THE CREATIVE & LOGISTICAL MINDS
CRAFTING YOUR NEW FAVORITE DAY
Claire Durán Weddings & EventS
WE KNOW THIS:
- Wally & Frankie
At Claire Durán Weddings & Events, every member of our team is dedicated to your inimitable vision, blending the best of us to create celebrations that showcase the best of you.
“There is one word to describe Claire
and her team — AMAZING”
The best experiences are born
of true collaboration.
Of course we’ll share our official bios, but what we do doesn’t fit into an easy box. Alongside planning, designing and producing, you can often find us acting as your …
Okay, now onto the "real" bios.
Claire Durán
Weddings were not the original plan. Claire left her native Dominican Republic to pursue a master’s in international public policy at Stanford, followed by a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland and a career in Latin American democracy and development, including work with the World Bank and Brookings Institution.
Over time, she found herself looking for work that could bring together the analytical side of her background with the creativity that had always been part of her life. In 2014, she founded Claire Durán Weddings & Events, with its base in the Washington, DC area.
Today, Claire holds the 360-degree view of every CDWE event. She is the first point of contact for each client and remains closely involved throughout the entire planning process, setting its direction, establishing priorities, and guiding the decisions that shape the celebration. She also curates the team of creative partners and vendors for each event, with a focus on finding the right fit for the client, the project, and the circumstances surrounding it.
Alongside Maja, Claire leads the planning and logistical strategy, evaluating options, anticipating challenges, and developing the framework that takes an event from its earliest stages through production. She also works closely with the design team, ensuring that creative direction, guest experience, logistics, and budget are considered together rather than as separate parts of the process.
At the same time, Claire leads the company itself, setting the direction for CDWE and guiding the team behind its events. Her background may be an unusual one for a wedding planner, but the combination of analysis, organization, creativity, and an instinct for taking care of people has come to define both her work and the company she built.
Her work has been recognized by Vogue, Brides, Martha Stewart Weddings and more.
FOUNDER and Principal planner
Find her: Seeking out live performances, from ballet and theater to concerts and musicals.
Maja Lama
Maja joined CDWE in 2016, originally lending a hand with one of the team's early destination weddings. What began as on-site support quickly grew into a much larger role, and today she works alongside Claire leading the planning and production of CDWE's events.
Maja oversees each client's budget throughout the planning process, approaching it not simply as a matter of tracking costs, but of understanding where and how resources are being used. She carefully reviews proposals and invoices, analyzes options across vendor categories, and works with Claire to assess the services, partners, and arrangements that make the most sense for each client.
She and Claire also develop the logistical framework behind every event, including the planning roadmap and the detailed timelines that guide both clients and the production team. From guest-related planning to vendor coordination and the many decisions that evolve along the way, Maja makes sure information is organized, communicated, and carried through to execution.
She is also an exceptional troubleshooter. Practical, quick-thinking, and difficult to rattle, Maja is often the person working through the scenarios behind the scenes and identifying a solution before a problem has the chance to become one.
Before joining CDWE, she directed major PR campaigns for brands including Nestlé, L'Bel, and United Airlines. Event weekends remain her favorite part of the process, when months of planning finally come together on site.
PRINCIPAL PLANNER
Nothing beats: A gin and tonic while lounging on a sunny terrace with friends.
Eli Bernabel
It was a chance meeting at one of Claire's Masterclass events that first brought Eli into the CDWE orbit. Before long, she joined the team, and today she leads the creative direction across CDWE's events.
Eli has a gift for listening to what a client imagines, sometimes before they quite know how to articulate it themselves, and translating it into a clear visual and spatial direction. Architecture, florals, lighting, furniture, textiles, materials, and the smallest details are considered together, giving each celebration an identity that feels specific to the people at its center.
Trained as an architect, with experience in both permanent and ephemeral architecture, Eli brings a strong understanding of scale, proportion, materiality, and construction to the creative process. She moves easily between the overall environment of an event and the individual elements that define it, from materials and florals to large-scale custom installations.
From the first concept through final installation, Eli guides the creative vision and works closely with the production team to ensure that what is designed can be executed with the same level of intention.
