Garine: Hello! My name is Garine, I am the social media and marketing manager at Chair Decor. I wanted to first start by asking you a couple basic questions. What is your name, and the name of your company?
Michelle: Michelle Garber and Tamara Niyazov- Fab Fete Event Planning
Garine: How long have you both been in the industry?
Michelle: We have both been in the planning industry for 15 years
Garine: That is an amazing amount of experience, you must have seen so many different fun trends! What have your experiences been during COVID?
Michelle: It has actually been very busy during Covid and especially during lockdown. We weren’t busy coordinating actual events, but we were very busy moving all of our summer weddings to later in the year or to 2021/2022. Each and every one of our weddings has at least 8-10 vendors which need to be contacted, confirmed and moved to the new date. That kept us quite busy during the 6 months of Covid! Luckily we are back to planning and coordinating beautiful events.
Garine: It has been quite a ride, I could only imagine the immense amount of concerned couples needing help with everything. What do think the long term impact of COVID will have on the wedding/event industry? What does this mean for the future of the event industry?
Michelle: We think that there has been a bit of a silver lining with Covid. Many people thought they needed to have this uber luxurious, large weddings but with Covid causing events to downsize in terms of guest counts, we think it really gave people a new perspective of the way weddings can be celebrated. Smaller, micro weddings have proven to be just as or even more stunning then the uber large weddings. There is something to say about an intimate wedding with everyone you are closest with. It has certainly given us more of an appreciation for those types of events and we truly love planning and coordinating those micro weddings.
Garine: I know what you mean! It is a lot more intimate and has a different type of beauty that we have all come to enjoy over the past few months. Are there any exciting new projects you’d like to share?
Michelle: We actually started to offer backyard movie experiences for our past clients and new clients. We have large inflatable screens that we rent out along with popcorn machines and a dedicated Audio visual tech who comes for set up, stays during the movie and breaks it down. It has proven to be a big hit for our clients. People are doing it for bachelorettes, birthday parties or just fun movie nights for kids and/ or adults. There are some amazing add-ons that we have offered as well- snow cone machines, blanket/pillow takeaways for each guest, muskoka chair rentals, smores stations, ice cream carts, catering packages. It’s definitely something that has generated a buzz and we have been really busy with that.
Garine: Thank you so much for sharing! That is such a fabulous idea; Thanks for joining me today, and I am so excited to see all the fun exciting things you have planned come to life!
