.

Gob­erd­han said the tran­si­tion was easy be­cause from a very ear­ly age, she be­came very skilled at many things and didn’t move on un­til she mas­tered them all.

“Be­fore I got mar­ried I did every sin­gle course I could do in Trinidad. Every­thing there was to do, I did it. I did paint­ing with wa­ter­colours, I did el­e­ments of de­sign, I’d find my­self up by Sylvia Hunt School of Home Eco­nom­ics, I had a drap­ery busi­ness at one time be­cause I just loved cre­ativ­i­ty and en­tre­pre­neur­ship. And my jour­ney of ed­u­ca­tion has nev­er stopped.”

She has even done a pro­gramme on how to make the busi­ness sus­tain­able, by go­ing pa­per­less and do­ing the flo­rals with­out us­ing the oa­sis, which is very bad for the en­vi­ron­ment.

“We’ve been re­cy­cling here for over ten years.”

The moth­er of two said she has had some amaz­ing ex­pe­ri­ences in her busi­ness life, and it has af­ford­ed her the op­por­tu­ni­ty to meet so many peo­ple at very dif­fer­ent lev­els of the wed­ding in­dus­try.

“It has been a ride, it has been ex­cit­ing. And I nev­er go any­where with­out my hus­band (Dave),” she said with a laugh.

“He has al­ways been so sup­port­ive. I love him to death.”

She be­lieves she has been suc­cess­ful in busi­ness be­cause she has tak­en the time to un­der­stand the in­dus­try, and cares about what she’s do­ing and the peo­ple in­volved.

“Be­cause if you don’t care about what you’re do­ing, the peo­ple you’re work­ing with, if you don’t care about the end prod­uct and if you’re on­ly think­ing about the mon­ey, you’re not go­ing to go any­where.”