Happy New Year!
from ~bostonbill~’s photo stream
… be sure to click to read the beautiful story of his parents, pictured, who met on a blind date on new years eve in 1952 and were engaged by the next morning. they were married nearly 50 years.
New years day might be my favorite day of the year. It is filled with so much excitement, creativity, hope, and enthusiasm for the future. I don’t believe in resolutions and can’t think of one resolution I made in many years past (while I still believed in them) that I actually kept. Instead, I believe in being honest and setting goals. I have so many goals for 2010 and as I began to put them to paper I realized that there are so many things in my life that I have accomplished—yet so much still to do. I hope that I can achieve most, if not all of my goals in this new year. If not, I guess that’s what 2011 is for, right?
2010 is going to be a great year – for some of you, it’ll be the year find love. For others, it’ll be the year you get married or start your own family. You might change careers, buy a new house, take a leap of faith, reconnect with an old friend or make new ones, start your own business, or close a chapter in your history. My advice to you is to keep the excitement you feel today… for a new beginning… all throughout the year. I firmly believe that 2010 will be YOUR year—but what do you plan to do to make that happen?
PSA: Big sports events and your wedding don’t always mix!
My husband (!) came home on Friday and told me all about the rant he heard on early morning radio about a personality who was REALLY annoyed that he had to attend a wedding during the epic baseball playoffs (yankees vs. redsocks, particularly). I am not a baseball fan but I can tell you that if I were invited to a wedding during the playoffs and my GMEN were playing — I wouldn’t be a happy camper either! Matter of fact, I might not even go!
Which leads me to the point and motivation behind this post: consider seasons and sports when choosing your date. I’m not talking about average games, but the BIG ones: Olympics, college bowls, final four, baseball playoffs, football playoffs and obviously the super bowl. You don’t want a groomsmen smuggling in a laptop to tap into the venue’s wireless network so they can download a live feed of the game in the lobby — because it WILL happen — and it WILL take away from your amazing event!
Coming up on the blog: the epic wedding of Liz and Jayson plus Veena and Rich!
Enjoy the rest of your weekend! xo
It Has Come . . . and Gone
Now that my dream wedding has come and gone I’m back to share my experiences leading to the big day. The month leading up to the wedding was a crazy one indeed. Although I had most of all my projects completed I still felt overwhelmed. Being the ‘Bride to Be’ you will feel like you have a million things to do and no time to do them. During this month you will also be getting excited. It’s finally time to go and pick up that marriage license and now . . . it’s real. With all of this going on you NEED to stay calm and remain focused! I was doing so well sticking to my plan of remaining calm and focused and then it hit. . . my one and only wedding melt down. There was only 2 weeks to go and it hit me like a ton of bricks. . . its here. . . its time. . .did I get everything done? What else do I need to do? So I sat down and cried for a good 5 minutes and then gathered myself. I sat down with the man who is now my husband and put together a game plan. We made a list of all the things we needed to get done and posted it in the kitchen so we could see it everyday. This allowed us to stay organized. We also created check lists of all the items that needed to be packed and ready the day before. So I have some advice that may be helpful to all of you soon to be brides out there:
1. Make check lists. . .this will help you remain focused and organized. You may find yourself doodling to do lists while at work, there is nothing wrong with this.
2. Let go of things that are out of your control. . .example: you cannot control the weather, checking it every 5 minutes will not make it change. Plan for the worst and hope for the best.
3. Communicate with you Fiancé . . .planning a wedding puts your relationship to the test, don’t throw it all out the window in the last month.
4. Don’t dwell on minor issues. . .things will go wrong and when they did I would tell myself the following “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference”
Hope this has been helpful. Happy planning!
A lesson on why you need to protect your wedding
My good friend Samantha Darr from soireebliss! called me to chat last night and told me about a very sad situation that some of her couples are facing in Houston. Apparently, their wedding / reception venue has shut down over night and the owners are nowhere to be found. They’ve taken off with couples’ deposits and full payments. I can only imagine how utterly devastated these couples must be to have lost not only their entire wedding, but their investment in that wedding. Prior to the venue shutting down, they ran a promotion where if couples paid in full, they received 20% off the total event price. Some people signed contracts as little as a few days prior to the venue locking its doors. The venue was also an “all inclusive” kind of venue, where the pastry chef, florist, DJ, and photographer were part of the package and subcontracted through the venue itself. The vendors haven’t been paid either and know nothing of being contracted to work for these couples on their wedding day. So these couples literally have no wedding at all. There are couples with weddings schedule to be this weekend and there is nothing that can be done. It really is a very upsetting situation and I wish there was something I could do to help the couples who are suffering over this. You can view the local news story about it here.
In my experience this is uncommon, but I wanted to share it with our readers because there is a moral here. Wedding Insurance is something that I recommend to all my couples from a liability standpoint and in case something like this happens. When you make investments you always insure them – your home, car, business, the diamond engagement ring you’re wearing. All of those are costly investments that you want to protect. You should think about your wedding day in the same way and spend the extra $200-$800 (depending on the size of your coverage) to insure your wedding and have peace of mind. I cannot stress this enough and I really encourage all of you to do some research on wedding insurance companies, like WedSafe, and consider making the investment. When you have $30K — $100K invested in an event you want to make sure that you are protected in case something goes wrong.
To all our vendors who read, please consider donating some of your services in some capacity to these couples. Many have of course spent their life savings and now they have absolutely nothing to show for it.
