Wedding planner to the stars Sarah Haywood on 20 years of planning the worlds most extrodinary weddings

[00:00:00] Welcome listeners. It's such a pleasure to have you here, but importantly, to have Sarah Haywood here. Sarah, you are a titan in the wedding and events planning- I'll take that ... sphere. Thanks. You know, Google is covered with your successes-

Is it? ... your stories. And- It's really dangerous to Google yourself, so I don't.

But I'm reassured to hear we're still there. It's... We've had so many fascinating people on, but you can really give us so many glimpses into what is the biggest day to most people's life. You must have so many phenomenal stories, moving moments, relationships that have been built through doing what you love, having spent 20 years organizing these amazing events.

Just to give a bit of context, so you're voted Vogue's top luxury wedding planning business. You're proudly an employee-owned business. We are now, yes. That's what we've done this year in our 20th year. Enormous congratulations. Thank you. Featured in, and this won't come as a surprise to our listeners, but Vogue, Elle, Harper's [00:01:00] Bazaar, Tatler.

Author of two best-selling bridal books, including The Wedding Bible, which I've just been having a look here. Oh, my Lord. It's copy-protected at work. Don't worry about it. No, this is the most marvelous book on the planet if you wanna understand the dos and don'ts of getting married. You've served as CNN's bridal expert for worldwide broadcast of the royal wedding of the Prince and Princess of Wales.

And very excitingly and importantly, been a consultant for HBO for their critically acclaimed drama Succession, which was that a wedding in Italy? It was here in the UK. Season One did a wedding in the UK. Wh- which wedding? Uh, Shiv marries, 'cause he's English, I've forgotten the name- Yes ... of the character already.

Yeah. Everything pre-pandemic is like BC for me. It seems like a long, long time ago, and that was pre-pandemic. What was the name of the character played by Matthew? Can't remember, but he's English in the show. Yeah, who's- So there's a wedding that happens up in East Norcastle and they pretend it's their family pile.

And of course, you not only plan these amazing events, but you teach people how to plan them- Try to, yeah ... through your amazing courses. How do [00:02:00] you encompass where your joy comes from for what you do? Depends what point in my career I have been at when you ask. Now, I'm getting pleasure from seeing that we've created a team that can now take the business forward.

That's my joy, to see that the business is going to survive and hopefully thrive beyond me. That's the joy. I've built it. We ran it successfully for, it's 20... Do you know it's 20 years today- Today ... that I incorporated the business. I had been working a little while as a sole trader before that. But it's 20 years today that I incorporated the business.

And when I started, I worked from a landing of my home, completely alone, building from the ground up. Internet was still dial-up. There was no social media. In some ways, it was not easier to build a business. It was a very different way of building a business. You didn't need to make a lot of noise, and you could plan how you wanted to make a lot of noise.

So I planned to [00:03:00] write a book, 'cause my first career, I was a journalist. Mm. So I was able to launch- A business and a book at the same time, and I was planning... I first pla- started planning in 1998, so a good sort of six, seven years before I started this business. So it wasn't completely fresh when I started the business.

But as I say, started on the landing of my home in Oxfordshire. Um, didn't move the business down to London as early as I should have done, 'cause it really took off when I did that. I couldn't get people to come and work for me up in Oxfordshire, 'cause the heart of the wedding industry is actually in London.

However, it wasn't an industry when I started. There was literally a handful of wedding planners. I used to have to explain to people what I did. They thought it was some ghastly American import, what I did. And that was really good, because I had a journalistic background, so I could actually go out and talk about what I did.

And like you kindly referenced, that I commentated on CNN the day of, uh, Prince and Princess of Wales's wedding. That's all come out of the way that I promoted [00:04:00] myself and the business at the very beginning. Starting off now would be completely different. I'm not sure how I would start now. And it was to my advantage that there weren't many of us, 'cause it meant that you could rise quite quickly through the ranks.

So I built it one event at a time, and we did our first millionaire wedding, so for somebody quite wealthy, probably six or seven years in. And then 10 years in, we started working exclusively with ultra-high net worth families, because it's such a skill all of its own. It's a completely different way of managing an event, 'cause it's not just a wedding, it's a big production.

So then we focused on that part of what we do. So there's been these moments of joy, to go back to your question. Landing the first few clients, landing the first event overseas, landing the first millionaire, landing the first billionaire, writing the first... But they've all been little punctuation points where I have got a great deal of pleasure out of it.

Of [00:05:00] course, interspersed with many failures, shall we call them? I usually like to refer to those as learning opportunities, because you can't have success without failure, and the learning usually comes from things that have not gone so well as opposed to the things that have gone very well. So I never worry too much when we hit a roadblock, 'cause I think there's gonna be learning in this for all of us.

But for the last few years, so for coming out of the pandemic, which as you can imagine decimated a business like this, in restrictions for two years, not able to work in any commercially viable form whatsoever, trying to keep a team together. The problems of emerging from a pandemic where people have not...

haven't had to work 9:00 to 5:00 in an office. All those things, all those challenges we've had to meet. Then I had to really focus on Rescuing the business first of all, and then having a plan for when I stopped. So I didn't have anyone r- I used to run the business and the event team. I don't know how I did that.

And then after the pandemic, [00:06:00] I brought in a CEO to help me, or he was an MD, he's now our CEO, to help us plan for my exit. G- g- I mean, it's so obvious- My potted history ... it, it, it's so obvious that you're a woman that is 10 steps ahead of, uh, you know, for, for, for a lot. I mean, you know, planning, eye on so much detail.

You have to. If you're running a business, you're just juggling all the time. But c- let's go back. The fiber of you planning these huge moments for people, where, what steered that for you? Uh- Was it what your parents...? No, it came from... My first career, as I said, was a televis- I was in television. I was a television journalist.

The thing that I loved about television, and I did like lots of bits. I'd left, I left university, didn't know what I wanted to do. Somehow ended up working in television. I was working for ITN, who do the news, and I thought, "This is fun. I'll go be a journalist." And I went on the ITN grad trainee scheme. I was a terrible journalist, but I wasn't bad at the telly side.

And I liked the... As part of my training, they sent me out to what were then the ITV regions, and I [00:07:00] loved that, and I loved doing the silly stories. I remember every year I used to do St Tiggywinkle's Animal Hospital at Christmas. I loved that. Being creative around a story, which of course as a journalist you mustn't be creative, but if you're doing a magazine-y type thing, you can be.

And then I realized I don't wanna do this forever, working on what I was doing. And I wasn't excelling at it. I was enjoying it, but I wasn't excelling at it. And I fell into events because it's quite a similar- Skill, putting a live television program together. You've got a running order, you've got a budget that the program needs to work to.

