HOUSE TOUR | Inside Wedding & Event Planner Augusta Cole’s Exquisite New York Home

Today on Homeworthy we’re taking you to the Upper East Side for an exclusive look into the fabulous apartment of renowned wedding and event planner and designer Augusta Cole. This gorgeous space doubles as her home and studio, and Augusta was instantly captivated by its charming architectural features. With over a decade of experience producing events around the world, Augusta’s personal design style is effortlessly chic and refined. Her home, adorned with a soothing palette of greens and warm tones, offers a serene retreat from her busy days traveling to some of the most exclusive destinations. Enjoy!

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today on homeworthy we’re taking you to the Upper East Side of New York City for an exclusive look into the fabulous apartment of renowned wedding and event planner Augusta Cole this gorgeous space doubles as her home and work studio and Augusta was instantly captivated by its Charming architectural features Augusta’s personal design style is effortlessly Chic and refined her home adorned with a soothing palette of greens and warm tones offers a Serene Retreat from her busy days traveling to some of the most exclusive destinations enjoy you’re watching homeworthy where we believe every home has a story hey homeworthy Welcome to My New York City Apartment come on in [Music] welcome to my home and studio um our home is an apartment within this old beautiful townhouse that’s been cut into a few different apartments um I totally fell in love with the place because of this beautiful stairwell which you’ll see as we go up it and it’ll take you to our home and office where my team comes every day for our wedding planning and event design company [Music] welcome in um here is our main space of the first floor um this is our apartment and studio and I call this floor our entertaining floor um so this little Jewel box that we found U really works for us because it’s super multi-purpose as you come in you’ll kind of see how we’ve used the space so it was super important to me that we had a beautiful welcoming moment so when you come in I envisioned a really pretty Demi Lon um sort of under these pretty Morano sconces that my dear interior designer friend Bo Brown found for me um and I love a poted Myrtle moment um so I try to keep these alive it’s a full-time job um but this is our sort of welcoming entry and a little special painting my mom gave to my husband and I when we moved in um and this is actually a piece of antique furniture that we refinished um with this kind of high gloss gray and beautiful taupey velvet um it was less beautiful when we found it and we kind of gave it an upgrade facelift and so this is my kind of welcome home and it always sort of feels finished like this I just love a little gathered skirt it’s um ticking is always a go-to you’ll see it in my event design you’ll see it in my home design I think it’s just such a subtle um delicate touch and but also handsome like not too feminine but the ruffle gives it a little bit extra frill so in concepting this room we had to think about the three primary functions of the space first we have to receive our guests and make them feel welcome but then we also wanted a space to set the table entertain this table has done many mockup and design presentations for our clients so it’s a very sort of useful beautiful moment in the room um and I’ll talk about these elements and the dining room space in a minute and then the living room um I went with this sort of all-white calm serene warm pette um so that guests kind of came in or our clients come in and it feels like a blank slate and it’s also very inviting and Gathering so it works if there are two of us meeting and we just want a little Nook to to chitchat and go through details or I can have a big cocktail party 12 15 people and we have a great time in this space so we really needed to make sure that this one room could multitask and I think the layout kind of flows beautifully for that so the dining room Nook sort of framed on these windows here um is one of my favorite spaces in the apartment these chairs and the table itself are actually a family heirloom um they were my great great aunt’s tables and chairs and then um my mom who’s also an interior designer she helped me with the little chair skirts and kind of giving it a little upgrade but it was really special to finally have the right space to use this beautiful old table and then in terms of the elements on the table today I went really sort of easy and effortless um I love keeping a beautiful like well ironed um thick kind of hemmed linen just like ready to go and it’s such like a easy soft summer entertaining look and then just used my sort of wedding China my little bernido Lou pattern and this nice heavyweight linen and then my my family silver and then these beautiful sananas Oregan wood handled knives glasswar I love to collect I’ll show you some of my collection in a minute um but these are especially meaningful I had them made in Morano for a wedding in Venice um we did two long tables in this amazing venue in Venice and had four different shades of blue glasses and so I I made sure to have my own little collection of them and then I love just like a simple clean water glass and then the floral quick trip to the flower market this kind of early summer season is especially beautiful