Rachel Hagen

Founder, Lead Event Designer & Wedding Consultant

I do personal. I am inspired by people, normal people like you and me. I love their stories. It’s who I am, but not everything I am.

I am a newlywed. We’re still counting anniversaries as months rather than years.

I loved planning my own wedding. The last line of our invitation read, “Dinner, dessert, dancing and ridiculous amounts of joy to follow.” That was important to us.

I love my husband for so many reasons. Yes, he’s everything I dreamed of, but also because he drinks coffee. I made a list of 100 things I was looking for in a guy before I met him–drinks coffee was on it because although I can’t stand the taste, I want to smell it brewing every morning for the rest of my life.

I am a life-long event planner. In over 10 years of professional experience, I’ve coordinated galas and dinners for 300, workshops for 50 and tradeshows for 50,000. I love logistics and details. I always have. I am organized and methodical, but not extreme. I have a junk drawer too.

I see my surroundings in terms of color and shape and texture. As a kindergartner, I would go home and tell my mother everything my teacher wore that day. It is how I view the world.

I am a designer. As a young child I spent hours and hours making my mud pies beautiful before they could be placed in the mailbox oven. I still make things beautiful, but today use my natural aptitude toward design to infuse weddings with the inherent beauty of the personalities, passions and lives of the bride and groom.

I organize M&Ms into color patterns. Of course, doing so leads to the inevitable consumption of the entire bag in too little time—you can’t just have one green in a mix of orange, brown and yellow and no one wants an extra brown that doesn’t fit in the pattern.

I find that my list of books to read continues to grow, all the while, I read and turn pages almost every day.

I grew up in the heart of Midwest, but made stops in downtown Chicago, upstate New York and San Francisco before landing in Colorado. Each place infused its own touch, a gratefulness for sweet simplicity from South Dakota, architecture from Chicago, quaint and cozy from upstate New York and an appreciation of fashion, art and design from San Francisco.

I love to window shop, but have vowed to only buy things I truly adore. I could walk and walk streets and stores for hours.

I grab a stick of Carefree bubble gum each afternoon around 3:00. It’s my late-day pick me up.

I love to travel. I think road trips are romantic. I’ve worn a backpack around Europe. I’ve driven across country 4 times and taken a different route each trip. I’ve been in the jungles of Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands. I visited the farm my grandfather grew up on in Norway and my grandmother’s hometown, London.

I love big earrings and red lipstick.

I adore flowers. If the truth be known, I didn’t put my bridal bouquet down until it was time to dance because I loved it so much. I spent 10+ years of weekends as a floral designer.

I love orange juice, fried egg sandwiches, my Italian husband’s marinara, French macarons, and green tea.

And, I love what I do and the clients I am blessed to work alongside.