Flourish Friday

So... how are those smiles working?? Have you changed any part of the world?? If you were doing it right... you did! If not, keep trying, it's worth it. Either way continue to work the smile, each Friday it is not time to forget the last step and move on, it is a building block. We are going to put one block on top of the other so we can build up to the ultimate "us".
So KEEP SMILING.

Now onto this weeks step. This is more of an inside step. Most people will not be able to tell you are working on it. This is between you and your brain. Did you know that you control your brain? Your brain does NOT control you. That is worth repeating; YOU CONTROL YOUR BRAIN. YOUR BRAIN DOES NOT CONTROL YOU. I am not sure that many people believe this. I think if they did, this world would be a totally different place. Now please note, I am not speaking as someone who has this mastered. I am speaking as someone that is working on this right along with each of you. In fact, this has been a major topic of discussion with myself this week.
Did you know that you can convince yourself to like something & you can convince yourself to stop liking something. It won't be easy. However, I believe that it is more important than any of us can fathom.

So, this next week my challenge to you is that you would learn to train your brain. The first step is this: Speak it out loud. If you want to train yourself to like broccoli then I want you to say it out loud through out the next week. "I like broccoli." "Broccoli is good." Then test it, put broccoli in front of you and when you go to take a bite, fight the urge to cringe or think negatively about the broccoli, continue to tell yourself that you like it. Don't expect it to work perfectly the first time, just like training for anything, it takes time and persistence. But continue to persevere if this is important to you. Then try it with other things; exercising, finishing the big project that has been haunting you, whatever it may be, work for it. You are worth it! Have a wonderful weekend and check back on Monday.

Take My Breath Away...

Have you ever come across something that just takes your breath away? That, no matter how hard you try, you just can't get it out of your head? Well, that is what happened to me a few weeks back. Just like every other day, I clicked on the Style Me Pretty blog to see what wonderful "eye candy" Abby had chosen for us that day... and GASP! There were the most mesmerizing photos I had ever seen. So here I am, sharing them with you today. Take your time and pour over the details in these tablescapes staged by Cournetnay Lambert of Courtenay Lambert Florals and Kortnee Miller of Simply Timeless Photography. Apparently this is what amazingly talented people do in the Off-Season...

Inside the Envelope...

So we've been talking about the outside of the envelope, now I would like to talk about what is in it! Here are some fun examples from one of my favorite companies. Check out their websites... They have OODLES of designs to choose from! The links are at the bottom of this page. :)

Jessica Lemmons Photography

I for one have got to say that I adore the direction that modern day photography has taken. Out are the days of posing with your head tilted awkwardly and holding a fake smile until you burst! Hooray! If you haven't spent any time swooning over a great photographers site lately... you have no idea what you are missing! Here are some amazing examples from a local photographer that I am obsessed with. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do!

Here's to an artistic eye! Thank you Jessica! Jessica Lemmons Photography.

Flourish Fridays

ANNOUNCEMENT! ANNOUNCEMENT! ANNOUNCEMENT!! Life's Little Polka Dot's is proud to announce the new theme of the Friday post. Flourish Friday. That's right, Flourish. Whether we are professional planners, amateur planners or not planning anything, I think we can all agree that we can all be better people. So every Friday we will be leaving the world of event planning and focus on just plain old US. First we should probably establish what "Flourish" really means.

flour⋅ish [flur-ish, fluhr-]

1. to be successful; prosper.

2. to grow luxuriantly

3. to make dramatic, sweeping gestures

To be successful & prosper! Who doesn't want to do that!!! To grow luxuriantly! Which is roughly translated as "a richly supplied and lush growth." And I know that making dramatic, sweeping gestures is referring to doing it "with an object" but I feel encouraged to think of it as "with ourselves."

So, every Friday we will look into what it takes to flourish. One week at a time. One action at a time. Please take the challenge that I present each week and live it. Let it become part of you...

