Wedding Dish Podcast: Ready for the Dance Party!
August 10, 2021
Featuring an interview from The Wedding Dish Podcast; Originally recorded May 6, 2021
SARA: Hello and welcome to The Wedding Dish podcast. Grab your fork and knife and take a seat at our table as we dish on all things, weddings, you'll hear stories and tips from real couples and wedding pros about love life and entrepreneurship.
I am Sara Alepin, the host of The Wedding Dish and CEO of Photos from the Harty and District Bliss. Thank you so much for tuning into The Wedding Dish. Let's dish.
I have with me two ladies who are also redheads. Also have loud laughs also brilliant entrepreneurs. They are trying so hard to laugh silently right now I can see them. The ladies behind Lucy Black Entertainment. We all know and love Rebecca Steele and Lauren Bretell. Thank you so much for being here. I love you ladies. And I'm so glad to have you back again.
LAUREN + REBECCA: Thanks so much for having us!
SARA: Let's dish. Let's talk a little bit about trends that you're seeing in, let's just really dive right in here and talk about some of the trends that you're seeing this year for weddings. A couple of things that I specifically want to hit on are as a talent agency, what you're seeing people investing in, if you're seeing, you know, different I hate to call it Instagram-worthy, but I feel like that's a lot of like what people are doing right now. Because for a long, you know, we had a little bit of a pause on the weddings for a couple of months.
REBECCA: If you want to just jump in, I think the big thing we're seeing or even non-wedding is everyone really wants to party. I mean, that's essentially the theme of 2021. And we've seen big parties coming probably later, but we also were seeing small parties happening just now. I'm definitely still seeing small weddings, which I don't think are going away. And there's a lot of fun things with small weddings. But um, but yeah, that's that, to me is the overview is people want to party and be together.
LAUREN: You know, everyone's been cooped up for over a year now. And they're just ready to celebrate you with their loved ones. You know, be with the people that they care about for these moments for one day, when they likely have not seen them in ages. And to Rebecca's point for the smaller weddings. They're so intimate, they're so beautiful. I personally had a smaller wedding by choice, you know, three years ago. So I love those. It's, I feel it's such a great way for you to really, really focus on your love and what's most important to you. And well yes, you can do a lot of that with larger-scale weddings. It just has a different feel about it. And I think after the year that we've all had that also adds to how everyone feels once you're all there.
SARA: Yeah. I now really understand the roaring 20s.
LAUREN + REBECCA: Oh my gosh, yeah.
REBECCA: It's funny, because I was actually talking about that the other day with, actually, my doctor, and she was talking about how events are coming back. And it's going to be the roaring 20s again because that is exactly what happened before. I think one of the trends that I think I love the most that go hand in hand with everyone not having seen each other is this idea of tapping into the nostalgia of their youth. You know what I mean? And we're seeing a lot of babies from the 80s and 90s, late 80s and 90s now getting married, and it's all about 90s rock and tapping into that nostalgia of high school and college and I guess the 2000s is old now. Gosh, what happened?
LAUREN: It’s very old.
REBECCA: I mean, we're having a great time with it.
LAUREN: They're gonna start calling it oldies soon enough.
REBECCA: Did you know that the Red Hot Chili Peppers are now classic rock? What the hell?
LAUREN: I believe it but that's crazy.
REBECCA: I was just like, what happened?!
SARA: Oh my god. Did you know that the Red Hot Chili Peppers was my first dance song?
LAUREN + REBECCA: What was your song?
SARA: Hard to Concentrate.
LAUREN + REBECCA: So fun, fun song.
SARA: It's very underrated. And a lot of people don't even know what it is if you don't know what it is you should listen to it. And then you'll kind of understand why it was our first dance song. But you know that that's not it just it fits us.
REBECCA: Let's see, that's what we're seeing more and more of I think that the idea of nostalgia and how people are pulling in what's meaningful and what they care about the most. I think that you could also say that for how they're spending money, even with parties in general, we've been seeing an uptick in people using more entertainment in smaller events that are maybe non-weddings, like bridal showers, birthdays, we actually have our very first reveal party that is what not reveal party, but like a reveal party like telling everyone they're pregnant party. We've never heard of that before. But oh, yeah, but we have a DJ, it's gonna be great. Super excited.
LAUREN: Yeah. So kind of going back to that theme of people are just ready to celebrate all of the things in life that they have not been able to celebrate with anyone else except for themselves, and maybe whatever loved ones live with them. They're just ready to share this joy and this happiness that we're, you know, so desperately trying to get back to after this year.
SARA: Yeah, I might start wearing my ball gowns to the grocery store.
LAUREN: I mean, you probably should.
SARA: Nobody's here to judge.
REBECCA: Can we have a happy hour and gowns? I think that's a great idea.
SARA: I feel like yes.
REBECCA: Amazing.
SARA: I feel like we should just get an Airbnb and, like, have a happy hour there. And wear gowns, do our hair.
LAUREN: Bring that theme for each night. You know, if you're there for a weekend, Friday is roaring 20s. Saturday at 2020.
SARA: I am here for it. So here for it.
LAUREN: Everyone coordinates; it's great.
SARA: I love it. Oh my gosh. That's amazing. I didn't even know a reveal party was a thing.
REBECCA: We didn't either. Never,
LAUREN: Maybe that'll be a new exciting thing that people are doing. Who knows?
