We recently connected with Jacquelyn Kazas and have shared our conversation below.
Jacquelyn, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Naming anything – including a business – is so hard. Right? What’s the story behind how you came up with the name of your brand?
Naming your business is one of the most difficult decisions! And it’s something that I sometimes think we failed on, haha! I knew when naming our business I wanted something unique and that reflected who we are. Beijos Events comes from the Portuguese word Beijos which means Kisses. My dad was born in Portugal and immigrated here and I was raised doing all of the Portuguese things in America. Going to festas, bullfights, eating all of the Portuguese food, and traveling there often to visit family. Beijos is what my Grandmother, or Avo, would say to me whenever we said hello or goodbye. I remember reading a book right after we started our company and it said rule number one – choose a name that is easy to pronounce – well, that’s where I messed up! It’s pronounced “Bay-Joos” in Portugal but here most people think it’s like Spanish and say “Bay-Hos” or get it wrong all together. We usually say Beijos like “Bay-Jos” – just for reference!
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
My name is Jacquelyn Kazas and I own Beijos Events. We are an event planning company along with a lifestyle blog that features anything from our events to party inspiration, home tours, travel, and recipes. I work with my friend Leah Carriger to produce all of our events and with my friend Abby Guido on the blog. My role is to design all of our events, photo shoots, and manage our social media and blog. We throw amazing events that range from kid’s birthday parties, baby and bridal showers, adult parties, corporate parties, weddings, and more! I also do product styling for mainstream brands. It’s a fun and creative field that I feel fortunate to work in but we also work very hard to make sure our customers are happy and satisfied by making each event unique and tailored to them.
Has your business ever had a near-death moment? Would you mind sharing the story?
Covid was a very scary time for our business. Obviously events were at a stand still during the pandemic. This was a scary time for everyone but extremely hard on the event industry. We didn’t know how long it would be until we came back from such a dark time. Leah and I took the time to be with our families and focus on them and I also did a lot of work with my fellow colleagues in the industry creating content of party ideas to post and keep people interested. This was not only motivation for me to get through this time by keeping myself busy and creative but it also gave all of our followers and clients ideas and hope for parties to come. Once life slowly started creeping back to normal business started booming and we were stronger and busier than ever.
How’d you meet your business partner?
I met my business partner Leah right after college. I applied to a clothing boutique that she was the manager of and the owner hired me on the spot! She trained me and at first I thought she was kind of intimidating and scary, haha, but after one night of getting drinks after work we became close friends. We bonded over a not so great work environment and learned a lot of what to do and what not to do when owning a business, something we had talked about doing together. The thought was to open our own retail store but after we both got married we decided we liked the idea of doing events. Thanks to the help of my own wedding planner we got our foot in the industry and made a name for ourselves by creating events for friends and our own families. It’s very rare to be able to run a business with a close friend, and I’m not saying it’s always easy, but since we had that start of working together we manage it well. We know each other’s work ethic is strong and can trust one another. I’m happy to say that we are still great friends and we are even godparents to each other’s children! I guess we are proof that friendships can survive businesses!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://beijosevents.com
- Instagram: @beijosevents
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beijosevents