Gareth Gallagher was shocked. And it smells faintly of gin and tonic.
The 42-year-old planner stood in the midst of a multi-million-dollar party he had organized, stunned by an argument together with his important client over a drink – specifically, serving a G&T with only two ice cubes as a substitute of three.
“They threw a drink at me for a mistake,” he recalls, bewildered.
That “Mommy Dearest” moment was the low point of an already exhausting bash.
The three-week family reunion – a probability for a really wealthy family to get together right after the pandemic ended – required Gallagher to assemble a team of twenty. It was like a real episode of Succession, stuffed with dysfunctions.
![Event planner Gareth Gallagher](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/NYPICHPDPICT000012412224.jpg?w=1024)
![Event planner Gareth Gallagher](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/NYPICHPDPICT000012412218.jpg?w=1024)
They coordinated every thing from private planes to penthouse stays for multiple guests in ten or more hotels.
Gallagher says he needed so many helping hands because everyone present was at odds.
“It was a family reunion, but neither of them spoke to one another, so that you change into a punching bag for all of them trapped on this narcissistic, dysfunctional family,” she says.
It is a situation Nicole Braghin and Arianna Grijalba would recognize all too well – Miami planners hired and fired by billionaire Nelson Peltz in only eight days.
He overheard them at the marriage of his actress daughter Nicola to Brooklyn Beckham last April, but their quick departure was said to have been brought on by a quarrel over the RSVP of Formula 1 driver Lewis Hamilton. (Problem: why was he still on the guest list though he declined?)
![Nelson Peltz Nicola Peltz Beckham](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/NYPICHPDPICT000007849068.jpg?w=1024)
![Arianna Grijalba (left) and Nicole Braghin (right)](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/NYPICHPDPICT000006993496.png?w=1024)
Event planner duo and activist investor Peltz at the moment are locked in competing lawsuits: he’s suing them for a deposit of $159,000, which he paid when the couple fired back with a counter-suit looking for $50,000 in damages. The fight continues.
This inappropriate public gun is a reminder that the titillating world of party planning is not as carefree and glamorous because it seems.
Gallagher’s Latest Memories, “Gareth at last”can also be intended to emphasise this point.
Gallagher that runs EVT mediawhose clients include Google, Levi’s and Apple, and he divides his time between Los Angeles and London – born in England – he desires to debunk the myths circulating across the industry.
“It was very necessary to me to point out the dark side,” confesses Gallaher. “From the surface, every thing looks great, but there are such a lot of dysfunctions.”
![Brooklyn Beckham and Nicole Peltz Beckham](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/NYPICHPDPICT000007848489.jpg?w=683)
Gallagher knows this firsthand: He has experienced many addictions in his 20-year profession – sex, alcohol and medicines – but now he’s proudly recovering.
He warns that substance abuse is commonplace in his field, even during working hours.
“I might say 99.9% of individuals worked under the influence. It is the only option to function in an industry built around redundancy, in a high-energy, high-tension environment where you’re employed twenty-four hours a day.”
Nonetheless, it wasn’t cocaine-induced paranoia that made him think he was being followed.
It was five years ago when he was living and dealing in Latest York on his option to a 12 Step meeting.
Leaving the apartment, he noticed a person in a white peaked cap lurking over the road.
The stranger within the white cap was back on the subway a number of minutes later.
![Succession: the Roy family](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/NYPICHPDPICT000012375354.jpg?w=691)
![Relegation event](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/NYPICHPDPICT000012375359.jpg?w=1024)
Gallagher then quickly disembarked and again as a part of the test. In fact the person did the identical.
Panicked, he confided in the girl next to him, a stranger. “She said, ‘I’ll go along with you and act like me.’ She was an angel sent from above.”
Nonetheless, that wasn’t the top when he shook his tail. When he arrived, he was disturbed by a latest member of the meeting, an oddly quiet woman.
“No one knew her and she or he didn’t say her name,” he recalls, “and indeed, it turned out she was a spy too.
![Gareth Gallagher with his new book Finally Gareth](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/NYPICHPDPICT000012412136.jpg?w=683)
![](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/NYPICHPDPICT000012412235.jpg?w=1024)
Each, he continues, were hired by a disgruntled former corporate client who desired to recuperate money they believed he owed them in addition to break his fame; luckily he had a great enough lawyer to stop it.
More terrifying was that he was being blackmailed by a hotelier who had reported to the owners of the establishment for running a prostitution ring from the bar of a five-star hotel.
Gallagher, then mired in alcoholism, had overdone himself in the identical drinking room the night before; withdraw your grievance, thundered GM through the intermediary, or I’ll send your recording to your customers.
Gallagher was undaunted; “admitted his own shortcomings and the manager was eventually caught in a separate, also illegal, offence.
![Gareth Gallagher launch event](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/NYPICHPDPICT000012412230.jpg?w=1024)
![Gareth Gallagher](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/NYPICHPDPICT000012412178.jpg?w=683)
Gallagher’s relentless determination was essential in one other nightmarish scenario when an Asian client decided to check him and his team in grueling, bizarre ways.
“She tried to stop us all night by moving tables across the conference room. We ended up leaving after 11 hours.”
One other stressful consider his profession: planners are sometimes used to maintain client secrets.
This will include extorting money in a company environment – for instance, jacking up prices from suppliers and pocketing the difference, or switching to first-class fairly than business class – or easy personal indiscretions.
In a single case, Gallagher needed to take care of each: while running a significant incentive program for a pharmaceutical company in Latest York City, a senior overseas executive instructed him to increase his stay, adding five extra days in a fancy suite at the top.
![Elton John](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/NYPICHPDPICT000010251276.jpg?w=1024)
![Kylie Minogue](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/NYPICHPDPICT000012375390.jpg?w=1024)
Bill the corporate as a part of the conference, he told Gallagher.
This manager planned to stick with a colleague, his mistress, when his wife returned home.
The doctor’s dishonesty was discovered, and the corporate questioned Gallagher and his team.
A couple of days later, the director drove his automotive right into a tree at high speed and died.
“I’m ashamed to confess I used to be involved in it, nevertheless it was considered one of my darkest times after I used cocaine to get through it,” Gallagher now says.
A lot of the issues Gallagher countered, nonetheless, are more about pettiness than real life and death.
Let’s take a client who spent $700 a head on a marriage but paid the calligrapher’s cost for the menu – they insisted on having it printed at Kinko.
![DJ Steve Aokie](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/NYPICHPDPICT000012373348.jpg?w=1024)
Forget concerning the bride, though: the real divas are the performers, especially the bold-faced names hired to sing a number of hits for several million at a non-public party.
He says they often take offense at requests, hissing in response to easy questions. “We had this with Elton John when a client asked him to sing a Kylie Minogue song,” recalls Gallagher; his response was to threaten to withdraw – not John’s first tantrum – putting the entire event at risk.
Nonetheless, nothing beats the rider Gallagher got when he booked DJ Steve Aoki for an event in Singapore, arriving on a non-public jet.
Requirements achieved Spinal puncture levels of absurdity.
“He wanted to fulfill me with an additional hot Starbucks hot latte as soon as he got off the plane. I just stood up against him and said, “Listen, man, come on.” He pauses, laughing. “The more you give, the more people want.”