You can plan this thing to within an inch of its life, but when you're dealing with live people in a live situation, doesn't always go according to plan. So you've got to be able to let something breathe if it's working and pull it back if it's not, and we still do that at a live event. If we rattle through the meal more quickly than we had expected to, that's not a problem.

We can do that, so long as everybody's kept informed. [00:08:00] Teamwork, I love working in a team. I love leading teams. I'm very bossy, so I like to lead a team. So it's a very similar skill, or certainly a transferable skill that has served me well, shall we say. So I think about, I think about how I'm planning out everything.

And let's go back, 'cause there was a day where you'd not planned a wedding, and then there was a, suddenly a day where you had planned. I was really, I was really lucky, 'cause it came out of... I'm naturally quite a good organizer, so it came out of having helped people plan events, having helped, at the TV station I worked at, helping plan some events that we would do around the anniversaries of our program or when we got our MPs together, whatever that was, helping on those.

And then a friend asked me if I could help them plan a 70th birthday, which I did, and I actually met my husband at it, my now husband. That would be terribly unprofessional now, to meet your future partner at an event you've planned. So I was very lucky. I had a few [00:09:00] events that weren't, I wasn't really in charge of, but I was.

So I learn- I thought, "Oh, this could be fun." But I didn't go into weddings straightaway. I did other events. And then when I got married, I was absolutely appalled By the way the then magazines spoke to you, the editorial. It all didn't feel very real or very business-like, and this is a very big decision, all the money you're spending when you get married.

And I thought, oh, and that's what inspired me to write The Wedding Bible eventually, 'cause I thought, "Somebody needs to write a good, meaty book." Not me telling you how to plan a wedding, but these books, both my books, are me going out and talking to the best people at whatever area of your wedding that is, be that floristry, what you're gonna wear, how you curate food, entertainment, whatever it is.

I'm not telling you. I've gone out and interviewed the people who can tell you, and that's the skill of a wedding planner. We're not cooking the food. We're not designing the tablescapes. We're having a lot of [00:10:00] input into all these things, but our job is to glue it together with a sort of sprinkling of creativity and a little magic dust along the top.

Our job is really to pull it all together and offer the service side of that so it feels seamless, and that's the same skill as I learned in television, putting a program together. The average age of someone getting married in the UK is 33. It's just changed. Yeah, it's just gone up again. It's just changed.

It's gone up. So it's 31 for women and 33 for men. Don't forget, an average, though, they take every wedding that happens, all 269,000 of them. So there are a lot of second marriages that make that figure higher. Yeah. It's probably two lots of people getting married, a lot of people in their late 20s, and then a lot of people in their 40s, 50s, and 60s who are on their second marriages, and that's what gives you that average.

You always have to remember that. Putting aside the yummy food, the flowers, the photographers, all of the logistics, two people, they're celebrating. Yeah, it gets lost somewhere, doesn't it? There's a few [00:11:00] parts to a wedding, right? You've got two families. It's about the bride and groom, but it's about their friends.

There's so much going on. If you would explain to someone what a wedding really is about, what to you are those sort of parts to it? I often have to remind myself, and- couples. What a wedding really is, it's a celebration of friendship, and it's an affirmation of the concept of family. At its heart, that's what it is.

It's people gathering together who have been on life's journey thus far with the two people who are getting married, and who are there to witness and pledge their support for their journey as they move forward together. That's what's at the heart of it. And of course, when you're going to celebrate a momentous occasion like that, it just needs to be a day that's a little more elevated from your ordinary every day, [00:12:00] whatever your ordinary every day is, which will be very different depending on your lifestyle.

So our clients, their ordinary every day is fabulous, which is why we have to create these huge productions because they're already staying in the world's most fabulous hotels, eating in fabulous restaurants, staying at one of their many homes that... Ultra high net worth families, they have an average of five homes around the world.

You know, they might be flying around their priv- whatever it is. When they come to us and say, "My daughter's getting married. My son's getting married. I'm getting married," in order for that day to be really special, it needs to be stratospherically special- Yeah ... 'cause they already lead a special life. When I got married, special for me was...

It's a long time ago, but it was a marquee in our garden, serving our favorite food, with some beautiful flowers and a great band. That did it for me. With Uncle Johnny going, "Yeah." That was fine. My fa- my father giving us, giving a speech, and me going, "Oh, God." And m- me telling my husband what kind of speech he had [00:13:00] to give, and I don't really remember the end of it.

I think I had a bit to drink, and it was great. That's, that was special for me. And all any of us need to do is create a day that's appropriate to who we are and the values that we have, and that's more special than our ordinary every day. And the nicest, most enjoyable wedding I ever went to as a guest was many years ago, one of my very good friends from college, she married a vicar's son.

He married them in his local church, I think it was up in Derbyshire. We then all went to their local cricket club. They'd been cooking chili con carne all week in order for that to be the meal. There were paper tablecloths, trestle tables, and they did a ceilidh outside on the green. It was one of the most joyful, wonderful occasions, and I sometimes think about how we put all this effort into how an occasion is going to be, but actually You can do all that.

People are what make a great wedding Totally. And unfortunately, sometimes in, in big budget events, people are on their [00:14:00] phone because they're used to it Big budget and a small budget. That's, that's one of the most- Yeah, all small budget ... extraordinary things that I've seen a change in, is, like, people don't live in the moment.

It's like they film it. I was in Brazil last month and I went up to the statue of Christ, and it had been really bothering me, uh, seeing so many people on their phones all the time while we were traveling on this trip, and how people... The first thing, they don't even take it in. They're up there, and it's...

And I'm noticing it now. I've noticed it. I'm seeing it all the time. You get on a tube train, nobody reads a book anymore. Everybody's just on the phone. You sit round having a meal and you see all the tables around you, everybody's just on their phones. I guess- And it's the same at a wedding, and a wedding has become an occasion to provide content For the bride and groom, they all, how are they gonna show it on Instagram?

Oh, just enjoy it. Photographer's gonna get you some great pictures. Don't worry about it. But we have content creators come. It's a really common thing now. Photographer, videographer, and content creators [00:15:00] so that people can have their 15 minutes in the spotlight, and it's, it- it's pressure that couples, excuse me, couples are putting on themselves, and I don't know if it's modern society, and of course, I think young people would like to counsel people like me because we're constantly telling them- Yeah

they're always on their phones. Yeah. But I do feel that people aren't living in the moment, and whether they be our clients or their guests, everything's seen through a phone, through the lens of a phone. Yeah. And we're not present. There are many instruments to make people focus, and I mean- Yeah ... but the irony of that is a nice flower arrangement, people take a photo.

