The Party Arc

Bronson Van Wyck is a renowned event designer and party maestro of Van Wyck & Van Wyck in New York City. Proprietor Mary Celeste Beall sat down with Bronson to get his expert tips on executing events, expound on some of the stories and insights he shares in his book, Born to Party, Forced to Work, and connect through their love of great hospitality.

Mary Celeste Beall: Bronson, you've hosted every type of gathering from incredible mega parties to intimate affairs. If you were going to choose, what's your favorite type of party to host?

Bronson van Wyck: This is hard! I like to instigate, and I like to encourage people to share something about themselves. So, I take a really personal approach to a lot of the decisions that I make about a party. For example, I had a Homer-themed birthday party in Greece a couple of years ago. Everybody had to come as characters from Homer poems. I did this because it was something I loved. When I was 10 years old, the heroes, gods and goddesses in mythology were like my superheroes.

What's interesting about a party like that, or about any kind of masquerade, is that by putting on a mask, people become, in a way, more of some aspect of themselves. We’re all kind of wearing a mask all the time, but for a party you’re choosing what mask you put on. It liberates you to fully embrace and adopt a character that's inside yourself. I love parties like that because I like to learn something about people.

Mary Celeste: I love a good costume party. In addition to the way people act in a costume and what you learn about their personality, it also adds this whole other three-dimensional element to the décor.

Bronson: It's the best way to decorate a party. The guests become the setting.

Mary Celeste: What do you think makes a party hit on all cylinders? What’s the magic?

Bronson: Great guests – nothing beats having a great guest list. But I think one of the most important things that hosts don't always remember to think about is that everybody's coming to see you have fun. Whether it’s your wedding, birthday or house warming, they're coming because there's something good happening in your life, and they want to see you happy and enjoying it. I think that's the first thing that a great host has to do. Then, the foundation of hospitality is providing for people's physical needs.

If somebody is hungry, feed them. If they're thirsty, serve them a drink. If they're lonely, give them a hug. Good hosts think about the right temperature of their food and drinks, and a great host thinks about having enough ice.

Mary Celeste: I love what you said about the host being relaxed because then everyone else is relaxed.

Bronson: The guests never know what’s supposed to happen, unless you tell them, unless you get upset and share that. Don't do it.

Mary Celeste: You are certainly an authority on how to host a party, but I also love your advice on how to be a good guest. What's your top piece of advice for how to be a great attendee at a party, whether it's dinner with friends or a large event?

Bronson: I think some guests show up because feel like they should or they feel like they're doing the host or hostess a favor by being there. In some little way, that might be true, but you're not the lead when you're at a party. Come to support the host, to make them have a better night and enjoy a great experience – and make some memories while you do it. The best guests are curious, and they're grateful to be there. I think they see what’s happening; they go sit next to the person no one is sitting next to. That's a great guest. That's a great person.

Mary Celeste: I love more than anything when my guests are engaging with someone new. Having people over is about reconnecting with people you know and connecting people that haven’t met. I think doing a seating chart is always fun, but it can be one of the hardest parts of planning a party. Would you agree?

Bronson: Yes, but I love doing it. You’re sort of forecasting the texture of the conversation at the table when you seat it.

Mary Celeste: I feel like the world is one degree of separation, and it's so fun when you can connect people that are important to you.
As a different type of connection, social media continues to play and larger and larger role in our everyday lives. How do you feel about putting the phone down and living in the moment versus capturing it and posting it?

Bronson: I think a lot of the behavior to default to going on Instagram or Tik Tok is a lack of attention span. The world is faster and faster, and there are too many things to deal with. I default to the 20-minute rule, and there's a whole chapter on this in my book. Essentially, something has to change every 20 minutes. Change the music, the room, the seating – whatever it is. It doesn’t have to be literally 20 minutes; you always want to read the room. But it keeps things fun. Keep the guests guessing, and you'll keep them engaged. The other thing about social media is privacy. I think good guests take their cue from the host. If the host is posting, then they’re sort of giving you permission to post. If they ask you not to post, my God, don't post. We have done things to keep people from posting before. It's the oldest trick in the book, but you put a little haze or fog in the air and it's like an instant Insta-ban because you can't take a good picture.

Mary Celeste: As we’re thinking about those elements and cues, or creating the momentum to change something every so often, how do you consider texture when you're preparing a space for an event?

