You May Now Kiss the Bride

First comes the proposal with a glamorous ring...  The next episode is full of gossiping about how you received the proposal... Nevertheless, after a short all the attention will be gathered around the ring!
After all the sweetest part knocks the door. The wedding planning... Is this really lovable as it is mentioned?
Well if your answer is yes then you better have a look to the questions listed below ladies... Where the wedding is going to take place? In a hotel or in a countryside? What kind of surprises should be organized?

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Moshe Aelyon.


Fireworks lighting the dark sky with sparkling colors would be great if the party is going to be organized at a night ornamented with stars and a view leaning against the beautiful sea. However, what about a wedding feast in a country side accompanied with a wonderful weather where you can feel the touch of the wind on your face? Would not it be so romantic?

Do you remember Jennifer Lopez from the movie “The Wedding Planner”? Was not she perfect in organizing fantastic wedding feasts? The first scene of the movie; a woman in hurry, finding immediate solutions to various problems including the cheering up of the bride, preparing the clothes of the groom and even finding the lost father of the bride that is supposed to bring her to the wedding reception.  Along with of course at last Lopez feels the happiness of making a woman’s dream come true into a romantic and unforgettable day.

Well of course not asking you to become a character of this movie in order to have a fantastic memory of becoming husband and wife. Actually there is an easier way not to drown in the ball of complex choices… Here comes Moshe Aelyon.

FROM THE SCHOOL OF SULTANS
Aelyon, who was born in Istanbul, went to Sisli Terakki Elementary School and then continued to Galatasaray for middle and high school. Even though his family wanted him to choose another school at the prelim, he picked Galatasaray. He believes he had a great advantage of going to a public school to which children from all over the country go. His old schoolmates include lawyers, doctors and many other professionals. Showman, actor, and famous TV host Okan Bayulgen is one of them.

Although he was dreaming of going to an art school in Italy and study fashion, as a result of his family’s objections, he got in the French Philology department almost as an accident. He had to delay his dream of fashion education for a while. He couldn’t obtain a solid educational experience from the school because of the chaotic political atmosphere of 1980s (other than learning how to play Okay at the Beyazit coffee houses!) and he came to Los Angeles in 1983.

He got a textile, fashion and marketing education in Santa Barbara and Los Angeles. In 1986 he went back to Turkey and married with a wedding ceremony “made for the sultans”, as he puts it, and came back to the United States after this glorious wedding with his wife as an unemployed man.

(At this moment of the story Aelyon realizes that he has lost his keys at the Starbucks we are at and a short period of panic takes over. But since he remembers he has forgotten them in the bathroom we both take a deep breath because we can go on with the interview.)

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Aelyon was born in Istanbul.


A CAREER STARTED WITH LEATHER
He had his first job experience at a Turkish company called Troy International in the leather business. He became a manager at the company at which he started as a sales person. Even though it was not a company which was open to growth, he made it start doing business in New York, San Francisco, Chicago and Dallas markets. He started his own retail chain by opening four stores. Aelyon, who says that they had a very good year of leather sales because of the movie Top Gun, quit Troy, at which he worked for five years, and opened the accessory company named Geomo Fashions and started working for Gon Leather. He tells us his reason for quitting Troy was that the job turned into business more than art, and he adds: “My battery died.”

At his new company, he started working on a very enthusiastic, eight-year-long job. Maybe because it was a long-held dream, his eyes still get wet when he tells the story. He started marketing the leather and the accessories of Gon Leather in the United States. He developed the idea of creating his own brand. He knew that Gon Leather did not have any future in fashion and his dream of creating a brand did not happen. Aelyon, who says, “I stopped my career suddenly and made a new start,” made this start by moving to Connecticut from Los Angeles.

THE GUESTS ENCOURAGED  
Aelyon is a name who does not only organize parties for famous people from Hillary Clinton to David Rockefeller but also for organizations from NBC to the New York Stock Market. Starting the organizations in Westport, Connecticut, where he lives, was made possible when he started throwing glorious parties which really impressed the guests. When he started getting the question “Why don’t you do it as a profession?” he started his business under the name of “event planner/creative consultant.”

What a coincidence that Martha Stewart, who is famous for her designs and who made a big impact on daily American lives, is also a name from the same town where Aelyon lives.  Aelyon, who likes to cook and eat a lot, thought of opening a coffee shop in Westport at first, but then when people advised him that wholesale is always better than the retail he decided to continue his professional life as a consultant. He started organizing the events of others at the company he founded under the name Mosaic. It really helped the business to organize the events for the companies which were in Fortune 500. Aelyon, to get the attention of the CEOs at those parties, says that he gives great importance to every little detail to show the guests that they are special.

MARTA STEWART WAS ALSO HIS GUEST
As business grew, he made a decision to organize events only for people who had an unlimited budget, even though he was open to every kind of customer before. When he was organizing 80 parties a year, he chose to drop this number to 40 and be more selective. But of course meeting high level people at these parties helped his business and became an important element when making his decision of being selective. He changed the name of his company, which was Mosaic, four years ago and made it more personal: Moshe Aelyon Studio.

Five people work at Aelyon’s studio.  He says, “We try to make sure everything is perfect from the day we get the job until the day the party takes place.” The preparation process of the jobs they get ranges from three months to one year. April-May and September-October are their busiest months. Aelyon, who is organizing the Venrock Association’s, which was founded by Rockefeller family, biennial seminar and entertainment night, which the CEOs of 200 companies attend, is also meeting with Pepsi to obtain the account for their East Coast organizational needs.

Miramax, financial giant Prudential Corporation, one of the world’s one most important IT companies The Gartner Group, clothing brand Eileen Fischer, Avon Breast Cancer Institute, actor Paul Newman and businesswoman Martha Stewart are some of the names among the celebrities he organized parties for. He answers the question “Did Stewart act as a guru for what you did?” as “She did. We are on the same page. She is someone that inspires me, that I respect and follow.” The cost of the events Aelyon organizes ranges from 50,000 to 500,000 dollars.

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COOK BOOK

There are different projects Aelyon work on. One of them is a cook book in which he tells Americans, in English, the easy ways to cook Turkish. He says, “You cannot imagine how hard it is for an American to cook a ground beef stuffed eggplant.” And he thinks Turkish cook books currently on the market are very complicated and do not have enough visuals.

He also works as the creative director of a New York-based company which aims to bring goods from the fields directly to the table. Image and brand creating, making commercials, and overseeing package and service details are on the front row of his many duties. Aelyon, who completed this project, now works as the creative director of a Boston, Conn., based kitchen presentation company. His goal is to recapture the image and brand of that 3 generation family. He has also been giving his services as an interior design consultant since September 2005.

Aelyon has two kids. His daughter has a leaning toward becoming an interior designer and his son is a soccer lover, which is not a big surprise since it is not completely out of his father’s sphere of interest. His son even contributed to the success of the state-wide team he plays for. Even though he liked to play basketball and volleyball during his junior high years, because of his son, Aelyon became also a soccer fan.

Aelyon, who made special designs for a lot of big brands like Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren during the years he did fashion designs, started getting invitations for TV shows. He collects the national and international articles, interviews written about him, and pictures taken, in an encyclopedia-thick folder. When we ask him about his expectations of the future he sincerely says: “The only goal following being healthy and happy is to be creative and give something to the world.”

(August 2005, 18th Issue)
Last modified onSaturday, 06 May 2017 10:07