The Easy, Ready-Made Wedding That Looks Anything But

Racked is no longer publishing. Thank you to everyone who read our work over the years. The archives will remain available here; for new stories, head over to Vox.com, where our staff is covering consumer culture for The Goods by Vox. You can also see what we’re up to by signing up here.

Grid View

Expand

• The first of White Label's six customizable designs: Ooh La La
• Falling For
• Love Lines
• Still
• Sweet Floral
• Cosmopolitan
• Falling For as interpreted by Erin Hiemstra of Apartment 34
• Believe it or not, this is also Falling For, as interpreted by Crystal Gentilello of Rue Magazine
• Another pretty place setting by the White Label gals
• Graphic boxes of flowers...
• Gold and black as far as the eye can see
• The women behind White Label: Gloria Wong (left) and Jubille Lau

Brides today have it made. They can check out Pinterest and immediately get a zillion ideas for place settings, tablecloths, chairs, candles, centerpieces, decorations, you name it. Then again, idea overload can be crazy-making for a bride who also has to choose her dress, a venue, a caterer, invitations, a cake and more—all the while dealing with input from opinionated family members. That's where event designer Gloria Wong and event planner Jubilee Lau come in. The two joined forces in May to create White Label, a "wedding in a box" concept that looks gorgeously custom.

And it is custom, to an extent. White Label consists of six designs, which include pretty much everything you'll need to show your guests an amazing time, excluding the food—but including the cake! Brides start with the basics of each design, then have the option to mix and match elements to make it their own. Wong and Lau help with your decisions every step of the way. We chatted with Lau about how she works with brides, how much they should expect to pay, and what type of bride the service is best for. Also, yes, Jubilee is her real first name. "Real and legal since the day I was born!" We think she found her calling.

1. How did you come up with the concept for White Label?
"Gloria and I have established a reputation for producing very custom experiences for our clients, where every detail is designed and created from scratch. We work with budgets ranging from $200K to over a million dollars with our custom clients. We've realized though, that not all clients want that of us, nor do they want to spend that kind of money on their wedding. Some simply love our style and our ways of working, and prefer to have a simple, yet beautiful wedding without all the bells and whistles and hand-holding. We want to cater to these clients too because their weddings can be just as special! White Label was created at first, as an "Event in a Box" concept, but Gloria and I have such high standards for our services we couldn't leave it at that. So we spent a year tailoring the entire concept and experience to make it an enhanced version of the "Event in a Box" concept, collaborating with talents such as Hunt Littlefield, Good on Paper, and Studio Cake, and adding in the event planning part to support the logistics, production, and hospitality of the event.

Also, we recognized how overwhelmed brides feel these days with the huge surge of images and information out there. We've talked to brides who have 20+ Pinterest boards and have no idea how to narrow down their ideas. White Label was created to make it easier for brides to identify a style they love, then work with us to play things up to personalize the look."

2. What type of bride would be a good fit with White Label?
"A pretty wide range, actually. Brides planning destination weddings tend to love the simplicity and convenience of White Label. Brides who want a beautiful, stylish wedding, but need to keep their costs in check also find White Label to be of exceptional value given the tailored designs and overall experience. Brides who simply don't care to have decor elements designed and built from scratch can certainly appreciate the way White Label allows them to easily pick and choose from existing choices."

3. What does White Label offer that other wedding planners don't?
"I think White Label has created a system that quickly and easily help clients to identify their wedding style, and has also created a seamless process for design and logistics to merge beautifully together. Our system makes the whole process very efficient, which our clients appreciate because they're so busy with their work, school, and social lives. As with our custom clients, we also offer hospitality services on the wedding day for White Label clients, where we have anywhere from 1-3 people on our team focused just on taking care of the wedding party and immediate families. We hear that's not typical, and our clients have always loved that about us."

4. How far in advance should a bride book your services?
"We've booked a wedding two weeks out, and we've booked a wedding 14 months out. We prefer not to book beyond 14 months out because when the planning is stretched so long, there are a lot of lull periods which makes the experience less enjoyable for clients."

5. How do you work with brides? How many meetings will you typically have before the big day? Are you on site on the wedding day?
"For White Label, the whole event planning and design process is very streamlined, so most of the work is done via email and Skype, especially because most of our clients happen to be from out of town. We have identified a few key areas that would require a meeting, if at all possible, such as a status checkpoint mid-way, a site walk through, a table mock-up, etc. but mostly we just want to save the clients time and help them to be as efficient as possible. On the wedding day, both Gloria and I have teams on site to orchestrate the entire event, from providing hospitality services to the wedding party and families to managing the load in/out process to overseeing the vendor set up, to orchestrating the ceremony?.we're basically there to run the entire event just as we would for our custom clients. The wedding day is when it all comes together. Even with White Label, we couldn't just hand things over and let someone else do the job for us!"

6. Can you give us a general price range of your services?
"The event planning services start at $6500 for one of our highly experienced associate planners. The decor would require a custom quote but starts at about $12,000 for 100 guests, to include flowers, stationery, wedding cake, escort card display, and all setup/break down of event in those areas. Upgrades are available if the clients want a little extra something. We just had a wedding this past weekend where the clients chose an all white palette for our Cosmopolitan line, and added a beautiful chiffon canopy with chandeliers over their head table. Gloria was brilliant when she designed the 6 styles for White Label because each one can be very versatile, and the options are endless!"

7. With a name like Jubilee, were you destined to become a party planner? Sorry, had to ask!! :)
"Haha, I get asked all the time if this is my real name, and it is! I've always loved parties growing up, and find lots of reasons to celebrate with a party. For as long as I can remember, I'm always throwing parties for friends and families to celebrate birthdays, beginning of summer, end of summer, back to school?you name it. :) I just love the festivities and energy at parties. Naturally, when I seriously thought about my career path after college, I wanted to pursue something along those lines?.and ended up in the wedding industry. Weddings are the epitome of parties and I genuinely love them, even though the actual planning work is a lot less glamorous than most people think. I really enjoy how personal and creative weddings are though, and because each one is truly so different, it doesn't get tiring for me even after 10 years!"
· All Weddings Week posts [Racked SF]