and I wanted something sort of wispy and Airy um so we mixed Claus and this to be honest I have no idea but beautiful little purple flower and just kept it simple so these chairs came with the table and this is a beautiful old um you know wood dining room table and they were paired together but it came with a pretty um you know old school cushion so instead I wanted to give it some fresh life and did these really pretty um kind of vanilla linen chair skirts and they have like a nice box pleat but not too frilly but I think it really keeps them looking beautiful all the time and it goes with so much my go-to tips for kind of entertaining in that word we all Aspire for effortlessly um is to one give yourself enough time I think it’s so important to preset your table the night before the morning before um go ahead and just check that fully off your list don’t save it to the end because it is it always takes a little more time than you think um have your stuff pre- ironed keep it stocked like all of that is those are easy tips but then just have fun with it don’t take yourself too seriously like this table for example you know I knew I was going to use just the whites to kind of keep it all clean and cohesive with the room but when I went to the flower market I fell in love with these wispy summer time blooms and I actually had a different glass in mind and a different finishing detail in mind and then when I brought it into the space CU I had time to test run it like it all came together and I mixed in the blue glasses and I edited out something and I just think one time is so important and go to the flower market with your foundation already in mind um and then the other piece is have a great or derve set out in your living room like if you just have a candle lit and you have your little bar stocked and you have something for people to nibble on when they first arrive when dinner comes out is going to be an afterthought um so then that’s kind of starts the evening off on the right note in a welcoming note so one of the jewels of this apartment is this beautiful fireplace I I mean all the molding detail when we repainted and we acquired the space um painting it this kind of happy white was very important cuz it just highlighted the scale and the AR exural detailing and then the high gloss or just gloss um on the molding was important and then kind of focusing in on it we actually have a working fireplace which is kind of a miracle in New York City um so this this winter we plan to dive into that I’ve been hesitant um but my neighbor downstairs Keith langum he always has his fireplace going in the winter and it’s like wafts this gorgeous smell so I’m inspired but we try to keep fresh flowers on the man and kind of use it as a focal and over the holidays it becomes a major Signature Place to to decorate um and we’re so grateful for the light and the natural Windows sort of playing off of each other and making the room feel bigger I love the old bones and all the character um I love old homes I grew up in Old homes and I think they just ooze storytelling and kind of Gravitas um and I just I love the scale of the ceilings and the molding um and I think it’s just a beautiful kind of blank canvas for us to build on you know it does kind of have an air of nostalgia um there is sort of oldw world allore and kind of a sense of know there’s a Cosmopolitan side to it that I think is just really elegant um but it also does feel like home and the thing about apartments and moving around in the city is it’s hard to find one that actually feels like home and this one really does kind of have that character so we found this apartment believe it or not my husband scored it on Street Easy um it was just a beautiful picture of the stairwell and a couple detail pH photos of these mirrors which came with the apartment and some beautiful molding details and he saw that it was a duplex and that it had three bedrooms and that it had two baths and it checked all these boxes but there was so little else that had to go see it and the location was fabulous so he went to see it first cuz I was out of town on a job and it was a mess like it had been left to kind of not be taken care of it had been somebody’s um place that they hadn’t really utilized as a full-time home for many years so when he went in there was a lot of work to be done but he knew it had natural character and things that I would love and so he encouraged me to come see it but when he opened the door he said to me like Augusta please don’t fall in love with this cuz it was going to be work and it had kind of character and quirks and um of course I fell in love with it so immediately I was fixated by the molding details the mirror details the height of the ceilings the beautiful floor fireplace the big windows and I could just immediately see this being a space where we not only you know enjoy our life but we entertain our friends and we host our clients and can run my studio out of here so when we agreed that this was going to be our spot we really um work together to figure out how what we wanted to do with the space and there was so much natural beauty to work with that we wanted to go sort of soft and keep the walls just a soft white so that we could really highlight the beautiful molding details and let these stars of the show these beautiful three panel gold trimmed mirrors be a big part of the room and be a statement so that’s sort of the jewelry