They Make Parties Pop
More and more hosts are working with professional event planners to pull off pictureperfect celebrations. But is that expertise worth the extra cost?
What do you do after fighting cancer? If you’re Sandra Durante, you throw a party. Diagnosed in December 2020, the Upper Saddle River resident was starting to feel herself again by September, and to mark that milestone, her husband suggested they celebrate with an all-out bash for 60 of their family members and closest friends. She loved the idea, but she didn’t much relish the thought of all the work that a big party entailed.
“I wanted it to be special,” she says. “I wanted it to be beautiful. But because I’d had such a terrible year, I really wanted to step back and let someone else take over.” So she hired Aimee Petersen, an event planner and founder of The Perfect Shindig in Wyckoff, to shoulder the burden of planning and supervising the event.
You don’t have to be recuperating to feel the urge to celebrate—or to dread the slog of putting together a big party with lots of moving parts. As celebrations have become larger, more elaborate, and more personalized, there’s been a heightened demand for event planners like Petersen, who notes that “people want a very curated, very detailed, very Instagram-worthy experience.”
The market-research firm Business Research Insights says the global market for party planning is expected to expand from $6.4 billion this year to $22.6 billion over the next decade. That’s especially impressive given that 30 years ago, the term “event planner” was virtually unknown, and the few people plying that fledgling trade catered almost exclusively to corporations and the super-rich. Now event planners work with party givers from all walks of life, orchestrating celebrations from first birthdays, sweet sixteens and bar and bat mitzvahs to graduations, anniversary and retirement parties—and, of course, weddings. (It should be noted that the terms “event planner” and “party planner” are often used interchangeably, though some use the former to refer exclusively to planners of corporate events and the latter to describe planners of social events like birthday parties; to complicate things further, many event and party planners work on weddings as well, and so-called wedding planners sometimes plan parties other than weddings.)
PLANNERS PROLIFERATE
When Christine Figliuolo planned her first wedding in 1995, “there wasn’t much need of a professional planner for the average bride,” she says. Since then, the Waldwick-based proprietor of Creations by Christine Events has worked on hundreds of weddings and other events in and around Bergen County, and she credits reality television for some of that success. Shows like Say Yes to the Dress, My Fair Wedding, Disney’s Fairy Tale Weddings and Amazing Wedding Cakes (not to mention My Super Sweet 16 and Martha Stewart’s Table Wars) have upped the ante for what we expect our celebrations to look like. (“I think it was My Super Sweet 16 that really kicked it off for event planners,” Figliuolo says.)
Social media played a role as well, as party givers posted scenes from their elaborate events online, further fueling a desire for Instagrammable celebrations. (Figliuolo notes that an increasing number of brides are bringing in content creators to document their nuptials.) And as parties moved from traditional event venues to more exotic locales such as beaches, barns and country estates, the need for planners expanded—now, at some spots, they’re even mandatory. When Hillsdale resident Victoria DiPiazza decided to hold her wedding at the Glynwood Center for Regional Food and Farming in Cold Spring, New York, she was informed that hiring a professional planner was a prerequisite. “The venue only supplied the property—you had to bring everything in, from tents to tableware,” she explains. It was a complex undertaking with the potential to go sideways fast without the supervision of a pro.
WHY HIRE A PLANNER?
Julia Martin and her family were halfway through planning her wedding at the Ridgewood Country Club when they realized that putting together an event with 250 guests was way out of their wheelhouse. “It was just too stressful thinking about how it was actually going to unfold,” she says. “Bringing in a wedding planner made it much easier.” Large parties can be particularly hard to organize; the seating plan alone can require the combined skills of a mathematician and a diplomat. Planners take over that task and many others, starting with the venue. Some party givers, of course, know from day one where they’d like to hold their event, but others are completely clueless. Lauren Simon, proprietor of Little Pink Bow Parties in Mahwah, notes that “a lot of the time, the biggest hurdle is finding a venue that fits in with the party you’re looking to throw.” To help her clients nail down a site, she asks questions—lots of them: “What kind of food are you looking for?” “Do you want people to be sitting down?” “Are you looking for them to be mingling?” “Do you want the venue to be a restaurant where people are being served and cleaned up after?” “Would you prefer to hire an outside vendor with waitstaff to man a buffet?”
