I am Holly Gray. I own and operate a wedding and event planning and design business, Anything But Gray Events, in Los Angeles. I want to share with you why values matter in my business. My job is literally to make things beautiful and care for people. Colorful. Joyful. Hope-filled. I build celebrations for love stories. I create spaces where people feel seen, celebrated, and safe.

And right now, the world does not feel safe. It is dangerous.

This is a deeply personal and emotional reflection, but I share it with a wider hope: that it helps other small business owners reconnect with their values, find their voices, and recognize the power they hold to create change in these unprecedented times.

The wedding industry is built on pretty images, perfect moments, and polished narratives. We post epic florals, elaborate tablescapes, champagne towers with tiny bows, and smiling couples, excited to start their lives together. All pretty, happy things. We, as an industry, rarely post about fear, rage, grief, loss, and especially politics. It’s not sexy, it’s not cute, and it doesn’t gain followers. So, as wedding and event professionals, how do we navigate the line? Or should we at all? While this choice is up to each one of us to answer for ourselves, for me, silence is not an option. Apathy won’t be my legacy.

 

I’m a Liberal Small Business Owner. Values matter.

Let’s be clear: I am very liberal. I am horrified by what Trump has done and continues to do to this country. I am angry about the cruelty, the attacks on marginalized communities, the erosion of rights, the normalization of hatred, and the way fear has become a political tool. This isn’t about being edgy or contrarian. This is about values. This is about humanity. This is about refusing to pretend that everything is fine because my Instagram grid looks “pretty”. Nothing we are living through right now is normal, and certainly, it’s not pretty.

My liberalism is something I mention on every consultation with potential clients. Why? Because their reaction will tell me everything I need to know about whether we are aligned and have the potential to move forward together.

If you’re a small business owner, especially in weddings and events, you know the unspoken rule: don’t talk politics and/or religion, ever. Don’t rock the boat. Don’t risk alienating potential clients. Keep it light, keep it fluffy, keep it pretty, keep it profitable. Well, you know what, I can’t do that. At the end of the day, there is good money, and there is bad money.

I can completely understand that fear. I feel it too, but I don’t want that fear to get the best of me. Losing followers, potential clients, or industry relationships is a real and scary risk. But here’s the thing: if someone stops working with me because I believe in basic human rights, equity, and compassion, they were never meant to be my client. 

When all else fails, your values are the only thing that will lead you back to who you are. And when you trade them for approval, silence, or a paycheck, you lose far more than business. You lose yourself.

And you know the adage, “If you try to be for everybody, you will be for nobody.” Time and time again, we are reminded of this.

 

Pretty Pictures Are Not a Moral Value Position

Weddings are beautiful. They are joyful. They are ongoing, despite the happenings in the world at any given time. But they do not exist in a vacuum. Our clients, our vendor teams, and our communities are impacted by policy, rhetoric, and power structures. Tiny children are being snatched in front of their schools. People are being executed in the streets by ICE thugs. Innocent people are kidnapped, detained, and jailed, unlawfully and brutally. Latinos are the backbone of our society, and as someone who has lived in Los Angeles her whole life, I know there are no harder-working, more loving, and welcoming people. Latinos ARE Los Angeles. After all, nobody can be illegal on stolen land.

George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Renee Good, and Alex Pretti. They should still be here. Living their lives, with their families, in peace. Instead, they were killed by the very institution meant to protect people.

Posting a stunning table design while ignoring injustice isn’t neutral. It’s a choice. Many of my clients are part of the LGBTQIA+ community and are directly hurt/endangered by Trump’s directives. Ignoring that would be turning a blind eye to their pain, and I would never do that, political or otherwise. If we ignore this ugliness to keep our feeds pretty, how are we promoting the love and the hospitality we are supposed to be creating within our line of work?

Our industry prides itself on love, connection, and hospitality. Yet many of us continue to curate flawless feeds while injustice happens in real time, saying nothing and doing nothing. This is not business as usual. Far from it. How does that align with the ethics of hospitality? How does that align with love? If our work is rooted in care, then our silence deserves blatant examination.

Speaking up against injustice is uncomfortable. It’s risky. It’s exhausting. And it matters, especially now.

I don’t want to look back on this chapter of my life and career and realize I kept my head in the sand because I was afraid of losing followers, of people hating me, or of being considered “too opinionated” to be palatable to everyone. I will never be for everyone, and that’s okay. I don’t want to have built a beautiful brand on top of silence and tunnel vision.

So this is me, saying it out loud, proudly, with no regrets: I stand against cruelty, authoritarianism, hate, racism, and gun violence of any form. I stand for equity, safety, and dignity for all people. I stand with the communities being targeted and harmed by this poor excuse for an administration. And I will continue to say so, out loud, even if it’s not pretty, even if it’s not on trend, even if it costs me people who don’t agree with those values.  The beauty of speaking up is that it also illuminates the people, situations, and communities that don’t align with your values on human rights. Their silence makes it easy to see who doesn’t belong in your life and who is not here for the fight.

