Listen to the Podcast About An Event Less Ordinary
Podcast Summary
Carolyn Johnson and Amy Nolan, the brains behind ‘An Event Less Ordinary’, were the special guests on “Eventful Endeavors”, a podcast hosted by renowned dueling piano player, Kai Plier. The dynamic duo have garnered attention for their innovative and creative approach to event planning.
They shared intriguing insights into how they discovered their passion for which formed a unique synergy of creativity and organization. Their entrepreneurial journey began in 2008 after a successful production of “Grease”, a bond that grew stronger as they planned Amy’s own wedding. The pair realized they had a knack for managing events with a theatrical flair and hence, ‘An Event Less Ordinary’ was born.
In discussing their unconventional naming choice, they revealed it was inspired by the movie ‘A Life Less Ordinary’. The name resonates with their ethos — to skillfully create truly unique events that stand out from the usual, cookie-cutter designs.
The guests disclosed their experiences planning offbeat weddings that brim with personality. As an example, they mentioned a vivid occasion where a bride and groom, choir lovers, sang ‘Summer Lovin’ from the movie Grease to celebrate their love. These unusual and love-filled moments demonstrate their adeptness in crafting ‘An Event Less Ordinary’.
Fans of theatrical productions and extraordinary event planning can find more engaging stories and insider tips in the full interview with ‘An Event Less Ordinary’ on Kai’s “Eventful Endeavors” podcast.
Learn more about An Event Less Ordinary
This interview was provided by Felix and Fingers Dueling Pianos
Podcast Transcript
Kai: Felix & Fingers (00:24)
Hi there and welcome to Eventful Endeavors. My name is Kai and I’m a dueling piano player and we have the folks from An Event Less Ordinary so why don’t you introduce yourselves and tell us your name.
Aelo (00:35)
Hi, I’m Amy. Hi, I’m Carolyn. We’re the owners of An Event Less Ordinary.
Kai: Felix & Fingers (00:39)
That’s so cool. Well, thank you for joining me. And I just wanted to start by having you tell me more about your originate origin story, origin story and like what brought you together? What made you want to plan events?
Aelo (00:52)
Well, first of all, thank you so much for having us. This is really cool. We’ve never been invited on a podcast before, so this is very exciting. We met in 2008 doing a production of Grease where Amy played Rizzo, I played Marty, so we were like force best friends. And then we’re best friends. And Amy got engaged and we were planning the wedding and…
Kai: Felix & Fingers (00:54)
Mm-hmm.
Yay.
Yes.
Aelo (01:15)
She just looked at me and she was like, we should do this. We’re good at this. We were both managing offices and doing theater. And then we started sort of planning my wedding together. And it was like, hey, this all makes sense together. Office, theater, weddings, kind of all in the same vibe of like managing things, keeping things organized, being creative, et cetera. So we started there. Yeah.
Kai: Felix & Fingers (01:38)
That’s the ultimate combination of creativity and organization, right? I’m so curious about your wedding. Did you have any elements of Greece or musical theater as a part of your wedding?
Aelo (01:47)
I don’t know, it’s so long ago. Did we sing? I made the band plug-in and play Joyful Joyful from Sister F2. It’s appropriate. We did actually have clients this last summer who met in choir and they’re singers and they love to sing together and so they love Greece and they sang Summer Lovin’ at their wedding and that was a real full circle moment for us. That was exciting.
Kai: Felix & Fingers (02:01)
you
Aelo (02:16)
But yeah, I don’t know if we did any grease at my wedding. I don’t remember. We had to have at least on summer nights, right? Probably. Yeah.
Kai: Felix & Fingers (02:16)
my gosh.
Yeah, that’s one of my favorite duets to play and every time I play with someone new they always know and we always sing it. It’s a blast. So tell me now, why are you called an eventless ordinary or why did you choose that name and how does that kind of reflect in the gigs that you take now?
Aelo (02:30)
Standard.
