Born to Party

Legendary party planner to the ranks of Beyoncé and Madonna, Bronson van Wyck talks cocktail parties, entertaining faux pas, and one unforgettable heist.

BY CAROLINE PORTILLO, DIRECTOR OF MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS

When one of the world’s leading authorities on hospitality offers advice, you listen. And when Bronson van Wyck took the stage at the Mint Museum Auxiliary’s Fall EnrichMINT Forum Nov. 14—just weeks after the release of his first book, Born to Party, Forced to Work: 21stCentury Hospitality—he had a rapt audience.

An Arkansas native who grew up on a farm, van Wyck founded event planning company Van Wyck & Van Wyck with his mother, Mary Lynn, in 1999. Van Wyck (rhymes with “hike”) now lives in New York City and is lauded for throwing epic international parties for everyone from President George W. Bush to Madonna, Beyoncé to Jerry Seinfeld.

The sold-out Fall EnrichMINT crowd loved hearing his stories of working under Pamela Harriman, an iconic courtesan and U.S. Ambassador to Paris. (Van Wyck was one of eight people who helped maintain her room of index cards, each card detailing key information about every person she spoke with.) And they swooned over the scope of van Wyck’s own “Homeric Ball” on the Greek island of Mykonos for his 44th birthday party. (Dressed as Dionysus, van Wyck hosted 400 friends and celebrities in custom-built ruins of a Doric-style temple, as Duran Duran played.) The Mint sat down with van Wyck to discuss everything from hostess faux pas to how to be the perfect guest. Lightly edited for brevity and clarity.

So what makes for a good guest? There are two great gifts a guest can give to a host. One is the gift of time. If the invitation is for 7 p.m., don’t arrive before 7:15 p.m. Give the host or hostess 15 minutes of grace. The other thing you can do is find the biggest loser in the party and spend 15 or 20 minutes with that person. You may not know why they’re there, but the host or hostess knows why. Give something back to the person who is taking care of you for the night. Help someone integrate.

What are some entertaining faux pas? Never complain, never explain. Nobody knows that you were going to serve soufflé and it didn’t rise, unless you tell them. Also, don’t be the host who spends the entire night with your head in the oven because you’ve created some scenario that’s beyond what you can do. Either get some help with friends or hire someone. People are coming to see you smile. They’re not there to see you stressed out or to not see you at all.

You’ve designed events for presidential inaugurations and for P. Diddy. How do you approach each differently? With the political work we’ve done, there’s a certain tone that’s appropriate. It might be an event or celebration, but you’re reflecting the sober majesty of the state, the occasion, the republic. That always had to be kept in mind, as well as the notion that, if a ceremonial occasion like this is happening, it’s happening for the people, even if everyone isn’t there. When P. Diddy is having a party, he’s doing it to have a blast, as he should be. When people are celebrating their birthdays, their weddings, these are occasions for joy.

You once worked on sets at Paramount. What did you learn there? I learned how to use a hot glue gun, how to use zip ties, how to use a staple gun and scotch tape. I also learned how to distinguish between what was going to be in focus and what was not. That’s really important because we never have enough time to set up an event to do everything the way you would with a house. And, frankly, we rarely have a budget that allows us to do everything. But you don’t need to—part of it is learning what’s going to be in the background.

I hear you have strong feelings about why dinner parties trump cocktail parties. By the time most cocktail parties start, I want to be in the bath. And a cocktail party is a drive by. I don’t like to be driven by and I don’t really like to drive by. I like to be the destination. And I like to spend time with people whom I consider worth being the destination.

What was something you learned on the farm in Arkansas that you still use today? How to change a spark plug, how to change a tire. We were doing an entire wedding once and had everything packed up in a transfer truck. It was late at night, and the team had put a padlock on it but hadn’t closed it before they went inside to take a break. Then somebody stole the truck. Dude jumps out, hot wires it and takes off in the 18-wheeler. It disappeared: the tent, all of the tablecloths, the girl’s wedding dress. The wedding was in five days. We were going to have to replace basically everything. I was on the phone, getting Vera Wang to get her seamstresses geared up, and then they found the truck four miles from the warehouse, sitting on the axles. They put us through 24 hours of hell, and all they’d taken were the tires.

Want more? To read an extended version of our interview with Bronson van Wyck—and see some epic pictures of parties he’s planned—visit mintmuseum.org/news-press.