Rachel Birthistle was born in Dublin, Ireland, her love affair with Italy started as a teenager when she discovered her passion for design. Her route to Italy took her via England where she worked as a fashion designer…a few years on and she now lives full time on Lake Como and her design interest has shifted to events and her fashion interest is now in shopping!. Rachel started The Lake Como Wedding Planner at her dining room table with no money and no clients. Her initial USP was being a mother-tongue English speaker based in Italy. She now has a team of 10 and they get to work on some spectacular weddings around the lake, as well as other parts of Italy when time allows.
Rachel is predominantly a wedding planner in a destination, rather than a destination wedding planner, this business model allows her lots of variation in the work she does. In the main they work with clients direct but she also has a strong B2B aspect and they often have the pleasure of morphing into the local team for many foreign agencies, we have worked for many agencies including Lisa Vorce, Jung Lee – Fete NY, Colin Cowie, Robert Fountain, Mr.Smith, to name a few.
This has allowed her to use her patch a little differently and start to represent Como as a base for corporate activities and private events, as well as a base for photoshoots such as the two recent ones we have produced for Harpers Bazaar US.
Rachel considers herself incredibly lucky to have a job that encompasses all of her interests – design & decor, food, Italy, traveling, and talking!. Blessed with the gift of the ‘Irish Gab’ and with a strong empathetic side to her character the aspect of my job that requires her to connect with people and win their trust comes easily.
The business has grown this year with the exciting addition of her furniture rental business and a second agency Rachel Birthistle Events, she saw the need to be less geographically specific and less wedding-specific in order to maximise the opportunities that lake Como and Italy has presented.