Event Planners and Designers

18 Shawna Gohel: Maharani Weddings

18 Shawna Gohel: Maharani Weddings

Shawna Gohel is a pretty big deal in the Indian wedding community. Her site, Maharani Weddings, boasts 800,000 visitors every month. Shawna and her team has published over 10,000 articles on Indian weddings, and an astounding 40% of readers return to the website several times a day for inspiration. Her readers have truly become addicted to the content she shares.

It all started when she herself got engaged. This was in 2008, before the time of Pinterest and Instagram. She rounded up as many bridal magazines as she could get her hands on, and realized that there was a serious lack of information about Indian weddings. Shawna started her own blog as a means to organize her own wedding information, and the rest as they say, is history.

Andy and Shawna chat in depth about her favorite parts of the job as founder of the website, and what’s next for Maharani Weddings. She also discusses what it means to be a mother and a driven entrepreneur, the challenges and successes of working with her husband as a business partner, and how she finds the right balance in life to satisfy all of her passions. Looking forward, Shawna and her team at Maharani Weddings are still growing and evolving the site, and there’s no stopping this force to be reckoned with. You can listen to Shawna’s full interview on The Wedding Biz Show now.

17 Rita Bloom: Pioneer of Wedding Planning and Design

17 Rita Bloom: Pioneer of Wedding Planning and Design

To say Rita Bloom is the pioneer of the wedding planning business would be an understatement. Rita’s story of discovering an entire industry need and growing her business is one of amazement and empowerment. From the 1960s when there was no such thing as wedding florists, designers, or planners, is where Rita grew from. As she puts it, the customer invented her business, as more and more people realized they wanted more options and creativity for parties and weddings.

Rita started her career almost by accident in the late 1960s, when she helped create some out-of-the-box decor for a neighbor’s sweet sixteen party. Her originality and tenacity as a decorator and event planner led her to picking up more clientele and work. If Rita ever came across an idea so out of the ordinary that no florist would help her, she would go out and pick those flowers in a field herself and arrange them to create her client’s vision. Her self-starter attitude led to a hugely successful career that is both fascinating and inspiring to women everywhere.

Andy and Rita dive into what life was like for women looking to get into business in the 1960s, how age plays a part in business and life, and some of Rita’s favorite moments of her long and triumphant career as a planner and decorator. You can check out the full interview now.

15 David Stark: Creativity in Design, Creativity in Business

15 David Stark: Creativity in Design, Creativity in Business

“You’re only as good as your last party.” This old adage is something that renowned event producer and designer David Stark holds in high regard. David has produced events for noteworthy celebrities like Glenn Close and Brad Pitt, organizations like Saturday Night live, the Whitney Museum, and the Metropolitan Opera, has 5 books published, and the list goes on in similar fashion.

David’s career in design started in college when he pursued studies in painting. After finishing graduate school in New York with an MFA in painting, he realized he in fact did not want to become a painter. While waiting tables in New York in his twenties, he and his boyfriend began diving into the floral scene, slowly growing from a small job operation to eventually a larger than life business 12 years later. Though David didn’t end up becoming a professional painter, he attributes his success in large part to what he learned in art school; not to paint, but to solve problems creatively, how to put together teams, and invent things. That process is what carries through to today for David, noting that putting together a team is the most creative act you can pull off.

Andy and David also chat about his favorite events he has ever produced, and he explains the mindset he uses when approaching a new event. For David, it’s all about creating relationships with people, pushing boundaries in the designs he creates, and always staying a little nervous, because that means you’re trying something completely original. Listen to the full interview to hear what inspires David, how he pulled off creating event decor out of toilet paper, and how he balances the creative and business aspects of his company.

13 Marc Eliot: Design, Music & Cipriani’s

13 Marc Eliot: Design, Music & Cipriani’s

Marc Eliot is Founder and CCO (Chief Creative Officer) of swoop, a New York-based design studio for upscale luxury celebrations for weddings, social events, and corporate events alike. swoop is also the exclusive in-house event design affiliate for Cipriani.

In this episode, Marc and Andy discuss what music and design have in common, the importance of “Game Day” improvisation, listening to what a design “wants”, how to get where the clients wants to go even if they can’t express how to get there, the freedom of structure, and more.

Marc discovered a passion for music and as a young man. As a teenager he composed music and entertained as a singer, with a focus on performing standards by greats like Nat King Cole, Dean Martin, and Frank Sinatra. This love of music eventually took him from New York to California in search of fame and fortune, and eventually back to NYC when those remained elusive.

