I Never Planned to Build a Company Like This

People ask me all the time why Irene + Co. has offices in Connecticut, New York City, Park City, and now Newport. They assume there must have been a strategy behind it, that I mapped out exactly where I wanted the company to go and built each location one after another. The truth is, almost none of it happened that way. Looking back, I don’t think I ever chased growth. I chased ideas, places that inspired me, and people who cared deeply about this work. Somewhere along the way, those things quietly became a business.

When I started Irene + Co., my dream wasn’t to build a team or create a company with multiple locations. I wanted to design experiences that felt impossible until they existed. I’ve always loved taking an empty room and imagining what it could become. I was fascinated by the idea that a blank space could hold so much possibility, and that thoughtful design could completely change how someone experienced a moment. That part has never changed.

What surprises people is that I wasn’t trying to attract the luxury market. In fact, I actively avoided it. At the time, I knew enough to recognize that I wasn’t ready. Beautiful design wasn’t what intimidated me. Communication did. The level of consistency, organization, and anticipation required to serve those clients well was something I hadn’t built yet, and I respected that enough not to pretend otherwise. Rather than chasing bigger weddings, I focused on becoming a little better with every event we produced.

Around that same time, people began entering my life who shared that same mindset. I wasn’t posting job listings or trying to build a staff. Almost every person who joined Irene + Co. came into the company unexpectedly. I’d meet someone, see the way they approached hospitality, notice how much they genuinely cared, and before long we’d find ourselves talking about weddings, design, and the kind of experiences we wanted to create. They weren’t looking for just another event job, and I wasn’t looking to hire. We simply found each other.

What stood out wasn’t their résumé or the number of weddings they had worked. It was the way they noticed things other people overlooked. One person cared enough to make sure every linen seam faced the same direction because details mattered, even if no guest consciously noticed them. Another instinctively created extra space at a dinner table for a little boy who would rather color than sit through speeches because they understood that hospitality looks different for everyone. Someone else always thought about grandparents, accessibility, and the emotional flow of a room before anyone asked. Those aren’t the moments that end up in a portfolio, but they are the moments that define how an event feels.

It slowly dawned on me that I wasn’t hiring employees. I was investing in people who believed in the same things I believed in. If someone had a dream of becoming a planner, a producer, or a designer, maybe Irene + Co. could become the place where they discovered what they were capable of. That shift changed everything. One person became two. Two became four. Today, seven people contribute to our weddings every week, each bringing completely different strengths, perspectives, and talents. None of them became copies of me, and thankfully they weren’t supposed to. They made the company stronger precisely because they saw the world differently than I did.

At almost the same time, my own life was changing. Connecticut became home while New York remained part of my identity, and eventually Park City became another place that deeply inspired me. Opening an office there wasn’t about expansion for the sake of expansion. It was about creating a life that reflected the places I loved while acknowledging a simple truth: if I wanted to continue designing weddings in multiple states and still be present for my family, I couldn’t keep carrying everything alone.

That realization was one of the biggest turning points in my career. For years, I believed that being a good business owner meant doing everything myself. I thought the company depended on me being involved in every email, every timeline, every decision, and every production. What I didn’t realize was that I had become the bottleneck. The more I trusted our team with meaningful responsibility, the better everything became. Clients felt more supported because more people were thinking ahead. Communication became calmer. Timelines became stronger. Instead of losing control, we gained excellence.

The biggest surprise, though, was what happened to my creativity. Once I wasn’t spending every hour solving logistics, I finally had room to imagine again. I started asking bigger questions. What if this installation floated? What if dinner happened somewhere guests never expected? What if the reveal became part of the experience? Those ideas didn’t appear because I suddenly became more creative. They appeared because I finally had the space to think. The team wasn’t taking creativity away from me. They were protecting it.

Looking back now, I don’t think we grew because I decided to scale a business. I think we grew because I kept saying yes to people I believed in. I invested in their dreams, and in return they invested their time, talent, and hearts into this company. Together we created systems, refined our process, and slowly built a business that none of us could have created on our own. The weddings became more thoughtful, the client experience became stronger, and naturally the work began attracting clients who valued those things.

That’s why Newport feels less like a new market and more like the final chapter of a story that has been unfolding for years. New York taught me to dream. Connecticut taught me how to build a business. Park City reminded me to create with wonder. Newport has always represented something quieter for me. It’s where I spent time as a child wandering the shoreline, eating oysters fresh from the water, and imagining the stories hidden inside those historic mansions. Years later, I realized our clients loved those same places for the same reasons I did. We weren’t following market data. We were following meaning.

When I look back on this journey, I don’t see a business plan. I see a series of people, places, and moments that asked me to believe before I had proof. That’s true of every wedding we design, and it’s true of this company. The best things I’ve ever built started as an idea that only existed in someone’s imagination. All they needed was someone willing to believe in it long enough to help make it real.