I saw a movie a long time ago called A Lifeless Ordinary. you ever seen it, Very good. It’s very good. You and McGregor’s in it. Anyway, we were brainstorming for days, I feel. days, weeks. That was obviously the most important part was the name. The branding. Yeah, so we brainstormed forever and we really wanted it to be…
Kai: Felix & Fingers (02:41)
No, I should see it.
Aelo (02:59)
something unique that wasn’t just like, we plan weddings, you know, we wanted it to be like, not specific to weddings, we wanted to use the word event for sure. And I trying to come up with something clever. Yeah. And then, I don’t know, suddenly this movie title popped into my head and then we Googled it and we found that there is a wedding there used to be back in the day, a wedding, less ordinary, but it was in the UK. So the title was ours. We did it.
Kai: Felix & Fingers (03:22)
my gosh, in the UK. That’s so cool. And you said that you sometimes take gigs that are not always just your cookie cutter wedding. You really try to go, you know, over the top and make something extra special and unique. Do have a story of a wedding that maybe wasn’t as conventional or something special that you did for a wedding recently?
Aelo (03:26)
Yeah,
yeah. Lots. Those people tend to find us. People who have unique and interesting weddings tend to come to us because of our names. Go ahead. Yeah, definitely. We’ve had brides and grooms pull swords out of cakes. It was little, wasn’t it? Or did they cut it with the… They cut it with the real sword. Right.
Kai: Felix & Fingers (03:47)
Yeah.
seriously? How big was the sword?
Aelo (04:10)
We’ve had them roller skate in as an introduction as opposed to just like walking in. We’ve had them play beer pong. They’ve, let’s see, of course now I’m like blanking on all the cool stuff. So many things, yeah. We’ve had, one time we had a bride and groom turn around at their ceremony and they had red clown noses on.
Kai: Felix & Fingers (04:10)
Wow, that’s so cool.
It’s such an open-ended question, yeah.
Aww.
Aelo (04:33)
and it totally shocked the audience and everyone laughed and cried and it was really cute. I don’t know why they did that, there was a reason for it. That was many months ago. I mean, there’s been so many fun things. Recently we had a get married on the stage of the Music Box Theater and they showed some horror movie trailers before…
the wedding started, that was cool. then their reception was at a place where they just showed a bunch of horror movies on a bunch of different screens, which was awesome. Yeah, it was really cool. That’s definitely our vibe.
Kai: Felix & Fingers (05:06)
Wow, I love music box theater. That is a really cool idea, because that’s such a cool venue. And it’s actually right around the corner from my house, so I know exactly what you’re talking about. Yeah. I’m sure that you also mailed different traditions as well, people from different cultures. Have you done weddings like that where you’re blending two cultures or two religions and turning it into a wedding?
Aelo (05:12)
Yeah.
Nice.
Yes. you remember that really early on we had to do one was Catholic and one was Jewish and it was both like we couldn’t find a priest who wouldn’t like leave the church and come and do it in a separate venue? Yeah. whole thing. Yeah, it’s a lot easier now. I also had like a South Asian one and a Jewish one where they did both ceremonies. So was many hours of ceremonies that was marrying a lot of tradition. And we’ve had a lot of
We had a Serbian Orthodox one that was cool. They do crowns during the ceremony. Yeah, we have a lot of different traditions, but we also do, I would say, secular weddings, not necessarily…
Kai: Felix & Fingers (05:58)
wow.
Okay, so that was such a perfect answer. Why don’t you also tell me about one of your LGBTQ weddings and what made it special? I personally am openly lesbian. I love the gay weddings. It just brings me so much joy and excitement. I’m sure that you’ve done a few gay weddings as well.
Aelo (06:20)
Lots, yes. We love our queer community and on top of the Music Box wedding, which was truly incredible and we can’t stop talking about it, in fact we saw one of the couple on Saturday and we were both like, my god, we won’t shut up about you. We cried through your whole ceremony. We did. was beautiful. So that was very unique and then of course our brides who sang Summer 11 was very, very special.
