Becoming an Event Planner

Armand Limnander

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781982140427
• eBook ISBN: 9781982140434
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Personal Success

A revealing guide to a career as an event planner written by W Magazine executive editor Armand Limnander and based on the real-life experiences of powerhouse event planner Bronson van Wyck—necessary reading for anyone considering a path to this profession. Becoming an Event Planner takes you behind the scenes to find out what it's really like, and what it really takes, to become an event planner. Behind every great event is a visionary planner, and Bronson van Wyck, founder of the award-winning event firm Van Wyck & Van Wyck, treats his events as works of art. He has masterminded celebrations for Dior, Condé Nast, Rolex, Gwyneth Paltrow, Beyoncé, and the Obamas. W Magazine executive editor Armand Limnander shadows van Wyck as he and his team produce a marquee event: a gala for the New York arts organization Creative Time. Using design, food, and entertaining, van Wyck transports his guests to carefully conceived, often fantastical temporary spaces. He reveals how the best event planners are aesthetic gurus, skilled social connectors, talented collaboration artists, and, most important of all, makers of memories. Discover van Wyck's path to prominence as you gain wisdom and insight from an event planner operating at the highest level.

CHAPTER ONE

Extravagant though it may seem, the Creative Time benefit was only one of hundreds of such bashes that van Wyck (rhymes with “bike”) has produced as a matter of course—and it was by no means a particularly demanding or complicated one. In New York, where he is based, there is never a shortage of parties. His twin companies—Van Wyck & Van Wyck, which specializes in personal events, and Workshop, which focuses on corporate clients—are undisputed leaders in the event planning field. Van Wyck is known for his no-holds-barred approach to entertaining, at home and abroad, and over the past twenty years he has developed a client list that includes brands like Mercedes-Benz, Estée Lauder, Cartier, Chanel, ABC Television Network, Deutsche Bank, Samsung, Amazon, J.Crew, Condé Nast, Goop, Dom Pérignon, and Ritz-Carlton Hotels, to name but a few. On the private side there are Presidents Obama, Bush, and Clinton; Alicia Keys and Swizz Beatz; Gwyneth Paltrow; Katy Perry; Beyoncé Knowles; Rupert Murdoch; Madonna; George Lucas; Calvin Klein; and the queen of Jordan. Keep in mind that there are many others who prefer to remain anonymous, and even more who are not bold-faced names.

Van Wyck amassed this roster over the past twenty years as the event planning business grew exponentially. David Adler, the chairman and founder of BizBash, a leading trade publication in the field, estimates that in the United States today, there are between 4,000 and 6,000 professional event planners—this does not include, of course, all the assistants at companies big and small that wind up organizing office Christmas parties or morale-building retreats. Events bring in about $6 billion a year just in New York City, where there are some 2,400 party venues. Adler describes the industry as a pyramid, with its base made up of concerts, festivals, and sporting events. Above that comes business entertaining—for example, when executives take out a group of associates to a fancy restaurant on an expense account in order to close a deal. Next up are corporate sales meetings, product launches, and conferences. Finally, at the apex, is experiential event design, which is what van Wyck and a select few others do.

Top event planners operate as lifestyle consultants as much as anything else. They have perfected the art of socializing and allow people to feel their best in order to spark connections. Using design, food, and entertaining, they transport guests to carefully conceived, often fantastical temporary spaces in which everyone can drop their inhibitions and comfortably interact on a level playing field. For this, van Wyck and his peers can command impressive budgets: it’s not uncommon for them to produce events with price tags ranging from $1,000 to $10,000 a head.

If you think van Wyck’s job is all about party hopping with fabulous people, though, you’re in for a rough surprise. His life sounds glamorous, but the reality of putting together a spectacular soirée is anything but. Though the big ideas are fun and creative and personality-driven, making them a reality requires a daily—if not hourly—grind. Event planning is a service-driven profession in which self-abnegation, adaptability, and flexibility are essential survival traits. When a client requests changes at the very last second, an event planner can’t afford to be flustered, disappointed, or frustrated. He simply has to make them.

