Named for my mother.

Neneda is a family brand built by Daniel Santos and named for his late mother, whose nickname was Neneda. She had a gift for keeping a family organized and looked after. That instinct is what the brand, and its wedding planner, are built around. Five percent of every sale goes to a children's charity.

My mother's name was Ana Maria. Everyone called her Neneda. I am not going to hand you a dramatic story about her, because that is not what I have. What I have is the plain thing she did better than anyone I have known: she kept the people around her organized and looked after. She seemed to know who needed what, and she made sure nothing important got dropped. None of it ever looked like effort.

That is the thing I wanted to build into Neneda. Not the logo, not the colors. The feeling of someone in your corner who has already thought of the part you forgot.

What the planner is for

Together to the Aisle is the first thing we have made. It is a wedding planner that keeps your whole wedding in one file: the budget, the guest list, the timeline, all cross-linked so one change updates the rest. It works in Excel and in Google Sheets, so you can open it on a laptop or a phone.

It is built to be shared. That part matters more than it sounds. So many people picture planning the wedding with their mom and then find themselves doing it alone in a notebook at midnight. The planner is one file everyone can open, so your mom, your partner, or the friend who keeps asking how to help is looking at the same page you are. It does on a screen the thing my mother used to do in her head for the people she loved.

The family behind it

Neneda is run out of our home in Miami. That is my wife Tania, our Alessandra, and Duke and Dixie. We are the whole company. When you buy something from Neneda, this is who you are buying it from, and this is the family the brand is named after.

How the giving works

My mother believed in leaving a little of what you have for someone who has less. The giving is how that belief stays in the brand, so I keep it in its own plain box and never blur it into a warm sentence.