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A massive inflatable model of Kylie Jenner’s daughter, Stormi Webster, for guests to walk through at her birthday party. A heart made of thousands of red roses on a secluded beach for Travis Barker’s proposal to Kourtney Kardashian. An aisle lined with white couches for guests at Golden Bachelor Gerry Turner’s wedding. Unless you live under a rock, you’ve seen Mindy Weiss’s work on your Instagram feed or your TV screen.
Aside from the Kardashians, with whom she collaborates often, the Hollywood wedding and event planner’s long list of clients includes Paris Hilton, Serena Williams, Diana Ross, Nicole Richie, and the Biebers. Thirty years ago, Weiss didn’t think she’d be rubbing elbows with the rich and famous. “I always dreamt that I would be the wife and mother with the apron, cooking scrambled eggs, like Lucy,” she says. “And then I felt very bored.” A gig in a stationery store led to a burgeoning party-planning business, and planning Brooke Shields’s wedding to Andre Agassi led to working with an impressive roster of A-listers.
Weiss knows people hire her for her extravagant, floral-forward style — “It’s about 40 percent me and 60 percent the client, and I’ll sneak things in of me that I think they’ll love” — but she and her team of 12 dedicate a lot of time to ensuring her clients see their own vision for an event come to life. “They’re spending an enormous amount of money and they’re trusting you to produce everything they’ve dreamt of,” she says. “You have to listen to your clients because you’re responsible for their memories.” Without spilling too many details (doing business in Hollywood requires discretion, after all), here’s how Weiss, who lives in Los Angeles with her husband, gets it done.
On her journey to becoming an event planner:
I would hang out at a stationery store because I love stationery and any sort of personalized anything. I got a job there and I met my best friend. After a couple of years, I got pregnant, and I decided to do stationery out of my house. I would do everybody’s invitations, and that’s where the creativity started. Then one of my clients said, “Will you just do my party?” I didn’t want to be an event planner, because every event planner I knew was crazy, tired, and complaining. But I loved this client, so I said yes. I was brought up in a family where my mother had the best, most creative parties that my sisters and I would watch from the staircase. I knew what to do. It was in my blood. From that one party at a country club, I got ten more parties. And then my first celeb was Brooke Shields’s wedding. Once you do one celebrity wedding or event, and you’re trusted and it went well, then more come because they knew it worked.
On her favorite events to plan:
It used to be weddings. But now what I enjoy, maybe because I have grandchildren, are kids’ parties and bridal showers. They’re short, they’re creative, and then I get Saturday night off.
On the hardest events to plan:
The most challenging events for me are destination weddings. When you’re local, I can call my vendors: We need one more couch. Can you run it over? But when you’re in Europe and you need one more couch, it’s difficult to get it there. You have to be precise. It’s not only planning the wedding. A destination wedding is also planning travel, getting to know the guests, making them comfortable, and making sure they know what’s happening next. Part of the success is the guest experience.
On learning to say no to clients:
I always have a second person in a meeting with me in case the client is throwing out ideas that are ridiculous. I’ve been doing this for 33 years now, and I am better about saying no. The stress of saying yes when you really want to say no, because you know it’s probably impossible, is worse than disappointing the client.
And the weirdest request she’s ever gotten:
Little people wrestling during cocktails. At first, I didn’t think it was real. But it was a comedian asking, so it was real. It was very inappropriate. I just looked at him and said, “No. You want them to talk about the bride and groom, not about little people wrestling during cocktails, right?” It was a breakthrough for me.
On how she deals with demanding clients:
When I was young, I was so much younger than the parents planning events. They used to say, “You’re 24, how am I going to make you responsible for this whole wedding?” As I get older, I’m on the same playing field as whoever is planning the event. I don’t tolerate being spoken to in a disrespectful way, for me or my staff. There are no excuses; I will give back their money. I am their employee for a limited amount of time. I’m not their friend, even though I know almost everybody in this city right now. I don’t tolerate it, and I don’t need to; most of my clients are legacy clients. I’d rather not have people crying in my office.
On learning her value:
The kids today have no problem asking for what they’re worth. But I find with my generation, it’s a little more difficult and it took me a while, but now I’m there. I used to charge a flat fee. Most people felt comfortable with that because they knew exactly what they were getting into. But the more you plan, you do not account for this and that. You didn’t know at the time that they decided to party ’til four in the morning, so you have overtime, more staff, all that stuff. I have a group of event-planner friends, and they all charge a percentage of the total cost. I was uncomfortable with that. One of them said, “Try it one time,” and I did it and it was wonderful. It made me feel valued. It made me feel like, Okay, I’ve worked hard on this project, and I deserve this. From that moment on, I charged a percentage.
On a typical day at work:
My day starts at 5:30 a.m. I have to do my Wordle and Connections, and then coffee and I check all my emails. My team is 12 people, and we all get to our office at nine. We have a round dining table and we catch up, especially after a long weekend, and go over lists of what we need to do. We meet for 45 minutes, do a coffee run, and then everybody parts and goes to their office and starts working. If we have an event that weekend, that’s our priority.
On self-care:
I get a manicure and pedicure every other week. I do Pilates three times a week at 7 a.m. I’m a morning person. I can’t do anything at night. I become comatose.
On unwinding after work:
All my kids are grown now, so I come home and I go right upstairs and put on my pajamas immediately. The minute I get home, I get into bed. I have the most wonderful husband who brings me dinner in bed. There’s a table upstairs and he eats with me there. All my kids call it “the position.” I work from there; it’s very bad, you should not do this. I taught my grandkids to lie in bed with me — after we go to Target, of course — and we watch movies. I will admit I am a rom-com freak and love the Hallmark Channel. I’m also a shopaholic. I don’t drink, do drugs, or smoke because I feel like I’m around it every weekend, but I love beautiful designer clothing.
On her expectations for work and motherhood:
I always wanted the kids to say, “We had the best mother. We had homemade dinner at the table every night.” But I had to be in so many places for work that I missed everything if it wasn’t in the morning. It turned out that I was able to give them a different life. I still think I was a great mom, and I’ve come to terms with that, because now they’re much older and they all tell great stories about me. Not the stories I wanted them to tell, but still great stories. It was funny because during COVID, they all moved in and I would cook. They would look at me like, “How do you know how to do that?” I could do it, I just never had the time to do it.
On the moment she knew she’d made it:
My middle son was a professional baseball player for a short time, so we would go to all these random little towns. There was this tiny town in Florida where we were having an Italian dinner. This waitress came up to us and was taking our order, and she looked at me and she started crying and ran away. I said to my kids, “That is so weird. What do you think happened?” She brought her mother out. And she said, “Oh my God, my daughter’s such a fan. She loves your weddings.” Then it hit me and my kids started laughing. People come up to me in the airport and it’s so weird.
On her advice for throwing a great party:
Consider the guests that you’ve invited. Consider the music you’re gonna play. Are they all 30-year-olds? Because most 30-year-olds right now are going back to country music and ’80s music. Consider the food. If you check off everybody’s needs, that is going to elevate their experience and in turn leave people saying, “This is the best party I’ve been to.”
On the people who help her get it done:
I have a personal assistant and they handle making appointments because I overbook. I’ve had the same helper — I don’t like to call her a housekeeper, I call her Mama — but she’s been with us for 33 years. She has helped me raise my children. And Robert, my second husband, he was Mr. Mom. I feel it would be really hard to have two parents who work the way I work, so if I wasn’t at my son’s baseball games, I would make him take a cutout of me for the stands.
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Brooke LaMantia , 2024-04-22 13:00:55
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