I’m about to hop on my video call with Kenzie Bates, event producer and owner of Kenzie’s Events, a full-service event production and design company. I have my questions set, my recorder ready. I open Instagram and scroll until I see her page. She posted recently.
When I click on her profile picture, I learn that her U-Haul, full of crucial items for an upcoming event, was towed the night before. I’m shocked and quickly change my first question for the interview. After we say hello and I introduce myself, I ask: How are you doing?
Bates tells me fall and Halloween are her busiest seasons. From haunted houses to Thanksgiving, corporate Christmases and end-of-year celebrations, her and her team are everywhere, doing everything, all at once. She tells me it is hard to live in the moment. She tells me she’s worried about work-life balance and making sure she’s spending enough time with her kids. She tells me her children’s after-school program costs two dollars a minute, that she’s recently divorced, and that all her event supplies from all seven of her previous storage units now live at her house.
It sounds like chaos, but the way Kenzie tells it is impressively calm. I’ll soon learn that’s her specialty. “I feel like my whole job is putting out fires,” she says. “It’s not a lack of coordination, it’s not a lack of organization — it’s just part of the industry that I’m in.”
Teresa Homer, an event manager with Kenzie’s Events, says it is exactly Bates’ perspective on the job that makes her great to work with. Even when everyone is stressed on an event day, Homer says Bates “Knows there are going to be little things that go wrong every day, but we’re just gonna deal with it and roll with the punches.”
The cool and collected manner Bates employs was won through the trials of building her business. Her calm resonates with customers, employees and contractors, allowing her creativity to shine through any mishaps and her calendar to fill up quickly.
The learning and development phase
Bates’ career in creativity began early. As a teenager, she wrote songs and played the piano while attending a music academy in Arizona. She helped put on concerts, quickly learning the ropes of ticket sales, stage design and event flow. Her dream was to attend Berklee College of Music in Boston and become a music writer, working with the rich and famous.
When she first left home, however, a short stop in Idaho to see a friend quickly turned into a job. Another friend’s parent had created a product, and they needed help getting it into stores. Her creativity and hard-working personality took her around the country, setting up custom display tables to market the product at Walgreens locations. She found she excelled at crafting the display tables and enjoyed expressing her creativity to benefit a business.
“I could see that this was a job that made my parents proud,” Bates explains. “People could understand it. I wasn’t going to be this poor musician who’s just trying to sell the next best song. I was now at the actual bigwig company, making good commissions and money. So I stuck to that.”
Instead of Berklee, Bates continued to study music at nearby BYU-Idaho. College classes fed her creative side while work taught her the basics of QuickBooks, company administration, warehouses and operations. Within a few years, Bates married and moved to Utah. She changed her major to business and finished her degree online while working another corporate job. She enjoyed developing her business skills but longed for a creative outlet.
To fill the gap, Bates started planning birthdays, baby showers and weddings for family members in Utah. As the raving reviews came in, she decided to find a new job that would allow her to dedicate more time to events. She soon found a position as a personal assistant.
“I figured if I could get in with a wealthy family, I would start being surrounded by people who could afford bigger events,” Bates explains. “I went into the job letting them know that I was trying to build my business. They said, ‘Well, that’s great! We hold a lot of events. We own seven companies. You could do all of our company events and decorate our house for the holidays.’”
With that, Bates began curating her portfolio of event work and meeting many future clients. Her business spread through word of mouth from impressed clients and event attendees.
Brady McDonald, founder and resident DJ of Rock the Mic Entertainment, knew Bates for years before she started her business, becoming a frequent contributor to many of her events. McDonald has been a witness to the growth of Kenzie’s Events and has a unique respect for her work.
“My business has grown based on the needs of what clients have asked for, and I think Kenzie is identical to that,” he says. “She has had to step out of her comfort zone … to pull off some fun things. She’s dealt with crazy budgets and pulled off miracles. Sometimes you take something to grow it or to get into a new part of the industry. She’s done so very well.”
Only the best
Kenzie’s Events started gaining traction, but as just one person, Bates knew she would need to be strategic. If she wanted to create the big, luxurious, show-stopping events she dreamed of, she needed a clientele willing to pay for them. Eventually, Bates found her dream client.
“There was a specific event where it was very high-end, and my client came in with a good chunk of money, and I just, I nailed it. Still to this day, those pictures are iconic for me from that event,” she reminisces. “It was such a big event, and seeing how I could transform the room — … I constantly say it’s like a high.”
The memories of these events are ones Bates knows her clients will remember forever. This specific party helped her finally see what she was capable of when given an opportunity, some trust and a good budget. Not only did she flex her artistic muscles, but she also broke through her limits and truly delivered the celebration she’d dreamed of. Once she’d given birth to her first child, Bates decided to go all in on the company.
