Hidden Gems: Meet Russell & Ashelyn of Party With Russelyn

Today we’d like to introduce you to Russell & Ashelyn. Them and their team share their story with us below:

Ashelyn: “Russell and I met while I was working as the Director of Digital at Orlando Magazine. He waltzed into my office with a dozen boxes of pizzas (mind you, there were maybe eight of us in the office that day) promoting a new restaurant and venue in the Downtown area. Not one of us was upset! We chowed down as he pitched the magazine on participating in an influencer event he was hosting in a few weeks, and his plan totally worked. 

We worked together curating a guest list of influencers, swag, and sponsors. When I walked in the night of the event, there was a Fiat physically inside the venue. I asked how he got it inside (the venue was on the ground/lobby floor of a luxury condo building with standard doors) and he shrugged his shoulders and nonchalantly replied “I had someone come remove the doors and reinstall them.” Having pulled some pretty crazy stunts myself while working on events in NYC for over a decade, I thought to myself “Well then… I think I may have found another nut job like me!” 

Fast-forward to a year later, we joined forces to work on a venue together, and test the waters. We both have A TON of ideas and quickly realized a lot of our networks overlapped; as far as skill set, in the areas where I lacked, Russell had experience and a strong track record, and vice versa. We had a lot of hunches and theories on the direction the global events industry should go in, and what we felt trend forecasting would lean into. 

Twenty-six countries and thirty-nine cities later, we hit the ground running with a solid plan. This gave us the perspective we were missing to fill in the blanks and turn our initial hunches into strategic goals. Our very first client led us to Music City, and we’ve been working to provide opportunities for the events industry folks, locals (and newlyweds-to-be!), creatives, and small businesses ever since.” 

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Russell: We have three main parts to our business, focusing on both the B2B and B2C clients. On the B2B side, Venue Consulting is our bread and butter. On the “couples” or B2C side, our exclusive all-inclusive destination packages are king. Oddly enough, the third part of our business is really made up of a bunch of one-off, non-retainer business that applies to both newly-weds-to-be and businesses alike, like location scouting, photo and video shoot production and staging, strategic partnership development, large-scale event ops, digital and social media strategy, media training and coaching, international travel itinerary coordination and management, etc., etc., etc.! 

It’s a little bit of everything across a long list of services, so it’s a lot to gauge. That being said, I would say the biggest obstacle and challenge we face is that everything we do is NEW. Pitching a new concept is already hard, but taking an existing concept and asking someone to erase what they already know about it is even harder. A prime example is our bridal show concept, With Love, LUIS. 

Prior to COVID, we had already noticed two substantial things: 1 – a shift in modern weddings to include more personalized experiences and a lower guest count, and 2 – after speaking with so many couples and vendors, the overall negative feedback from both about attending and participating in bridal shows. When the pandemic hit, the term “micro-wedding” became a mainstream phrase overnight – a trend we identified and explained to clients a hundred times over waaaay before the pandemic – and bridal shows hosted in and showcasing a massive ballroom when attendees were most likely looking for smaller spaces, just didn’t make sense.” 

Ashelyn: “Jumping in here! We also informed our clients that ten years ago, many couples picked a structured package at a venue and all they had to do was “show up” to their wedding. Now, you can’t just “show up” to your wedding… newlyweds-to-be have an average of five additional “wedding” events outside of the Ceremony and Reception – Thanks Instagram! Social media channels now give couples a platform to share these milestone moments, playing into the desire to have more personalized events. By having a lower guest count, couples can allocate more of their budget to custom experiences. For some couples, the abundance of online tools available to them make them feel confident to try to plan what feels like a million different events; for others, it’s incredibly overwhelming. 

We took advantage of the time we had in 2020 to rethink the entire premise of a bridal show, truly absorb the shared pain points for couples and vendors, and deconstruct what makes up a traditional show in order to fit the needs of a modern couple, showcasing multiple smaller spaces vs one large ballroom and focusing on the entire wedding journey instead of just the Big Day; that’s how With Love, LUIS was born. Since the events industry was at an ultimate decline, this also gave us an opportunity to produce an event that would help our vendor network try to book future business and generate dollars back into the city of Nashville, by targeting surrounding cities instead of just local residents.” 

