Luxury wedding planner hands 75% of firm to staff after rejecting trade sale

Sarah Haywood spent 19 years building a multi-million-pound wedding business that plans events for ultra-high-net-worth families across Europe. This Valentine’s week, she gave three-quarters of it away.

The founder of Sarah Haywood Exceptional Celebrations transferred 75% of the company into an Employee Ownership Trust, making it the first business in the UK weddings sector to move to employee ownership. She kept 25%. The decision came during the firm’s 20th anniversary year, following a three-year succession programme designed to answer a question most entrepreneurs face: sell out or hand over?

Haywood chose the latter.

“The business was built slowly, deliberately and with extraordinary care – just like the events we produce,” she said. “Selling to an external buyer would have changed its culture overnight. Employee ownership allows us to protect what makes the business special, reward the people who actually deliver the work and ensure continuity for our clients.”

The timing carries weight. Private equity and global lifestyle groups have been consolidating the luxury events sector, snapping up founder-led businesses and rolling them into larger operations. Haywood walked away from that path, securing independence instead through a structure that places control in the hands of her specialist team.

It’s a rare move in an industry built on personal brands and founder relationships.

The decision follows a period that nearly destroyed the business entirely. Covid-19 restrictions wiped out 90% of revenues over two years. The company recorded the only loss in its history. Haywood relied on reserves accumulated over more than a decade to keep the operation alive while weddings—the elaborate, multi-million-pound celebrations that define the firm’s work—simply stopped happening.

From 2022, the rebuild began. The company redesigned its governance structure, appointed Lee Sansom as CEO and brought in a Director of Events. An independent executive team replaced the founder-led model. The Employee Ownership Trust now anchors that shift, ensuring ownership, management and delivery align under a structure increasingly adopted by UK professional services firms but never before seen in the wedding events sector.

Sansom described the move as deliberate stewardship over short-term extraction. “This is a rare example of a founder-led luxury business choosing long-term stewardship over a trade sale,” he said. “Sarah Haywood is a true British entrepreneurial success story – a micro-business grown into a globally respected brand. The EOT is a bold, forward-looking step that gives us stability, independence and a governance structure that supports sustainable growth rather than short-term extraction.”

Under the Employee Ownership Trust structure, employees become the majority economic beneficiaries of the company whilst Haywood continues as Founder Director with her minority stake. A Trustee Board now oversees governance. The model gives the team an equity-backed stake in the future of a business they’ve helped build.

Founded in 2006, Sarah Haywood Exceptional Celebrations started as a home-based operation. It grew into an international firm producing complex, high-value weddings and private events for global clients. The Times once called them “wedding organisers you need on speed dial.” Vogue US regularly ranks the team among the world’s top international wedding planners.

The shift also reflects a move away from personality-led branding toward the reality of what the business has become: a multidisciplinary team delivering intricate, multi-million-pound events worldwide. Discretion defines the work. So does meticulous planning and flawless execution for clients who expect both.

Haywood, who authored two bestselling wedding planning books and presented the TV series The Wedding Fixer, remains involved but no longer holds majority control. That now sits with the trust, which exists for the benefit of current and future employees.

For a founder who built the business slowly over two decades, survived a pandemic that nearly wiped it out, and watched private equity reshape the industry around her, the Employee Ownership Trust represents a different kind of exit. Not a sale. Not a succession crisis. A deliberate transfer of power to the people who do the work.

Few founders in the luxury sector make that choice. Most take the trade sale. Most cash out. Haywood spent three years planning an alternative, ensuring the business could function beyond her whilst protecting what made it distinctive in the first place.

The move takes effect this week, during the firm’s 20th anniversary year. The timing—Valentine’s week—wasn’t lost on anyone inside a company that’s built its reputation on getting details right.