Whew! Back from a whirlwind 3 days in NYC earlier this week and digging out from being gone from the office! Was a great trip and jam packed with wonderful and productive industry meetings!
Here are some of the highlights:
The Wedding Salon event was really well done - Tatiana Byron and her team continue to outdo themselves with this event with well over 1,000 high-end brides and planners in attendance. Media covered it in a big way - from all the local NY affiliates to the New York Times, Access Hollywood and more!
While there we connected with so many industry friends! Great to see David Tutera, Sylvia Weinstock, wedding PR guru Eda Kalkay [a new friend!], senior editors of TheKnot Rebecca Crumley and Christa Vagnozzi, Holli and Robert Ehrlich of Wedding Podcast Network, Zev Greenfield of Milk & Honey Productions and meet our 'booth buddies' next door to Cayman - floral designers Aisling Studios who just wrapped the wedding scene for the "Sex and the City" movie!!
We then enjoyed a FAB dinner at the uber-hot Waverly Inn with Marcy Blum...too bad that the paparazzi did not want to snap our photos when we got out of the cab! We offered though! Evidently JLo and Marc were spotted there days before we were and it is nightly parade of the 'who's who' - leave it to Marcy to get us in and regale us with stories and introductions all around! Loved it!
The next day we had another amazing lunch with Sean Low, president of Preston Bailey Designs at Tabla and talked all about engage!08 as well getting updated on all of Preston's latest adventures around the globe!! From Casablanca to Jakarta - and to Dubai in between! So excited for PB to share stories with us in June!
Grabbed coffee [and cookies] with Jay Klanfer of Elite Wedding Collection and heard all about his latest ventures. Always great to see him!!
Then some meetings with our friends at Chowder Inc. - the totally cool ad agency of record for Cayman - always a treat!!
We then headed over to Kleinfeld to meet up with dear, dear friend Randy Fenoli, their fashion director. The tv crew was wrapping up from a day of shooting the second season of "Say Yes to the Dress" which has been a huge hit and helped to keep the brides lining up outside the doors of Kleinfeld to search for their perfect gown!! While many in the bridal retail industry have reported tougher times of late - Kleinfeld continues to go from strength to strength! We enjoyed catching up with owners Mara Urshel and Ronnie Rothstein - they are just delightful! A lovely dinner followed in Chelsea with Randy as he shared his take on the latest bridal collections viewed the week before and then we collapsed for the night!!
Wednesday brought my first visit to the charming and brilliant Wedding Library by Claudia Hanlin and Jennifer Zabinski -- Kath has been raving about it to me for years!!! Claudia got in touch with me while we were up there and we all quickly synced our schedules to sit down face to face to learn more about each other. As you can imagine - the time flew by and we had much to chat about!! Love, love, love their concept - and am really excited for all of the plans they have for the future - time very well spent!!
So that is it in a nutshell...our very enjoyable, jam-packed few days in NYC. Always a pleasure to connect with old friends and new. Great to see everyone - looking forward to continued successes and potential partnerships in the future!!!
Signed - a totally exhausted but still exhilarated,
Rebecca
p.s. Couture Map of New York by my FAVORITE calligrapher Stephanie Barba. www.couturemaps.com
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