Introducing Nicole Knudsen, Summer intern 2014
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At the Old Field Club in East Setauket, NY. A venue ADE already has two weddings at in 2015!
Blog Post #1 - About Me
Hi everyone! I’m Nicole Knudsen and I am so excited to be a part of Ashley Douglass Events as an intern this summer! Aside from helping Ashley and Sara with all of the events they have booked this summer, I will be writing up blog posts as well! Before I start writing up different ones, I figured you should all get to know me first! As well as how I ended up on the path to hospitality.
I was born and raised on Long Island, NY; specifically Northport. I grew up in the same house my dad grew up in, attending all of the same schools he had (not all of the teachers though..) Throughout my whole life I danced outside of school at the wonderful Anita’s Studio of Dance. In high school I was on the varsity kick-line team, as well as, a student-run fundraiser for A.L.S (Lou Gherig’s Disease) name A Midwinter Night’s Dream (AMND). AMND was my first interaction with the hospitality industry on a very basic level. I loved it and from there on out knew I wanted to do something within that field.
After graduating from Northport High School in 2011, I decided to attend James Madison University as a Chemistry major on the Pre-Med track. Now you all must be really confused as to why I’m working as an event planner intern this summer, which is now the summer before my senior year. Well now the story gets good.
About a month into being a freshman at JMU, and enduring endless hours in the Library and the Chemistry Lab, I realized that I didn’t know if this was for me. I mean, I loved our pretty library on campus, but I got to tell you, I saw years ahead of me not interacting with people while here I would be studying to help them! A worthy cause, but perhaps not up my alley! After reading the whole course catalog from cover to cover to see what other majors are offered, one stuck out to me: Hospitality Management.
I met with the Director of the School of Hospitality and Sport Recreation Management and decided the best major for me was Hospitality! This has been the best I decision I have made to date! One major part of the program is outside experience. In order to move up to the next level of classes from the foundation level, the program states you have to have 600 hours of work experience in the hospitality field. For the first two summers of college, I lived at home and worked as a server at Oheka Castle in Huntington, NY. By observing my bosses, I truly saw what it took to run events and I knew I wanted to carry on in the field of event planning. Even though there were long hours and most of the events were on the weekends, I still enjoyed being there and learning about the field. Then came time to search for my summer internship before my senior year! I knew I wanted one at home and this is what led me to Ashley Douglass Events! They are an event planning company that works on many weddings, while also working on some other corporate events and fun family and community events. They cover everything from soup to nuts, while some other companies I had looked into focused more on just design or just day-of or month-of coordination. I know I would get to learn and see all sides to the puzzle!
More blog entries are on the calendar. For one, I plan on talking about my favorite venues as we do site inspections with this year’s clients and Brides, and also as a follow Ashley around doing site inspections for our new 2015 clients that just began coming on board!
To say that this is going to be the best summer is definitely and understatement. I have the internship of my dreams and I am super excited for everything about it. Along with my internship, my sister is getting married this November! Along with being an event intern, I get to be a Maid of Honor and experience the joys of that! I’m looking forward to what I think will be the best 3 months of my life!
XOXO,
Nicole
At school with my ZETA family!