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I Once Threw a Party a Room Full of Board Members Refused to Leave
That was thirty five years ago, and I have been chasing that feeling ever since.
I founded Diamond Receptions in 2007. Somewhere between that party and this business, I also learned something about money that isn't mine, and it changed how I have run every wedding since.
Here is the rest of it, if you want it.
The Gala Nobody Wanted To Leave
Before any of this, I was the marketing and special events director at a local Chamber of Commerce, and I was handed a problem dressed up as an assignment. The chamber needed an annual meeting for its board of directors, the kind of event where business gets done and everyone claps politely and goes home. I was told to build something bigger than that around it. Make it profitable. Get three quarters of the membership in the room, and understand that in the years before me, people showed up, ate dinner, and left the moment the actual board business started.
So I built a gala around it and gave it a name: Putting on the Ritz. Red carpet, spotlights, the whole room dressed for it, and gaming tables scattered through the reception so there was always somewhere for a conversation to keep going. Almost the entire membership came. Nobody left early, not even for the board meeting itself. We raised more money that night than the chamber had ever raised at a single event.
They still use those gaming tables today. Thirty five years later, at the same annual meeting, for the same board business, because it still works.
That night is where I found out I could do this. Not because I dreamed of parties as a little girl, but because I was handed a real problem with real numbers attached, and something in me knew exactly how to solve it.
And when it was over, I was almost sad. I did not want to wait for the next assignment. I wanted to throw another one immediately, and that restlessness told me more about myself than the gala itself did.
The Job I Almost Never Left
That feeling, the room staying, the number coming in higher than anyone expected, was addictive in the best way. It is the reason I spent years afterward in nonprofit work, because nonprofits live and die by their events, and I had found the thing I was actually good at.
Eventually I became CEO of a nonprofit built by a coalition of local churches, for a very specific reason. Their congregations were being asked, over and over, for help with rent, electric bills, groceries, emergencies of every kind, and it had become more than any one church could manage or verify on its own. So they built an organization to do it properly. My job was to raise the money, speak for the cause, and make absolutely certain that every dollar those churches trusted us with reached the person it was meant for.
That is not a background most wedding planners have. But it is exactly the training that shaped how I have run Diamond Receptions from day one. I spent years being the person accountable for money that was not mine, watched closely by people who had every right to ask where it went. I would not know how to operate any other way now if I tried.
Why 2007
I remember thinking, more than once, that if I could work this hard raising money for someone else's mission, I could work at least as hard building something of my own. That thought sat with me for years before I finally acted on it.
Diamond Receptions started in October of 2007. Same skills, same instincts, pointed at something that was finally mine.
The Year I Almost Did It Like Everyone Else
Early on, someone in this industry told me plainly that if I wanted to make real money, I needed to upcharge my vendors. Call the florist, they said, tell her what the couple's budget is, get her price, then quote the client something higher and keep the difference for myself. Everyone does it, they said. It is just how the business works.
I tried it exactly once.
I was sick over it. Not figuratively. My stomach was in knots every time that phone rang, because some part of me was always braced for the moment she found out. I could not sit across from that couple without wondering if today was the day.
I never did it again. It is not in me, and I stopped trying to make it fit.
What This Actually Looks Like
Here is exactly how that works. You hire me first, and you tell me what you need. I reach out to every vendor on your behalf, share your budget and your wishes, and negotiate the price and anything else I can secure. Once a vendor agrees, they send the contract to me, in your name, before it ever reaches you, so I can review every line for problems. Only once I am satisfied does that contract go to you for your signature. And once it is signed, your deposit goes directly to that vendor. Not through me.
That is not an accident and it is not a policy I adopted to sound good on a website. It is the only structure that makes the thing I refused to do impossible in the first place.
The negotiating still happens, and it is real. A florist might take ten percent off her usual rate because I have sent her business for years. A DJ might throw in lighting worth several hundred dollars at no charge, because that is the relationship we have built. You see all of it, in writing, because it is your name on the contract.
A mother of one of my recent brides told me she had almost not hired a planner at all, after watching a friend's son get taken advantage of by one. His planner had done beautiful work, she said, and had also quietly upcharged nearly everything. Once I explained how differently I structure things, she understood the difference. On that couple's engagement party alone, the vendors I negotiated with saved them thirteen thousand dollars against what that event should have cost.
That is not a discount I am offering you. It is simply what happens when nobody is skimming anything off the top.
Who I Am When I Am Not Working
 Son Dwayne |  Daughter Ashleigh & Family |  Boxing Match |
|---|---|---|
 Son Chris & Family |  Having fun with a band singer |  New York City |
 Granddaughter Taylor & Grandson Casey |  Baseball Anyone? |  One of my favorite bands |
 A little fun with Peanut |  Granddaughter Haileigh |  Grandson Sammy |
 Rome |
I love spending time with my three children and four grandchildren. My children are Dwayne, Chris & Ashleigh, and my grandchildren are Haileigh, Taylor, Sammy & Casey. Nothing makes me happier than a house full of them, especially when I get to cook for everyone. When my family isn't around, I love going to see live bands, playing pool or even watching amature boxing. (lol-yes, really!)
I cannot leave a room alone. Every season, without fail, I am rearranging furniture, swapping out pillows, changing a color scheme that was perfectly fine the way it was. Long before I was designing reception rooms for a living, I was doing the same thing to my own living room, over and over, because I love to design.
For years I judged pageants for the Miss America organization, and it taught me two things I still use every day. The first is poise. Grace on a stage in front of a room of strangers is not so different from grace in front of a room of guests on the biggest day of your life. The second is gowns. I spent years up close with fabrics, embellishments, alterations, and the dozens of small decisions that determine whether a dress actually fits the way it should. That eye is the same one I bring to every bride I work with today, on the Diamond Receptions side and through The Gown Whisperer.
And I travel every chance I get. Spain, Italy, Mexico, Hawaii, more corners of this country than I can easily count. Everywhere I go, I find myself looking for venues. I cannot walk into a beautiful courtyard or an old chapel without seeing where the ceremony chairs would go, or how the light would fall at five in the afternoon. It never turns off, and at this point I have stopped wanting it to.
If You Have Read This Far
You already know more about me than most couples learn about their planner before the wedding is over. That is exactly how I want it. I am not interested in being a stranger you hired. I would rather be the person you actually trust with one of the most important days of your life, and trust is not something you get from a polished bio. It comes from knowing what someone actually believes, and what they have refused to do to get ahead.
I believe your money is yours. I believe a contract should say what it means. And I believe the best wedding days happen when the person running them is not hiding anything from you.