That attention to detail follows her outside of work too. On a walk with friends, Eli is usually the one noticing the façade, texture, shadow, or small detail everyone else has already passed.
CREATIVE DIRECTOR
Always noticing: The details hiding in plain sight. And yes, if a painting is hanging crooked, she'll probably quietly fix that too.
Rafa Milanese
Rafa brought his background as an architect from a furniture and design studio to the CDWE team, ensuring the beautiful idea is also the buildable one.
Naturally drawn to both creativity and structure, he leads the technical and production side of our design work while playing an active role in the creative process. Rafa approaches each event by thinking through the space, the way guests move through it, and how all the pieces come together within the realities of the venue, production, and budget. He has a knack for turning complex ideas into clear, tangible experiences, especially when a concept calls for something custom, architectural, or completely unexpected. There’s little he finds more rewarding than watching a client experience something that once existed only as an idea for the first time.
Outwardly the most energetic of the group and always ready with a joke (if there's a pun, you know it's coming from Rafa), he's secretly a perfectionist. Though after experiencing his large-scale, impeccable designs, perhaps it's not so secret.
Design & Production Director
Late nights: Listening to music, breaking into song and definitely dancing too.
Michelle Arthur
Michi is our Jane of All Trades — and she's just as likely to be working from a beach town, a big city, or somewhere in between. Wherever the wedding takes her, she's there. You might find her blogging on a Monday, creating content on a Tuesday, and handling admin on a Wednesday. She's even stepped in with her on-point calligraphy skills to rescue last-minute seating chart changes!
On wedding weekends, Michi becomes a wedding-day shapeshifter, moving through the venue in a flash — one moment at setup, the next capturing the first look. — phone always in hand, catching the candid, joyful, in-between moments no one else sees — she captures every single detail of the behind-the-scenes making of the wedding, plus the results. If you've seen our social media and her great eye, you'll understand why we love her so much!
Between weddings, Michi is usually off exploring somewhere new — camera and phone always within reach, just in case the moment calls for it.
HEAD OF MARKETING & CONTENT
Positive vibes: One minute she's cracking a joke, the next she's got you thinking about life differently. That's just Michi.
Karla Alcántara
Karla, started collaborating with CDWE for over eight years, in response to a unique need for a wedding weekend assistant for our very first destination wedding, organically and meritoriously moving up to be an integral member of the core team.
Her responsibilities are logistical, ranging from organizing invoices, contracts, seating plans, inventory control, to individual guest follow-up with impeccable attention.
But Karla is a true chameleon, always willing to collaborate in different areas of the company, offering a smile and dancing a good merengue whenever the opportunity presents itself, serving as an excellent resource within the ranks.
She's a Clinical Psychologist by profession and, alongside all her CDWE responsibilities she is also Grief Mentor and loves educating individuals and families about the dynamics of Elderly Adult care.
Administrative & Logistics Manager
Always: Organizing everything down to the last detail. Occasionally: Dropping a wisdom bomb. Inevitably: Rescuing Claire from losing her phone 10 times every wedding.
Giselle De Camps
Giselle, or as we like to call her "Gi," joined CDWE drawn by the joy of creating experiences that tell stories through design. With a background in architectural design, she's fascinated by how emotion can take shape through form, light, and detail.
Within the team she's the thread that connects the stages of a design, carrying a project from early research and concept through the custom details that give a wedding its personality, the curated objects, the seating charts, the small touches guests remember. Her process is equal parts precision and play, and she's steadily taking on more, growing into ephemeral architecture and larger creative work as she goes.
She brings quiet focus and a touch of humor to everything she does, keeping the creative process grounded and full of heart. For Giselle, design is simply the most beautiful way to make sense of the world.
junior designer
Morning ritual: matcha so sweet it could qualify as dessert, with a dramatic playlist included because good design deserves a soundtrack.
“Forever fans of Claire Durán and Team!
Planning for a wedding can feel so daunting and overwhelming,
but working with Claire, Maja, Eli and the entire team … We were so lucky
to not only have the most perfect wedding weekend, but the
most amazing experience in planning it.”
- Amanda & Wyatt
on instagram
@claireduranweddingsandevents
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