Eventique - April 2022

Working With Celebrities It’s Not as Glamorous as You Think!

knew he’d have my back if anything went south with my internet connection. On the big day, I holed up in his toolshed to produce and direct the show with my laptop, iPad and cellphone, ready for action. Pretty glamorous, right? Meanwhile, Rob and his wife, Marisol Maldonado, tuned in from their Westchester home. They were the gala’s MCs, ready to walk an audience of 120,000+ people through the night’s event from their iPad, which was being streamed to Facebook, YouTube, and Twitch. We’d never done an event quite like this before with so many pieces of the live show joining from different locations around the country, but we’d taken every reasonable step to ensure it went smoothly. Mere hours before the gala began the weather turned against us. A tremendous rainstorm swept into the mountains, pounding the roof of my tool shed hideout and soaking Rob’s house in Westchester. I checked and rechecked my internet connection and it looked just fine.

When people find out that I plan high-profile events for a living, one of the questions they always ask is, “Have you met any celebrities?” After I say yes, the next question is inevitably, “What were they like, really?” The truthful answer isn’t what you’d think. To explain it, I like to tell a story about Rob Thomas, the lead singer of Matchbox Twenty. Back in 2020, Rob and I worked together on the To the Rescue! gala for The Humane Society of the United States. It’s a massive annual event and was one of the first major gatherings to go virtual due to COVID-19. As you might imagine, the setup was … unconventional, especially on my end. At the time due to the Pandemic, I was renting a home in the Pocono Mountains with my family and before the show, I made the trip to my cousin’s house nearby. The Wi-Fi in the rental house was not great and he’s a Wi-Fi guru, so I

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