This was one of those episodes that felt like a celebration from start to finish — of craftsmanship, of love, of tradition, and of the American spirit in all its forms. We uncorked patriotic wine, admired handmade jewelry, toured two stunning event venues, planned a wedding, arranged some flowers, spent a gorgeous day at a world-class salon, and finished with a bite of Sicilian pastry that tasted like home. Here’s how it all unfolded.

Republican Red Winery: Fine Wine With a Patriotic Soul

Paul Johnson, second-generation winegrape grower and owner of Republican Red Winery, joined Donna to talk about a brand that’s as much about celebrating American freedom as it is about producing exceptional wine. Paul learned the craft from his father, who started in the early 1970s on California’s central coast — a region that produces everything from Chardonnay and Pinot Noir near the cooler ocean air to Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot in the warmer inland valleys.

What sets Republican Red apart is the philosophy behind the label: the bottle itself is part of the experience. Labels are designed to be striking, conversation-starting, and meaningful — and for America’s 250th anniversary, the team launched the America 250 Collection, featuring iconic imagery including Washington Crossing the Delaware, the Liberty Bell, and Benjamin Franklin’s original Join or Die illustration. The labels are printed with metallic ink that shimmers in the light, and several have already sold out, making them genuine collector’s items.

For Paul, the collection isn’t just a celebration of 250 years — it’s a reminder that freedom isn’t guaranteed, and a tribute to the military and all who fight to preserve it. Many customers buy the bottles without ever opening them, displaying them as timeless pieces of American history.

Paul is spending the Fourth of July with family in Idaho — which, he noted, is exactly what it’s all about. He also extended a generous offer to Donna’s daughter Elise, who is finishing her master’s in fine art in Nashville, to collaborate on a future art and marketing project for the brand.

Find them at republicanred.com.

Laura Lee Jewelry: One-of-a-Kind Polymer Clay Art You Can Wear

Local entrepreneur and longtime friend of the show Laura — whose brand is Laura Lee, named after her own middle name — brought her stunning polymer clay jewelry collection to the studio, and it was impossible not to stop and stare.

What started as a stress outlet after watching a few videos online has, in under a year, grown into a full business with a website, craft show appearances, and a waitlist of customers who spotted pieces on her Instagram and Facebook and reached out immediately. Every single piece is an OAK — one of a kind. No two are ever the same. The colors, the layering, the slicing and recombining of clay — it’s a process that takes 5 to 6 hours per piece from start to finish, including baking and a resin or glaze finish.

Laura is particularly mindful of wearability: all hardware is surgical stainless steel, tarnish-resistant, and built to last for years rather than seasons. Her pieces are also remarkably lightweight — so light they don’t even register on a standard scale. She’s currently expanding into beaded necklaces and bangles, and is happy to recreate something similar to a piece she’s worn or displayed — though never exactly the same.

As Donna put it: anyone can use the same materials, but not everyone gets the same result. That’s what makes a Laura Lee piece a Laura Lee piece.

Find her at lauraleejewelry.com or on Instagram and Facebook at @LauraLeeShop.

Lucille’s Florist: 27 Years of Color, Creativity, and Human Connection

Lucille Conforti, owner of Lucille’s Florist in Fishkill, New York, has one of the best origin stories in small business. Twenty-seven years ago, she was driving down the street, tired of corporate America, saw a flower shop with a for-sale sign, pulled over, walked in, and told the owner she wanted to buy it. The owner thought she was nuts. Lucille’s mom, a real estate agent, handled the paperwork. The rest is history.

Completely self-taught — through books, flower shows, and an innate eye for color and design — Lucille has built a shop that’s as much about emotion as it is about flowers. Her favorite bloom? Hydrangea. Big, fluffy, and fills in beautifully.

On wedding trends, Lucille says the look right now is decidedly un-structured — loose, garden-style arrangements that feel like you clipped them straight from an English garden. Whimsical, bouncy, asymmetrical. No rigid symmetry, just beautiful.

Beyond weddings, Lucille’s handles anniversaries, birthdays, funerals, and every occasion in between — including the ones where someone just wants to make another person feel special for no particular reason at all.

Find her at Lucille’s Florist in Fishkill, New York.

VIP Country Club: Where Every Wedding Is a Production

Donna traveled to New Rochelle to tour VIP Country Club, and it was immediately clear why this Westchester institution has been the venue of choice for weddings and special events for over 70 years. General Manager Thomas walked Donna through what makes VIP genuinely different from every other venue she’s ever seen — and the answer comes down to one thing: they treat a wedding like a restaurant, not a catering hall.

From the moment guests arrive at a cocktail hour that looks like a Manhattan lounge — complete with a pool table, a giant chess set, TV monitors for personalized slideshows, and a state-of-the-art sound system — to the printed dinner menus handed to every guest, the wine list with 13 varieties, and the specialty dessert menu featuring espresso, cappuccino, and nine organic teas, every touchpoint is designed to be remembered five years later.

The venue features four distinctly different spaces: a cocktail room that converts to a nightclub after-party space with its own DJ booth, a main dining room, a ceremony area, and rooftop terraces for coffee and dessert under the open sky. Thomas personally finalizes every wedding six weeks out — reviewing spelling of names, seating plans, ceremony lineup sheets, and run-of-show documents — so that on the day, nothing needs to be asked. It just happens.

The philosophy, as Thomas put it: the restaurant business is show business. Anybody can do a wedding. It’s the details that separate the great ones.

