Courtesy Creative Venue & Rentals LLC.
Independently owned and operated event spaces are a rarity, so Shauna-Marie Lopes’ Creative Venue & Rentals LLC in Bridgeport
struck Eye on a Small Business as an especially interesting model.
Originally from Jamaica, the longtime Bridgeport resident was premed at Fairfield University, with thoughts of eventually becoming a surgeon. But after deciding the medical-school track was too complex, she settled into a career as a sterile processing technician with surgical services.
Then, in 2006, planning her wedding, everything changed. That was when Lopes fell in love with event planning.
“It was a lot of work, but it was stimulating and kept me busy, similar to working in the hospital.”
Lopes began with the linens and decorations she had purchased for her own wedding as her primary inventory. Early commissions included arranging centrepieces for churches and organizing small private events, employing her innate design and decorating skills, before she moved on to what she called “micro weddings,” as what was essentially her hobby began to grow into a viable business.
By 2013, Lopes told Westfair’s Fairfield County Business Journal, she had all but taken over the 900-square foot basement of her home, as well as the dining room, at which point her husband, she said, “realized that this was not going to slow down.”
“He told me I needed to find a location to store my inventory.” Not only had he been deprived of the basement as his mancave, Lopes said, but even the living room had become out of service for family events.
Reaching out to a Realtor friend who with a business in Bridgeport, Lopes was introduced to a local contractor and together they started looking. Within a year she had found and fallen in love with her current location on Logan Street in Bridgeport, and after forming an LLC, and enduring a “grueling” yearlong process of drawing up a lease, obtaining zoning permission and securing a loan, she opened for business in 2017.
The event space is an impressive 7,300 square feet, with 67 parking spaces on a private lot. It holds up to 450 people seated, or 950 standing, and can be sectioned off for smaller or more intimate gatherings. Basic lighting and AV equipment is provided by the venue, although clients can, of course, customize this. Catering is outsourced and staff are not retained but are brought in per event on an as-needs basis.
An interesting complement to the event space is that, with her own large inventory of linens and equipment, Lopes also acts as a supplier, renting to caterers (hence the “and Rentals” in the company name). Linens and other party décor items are also available for purchase on Creative Venue’s online store.
A lot of Lopes’ business is word of mouth, and she additionally promotes the space on social media as well as Google. With weekend dates predictably being the most popular for event bookings, she said, one of the challenges in common with many well-established event spaces and hospitality-related businesses is selling the space during the week. Lopes is strategizing to win company contracts for quarterly midweek meetings. (WE Transport Inc., a school transportation company also based in Bridgeport, has also been an early client.)
In 2025, Lopes participated in the Fairfield County Business Accelerator
Program at the Bridgeport Public Library, which, she said, improved her marketing skills and boosted her to move forward with an improved business model.
Additionally, Lopes said, she was grateful for the two local grants she has received, namely a recent Bridgeport Regional Business Council award and, prior to that, a Bridgeport American Rescue Plan grant, designed to help businesses stay afloat during Covid-19.
The latter was one which, in Lopes’ case for sure, clearly achieved its target.