Bronson: You can consider everything from the perspective of texture, but aesthetically the way light falls on a smooth surface versus a highly textured surface, the way it falls on something that's shiny versus something that's matte, the way that it works on foliage or bark versus flowers is so interesting. Lighting is the single most important aesthetic thing you can do for a party. I always want to light from three different angles – above, from the side and below – and they do different things. The lighting from above is sort of the ambient light that's making everything visible. The lighting from the side is the drama, giving priority to the things you want most visible. And lighting from below takes 10 years off of your face.

Mary Celeste: It's interesting because I think that when you have the right lighting, you can bring everything to life but you can also hide things.

Bronson: Exactly! You can also use it to deemphasize what you want to deemphasize. We don't need to be in high def all the time.

Mary Celeste: Thinking about other elements that influence the atmosphere, how does music and music choice add another degree to a gathering?

Bronson: I think music is your biggest tool for sort of conducting the night. It has such an ability to influence the emotional state of a room. You want a night to be multi-layered and multi-textured the same way a play is. There are scenes, the scenes together make up acts, and the acts together make up the whole arc. Music is a great way to frame it all.

Mary Celeste: I agree, and it kind of gives cues to the guests.

Bronson: That's exactly right. Because the guests are your actors in a way.

Mary Celeste: In thinking about the textures that we experience at a party, I thought about the range of options that are available. What are your best tips for not sacrificing the experience when your budget is low? (I’m thinking about those polyester or paper blend napkins that might be the perfect color, but they really don’t absorb anything!)

Bronson: Votive candles are practically free. I light so many votive candles, I can't even tell you. A lot of time I end up taking some away, but you can buy boxes of them for a few bucks. So, lay in on the votive candles. I also like to take ordinary things, and sometimes things that are cheap because nobody likes them – like baby’s breath or carnations – and use them in gigantic, on-mass kind of assemblies. They can be really fun, and that applies to all kinds of ordinary materials. We did a party for the New York City Ballet on the opening night of the Tempest. We took residential and commercial installation material, that sort of cottony, foamy stuff, and wrapped it around chicken wire going up 40 feet to create what looked like cyclones for this storm-theme ballet. You do that with a recording of thunder and lightning and a strobe, and people feel like they're in the middle of the storm.

And I'll tell you one thing that I definitely don't do when there's a budget – I don't do gift bags. The gift is the experience. It's the memory. It’s the opportunity to have been in the room where it happens when it was happening.

Mary Celeste: Your book, Born to Party, Forced to Work is a beautiful representation of your energy. I think readers can really feel the joy you get from being a guest and being a host. How do you feel after an event as you reflect on the experience you were able to create?

Bronson: Our success over the years is really about the joy that our whole team feels when we ourselves have had a splendid time in the care of somebody else's hospitality, cocooned and wrapped up in graciousness, love and warmth.

It's a wonderful invitation to kind of leave your administration, your bills, your lemons in the coat check and come in and be human, present, real and engaging. I think our joy in doing it comes through, and you can't fake that.

Mary Celeste: In thinking about that authenticity and joy, I want to ask about the roots of your hospitality. I know you’re originally from Arkansas, and you’ve shared about how your family always gathered, and entertained, at meals because there was no other option. Do you think that Southern hospitality played a role in where your passion for your now career comes from?

Bronson: My version of Southern hospitality is so different from yours – which is superb. We were six miles away from Tuckerman, Arkansas – the population now is 1100 or 1200 people, I think. Our closest neighbor was my grandparents, and they were three miles away. There was no restaurant, no movie theater, nothing. People were always coming to visit my family, and we had to take care of them when they showed up on our doorstep. They had come very far, and they were entirely in our care for every meal, for every aspect of their waking experience. So, we got really good at that. We were running a bit of a resort in a way – with no infrastructure. It was a lot of planning, and we really understood the fundamental obligations of a host. We knew what it meant to be gracious and generous with hospitality and how good that can make people feel. And once you feel that, you want to do it all the time.

Mary Celeste: I’m sure you’ve been asked this before, but I’d love to know – What’s your dream party that you haven’t thrown yet? Is there a theme or an idea that keeps coming back to you that you hope to bring to life one day?

Bronson: You know, the great thing about ideas and creativity is it’s a renewable resource. At any given moment, I've got half a dozen or a dozen parties in my head. The great joy of my existence – aside from my family, the people I love and just feeling very fortunate – is that clients come into my office, and I get to share those ideas with them. Then some of them we even get to go do!