“As adults, we kind of get into a routine where our life becomes old. If we don’t create moments that are exciting or moments to be celebrated, like birthdays or Halloween, life can fall into a stagnant place. I hope [Kenzie’s Events] inspires people to take time to appreciate moments and create little magical things for themselves.”
— Teresa Homer
“Seeing as I was doing these events, and seeing that people really trusted me and appreciated my work, I thought, ‘OK, I think I found this clientele,’” she says. “And that’s when I started requiring a minimum. … I know a lot of people want to work with me, and wish that they could; but there’s only one of me, and I also have to make money.”
Setting a minimum for her events helps Bates work with clients interested in parties on her level, who understand and value the effort that goes into throwing celebrations worthy of Kenzie’s Events.
“I undervalued myself for so many years, losing money on events because I wanted it to be greater than it was,” she says. “Once I had a good clientele, I was able to weed those out so that I would actually have people who could afford what I envisioned for their events.”
Go home and go viral
As Kenzie’s Events grew through word of mouth, Bates’ social media presence also helped create intrigue. Professional photos of the best events garnered an initial following, and once that grew, the company started catching the eye of influencers and celebrities.
“Even though my Google reviews are minimal, it’s been Instagram — that’s where I’ve received most of my clientele,” she says.
At the top of her page, Bates proudly features clips of Post Malone performing at a recent event and Mayci Neeley and Mikayla Matthews from Hulu’s “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” thanking Bates for throwing them a “10/10” dual baby shower.
Instagram is also where Bates found many of her vendors and contractors. Homer initially found and reached out to Bates on Instagram for her job. She was impressed by Bates’ skills and started as an on-call staff, helping set up and take down events. Now, she’s an integral part of the Kenzie’s Events team.
“It’s pretty easy to see in the events, but also on social media, that [Kenzie] does a fantastic job. I think there are a lot of event planners who pull parties together that are great. But Kenzie truly pulls together people’s visions,” Homer says. “[The events] look exactly like the clients’ Pinterest board; she truly brings magic things to life.”
One such vision came in 2022 from Jeffery and Katie Nelson. Bates began working with the Nelsons a few years earlier on birthdays and corporate events. When the Nelsons decided they wanted to decorate their house with a Harry Potter theme for Halloween, they knew just who to call.
“We met with Kenzie, and we all brainstormed and got way out of control,” Katie says. “Now, we get hundreds of people a night. On Halloween, we have at least 3,000 trick-or-treaters.”
The Nelsons’ Halloween decor, which you can see more photos of on their Instagram (@HogwartsontheIsland), includes a great hall on their porch with a complete Diagon Alley below, a Quidditch pitch, the Weasley family burrow, a potions room and their very own goblet of fire — all of which surrounds the outside of their home. Guests can see the full extent of the decor on the Nelsons’ custom Marauder’s Map. Each item has been carefully curated and stored to grow their collection through the years.
“Kenzie helped us realize that she was able to leverage not only her own skill, but she brought in some additional vendors to support what we wanted to try to accomplish,” Jeffery says. “Kenzie is a wonderful resource and a person who helps you realize your vision. She can take your idea and make it even better than you might expect.”
The success of the Nelsons’ home and others created a wave of interest in Halloween decor by Kenzie’s Events, eventually growing into an entire “Barbieland neighborhood.”
Although the houses and events sometimes take 18-hour days to pull off, Homer says the efforts are well worth it.
“As adults, we kind of get into a routine where our life becomes old. If we don’t create moments that are exciting or moments to be celebrated, like birthdays or Halloween, life can fall into a stagnant place,” she says. “I hope [Kenzie’s Events] inspires people to take time to appreciate moments and create little magical things for themselves.”
Let the celebration begin
For McDonald, the success of Kenzie’s Events makes complete sense. He’s seen firsthand how hard Bates works for her clients and knows she is the best of the best. Despite her skills, McDonald says Bates continues to impress him most with how grounded she stays.
“She is humble. She is determined. She is a human being. She has challenges and trials and gets through them. She’s no different than anyone else,” he says.
After nearly 10 years in the business and countless cakes, dinners, balloons and shoutouts, Bates has accomplished her goal of working with the rich and famous — just not in the way she initially hoped. Instead of music, she creates the greatest celebrations with clients who are passionate and invested in her work.
“It isn’t about the money, the big office or the biggest team. It’s that I’ve met my goal of working with the rich and famous,” she says. “That sounds kind of crazy, but ultimately, those are the people who throw the events I want to create and design. It’s the best, best job ever. I love it.”