One of my favorite resources while planning my wedding, and before I was planning a wedding, and I still read them now that I am not planning my own wedding but hopefully am helping with YOURS, is A Practical Wedding. Meg's book was the first wedding book I bought, and the only one I read cover to cover and referred back to repeatedly. I could sing them praises all day long. They get it. The understand that not everyone can spend on their wedding what they would spend in 30 years paying off a mortgage. They understand that weddings don't fit into a perfect little cookie cutter form. And they are a large part of why I want to be in this industry.

I want to work with you, not because I want to throw some lavish party on your dime, but because I want to find an affordable way for you to get hitched and have a wonderful time doing so.

I don't believe in the nonsense that you MUST. HAVE. EVERY. LITTLE. DETAIL. PEEERRRFEECT.

Yesterday I had a meeting with a couple I am working with and their potential caterer. This was the first time I was meeting the groom so I asked him what was important to him on his wedding day. He said first that his dog was there, and second that he just wants it to be a fun party with good food. He then made a great point that often when you are planning for a party for a long time it becomes this hyped up thing that you think will be amazing, and yes it's fun. However, the best parties always seem to be the ones where a friend calls you at 5 o'clock and says, come over, let's have a party! 

As your wedding planner, I want to help you to not over-think yourself to death in the wedding planning process. Let's see what we can do to save you some cash and throw an amazing party to celebrate your lifetime commitment to another person.

And because, what's a blog post without pictures? Here's some of the pretties I've been drooling over lately (click on the images to go to the sources):

P.S. Happy Halloween, eat your favorite candy guilt free today, your dress will still fit, don't worry about that! 

Last April I co-hosted a wedding shower for Arianna & Zack. As soon as I started thinking about this shower I knew that a Pink, Glitter & Gold theme would be super girly and fun for Arianna, and well, Zack loves Arianna, so he'd love that she'd love it. We had a pretty tight budget (who doesn't?) and a lot of ladies that we were inviting. We ended up having about 80 ladies attend in the end. So we came up with the idea of serving soup, salad, and bread sticks and then having a decadent dessert table. Here's what I came up with!

I have to say that I had a ton of help with the shower. Vince helped me cut down rolls of glitter wrapping paper to be skinny enough for table runners. My sister-in-laws Miranda and Michelle came over and helped bake and package all of the cookies (no pictures of them, but we did white chocolate filled snickerdoodles and strawberry frosting filled sugar cookies both in a whoopie pie pan so they were big and soft and yummy). Michelle also came over and crafted the centerpieces with me--who knew a tin can could look so cute. 

Since we had a large crowd we had to adjust the games so that people could be engaged and not bored. The game we played took place during gift opening and was as easy as setting a timer for random intervals and when it went off the person who gave the gift that the couple was currently opening got a door prize. We also had a mad lib for wedding advice at each seat which I just finished crafting into a scrapbook for Arianna and Zack along with photos from the shower and from the DIY photo booth we set up. 

And that's who you throw a girly pink bridal shower! I offer shower planning as part of my services. Need some help figuring out where to start or just want to have your brainstormed ideas come together without too much effort on your part? Besides, as a host, you still need to be able to enjoy the shower you are throwing! Contact me and we can set up a meeting to discus how I can help with your next bridal shower.