For four days, the group had private run of the island resort. There was a treasure hunt with clues informed by the birthday girl’s likes and dislikes, a game show riff on This is Your Life, “beach Olympics” featuring her favorite sports, meals by her favorite chef (who flew in for the occasion), and a movie montage of well-wishes and memories from those in attendance. “The resort sprinkles magic into the experience in all sorts of ways,” says Ezon, who adds that the personalized flick played on a movie screen that seemingly appeared out of nowhere. “The whole weekend was about her,” he says. “She was totally blown away.”
A Celebratory Dinner With Fireworks Pairings
Usually, the core components of a romantic dinner include white tablecloth settings, candles, great wine, and lots of butter. But one of Ezon’s clients wanted to take the common date idea above and beyond to make it worthy of a milestone birthday. The client, an accessories designer, chose Italy’s Amalfi Coast as a destination. For the concept, Ezon put together a tasting menu at Palazzo Avino’s beach club—which was shut down entirely for the couple—to be paired not only with wine, but with “wow moments” at every course.
“The first course started with violins playing their wedding song,” recalls Ezon. “Then there were fireworks with the entrees.” Topping a private pyrotechnic display was the head-scratcher, he says, but the answer came from someone else’s book. “I had an idea to recreate the ‘fashion tea’ program at London’s Berkeley hotel, where the petit four cakes are sculpted into things like diamond rings and stiletto heels,” he explains.
Out came a procession of 10 cakes, each representing a special moment in the couple’s relationship. It started with an orange T-shirt, which he’d worn on their first date, to her long-lasting dismay. (It became a running joke.) Then came blue dolphins, a subject of her many paintings. Then a Lion King playbill, a reference to the show they saw three times together; an elephant, from their honeymoon in Chiang Rai, Thailand; and a set of Mickey Mouse ears, nodding to her childlike obsession.
“The violins and the fireworks? That was easy. It was these meaningful, quirky things that really set this one apart,” Ezon says.
A Birthday Fit for a Royal
When clients have a particular passion, it’s easy to build exclusive experiences around a theme. That’s what Rago did for Austin-based real estate broker Wade Giles and entrepreneur Jeff Schab, both avid horseback riders (with a new, equestrian, tech startup, to boot).
To celebrate Giles’s 30th birthday, Rago planned the most over-the-top, equine day in London, where ponies and polo are part of the royal culture. “It had to be more than just riding a horse in Hyde Park,” she says. “It had to be super-sexy.”
Rago first had the couple become members of the Riding Club of London, which opened up a host of exclusive benefits. Through that network, she managed to get polo ponies to Hyde Park and deck the couple out in dressage gear for an unattended ride, at full-gallop, through tree-lined boulevards. “The club has special relationships that they can leverage to make this happen,” explains Rago, “but it’s certainly not common—you have to have the riding experience to prove that you’re not a liability.”
From there, the couple got to go behind the scenes in the Hyde Park Barracks—to pet the Queen’s horses and meet the staff that cares for them—before jumping into a helicopter and heading to the Guards Polo Academy in Coworth Park, created by Prince Philip and home to the annual Queen’s Cup. “There, they got a private polo lesson from the former captain of the British national team and got tickets to a match, which they ended up missing because they were having too much fun shopping and having cocktails.”