Week 1 - A Smile Can Change the World

Very few people could argue the fact, that a simple smile can change your entire mood. You could be having a really rotten day and then someone smiles at you... really smiles, and although your day won't necessarily turn full circle. It will improve. And you don't have to rely on others to do that for you. You can do that for yourself. No matter how bad you feel, smile...really smile and again, it will improve your mood. PLEASE NOTE: WE ARE NOT TALKING ABOUT SURFACY, FAKE SMILES - THERE IS A DIFFERENCE. To REALLY smile you have to take a minute and focus on something that REALLY makes you happy. Taking the time to think about these things are guaranteed to make you a happier person. Which will lead to more smiles...
Now, my favorite part, making it about others. What can we do for others? If this is a foreign concept to you bear with me. There is no way that you can succeed at this challenge and NOT have it change you, forever. My family has laughed at me for years; when I go into the grocery store and smile and say "Hi" to a good majority of the people that we pass. When I leave the checkout counter knowing at least one piece of personal information about the clerk. (Not always, I too have a schedule that occasionally prohibits me from "befriending" all store clerks.) I do at least always SMILE and talk nicely to them, respectfully.
So as you go into your weekend take this challenge: Smile. Smile at everyone you meet, and watch the immediate reaction to this very easy gesture. If someone is walking slowly and looking defeated, make eye contact, and smile. Watch as they will most likely straighten up and walk more briskly. You have more power than you may ever know. Lets change the world. One smile at a time!

Things To Budget For

As I promised earlier this week, here is a list of things to keep in mind when planning your wedding budget: (please note that you may not have a need for everything on this list and you may have needs that are not specified on this list. It is just to give you an idea of what to consider.)

CEREMONY

Ceremony Site-Officiant Fees

Flower Girl Basket - Ring Bearer Pillow

Unity Candle

WEDDING ATTIRE

Bridal Gown - Alterations -Headpiece & Veil

Gloves -Jewelry

Stockings -Garter

Shoes -Hairdresser

Makeup Artist -Manicure/Pedicure

Groom's Formal Wear

PHOTOGRAPHY

Bride & Groom's Album -Parents' Album

Extra Prints-Proofs/Previews-Negatives

Engagement Photograph

Formal Bridal Portrait

VIDEOGRAPHY

Main Video Titles-Extra Hours

Photo Montage-Extra Copies

STATIONERY

Invitations-Response Cards

Reception Cards-Ceremony Cards

Pew Cards-Seating/Place Cards

Maps-Ceremony Programs

Announcements-Thank You Notes

Stamps-Calligraphy

Napkins/ Matchbooks

MUSIC

Ceremony Music-Reception Music

RECEPTION

Reception Site Fee-Hoers D' Oeuvres -Favors

Main Meal/Caterer-Liquor/ Beverages

Bar tending Fee

Bar Set-up Fee-Corkage Fee

Fee to Pour Coffee-Service Providers'

Meals -Gratuity-Disposable Cameras

Parking Fee-Valet Services

FLOWERS

Bride's Bouquet-Tossing Bouquet

Maid of Honor's & Bridesmaids' Bouquets

Flower Girl's head piece & pedals

Corsages for Family Members'

Boutonnieres for Groom & Ushers & Family

Any arrangements that you may want at the ceremony

Flowers for reception

BAKERY

Wedding Cake-Groom's Cake Cake

Delivery/Set-up Fee-Cake-Cutting Fee

Cake Top-Cake Knife/Toast Glasses

DECORATIONS

Table Centerpieces -Balloons

Candles - Anything else you envision!

RENTAL ITEMS

Ceremony Accessories -Tent/Canopy

Dance Floor -Tables/Chairs

Linen/Tableware

Heaters -Lanterns

GIFTS

Bride's Gift -Groom's Gift

Bridesmaids' Gifts -Ushers' Gifts

MISCELLANEOUS

Newspaper Announcement-Marriage License

Bridal Gown/Bouquet Preservation

Wedding Consultant

Wedding Software

Taxes

Spring Has Sprung -So Have These Favors

Are you looking for favors that will last forever? Well why not take a hint from mother nature and offer your guests these lasting tokens of your appreciation? These wonderful favors are perfect for spring and summer weddings. They are friendly to the environment too! Your guests can go home and plant these in their own gardens or planters and be reminded of you year after year. Plus, you can cluster them in the middle of your tables for a fun centerpiece, and since everyone takes them with them when they leave, clean ups a snap!