They do, yeah. A great DJ, people wanna film it. Yeah. But you live in a world where a big weapon for you is secret sauce, the really thoughtful touches. Now- That's largely about service and how people feel you're looking after them. Can you- I think that's what luxury [00:16:00] is now. Can you give us an insight because i- i- into quite the attention to detail that you can, you go to for making these places feel special?

And we might touch on your general budget that you typically work with. We're generally working at several million. Not always. Not always, but generally we are. That's what we're known for. And for that money, people expect, deserve, and from us they receive a service that has service at its heart. So for us, people feeling looked after, and therefore we, we, we s- we spend a lot of money on making sure we have enough people at every event so that everybody's looked after, so everybody feels like a VIP, so that from the moment you arrive at an event, and if that's a destination even- event, that might be arriving at an airport and us providing the pickups, [00:17:00] that at all times you just feel it was effortless and that you were looked after in the way that you might feel if you're staying in a really beautiful luxury five-star hotel at a gorgeous resort.

It's that level of service that we're looking to give you, but that it feels really unobtrusive and effortless. We don't want you to feel as though there are dozens and dozens of staff around you. We want to step back. But we've got our eyes and ears on our guests at all the time. And then in the actual planning stage, we aim to give our clients a really nice experience in the planning.

People are only human, and they are gonna get stressed about their weddings and get bogged down in the detail. When it works best is when people embrace the reason they've hired us, is that we know what we're doing. We have a lot of experience, a lot of expertise, and we like to explore what will work best for you, not just what you saw on Instagram.[00:18:00]

That's really important. And then we curate the whole wedding right through from Finding the right venue to the last guest leaving, everything is carefully curated. And we like to give, give options that are some of the best that you can work with. Sometimes one almost has to be... Today here we're talking about weddings, we almost have to be at a wedding to slightly see the attention to detail you have to be thinking about.

Mm. So for example, routes when people walk from A to B to a venue. Yeah Seeing where different arrangements- Taking into account all weathers, that people are usually dressed up, how comfortable is it to walk? Behind me there's a picture of an archeological site here that we did a wedding on last year.

You know, walking around in a Roman ruin, a very large one. How are we gonna make that as comfortable as possible for people, given the confines of where we are? So a wedding like that, for example, you might not see what we did because the idea is that it all blends in and you're just clum- comfortable.

But actually [00:19:00] underneath what you're walking on, it was stones. Or the platform that you're dining on, you might not realize it's a platform, you just went up some steps and you dine. But otherwise, it would all have been a bit higgledy-piggledy and- Yeah ... there would've been nowhere to put a stage. It's nice if people don't really notice that.

It means we, we got it right. And if we're in a venue like, I don't know, a hotel, it doesn't happen very often, but we might be, we have done. Maybe we're in a London hotel ballroom. It's about how do we elevate that room so that you don't just walk into it and think, "Oh, this is the ballroom at the X hotel."

That we've done something with it to lift it out of itself. What are the things you've done or seen that you think are just genius that people have done? Maybe it's for their guests, a departing gift that they've given, or something that they've thought of. Because some of these weddings are a weekend, right?

And they- Most of them are, yeah. Yeah. It... Or maybe it's a museum visit on the weekend or... More generally, I would say the things that mean most to people are [00:20:00] when it feels personal, so that a wedding really reflects a couple. It's not usually... You can give people a wow gift, you know, might be big Hermes gift bag, whatever.

That's just... What's the word? That, that's just money bought a gift. Whereas if something is really beautifully curated, what can I think of? So we had a wedding, oh, a long time ago now, probably eight, 10 years ago, where we hired a beautiful hotel in Tuscany. It's actually a resort. It's called Castiglion Del Bosco.

It's a Rosewood property. And it's built a- along an old medieval village, and the main street is the hotel. Some of your listeners might know it, and it's got villas. It's a very beautiful place up in the Tuscan hills. And she chose there, the bride, because Italy was special to her, and the bride and groom had one of their first holidays in Italy.

So we did some very small things that were very meaningful, [00:21:00] and she wanted to support local Italian artisans. So for example, the original save-the-date... People send out a save the date. These days it's often digital, but they might send a paper invitation or something in a box. We went to an artisan tile producer down in Southern Italy, and they created a traditional Italian tile, and we just put the save the date and the date, and then we put the coordinates of the venue And then we built a website, and her mother was really into reading the stars and doing...

I can't remember what you call it when you chart someone's birth. Yeah. She charted what the sky at night would look like on the wedding day at that location. So you opened the website, you click the button, and that sky came. And then we'd done drawings of the couple and animals that represented them, their guests would understand.

L- really small things that feel like they're very much a tool, [00:22:00] but actually if you knew the couple, everything about that wedding as it grew from the moment you received the save the date to the moment that the wedding happened, was really personal. The invitation was done on a piece of Carrera marble.

And so that had followed a tile for the save- And then they got a piece of Carrera marble with the in- invitation inscribed on it. And then when they got there, the gifts were things... On the first night, we did a fiesta down the main street of this borgo, and we had stalls as though it was like a market.

So we had people making vases, the beautiful va- vases and painting them, and you could take them home with you. And we had a leather maker, we had Cartusia, the pa- perfume company. All kinds of things that then made it personal. In your room you had some postcards, and we did the old... I can go on and on, but you get the idea.

Yeah. It was things that meant something to the couple. So there were lots of very small things that at the end of it, you couldn't have been at anybody else's wedding, only theirs. It was so personal to them. So personal to them. On the [00:23:00] dance floor we put the sky at night again that the mother had done for the website.

We just put it on the dance floor how it was that night. We had newspapers every morning when you woke up. A newspaper had gone under your door. I've got them here, actually. And we'd got... A lot of it's pre-done, obviously. But we'd done overheard at the wedding what people had said. We told you a little bit about how they met.

We did a horoscope for the day, the weather forecast, what the recipes were for some of the cocktails, and the things that you'd eaten. Just really personalized. And we were doing that before personalization was a thing. Mm. It's now a thing. Everybody wants things that are personalized in their weddings.

And it's those tiny things that when you put them all together are really meaningful. 'Cause anyone can go out and buy a designer bag and fill it with expensive bottles of wine and things to eat. That's not the same thing- Mm ... as giving something that feels meaningful. And fun. You must have had some very eccentric clients that have wanted all sorts of quirky things.

I've heard about a, an agency that organizes actors and actresses [00:24:00] to have these sketches at parties. Yeah, we've done stuff like that. Maybe more than that, but- They call it immersive entertainment. Yeah, we've done a bit of that, which is... It's done well. It's really good. There's a really c- good company here in London that does that.

