Born to party
Stephanie Grace makes a living helping the rest of us have a good time
By Joanna Beresford 10/29/2009
Stephanie Grace is going through life from party to party. As founder and president of Stephanie Grace Design, she creates floral arrangements, organizes events and plans parties for private and corporate clients throughout Southern California and the Vail/Beaver Creek region. In Pasadena, Stephanie and her team recently completed floral arrangements for three weddings at the Langham, Huntington Hotel & Spa and planned a wedding reception at Twin Palms in Old Pasadena.
You could say that Stephanie was born to party — or to help the rest of us party. Her grandmother worked as a seamstress in a wedding dress shop, making and designing gowns, and Stephanie grew up among the trailing satin and bird-cage veils her grandmother brought home from work. She remembers gazing at the lovely dresses that hung in grandma’s living room and dreaming of dressing as a bride for Halloween. She also worked with her mother throughout childhood, designing and producing fashion shows, charity balls and social events in Chicago.
“I do feel like everything’s come full circle,” she says.
While studying law and business at UC Davis, Stephanie did what most college students do: she organized lots of parties. But she did it better and more beautifully than anyone else. Soon after graduation she realized that she wanted to establish a full-time, professional event-planning service.
“Life is really short,” she explains. “I didn’t want to waste time. I truly believe that if you follow your heart you’ll succeed. We officially opened our doors about two years ago — and we haven’t stopped creating and working since!”
In addition to planning weddings and special events in public places, Stephanie organizes events at clients’ homes. She says that she’s especially thoughtful about season and color when creating home events. This autumn she’s been blending lots of purples and grays, for example, with traditional hues of gold and brown for a rich and contemporary palette.
To learn about color and thematic trends, Stephanie reads a lot. She devours magazines and Web sites, studies the work of other designers and melds everything she learns into a style that is distinctly Stephanie Grace.
“We’re constantly engaging with the world through reading and collaborating,” says Stephanie. “Ours is a long process of discussing the vision with the client and among ourselves. Everybody sees an event differently, but we have a fabulous sense of collaboration, and that leads to a unique product for every occasion.”
When I spoke to Stephanie, I had the moon on my mind. I had recently finished research for a project on lunar design and architecture. The European Space Agency has considered Norman Foster and his British-based, global architectural partnership as creators of the first lunar settlements. Foster has been greatly influenced in his career by Buckminster Fuller, and the ESA has reportedly engaged Foster’s firm to reimagine Fuller’s geodesic dome structures — and rename them “lunardesic domes,” I assume.
When Fuller created his geodesic dome designs in the 1950s, he dreamed that the invention might “house the world.” If Norman Foster contributes to our lunar colonization efforts, Fuller’s dream may come true — and that would open up all sorts of possibilities for interplanetary partying. This could put creative event artists like Stephanie Grace into orbit.
“Planning for a party on the moon would be tricky,” says Stephanie. “In terms of practicalities, that would be the hardest destination I ever considered. Everything that would normally go in a centerpiece, for example, would have to be glued down. And aesthetically, we’re not dealing with bright colors here. Everything would look like Armani. It would be clean and sleek. We would use lots of whites and gray, and containers might be made from lunar materials, metals and ceramic. The beauty of the moon is in its simple geometry.”
But the fundamentals wouldn’t change much, even for lunar parties. According to Stephanie, “To succeed anywhere, in anything, takes passion. If you do what you love, you’ll be successful, and that makes life joyful every day.”
For more, visit stephaniegrace.com or call (310) 467-4189 or (760) 267-7255.Contact Joanna Dehn Beresford
at truewrite@yahoo.com.
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