Kai: Felix & Fingers (06:21)
Yeah.
Aelo (06:44)
But I think one of my favorites was, wait, was one that neither of us had. It was one of our employees, Lauren, who coordinated a wedding where they came out in spandex body suits and did their first dance. And I randomly ran into that person, one of those guys the other day. Was he in the body suit still or no? No. I think one of my favorites was,
Kai: Felix & Fingers (06:58)
No.
you
Aelo (07:10)
Mike and Alexander out at the Chicago Botanic Garden. Alexander had been going to the Botanic Garden since he was a child and was so excited to get married there. they were just the sweetest human beings on the planet. They both wore white tuxes. I love that. It was so stunning. And they were just the kindest people and their first dance was to Simply the Best. Of course. you know.
Kai: Felix & Fingers (07:33)
Uhuhuh.
Aelo (07:34)
I mean, was just the sweetest thing in the entire world. really was. their families were so loving. And I don’t know, it’s just that feeling you get when you’re doing your job and it’s like, this is why. This is why I do the job, because they were just the happiest boys. That was a beautiful one. Yeah, that was a good one.
Kai: Felix & Fingers (07:49)
Yeah. Yeah, I think we all have those moments where we see how happy the people around us are and it does remind us like, okay, this is why I’m an entertainer. This is why I’m a planner. And I totally rate to that. That’s so special though. And like two white tuxedos. That must have been so cool. I want a white tuxedo. The most is handsome.
Aelo (08:07)
Very classy. handsomest boys. We also did our first, sorry go ahead. I was going say we did our first poly wedding this year as well. Yeah. was awesome. We had a couple of three. A couple of three. A couple of three. A I suppose. I’m not sure if they all describe themselves that way. three either way. And they were great and we loved them. And it was really nice to see all their family and friends be there and be so supportive and like how far we’ve come.
Kai: Felix & Fingers (08:17)
really? How did that work?
a throttle.
Aelo (08:36)
You know, it was quite an event for us too. It was a milestone for us. was really beautiful. was very touching in ways I wasn’t expecting. all three of them are just the kindest. Like we are so lucky. I can’t express to you how lucky we are. And I think a lot of it has to do with our name and like the personality and the branding that we’ve put out, which is very true to who we are. But we just get the coolest clients ever. We do.
And people always ask us, what’s your client story? What’s the worst bride you’ve ever had? And it’s like, no, it’s never the bride. No. It’s not the mom.
Kai: Felix & Fingers (09:08)
Yeah. I mean, I think that’s props to you too, because you definitely create a relationship where people feel comfortable and you’re very good communicators and that I think people just feel very comfortable with you and feel comfortable bringing their needs to you ahead of time. And I think that’s just an environment that you foster proactively, which leads to a really good relationship.
Aelo (09:33)
Thanks, Kai. You, Kai, that’s so nice. Aw. I didn’t know we were gonna cry today. I know.
Kai: Felix & Fingers (09:36)
Yeah, yeah, I know because
It’s been so cool to get to know you recently at Therapy Thursdays, which you invited me to. And it seems like Chicago in general has such a rich wedding industry and special events industry. I know because I’ve played all over town with Felix and Fingers doing dueling pianos and I’ve seen so many different planners in so many different venues. I would love to hear more about the landscape and what’s your experience in the Chicago wedding scene? What are some of the events and things like
Therapy Thursdays that you go to where you create community with other wedding workers in Chicago.
Aelo (10:13)
Yeah, we were so glad that they brought that back. It kind of went away after the pandemic and, you know, because it takes a lot of vendors kind of pooling their resources to put that on.
They do it monthly now and it’s really fun. We kind of see some of the same people and we always meet new people there. We always get to see new venues and try new food, which is fun. Last summer we went to the Chicago Style Weddings launch party. That’s really fun. Really like a classy Chicago event industry party.
part of the Green Wedding Alliance. And this year we organized a beach cleanup. I still call it Hollywood Beach. It’s Kathy Osterman Beach, gay beach. We love gay beach. It’s the best beach in Chicago. is.