Headline artists, that kind of thing they ask for. We've built a winter wonderland on a side of a lake. Mm. In the snow with seven weeks notice. Animals, we usually don't like to work with animals. They never do what they're told. People don't usually ask for something outrageous because when it actually comes to it and it doesn't make any sense, they understand why.

I've seen some ridiculous things online. Our clients haven't asked that, you know, people... There was something in Sicily last year where there was a couple, I don't q- I don't quite understand it, maybe you had to be there, and they were in giant petals that were swinging from over the guests. And it was, it was interesting.

Nobody's ever asked us for anything like that. Our clients just want the really the very best of the best of the best, but they want it to feel [00:25:00] effortless. And post wedding, that almost feels like a sort of sudden, "Oh, but that's happened." The post-wedding gloom. And then you, and then you don't hear back, and photos come at some point.

Yeah. Is there some thoughtful things you do, or the things you think should be done to make people feel special post an event? Maybe it's- We, we try to think of people straight after and first anniversary. We, we do all kinds of things. We've been doing some personalized boxes with... But actually I don't want to say in case any of my clients listen-

'cause then they won't be surprised when they get it. But we try to do something that's personal and reminds them of the wedding. Yeah. And what about the guests? Guests can usually access galleries to see all the images, and sometimes they stay in touch with us. They're more likely to stay in touch with our hospitality team, who look after them, and they really get to know them.

We're busy setting up events and making them work, but our hospitality team, who are front facing and are helping people get into vehicles and transport them to all the events, they're there making sure everybody's got the drinks that they want. If there are people who need a little bit more attention, they're doing that.

So we have our VIPs and our VVIPs and our bridal parties, so [00:26:00] there are people that we're often asked to really take care of, be that grandparents or people who are genuinely VIPs. We like to keep our eyes on parents and the, and the couple at all times so they never have to go and get a drink or... So those people that look after them on that, they become friends afterwards.

They sometimes try to steal them to go and work in their houses, but... So many moving components, things w- do go wrong occasionally. Oh, yeah. Things go wrong all the time. You know, I mean let's say- They're live events ... let's say there's a marquee that... I know the marquee sometimes get flown out to locations because they're just one of a kind.

But if, if something like that, really crucial, just isn't... It is delayed, what's the game plan? It... Usually something like that's brought in a couple of days before anyway. The worst that's happened, there was an air traffic controller strike over France so that we couldn't get a lot of people in where we needed to get them, so we had to hire a private plane and take people around France to get down to The border with Italy and drive them across.

We've had to do that. [00:27:00] That's the worst thing that's ever happened. And a cake, even a cake though, transporting a cake from one country to another. Oh, I've had funny things with cakes. I've had a number of cake dramas. If you need to put a really large cake on a plane, you obviously need to know the size of the hold door and the height of the hold.

So I've had two disasters, near disasters with cakes. One, we were working with the wonderful Peggy Porschen when she did wedding cakes. She now just runs her beautiful shops here in Belgravia. But this huge Peggy Porschen cake, and it came in three sections. We got the dimensions of the door, and then when we drove down, the plane was at Farnborough.

When, when, when Peggy and her husband took the plane the, the cake down to the plane, they'd forgotten to tell us that the engine was in front of the door. So you had the width of a suitcase. They'd just forgotten. So we asked for all that. The, the door dimension. We couldn't get it round the engine and into there, so we had to put all the people in the plane and then we had to put the cake, take it up the steps and lit- literally put it between the pilot [00:28:00] and that little area.

I dunno what you call that. I don't know much about planes, but you go up the steps, the greeting area. The greeting, yeah. And- You walk down ... we had to block the loo. Luckily, it only had to get down to Nice, and we just said, "You can't go to the loo once the cake's in." And the pilot did the most hilarious safety briefing.

And he said, "And in the event of an emergency, you are gonna have to eat your way out." So that having happened to us, we were like, "Okay, let's..." The next time we had to fly a cake, same company, get the dimensions, make sure the engines are... We do all that. And then between getting that information, the wedding, the client bought a new plane and a smaller door Had a smaller hole door, so we still couldn't get the cake in.

So now I will not have cakes flown. They have to be driven down. And give us a flavor of just quite how much money is... C- have you got some stories or e- examples of just some... Just slightly kind of- What, like spending 35K on a cake and- Yeah ... yeah, we've done that. I think the most we've paid for a cake is just under 40.

And flowers? Flowers, oh, hundreds and hundreds of... Over a million. Over a million on flowers? Yeah. Oh, w- way over. It depends on what- Really? ... what we're talking [00:29:00] about. Yeah. But that's when you're doing multi-day- Yeah ... big events. You built something from scratch, and it might be flowers or other elements of design that you're putting in.

Bespoke bars, hand-painted tables. Yeah. You know, we're doing this... It's a big thing with us at the moment. Second time we've done it now. Putting... Doing hand-painted tables in a marquee rather than cloths because of the bespoke thing, that people love something bespoke. Headline art- headline artists are where a lot of money goes, having someone very well known.

And have you got some quirky experiences i- in that realm? Imagine- The thing that always I find hilarious about working with... It used to be really rare, and the Russians started this. At every party they had a headliner, and it would make big news. Elton John sang at... Now it happens all the time. Like, all...

Like, all the time. More than half our weddings have big acts. Last year the big thing was [00:30:00]headline DJs. But, so we liaise with the management. Every single time they send us riders as though they're about to sing on the Glastonbury stage, and we're like, "It's a 20-minute set in a very small marquee, and we cannot fit all that kit in."

And we negotiate. But their standard rider is what they send, so we spend a lot of time negotiating on those kinds of things. And what I have also learned is often it's not the artists putting in the other... the, the food and beverage rider. They often don't even go into the room. It's all the other people that we have to provide all this stuff for.

Yeah. And then sometimes the people that you think would put in a really demanding rider, it's like one page. They want some fried chicken and some Budweiser And others, it's pages and pages, and it must be this, and there must be peanut M&Ms, and you need to take out all the red ones. And it must be this brand of this, and this brand of that.

And this needs to be served, and it needs to be this temperature, and it's absolutely crucial that it [00:31:00] comes at this point, and then it goes untouched. Mm. We actually put people in to manage the riders now. We were like, "Make sure that room is exactly as it says on that rider." We've had to cover up... We had someone once that was a germophobe, and we had to literally cover everything in white, brand-new sheets, and we weren't allowed to do it till someone from their team showed up so they could see we were taking them out of the packaging.

And, uh, also family dynamics. Someone really well known as well. I'm not gonna say who. It was a really well-known person. They were- turned out to be a germophobe. We know a very famous germophobe who's, who's a big politician in, in the US. Oh, yeah, it wasn't him. Yeah. No one's ever paid for him to come to a wedding, let me tell you that.