 

A Valued Quote I Have Carried With Me Since High School

My high school senior yearbook quote was from Isadora Duncan, a dancer and choreographer considered to be the ‘Mother of modern dance’. “You were once wild here, do not let them tame you.” While others in my early 2000s class chose boy band lyrics or Shakespeare quotes, I chose my senior quote because it felt passionately charged, poetic, and rebellious. I was not one to ever fit in, go with the flow, or keep quiet. I was not one to get in trouble either, but I was also not one to do what I was told. The idea of everyone else doing something made me want to do the opposite, even more. Not sure if much has changed there.

Being outspoken often kept me out of the “cool kid” circle, leaving me eating with a teacher rather than my peers at lunchtime. It can be lonely when you are the squeaky wheel, but it can also be empowering to know that you didn’t crumble under the pressure of others; rather, you changed course and flew north. Now, I keep returning to this quote as an adult because it feels like a directive of responsibility. Being “wild” can be both a positive and a negative. Being “tame” has the same flipside. The wildness pushes you forward, keeps you free, and sheds you of the human desire to be the same. The lack of taming shows your true colors and moral ground, while not being swayed.  “You were once wild here, do not let them tame you,” is a motto I carry in life. It’s my anthem in good times and bad. Those words have not stopped echoing in my head against this administration since we got here in January 2017.

In business, in politics, in life, it is easy to be tamed by fear, optics, and the desire to stay palatable for all. You are not vanilla ice cream. But that quote has stayed with me as a reminder that I do not have to shrink, soften, or silence myself to be successful. As a recovering people pleaser, that should tell you everything. Not tamed, not silent.

So, I ask you now, wedding and event industry peers, do you want to be tamed by the atrocities we are seeing in the world, or stay wild in the efforts to stop them? It’s your choice, but it’s a choice that really matters.

 

The Night That Forever Changed Me

On Tuesday, November 8, 2016, I sat on my bathroom floor in total disbelief as the election results came in. I was spiraling, if I am being completely honest, as I know many of us were. I had spent weeks mailing postcards, petitioning, and advocating for Hillary Clinton. Not because she was perfect, but because I believed she was decent, capable, and aware of the glaring warning signs of what could happen if Trump won. Clinton was a representative who mirrored my values of human decency, freedom, and autonomy.

I cried for hours. I cried for women, for people of color, for queer folks, for immigrants, for anyone who would be pushed further to the margins. I know money will never be more important than morals. I cried into my blue bathroom rug, half hoping I would fall asleep and wake up to discover it had all been a nightmare and that reality had corrected itself. I was wide awake, with blood rushing to my head because the world felt upside down.

Hours later, my partner, Sebastian, who was born and raised in Germany, woke me when I had finally fallen asleep on the floor. He reached out his hand with two Aleve and a glass of water, and proceeded to sit with me, leaning against the sink, and said something that I will never ever forget. He told me, “Holly, I grew up in a country (Germany) that freely elected a leader (Hitler) who went on to murder millions of innocent people. This will be no different.”

His words hit me like bricks. I wanted him to be wrong, but I knew, in my gut, that he wouldn’t be.

That night regularly flashes in my head, now as I see images on television and in the newspaper that are too eerily similar to what was done in Germany in the 1940s. Yes, the photos are now in color, and targets are different, but the hatred, biogtry and utter violation of human rights and decency are the same. We have traded Auschwitz for Alligator Alcatraz, the SS (short for Schutzstaffel) for ICE (short for Immigration and Customs Enforcement), and a toothbrush mustache for the orange glow. How are we so blind to see that history is repeating itself, play by play, and it will only get worse before it gets better?

 

Visibility Is a Values Statement

As a business owner and face of your company, showing who you are, what you believe, your values, and what you find morally reprehensible is part of running an honest business. Branding isn’t just colors and fonts. It’s ethics in public, in private, and everyone in between. It’s walking the walk and talking the talk. In black and white. In full clarity. Not hidden down at the bottom, but rather values proudly displayed at the top, for all to see and understand.

Yes, it’s easier and safer to stay quiet. Neutrality feels tidy. It feels professional. It feels less risky. But we do not need quiet right now. Society and socials are not isolated from each other. We need small businesses, in every industry, willing to rally, to speak up, to say clearly that hatred, cruelty, and dehumanization are unacceptable. Values matter more than ever. I am speaking directly to my fellow wedding and event pros when I say, we need to stop showing pretty and start speaking powerfully. We are better and stronger, together. 

Peacefully push back, confidently march, don’t buy products from companies that back Trump’s funding and agenda, and relentlessly call your representatives. Be loud, tireless, and consistent against injustice. Use every platform, whatever the size, because your voice matters.  Silence is comfortable. Courage is not. I’m choosing noisy courage, and I am encouraging you to do the same.

 

What This Means for Anything But Gray Events

It means my company is not just about design and logistics. It’s about values and always has been. It’s about who feels safe in our spaces. It’s about what we stand for when it’s uncomfortable.

If you’re aligned with that, welcome. I’m so glad you’re here.

If you’re not. That’s okay. The door is stage left.

There are plenty of wedding professionals who will stay silent. I’m not one of them.

I keep thinking about that Isadora Duncan quote: “You were once wild here, do not let them tame you.”

This is me choosing not to be tamed by fear, by optics, or by the pressure to stay quiet. This is me choosing to be honest, to be visible, and to be loud about what and who matters.

This is not a marketing strategy. This is a line in the sand. Silence is a choice, but silence won’t be my legacy.