If any employee is still wondering who left more than a dozen chickens in E.S. Bird Library during the early ‘80s, it had something to do with Bryan Rafanelli — as in the Bryan Rafanelli who planned Chelsea Clinton’s wedding-of-the-year extravaganza.

The incident was framed as a fraternity joke, and it was, to an extent, but the chickens were deposited after they had served their initial purpose — clucking and waddling around bales of hay in the Delta Tau Delta house for a farm-themed party, complete with a corral assembled in the living room. 

 

It was one of the many events Rafanelli organized as a political science major at Syracuse University. Other notables were Winter Weekend’s first ice-carving competition and a campuswide dance-a-thon to raise money for muscular dystrophy.

 

‘He always tried to bring it to another level,’ said Alec Stern, his roommate at SU for three years.  ‘Even in college, it was just clear that he had a knack for it.’

 

Today, Rafanelli coordinates about 100 events a year and runs the Boston-based Rafanelli Events, the design and execution company he started 14 years ago. A few standouts on his résumé include fundraising for Hillary Clinton’s Senate and presidential campaigns and making arrangements for a handful of President Barack Obama’s inauguration events.

 

Rafanelli’s fame rose this summer as the media speculated the whereabouts of the Clinton-Mezvinsky wedding. To maintain secrecy, he found and booked the location without telling people what it was for, he said. The 500 invited guests were told about Rhinebeck, N.Y., only five days before the wedding.

 

Though the wedding is over, Rafanelli has plenty to keep him busy this fall. He’s working on the launch of a new American wing of Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts and the annual Storybook Ball, which raises money for the MassGeneral Hospital for Children. He also hopes to expand his Washington, D.C., center, which opened last year when he was working on Obama’s inauguration events.

 

‘I had an extraordinary summer, with amazing projects. And so, I have to keep my eye on 2011. We have to feed the monster, you know, keep this going,’ he said with a laugh.

 

The precursor to his rise as an event designer was his positions as co-social chairman of Delt and president of the Interfraternity Council at SU, Rafanelli said.

 

‘There was always rush parties, and every house recruiting for new members,’ he said. ‘So that was really where I cut my teeth, organizing and pulling people together, coming up with themes and producing the events.’

 

Rafanelli would put his own special touches on each event, Stern said, and they were replicated in future years.

 

‘There was definitely a unique touch and a unique flair with everything we did,’ said Stern, who was Delt’s co-social chairman with Rafanelli, and often still works with him on nonprofit events as the vice president of strategic market development at Constant Contact.

 

Rafanelli never planned on being an event coordinator, though. He seemed poised to follow the same path as the many lawyers in his family. After loving high school history, he enrolled at SU as a political science major. In September 1983, during his senior year, he told a Daily Orange reporter he was planning on pursuing a master’s degree or going to law school, then working in public administration or getting elected. Through the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, he interned at the Syracuse mayor’s office and with the councilor-at-large, Joseph Nicoletti.

 

‘I was knee-deep in politics,’ Rafanelli said. And he doesn’t regret it.

 

‘Oh my God, are you kidding?’ he said when asked if his political science major ever comes in handy.

 

‘I think life is politics in many ways. So often, you’re dealing with people who want to be the best, who want to serve and compete against each other. So I just feel like it’s so alive and well all the time. This kind of push and pull that happens in politics is really what happens in daily life.’

 

After graduating in 1984, he joined an executive training program with a department store, which gave him a solid understanding of business and retail. He later went to design school, became an interior architect and was constantly volunteering to organize events for nonprofit organizations, which led to the start of Rafanelli Events. About 30 percent of the company’s projects are for nonprofits, he said. 

 

Planning events such as the three-day Muscular Dystrophy Dance Marathon at SU is what sparked his interest in nonprofit events, Rafanelli said.

 

‘The core of it was going to Syracuse, doing my fraternity,’ he said. ‘They were incredibly philanthropic. Most of the community was. I really feel like Syracuse was a place where everyone was giving back.’

 

But nothing Rafanelli organized at SU — or anywhere else — involved a level of secrecy like the Rhinebeck wedding, he said. He’s still not disclosing the cost, other than denying rumors of $150 invitations and $15,000 toilets in an interview with The New York Times. 

 

‘Oh, God, no,’ he said when asked about the cost. ‘Don’t get me started about that!’

 

But this shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise. After all, he kept the chickens a secret for nearly 30 years.

 

bmdavies@syr.edu