Red-Hot and Pink Powered Parties Take Over Tootsies — You’ve Never Seen Galentine’s Day Or Tickled Pink Bashes Like This
When a Store Becomes About More Than Shopping
BY Shelby Hodge // 02.20.25
Donna Lewis, Dr. Sippi Khurana, Beth Wolff, Leisa Holland-Nelson Bowman at the American Cancer Society's Tickled Pink event (Photo by Jacob Power)
How the ladies love Houston’s icon Tootsies as a party venue. The vast marble thoroughfares cutting through the latest fashions regularly attract a flock of swans dedicated serving the community. So it was that just within days, two nonprofits took over the salon for fundraisers. And what a colorful throng: ladies in red for a Galentine’s Day event and femmes wearing pink in salute to the Tickled Pink Luncheon.
For Dec My Room, it was a Galentine’s Day fête that began with shopping at Tootsies, which at the moment is filled with rodeo-ready threads and accessories, and continued with a colorful luncheon in the butterfly-infused PostScript HTX. Jennifer Cope and Marie Flanagan chaired the fundraiser that brought in some $120,000 for the nonprofit that decorates the hospital rooms of longterm pediatric and young adult patients.
Since founded by Susan Plank and daughter Kendall Plank in 2007, Dec My Room has decorated nearly 18,000 hospital rooms around the country for pediatric and young adult patients, transforming the typically cold hospital room into a themed adventure focusing on the special interests of the young patients. The effort, launched in Houston, now serves 178 hospitals and counting.
This throng included notables Whitney Lawson, Estela Cockrell, Laurie Krohn, Stacey Lindseth, Brittany Tribble, Katie Tsuru, Donae Chramosta, Ally Shell, Jennifer Pinkerton, Kelly Larkin, and Kelli Weinzierl.
A Celebration In Pink, Tootsies Style
Rose colored glasses were not needed for this cocktail affair at Tootsies where the American Cancer Society’s Quantum Capital Tickled Pink Luncheon clutch gathered in celebration of the April 17 fundraiser. For it seemed that most of those attending were indeed thinking pink.
Luncheon chair Dr. Sippi Khurana was joined in welcoming guests and introducing honorees by honorary chairs Leisa Holand Nelson Bowman, Donna Lewis and Beth Wolff.
Elizabeth Anthony
Taking bows as honorees were Myrtle Jones, Leila Perrin, Brandi Sikes, Rick Smith and Gaye Lynn Zarrow. Each of the honorees is either a cancer survivor or has a close family member who has fought the disease.
The Tickled Pink Luncheon will raise funds in particular to improve the lives of people with breast cancer and their families through advocacy, research and patient support, as well as to ensure everyone has an opportunity to prevent, detect, treat and survive cancer. Highlight of this day was the Tootsies fashion presentation of styles in pink just right for the luncheon.
Notables lending support on this evening included Lesha Elsenbrook, Denise Monteleone, Lara Bell, Cheryl Byington, Tiffany Halik, Stuart Zarrow, Shelley and Lee Boyer, Heidi Rockecharlie, Sonia Soto, Franelle Rogers, Chree Boydstun, Evelyn Leightman, Beth Muecke, Patti Murphy, Zane Carruth, Charity Yarborough, Sandra Porter, Maddy Kades, and Katie Tsuru.
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