GATHER
13 years! 13 years of meeting new people and helping curate, organize, design and counsel clients and friends on design projects from weddings to flowers to interiors to private classes. I took a little break from weddings as interiors and hospitality took off like a freight train. Plus, Covid made gatherings really not fun. I’m glad to be back spreading my time between all the things I really love - weddings, interiors, events at the studio (which will soon be a shop!) - so much opportunity to evolve and I’m feeling really in line with it all.
In the last six months of figuring out where I wanted to go next, I finally had the space and time to reflect on what I love most about what I’ve gotten to do over the years. Gratefully, here it is (in no particular order):
Getting to work with my most trusted family and friends to see and experience things we maybe wouldn’t have ever gotten to do together.
Traveling across country to stuff invitation envelopes with my California bride and her family.
Having Dolly Parton as a guest at a wedding and seeing her in the cutest outfit ever - lavender blazer and skirt with bedazzled matching gloves covered in crystal butterflies (that matches the butterflies in her beautiful blonde hair!!)
Learning the very tough lesson of how I cannot manage people’s emotions, even when it’s so hard watching families and clients navigate such hard transitional dynamics. This goes for weddings, industry friends and their evolving businesses and clients redesigning beloved restaurants. The process of design can be emotional and as a very empathetic person, there have been moments I definitely internalized things I now understand I can’t. Putting up that boundary is easier for me now (I even wear a ring to remind me of it every day…) but also makes me feel deep sadness to watch anyone experience this - I just know how to better manage it. Change is hard.
Producing a wedding on a mountain top in Eastern Kentucky for 400 people with ZERO natural resources available. I still can’t believe we pulled it off but we did somehow! Fireworks and everything.
Getting to redo the Butchertown studio. When Whitney and I signed the lease on the Wenzel studio (the one I’m currently in) right after I found out I was pregnant, it was so exciting. Redoing the previously vacant, dilapidated building and bringing it back to its glory was such J O Y. I remember saying ‘Kit will be five when our lease is up!’ And he’s now 6. How time flies.
Getting to build THE Mint Wall at the airport. Fell right in line with my weird talent stack of building displays with natural elements…The best part of this experience was getting a behind the scenes tour for my Mom - she is OBSESSED with the airport and her excitement was beyond.
Being a team with Chris and conceptualizing together all the RANDOM things he’s built. Here’s his list of faves: drawing plans, building a beer wall, constructing a mint wall, planing down wood boards to make wooden table runners (the perfect excuse to buy a planer……), getting to use a blower to clean off a pristine white carpeted tent floor, foraging for branches, moving plants to cover satellite dishes….so many things!
Traveling to Greece for the Elysian Workshop to design and style all the photoshoots. It finally gave me the best experience to get to Greece and experience a culture I’ve always been raised side by side with at church. And then after that, flying to Romania and wandering around Bucharest. Forever inspired by it.
Getting to be a part of the redesign of Holy Grale. It is such an important spot in Louisville and I’ve always respected it so much. After Kit was born, I made Chris drive me there to get a hamburger. Through it, I got to get to know Lori, the visionary co-owner behind it. . And while she was finishing her training as a Pilates instructor, I got to be one of her test bodies through it. As a former dancer and as a person struggling with chronic body pain, the timing of her coming into my life was truly DIVINE. She not only helped me strengthen my body, she inspired me through a time when I really needed it.
Traveling to Nepal to do flowers for the Beyond Workshop (similar to The Beyond Workshop but wildly different in experience). Foraging for flowers on off a mountain cliff…..drinking warm milk in a flower nursery, seeing the Himalayan Mountains in front of our faces after DAYS at the hotel where they were covered in clouds. And this doesn’t even cover the week after the workshop when we were exploring the city of Kathmandu providing acts of service. Forever engrained in me….
Meeting ALLLLL the vendor friends, local and afar, especially ones who I am still very close with. Some of the best, most intuitive, empathetic helpers that exist. They love to serve others and I find that to be such a special quality in a person.
Finally getting around permitting to be able to design and redo the Market Street Apartment, which is now one of the rentals (STAY II) At the start of this project, we knew there was an issue regarding needing an insanely expensive (upwards of $30k+ I think!) sprinkler system which would have killed the project. Chris’ mentor and boss, John Warmack (a code wizard!) helped figure it out. John has since passed away and I so wish he could see where Chris is now and what we’ve accomplished with that space.
I’m so grateful.