There are a number of ways to make these wonderful as well. There are a number of companies online that offer some sort of seedling, you can get them by themselves or already in containers with bows or tags. You can get them from your local Nursery in most cases as well. This is a fun way to keep things local. You can also cut them from your own garden as "starters". This is the least expensive option, you just need to make sure that you know what you are doing. There are many resources for this. It isn't very difficult. Or as with these amazing lucky bamboo shoots, you can look on eBay! The total is about .15 cents each on these 4" stems. They come in all sizes however, so why not buy many sizes and display all around!

If you get them by themselves the sky's the limit on what you can put them in. You can wrap them in pretty paper depending on the variety of plant. (some will need to be in soil or water full time) You can put them in adorable pots that you have painted or leave them plain for an earthy feel. The ones above are in fun little boxes! With each of them you can find fun ways to incorporate your theme or a signature tag. Have fun with it!

Fonts

I was on a mission today, a mission to find a certain font... what a daunting task that was! But alas, I have found it! It is amazing as we get older the things that really excite us... Anyway as I was on my great font quest I realized that I had been captivated by all of the wonderful varieties out there. Seriously, I poured over them for... well, lets just say, longer than I probably should have. :) So I thought that maybe I would share some of my favorites with you!

They don't always have to be elegant or fancy... check out these fun and casual fonts:

And I love these!!! The sky's the limit folks! Never settle for ordinary...

These and thousands more can be found at What The Font {dot} com . The ones posted here cost anywhere from $12 - $40. Happy browsing!

Wedding Budget

What is the first thing to do when planning a wedding??? No, it's not pick out the colors, although that would be the most fun... Who doesn't love swooning over a great color palette?? No, the first thing you have to do is figure out the budget. Ugh. Did I just say that?? I did, but it's because I had to. If you want your event planning to go smoothly you have to start at the beginning. A budget is kind of like coloring. When you open a coloring book and start to color, it always looks best if you first outline. The budget is that outline. Then the rest of the picture will look better as you fill it in if first it was outlined. So what do you need to budget for? It is more than you think... Too many brides think that they need to pay for some place to get married, a dress, cake, flowers, photographer, and food. If only it were just that easy. There are dozens of expenses that, if your not prepared can send you over the edge and keep you from having the wedding of your dreams. Once that budget is done you can realistically decide what kind of wedding you will have. Don't worry if your budget isn't very big, you can still have an Unforgettable wedding, when you work on your budget you can move things around if you like. For example;

If your dream is to have loads of flowers... you can "tweak" your budget to figure out where to offset the cost of the flowers you are wanting. Maybe you want tons of flowers, however, you can do away with a full sit down dinner. Go for appetizers instead. Then take the money you saved on food and put that toward the flowers.

If you didn't have a budgeted plan you may have booked a fantastic venue for your reception at a time that a "meal" is required and then NOT had that money to put toward flowers. I hope this is making sense. You are essentially assigning a certain amount of money to each category, ensuring that you will have full control over where it is spent.

This may sound funny, you might be thinking, "Crazy woman, I know what I want and how much I plan on spending!" If you have never planned a wedding before trust me, there is A LOT to keep track of and A LOT of things to pull you in and make you "fudge" your budget a bit to get what you want. A solid budget keeps that from happening.

Later, I will be posting a list of things to keep in mind when planning your budget. Feel free to copy it down and refer to it as you create your budget.

J Crew

While shopping for our wedding attire we tend to gravitate toward "Bridal" shops. Today I would like to leave you with the idea of stepping outside the box and going to a clothing store for your gown and attendants dresses. I will only showcase one today... J Crew. Enjoy!

