A Note from Liza:

There are certain people you meet professionally who eventually become part of your family’s story.

Mindy is one of those people for me.

She planned four unforgettable days in Miami for my daughter Alfee’s wedding and later created my stepdaughter Sabrina’s beautiful wedding celebration in California. Years later, we still talk about those weekends.

Of course I remember the flowers, the tables, the details and the extraordinary production.

But what I remember most is how it felt.

That is what Mindy understands better than almost anyone.

She has created weddings and celebrations for some of the most recognizable people in the world. She has built a business over 35 years, remained at the top of an intensely competitive industry and developed relationships with clients that now span generations.

But when I asked her the difference between an expensive event and an unforgettable one, she gave me the answer that defines this entire conversation.

You cannot pay for emotion.

Mindy calls it the “mush factor.”

It is the moment everyone in the room can feel that the couple loves each other. It is the handwritten note waiting inside a place card. It is using a grandmother’s vase in the flowers because only the family will understand why it matters. It is knowing that a bride’s cake collapsing is not the end of the world, but simply another story she will tell one day.

And behind all of that beauty is a serious business.

Mindy started with custom stationery at home and almost accidentally became an event planner after one client convinced her to take on a birthday party. That one event led to ten more. Her first celebrity wedding, for Brooke Shields and Andre Agassi, taught her how quickly she could solve problems under pressure. And over time, reputation became something even more valuable than recognition: trust.

Today, nearly half of her business comes from legacy clients. She is planning weddings for brides whose birth announcements she once created.

That says everything.

We talk about creativity, competition, budgets, family conflict, destination events, changing wedding trends, why photography matters, why she tells young planners to pick up the phone instead of texting and why she still loves the work enough to joke that she quits every Sunday and comes back Monday morning.

But this episode is really about something larger.

How do you build a career around other people’s most meaningful moments and remain worthy of being invited back for the next generation?

Mindy has spent decades answering that question.

And she has made an unforgettable business out of it.