After that, decisions cascade: Do you need a tent? Flowers? Tableware? Linens? Music? What about invitations? Color scheme? Theme? Seasoned event planners often have long relationships with vendors, so they can not only match them to party hosts’ expectations but also vouch for their reliability. During the off months of January through March, for example, Figliuolo spends much of her time meeting with vendors, old and new. “I’m making sure I have a nice arsenal of good, reliable, reputable professionals I trust,” she says.
Durante says her planner, Aimee Petersen, “always gave me choices of vendors: two different tent companies, three different caterers, suggestions for musicians.” And as for the party’s décor, Petersen offered copious inspiration pictures to help Durante pull her vision together.
For many people, the most valuable service a planner provides is making things run smoothly on the day of the event. “This is live theater,” says Figliuolo. “You get one chance to do it, and you’ve got to know what you’re doing.” Martin remembers that on the day of her wedding, her planner, Christine Figliuolo, “always had her head on a swivel—sometimes I’d realize I was looking for something, and she would just appear with it. I’m sure there were so many things that she did that I didn’t even notice because, to some degree, I felt like a guest—I didn’t have to worry about anything, which made it very enjoyable for me.”
That’s especially important when you’re faced with the unexpected, like massive flight delays the day before your destination wedding or catastrophic weather events. In 2023, for example, Durante threw a second party to celebrate life (mostly because the first one had been so much fun). Like her original event, it was set in a backyard tent—a fine choice unless a tropical storm moves in, which was exactly what happened.
“I probably would’ve been a nervous wreck,” says Durante. “But our planner got the tent company on the phone: They put up walls; they put in a heater; they built a covered walkway from the tent to my door. And it was perfect— not a drop of rain entered that tent.”
GOING IT ALONE
Of course, not everyone needs or wants a planner. June Lee threw herself a big 30th-birthday shindig and handled the 40-guest event entirely on her own. “I wanted full creative control,” says the Midland Park resident, “plus I’m an organization freak—I kind of relished the challenge.” She doesn’t regret doing it solo, but she does wish she’d “recruited a couple of friends to help me on the day of.”
Ridgewood resident Donald Murray also felt confident in his ability to plan and execute a large event—specifically, his own wedding. The biggest challenge, he says, was the seating plan, which had to be adjusted every time a guest unexpectedly bowed out—something that happened several times. If he throws another big party, he says, “I’d do it myself but use AI more to streamline things.” In fact, in 2025, according to the wedding website The Knot, 35 percent of couples used AI to help plan their big day, employing it for everything from, yes, the creation of seating plans to researching etiquette to nailing down a theme.
Besides self-confidence, a penchant for organization and a desire for creative control, economics undoubtedly plays a role in the decision to go it alone. Even if you’re forgoing a pricey venue and specialty vendors, the cost of food and drink alone can be daunting; The Knot reports that the average cost of a wedding, for instance, has risen from $28,000 in 2019 to $34,000 in 2025. And hiring an event planner could add anywhere from $500 to $10,000 and up to the expense of your event, depending on its size, complexity and what, specifically, you’re hiring the planner to do. (Some people, for example, only want an event planner to supervise on the day of the event or to do everything up to, but not including, the day of.)
The folks we spoke with who opted for a professional planner say they’d do it again, especially for a large event, citing, in particular, what they saved in both time and frustration. And they were especially adamant about having a pro on hand for the day of the event. Instead of chasing down vendors and dealing with seating mishaps, they could eat, drink, dance and mingle, worry-free.
“It was a celebration for me that I didn’t have to do anything for, which was really nice,” says Durante of her recovery party in 2021. “I was the girl of the hour.”
EVEN FOR DIY PARTIES, THERE’S HELP
Not ready for a pro to plan your event? These apps and websites can make solo party planning a whole lot easier:
• SocialTables—No matter how many guests are on your list, SocialTables makes seating them a snap. socialtables.com
• Zola—Specifically for wedding planning, Zola lets you track budget, RSVPs, vendors and vendor contracts and guides you through the creation of a wedding website. zola.com
• Evite—The king of paperless invitation apps, Evite helps you design and send invitations and keep track of RSVPs. It can also send reminders to late responders. evite.com
• Pro Party Planner—This all-in-one tool helps you manage your guest list, plan your menu, create and stick to a budget and more. propartyplanner.com
