Our Story
Hi, I’m Rachael – founder of The Events Lounge and the person who will be by your side from the very first conversation to the moment your celebration comes to life.
Events have been my entire career – nearly two decades of it - and event management is the only role I’ve really known. I started young, travelling to South Africa at 22 to produce trade expos for a mining company, before moving into the world of corporate events where I spent years producing international events for some of the world's biggest companies, including Hewlett-Packard. I was running high-end international incentive trips for large groups end to end with every single detail accounted for. It made me a problem solver, calm under pressure and completely switched on to how events run.
It was an extraordinary experience. But somewhere between the roadshows and the conference rooms, I realised I was producing the same event in a different city, over and over, with no room for creativity. So I made a deliberate choice – to take everything I knew and pour it into something with heart.
What I found in weddings was everything corporate events couldn't give me. Culture, connection, creativity, the heartfelt, the joyful. Every couple carries a story that has never been told before, and every celebration is entirely its own. After years of "death by travelling roadshow," I had found my place.
The Events Lounge was born during maternity leave, in a season of life that brought both great joy and great loss. After losing my dad and my brother, my family and I made the decision to leave Sydney and relocate to the Gold Coast – chasing sunshine, ocean and a slower, richer way of living. Grief has a way of clarifying things - what mattered, and what didn't. I've always been someone who builds things – I started my first business at 14 and never really stopped. The Events Lounge felt like exactly what I was meant to build.
I'm a wife, a mother, and proudly part of a family that spans Dutch, Māori and Indigenous Australian heritage – culture, connection and storytelling are woven into everything I do and into the way I approach every celebration I'm part of.
The celebration is yours. Our job is to guide you through each decision to create something thoughtful and deeply personal to you – whether it's a wedding, a corporate event, or anything in between.
Our team
BEHIND EVERY CELEBRATION is A CLOSE KNIT, INCREDIBLY TALENTED TEAM – PEOPLE who READ THE ROOM, ANTICIPATE what YOU NEED BEFORE YOU ASK, and STAY COMPLETELY CALM NO MATTER what THE DAY THROWS AT THEM.
The result is a day that feels effortless and natural – exactly as it should be. Many of our team have been with us for years, some have left to start families and come back, and every one of them takes real pride in the work. This is the team you'll actually be working with.
Our approach
Every idea starts somewhere unexpected – a colour, a memory, a song you can't stop playing. Our job is to take that and turn it into something real, without losing what made it feel like you in the first place.
We only take on a small number of celebrations each year, because creativity like that takes time, and so does getting to know someone properly. The team we put behind you – photographers, florists, venues, caterers – is built from relationships that go back more than a decade, chosen because we'd trust them with our own families' celebrations.
However big the idea, however small the detail, nothing about your day is generic. It's yours, start to finish.