We planned our own wedding first.
Married, and it turns out, quite good at this. Between us we've spent years working in events and travel, which meant that by the time we were planning our own day, we already knew exactly where things tend to go wrong, and exactly what we'd want someone else to quietly handle. So we built the business we wish we'd been able to hire.
There We Are Then Events is what happens when that experience meets a fairly simple belief: some things are always worth paying someone else to do, especially on a day you don't get to have again.
We also run a Travel Counsellors franchise alongside the planning business, so when it comes to the honeymoon, we can book that too. No hand-off to a stranger right when you've just handed us the rest of your trust.
Gina
Gina is the spreadsheet-and-vision-board half of the operation, usually with both open at once. She has a degree in International Business and Tourism and spent over a decade in marketing, building other people's businesses, before deciding to build something a bit more adventurous: eight years as international cabin crew for a major airline, which took her properly round the world and taught her more useful travel advice than any guidebook could. She's naturally organised to a slightly alarming degree, genuinely happiest inside a well-built spreadsheet, and just as happy designing the small details nobody notices until they're missing. Outside of work, and mothering our two-year-old, Miles, she's usually found skiing, in a pool, or at the cinema.
Ari
Ari has spent his whole career in sound, working in theatres and arenas and touring internationally as Head of Sound. When COVID put theatre on shaky ground, he bought a Travel Counsellors franchise to run alongside it, and it turned out to suit him just as well: he's every bit as organised as Gina, loves a good network, and has built up contacts across the wedding industry that most planners would need years to gather from scratch. He's a genuine plane geek, still finds an excuse to travel whenever he can, and outside of all that is fully occupied being Daddy to Miles.
How we got here
We worked this out properly while planning our own wedding: between the two of us, we already had the actual skills this job needs, we just hadn't put them together yet. And with a toddler at home, and both of us at a point where neither of us wants to be away from him for work forever, the timing finally made sense. So we stopped planning other people's shows and other people's trips, and started planning days like the one we had.