and then we wanted to dress the rest of the room to be really versatile very Serene and a bit of a blank slate creatively cuz our world is as an event designer is full of color and pattern and our clients have Diversified taste that it felt like a smart move to just kind of respect the beautiful bones of this space and then design a living room and an environment that could allow anybody to think outside the box and not to feel influenced by one certain style Direction so we went with this more kind of Polish tailored white look so while the space is big and beautiful for a New York City living room it actually is quirky like we’ve got these mirror covered closets amazing we have storage and this one actually goes way deep and is incredible because it’s our office storage closet but we have we can’t block these doors we can’t block that door we have the stairs to contend with and then you want to respect the fireplace and entry space so while it’s very open it has a lot of things to maneuver so we had this um sofa custom built um I was inspired by a few different designs and my husband has a manufacturing company out of Mexico called ens Imports and we were able to design this to spec and then I work with an amazing upholster here in the city um and he beautifully finished this you with the direction of Bo Brown my interior design friend um and then from this we wanted to complement it with little seating nooks and different arrangements so the two little slipper chairs I love they’re cozy I found this at an antique shop um this fun little chinoiserie side table but the really sweet detail on these slipper chairs is that the trim is in a a soft satin a white satin it was a little Bridal note that I thought Bo kind of creatively came up with um but what I love is while the room is Big you can have two people here chatting and feel cozy or you can throw a party for 50 if you can believe it we have a Christmas party here every year and there’s 50 people you know hobnobbing and having a great time so the sofa is extra long and fits many and then we have our little seating Nook here I love these high coffee tables um I love that they’re a little bit more utilitarian and modern than other elements in the room but we especially love showcasing our design influenc coffee table collection it’s like travel books design books um kind of vintage books on textiles uh this is a great sort of resource library for us and then you entertain on the top and kind of can have or derves throw a book out do design meetings together so they’re really great utilitarian tables this cozy chair is meant to be my husband’s chair you know lay back and have a a cocktail at night but I do think whenever we have friends over it’s the first chair they people gravitate toward and they really settle in so I’m not sure how often he actually gets to sit here um but it’s a beautiful reading chair it’s cozy and you get to enjoy through the mirrors like all of the room which is really pretty my design style is to be a bit collected um I love for things to have purpose or meaning and to tell a story and I’d rather have less things that have something to say rather than kind of more things that we’ve just purchased because of how they look so kind of all the elements that we put out I can tell you something about and that would take too long but for example you know this is this beautiful little match um holder was a gift from a dear friend um after an important thing happened for his life and I always remember that um these are kind of beautiful antique looking glasses what do they call binoculars whatever spectacles um and I’ve had them for a long time from an antique shop this silver dish was a um tray from my mom and we share a love of antique silver so we kind of collect that together this I’ve had forever my whole life I’ve taken it from room to room and then we have a lot of this trinitate kind of white Earth and wear from s Miguel where we spend a ton of time and that’s where my husband does a lot of his manufacturing and then below here are just all of these collected books that I’ve purchased been gifted and just adore um and continue to stack them higher and higher like this is one of my favorite books um life in a French country house if you haven’t read it you should it’s from Cordelia de castellan and it’s all about entertaining in the French Countryside and then there’s you know William Morris and his amazing textiles I have Christopher Spitz Miller’s book who I know is been on home worthy many times um there just so many fabulous books and this is definitely a favorite part in the apartment so this is a a kind of gallery moment in the living room um again Imagining the space when it was just a totally blank cvas this wall was like calling for something major and so the first person I thought of was Kiki Slaughter she’s the artist behind this canvas um I commissioned this piece based on a couple smaller pieces I saw um in her portfolio and I just loved this sort of washed breathy landscape you could kind of interpret it as you will and the the happiness of the color palette given that everything else was so sort of blanch with intention this was our our bright spot um our our art moment so the Kiki is the signature of the wall and then we use these great pedestals again a modern touch and otherwise pretty traditional antique space um and I love to sort of decorate it with little homage to travel and and things