Some people have jobs so cool we'd actually enjoy attending their marathon Zoom meetings. Even the ones that could totally have been an email.
Not to say we don't cherish our all-important responsibility of bringing you every last piece of need-to-know information about the casts of Bridgerton and The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, but we don't have our own glam squad or a Rolodex filled with famous names, now do we?
But the impossibly cool people we'll be profiling in E! News' latest series totally do. Plus access to things like private drivers, designer garb and the type of professional titles we'd drop with wild abandon at parties, dinner dates or while chatting with the barista at Starbucks. Welcome to A Day in the Life...
Most brides don't know exactly what to expect on their wedding day—how they'll feel standing at the end of that aisle, if the weather will cooperate for their outdoor vows, what mishap will occur that no one will notice except them.
But Paris Hilton was especially blind to the process.
"She had only been to one wedding," planner Mindy Weiss reveals to E! News of the recent bride, who attended sister Nicky Hilton Rothschild's Kensington Palace affair back in 2015. "Maybe two weddings, she told me. So usually my brides know what's going to happen, but I don't think she knew what to expect."
Thankfully she had an expert to guide her.
For the past three-plus decades, Mindy has helmed pretty much every celebrity wedding you've heard about (think: Justin and Hailey Bieber, Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi, Ciara and Russell Wilson). So when Paris gave the pro six months to put together the Thursday, Nov. 11, vows that would air on Peacock's Paris in Love and be thoroughly dissected by the OG influencer-turned-beauty and fashion mogul's legion of fans, she was more than up for the task despite having already committed to staging Simon Huck and Phil Riportella's nuptials later that weekend.
"It was a lot," Mindy admits of the three-day affair that continued with a Friday night, carnival-themed party on the Santa Monica Pier and a final Saturday reception back in Bel Air.
Particularly when you consider it took them a full week to create the tented, twinkle light- and chandelier-filled space of Paris' dreams in the back of her grandfather's former Bel Air estate.
Mindy likens the process to building a house. "First you have to lay down the floor, which took a day and a half," she says. "Then we put in the tent. After that, we laid down the aisle from the house to the tent. From there we carpeted, draped the tent, started adding all the lighting in the ceiling and chandeliers and we built two stages."
By the time Mindy and her team of 105 staffers turned up that Thursday morning, they had fully prepped the kitchen for the caterers, installed all four bars, the equipment for the 13-piece band and Mark's Gardens' endless arrangements of white and pink roses, then presided over the one-hour rehearsal and a lighting check that wrapped by 11:30 p.m.
"It was a big production," says Mindy. Thankfully she vowed to give E! News every last detail.
7 a.m. (PST) Welp, that's L.A. traffic for you. Arriving to the 13-bedroom spread, Mindy learns she, her staffers and all 152 members of the Paris in Love production crew have been regulated to one driveway "because they wanted to keep the front clear."
Her team is shuttled in from a parking spot half a mile away, but the situation requires a bit of juggling once the caterers and other vendors arrive.
8 a.m. Grab a seat! Though not to rest, of course. With fabric already dividing the massive tent, setting up the chairs in the ceremony space is first on the to-do list. "We have to make sure they're perfectly straight and all that stuff so it takes a little bit of time," admits Mindy.
Then comes the most anxiety-ridden part of her day: The rush to finesse every last table setting. "The seating chart is so important and typically we get it way ahead," says Mindy. But with RSVPs coming in for three events and multiple cooks in the kitchen, including mother of the bride Kathy Hilton, "We didn't get it 'til late," Mindy shares. "So that was kind of a rush because we had to fill in all the table numbers and then placed everybody at tables."
10 a.m. Fortunately the bride—arriving on site to meet up with her glam squad—is far too blessed to be stressed. "We continued to check on Paris all day," says Mindy, noting she was "the easiest person ever."
Most brides are nervous even without television cameras trained on them, but Paris is hardly new to this game. Says Mindy, "I was just happy that she was happy."
2 p.m. Dare we call it a cakewalk? As the crew from Wolfgang Puck Catering arrives at the same time Joanie and Leigh's Cakes turn up with their gilded, multi-tier confection, Paris and her squad are happily swapping memories over champagne and a charcuterie spread.
All is calm(ish) downstairs, too. Following the rush to finish the tables, "we kind of were ahead of ourselves," raves Mindy, "which was amazing."