Um- And I wouldn't do it anyway. Yeah, fair enough. Fair enough. That would be the most outrageous thing to ask for, in my mind. "Can you get me Donald Trump at my wedding?" That would be the most outrageous request. It must be quite difficult trying to get through to these teams, f- to these celebrities There's people you go to You, you, you go to There's people you go to.

We've done it so often now we know who to [00:32:00] go to Yeah And we have personal relationships with some of the really big agents Okay Just because we've hired them so often Yeah. Yeah Because of course, most people have no clue what this might cost, so they think they might be able to get Adele for a million quid.

We wouldn't. Or they'll think, "I can get Elton John now he's retired. I could have him for 150,000." No, you couldn't. Yeah. And insurance, do you offer wedding insurance? Is that a thing? No. We have... Obviously, the events are insured. Everything you're buying is insured, but if you're talking insurance for couples, there is such a thing.

It's very hard to get for this level, and you can't get it unless you're domiciled in the country where the wedding is, 'cause we've been through it. So we do recommend people have things like the gifts are insured and all those things, but we can't insure a couple. We certainly can't insure them against changing their mind.

I don't think you can get insurance for that, but we're all properly insured, obviously. So presumably if a wedding gets canceled- Yeah ... you're gonna be paid regardless, or- It depends why it's been canceled. I learned a lot about this in the pandemic. Um, and I won't bore you with it, [00:33:00] but you would need to refund something.

If the wedding was a long way off, you would need to be doing some refunds. Mm. During the pandemic it was very difficult. A lot of businesses went bust, 'cause obviously venues especially still had their overhead. Mm-hmm. Mm They still had to maintain their properties- Mm ... but they had to give money back to clients who'd booked weddings, and they had no income whatsoever to keep this huge infrastructure going.

Mm. And during the pandemic, I actually lobbied government and we were successful. We did manage to get a weddings task force set up. T- it didn't achieve very much in terms of helping desperate businesses, and the industry took a big battering, and it's- People went, a lot of people went out of business.

There's a lot of people that I knew before who I don't know what happened to them. Mm. It was a tough time. I hope we never have to go through that again. Yeah. Re- ruthless nature of the world. Now, it'll be, it would be sacrilege to not try and get some tips from you- Yes ... for people. Tip, okay. So tips and things that come to [00:34:00] mind, please.

So the most important thing if you are getting married is for the bride and groom, first of all, to get themselves on the same page. What kind of wedding do you want? Where might it be? Don't need to know exactly. What time of year? You might even have a date in mind, but get yourselves on the pa- same page.

Then take this out to families, particularly if they're contributing financially. And of course, these days it might just, it might not just be parents, there may also be step-parents. So we could a- actually have on, with the [00:35:00] bride and groom, another four couples- Mm ... need to have some kind of input. 'Cause if the bride and groom are not on the same page, the next part is going to be really difficult because you've got to get everyone else on the same page.

And I often say, sometimes people, when there's a problem, you don't, they don't necessarily need to get their own way, but they need to feel they've been heard. So a lot of tension around weddings, when we actually analyze it, it's nothing to do with what the couple are saying it is. It's to do with other family tensions.

Somebody can't come because they decided to have a baby or it was really important they were there, but they can't be there. Or a brother or a sister's wedding had this, I don't want to do that. Or just family tensions overall, family not being happy with where a location is. We were talking about that today in the office, without going into too much detail.

The couple like a location, and for reasons that are probably quite valid, one set of parents does not want that [00:36:00] location. But that's a really big compromise to, to marry in a different country. So these are things that we can't solve for a client, so the couple need to be aligned so that when they go back to the parents and say, "Yes, we are going to do it there.

We, we understand why, but it's really what we want to do." Or-

couple themselves resolve it, because one of them might want to get married there and the other one might be willing to bow down to parents. If the concession is being made and one half of the couple isn't happy with, that's gonna fester. And all these problems, when they fester, they become big problems that I can't solve.

Yeah. Me and my team can't solve if you've got interpersonal relationship problems. But they'll, they often take it out on us as well. I know, yeah. And it's a problem. I have no doubt. But classic mistakes you will see at a wedding, something like the temperature can change and- Yeah ... there's no blankets or- Mm-hmm

or flower arrangements. Some see people who are opposite you. Yeah, it's a really common problem, that one. [00:37:00] And- Food service being slow- Yeah ... and not coming out hot ... these huge gaps, and it, it's- Um, not thinking about a trip hazard. Uh, really silly things that actually become big issues. My thing, very early on in my career, I was like, "Look after whoever is looking after the washrooms.

And if nobody's looking after the washrooms, put someone in. Think about that beforehand." Mm-hmm. 'Cause it's the one place that every single guest will visit, and they will remember it if it wasn't very nice. Mm-hmm. So I do spend time thinking about things like washrooms. Coat check. Checking your coat- Yeah

if there's a winter wedding, the first thing pe- you don't want is a queue of people that takes 15 minutes just to check your coat. Tiny things. That is such a great... That's such- Tiny things ... That is such a great example. And, and what do you have to share around tips in that sense? Because small friction point, for example, could be finding your table.

You arrive- Yeah ... you're looking for a table. You've been told that over there, there's a table plan. Yeah, and you can't find your way- And you're like, "Oh" ... because everybody's crammed into a tiny room and- Yeah. Take us through the most ingenious things you've [00:38:00] seen. It's actually just about being organized and planning, and not hoping someone else is going to sort something out.

You just got to think through everything. None of what we do is rocket science. None of it. But there is an awful lot to do, and we divide it up into sections. So the first thing I would say, and it's... I wrote this book off the back of it. You can't get this book anymore, by the way, so d- I'm not plugging it.

Okay. It's out of print at the moment. I'm gonna write a new one. Is don't get carried away with the detail. You've just got engaged. Don't get too carried away with the detail of the day until you've thought of five things. The big five. Where do you wanna get married? Just approximately. Mm-hmm. This country?

If it's this country, which county? Is it gonna be a city? Think about that. Mm-hmm. When? Just approximately. Spring, summer, autumn, winter. Who? So what kind of guest numbers? Who do you think you might invite? What's your no compromise guest list? 'Cause it might only be 40 people. Mm-hmm. And the million dollar question, how much money can you afford to spend on it?

Because you need to nail that down before you start on this. Mm-hmm. You need to know what you can afford. And it [00:39:00] always astonishes me that, you know, next to buying a house and buying a car, this is a really big purchase. But you wouldn't go out and shop for a car, you wouldn't start with a top of the range car.

