Come On In! The Party’s Just Getting Started

Well kinda… the party that is While Entertaining actually started five years ago.

WE started as a magazine in March 2020 because I wanted to highlight the Black chefs and hospitality pros that had influenced my perspective on party planning and hosting throughout my years as an event planner in NYC. I had beautiful pages headed to a print and then the city (and the world) shut down. Our first issue never went to print. I did, however, release this first magazine digitally a few weeks later. It brought a couple hundred people joy, but it was an odd time to be releasing a publication about social gathering when we were all supposed to be social distancing.

I am a party planner by trade, and while there were no parties during these early pandemic months, I spent a lot of that time putting my party planning practices and ideas on paper, post-its, and notebooks. These musings would later become the topics of While Entertaining’s digital newsletter and the foundations of my forthcoming entertaining book.

When the lockdown lifted and the parties resumed, I went back to running my NYC-based supper club, To Be Hosted, and published 4 beautiful yearly editions of While Entertaining magazine. [Editions from 2021-2024 are still available at BEM Brooklyn]

Running a magazine by yourself is, as you can imagine, not a sustainable endeavor. I was writing, editing, coordinating photography, pitching retailers, pitching sponsors, marketing, and going to the post office to mail every single order (thousands of them). Can you imagine? I couldn’t do it anymore. [No shade to Tati at my local post office – I’ll still drop by to see you, sis.]

So I made the decision not to go into print this year. I did not have a plan for what would be next for While Entertaining, but I knew it needed to be different (and digital). For the past few months, dear friends and respected colleagues have said, “you need to be on Substack.” And once I started playing around with this platform, I, too, said to myself, “you need to be on Substack.” So here I am and here WE are.

To my Day One Subscribers, thank you for still being here. Sometimes it feels like you all are the ones that actually showed up to the cookout on time, and then you had to help me get the backyard set up. Ha! But jokes aside, it is truly an honor and deeply grateful to have your continued support. I think you will find that our move to Substack will be the most exciting iteration of While Entertaining to date!

And for those of you who are fashionably late ;)

You are actually right on time! My heart is bursting with ideas to help us all prioritize enjoyment during these strange times. For you it’s going to feel like you’re really getting in while the getting is good! [In fact, I hope your arrival here really feels like it’s 10:51pm and you’re getting to the club just in time for Ladies Free Before 11 door entry.] You remember that feeling? Fortunately, our club era is behind us and I’ll be here to help you make plans that will surely have you in bed by 11p.

To celebrate this new chapter, all my subscribers (old friends and new) will have access to the paid subscriber benefits for the month of April – the official kick off of the While Entertaining On Substack experience.

We’ll be kick things off officially on April 3rd and I’ll send my emails (Things WE Love, How to Host, and From My Journal) on Thursdays. You’ll receive new posts right here in your inbox. If you can’t find the newsletter, check your Spam folder or Promotions tab, and move this email to your primary inbox. And now that we are on Substack, you can also log into the Substack website or the app to access post archives, my notes, a community chat, and more.

Talk soon,

PS - Tell a friend to tell a friend – join us, recommend us, and subscribe! Thank you. :)