Our Event Planning Philosophy
Guests should be pampered. Whether it’s a wedding, holiday party, or business event, the celebration is about you and your guests. And that’s why EJP Events goes the extra mile to ensure that every aspect of your event makes you and your attendees feel right at home.
“Pampering” is not just about caviar, ice luges, and dreamy lighting (although our event and design team can make that happen)… it’s also about taking care of people. It’s about the things that no one notices until they go wrong: signage, maps, logistics, itineraries, and accessibility. We plan the guest experience from the moment they open their invitation, to the time they leave the venue to go home. Including virtual venues! All so you can look great and enjoy the wonderful, fun experience you deserve.
Meet the Team
Emee Pumarega, Founder
Emee Pumarega has been working in hospitality since 1997. She began her hospitality career in Austin, Texas, at Green Pastures Restaurant (now called Mattie’s) and at Doubletree by Hilton. Her almost 20 years as an event professional business owner in Portland, Oregon, and her experience in envisioning, co-creating, and managing successful and memorable events of all kinds is the cornerstone of the company.
Shawn Granton, Marketing and Events Assistant
Shawn Granton has been working with EJP Events since 2018. He brings a dozen years of hospitality experience with him via Hostelling International. He has also planned many bicycle and walking tours around the Portland, Oregon area; and brings his many years of experience in writing, illustration, and independent publishing to the design of EJP Events’ blog, social media, and as an in-house consultant on event communication materials and graphic and digital design.
Josie Masri, Event Coordinator
Josie originally joined EJP Events in 2022. She brings a broad set of business and hospitality skills to EJP Events, having worked in catering, upscale grocery, as well as bookkeeping and property management, prior to her Event Coordinator role. She is involved in all aspects of the business from initial sales contact to onsite coordination. When she’s not running the sales effort at EJP Events, or managing our venue, Risley Landing Gardens, Josie is a sales and events coordinator for Urban Restaurant Group.
Tieara Myers, Associate Event Coordinator
Tieara Myers is a seasoned event production lead and assistant who joined EJP Events in 2023. She has assisted and led projects both virtual / hybrid and in-person for a multitude of organizations, from nonprofit to tech. Working as a leader, and as part of a team, she brings a continuous flow of communication to our events, to ensure ease and cohesiveness in the planning process and onsite.
Lucy Aldous, Associate Event Coordinator
Lucy joined EJP Events in summer 2023, jumping right in to the busy event season, and continuing without missing a beat to supporting an annual tech conference, and a nonprofit gala attended by Oregon business and political leaders. She loves the excitement and variety in the events field, and thrives on the dynamic world of event planning and management, where every day brings fresh challenges and exciting encounters.
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Do you see yourself as part of the team of hard-working, driven, and creative event professionals at EJP Events? Please send a resume and cover letter or questions you have about open positions here.
We are always accepting and reviewing resumes for the position of Associate Event Coordinator. This is a flexible, part-time (with full-time potential, pending successful 6-month paid training period) position at EJP Events, with benefits. The AEC position is created to meet you where you are in your event professional journey. To inquire, please first read the job description, then send a PDF resume with a cover email to this email address.
Our Promise:
True Hospitality Welcomes Everyone
EJP Events is committed to offering services regardless of nationality, ethnicity, racial origin, sexual orientation, biological sex, gender identity or expression, religious affiliation or non-affiliation, age, or disability. EJP Events welcomes all marriages and supports basic rights for all.
Our Anti-Racism Pledge:
Our Anti-Racism Pledge:
We recognize that the lack of diversity in the events and weddings business hurts Black-owned event businesses and Black people in general. As a business owner who identifies as Asian-American and a woman of color, I see how being “white-adjacent” and how the “Model Minority” myth plays into systemic racism and harms our Black colleagues. We must continue doing our part to correct these wrongs. Therefore, we pledge to be actively anti-racist in our communication materials, our business processes, and our hiring practices. The following are four specific practices and policies we use to highlight and uplift the Black community, especially the Black LGBTQIA+ community, and to be inclusive in events and weddings:
• We use welcoming and inclusive language in our internal communications as well as in the communications we help write for event clients. We pledge to educate others when we see non-welcoming and non-inclusive language, especially in marketing materials and event registration forms.
• We recommend venue and vendor choices to our clients that are welcoming to Black and Indigenous hosts and attendees as well as those of all ethnicities, and remove venue and vendor choices from our recommendations who practice racial profiling or other discriminatory practices.
• We hire from an ethnically diverse roster of vendors that includes Black event professionals. We pledge that the number of Black event professionals we hire will be proportionally representative or more, of the racial background of the community we live in.
• We center positive and joyous Black and BIPOC representation in our website, marketing materials, and social media. The number of images we feature will be at a minimum, proportionally representative or more, of the population of the community we live in.
These practices are implemented effective immediately, and we promise to review our practices on a quarterly basis, with our first all-company review done in January 2021, and another review done in March 2024, available on request, to ensure that our public actions in the event and wedding planning world align with our values. We ask that you call us in and hold us accountable by emailing us at accountability@ejpevents.com if you have feedback or notice ways we can be doing better.
We acknowledge that we didn’t come up with these ideas on our own, and do not position ourselves as experts in this field. Racial justice expertise is an area we defer to Black leaders, to whom we pledge to expand our knowledge of, and continue to listen to. Equity and justice work is the labor of a lifetime. As humans, we acknowledge our own mistakes and imperfections in this process; we ask for, and continually give grace to others, in this journey. We’ll be updating, refining, and adding to our pledge as our understanding and processes continue to evolve.
We are grateful to the individuals and communities who have welcomed us into their networks during summer 2020, and after, in order to continually learn and grow. Many thanks to these events businesses who are leading the way and have inspired us in this discussion: All the Days, Cocktails and Details, EllyB Events, and Andrew Roby Events.
Sustainability and Social Justice
EJP Events plans events with an eye towards sustainability. We steer clients towards beautiful and authentic event and wedding planning solutions that do the following:
– have a low impact on water resources
– promote the use of transit, shared transport, and cycling; and do not prioritize single occupancy vehicles
– reduce waste going into local landfills, especially single-use plastic.
EJP Events supports social justice by offering additional and value-added services to our clients who are non-profit organizations working on social justice causes; as well as donating time, dollars, and resources directly to selected organizations in our community.
Here’s a list of just a few organizations that we have come across as we continue our journey as inclusive hospitality and events professionals, who we recommend supporting. These organizations align with our motto of “True Hospitality Welcomes Everyone” and support social justice, equity, and/or environmental causes. Many of them are places where our employees have given time, membership, resources, and funds. Some have also been our clients, and we are grateful to have served them. We hope you’ll visit these organizations to learn more, and to donate or subscribe.