Russell: “With Love, LUIS is a Luxe, Unexpected, Innovative Show, that debuted in Nashville on June 12, 2021, and was tailored to the modern engaged couple residing in the SE region of the U.S., like Middle TN, Louisville, Birmingham, Charleston, New Orleans, Atlanta, Charlotte, North and Central FL. This was the first bridal event of its kind, targeting future newlyweds and their journey from engagement to honeymoon vs just their “Big Day” needs (bachelor/ette, rehearsal dinner, welcome party, farewell brunch, engagement party, bridal shower, mini-moon, and everything in between)! We welcomed both businesses in the bridal industry and “bridal-adjacent” businesses to participate – a phrase we coined to include brands and businesses that aren’t necessarily in the bridal industry but help aid in the execution of all the surrounding events in the wedding journey. 

Ashelyn: “Think fashion brands for what to wear to your Welcome Party or Bachelorette, athleisure wear for the drive or airplane over to your regional destination, and even low-calorie snacks to consider for shedding those L-Bs, before the Big Day! All of those brands also play a role in the crazy journey from “they said ‘yes!’” through the ‘I do.’ The luggage set you purchased in prep for your honeymoon and the $150 dollar pillows you asked for in your registry are also brands that are bridal-adjacent!” 

Russell: “Attendees traveled from location to location to meet vendors and participate in Immersive Guests Experiences along the route. The event featured everything from moderated panel discussions to branded pop-ups, a rotating and themed Fashion Showcase, live wedding band lineup, curated property tours, and so much more. Couples on the hunt for their “wedding city” and those who hadn’t nailed down their bachelor/ette parties and/or mini-moon destinations also had the opportunity to meet exhibitors from cities across the southeast as part of our “Say ‘I Do’ City Snapshots.” We also focused equally on the vendor experience by offering a pay-per-square-foot model for exhibit space instead of the typical 10’ x 10’ booth, and featuring one-off Meet & Greets with vendors surrounding a particular topic without making these talking engagements boring 90-min long panel discussions so they could get really valuable one-on-one time with couples.” 

Ashelyn: “It was an incredible experience, but VERY difficult to explain, especially to someone (couple or vendor) who was familiar with the typical bridal event. We had to pitch a new concept to them while addressing all of the pain points associated with the event many of them already didn’t like in their minds AND walk them through COVID precautions at the same time. 

Most of our ideas come from evaluating something from all angles and figuring out ways to elevate it and make it better. While we may feel the solution is clear to see, we have to explain that vision to everyone else in the simplest way possible. We could be chatting with someone who just launched a business or someone with 50 years in the business; our audience has a wide breadth of industry knowledge and varying degrees of experience.” 

Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
We are a venue consulting duo that works to create sales and marketing strategies for venues across the country. Our process is simple: evaluate the market and location the venue is in, create new sales packages and collateral to execute higher rates and reach new target markets, manage inquiries, implement long-term partnerships and create new sales funnels to generate more revenue for our clients. Within that process, we produce photoshoots (to supply images for the new marketing materials) and launch/Open House events (to show them off!). 

In addition to working on behalf of venues, we also develop Destination Micro-Wedding Celebrations to help couples streamline their wedding planning journey. From the serene mountain setting of Medellín, Colombia to Music City (Nashville, TN) we create first-class experiences tailored to the modern couple, identifying unique ways to tie the knot in undiscovered locations and venues, utilizing our massive network of top tier vendors for flawless execution. 

Ashelyn has produced large-scale events and digital sales programming both in-house and within agencies in NYC for over a decade. Some of the events include South Beach Wine & Food Festival (SOBE), New York Fashion Week, TED Talks, Red Bull Academy, Social Media Week (SMW), and Speed Rack competitions across the country. She was one of the first people hired at HBS start-up Rent the Runway, implementing the first digital sales programs (resulting in over $125k in three months). She’s executed similar programs for NYC Media Group (converted over 65 clients within one quarter), and Orlando Magazine (330% increase in year-over-year revenue, resulting in over $129k in sales). Ashelyn’s top clients have been in the fashion, travel, and hospitality industries, working with Diageo, Milk Gallery, The Standard Hotels, Capital One, Nike, Cayman Islands, Ann Taylor LOFT, Club Monaco, Wyndham Grand Orlando Resort Bonnet Creek, and more, leading teams at internationally recognized agencies like Jack Morton and ALLDAYEVERYDAY. 

