WISHCLOUDS Launch Party, October 2013

Event Stylist: Miss Party Mom Event Planning

MPM Intern: Kristin Lethbridge

Photography by Felix @ LA Look Book

Background: WISHCLOUDS is a shopping/social media website with an app that alerts you as to when things go on sale... hence the tag line: "Know Without Fail, When Things Go On Sale". Another aspect of the site is that when you "wish" for something others following you can see just what you're wanting... let's say... for Christmas! It's pretty brilliant. If only I could convince Shawn to follow me. This party was to "present" the site to fashion, home and beauty bloggers so that they could give it press to their readers- WISHCLOUDS market: people interested in fashion, beauty and home decor.

I've already written about how I landed this amazing gig... if you somehow missed that story you can find it here... or here... It's a fun one.

Behind the scenes I worked like crazy with Sara of Green Elephant Prints who's located in my town. It was nice to be able to physically meet with her and sketch out some ideas as to what I had in mind. She was amazing with her turn-around time and quality of work and I highly recommend her if you're looking for a printables designer.

For 2 weeks before the event I spent countless hours (except I DID count them this time) emailing all of my vendors making sure I had everything I needed to provide candy/desserts for 50 top LA bloggers and a few of the WISHCLOUDS Tastemakers (celebs) that would be there. We had cookies coming from San Diego- me coming from the Central Coast and organic marshmallows coming from Canada... I'd say we spanned a pretty good amount of land for an LA based party!

I had all of my signage printed in my town at Local Copies... and true to there always being at least one pre-party malfunction I went in to pick them up and they were all 3 feet long verses 5 feet long. At first I was annoyed and then I realized I'd be able to keep all of the wrongly sized signs and hey- having 2 sets of signs never hurts!

I made the 3+ hour trip down to LA on Monday. On Tuesday I met Ashley, head of social media for WISHCLOUDS at the office where the party would be and I got myself a little tour so I could better visualize my set up.

Let me tell you it was good to be back in LA- traffic and all I was loving being back in the grind of a big city. You can seriously take the girl out of the city but you can NOT take the city out of this girl! I love all the chaos a big city brings... and knowing I was there setting up something I'd worked on for 2 weeks straight, it was exciting. Having grown up not far- distance wise- from Beverly Hills (but VERY far economically speaking!) I spent a lot of my weekends in High School begging my mom to drive me down to Melrose and Wilshire so I could go shopping. I hadn't been down in that area for a while though and was so happy to figure out exactly where the building was and unload my first load of party stuff.

Wednesday I was up and at um' at 7am with the glue gun plugged in and the glitter flying in order to finish up some last minute things. I ran some party errands and left the South Bay at 1pm for Wilshire Blvd. I got there, unloaded on a huge dolly and then shimmied my way in to setting up my dessert table way earlier than I was supposed to... I was told I could start at 4pm (party started at 6pm) and I knew that wasn't going to fly with everything else that needed to be done- I was sweating just thinking about setting everything up in 2 hours.

Set up was pretty intense. Everyone in the office had there own thing to be working on and we were all working like crazy until 10 minutes before guests arrived... slightly stressful! I am so used to having my sweet interns to boss around and at this party- I didn't have that luxury! If anything- I was the intern! It was fun watching Jamie take a boring board room and turn it in to a gifting suite full of amazing swag I was drooling over... it really made the whole fashion blogger thing ultra appealing since that's who would be hitting the suite up. Hummm...

During the party I was able to network like crazy (I haven't collected that many business cards since my Mattel function days!) and eat some amazing sushi and drink unlimited amounts of Diet Coke... definitely a major job perk. My main job however was to help people fill up custom WISHCLOUDS candy bags. I also had little glitter take-out style boxes if they wanted a quick way to get a sampling of every candy on the table. All of the sweets were a hit and I received so many compliments on the table that I was on [WISH]CLOUD 9 the whole night, what- like I wasn't going to do that?

I seriously owe it all to these peeps who cranked me out some amazing items on a 2 week turn around... my VENDORS!

xo Party or Die xo

kenna

Graphics: Green Elephant Prints

Logo Cookies, Cloud Cookie Pops, Cake Pops and Cake Balls: Roni's Sugar Creations

Cloud Marshmallows and Marshmallow Pops: Kimberley's Kitchen

"Sweets" Pin Wheel Sign, Jumbo Coffee Filters, Coffee Filter Garland: Peckled

WISHCLOUDS Custom Photo Props: Tweedle Dee Designs

Cake Pop Bling Sticks and Bling Candy Scoops: Made by a Princess

Blue Sixlets, Vanilla Taffy and Rock Candy: Candy Galaxy

Hot Air Balloon Lantern, Cloud Photo Backdrop: Oriental Trading Company

Turq Glitter Take-Out Boxes: Michael's Crafts

The CEO's of WISHCLOUDS 

Fashion blogger Beth Jones on the left

The winner of one of the 7 iPad Mini's up for grabs... I thought about jumping her for it.

John Salley of the NBA and Teala Dunn of Nickelodeon's Dog With A Blog