An Interview With Our Bride of The Week, Nicole Froelich
Nicole
We interview our bride of the week, Nicole Froelich, a gifted wedding planner who sees culture as a source of inspiration when creating the dream wedding.

By Patricia Yaker Ekall


This interview features the dynamic Nicole Froelich, a wedding planner with a vision to make every ceremony as gorgeous as it would surely be memorable. Based in Hong Kong, the Swiss-Taiwanese polyglot knows a thing or two about seeing culture as a source of inspiration. She believes that a wedding is “an event that cannot be duplicated.” Nicole works tirelessly to ensure the weddings she plans under her company name, Nicole Please Weddings, are the stuff of dreams. Most notably, Nicole is a Galia Lahav bride. Having fallen for the brand when she first lay eyes on a client’s choice of wedding gown, she made a mental note that she, too, would be clad in Galia Lahav on her special day.

We caught up with the entrepreneurial beauty to learn about her philosophy towards wedding planning. We also discovered all of the achingly beautiful details of her fabulous wedding in Morocco, some of which she shared with her followers on her Instagram page. Get to know our darling bride of the week.

What is it about weddings, in general, that made you want to plan them professionally?
Weddings are a spectacular milestone in your life. A wedding marks an emotional, intimate time and every single one is different; reflecting not only a person but the couple together. Everyone has their own understanding of weddings and I find nothing more exciting than creating a reflection of a couple’s love, enabling them to share that with their dear ones. My dream has always been to turn someone’s vision of ‘the perfect day’ into reality. Because I want to give the couple the best experience, I wouldn’t want them to associate their wedding day with any kind of stress. For me, weddings are about celebrating, having fun and experiencing joy and nothing makes my life more meaningful than to share my passion with others.


Can you recall the first strikingly memorable wedding you attended?
That was a wedding in Tel Aviv, Israel, in the summer of 2011. It took place under hundreds of lemon trees. I have this strong memory of the lovely scent and that moment I looked up – it’s as if it were yesterday. It was my first time attending a Jewish wedding and I was mesmerized by the intimate rituals and touched by the traditions. We danced the night away like there was no tomorrow. That is what I call a celebration of love and life!
At the welcome dinner, all the guests were seated in the restaurant: the bride came for the cocktail reception, while the groom joined us later, for dinner. This was in order for them not to see each other. The bride and groom didn’t see each other for seven days prior to the wedding day and all of us could feel the tension and excitement of the first look when she walked down the aisle, by her side her mother and father, accompanied with a deep male voice singing a Hebrew song.
During the wedding planning, the bride showed me all the Israeli bridal designers and one stuck to my mind: Galia Lahav. It took me a split second and I knew, it was the one. In order not to jinx it, I never mentioned a word about it until the day I was engaged.


Did that moment directly inspire your career today?
In 2010, when I first moved to Hong Kong, I was looking for a job and I knew I wanted to be a wedding planner, even back then. During my first interview with one of the biggest agencies in Hong Kong, the founder told me that I was too young, had no experience and wasn’t even close to getting married myself. She decided not to hire me because of those reasons, so I parked the idea in the back of my head and pursued my career in the next best thing: events management. I focused on planning events for luxury brands like Louis Vuitton, Hermes and Shanghai Tang. I learned all about production, operations and logistics but most importantly, I learned about the importance of attention to detail and became adept at delivering quickly with quality in mind.

Still, something wasn’t quite adding up so I moved into PR and Marketing. Then I was made redundant. It was during my time searching for a job that I helped a friend with her wedding planning. The moment I realized that it was time to get over my crushed feelings about my dream, I started working on a website. Before I knew it, I had my first client under Nicole Please Weddings. Through word-of-mouth, I got another client shortly after. I was thrilled when the work I did for that got into the Tatler, Philippines. Then I got another commission through social media. I don’t believe in coincidences; my success was not only about timing but the things I’d learned in my previous career. I’m grateful for the years of experience I had in events planning and I’m thrilled about the outcome.


How does travelling and seeing the world influence the work you do?
Every pattern, shadow, flower, colour combination, scent -even architecture – influences my creativity. We travel around the world a lot, which broadens my horizons and helps me understand different people, cultures and traditions. From how they communicate with each other to their relationship with loved ones, their upbringing and the education they had, as well as the exposure they have to art, music and food. Regardless of the country we’re in, we always try out new things to broaden our range of experience. From new restaurants for food presentations, museums and heritage sites for venue scouting, to going to theatres and concerts for staging ideas, there’s always room to find a source of inspiration. I also like to scout fitness trends for new songs, as well as mindfulness tasks that help with personal growth, which could help my clients better connect with their inner self. The way we live our life is a source of influence in its own way.

What, in your opinion, are the benefits of appreciating different cultures?
The world today seems to be more united than ever before, coming together not only geographically speaking but culturally, too. Some of these merges in culture can be attributed to more inter-cultural partnerships being forged. As a result, we become more understanding and adapt quite quickly to each other: so life becomes more interesting. More and more weddings are being created with varying aspects, influenced by each culture that might have touched it. People tend to want to connect more deeply with their roots, thus keeping certain traditions alive while simultaneously creating new ones. All of these factors allow us to reinvent the different ways we celebrate. It’s wonderful because it challenges our creativity in order to make each client’s wedding bespoken for them.

When it comes to inter-cultural weddings, mutual respect is often the secret to a successful wedding day. The trick is simple: the more you include your loved ones, the more memorable they will make your wedding day for you. It is, therefore, my duty to act as a go-between for the couple and everyone else, in order to avoid any additional stress.


Aside from your schooling, how else did you learn to equip yourself for your chosen profession?
The most important characteristic of a wedding planner is personality. It’s a crucial quality to have in order to sensitively manage the expectations of the bride (and groom), but also to be sharp enough to manage all the suppliers. It’s imperative to stay positive and friendly, creative and solution-oriented, active and understanding. Then comes the experience of being the wedding planner while doubling up as an observant guest, in order to understand the other point of view.