I love so this is a particularly fun pedestal dish um it’s from pulia we spend time in pulia I love going there for fun and for work but personally we go to this town called gralia a friend of mine who lives in Pula introduced us to this ceramist named Nicholas Fano and he’s famous for doing these brush faces and so we were pouring the back of the studio where everything is made and he just sat down in his chair and started painting this pedestal and just like this and hysterically it’s like totally my colors I love it um so it had to come home with me and I always treasure it and keep it out as art then these glasses I also always keep out like jewelry um I think glasswar is my more prized jewelry than actual jewelry these are Morano glasses by Dav fwin um we sort of on our travels to Venice last year working on a wedding we did a lot of local sourcing and sleuthing like who are the you know the artists Behind these beautiful pieces that we all see and can purchase Stateside and we went to his actual studio in Morano and got to see him blow the glass and met his wife and spent this you know magical afternoon and we’re still in touch today and anytime I’m there have friends going I try to connect them but these particularly were just so fresh beautiful they’re so light um I always keep them out for parties I prefer to drink wine out of them I think it’s so fun and champagne is great and when I get them out for client meetings one of my favorite stories is um we had this father the bride over we were doing a big table mockup in the kind of dining room space and had welcomed them in to the studio and I was serving wine at the end as like a you know cheers and I said gosh I think everything tastes better of these glasses and he used them he said you’re totally right these are amazing and like had absolute respect for the Morano um lightness so always use these and then these candlesticks which you know clearly have been used um they’re from Morocco I was in the Suk and met one of the great tamag dealers um tamag is this particular treatment of the kind of veriday green color on the earth and wear and so these also have I have some other vo of holders and containers but these candlesticks always stay out and tell a story I’m also um a collector and sucker for a beautiful cocktail napkin these are especially meaningful these are beautiful ones from losen ceros um they were a gift from this last fam trip to Italy that I went on um hosted by some friends in the industry and I will treasure them I don’t even know that I’ll let people use them they might just have to look at them but maybe optimally they will but they’re beautiful Okay so so before we go upstairs we’re going to do a quick pop into the office see how things are going and then Breeze by our little entertaining um pantry if you will so people have made the joke that our bar is bigger than our kitchen which I think by square footage it is um this is where we keep all of our entertaining elements so I love glasswear I I mentioned that earlier and I love to keep sort of my glassware collection on display so it’s readily available um the same Venice wedding that I mentioned I had these made for our more contemporary party on the first night and they’re these really cool kind of bubbly morani glasses um so I had to keep a collection of those um my husband is amazing at sourcing on auctions like how lucky am I and he found you know all this cut crystal Waterford for me which um we’ve kept from you we moved from Charleston to New York um we’ve also made some glass wear so we’ve did some little etchings and details on blown glass in Mexico I also love porcelain and China and I when I found these little dessert dishes I just couldn’t say no so I keep them on display cuz I think it’s all like part themselves um oh this is sort of cute so you saw my Morano collection earlier um I wanted to buy the the glasswar set for me but then I did shot glasses for my husband because he’s a big fan of costard Deon tequila and you’re supposed to sip out of it so sort of an elevated pairing and it’s definitely one of our party tricks when we have people over to the living room and we want to you know get everyone going and just have a little sip of the craon out of these special glasses also in here is kind of all of our entertaining pieces you know I have let me see how it looks I have a candle drawer with all of our candle components um my silver and cocktail napkins are here and then we keep like napkins and play setting details and then sort of below is just more and more entertaining layering options and vessels and barware and I have a lot of stuff I like to keep what I love the most out so it’s like readily accessible and then because we have so little space you have to stay organized and you have to edit so if I didn’t if I had more space I’d have more stuff but I’m limited by my real estate so um and then we come in before we go in the office this is our little powder room it’s tiny but if you pop in we made a little statement with the shower curtain um so it we did a big sort of chint shoe marker pink and green just happy um and then the little window is is never very pretty in the city so we did that fun little lace panel to block the less pretty window Welcome to our office this is where the magic happens so we have an office for Augusta Co events in New York which is here home base um and we have an office in Charleston South Carolina on Broad