Christmas is just one day away, but the holiday season is far from over. If you’ve been desiring to support more Black-owned businesses this season, but you’re not sure where to begin, consider checking out the Seagrams Escapes Holiday Marketplace — a joint venture between the adult beverage company, “Real Housewives of Atlanta” star Cynthia Bailey, and Eva Marcille. We caught up with Bailey to discuss the holiday shopping expo, her recent wedding, blended family life under quarantine, and her future with the Real Housewives franchise.
MN: Tell me about the Seagrams Escapes Holiday Marketplace. How can people who are interested get involved?
Cynthia: Basically, all they have to do is go to the website, www.seagramsescapesholiday.com, and it has all the information, but basically it is a platform that Seagrams and I created together to just help promote Black-owned businesses to give them exposure. As a Black-owned business owner myself, my most recent business being the Bailey Wine Cellar, was also hit during COVID. A lot of businesses, Black-owned businesses specifically, are definitely still struggling — the ones that even made it. So, we wanted to come together to create this platform to drive business to the business owners that need to stay afloat and also, one of the other great things, we’re going to be announcing in January that we also offer a $10,000 grant to three Black-owned businesses. It’s a lot of money when you’re already struggling to keep your business afloat so we have the grant e will be announcing that the first week of January, after the new year.
MN: Congratulations on the wedding! I got married on 10/9 several years ago so I definitely understand wanting the perfect date.
Cynthia: Well, I’m glad you did girl because I was getting a lot of heat about this date. Hindsight being 20/20, everything did work out. No one that came to our wedding tested positive for COVID-19 as a result of being at our wedding. I do have that to look forward to and that information is already out there. But you guys will see the process, the journey of the back and forth. We almost postponed it several times. We had a hurricane the week of my wedding. We tried to do everything outdoors because we did everything we could do on our end to make sure everybody was COVID-19 conscious. And one of the things I just wanna make clear is I was never like, if legally I could not have this wedding, then I would not have had it on the date but I was under the understanding that as long as I was following the rules and I was COVID-19 conscious and I gave everybody what they need it to be safe at this wedding that I could still have the wedding. And I think, you know, you guys will see all of that play out a little bit more. But that was it, like, I would never not take this pandemic seriously. You know, I just really thought about it like, ‘Hey, all right. Since we don’t know when we’re going to get to the other side of this thing and it looks like we’re gonna be in masks for all of 2021, how can I have it and be COVID conscious and you guys will see that play out.
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Author: Dion Mitchell
I am a web and data management consultant with a passion for helping clients implement solutions to achieve their goals. With over 20 years of enterprise IT experience, I have become an expert in project management and problem analysis acquired from various roles ranging from systems analysis, systems engineer to...
