Monday, October 18, 2021
What It's Like to Plan Weddings for Celebrities, Billionaires
www.businessinsider.com: I was working in four- or five-star restaurants for years before I started my own wedding-planning company. My husband, Bryan Keck, said it sounded like a terrible idea, but I did it anyway.
I started by placing an ad on Craigslist and immediately booked a wedding at a huge estate with 100 people. I still don't know how it happened.
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7 comments:
This is an interesting business article. I love hearing stories of self made women building their own businesses and succeeding. I have heard of designation weddings but I didn’t know there were wedding planners that were specified in that. I thought it was more location based but that alternative makes sense. It’s a great insight but it doesn’t sound that glamorous. Maybe it is a tough reality but it seems that this article is glorifying an unsustainable lifestyle. I wonder if Alison still attends all of the weddings that she plans or how she manages the people that work for her now? The concept is really cool and niche but it seems like she is bragging about how much she works and I think that is a toxic trait of white supremacist culture. She also hit on 9-5 jobs, which honestly I kinda wish I had at this is point. I’m glad that she has work but this interview rubbed me the wrong way.
I have discovered since leaving high school that my passion for management is not limited to theater as I had previously expected. I believe I would be equally happy working as a manager in any industry as long as the work is project based and fast paced. The wedding industry has interested me for this reason for the past year or so. I fear freelance work and being self-employed though and will likely never get into it for that reason. I also did not really anticipate how the days are in some ways even longer than in theater, but I wonder if the fact that this person’s business focuses on extremely high budget destination weddings is the contributing factor for that. Of course, wedding day would always be extremely long, but if you are working locally, you won’t have people emailing you from two time zones over all that often.
This sounds like a hell of a job, like jumping between tech weeks for different shows every single day of your job. Grueling, but extremely rewarding. There is also an element of this that draws me as a theater maker which is the basically unlimited budget. The thought of being free to spend however much I’d like is thrilling, and it makes this job seem like paradise despite the time commitment. I was shocked by the details of how they live their life with free flights and free lodging because every hotel wants them to see their property and I can’t help but fantasize about jumping about between five star hotels and the highest rated air bnb’s as a job, but I don’t this this life would be right for me or any theater maker. The freedom of cost I spoke about before is not really freedom at all because you must plan the event to the client’s specifications without very much creative control.
While Alison Laesser-Keck’s job sounds stressful and hectic at times, it also sounds really luxurious and exciting. It seems like she got pretty lucky with her first gig, the fact that she just posted on Craigslist and booked a 300-person wedding as well as had a husband that could do promotion for her at his job was definitely helpful. If I were in her position, I would have a hard time making decisions after being given such a high budget or even no budget. The photo included in the article of the wedding in Utah looks beautiful, there is a lot of amazing nature there and if I was a rich person I would definitely consider getting married there. I do wonder why it’s so important that there’s no butter on the tables in photos, is it just unattractive? Or does it melt too fast and look sloppy on camera?
36. I think I would love this job. As a child I was really drawn to David Tutera’s wedding planning reality show. When I got older and became interested in stage management. I thought seriously about event coordination and management. My sophomore year of high school, I had the opportunity to stage manage a gala style fundraiser. I worked primarily on the live performance aspect and with talent wrangling. The event had some well-known alum of my school. It was really great to get this hands-on experience and see into event coordination. Although, I am more interested in working in design now, I could still see myself being interested in management and event coordination. The adrenaline and rush the article describes is something, I personally find so thrilling. I impressed by Alison Laesser-Keck’s drive and ambition in her business, especially in her ability to travel and see the world with her husband, while working.
While reading this article I drew a lot of parallels between the job of a wedding planner and the responsibilities of a production manager. The author mentions that her tasks include budgeting and managing different teams of people which I think general fits part of the job description of a production manager. I also noticed this sense of pride the author has in making sure that she is valuing what her clients have put in to make sure they have the wedding they want which I can relate to because as a stage manager, your position is to maintain the authenticity of the show (in this case the director is the person paying for the wedding and the stage manager is the wedding planner). This again applies to the theatre industry because the author mentions in the beginning that she was getting gigs by word of mouth and especially in the technical theatre field, it is very much about the connections you have and the impressions you make on one job that will lead you to the next one.
This article speaks to the amount of planning and work that goes into making a huge event happen. As Laesser-Keck describes, it's not only 9-hour days immediately prior to the start of the event, it's constantly being on the lookout for new opportunities and new locations, while coordinating everything for the weddings already in the process of being planned. Her job not only involves budgeting, management, communications and general oversight, but design and aesthetic planning. That's a lot for just two people to do. It was an interesting read overall, but I have to say it kind of got on my nerves. A lot of the article was just Laesser-Keck bragging about how much she works, how often she flies around the world, and how blessed she feels to be planning luxury events for billionaires. Her events do look fantastic, but not everyone can afford a "no budget" destination wedding.
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