Elizabeth Harris, right (shown here with Michelle Hodges, owner of Sprout), specializes in putting together creative events in Fredericksburg. Photo by Phil Houseal
Details:
Contact Elizabeth Harris Event Design at www.eharrisevents.com, info@eharrisevents.com, 512-947-2916.
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Be a guest at your own event
by Phil Houseal
Sept 30, 2009
She has hired attractive “party fillers” for tech conventions in Las Vegas, and booked a superstar to sing at a surprise breakfast in New York. Now Elizabeth Harris is happily planning weddings in Fredericksburg - even while dealing with the occasional “Mom-zilla.”
Harris, who has a double major in Interior Design and Art, has operated her Event Design business in Fredericksburg for the past three years. Before that she put together events in Jackson Hole, Las Vegas, and Austin during the go-go dotcom days, where clients had “ridiculous” budgets and outrageous expectations.
She noted one Vegas party for “tech nerds” where she had to find “fillers.” “You hire girls to come and be beautiful, to mingle with the guys. It ups the energy.” She giggled. “These guys are standing there amazed to have this awesome girl talking to them, not realizing they were hired to be there.”
At a New York event in the 1990s, she brought in Natalie Merchant to sing for an intimate breakfast.
“It was very unexpected and very cool. Her crew had been there all night setting up. We really pulled out the stops.”
Now most of her business is putting together memorable weddings. Her goal is simple: Elizabeth Harris wants you to be a guest at your own wedding.
“A lot of people are too exhausted by time the wedding gets there,” she said. “You can hand it all to me, and you are done.”
Harris does a lot of what she calls “day of” services: delivering gift bags, running rehearsals, making sure all goes smoothly during the wedding. “I stay in the background, but I run the event. So no one has to worry about that.”
Just having her there helps banish the bad behavior of “Bridezillas.”
“I think when people hire a wedding planner, they tend to be better behaved. Bridezillas are more comfortable taking it out on family and friends. When you bring a stranger into the intimate mix when planning a personal event, you diffuse that.”
Harris actually has more problems with the “Mom-zilla.” She tells of a wedding where the parents came to town for extensive pre-event planning. “Mom had a folder at least a foot tall. I had never seen anything like it. The bride and groom came in and she had a tiny notebook. When we ran through the folders, nothing was about ‘her.’ Mom and dad had been doing it all and she was trying to respect that.”
“I said where are the two of you in this wedding? What will make people say they were at your wedding instead of any wedding with the bride and groom inserted? What about this is personal? They had nothing to say.”
Harris did some probing and discovered the couple had maintained a long distance relationship by writing letters. She designed vintage postage stamps as a theme, and left post cards at the tables so guests could write notes the couple would read later.
It is outside perspectives like that make hiring an event planner make sense.
“Someone like me can come in and develop the whole scheme for the weekend. We come up with a look, so there is an intangible feeling to weddings you walk into and go, ‘Wow, this is amazing’ versus when you just put blocks in a row.”
Planners are also cost effective.
“I save you money, time, and a ton of legwork and stress. Clients almost always come back and say it was the best money they spent.”
While tradition still reigns on brides-to-be, Harris is excited about new twists on this timeless ceremony. She is seeing more casual weddings, featuring fun activities, artistic photography, “green” aspects, and unexpected elements such as the family that is having guests make “s’mores” around the fire pit.
“Fredericksburg does things its own way, with different priorities. That’s both good and bad. The etiquette is different - people don’t really RSVP and that takes a lot of getting used to. People do lot more simple weddings here - because they are not expecting the stars and moon.”
But if they were, Harris would probably try to get them.