Kai: Felix & Fingers (10:53)
Love gay beach. Yep. It’s the cleanest beach in Chicago too.
Aelo (10:58)
It’s the cleanest beach in Chicago. that’s thanks to us early in this spring. So that was really fun. We got to organize that through the Great Lakes Alliance. And I think we’ll do that again next year for sure. And probably should do it at the end of the year too. Lots of interesting things found. So that was a way to gather community and that’s the Green Wedding Alliance is also a way to be in community with our vendor partners.
And then what did we do last year that was like a hop around hotels? That was so fun. I don’t remember what that event was called because we, there was also free wine. I think it was through the hotel. They have like three different hotels that are owned by the same company. So they put us on a trolley and let us go around to all three of the hotels and it was a blast. was really cool. We often say yes to stuff that we find in our inbox.
Kai: Felix & Fingers (11:40)
my gosh.
That’s the best thing. I actually noticed a correlation. A lot of the planners that do LGBT weddings are also part of the Green Wedding Alliance. Can you tell me more about what that is and what that entails? Because that’s so interesting.
Aelo (11:57)
take that one. No. It’s a cool organization. It’s relatively new. think. No, I’ve been around a while. Okay. I don’t think we can really speak on it, to be honest. Like I’m not well versed enough to make it. They it’s about sustainability. You know, they they encourage sustainable practices. Since we’re planners and we don’t really have stuff or an office or
Kai: Felix & Fingers (12:07)
okay. That’s okay.
Aelo (12:20)
like a building that we own or anything, we don’t really have like a footprint. So it’s really more for caterers and florists to try to cut down on waste. They use a lot of interesting products that they can reuse. One of the caterers that is in the Green Wedding Alliance has their own garden, like a rooftop garden, and so they use a lot of that food. Yeah, it’s really, it’s an interesting group. They’re doing as much as they can, I think, for
busy professionals putting together a nonprofit organization. Yeah. Yeah. And they have two wedding shows a year or two or one. It’s, it’s called committed. And so all of us vendors who, and of course we recommend as much as we can, sustainable products, vendors, all of that. But they, have a wedding show that’s called committed every year. And it’s, it’s really lovely. And you can, if you, you know couples and
or throuples, it’s important to them. Engaged people, marryers. They can come to the show and they know that they’re getting a sustainable way to plan their wedding because there is a lot of waste in the industry when you think about all of the programs you print and all of the food that you buy and that doesn’t get eaten and all of the like a plastic favor or something and obviously we’re all trying to be a little more keep the world alive. So
It’s important.
Kai: Felix & Fingers (13:36)
Yeah, yeah, that’s really cool. There is a lot of ways like a lot of times I’ll see all the floral arrangements just be like thrown out after a wedding. So that’s nice that they’re finding a new life for it and giving it to whatever it be like hospitals or something like that. And that’s the coolest thing. Okay, so what would you tell yourself when you were first getting started as a planner? Because I’m sure that you’ve learned so much and you’ve grown so much throughout the years of planning and trial and error and yeah.
Aelo (13:49)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
I got one. Put hours in the contract. I was gonna say don’t take shit from people, but… That too. Also…
Kai: Felix & Fingers (14:05)
Yeah.
okay.
Aelo (14:18)
Also make sure that you don’t have an unlimited amount of time you’re available to your clients. Put parameters on things. Everything that is in the four corners of the contract is what you are committing to. Our first wedding, we started I think at like 8 a.m. and we did not go home until like at least one o’clock. And we continued to do that. And now we have hours in our contract that you get up to this many. If you want to add more, you absolutely can.
Kai: Felix & Fingers (14:29)
Mmm.