Russell made his mark on the Florida market producing successful bridal events for almost fifteen years. Some of his clients include Jumbolair Aviation Estates, University Air Center, and Harn Museum of Art, to name a few. His events were so successful, Ocala Style Magazine acquired a series of his events to produce under their publishing umbrella. He recently managed a 900-acre horse ranch, generating over $600k in revenue in the first year, and has solidified partnerships with clients like The Celebration Society, Every Last Detail, and The Knot on behalf of clients in a record-breaking one month timespan. He also managed over 100 villa rentals adjacent to the horse ranch, renting them out as add-ons to the events to generate additional revenue. 

With the best of both worlds – large agency and small business clients – and our combined track record, our clients are able to benefit from experience acquired through working with a massive range of budgets, big-box branding, top-notch client relations, deep knowledge of goals, benchmarks, and ROI, core competencies in establishing fruitful partnerships, logistics, and production acumen for events, and optimal selling through digital mediums… just to name a few! We are able to utilize that knowledge and apply it to our past experience working directly with event/wedding venues and the (travel) markets that pertain to new clients. 

Click here to check out the most recent event we produced on June 12th: With Love, LUIS – Nashville’s first-ever bridal stroll and the largest in the southeast – and find inspiration, location scouting, and a ton more examples of work we’ve done with clients, on our Instagram portfolio: @PartyWithRusselyn 

Can you talk to us about how you think about risk?
Ashelyn: “Our Risk-Taking runs parallel to our Obstacles/Challenges! To Russell’s point, 99 percent of what we do is new but it falls within an existing construct – for example, we didn’t invent the bridal show, we just produced our version of it (With Love, LUIS). This makes a lot of our work fall under “concept selling” vs “needs”/ “wants” based selling. It really is the biggest hurdle we deal with. Let’s put it this way – there are more people genuinely open to hearing about something completely new than there are who are willing to change [their perception]. The best example to describe this common challenge for PWR is the purchase of a home. 

Let’s say you purchased a home in a new luxury neighborhood. This neighborhood has an HOA (Homeowners Association) that you must be compliant with as an owner of this property. Because you travel often, you’re going to have to hire a landscaping company to keep up with maintaining the home while you are a way to avoid fees. Landscaping in this example is needs-based; you will actively be searching for a landscaping company to fulfill that need. A few months later, there was a series of break-ins in the neighborhood. You are contacted by a security company offering state-of-the-art protection for your home. While you may not need this, you may want to have this since you aren’t there all the time; this is wants-based. Then Russell and I come in with a new concept that you may not know that you need or want yet! We knock on your door and introduce ourselves as Airbnb, a concept to temporarily rent your beautifully landscaped and super safe house as a revenue-generating channel while you are away. The innovators and early adopters completely understand our crazy ideas! It’s the other 84% of people that require a lot more hand-holding and have a longer gestation period from our initial touchpoint to jumping on the bandwagon and joining us for the ride. 

We launched the largest bridal stroll in the southeast during a pandemic. We constantly ask people to erase everything they think they know about a topic from their memory before walking them through the PWR version of it. We purposely find ways to redefine our own terms (hello “bridal adjacent”) in order to create opportunities for us to explain our point of view. There’s risk in all of it, but it’s the most exciting and rewarding part of our business. Seeing our ideas come to life and accomplishing goals on behalf of our clients makes the hustle worth every minute.” 

Contact Info:

• Email: [email protected]
• Website: https://www.partywithrusselyn.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/partywithrusselyn/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/withloveluis

Image Credits
Zach Dalin Photography
Frozen Exposure Photo & Cinema
Tap Truck Nashville
Joshua Grasso Photography
Ivory House Media
Melanie Sutrathada
PWR