Van Wyck founded the company in 1999 with his mother, Mary Lynn, who still works with him and shuttles back and forth between New York and her home in Arkansas. His sister, Mimi, joined a couple of years later and currently oversees a Van Wyck & Van Wyck outpost in Charleston. Between his Manhattan headquarters, Mimi’s office in South Carolina, and a 33,000-square-foot warehouse he keeps in New Jersey, van Wyck employs a full-time staff of about fifty, roughly divided into three teams. Project managers and coordinators are responsible for client interface and guest relations; designers oversee interior architecture, sets, and lighting; producers take care of carpentry, soft furnishings, scenic paintings, flowers, permits, and plans. On the Workshop side, there is also a digital content group, as well as talent bookers for event performances.

Several weeks before the Creative Time Gala, van Wyck invited me to sit in on a call with “the client.” He has worked with several other not-for-profit organizations in the past, but this was his first experience with Creative Time. A board member with whom van Wyck had collaborated on private events had asked him to take on the gig. Van Wyck’s personal aesthetic was on display as soon as I arrived to his headquarters in Manhattan’s Flatiron neighborhood: instead of the usual hard angles and straight lines that are par for the course in corporate waiting rooms, his was furnished with a homey sofa, a coffee table with books about decor, potted plants, and a couple of large paintings that would not have looked out of place on the sales floor at Christie’s. His own office, surrounded by big windows and anchored by comfortable seating areas, resembled a chic prewar studio apartment, save for the glass wall that exposed it to the rest of the floor.

“Typically our production time line is longer,” van Wyck said, noticing that the gala was little more than a month away. Everyone was mindful of staying on track: this was a pro bono project, and nonprofits rely heavily on events for their yearly fundraising. “We are trying to help them make money, working as volunteers and essentially only covering our costs. So we have to focus on broad brushstrokes that have a big effect and can be achieved with a reasonable budget. The upside is that because of that, we don’t have a long approval process, which saves time. They know we are going to do a good job.”

Still, there were some kinks to iron out. A few key members of van Wyck’s team walked in and sat around a rough-hewn table positioned in front of a bookcase teeming with art, history, and design books. There is no one path to becoming an event planner—while specializations in hospitality, production, or design can be helpful, no degree or special license is required—so it was interesting to see how everyone came from dramatically different backgrounds. Austin Ibasfalean, one of van Wyck’s senior deputies who was overseeing the project, had worked at Ralph Lauren for almost eight years and then for the luxury titan LVMH in store design and visual merchandising. Anna Lund, van Wyck’s director of partnerships, public relations, and special projects, had studied English literature—her graduation thesis, about the differences in English and American manners as seen through the works of Jane Austen and Edith Wharton, may have foreshadowed some of her future interests. Em Pak, who was in charge of props and construction, had gone to school for industrial design and specialized in large-scale installations.

Ibasfalean distributed detailed floor plans of the raw space they needed to transform. Architectural drawings, he explained, are critical to every project—the team uses them to brainstorm ideas and track ongoing changes in the design process. Everyone in the company takes computer-aided-design (CAD) classes so they can understand and update these plans and address everything from lighting choices to whether there is enough room for waiters to pass in between tables. “The difficulty in this case is that the space is an enormous old trading room with rubber floors and a forty-foot-tall acoustic tile ceiling with no rigging points,” Ibasfalean said. “That means there is no way to lower the ceiling or hang lights from it. When you have a room that is so enormous, where you are trying to create an intimate atmosphere, it becomes very challenging.”

Usually Van Wyck weighs in on the venues, but in this case Creative Time had selected 300 Vesey in advance. The vastness of the space did, however, afford some opportunities. “The plus side is we have the ability to create a progression as guests arrive and make their way to cocktails and dinner,” Pak said. “We can really delineate different areas, each with its own aesthetic feel.” Van Wyck got a quick rundown from Ibasfalean of where the project stood, suggested a few adjustments, and then called Justine Ludwig, Creative Time’s director, on speakerphone to take her through the proposed design. She, too, had the floor plans in hand.