Street our team here Colette and Claire we’re here every day when we’re not on the road um um we love we love being in the office together I know there’s a lot of remote work happening but in our creative field collaborating being on Zoom calls working with our tangible elements it’s so important so this is where we kind of work and we take our Zoom calls with our clients and then we host our clients out in the entertaining space um we are doing events you know a limited number a year they’re primarily weddings however we do do social events and kind of cater to our Legacy clients when they have party needs um but primarily we’re doing weddings um most of them are domestic but about 20% are abroad sometimes 25 um like this year we just wrapped up our first wedding of the season was in St Barts and now we’re going to be heading to provance in September and then San Miguel in October but then otherwise we’re kind of jumping from different spots either Upstate or Texas or West Coast or Colorado uh wherever our clients parties take them so by virtue of being in New York we can literally get on a plane anytime and get wherever we need to go and often are even doing quick day trips to see our clients and just make decisions and make stuff happen um but when we are so fortunate to be home um this is where we are and we really focus on sort of a residential approach to um event design we love that our clients are typically influenced by Interiors or their travels and we try to layer in those elements um by thoughtfully designing unique and tasteful and super experiential parties it’s always good to have a mood board so that you can kind of creatively get a snapshot of where your events are going and how the designs are correlating so we line up our clients um on the two walls and kind of keep keep um textile swatches once their paper decisions are done and we have the physical samples we’ll hang them up on the wall and then any other like kind of critical component that layers a kind of foundation texture or pattern um we keep on display we also you know use that as sort of just a a palette reminder but then from there we love working with you know custom tabletop glasswar um we make a lot of the Linens for our clients and then the overall Ambiance is where we work with our design Partners on really honing in on the kind of global aesthetic of the events from draping to lighting to Scenic builds and cap you know um Woodworking and kind of making these very custom components within whatever space we’re working in whether it’s a venue or a tent or in a field so in the world of events we’re a firm believer that everything should be beautiful it should run seamlessly it should feel incred but it also has to be fun like we’re in it for an incredible experience so we’re always looking for little things to create a through line to energize and so this is a fun little example of prototype um we’re working on a party in Mexico and you’ll see how this gets rolled out but it will be it’ll be a fun feature at an upcoming party okay so before I take you upstairs I’m going to give you a sneak peek into some place that I never show anyone um I have this drape up here with great intention and it hides our teeny tiny New York kitchen so here’s where truly we have our kitchen and if you can believe it we have a Christmas party for 50 people every year and ulina Catering figures out how to make that work so we can make it work if they can make it work but we love it and honestly this drape is perfect because it just kind of keeps that space as um a workspace and it it’s totally functional and our life is so outward and we go out and we’re on on the go and we travel that really it’s the perfect entertaining kitchen and when it’s just the two of us at home it works perfectly so other reasons I fell in love with this apartment was the twostory versatility of the space I loved that the first floor could be you know very hospitable where my team comes to work every day where we entertain where we host clients but also that we can then Escape up and have a separation between work and home and have sort of a living floor so upstairs stairs is where our bedroom is we do have a casual Den kind of dressing area laundry room um sort of the functional side of life um but what I’m going to take you up now to see is our [Music] bedroom welcome to my bedroom um I love this space it feels like a little Jewel box to me the stain glass windows were definitely the inspiration for this one being my bedroom um and two they inspired this kind of Dusty soft lavender paint color um that I was so drawn to paint this room in um what I love about it is it’s lavender but it’s sort of taking on this like kind of neutral and it’s a works as a beautiful layering piece for all of the pattern and warmth and texture that we brought in through textiles and um different Furniture pieces and like in dark woods so the Shay is definitely a signature piece in the room and I love that first my husband was inspired to make this it’s really meaningful to us but then that I got to kind of paint it with the teex styles that I love and I’ll be honest in my career path um relaxation isn’t a top priority we’re really on the go it’s a high-paced um totally stress-free job and so I thought if I kind of made myself a Shay and had a little area to kind of tuck away and relax maybe I would start doing that a bit more so um the Shays is sort of always calling you