Daily Inspiration: Meet Amy Rizzo Kristen Bushmoyer

Today we’d like to introduce you to Amy Rizzo Kristen Bushmoyer

Hi Amy Rizzo, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
Cakewalk Events is run by Amy Rizzo and Kristen Bushmoyer. We met in 2015 and have been working together ever since to build our event planning business.

From the beginning, we noticed that the vast majority of event spaces in our region are costly, large capacity, blank rooms that require a great deal of additional work and expense for a wedding. We also took note that other wedding businesses featured mainly young, white, affluent couples on their websites and social media. We wanted to disrupt the culture of the cookie-cutter “monster” wedding by offering affordable, intimate, beautifully decorated venues that included quality professional services. That way couples could save their hard-earned money and wouldn’t have to take time out of their busy lives to research and choose vendors. The first elopement packages we offered started at $200, which included venue, coordinator, music, photography, flowers, and the officiant. When we realized we had a successful formula for our weddings, we began to add bigger and better wedding and reception packages that relieved even more of the wedding planning and expense.

It has always been important to us that our clientele represents our diverse city and our attitudes about inclusivity. We set out to make our venues accessible for anyone and everyone who wants to go outside of the mold of the prescribed large scale wedding. In the past couple of years, our scope broadened dramatically when we realized that the philosophies and strategies we used for our wedding packages could easily translate to all sorts of events and include even more services and vendors. We now offer hourly rentals, party packages, and an assortment of additional services and want to continue to grow to include more and more offerings and event types.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
I want to say this first: our venue and services are unique and we have had a high level of customer satisfaction so that part has been pretty smooth, thank goodness!! However, cash flow is always challenging in a business like ours. We often are booking events for months in the future, but don’t see that money for quite a while even though the operation costs are year round! We have had to really be mindful of our spending and budgeting. The pandemic was really tough for us, too. Maybe a little less so than venues with larger capacities, since we were already offering setups and packages for smaller wedding groups. But, still, our bookings were really down yet our leases and utilities kept on.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Cakewalk Events is known for thoughtfully designed event spaces that offer affordable, all-inclusive service packages for weddings and parties. We offer transparency with our pricing as well, so there are no hidden fees or costs. It builds trust with our customers and helps them reduce stress in their planning process.

Our team of vendors is truly exceptional and experienced. We feel very proud that when our couples get married with us, we can offer them the very best experience. We really do right by our customers. We also make it a high priority to pay our vendors generously for their services.

What does success mean to you?
We measure our success by our high customer satisfaction. We love to hear the reviews that come in from couples who rave about their day and how stress-free and beautiful everything was for them. When we look through our client photo galleries, we can see how happy our couples are, how skilled our team is, and how dedicated we all are to a top-notch product.

Pricing:

• Our least expensive wedding is $499!
• You can do an all-inclusive reception with cake, catering, bar, coordination, toasts and more starting at $6650.
• We can do hourly rentals during non-prime-time hours for $250 for the first hour and $100 for each additional hour!
• All of our prices are clearly listed on our website.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.cakewalkeventskc.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cakewalkeventskc/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cakewalkevents
• Other: https://www.pinterest.com/Cakewalkevents/