“Basically, what we are doing is taking Jenny Holzer as the starting point and bringing as much of her energy and vision to life without being reductive or overly referential,” van Wyck said after pleasantries had been exchanged. “We are managing the very specific qualities of this space to make it function and to support important visual elements. At the same time, we have to lay out areas that feel gracious and comfortable. People should feel the grandness of the space but also have pockets of intimacy and warmth, which it obviously lacks in its raw form.” He paused for emphasis, then drilled down into specifics.

“The first thing we are doing is a palate cleanser, which is to say immediately transport guests somewhere special after their quite dry arrival to that corporate office building. So as soon as they get out of the elevator we will have a tunnel made of heavy black fabric, and we will use gates of lights changing color to create a progression. The idea is it’s a staged visual journey out of your day and into a night of fun.”

That tunnel led to an anteroom where cocktails and light hors-d’oeuvres would be served. Before the call, van Wyck had questioned the positioning of some potted plants that dotted the space. “Once people emerge from the tunnel there will be a center line of bar tables with stools,” he said. “In the floor plans you can see that around the perimeter of the room there are some green trees—we now want to cluster those to create an allée going down the middle, with a pair of bars facing each other.” Van Wyck explained that to solve the dilemma of how to light the space, dinner would be served in an adjacent room, under a canopy of trees lit from within; the foliage would feel both dramatic and cozy. Dining tables would be different shapes and sizes, some in snakelike configurations, others straight, and would be decorated with masses of candles. (“Candlelight makes everyone look young and beautiful. Your guests will be so grateful!”) Because Holzer’s work is so spare, it was understood that there would be no candelabra or tapered candles, but simple, unobtrusive votives in no-nonsense—and budget-friendly—glass receptacles.

The most complicated question was how to separate the cocktail area and dining room in a way that was practical yet impactful. “The division between cocktails and dinner is a wall of staggered mirrors, some eight feet tall, some twelve, some ten, some on one plane, others on a different plane,” van Wyck said. “They will create endless reflections, playing with people’s perceptions of the party and themselves.” Anticipating concerns about over-served partygoers stumbling into the mirrors and creating a distracting bloodbath, van Wyck was quick to explain that the mirrors were actually made of Mylar, a synthetic material that is much lighter than glass and doesn’t shatter. Still, the faux mirrors would need supports to stay upright, and concealing those was an issue.

“We are going to make a gigantic mound of fallen autumn leaves in different colors, positioned at the base of the mirrors and running the whole length of the room,” van Wyck said. “When it’s time we will pull open parts of the mirror wall and guests will walk through the leaves and into the dinner, leaving behind them a trail of foliage.” After that, while everyone ate, the cocktail area would be restaged with a darker, cooler vibe, and glow-in-the-dark tape would delineate a dance floor for the after-party.

Once the presentation was done, all eyes turned from van Wyck to the speakerphone at the center of the table, as if it had a life of its own. “That sounds great,” Ludwig said after a short pause. Everyone exhaled, and the shoulders in the room dropped an inch or two. “I love the tunnel—the transition out of the corporate building adds interest,” she continued, before subtly hemming and hawing. “In the cocktail area the two big bars are great, but I don’t quite understand the trees along the high-top tables. And I’m having a hard time visualizing the mounds of leaves, because Jenny’s work is so clean and sleek.”

Van Wyck elaborated on his train of thought. “We thought the leaves would be a great way to solve a functional problem, and at the same time they connect to the illuminated trees. Jenny sometimes presents her work outside, so there is a part of what she does that relates to nature. We are trying to put forward elements that are in line with her aesthetic but that also soften the venue. If this event were taking place in, say, an old Italian palazzo with decaying plaster, then we wouldn’t need to worry about that.” Pak pointed out that the leaves would make the room feel more ephemeral, referencing the passing of time. But, understandably for someone who doesn’t deal with decorative deciduous foliage on a regular basis, Ludwig struggled with the concept. “I get that both Jenny’s work and the space are quite stark, so we do need elements to warm things up,” she said. “But I just can’t visualize it.” Van Wyck offered to email her some images that would give her a better idea of what he had in mind but also assured her that he would brainstorm other possibilities.

