“To be candid, becoming a wedding planner after getting married was the furthest thing from what I wanted to be.” Today’s woman dreamer, Tanvi Desai Rana, is a woman to know in the wedding and events industry. As the lead planner of Mint To Be Events, Tanvi has planned weddings all over the world for the past 12 years. Tanvi reflects on her career, including the first wedding she ever planned, and shares her expert tips on hiring a planner versus DIY, Covid-19 Precautions, budgeting, and bringing your dream wedding to light. She shares, “The advice I would give to my younger self and other wedding planners is to embrace wedding planning as an opportunity to touch people’s lives.” Enjoy Tanvi’s story!

1)      Tell us your story. What inspired your passion for wedding and event planning? 

In talking to many of my peers, many wedding planners get involved in this business after having planned their own wedding that they extend the infatuation of it into planning for others.  To be candid, becoming a wedding planner after getting married was the furthest thing from what I wanted to be.  In fact, I couldn’t wait for a break from planning and to escape to our honeymoon for a much needed break.   I realized however after getting married, that if I were to remain married, I’d have to join the wedding industry as my husband, who happens to be an entertainer, was out servicing weddings nearly every weekend.  At the time I was an electrical engineer working full time, and with him gone on the weekends, the only time we possibly had to spend with each other were at his weddings.  I would tag along with him and he would ask me to help prep the timeline for when he’d have to make announcements, ask the banquet staff when doors would open, or coordinate with the catering staff so that he can announce dinner.  At first, I could not understand his commitment to the business. When working in this industry, you almost have to consume yourself to a point where you have to become a part of the client’s family, wherein you are part of not only their success but also part of their failures.  That’s when I realized, wedding planning is not a job or a role, but rather embracing a family as your own and helping their celebration to the finish line.  The actual event is no different than project management at work, where you learn of the client’s requirements (their vision), translate them in terms that your workers understand (vendor management) and execute the project through fruition (the celebration).   The only difference is there is a heightened “human” element to it.   Wedding planning is no different than work, except you help plan who they hire for the cake and eat it too.

2) You have planned numerous weddings around the world, helping so many people celebrate their special day, including destination weddings. What were some of your favorite weddings you got to be a part of? What were some clients or stories that you would like to share? 

There is no one wedding more important than another as I pour my heart into all of them.  Every single wedding has a story beyond the celebration.  There are times where we are laughing behind the scenes and other times where we are sharing stories with our clients.  I guess the weddings that are our favorites are the ones where we were able to solve unforeseen obstacles.  Take for example, a few years ago we were helping a New York City Tamil bride get married to her U.K. Buddhist Sri Lankan groom at the Hard Rock in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic.  As confusing as that may sound, every detail was planned for an outdoor setting, including the sangeet on a patio.   We planned for an alternative space if the weather didn’t cooperate, but imagine minutes into the sangeet, noting no forecast of rain for days and then without notice having 6 inches of torrential rain flood the entire function.  Our bride was devastated!  There was little we could do.  However they rallied around each other, and gave new meaning to the term “monsoon wedding”.   It was probably the most exciting part of all their celebrations.

3)What are your top 3 tips for planning a wedding, particularly during covid? 

There is still a large consensus that a wedding planner is an added unnecessary cost.  The advantage of having a wedding planner is to allow the client to focus on the vision of their event and allow the planners to coordinate everything to make that vision happen.   Without a planner, a client must evaluate multiple vendors, negotiate price points, and then somehow coordinate all of the vendors to come together on the day of to make it happen.  Often, vendors do not have time to talk to each other, and so each body of work is coming in separately without knowledge of the other.  The planner acts as a horizontal layer across all vendors, like a manager, and directs all of them to perform in line with the client’s vision.  It’s almost like hiring a bunch of individual musicians to perform, but not having a director leading them in an orchestra. 

The first tip in wedding planning is to evaluate whether you need one; primarily by valuing the impact of a symphony of working as a single unit.