You wouldn't, you, you wouldn't wander into a Jaguar showroom or a Rolls Royce showroom or a BMW showroom if your budget was more- Ford. You wouldn't You wouldn't go and look at a four-bedroomed house if your budget was a p- two-bedroom flat. You would know. So do a little bit of homework about what you think it might cost.

You can tell, "I've never done this before. What would it cost?" Okay. Again, it's not rocket science. If you were to take 20 people to Pizza Express, give them a couple of drinks before you had anything to eat, three-course meal, half a bottle of wine, cup of coffee afterwards, maybe a couple more drinks, oh, and let's have an extra bit of cake, you wouldn't get out of there probably under what?

About 1- £120, £140. So why do you think when you put 100 people [00:40:00] in a room, and you're gonna feed them a three-course meal, give them wine, have drinks before, a bar afterwards, why do you think you can do that for £75? You can't. You can't. I've plucked that figure out of thin air, but you can't. Think about it.

Yeah. Think about when you're going to the supermarket. Even if you went into Tesco and you bought their luxury bouquet, it's about 30, £35. Take it home, take it apart. How many floral blooms are in there? Half a dozen? Some greenery, couple of stems with a few small flowers on it. That won't go very far if you're trying to turn that into a table arrangement, and you have to think about those things, and you have to think about the people.

The more complex the event is, the more people you need to put at it, and people are the most expensive thing you're going to be buying with, if you're getting married in Europe, in this country and in Europe, because labor costs are very high. So if you want a five-tier cake with a lot of elaborate design on it and sugar flowers all over it, that's several weeks' work for one person.

It's [00:41:00] going to be expensive. So don't be surprised at the cost. If you

want a couture gown, dozens of people work on a couture gown. Dozens. Seamstresses, beaders, all kinds of, pattern cutters. It's a really costly thing to produce. So if you don't have that budget, go and buy a really nice designer made-to-measure gown. Educate yourself. Educate yourself so that it's not a surprise, and break it down.

And people look at it and they think, "How could they possibly cost that?" Hundreds and hundreds of people, before the wedding day, involved in putting together the kind of event that we do. And every wedding has a lot of people, and people don't want an ordinary day. They want an exceptional day. We were talking about tips.

Yeah. Yeah, educate yourself, and really work out what can you afford to spend. If you don't have 100,000 to spend on a wedding, don't go out and hope you can achieve 100,000 pound wedding when you've got 50,000. You can't. You can certainly do things to elevate, [00:42:00] if you really think about it, how you will present your wedding, and think about what your priorities are.

That's really important. Mm. Is food perhaps your priority? Do you want a wedding film? If you don't, do you want a really good photographer? If you want both, who's doing the kind of work that you like but that isn't really high up and well known? Mm-hmm. There's plenty of very talented people who just haven't been discovered yet.

Mm. Do a little bit, and it's really easy to discover people now. Educate yourself. Think about your priorities. Think about what you can afford to spend Don't just go into it blind and end up getting a venue that's too big or a venue that's too small because you didn't think about your guest numbers.

Don't go doing a mood board designing what your event's gonna look like until you're sure you can afford the dream. Yeah, well you've really got to model it out, right? Like- Yeah ... okay, w- if, if it's this many people, will actually venues typically cost- Mm ... minimum that. X for this number of people. Every person you add has a cost.

The food and beverage cost, the seat that they sit on, [00:43:00] the tableware that they use, the extra tables that you bring in for... Six more people is an extra table. If it's a long table, say eight people if it's a round table. It's a whole table. Mm. So you'll have the linens, the tableware. This is before you've even fed them.

They're gonna drink, they're gonna eat. Every person is a cost. So only have the people there that you really want there, who's got you to this point in your life and who's gonna stay with you in the future. That's not everyone you work with. That's your family and your close friends. And then see who do you want outside of that.

There may be people that you really want to be in your life in the future who you recently met, and therefore you want them at your wedding. People do th- really different things for weddings, and maybe that's for reasons of different culture, religion. That's a nice thing now, the fusion of cultures- Mm

where we're seeing being a stickler for tradition isn't necessarily a priority anymore. It's about fusing cultures and traditions. We're seeing that a lot. And also just [00:44:00] people looking at it as something that they can make their own, right? There's much more- Yeah ... openness suddenly- Yeah ... maybe today than in previous times to changing the structure of a service- Yeah

doing things at different times. Yeah. What are some great things you've seen in terms of... If, if you could pluck different parts of different cultures and approaches, what, what are some, what are some of the things- I think, no, I I al- always say if you don't want to do it, don't do it. If you don't... A cake, it's traditional to have a cake at a wedding.

If you don't want one, don't have one. Just don't have one. Nobody's going to go, "Oh my God, they didn't have a cake." But if it, if you'd like to have one, and you like that tradition, and it's traditionally about the first moment of the feed, of a couple feeding one another. That's what, that's what it's about.

It dates back to Roman times. And the first wedding cake was built by a... The modern wedding cake was a French baker who modeled the cake on the spire of St. Bride's Church in the city, the layered, the tiered cake. But, you know, if you don't want a cake, you don't have to have one. [00:45:00] Or you may be, I don't know, I've done Scottish weddings.

In Scottish, in Scotland, they have some lovely traditions. One of them is, I think they call it hand fasting, where someone ties your hands together, and there's a ritual around that. It is really rather beautiful and just takes a few minutes. And it's during the ceremony. And so your hands are bound and you make some kind of affirmation.

I can't remember what the words are. It's a lovely little tradition that they do in Scotland. So we've done some American weddings in Scotland, and we've embraced that tradition. They do broom jumping as well- You jump over a broom. I can't remember what the significance of that is. And then we've seen weddings where, because they might be different religions, they've incorporated some wonderful readings or some other wonderful traditions from that.

They fused those things together, fusing the food together. It's about bringing in things that are meaningful to you, and thinking about why they're meaningful. And there must be some examples of some expression of that. For example, when you think of a wedding cake, you think of traditional, a [00:46:00] tower. But there might be a bride, for example, that's, "Oh, no, I wanna have a gigantic tiramisu because that reminds me of-" Yeah, people do that

this way. Do, can you give us some more examples or- I rather love... We've done, yeah, Indian weddings, which is quite traditional for the groom to arrive on a horse- Wow ... coming through with them, and that's rather wonderful. Something that's fun and interactive and visually stunning. That's nice. We've done a flash mob engagement.

That was fun. Wow. That was fun, where we turned a stately home into what the bride was told was a hotel, and everything from the check-in staff to waiting staff, and then we, we were... I can't remember what we were doing. We, we were venue hunting, so they knew they were getting mar- This is a thing now with young people.

