Meet Renée Strauss | Travel Industry Entrepreneur & Executive Producer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Renée Strauss and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Renée, can you share a quote or affirmation with us?
“I saw the angel in the marble, and I carved until I set him free” Michelangelo Buonarroti

The first time I read this quote, it struck me very hard. It was as though someone clearly understood me and my MO.
I am a visionary. I see the end of the road — the destination — vividly in my mind, And I am then relentless. The goal is to reach it. No matter how many twists and turns and pivots it may require, I don’t stop until I reach it.

What should our readers know about your business?
I have been in business for several decades, in different segments, but all related to the wedding industry in one way or another. I’ll start my narrative with my current venture and then tell the story of how I got here!

Wedaways is my current entrepreneurial venture launched in 2016 with my daughter, Pamela Goldman.

Wedaways is a luxury travel agency, catering to wedding planners and their high-end clients needing full property buyouts, room blocks, and honeymoons. Satisfied clients have remained Wedaways loyal customers. We serve them for all their personal, as well as corporate travel needs. We have 3 offices worldwide: Beverly Hills, CA is our headquarters, NYC and Lisbon, Portugal.

Wedaways is also a digital platform that features luxury properties around the world that cater to the wedding & honeymoon markets. This serves as a resource for engaged couples, wedding planners, and other travel advisors. In fact, surveys have shown that often a couple learns about a brand for the very first time on our platform. We have a dynamic blog and newsletter program, which is how we serve and stay in touch with our 3 audiences: The global wedding community, hospitality, and consumers.

For those properties that are in need of or want gorgeous marketing materials to capture and gain their market share, we have a production company called Wedaways Styled Shoots. We have a full bridal fashion partner ensuring fresh merchandise for every shoot, top industry wedding planners, photographers, videographers, florists, and rental companies. We select the perfect professional team for each property and remain at the destination for up to 6 days. We capture various vignettes: ceremonies, tablescapes, brides (professional models), and more. These image and video assets are relevant for up to 3 years and are all the wedding marketing assets a property needs for social media, websites, and travel trade shows.

This project was born out of Covid when many properties were closed to the public but focused on coming out of Covid first in class.

How did I get here? It’s been an amazing journey.

In the mid-1980s, I purchased a waning bridal salon in Beverly Hills. It was shabby, not chic. Over time, I redesigned the interiors, refreshed the merchandise, and, realizing my store windows were my business card, hired window dressers. Renée Strauss for the Bride, a landmark destination, was born.

The store wasn’t huge. About 3,000 square feet. But the location was on Wilshire Boulevard, the main street running through Beverly Hills. The investment in window dressers was expensive for me at the time but turned out to be one of the best investments I made. TV, commercial, film producers, and costume designers noticed and started to come in and buy merchandise for their productions. Always being entrepreneurial, I created studio services and fast became the go-to bridal salon for all wedding wardrobe needs for production ranging from Hollywood to New York, to Toronto to Vancouver, and in-between.

If you ever watched General Hospital or The Young and The Restless, the wedding wardrobe came from Renée Strauss for the Bride. The original Dallas and Dynasty TV shows. Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. ER starring George Clooney. Joan Rivers on Johnny Carson. The same. Too many to list.

And movies to name a few: My Best Friend’s Wedding, Runaway Bride, Mr. Magoo, and Father of the Bride starring Steve Martin, in which my company not only created all the original wedding wardrobe but where they recreated Renée Strauss for the Bride in the movie, and I have a cameo appearance.

I designed and created the wedding gown, and consulted on set for the award-winning music video Guns N Roses November Rain. And for the award-winning Gallo Wine commercial production shot in Napa Valley over 5-days, which won best commercial production two years in a row. This opportunity gave me the idea to personalize sparkling wine (champagne??) to give as gifts to my clients when they purchased their wedding gowns. I still, to this day, hear from former clients that they have kept that bottle.

When I realized I needed to up my game and bring in wedding gowns from Europe to cater to the high-end clients the five-star southern California hotels were referring to me, I made sure my four young children were in good hands and went to London, first. The story was pretty much the same in every city: Paris, Milan, Barcelona. I flew to the city. Stayed in an upscale hotel. Rented a conference room space and had the concierge help me locate local designers. I also explored the fashion districts on foot to find the designers the top shops were selling. I invited designers to the hotel to show me their designs, and this is how my import business was born. At that time, I had no idea trade shows existed for this endeavor. Of course, over time, I learned, and due to the volume I was able to purchase, I became a “hosted buyer” for the bridal trade shows in the cities I mentioned. This means that the trade show organizers would poll their exhibitors and ask them which retail stores they would like to come to see and buy from them at the exhibition. My name came up for every major market. So my airfare and hotel were paid for every show for 25 years.

Because my inventory was so diverse, I sold wedding gowns to socialites, royalty, and brides with very good taste. Prime Ministers, airline owners, corporate leaders, actors, and the wealthiest families from all over the world were my clients.

I built my international network, which opened up an entirely new opportunity.

By now, I had moved from my original store, and purchased an 8,000 sq ft building down the street.

The challenge was that there were no windows. But that challenge led to a new opportunity.