And bridesmaid dresses they will WANT to wear again!!

And they have SHOES!!!!!!!!!!
Look at these! Talk about eye candy!


You'll find them all at JCrew.com

Swoon Over It

Seriously, you will swoon over it! This is what I was referring to when I said you can hire someone to address your envelopes for you. So now that you have the "detail oriented" postage, keep going with that fantastic first impression by having your addresses personally hand written! Talk about setting the stage. Now there are many wonderful businesses that do this sort of work, however, today I would like to showcase just one, from the outstanding talents of Amanda {at} Swoon Over It! So please, with no further ado, feast your eyes on these...

And my favorite, the one that I would use.... if I wasn't already married :^)

Please go and "swoon" over her site HERE you won't be sorry!!

Mr & Mrs K

F.A.B.U.L.O.U.S. If I could choose just one word to explain the first "official" wedding that I coordinated. It would be Fabulous. Truly, Mrs K had such an amazing vision. It was fun to watch it all come together. This is one that was a Rehearsal & Day Of, package, so my duties were to confirm vendors, write detailed itineraries for the wedding party and make sure that the rehearsal and wedding day ran smoothly. And boy did it! Woo Hoo! First of all I have to say that the families and wedding party were an absolute JOY to work with. Really, a true blessing to any coordinator! So thank you to you all. With that said I will tell you how things went:
Thursday
3:00 Meet at the church to decorate
5:30 Get the troops in order and start rehearsing
6:30 Wrap up a great rehearsal
7:00 Enjoy a wonderful dinner with the families and wedding party. The grooms family went all out and it was scrumptious!
Friday
8:00am Meet at the reception site to get keys and start decorating. We had amazing turn out of family and friends to help with this so it went incredibly smooth.
12:30 Go to church to finish the aisle decorating
1:30 Back to reception to help the dearly devoted aunt and uncle finish putting up the white lights. It was a labor of love, but so worth it! Thanks you two.
2:30 Back to church to let the florist in, and get flowers in the refrigerator.
2:45 Back to Reception to lock up
3:00 Home to get ready... or so I thought. This was the one snafu in the day and it was TOTALLY my fault. I had changed the cake delivery time to 3:00 but forgot to change it on my schedule, so the nice lady from the bakery had pulled into the reception parking lot just seconds after I pulled out. Unfortunately she wasn't able to reach me until 4:30!!! So....
4:30 Sprint to the reception and let her in, apologize profusely, return home to finish getting ready.
5:00 Back to reception to finish last minute details like fill the water jugs, start the coffee, and make sure everything was in the right place.
5:45 To the church!! Almost time for the wedding
6:00 Snacks for wedding party, time to relax until show time!
6:30 Guests arrive
7:00 Showtime!!!!!
7:10 Guests seated and ready to roll
7:15 Wedding party enters and all goes PERFECT :)
7:40 I slip out and leave church clean up to my assistant
7:45 Arrive back at reception and light hundreds of candles and set lighting to perfection!
8:00 Guests show up
8:20 Bride and groom show up
8:21 Bride and groom announced and go straight into their first dance... flawless!
8:25 Guests party and have fun for the rest of the evening.
11:30 Reception is totally cleaned up thanks to amazing family and friends... Time to go home and C.R.A.S.H.
Whew! Fabulous! Thank you Mr & Mrs K. May your marriage be blessed beyond imagination!

Here is one sneak peak photo... more to follow so please check back...

Note the sheer genius of this photo. Our photographer has a gift, we were blessed to have her!

The Art of RSVPing

Répondez s'il vous plaît - RESPOND PLEASE. So, here's the question of the year??? Do you R.S.V.P? Honestly. I believe that R.S.V.P.ing is a lost art. There was a time where no one would consider NOT letting someone know if they were planning on attending an event or not. Somehow people have decided that R.S.V.P. means "let me know if you can't come." No it literally does mean RESPOND PLEASE! There is a lot to do to get ready for any event, invitations, decorations, cleaning, preparing, and possibly food to purchase or prepare. When you don't know how many people to expect it makes it much more difficult.