They know they're gonna be proposed to, and they have a whole thing around the engagement. This is a thing. So you know you're getting married, and then you have an official proposal. So she didn't know that this was the surprise proposal, and during dinner- [00:47:00] Obviously actors. On a table adjacent, he went down on one knee, and she went, "Oh, look, he's proposing to her."

And then the next table did it, and the next table did it, and the next table did it, and then he did it. And he was a musician, and we separated the couple within all this dancing, and then they went outside and he played the piano, and the fireworks went off. It was lovely. Have there been some quite unique approaches, for example, to speeches or anything like that?

Speeches, they either go really well or really badly, and lack of preparation is when they go badly. A good speech

Is short, but not too short. Has some humor in it, has some purpose to it and a, a, and s- and a thread weaving through it. But a bad speech, it's embarrassing when a speech is bad. And if they're too emotional, people get uncomfortable. Emotion is good, but when a person can't hold it together, that can be slightly embarrassing.

Can you think of a disaster [00:48:00] that you've heard? I've, I've had, I had a couple once years and years ago where the groom had just not prepared, and he said to me, "I haven't done a speech." This is at the beginning of dinner, he says, "I haven't done a speech." And I said, "Look..." He said, "You'd write me one." I said, "I can't write you one, but I can give you some bullet points."

On a piece of card I wrote, "Tell your new wife that she looks beautiful and say something nice about her. Thank the bridesmaids. There are some gifts for them, and we've put them behind the table." Yeah, w- and I went through it like this to give him some structure on what to say. He literally read it off the card, and he got to the bit, "Bridesmaids, and there are some gifts behind you.

Where are..." It was, it was... And it wasn't funny, 'cause he just hadn't prepared. Wasn't funny. Yeah. Wasn't funny. And when you go to a wedding, are you pretty sure you could work out how much it costs? Yeah. Yeah. Not that people want me at weddings though. People don't invite me anymore. My family don't like me coming.

What do people tend to underspend on in weddings? [00:49:00] Service, making sure there are enough people to really look after you. The non-pretty things. There's a lot of incomprehension around costs to do with technical sound, lighting, technical production, tableware rentals, things like... People don't understand.

They all go, "What... Why does it cost me £1.20 to rent that plate?" Or, "Why is it £5 to rent a chair? That's a lot. I could buy a chair." And it's to do with people not understanding that what goes into providing what you need. It's a business. It's got premises. Yeah. Say it's a rental company. It's a business with very large premises, and therefore rates to pay on that.

They've got staff to pay. They've got overhead, big overhead. Vans to deliver everything. You order 100 chairs, somebody has to take them... They have to take them from the warehouse, put them into a van, deliver it to your venue, go back to your venue, bring it back, clean it, wrap it, and have it ready for the next event.

[00:50:00] That's why it costs £5 a chair. Yeah. And storage for the, you know- And it's... It would be like walking into Starbucks and saying, "Why does it cost £3.50 for a cup of coffee?" Whatever it costs. It doesn't cost £3.50 for the coffee. It's being able to provide you with a coffee- Yeah ... costs the money. Yeah. And, and we were talking about budgeting.

Providing you with everything at your wedding has required people to get it there. At the very least, it's required people to get it there. Some of the stuff has required the huge supply chain in food. It's not like going into Tesco and buying... The supplier- The caterer, they've gotta cook the food.

They've gotta employ all the people to cook it. They've gotta employ all the people to serve it. They've gotta employ all the people to clear it, take it all back to a- their studios, warehouses, whatever. Businesses cost money to run, and it may be a wedding and a really special day, but we are still in this as business people.

It's okay to make money with what we do. That [00:51:00] often I feel people feel we shouldn't be making money 'cause it's someone's special day. Of course we need to make money. We're a business. It's okay for us to make a profit. We should be making a profit, otherwise we wouldn't be doing it. Yeah. We know it's your special day, but that's what we do for a living.

What are you most grateful about having chosen this career path? It's given me a window into a world that I wouldn't otherwise have known anything about. It's given me an opportunity to be a little bit creative, build a reasonably successful business, and meet other people around the world who do what I do, and be part of a community that I didn't even know existed, and it's opened my eyes as to how the world works.

Mm. It's really opened my eyes. It's given me a decent living eventually. It was very hard at the beginning, but it's eventually given me a decent living, and I've had experiences that most people would not [00:52:00] have, and that I certainly wouldn't have without being able to work for the people that I do, seeing places and experiencing things.

I- is there an undercurrent reality around people that you think is under-spoken around, in a good way, in the most, in- Yes. I think, um, often i- in the, in a media context, the kind of weddings we do are oft criticized, and people talk about, you said, it's a gross waste of money. It's starving people around the world that could be helped with this money.

In my experience, a lot of our clients are very philanthropic. You don't know what else these people do, and without them, entire industries would not exist. So we're doing a wedding, our next wedding, we were talking about it this morning, and I asked how many staff have we got on the day. Just on the day, 136 people are working on a wedding for 120, just on the day, e- [00:53:00] everybody from serving staff to florists, all that.

And that's quite small for us. That means just for one day, 136 people are being employed. Imagine how many people and businesses are benefiting from just one wedding And there was an article came out yesterday in The Times about the cost of being a wedding guest. It, it's at over £350. You've got to travel somewhere, stay overnight, usually buy a new outfit, and buy a gift, and that's a lot, that's a lot of money.

But I did some number crunching based upon the average wedding in the UK has between 80 and 100 guests, according to all the media polls. And we know there are 267,000 weddings a year because that's official data from the Office of National Statistics who record every single wedding. That means before a couple have spent a single penny- 6.6 billion pounds has been injected into the economy for [00:54:00]every, every year, 6.6 billion pounds.

People traveling to the wedding, staying in hotels, buying clothes, and buying gifts. That's all keeping the wheels moving because if people don't host these events, lots of people won't be employed. And you could say that about anything. If, if Michelin Star restaurants didn't exist, or any restaurant didn't exist, those people wouldn't have jobs, and that would affect not just the people who work in the restaurant, the whole food supply chain would be affected.

So I think of it like that. The number of people who get work because I exist. I thought about it during the pandemic, 'cause I looked at how many people weren't being employed because we weren't able to employ them. It had a direct effect on- Mm ... the supply chain. So you can criticize that somebody might spend several million pounds- Mm

on one celebration. It's not usually one day, but on one celebration. But they're injecting all that money into the economy that otherwise would likely sit in their bank account. [00:55:00] 'Cause they're not failing to be philanthropic just 'cause they're hosting a wedding. It's not an either/or. Wealth needs to be distributed through the wealthy purchasing goods and services.