Aelo (14:46)
There is a boundary setting that is very, I think, important to the business because some people will take advantage of the time you give them. And it’s happened very rarely that we’re seen as the help, but sometimes we are. And so we’ve learned a lot over the years to set boundaries and be like, this is what we can do. And we have very polite ways of saying it.
Kai: Felix & Fingers (15:11)
Yeah, and I bet you’re so much more efficient too, where sometimes when you’re working on less time, you actually work more efficiently. Yeah.
Aelo (15:17)
Yeah, I agree. I agree with that. think we’re both very, how efficiently can I do this? Our whole team, really. The whole team is like, let’s get this done. Yeah. And it’s important to have those boundaries. Also, I think I would pat our little baby wedding planner heads off and be like, you did it. Good job.
Kai: Felix & Fingers (15:23)
I’m
yet.
Yeah, yeah, celebrate yourself. It’s hard to remember to do that when you’re just going from gig to gig to gig and it’s so important to just like give yourself your flowers. Absolutely. You deserve flowers, we all deserve flowers. Yeah.
Aelo (15:44)
Right.
Thank you. I can buy myself flowers. That’s the song goes, right? It is. Okay.
Kai: Felix & Fingers (15:56)
I know. So tell me about the live entertainment that you’ve had. Like we do dueling pianos, that’s our thing, where we have two piano players, we’re taking song requests and anything the room wants to hear within reason, we play for them. And it’s like a very interactive thing. But I also want to hear about the entertainment that you’ve booked in the past and how it’s really worked for you.
Aelo (16:08)
Mm.
Wait, can we ask you questions? Because now I need to know what you won’t play. So our kids there, probably.
Kai: Felix & Fingers (16:20)
Yeah, I mean…
You know, I think we’re reading the room. So if it’s in December, we’ll play All I Want for Christmas is You by Mariah Carey. If it’s June, we’re not going to play All I Want for Christmas is You by Mariah Carey. But you know, like, we’ll get our song requests and you know, if the energy is really, really high, we’re going to take those high energy song requests and as the night winds down, then we’ll also play like the slower ones unless it’s time for a slow dance. But I think there’s a lot of thought and care when we’re curating
Aelo (16:29)
Mm-hmm. Sure. Not. Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure.
Kai: Felix & Fingers (16:51)
our show and we’re playing and we’re like respecting all these song requests that are coming in. We just want to make sure everyone’s having a good time the whole time and if there’s a song that kind of comes out of left field that an uncle put in or something or a five-year-old you know like we’ll definitely play that song for a little bit and give it its props and then go back into something that keeps people on the dance floor so well we never like ignore requests you know it’s just a matter of curating
Aelo (17:04)
Yeah, Maybe sure.
Yeah.
I would say we’ve booked a good mix of just a regular DJ or a band, a big band. A few times we’ve had a mariachi band. That was always a good time. And I did have Dueling Pianos once, which was fabulous. I would recommend that to anyone who’s got like a party crowd. I think that’s the way.
You know, a party crowd and a couple who isn’t like, this is exactly what I want to dance to at my wedding. You know what I mean? Yeah.
Kai: Felix & Fingers (17:47)
But that’s the thing, because we do play exactly what they want to dance to at their wedding. Yeah, yeah.
Aelo (17:52)
True. No, wait, sorry. You take requests from everybody though, right? I mean, because there we have, of course, sometimes couples are real controlling. They’re real. This is exactly what I want to hear in the exact order I want to hear. Yeah. Yeah. So you have to have people chill with letting their guests pick some of the music.
Kai: Felix & Fingers (17:57)
everybody, yeah. But of course, we always prioritize the bride and groom. Yeah.
there is that, there is that, yeah.
Yeah, we have, we offer a package that has a must playlist. So they’re able to put in a bunch of songs that they want us to play and we promise we will play them. But yeah, exactly. But no, it’s just, it’s just so, much fun.
Aelo (18:19)
sure.
That’s smart. That’s good.
