Bianca Cirillo
Bianca Cirillo is a seasoned event professional with more than 25 years of experience in the events industry, currently serving as Senior Sales Executive at Different Look Luxury Tabletop Rentals. In her role, she collaborates closely with hotels, banquet managers, country clubs, producers, and event planners to provide luxury tabletop rentals and assist with refined tablescape design. With a strong design-driven focus, Bianca specializes in curating china, glassware, flatware, and chargers that elevate the guest experience and align seamlessly with each client’s overall event vision. Her approach combines aesthetic excellence with hospitality-level standards, ensuring every detail is polished, cohesive, and event-ready. Bianca’s professional journey reflects both creativity and entrepreneurial spirit. After beginning her career in travel and attending travel and hospitality school in Miami she built a strong foundation in customer service and operations. She later paused her corporate career to raise her 4 children, during which time she began designing gift baskets and centerpieces from home. What started as a creative outlet quickly evolved into a thriving event planning business, “Tied With a Bow,” which she successfully led for many years before retiring from the company three years ago to join Different Look. Her career in events represents a successful second chapter built on passion, resilience, and innovation. Known for her integrity, honesty, and professionalism, Bianca believes that respect, a positive attitude, and a genuine smile can carry you through even the most challenging situations. She is deeply committed to creating beautiful, meaningful experiences through thoughtfully designed tablescapes that bring people together. With decades of hands-on experience in hospitality and event production, Bianca continues to be a trusted partner and creative resource within the luxury events community.
• Party Planner of the Year
• Knights of Columbus
What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my succes to a combination of consistency, preparartion, and strong relationships. I focus on doing the small things well and following through, while always looking for ways to improve and refine my approach. I'm proactive about anticipating needs and staying solution-oriented even when challenges come up. Most importantly, I invest in genuine relationships built on trust, because when people feel seen, appreciated and supported, everything else tends to follow.
What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best career advice I ever received was to always protect your reputation. Skills can be learned, opportunities come and go, but your reputation follows you everywhere. I focus on being consistent, watching deadlines, and budgets, I deliver what I promise and I treat everyone with repect. Long-term trust is more valuable than any short-term win!
What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I would tell young women entering this industry to take both the creative and the operational sides seriously. It's easy to fall in love with the design; the florals, the aesthetics, even the clients-but the real power comes from understanding logistics, budgets, margins, and timelines just as well as you understand your color palettes!
Build your reputation on reliability. Follow through. Communicate clearly. Anticipate needs before they're spoken. In events trust is everything-after all, this is someone's very special day!!
Get along, but don't be afraid to advocate for yourself. Know your value, refine your skills, and step confidently into rooms where decisions are being made. You desrve a seat at the table.
Bottom line-Master the details behind the beauty. Learn the business, protect your reputation, and don't shrink yourself to make others comfortable. Confidence and competence with the goods to back them up is a powerful combination!
What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
One of the biggest challenges in our field right now is balancing client expectations with operational realities. There's a lot of inspration out there-beautiful content, viral trends, and elevated aesthetics, which is wonderful, but it can create expectations that don't always align with timelines, budgets, or logostics. Part of our job is translating those aspirations into something practical and seamless without compromising quality.
Another challenge is talent retention and workforce capacity. Events are high pressure and in our market, South Florida, seasonal, which makes it hard to maintain consistent teams. Investing in training and mentorships is essential but takes intentional effort.
Finally, there's the need to innovate while staying grounded in fundamentals, and our own unique style. Clients want fresh ideas, but excellence comes from strong planning, clear communication, reliable execution, and the quality of goods we are known for. Juggling creativity and operational discipline is both the biggest challenge and the biggest opportunity in our field today.
What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Integrity is the foundation of everything I do. In both my work and personal life, I believe in following through on commitments and doing what I say I'm going to do. Trust is built in small moments.
I also value excellence. Not perfection, but intention. I care about the details, preparartion, and delivering at a high standard because that reflects respect for the people I'm serving.
Relationships are incredibly important to me. I've been married for more than 30 years, and my husband is still one of my favorite people. We have 4 amazing children, who have brought even more wonderful people into our lives! We still enjoy big Italian dinners every Sunday at our house, so whether it's clients, colleagues, friends or family, I invest in people. Success feels most meaningful when its shared!
And finally, I believe in maintaining a positive attitude. This industry can be very stressful, since its always changing-but I've learned that staying optomistic and choosing to smile, even during challenges, sets the tone for everyone around you.