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! 

This past weekend I had the opportunity to assist a family with the very important celebration of their son's Bar Mitzvah. The night had a Motown theme so I created these "records" with the young man's favorite Motown Hits. 

I also put together these simple Towne Club Soda (made in Detroit of course!) favors by creating  a custom tag for them and attaching them to his favorite flavor: Root beer! 

I should be sure to mention that this was very much a Do It Todero project. I had the idea of the CD's but I had never seen these awesome ones that look like mini vinyl records that Vince told me about. I did the design work, but Vince helped a ton with the construction. I also could NOT figure out how to print on the CD's themselves, but luckily Vince was able to figure out that whole process. 

I also coordinated a Murder Mystery party for the kids in attendance at the Bar Mitzvah. Corralling 30 pre-teens when they are excited and eating lots of sugar was more work than I imagined, but we all had fun and most importantly, the Bar Mitzvah thoroughly enjoyed his evening. 

Hiring an Event Planner doesn't have to mean that you turn the reigns over for the whole event. Is there a portion of your event that you need help with? Do you want DIY favors but aren't crafty of don't have the time to create them yourself? Let's talk about what we can do together to make your next event a chart topping hit!

One of the most important things of planning any type of event is staying organized during the process. There is Pinterest to keep your inspiration images organized, binders to keep track of contracts, and  you could use a Word program to keep all of your computer documents organized. But what happens when you are gone on a long weekend adventure and you just want to tweak that guest list or time line a little bit but it is on your desktop at home? You don't have access to it.

Not the case with Google Drive. I have been a long time lover of Google Drive (formerly Google Docs), and as I move into event planning it is still a very powerful and useful tool. Whether you use it or not I will most likely be creating your timeline, budget, guest list, seating chart, whatever I dream up with Google Drive and then sharing it with you. If you are using it too I will share the document with you so that we can edit it together, if you aren't using it I will email it to you either in PDF form or as a Word Document. 

Here are my top 5 reasons you should look into Google Drive as a method to keep yourself organized:

1. Instant access across all devices. There are apps for Apple and Android products and they work wonderfully.
   
2. Live team edits. I've used Google Drive with brides to create a to-do list and as we complete things we cross them off the list. This way we don't both do the same task, plus it holds both me as the planner and you as the bride accountable by knowing the other can see if it's done or not. There's also a chat box feature.
   
3. Shared documents. Your mom wants to know who's made the cut on the guest list? Send her a copy of the document that she can VIEW but not EDIT. You have the option when you share with others what they can do to the document. 
4. Forms. In previous jobs I used the forms option a ton. When it came time to send a rehearsal dinner invitation my time and budget were pretty much maxed out. So I sent an e-vite that I created in my Gmail with a link to a Google Form that served as the RSVP. Not perfect for grandparents who don't use email, but great for everyone else. You could also use it for collecting all of those groomsmen measurements.
5. It is FREE. If you have Gmail, you have Google Drive. Simply click on the table "Drive" and you'll be taken to it and they have a spiffy little tutorial to teach you how to use it. 

And best of all, if you hire me, I have already created a ton of documents that will make your wedding planning easier and I will either send them to you blank or get started filling them in for you! How are you staying organized?

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.

When we got married last November I thought that I could plan all of my wedding events by myself, with the help of Vince of course. We certainly did succeed at this, but I lost small parts of my sanity in the process. Thankfully we had a week long honeymoon in Puerto Rico where I could reclaim this sanity and relax and bask in the sun and bliss of being married. 

This photo (as you may have guessed) was snapped by my sister-in-law Michelle at our rehearsal. I think our faces communicate our feelings that night--I'm stressed but smiling, Vince is a little nervous maybe? What happened that evening  was that people were late, I wanted to wait for them to be there to begin, plus I wanted to talk to everyone that was there and things were running behind. I had laid out exactly how I wanted the rehearsal to go, instructions on paper that were not communicated well to anyone else. My bad. 

Thankfully my dear friend Kelly was able to get things on track and she ran the show for the night. She got everyone in line, and organized and got the ball rolling. For this I am eternally grateful because without her I don't know what might have happened to our rehearsal, we certainly would have gotten to eat a lot later than anticipated.

And this is where I wish I would have hired a wedding planner to coordinate the rehearsal and the day of the wedding. It would have meant the planner being on the phone with people, that same planner would have gotten the show on the road so that Kelly would have been able to enjoy the experience with us as we prepared for our wedding day, and that planner would have told me to take a deep breath and take it all in.

This is what I want to give to you as a planner--peace of mind that the details are taken care of, that every "t" is crossed and "i" dotted and that those that need to know also have this information, and most important: that you get to relax and enjoy what you have worked so hard on. 

If you want to enjoy this but don't need help with the planning process, I have a wonderful Day of Coordination package that you will be interested in, contact me and we can set up a coffee date to discuss it!

Former brides out there: Did you hire a wedding planner or day of coordinator? If you didn't, do you wish you would have? Was there any wedding hiccup that a planner could have averted?