SARA: Well, I mean, we've saved a lot of money this last year from not traveling. I think you all probably travel as much as we do.
LAUREN + REBECCA: We try to, we want to.
SARA: I think I'm on an airplane at least every eight weeks.
LAUREN + REBECCA: That's awesome.
REBECCA: That's probably more than us. But that's okay. We love it. Can't wait for it to start again.
LAUREN: We're definitely already planning all of our future ones. And kind of our first big trip that we want to take to you know, check something else off the bucket list now that it's finally safe. Now that we've had this whole year to save money to be able to actually do it, you know. And so it's fun to think about all of those things that we're going to be able to do very soon once it's safe.
SARA: And are you thinking about having? I mean, I know we've got a couple of months, but are you thinking about having a Lucy Black Entertainment anniversary party this year?
REBECCA: So we actually brought it up a few weeks ago, because we were at the Conrad on their rooftop. And I was like, Can we just invite a bunch of people to hang out, like on the roof with us? We were still in, we're still in negotiations about that. We'd like to, I think.
LAUREN: It's you know, we've just kind of it's still that watch and see game right, especially in DC proper, as things are kind of slowly opening. And you know, restrictions have been really unpredictable in that sense, unfortunately. So we're just wanting to make sure we're doing whatever it is is as safe as possible because that's what's most important is keeping our team safe. But we would absolutely love to be able to celebrate safely. You know, our three-year anniversary would be just amazing.
REBECCA: I totally agree.
LAUREN: There's never two or two years with virtual and we were able to premiere our band video for Lucy Black Luxe. And it was so much fun with our wonderful friend Stephanie out on her beautiful farm Shenandoah Mountains. And you know, we dressed up and had champagne. And it was lovely. It was definitely you know, a COVID celebration.
SARA: I was there I stayed till the very end because you know me, I'm always the last one out the door. And we convinced our friend to have a few drinks with us.
LAUREN: Yes.
REBECCA: I forgot about.
LAUREN: It was a great night.
SARA: It really was. It really was. And I loved that video, we'll have to put it in that love to link to it in the show notes. It's so good. It's so good. Your musicians are so talented.
LAUREN + REBECCA: Thank you.
LAUREN: You're incredible. We love them dearly. They're like our family, you know, and we spent so much time and energy kind of blood, sweat, and tears into creating that video. I don't think people realize how much pre-production goes into creating something like that. And the teams that are involved in, you know, it's just we're so happy with how it turned out and the feedback that we've received and so excited.
SARA: It was awesome. I was super impressed. Even though we watched it over zoom and together.
REBECCA: That's right because we had it on Facebook Live. YouTube Live. Yep. Oh, man. Good times.
SARA: We've had so many good times together. Yeah. So um, what are what have you seen in terms of like, new, exciting venues? Or you, you all are always so far ahead of the curve on things that are happening in the DC area. So what have you seen like, that's like opening or doing like crazy changes, because what better time to do renovations and updates, than during a year when you can't necessarily have events? Um, you know, let us in on the spoilers.
LAUREN: Well, this is brand new. But, you know, The Conrad, as we mentioned, was very new prior to the pandemic. And we had done a couple of things there. And I feel like they, you know, we were just getting ready to start doing larger things there and having weddings and getting to experience full scale events, which totally got shut down, obviously. And so personally, I'm super excited to really be able to use all of their spaces, all of the ballrooms really see what can be done in those spaces because it was created to allow for so many things, you know, you they have rigging in the ceiling. So you can bring in aerialists, they have really high ceilings, so that you could do whatever you want, you can fly in your lighting instead of having it all over the floor. You know, those kinds of things. Um, maybe Rebecca can speak to newer venues or people who maybe have received a facelift. But for me, that was that's one that sticks out for me because I feel like they were right there getting ready to kind of step into their potential and everything was just kind of, you know, shut and there was nothing that anyone could do about it. So I'm excited for that.
SARA: That sounds amazing. What better way to celebrate going back to events than aerialists, right?
REBECCA: I really, really, color is always the one that I'm excited about would be the Schuyler and I have not even been there yet.
LAUREN: At The Hamilton.
REBECCA: Thank you. Yeah. And we were supposed to do a hard walk or a hardhat walkthrough and then it didn't happen. And so they've been actually just starting to open up now. They’re kind of doing sneak peeks and things like that. But we got to see renderings of the space. And it is so beautiful. And it is amazing. I haven't even seen the Hamilton in forever. So I feel like that whole property and all the pieces that they have. I'm very, very excited about it.
LAUREN: Yeah, it looks insane. It's going to be amazing.
SARA: Yeah, I was. I got invited to go to the walkthrough that they're doing today and tomorrow, but I was recording the podcast and then I realized that they close their cars. You know, everybody's trying to do things safely. They closed the RSVP at five and I looked at the clock at 5:15 because I was like, I could probably go tomorrow.
REBECCA: That's so funny. You know, I was actually very sad we did not get invited. No shame to all of our friends who work there. Entertainment’s really like the last on the list. And I'm like, come on, I want us to know your space like, hello.
SARA: I wish we had talked about this before because I would have definitely, especially because I know we're now on a tangent a little bit but Laura and I have to come to your neighborhood. Oh, because I have to deliver a wedding album too.