What Do Padma Lakshmi and Kyra Sedgwick Have in Common? Their Wedding Planner

Event planner-about-town Marcy Blum struts into the exclusive, members-and-their-guests-only Soho House like the regular that she is. With an air kiss here and a “Lovely to see you!” there, Ms. Blum is at home among the intimidating, heavy-on-the-leather decor and even more intimidating patrons. “Is that Gwyneth?” she asks nonchalantly. (It isn’t.)“I became a member of Soho House because of affirmative action,” she explains to me, “They needed an old Jew.” Even if Ms. Blum relishes being a part of this exclusive world, it’s clear that she has the perspective not to take it too seriously.According to Ms. Blum’s elegantly calligraphed business card, she is an eventiste. According to her clients, she’s a psychoanalyst. According to New York magazine, she was the “Best Wedding Planner” of 2001.And according to Ms. Blum herself, “I’m sort of a quirky favorite aunt.” In truth, Ms. Blum is all of these things – a little bit Woody Allen, a little bit Jennifer Lopez from “The Wedding Planner,” she is the co-author of the wildly successful “Weddings for Dummies” and “Wedding Kit for Dummies” and the owner of event-planning company Marcy Blum Associates.Ms. Blum grew up in the Riverdale section of the Bronx. After studying acting at the High School of Performing Arts, she went to live on a commune in Vermont (“You know, it was 1970”), after which she headed to the Culinary School of America in Hyde Park, N.Y. Upon graduating with a chef’s degree, Ms. Blum dabbled as a cooking teacher, a food consultant, and a sous-chef until starting an event planning business with her then husband.In the mid-1980s she entered the world of weddings by advertising her planning services in the back of New York magazine, and unknowingly became one of the first people to single-handedly plan weddings.” People were either like Leticia Baldridge,” she says, putting on a fake, sing-songy aristocratic accent, “who thought you must go to Tiffany’s, you must have the wedding at the Pierre, and you must walk down the aisle like this.” She loses the accent: “I was an old hippie who had great taste in style who wanted to do something different.”Her attention to the small details combined with her sorcerer-like ability to envision and develop a concept that is tailored exclusively to her clients’ individual tastes and personalities has earned her the spot as one of New York’s premier wedding planners. Ornate but never ostentatious, elaborate yet subtle, Ms. Blum’s weddings are known for being tasteful, whimsical, but above all elegant. Indeed, movers and shakers like Billy Joel and Katie Lee, Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgewick, Salman Rushdie and Padma Lakshmi, and two Rockefellers have entrusted their wedding days to Ms. Blum. For Billy Joel and Katie Lee’s wedding in October, Ms. Blum transformed a tent on their Centre Island estate into a Tuscan garden with a vine ceiling. “It felt like you were sitting in a farmhouse under an open sky,” she said.Ms. Blum likes to credit herself with turning the traditional wedding party into an all-out wedding bash. “I tell people, you know that this can be a great party – it doesn’t have to be stuffy and trite to be elegant. It can still be elegant but be a fabulous, knock-your-socks-off party.” To be sure, most of Ms. Blum’s wedding parties go on into the wee hours of the morning, and Ms. Blum generally stumbles home at around 5 a.m.One of the first weddings to inspire her was her own wedding back in 1986. “Our wedding was all about food stations,” the self-described “foodie” said. “Before that, nobody went to a black tie wedding with food stations.” She mused nostalgically, “People still talk about that wedding.”Above all, though, Ms. Blum prides herself on being a crisis averter. “Thanks to my experience in the restaurant business and my stage training, I’m very fast on my feet.” Whether it’s deciding at the last minute to hold the cocktail party before the ceremony because an officiate didn’t show up on time, or making the executive decision to move the wedding inside due to an unexpected change in the weather, as Ms. Blum put it, “on the wedding day – that’s when I earn all my money.”In addition to overseeing the actual wedding day, Ms. Blum strongly believes that weddings “are as much about the process as the ‘day of.’ I tell the brides, ‘Let’s meet for drinks. You wanna go to Soho House? Let’s go to Soho House and sit by the pool and chat about what we’re gonna do.'” She took Padma Lakshmi for a girlie afternoon of bonding and jeans shopping at Barney’s. This past year, she hired a minivan and a driver to shepherd another bride, her eight bridesmaids, her mother, and her grandmother around dress shopping. “Our shopping was punctuated with champagne stops and ended with dinner and margaritas at Dos Caminos. It was very celebratory.” She explained, “This is supposed to be a memorable time, one of the best times of your life. It really doesn’t get any better than this – everyone’s focused on you, you’re spending a lot of money, and you’re madly in love. I also do this for myself,” she added, “I don’t want to be having a miserable time.”As Ms. Blum’s reputation as an “it” event planner has grown, she has veered away from the personal shopper role and prefers to think of herself more as a consultant. “Not to sound like an old bitch,” she said, “but people come to me for expertise. I’m going to sit and talk to both of you and tell you what I think you should be doing. I’m not in the shop-and-schlep business. You don’t need my taste or style or expertise if you’re going to see 47 caterers – hire a Town Car.” She added, though, “I love people who have taste and style – I don’t want sheep. But people hire me to be a collaborator, not a social secretary. “Because planning a wedding for Ms. Blum is such an intense, all-consuming process – she only plans six or seven weddings a year – Ms. Blum’s position as a professional event planner very often evolves into a therapist, a relationship counselor, and, ultimately, into a friend. Indeed, Ms. Blum frequently develops long-lasting relationships with her “graduates.” In the week before Christmas alone, Ms. Blum had dinner with two couples and lunch and dinner with three brides. “One of my brides called me the other day from Palm Beach, and told me to come down for the weekend,” she said.The process is such an intimate one, that, according to Ms. Blum, “at nine out of 10 weddings, I cry.”

What Do Padma Lakshmi and Kyra Sedgwick Have in Common? Their Wedding Planner

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