While using this analogy of the orchestra, every production has a different price point.  Some songs require more musicians, more instruments, more technology.  Other songs require an acoustic guitar and a single singer.  The budget of a wedding should reflect their “song” as in (tip #2) be realistic with your wedding budget.  There are ways to conduct any wedding at any price point as long as you are realistic with your expectations.  It is human nature to want the best bang for your buck, but as a wedding planner, while negotiations are part of the job, the priority is for finding and working the right vendor at the best quality within the spending power of the client.

Covid certainly presented a multitude of challenges in weddings.  During the pandemic, the wedding world literally shut down except for small functions in people’s own backyards.  The weddings that were slated during the peak of the pandemic were either canceled or rescheduled for a further date.  Rescheduled weddings are still in flux as to what the mandates allow and don’t allow.  Take for example, we have been trying to plan a destination wedding in Spain for nearly two years, and with the latest variant of Covid, we may be postponing the celebration yet another year.  However, like the flu, covid may very well be our new normal.  For the time being, my tip #3 is to plan for as much as you can outdoors and in the summer.

4) Take yourself back to the first big event/wedding you ever planned. What advice would you give your younger self? 

Oh my, this is embarrassing.  When I finally decided to commit to wedding planning, nobody trusted my ability to help them with their wedding as I didn’t have any weddings to show forth.  Nor could I leverage social media the way new vendors do today.  In consulting with my husband, he suggested offering the services for free to build a name, and be happy with whatever the client gave, whether it be a tip or even just a referral to help book the next client.  The goal was to demonstrate my worth. 

I booked my first wedding planning nearly 12 years ago at the old Taj Hotel in Boston (now the Newbury Hotel) for free.  I was a bit naive and selfish labeling the client such that they had enough money to book a luxury venue, then why were they luring free services from me?  I woke up before everybody (5am) and didn’t leave until everybody had left the ballroom well after 1am the next day. I probably wore the wrong type of shoes, but even the best of shoes would have torn into my heels as I clearly remember my feet in extreme pain.   I literally cried the entire ride home, screaming at my husband, blaming him for luring me into this business.  Specifically, why would anybody expect to do so much work and not give a single dime for the effort.  It was almost as if your time wasn’t valuable.  I also had nothing to compare the effort to as I never had a wedding under my belt, so I pretty much thought I screwed everything up.

Several weeks went by and then I started getting calls from the mother of the bride.  I had already settled in my head that I was never going to plan another wedding again, and so arrogantly I avoided her.  I didn’t want to hear any complaints of how poorly I may have done.  To my surprise, the family found the address of my parent’s house, and had dropped off a package.  The package had a variety of gifts, from designer bags, to sweets and chocolates, but most importantly a handwritten letter.  To summarize the contents without getting too sentimental, the entire family not only were impressed with my work, but from that point forward promised me that I was part of their family, like their own daughter. 

The advice I would give to my younger self and other wedding planners is to embrace wedding planning as an opportunity to touch people’s lives.  If making an impact on people is not for you, then certainly don’t do it.  If you are doing it to make an income, don’t bother.  Without investing a lot of love, time and sore feet, it’s not worth it.  If you are patient enough and fully learn all aspects of the business, the amount of love you get in return will translate into so much success that will elate you to dreams you never once had imagined for yourself.   

5) As the platform for women dreamers, what is your next big dream? Any big destination you would like to plan an event or celebration at? 

I’ve been very fortunate to have planned weddings around the world.  It is in this experience where I have found a lot of inspiration as to how the world conducts weddings in a lavish way.  Being from New England, raising a family here, I truly feel that we can elevate our quality of weddings.  Weddings locally have been a bit stagnant and I truly believe that in the breed of being a Bostonian and protective of who we are. It is the Boston vs everybody’s mentality, in a humorous way.  This is no fault of the clients, as they are wanting to embrace new ideas as they see it in magazines and various social outlets.  But my next goal is to encourage local vendors to embrace change and establish a new way to celebrate in Boston.  Stay tuned…. 

Thank you Tanvi for sharing your inspiring story with us! We are excited to have you in our global women’s network!

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