DIY Rhinestone Dog Collar

Just saw this through weddingwire. If you have a pooch that is going to play a special part in your wedding, consider this cute DIY "bling" collar. The materials are listed on Bridal Buds Web site.

Too cute!

The Coolest Guest Book

Okay. I just saw a video blurb from the Get Married with Colin Cowie show. One of the things they featured were these cool accordian style guest books. They look like a book, but when you open them up, little envelopes fold out accordian style. It is so cool looking. Guests write notes on cards, put them in the envelopes along with maybe a picture of themselves that they took at the wedding (have Polaroids available) and slipped them in the envelope with their note. How cool is that? What a wonderful way to keep and showcase notes from your guests to look at and remember years down the road. The pictures above don't do them justice, but click on this link to see the video. The guest book feature is towards the end. The company is called The Honour of Your Presence located in New Jersey. Here's a link to their Web site, but when I tried it, it wasn't up and running yet. Their contact info. is: 421 Main Street, Boonton, New Jersey, 07005 (p): 1 (866) 669-9555.

New Year's Resolutions

Okay. It’s the new year. We’re suppose to make New Year’s resolutions, right? I don’t like to call them resolutions for whatever reason. I would rather call them goals and I do have some goals I would like to accomplish this year.

For my wedding business, I would love to expand it by offering simple floral design services for making bouquets, boutonnieres and centerpieces as well as graphic design services so I could design invitations, programs, etc. I’ve already helped past clients with program design and I did my first floral design last September and am doing it again for one of my weddings this May. I just want to get a little more educated with each of these services so I can offer the best to my clients.

As far as personal goals, I would love to learn French and take photography classes (photography is my second love, after weddings.) I’ve always wanted to learn French and, in fact, tried to self-teach myself a long, long time ago with books I checked out of the library, but then life happened and I never stayed with it.

It’s good to write down goals. You are more apt to keep them. To help you write your goals, think of the SMART method – S – specific, M – measurable, A – achievable, R – realistic and T – timeframe.

What are your goals for 2009?

How Are You Spending Your New Year's Eve tonight?

My husband and I, along with our teenage children, are hosting a small New Year's Eve party in our new home. There will only be eight adults with teenagers and some younger children. I downloaded lots of dance music from the 70's, 80's and today. Anyone who knows me knows I LOVE to dance! That is a must-have at my parties.

I made tissue pom-poms as the simple decor, taking an idea from Martha Stewart Weddings. The pictures shown above don't do them justice, though. We still have our Christmas decorations up so I am only putting the pom-poms in the Family Room where the main party/dancing will be taking place. Of course, there will be candles glowing everywhere. I will have two lanterns on top of my columns at the entrance inside the foyer. I originally was going to have them outside the entrance, however, in my area, a coldfront is coming in and it is VERY windy. I am also using small Mason jars as my luminaries to line the walkway, but they will have the flicker lights in them as tealights would not stay lit in this wind. I will be weighing them down with mini-sandbags I already have that I usually use for my paper luminaries when I use them for weddings.

Every family is bringing a hot or cold Hors d'Oeuvre and a sweet or salty snack. We are providing the drinks - wine, punch and sparkling cider for the toast at midnight. Why not champagne? Because the majority of people do not like the taste of champagne, so why waste a good bottle for just a sip? To divert to weddings for a moment, I also tell my clients to save money and not serve champagne for the toast for the same reason. A sip is taken and then the rest just sits in the flute - wasted. Okay, back to my party. The party is scheduled for 9pm - 12:30am, but if anyone wants to stay later, they are welcome. The first half-hour will see guests arriving and setting up the food. The next hour will be for eating, mingling with nice, background music playing. For the second hour, the dancing PARTAY begins! We'll dance until 11:30pm when it will be time to tune into Dick Clark's Rockin' New Year's Eve with the Jonas Brothers, which the teenage girls will love, and watch the ball drop to welcome in 2009!

I want to wish everyone a safe, healthy and Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas!

My last wedding of the year was last month for Jenn and Ricky. Click here to read their story.


I am now working on my next two weddings and I have a meeting with a prospective client this Saturday. Whew!

It's also Christmas next week. Can you believe it? I don't like it when there are only four weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas. It just doesn't seem like enough time to get everything ready. I still have more shopping to do. Aghhhhhhhh! The house is decorated, but I don't feel ready. Are you?

I wish you and yours a very Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year!

Happy Thanksgiving

I will be taking the rest of the week off, but thought I would share with you a little blurb about the history behind us celebrating Thanksgiving Day on the last Thursday every November. Enjoy!

In the fall of 1863 the Civil War raged across this country taking the lives of the best young men that this land had to offer and threatening to tear the nation in two. In the midst of such chaos and bloodshed it would have been easy for the country's leader, President Abraham Lincoln, to raise a defiant hand toward heaven and question the wisdom of God. But, that is not what President Lincoln did, instead, he sat down and penned the following words.

"The year that is drawing to its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of such an extraordinary a nature ... (that) No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It is seemed to me fit and proper that they should solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens ... to set apart the last Thursday in November ... a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings ... and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility, and Union."
Happy Thanksgiving!

I know, I know...

it's been a long time since I posted and this post will not have anything to do with weddings.

Our family moved recently and that took up a lot of my time with selling and buying a new house, moving, and most frustratingly of all, trying to establish new phone/Internet service. For the first two weeks in our new house, we had no phone service (with the exception of our cell phones) and no Internet service. Well, the phone service finally got connected, however, we are still trying to get our DSL service established. There has been a multitude of issues with the phone company getting our lines to work. Last week, I thought it was done. However, I go and try to use one of the jacks we use for our Internet service (until we get the DSL connected one day) and, lo and behold, the dial tone is no longer there. It was working when they initially connected it. What happened? Aghhhhhhhhhh! I am about to scream my head off. This is crazy. I have made numerous calls to the phone company, even going to the supervisor level, and I am waiting for him/her to call me back. Yeah, right. It's really unbelievable.

Okay enough venting for today. Hopefully, I'll get back to posting about wedding stuff soon. I have a wedding this Saturday, so I'll post something about that next week.

See ya. Hope you have a great rest of the week.