Party starter aids ill children

CURRENT EVENTS: Stephanie Frazier-Grimm, left, owner and founder of Couture Parties and The Confetti Foundation, meets with Mary Lynn Williams, event manager at the Newport Marriott. / PBN FILE PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO
CURRENT EVENTS: Stephanie Frazier-Grimm, left, owner and founder of Couture Parties and The Confetti Foundation, meets with Mary Lynn Williams, event manager at the Newport Marriott. / PBN FILE PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO

Anyone who’s ever planned a wedding or a large-scale party knows it’s typically a lot of work. But for Stephanie Frazier-Grimm, founder of Couture Parties LLC and nonprofit The Confetti Foundation, it’s her full-time job and she loves it.

“I get to create lasting memories for people,” Frazier-Grimm said. “It’s unbelievable.”

Frazier-Grimm started her first business, Mama & Bambino, in 2005 between the births of her son, Carter Grimm, 12, and daughter, Ellie Grimm, 8. The company designed gifts and accessories for babies and quickly garnered popularity after having its products featured in a several magazines and even worn on the “Oprah Winfrey Show.” She sold the business in 2006.

After spending a year at home with her children, Frazier-Grimm’s entrepreneurial spirit drove her again to start a new business. She launched Couture Parties and got her first gig throwing a 100-person cocktail party for the parents of her husband, Paul Grimm.

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“From there it was all word-of-mouth,” she said.

Couture Parties now does between 60-75 social each year. And it didn’t take long before one of her repeat customers asked Frazier-Grimm to plan a wedding for a granddaughter. Now she does about 10 weddings yearly.

About 95 percent of her business happens inside the Ocean State. The remaining 5 percent comprises roughly one destination wedding each year, business that has sent her to New York City, Los Angeles, the Caribbean and beyond.

She plans parties and weddings for both Rhode Islanders and out-of-towners who come to the Ocean State for destination weddings. The Knot, a wedding-planning website, named Frazier-Grimm “Best of Rhode Island Wedding Planner” three years in a row.

Frazier-Grimm last year launched The Confetti Foundation, a nonprofit that provides birthday supplies for children in hospitals.

She got the idea for the nonprofit after a friend told Frazier-Grimm about a child who was having a birthday party at a hospital, but missed out on balloons, cake other party materials because the hospital didn’t have the capacity to provide them.

She sat on the idea for a couple of years before launching The Confetti Foundation, which – like her other ventures – has gained popularity.

“The nonprofit is snowballing and our goal is to be in every children’s hospital in the country,” Frazier-Grimm said.

The nonprofit has already provided for 790 birthdays at 80 hospitals in 34 states, according to Grimm-Frazier. •

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