to sit down read a book take a breath and relax and it also just makes the space so inviting when you come into it and know it’s like time to unwind um another element that I love of the space is this little vanity I do do my makeup here and I do put on my jewelry and use it um and I love again a little skirted moment the mirror top makes it feel a little bit more like retro kind of Glam and I just keep it with a little touch of floral um this lamp is maybe one of my prize possessions um it’s another Morano piece I found it in an antique store while I was on a site visit with a client and we all kind of popped our head in and I swear it was like the lights were on and things were shining at it like you need me so I found this lamp out of a little corner and made sure it came home with me um and I love that it’s kind of on the vanity as like a star and then I love Majolica and just again more plate collection so adding these fun finds sort of at this little feminine Nook is very fun the other sort of star of the room are these two built-in bookshelves and they were calling to kind of showcase collections of things that we love and it was also an opportunity to play with the palette and sort of anchor the earthiness and the collected nature of this room um I kind of highlighted it with some elements from pulia um a painting that we’ve got on a trip to maev you know pictures of my parents um oyster shell plate from our time in Charleston other elements from auctions that my husband’s participated in and then obviously sprinkled in some wedding photos um planning your own wedding it’s it’s a I planned with my contemporary at a wonderful firm where I was before launching my own business and we joke that we put it together over a pedicure because that’s about all the time we had um but when you are in the world of party planning you doing your own wedding is can be quite efficient so that was fun um and that was almost 10 years ago we’re about to have our 10e wedding anniversary and then this bookshelf again has other sort of collections of things um I love the the um cabbage wear um more melica there and then a little picture of my grandmother Jean Jean she’s definitely an inspiration she’s in her late ’90s and full of style and is still redecorating her home and is definitely one of the kind of great mentors in the world of entertaining and design for me so I love that photo of her and then we just kind of roam right in to the vanity one of the signature textiles that I just wanted to touch of cuz it’s busy but I I love it is this Raul and it just again brought that great lavender stripe through as a through line and what’s fun is like decorating a room like this felt very natural cuz it was almost like designing a party you’re playing with different things for different purposes and you want a little touch but not too much and it has to be a space you want to spend time in not just for that one moment but that is lasting and Timeless so I really love how these layers work together um and then the headboard this is a headboard I had and it was just in a basic linen and I reupholstered it to match the bed skirt and I just I love the kind of warm tone that it brings um these lamps my mom actually had one of these lamps in our house growing up and I searched high and low and I found a pair for myself I just I love them they’re colorful they’re vibrant they’re Punchy and then this Dusty fmoa um lavender shade is really fun um then to sort of anchor the top of the bed we I love plates it’s no no priz um and hanging a few you know collected plates um that were in the sort of the palette of the bedroom um I found them on cherish actually and I love these you know the small Violet ones as well the Botanicals and then this is a great anchor piece honestly it looks antique it’s not it’s from sewn but I think it’s just a great Oculus mirror um and then the bedding I wanted to go just kind of clean and elegant kind of fine Italian Linens and again my dear friend and interior designer um neighbor Keith Richard langum he introduced me to Casa biano they’re this it’s a gem of a linen shop on Lexington highly recommend and um we kind of worked through what I wanted the bedding to feel like and I topped it off with this lily of the valley embroidered Euro sham [Music] so this is our bathroom um and if you come on in you’ll see we just did a high glass Pure White that was a tip from an interior design friend if you just want to quickly make up make a bathroom look better go with the high gloss white um then I used again my little shower curtain trick I love this shacha Versa pattern it has that dusty lavender again and sort of tied into the bathroom and then this sink is beautiful it’s like this French kind of brass Leed marble sink and it came with the place obviously um and we just sort of highlighted as a pretty little moment um I again kind of collect my splatterware from pulia everywhere and then um yeah M two towels that are always pretty and fresh and kind of keep it keep it light home means a space where I want to have people over um I love having people over in this space whether it’s clients my colleagues um my family or our friends and host parties and home is also where you want to retreat too and I think we have spaces in this in this apartment that kind of service both of those things thanks for watching be sure to go to homew worthy.com for exclusive content shopping guides and so much more