Disney Magic at Eventique PRODUCTION MANAGER CARA BERGER KNOWS THE MOUSE’S SECRETS!
As you’d imagine, Cara was already an expert when she started working for the Eventique family of companies in 2017 — and it’s a good thing because her first event with Eventique was something of a trial by fire! “Our client ended up hiring Eventique to do all of the fabrication just a week before the event! That same weekend was Memorial Day weekend, and I was in a friend’s wedding. I was at the wedding getting calls all day about how the client wouldn’t approve the budget and we had about a week to pull it off. Of course, we ended up pulling it off because that’s what we do. On the day of, I was in charge of the walkie talkie of 50 people including the host, greeter, and catering.” Despite the stress, Cara said the event “ended up being perfect” and is one of the highlights of her time at Eventique along with IPsoft’s “Fire & Ice”-themed holiday party at the Museum of Natural History NYC. That event let her and her team really exercise their creative freedom — one of Cara’s favorite parts of the job. “We created icebergs in the furniture and a moving northern lights photo booth,” she recalls. “It was not your typical decor! We were able to get creative, using not just flowers but fabrication and 3D items that made the atmosphere really cool.” Event planning has been a lifelong dream of Cara’s, and she’s thrilled to live it at Eventique. Growing up, she was always the one who “took control of planning” get- togethers with friends, from her soccer team or summer camp. Today, friends still turn to her for help planning their weddings when she’s not busy working, staying fit (she ran 500 miles last year), or hanging out with her blue merle Pomeranian, Lyla. “I always wanted to be an event planner or something in the social field. I’m a very social person — I talk a lot — and when I went to school, that was my degree right away,” Cara says. That clarity of vision is obvious from the moment you meet Cara. If you work with her for your next event, she may even use a few Disney secrets to make your attendees’ experience magical.
The University of Central Florida has an entire class in “Walt Disney Secrets” — and Eventique’s production manager, Cara Berger, took it! “Disney sponsored part of the school of hospitality at University of Central Florida where I double majored,” she explains. “They pretty much helped guide guest speakers and professors. To graduate, you had to do X amount of paid internships [at Disney] because with an events degree, you have to be hands-on to understand it.” Cara chose to work at Disney’s Swan and Dolphin Resort handling event planning for the hotels as well as private events. “I was a little bit more boring compared to my friends — they were the actual princesses and the characters!” she says. As “boring” as it may have been (and frankly we doubt it), working at Disney gave Cara a crash course in the type of event planning and coordinating she does today for Eventique. After her stint at the Happiest Place on Earth, she transitioned into the nightlife industry. Her experience led her from working for music festivals to running the events department at a well-known venue with several spaces: Metropolitan Pavilion.
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