It's too simplistic to say it's shocking that someone should spend that kind of money, because the only person that spends that kind of money is a person who can afford to, and it's appropriate to them and their lifestyle, like we were saying at the beginning of this interview. Imagine if they held a royal wedding, and they just went off to the local register office and we didn't see any of it.

We'd be really disappointed. Yeah. We want to see it. Yeah. And I, uh, and it depends who the celeb is as well, when celebrity weddings are criticized. Last year, I remember Jeff Bezos, his wedding got a lot of negative attention. All kinds of things were said, like Venice came to a standstill. That was not the biggest event in Venice, even that week.

They're forever doing big events in Venice. The place didn't come to a standstill because of him. The whole place needs this kind of work. Taylor Swift, I would imagine, is gonna have really positive coverage because she's popular, and people are gonna [00:56:00] say, you know, "Good old Taylor She- they found love," and, "How wonderful."

So it depends who the person is as to whether they'll get criticized. But as I say, if people don't spend money, a lot of us won't be employed, and the wheels won't go round. You just shared us how connected everything is, you know, the c- the complexities, the costs, and- And it's great because we're developing skills that we wouldn't otherwise...

All kinds of people are doing things, small and big things, that they wouldn't otherwise get the opportunity to do without the events industry. The events industry is extremely valuable to the UK economy And the wedding sector within that is also extremely valuable. Mm. It's worth about 14 billion- Mm

including that 6.7 that I- Can you, can you share the biggest budget you've...? It was a lot, and it was unusual. Our average budget is about three, three million. Yeah. And we've got, yeah, some that come in more than that and some that come in less than that. And, and you limited roughly on how many you can do a year?

We like to do a minimum of six and a maximum of eight. Mm. Some years we hit the [00:57:00] eight. We actually haven't since the pandemic. I don't know why that is. And people plan differently now. Before the pandemic, our average lead time was about four months. Now it's well over a year. So we were pushing the events through quicker before the pandemic.

Mm. I never used to worry about the following year at this point. We were saying today how many events we've got in for next year, and it's a bit of a record. I was like, God, before the pandemic we wouldn't have been able to cope with that- No way ... 'cause we'd know another two would come in before Christmas.

So people are spending differently. I don't know why Um, and that's the other thing you have to do when you're running a business, it's evolving all the time. As soon as you think you've learned something, you have to relearn it, 'cause it happens in a different way. If there was a message you could pass on to a young version of yourself, what would that be?

Aside from don't do it, no, I would do it. I, I think I would've told myself to not get so bogged down in the weeds and the worry of it all, because at the end of the day, your, your own life and your own family [00:58:00] is more important. And when you've got people around you constantly making you feel like your own life should be put on hold because of their special day, they need to be able to call you and you need to be available 24/7, I think I'd have put a bit more balance in it.

But I wonder if I'd have got there if I'd put that balance in. You, you've clearly got a lot of faith in things working out, faith in yourself and faith in me coming out, and you clearly pass that along to so many people and- I hope so. It becomes more difficult as you get older. I've realized I never thought age was a thing until I got older, and I'm quite pleased that I'm getting older.

I think that's great to have managed, I've got here. I think we do live in a quite ageist society, and I'm just beginning to notice it, and I would like to think I could be a bit kinder to myself about that. 'Cause you can care less as you get older. It's okay to care less. Mm-hmm. And you can let things go a little [00:59:00] more as you get older.

And, and just, you said something insightful earlier on, which is about failure and how- Oh, yes ... it ultimately it's just a way to learn. Failure's just a step to success. Takes a long time to have faith, to keep your nerve. Holding your nerve takes a lot of faith. When you've failed at something again, usually if I fail at something again, I have not taken the learning the first time.

So I think, "What is it that I did not take from the first time that it's happened again?" And sometimes it might have been as simple as saying no to something or to someone. And other times it might be chasing something like money. Oh, we're doing it 'cause we need the money. Do we need the money? So long as we can pay our bills, do we need the money?

Saying no, I'm mu- I'm much better at saying no now. If a client, if it's not gonna work, I'll just say, "It's not working." And that happens. That does happen. You're working with [01:00:00] people- Mm-hmm ... and you're not the right fit, and it's okay not to be the right fit. It's okay not to be the right fit. Happily, over the last few years I've become very friendly with some of my major competitors, and over the last decade I would say.

We all face the same problems, and sometimes I'll lose a job to someone I really like, which makes it much more bearable. And I always say, "I took to my bed for two hours, but I understand why they went with you." And sometimes we'll be pitching, I'll think, "There's no way we'll get it over that person- Yeah

because that person is such a great fit, or that business is such a great fit- Yeah ... for this client. I and my team are not what they're looking for." And some people just want to have a lot of fun, and we're very business-orientated. We're like, "Let's get on with the job." Mm. Whereas I, I know all the, you know, the New York planners love to go out.

They go out for drinks all the time with their clients. We haven't got time for that. We need to get on with the job. And that's just the way they operate their businesses. Yeah. Your whole world is around understanding people. When you're looking for people to join your team, maybe [01:01:00] some of the best- My whole world is meant to be about understanding people.

If I could just crack that- ... it would be brilliant, if I could just crack understanding people. I do not understand- ... a lot of people. People are very... People get in the way of themselves so much I do not understand people in the way that you might think I do. You'd be really surprised. If people don't understand themselves, how are we meant to understand them?

People don't know what they want. They know what they don't want. It's not the same thing. You can pass one thing to young listeners, what's that? Try and live in the moment a bit more, because I, I would like to have learnt that. Living much more in the moment, enjoying the growth of life, personal growth, professional growth in your relationships.

And I did another interview last week where somebody was talking to me about relationships. I must see re- relationship, what makes a successful relationship. And I was talking about if you're in a relationship, you're unlikely to be at [01:02:00] the same place at the same time. Relationships move in parallel, and if you can understand that and accept that, your relationships will be much more successful.

Not every, you never wanna be that, particularly with personal relationships, but also professional relationships. Mm. You need to give people time to get to where you are, and sometimes they need to give you time to get to where they are. And their sense of people being independent and there- Mm ... being a lot of unknowns that aren't related to you.

You were making the point around how when there are challenges in with a relationship at work, it's often that things have gone wrong on their end. It's not related to actually the cutlery- Ex- ... or whatever it is. Yeah, and sometimes it's the same as it, when you're an employer. Oh my gosh. When you're employer, it, somebody may be messing up in some way at work, and then it's not about the work.

It's not they can't do the work, something else is going on in their life that's challenging them. We all bring all our baggage with us, and it permeates into all the areas, our lives. And social media can make life look very perfect, [01:03:00] and I doubt that it is perfect for most people all of the time. Sarah Hewitt, thank you so much for sharing your time with us.

Thank you. It's been a pleasure. Thank you very much.