The rest of the discussion was perfunctory: table sizes and shapes, types of seating, number of guests per table. All seemed settled until Ludwig said that one of the bars was too big; she wasn’t sure the budget would allow for that many bartenders. It didn’t seem like much, but I sensed that van Wyck had flagged the comment. As good-byes were exchanged, he recommended, in a seemingly lighthearted way, that Ludwig not skimp on the bar staff. “I just have to say, if anyone has to wait in line for a drink, it will ruin all of the wonderful things we are doing,” he said. There were chuckles all around, but it was clear he was only half joking.

A couple of weeks later, Lund and I drove to van Wyck’s warehouse in New Jersey, about forty minutes outside of Manhattan. Most event planners rent their supplies; it’s uncommon for them to stockpile or fabricate their own, so I was curious to see how that side of the operation worked. After crossing the Hudson River and skirting by the Newark airport, we turned onto a dreary industrial road and eventually pulled into a parking area large enough for trucks. The warehouse looked like, well, a warehouse, surrounded by other identical warehouses.

The inside, though, was a different story. It brought to mind Willy Wonka’s factory, minus the chocolate river and candy mushrooms. Not that this was any less surreal: for starters, there were pterodactyls hanging out by the rafters above the entrance. “I have no idea what they were used for,” Lund said, as she unsuccessfully attempted to suppress a giggle. She also couldn’t quite figure out where she had last seen the Chinese gong resting against a wall, the taxidermy antelope that seemed to keep guard of a hallway, or the life-size gorilla made out of silver and gold pine needles.

She explained that the birdcages, butterflies, chandeliers, Mardi Gras beads, faux tortoiseshells, straw hats, corals, chinoiserie lanterns, baskets, seashells, rock crystals, life preservers, mirrors, and other knickknacks were in constant rotation, depending on special requests. (Nautical beach party! Circus-themed birthday! Destination wedding!) Lund had a feeling that a structure that I couldn’t quite place but looked oddly familiar was part of an airport luggage carousel. “It might have been something for a party we did for an airline,” she speculated.

What she did definitely recognize was the room that looked like a Greek archeological dig. “All this was for Bronson’s forty-fourth birthday party,” she said. By “all this” Lund meant a throne fit for Zeus, a Trojan horse, a gargantuan foot that might have been amputated from a colossus, and enough columns, plinths, pediments, and cornices to rebuild the Acropolis. In 2018, that and much more had been assembled on Mykonos, where van Wyck had decided that a disused smelting plant on a cliff by the sea was the perfect setting for a Homeric ball. The factory was in such poor shape that before any plans could even be considered, it had to be made structurally safe for human habitation, however temporarily; it also had no access roads, so van Wyck built one, using dynamite and a bulldozer. By the time he was done, the decrepit structure had been transformed into an Olympian setting complete with hand-painted frescoes. Hundreds of guests dressed as their favorite mythological figures were treated to performances by Duran Duran and Flo Rida and danced on island platforms in a flooded, laser-lit cave worthy of Hades until a breakfast of scrambled eggs, bagels, and osetra caviar was served. (Van Wyck was Dionysus, of course, in a grape-laden crown and turquoise toga with more grapes tumbling down the front.)

The warehouse, however, was no mere prop storage unit. Everywhere you turned there were people deeply engaged in one task or another. At one end of the ground floor, Marjeth Cummings oversaw the floral department, which had the air of a store within a store. It housed hundreds, if not thousands, of vases of all sizes, shapes, and finishes: mirrored, silver, gold, copper, plain, textured, clear, with and ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Introduction
• Chapter One
• Chapter Two
• Chapter Three
• Chapter Four
• Chapter Five
• Chapter Six
• Chapter Seven
• Chapter Eight
• Appendix: Tips and Additional Reading
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Copyright