Seeing the link between Teissia Treynet’s work and her Idyllwild Arts Academy education requires imagination. That is, until her excited explanation spills out.
The Class of 2002 Theatre graduate remembers learning “about opening a theatre and putting together a business plan for it, and set design gave me the design bug that helps me give a client the aesthetic she wants for her wedding.”
Last December, Teissia’s company, Firefly Events (http://firefly-events.com/about), added to its Los Angeles and New York locations a new office in “an amazing wedding market”: Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
“Learning acting as a discipline”—at Idyllwild and at DePaul University, in Chicago—“teaches you to read people. And you have to read a client to figure out if she wants romantic, edgy, super-modern. . . it makes putting on a wedding as exciting as the opening night of a play!”
Because a couple that shops seriously in the luxury-wedding market may have the means to get married anywhere, Firefly usually plans and designs between one and three destination weddings per year.
“We did a memorable one in Morocco: two weeks of traveling throughout the country to source from local markets, then a week in Tangier to pull everything together.”
Teissia enjoys travel enough to give some thought to opening more offices.
“You never know. . . maybe the South of France.”
But other plans occupy her now.
“There’s getting an interior-design division going, since we’re already doing it on the side. And writing a book: a planning guide that will be an educational tool for aspiring wedding planners. Plus another book about the emotional journey of wedding planning.”
That journey can be a challenge to navigate if people don’t know what they’re doing, which is why professionals like Teissia can be so helpful.