Marc’s involvement in the luxury wedding industry is a happy accident—the result of being asked to work for a floral decorator as a young man. Originally a way to help finance his music career, Marc found a new passion—design. He learned that he loved designing events, producing events, and working with people. This new kind of “performance” fueled a lot of the same passions as music for him, and for some time his music career and design career co-existed, as Marc simultaneously honed his design craft while performing music, releasing albums, and producing shows.

In 1991, Marc founded his own Long Island floral company, Simply Elegant, with two partners and ran it for nine years as its Managing Partner & Creative Director. His growing reputation ultimately led to being General Manager and Creative Director of Floralia Decorators, with an exclusive affiliation at The Waldorf Astoria’s in-house floral provider.

When not fully immersed in his role at swoop, Marc is an avid composer, crooner, lyricist and writer, and an active member of the world-famous Friar’s Club.

11 Colin Cowie: Creating Groundbreaking Luxury Experiences

11 Colin Cowie: Creating Groundbreaking Luxury Experiences

Colin Cowie is a top designer for all things weddings—as well as galas, charitable events, corporate and destination celebrations. He’s beloved by the likes of Oprah, Jerry Seinfeld, Elton John, Michael Jordan, Bruce Willis, Jennifer Aniston, and countless other A-list celebrities.

Ever since Colin arrived in Los Angeles from Kitzwe, Zambia at the height of apartheid in 1985, his professional life has soared. While teaching cooking lessons at age 23, he met a woman whose chance encounter soon led to his first wedding assignment for a local bachelor: Hugh Hefner.

Thirty-one years of parties, weddings, and multi-day events later, he’s never created the same event twice.

The degree to which Colin cares for and personalizes his work is not just unmatched, it’s nearly indescribable, and precisely why he’s consistently relied upon by the most discerning of clientele. He learns everything there is to know about his clients, over hors d’oeuvres and champagne, until the event he crafts (and the journey on which he takes his clients to get there) is not just perfectly tailored, but permanently unique. When he isn’t designing weddings and Fortune 500 parties, Oprah Winfrey’s Legends Ball or Guinness Book of World Records-breaking pyrotechnic shows abroad, Colin works as “creator-director” for elite brands like NetJets, Dom Pérignon, and Bergdorf Goodman; even private islands.

Idyllic as Colin’s life may sound, and so often is, he and Andy extend their conversation today beyond the exclusive glamour of the luxury events industry to the unseen challenges once faced in the midst of the great recession, Colin’s daily routines (from meditation and “I am” statements to nightcaps), professional strategies, and the critical value of humility and gratitude.

10 JoAnne Brown: Queen Of Caribbean Destination Weddings

10 JoAnne Brown: Queen Of Caribbean Destination Weddings

When planning a dream-come-true wedding on an island getaway, only one name immediately comes to mind: JoAnne Brown. In this week’s conversation, Andy talks to the go-to planner for weddings in the Cayman Islands and beyond.

Even before she dominated the destination wedding world, JoAnne was fittingly immersed in the tropics. Born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica, with a mother born in the Caymans and a father who launched Appleton Rum in Jamaica, JoAnne adored helping others from the start. She’d decorate everything from birthday parties to her friends’ Christmas trees, as long as she was designing something that would bring joy to a family she’d come to know. Before long, a friend asked JoAnne to decorate and plan her wedding locally; from there, momentum grew by word-of-mouth until she could no tackle the work independently out of her front living room.

5 Bryan Rafanelli: Telling Clients’ Stories Through Event Design

5 Bryan Rafanelli: Telling Clients’ Stories Through Event Design

Bryan Rafanelli’s exquisite sense of style, attention to detail and ability to transform clients’ visions into unforgettable celebrations have made him a go-to planner for the nation’s most exclusive and high-profile events. Andy talks with Bryan about how he became a world-class events designer, and they discuss the business of creativity and the creativity of business.

3 David Beahm: Risk & Synchronicity

3 David Beahm: Risk & Synchronicity

David Beahm, world-class wedding designer and planner, known for his inventive work and trademark lavish flower creations, has designed countless weddings for society, high profile and discerning clients, including Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas, as well as a host of celebrity and Fortune 500 corporate events. In this episode, we learn a lot about David and how got there from here—his early days as a teacher, his deep background in music and musical theater, and the leaps of faith that enabled little and big synchronicities alike.

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