Salon CoCo Bond: A Four-Floor Wellness Experience in Shrewsbury, NJ

One of the most memorable days Donna has had on the show happened at Salon CoCo Bond in Shrewsbury, New Jersey, where founder and owner Erin McCabe welcomed her for a full day of beauty and wellness — and it turned out to be so much more than a salon visit.

The name says it all: a cross between Coco Chanel and James Bond, feminine and masculine, classic and bold. Erin, who grew up with thick, unruly curly hair that nobody knew how to manage (including her mother, whose well-intentioned attempt at a haircut left Erin in tears), built her salon from a deep personal understanding of what it feels like not to be served well — and a fierce commitment to making sure her clients never feel that way.

Spread across four floors, Salon CoCo Bond offers:

• Hydrofacials — a triple-threat treatment that hydrates, exfoliates, and deep-cleans in one session, no downtime required
• Red light therapy — for fine lines, wrinkles, and skin irritation
• Japanese head spa — a rain-shower scalp treatment that stimulates follicles, addresses hair loss and scalp conditions like eczema and psoriasis, and doubles as one of the most meditative experiences you can have at a salon
• Manicures and pedicures featuring Dazzle Dry — a chip-resistant, fast-drying polish system that requires no UV light
• Makeup concierge with Celeste — a full service that includes auditing your current makeup bag, color matching, a field trip to Sephora, and a follow-up lesson on how to use everything
• Full hair services including cuts, keratin treatments, balayage, highlights, perms (including the textured look currently very popular with teenage boys), and specialty curly cuts

Erin also runs an in-house stylist training program called ASIT (Associate Stylist in Training), led by educators who have been with the salon for 15–16 years — because no one steps onto the Salon CoCo Bond floor without learning to do things the CoCo Bond way first.

Family-friendly, deeply community-oriented, and staffed by people who genuinely love being there. The energy is impossible to miss from the moment you walk in the door.

Planning With Pedana: The Wedding Planner Who’s Been There

Caitlynn Pedana, Owner and Lead Planner of Planning With Pedana, got into the wedding industry the way the best people do — because she needed someone like herself on her own wedding day and that person didn’t exist.

A former teacher with a natural type-A personality, Caitlynn describes her approach as a “calm, organized, best friend” style of planning — brides aren’t just hiring an expert, they’re gaining someone they can trust completely, the way they’d trust another bridesmaid. She handles the chaos behind the scenes so the couple never has to. Family drama, a vendor running late, something that broke — none of it reaches the bride. That’s the whole point.

On current wedding trends, Caitlynn shared two that are genuinely catching on. First, the silent cake cutting — instead of stopping the dance floor to make it a spectacle, the couple cuts the cake off to the side with candles and soft lighting, still visible to guests but intimate and elegant. Second, room reveal in place of the sparkler exit — couples get a private first dance in their fully decorated reception space before guests arrive, soaking in every detail they spent months planning before the party begins. The sparkler exit, the bouquet toss, and the garter removal? In five years of weddings, not one bride has requested any of them.

Caitlynn has been in business for five years and brings the same meticulous preparation she developed as a teacher — and as a stay-at-home mom — to every event she takes on.

Find her at Planning With Pedana.

Floral Terrace: A 1920s Theater Reborn as Long Island’s Most Stunning Event Venue

Daniel Akilov, President of Floral Terrace in Floral Park, New York, joined Donna to talk about a venue with a history as beautiful as the events it hosts. The building itself dates to 1920, originally built as a Broadway-style theater — one of the first of its kind on Long Island. Decades later it was converted into an event space, and for the last seven years under Daniel’s stewardship, it has been reimagined again: designer finishes, social-media-ready aesthetics, and a level of personalization that makes every event feel singular.

Floral Terrace hosts up to 450 guests and caters to a genuinely multicultural clientele — weddings, quinceañeras, sweet sixteens, bar and bat mitzvahs, corporate events, and more, each with packages and menus tailored to the specific cultural traditions and aesthetic of the event. The venue has vendor relationships that allow for event turnarounds as fast as 30 days from booking, which is rare at this level.

Daniel’s most memorable event at Floral Terrace? The party he threw for his own wife — designed from scratch to showcase everything the space could do. Every guest left saying they wanted to host their own event there. That, he said, is what built his love for the work.

Welcoming to all — including the LGBTQ+ community, which Daniel noted warmly — Floral Terrace draws guests from across the tri-state area.

Mario’s Pasticceria: A Third-Generation Sicilian Bakery Built on Love

The perfect ending to this episode came in the form of a pastry. Anthony Mistretta of Mario’s Pasticceria arrived with a tray of St. Joseph’s cakes — and the story behind them is as rich as the ricotta cream filling inside.

Anthony’s grandfather emigrated from Sicily in the 1960s, came to New York the way so many immigrants did, and opened a bread bakery. The family has been baking ever since. Today, while the bread tradition lives on, the bakery has evolved to meet modern tastes — and if people are going to cheat on their diet, Anthony noted with a smile, they’d rather do it with pastry than bread.

The St. Joseph’s cake — fried dough filled with traditional ricotta cream (or custard cream in the Campania style) — is made entirely from scratch, with gold-standard ingredients and no shortcuts. The tradition behind the pastry runs deep: St. Joseph’s Day in Italy is essentially Father’s Day, and the pastry was created to celebrate the end of a devastating drought after prayers brought the rains back to the land. Anthony makes them seasonally, from fall through Easter.

His philosophy on pastry is simple: it has to be nostalgic, it has to be made with quality ingredients, and you have to be willing to stand behind every single thing you put in front of someone. Food goes into your body. It has to be good all the way through.