4 p.m. An hour after Paris and Carter begin taking photos, the first guests begin trickling in. Which is good, as it's quite the process to make sure everyone from Kim Kardashian to Nicole Richie to Emma Roberts gets tested for COVID ("We had collected all the vax cards ahead of time, so we were lucky with that," says Mindy), signs a production release and hands over their phones. On the first evening, notes Mindy, they were more than happy to acquiesce. But by Saturday, "People started getting a little, 'Oh, it's the third night! You don't need my phone!' And we're like, 'Yeah, we do.'"
As guests filter in, Paris hits up glam for a touch-up following an especially emotional first look. "Because if I walked the aisle with all that mascara running down my face," she wrote on her blog, "it would've been beyond."
6 p.m. "If you show me real love, baby, I'll show you mine..."
Only a half hour after the planned start ("That's on time," insists Mindy) Paris' pal Kim Petras begins her rendition of the reality star's 2006 single. "It was so surreal hearing 'Stars Are Blind' being sung by one of my favorite singers now at our wedding," Paris wrote, "and knowing that as soon as it finished I would begin my walk down the aisle."
Kim also takes lead on the bride's processional, belting out a version of Elvis Presley's "Can't Help Falling in Love With You" that left Paris struggling to keep herself in check. Though if you ask her uncle, Mauricio Umanksy, the most touching part of the 25-minute ceremony was the self-penned vows. "It was just beautiful," he said. "I'm a sucker for speeches and vows and all that kind of stuff so that was my favorite."
6:30 p.m. Time for more (literal) dirty work. Once guests are ushered to the front lawn for the 75-minute cocktail hour, Mindy's team descends on the ceremony space, striking all of the chairs, the aisle runner and the stage to make room for the dinner tables.
The oversized white floral arch is moved from the altar to the tent's entrance, a job "that was a scene in itself," shares Mindy. "There had to be 20 people trying to lift the arch to get it to the front of the tent." But the trickiest task is attempting to remove all the footprints and scuff marks from the very white carpet. "We were on our hands and knees trying to clean it," she reveals. "It was not good. But it worked."
7:45 p.m. For Mindy this reception reveal is nearly as crucial as the moment Paris stepped onto the aisle in her custom Oscar de la Renta gown. "The band started playing and we invited everybody back in, which is always fun to see people's expressions," she describes. "They know they were in this tent for the ceremony—how did we turn it over and make it even larger? Because a lot of people didn't realize there was anything behind that fabric."
Guests sufficiently wowed, they take their seats for Mr. and Mrs. Hilton-Reum's grand entrance and first dance to "Just the Way You Are" by Bruno Mars. "Carter and I aren't much of dancers," Paris admitted in her blog post, "but we've been practicing for weeks and I think we pulled it off!"
9:40 p.m. A second celebrity performance? That's hot. Following the first two courses of dinner and speeches from father of the bride Rick Hilton, matron of honor Nicky, Carter's brother, a friend and the groom himself, Demi Lovato takes the stage for a surprise rendition of Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You," which "was outstanding," raves Mindy, noting she didn't realize the pop star was "so powerful."
10:45 p.m. Once DJ Beat Breaker begins a set that Paris labeled "raging," it's normally Mindy's cue to leave. "I stay until they cut their cake and the after-party food's out," she explains of her routine.
But for this affair, she commits to seeing it through to the last encore. "It went late," she marvels of being able to keep the dance party going until 2 a.m. despite their residential location. Credit their thoughtfulness, perhaps, Mindy and her team delivering notes to all of the neighbors the day before.
2 a.m. That's a wrap. Sorta. A portion of Mindy's team (who were able to leave the manse by midnight) is tasked with reporting to the Santa Monica Pier the next morning for set-up with the rest of the crew filtering in that afternoon. And, of course, there's still the Saturday reception and Simon Huck's wedding to oversee.
By the time Mindy makes it to her Sunday morning ritual of browsing the local flea market and spending time with her grandchildren, "I could not move and I kept saying to my husband, 'Something's wrong with me. Something's wrong. I'm so tired. I'm so tired,'" she recalls. "And he goes, 'Yes, there's something wrong with you that you don't understand why you are so tired.'"
The exhaustion is worth it, though, as Paris' official review rolls in: Loves it.
"She wrote a lovely email," says Mindy. "I think she was thrilled. And she got such a positive response on her fashion, which was a big deal and it really showed a different side of her." Ultimately, while her job is hard AF, requiring her to be aware of every potential mishap without showing the slightest hint of anxiety, "It's very rewarding," she says. "Very, very, very."
(E! and Peacock are both part of the NBCUniversal family.)