I can only imagine the energy that you feel, how fun that must be.
Kai: Felix & Fingers (18:34)
It is, it is. It goes by so fast, even though it’s like a two hour to four hour show, whatever it may be, usually two to three hours. Like it just goes by like that because we’re always like feeding off the room and feeding off of each other. It’s always nice to have a partner, a partner in crime. You know that of all people working together. So you have a whole team of people. Tell me about the process of building your team and how each person kind of came on. Cause I know that it’s more than just you two now.
Aelo (18:43)
Mm-hmm.
you
it started just us until about four years in. Yeah. And then we started to have so many weddings that we had to separate and not do them together anymore, which was hard. It hard. was, was an adjustment for sure to not be able to look across the room and like we share the same brain. We’ve joked for 15 years now. So, but we just,
Kai: Felix & Fingers (19:24)
Yeah.
Aelo (19:27)
You had a friend, Lauren. My dear friend Lauren from 20 years ago, I’ve known her forever. She actually went to college for event planning. She has a hospitality degree and really knows what she’s doing. So we asked her to come and just help us with a couple of events. And then after a while we were like, we should hire you. How do we do that? And then we figured it out and figured out how to be a real small business and hire people. And then a couple, maybe a year later we did a search, put out
a call for more employees and read resumes and called people in for interviews. And we found Brittany and Rachel who have been with No, Rachel was my friend. just remember. you’re right. You knew Rachel. Yeah, I knew Rachel. She did come in on that resume. She came in on that. Yeah, but I just remembered that we’d known each other for a while. Yeah, that’s right. So we found Brittany and Rachel. They’ve been with us for about a decade. They’re fantastic. We love them. They’re just the easiest people.
to work with and for and around. And then after that, we just started adding assistants because we had those three who were taking lead on weddings, meaning that they could go and be the coordinator and Carolyn and I wouldn’t have to be there. And then we started hiring people to help them, et cetera. So now we have six lead coordinators and four assistants. And sometimes I assist, sometimes Carolyn assists. Like we all, mix it up. Everybody works together.
It’s always kind of fun to make sure that everybody’s paired with somebody different on the team so that everybody spends time together and everybody’s great. I don’t know, we’re really lucky.
Kai: Felix & Fingers (20:58)
Yeah, that’s so cool that you also switch roles with each other and like sometimes one person is the assistant and the other like that’s a really cool like synergy and the trust that it takes to be able to do that is yeah.
Aelo (21:08)
Yeah, we also take into account like what the wedding is, who the people are, like who’s going to be the best fit for them, much like a band or DJ would for like an MC. Yeah. Yeah.
Kai: Felix & Fingers (21:21)
Yeah, that’s so true. Wow, is there anything else you want to share about An Event Less Ordinary or yourself or your cats and dog before we go? True.
Aelo (21:30)
They’ve had enough time. I know, it’s been an awesome 15 years. This was our 15th season, which kind of blows my mind still. to have the team we have also blows our mind. Sometimes I can’t believe that we’ve curated this life for ourselves.
It’s wild. it’s really cool and if anyone out there needs coordination, I think we’re pretty good at it. I’ve heard we plan, can coordinate, can manage all those things. We’re happy to help with any event, not just weddings. We private events, we do fundraisers, they’re the cats. And then Harry has the best day. Kids birthday parties, all kinds of stuff. Yeah, we actually, we got to do a couples…
Kai: Felix & Fingers (22:13)
Yeah.
Aelo (22:20)
one of our couples had twins and then we got to do their birthday party, their first birthday party. So cute. Yeah.
Kai: Felix & Fingers (22:25)
Wow, that’s so much fun. I know that you’re very versatile. You do events across the spectrum. That’s really, really cool. Yeah. Thank you so much for being a part of Eventful Endeavors, and I will see everyone at the next episode. Everyone wave bye. Bye.
Aelo (22:33)
Yeah, thank you. Thanks, Kai.
Bye, thank you!
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