Amy Shack Egan describes herself as an “anti-wedding” event planner. The company she founded in 2015, Modern Rebel, creates what she calls “love parties,” personalized events that celebrate the couple and their relationship and often include modernized or reimagined wedding traditions (or sometimes almost no traditions at all).
The couples she works with may forgo walking down an aisle or even conventional attire. (Ms. Egan once did an event where the wedding party was dressed as astronauts.) Another offered permanent tattoos to guests instead of a wedding favor. A few might skip the dance floor, but maybe have a bouncy castle instead.
Though she is involved in her clients’ lives, she would never call herself a couples’ therapist. “But I might call myself a relationship expert,” said Ms. Egan, a 32-year-old Orlando, Fla., native who now lives in Manhattan’s Washington Heights neighborhood with her husband, John Egan, 41, and their 2-year-old son, Arlo.
“When you have a front-row seat to the intensity of the wedding-planning process, you learn a lot about what makes a relationship work and how important it is to reflect that relationship — and to celebrate it — in your event,” she said.
Ms. Egan started her company after helping a stressed friend organize her wedding. “I wasn’t identifying with this defining wedding moment,” she said. “Neither were my friends. They were excited to get married, but weren’t excited to plan a wedding. They didn’t feel seen, celebrated or represented.”
She averages 50 weddings a year, working mainly with young couples who find her from referrals and from searching online using keywords like “anti-wedding” and “untraditional.”