I took the beautiful logo that I had designed years before and had it made into a 20-foot high and wide brass sign, immediately creating a mystique and branding long before that was the norm.

Clients started asking me for assistance beyond the wedding wardrobe. To actually plan, design, and execute their weddings. I was up to the challenge because of the strong industry network I had cultivated over the years. But I was careful not to accept local weddings because my strong referral base outside of hotels was wedding planners. I didn’t dare step on their toes. So I accepted destination weddings.

The wedding of all weddings was for Italian clients whose dream was to be married in their hometown: Rome. And their dream venue was The Vatican. Well, we made it happen. It took some time to organize, but there I was, Renée Strauss, a Jewish girl from Beverly Hills, in St. Peter’s Basilica’s largest Capella (chapel) with Swiss Army guards in tow, and the Secretary of State of Vatican City presiding as officiant, fixing my bride’s train as she knelt next to her fiance. And my number two? My daughter Pamela.

Yes, it was quite the experience.

It wasn’t long until reality TV shows became the popular genre, and I, too, got in the mix.

Producers came to me, I “auditioned,” which basically consisted of a day in my store, and won the lead in a new series called Brides of Beverly Hills. Canada, Italy, and Australia were the most popular markets for the show.

We shot 27 episodes which ran for two years and went into international reruns for another 7 years. It was great fun. And it led to me shuttering brick and mortar. That doesn’t sound like a very good ending, does it?

Well, you see, for my entire career as a luxury bridal salon owner and operator, inching my way to bigger things, I always would walk through my beautiful salon and say out loud (when no one was there, of course), “there must be something bigger than this for me”. “How do I get beyond these four walls?”. Never did I imagine it would manifest into an international TV show, which inevitably would lead to Wedaways.

I did a 3-year stint with Italian travel trade shows, which led to my daughter and I driving through Italy for 3 weeks, checking out hotels and resorts, and thinking about ideas on which we could build a business together.

Wedaways was conceptualized out of the popularity of my TV show, which gave my personal brand Renée Strauss global recognition and trust. Combined with the smarts and entrepreneurial spirit of my daughter Pamela, we discovered properties that were eager to capture their market share and trust our platform as a vehicle to get them the attention and consideration they deserve. We’ve cultivated relationships with wedding planners who trust us with their clients and have grown their businesses as a direct result of working with Wedaways.

Capitalizing on decades of building my network, which I consider to be my net worth, I reached back and reignited relationships that went silent during the years between shuttering brick and mortar and Covid. Our production company was created to serve the global hospitality community with their wedding marketing needs. We’ve developed many dynamic initiatives for our growing wedding planner client community via our global travel services, which act as an extension of their offering to their clientele.

Believe me, there were many challenges along the way. Raising four children born within five years of one another. A very difficult divorce. Leaving my children with my ex-husband as I hung onto my business for dear life. Almost losing my business altogether. Moving from one building to the next, twice. But these challenges, terrifying as they were, always led to something bigger and better. Designer brands emerging onto the market in direct competition with me inspired me to go to Europe, and import unique merchandise, which led to a much bigger client base and new opportunities. And in between all of this, I married my soulmate, who also happened to be my dentist.

My children are all grown into amazing, entrepreneurial leaders. I have five grandchildren, and the sixth may be born by the time this article is published.

Thank you for reading my story. I hope it inspires you!

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I love picking up visitors from LAX. It’s hectic but exciting. The only real issue is that the traffic in Los Angeles never really lets up. No matter where you are. So you need to calculate a 20-60 minute buffer whenever you get on the road! But it’s so pretty it’s tolerable.

We love to host friends, and my husband and I enjoy cooking for them. So a trip to a Farmer’s Market is often on the agenda for the freshest ingredients leading to a marvelous meal together.

We’re early risers, so we’d get up and take a full city walk through our residential Beverly Hills neighborhood, all the way to Century City and back, stopping in the iconic Beverly Hills triangle, for coffee or lunch at an outdoor cafe, and people watch.

A trip over to Century City Mall for some shopping would be a half-day activity as Eataly is a popular destination.

I’m not big on amusement parks or kitschy destinations like the Hollywood Walk of Fame. I’d rather take guests on a drive downtown and enjoy a performance at the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion, Ahmanson Theater, Mark Taper Forum, or Disney Music Hall. And then enjoy dinner in one of the gorgeous restaurants that are bustling at night.

Then I’d say we’d spend a few days down at the beach at our beach house and barbeque, talk long walks, and sit around the fire pit at night enjoying each other’s company.

Eventually, I’d take them back to LAX for a fond farewell.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
My shoutout is to my four children, who were the inspiration that drove me to success. They were my sole motivation. There was a point in our lives when the walls began to crumble, and it was either sink or swim. We entirely depended upon the survival of my business. I didn’t realize my strengths or how creative I was until I realized it was all me. Up until that point, decisions didn’t seem quite as daunting.

Website: wedaways.com

Instagram: @reneestraussbh @wedawaystravel

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/restrauss/

Twitter: @reneestraussbh

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/reneestraussbh

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/wedaways

Image Credits
Redamancy Photography Lerina Winter Photography Ashley Ludaescher Photography