Just look at the two extremes... Everyone shows up and you didn't prepare for nearly enough!! Or no one shows up and you did all of that work for nothing! Now grant it, neither of those is typical, but, they are possible.

So next time you see those four little letters scripted across the bottom of an invitation please be courteous and RESPOND.

Details

Details Right from the Beginning!

What takes something ordinary and makes it something WONDERFUL? Details. Details can be big or little, a big expense or no expense. But if you want to make something great you need to add details! No matter what the event you are planning the first impression of that event is the invitation! And what comes before the invitation? The envelope that's what! So make it special. Have a friend with wonderful handwriting do it. Or send them through your printer with a special font. Or you can even send them out to be addressed by a professional... (which I will address (heehee) in a later post. The other thing that can make it special is the postage. Here are some wonderful stamps that you can get directly from http://www.usps.com/ . Enjoy!

Please keep in mind that the price of postage will be going up on May 11th. The new price will be 44 cents.

This beautiful stamp is 61 cents.

Weddings are not the only thing you send out invites for... here are some for those "other" special occasions...

If you want something truly special or can't find what you need there is always this option... Personalized Photo Stamp Software! How great for Christmas cards! Make yours stand out in a season of many cards.

Wedding Planners

Should I Hire A Wedding Planner?

So you're engaged! WooHoo! Your head is spinning with all the things that you want to get done and you are starting to see color combinations dancing through your dreams. So many questions:

What is my budget?

Who should I hire?

Where should we say I do?

Should we dance?

Are we going to serve food?

What wedding sites are best for ideas?

Who is going to fit my style?

Why does my mom have so many ideas?

How can I tell my future mother-in-law that I don't like her ideas without hurting her feelings?

Is there anyone that I can talk to about this who understands???

YES. There is someone out there who understands and who has done this many times before. Your local wedding planner. I know when you are looking at budgets it is overwhelming to think of adding in ONE MORE cost. However, you really can't think of it that way. You need to realize right up front, that a wedding planner may cost you a little bit in the end, however probably not as much as you think.

Did you know that the average bride spends over 200 hrs on the planning of their wedding?? Over a quarter of that is just on finding and interviewing vendors. These interviews are a key element when you want to make your wedding something UNFORGETTABLE! Knowing your vendors and having them know you is irreplacable. When you have really found that someone who knows and understands YOUR style you will be amazed at what that does for your big day. Your local wedding planner knows this and also a "good" wedding planner knows all of the local vendors... even those that do not advertise. They are able to connect you with who they know will be a good fit. Or at least narrow it down to 2-3 referrals. Cutting your hours wayyyy down. And lets face it, TIME IS MONEY. Do not forget that when you are making your budget. The more time you have to take off from work, or not get to your normal responsabilities, just so that you can make more phone calls or meet new vendors - is costing you money. Most Wedding Planners will have multiple packages available. One of those should be Vendor Referrals. Meaning that for a small fee they will meet with you and find out who you are and what you want, then they can give you their professional recommendations as far as price, style and availability.

The other thing to keep in mind is that a good Wedding Planner is constantly staying on top of new styles and trends and knows how to make these a reality for any budget. The resources that Planners have are endless and they can do many things that you want at a fraction of the price. This could end up saving you hundreds in the end. You will probably find that most Wedding Planners offer a Full Service package that would include this exact thing.

Have you ever heard of SANITY. I don't know about you but that in itself is worth a million bucks. There is nothing worse than planning your perfect day and then NOT being able to sit back and enjoy it. That is what you are supposed to do, ENJOY IT. By hiring a Planner to do Rehearsal & Day of Coordination you and your family and friends are free to sit back and take in the memories that the day has to offer.

In the end I would say that it is worth it to at least meet with a Wedding Planner or two in your community to see what they have to offer. Most of them offer a complimentary session so what is there to loose!