Hit the Books, Baby

Yay, you got the ring!!! After you call all of your friends and family and post picture on myspace, facebook and your blog proclaiming yourself a taken women. Unless you have a a fat book wedding planning book, I recommend celebrating by buying a great wedding magazine and running to your nearest bridal store on a weeknight (Weekends are their busiest time) and trying on as many dresses as you wish. This is more of your play time and to get a feel for the wedding world and your likes and dislikes.

For serious research here are my suggestions:

Websites: (I like these sites because they are great resources to finding local vendors, interactive wedding checklists, and over all wedding information. The Wedding Knot Create a wedding page. This is a great way to announce the engagement and wedding plans to family and friend. Trust me, once they know you are engaged the next question is when you are going to set a date. Plus the Knot has a TON of information.
The Wedding Channel I love this site for the registry connection. This site also allows you to create a wedding page.
Get Married
Wedding Wire Brides

Magazines: Brides, Martha Stewart Weddings, I Do, and Modern Bride.

Books: (You can choose to purchase these books or go to the library. My girlfriends always borrow my books.) By topic: Inexpensive Weddings , The Grooms Guide - Great book for the guys, because let's face it. They are a bit out of their element when it comes to weddings., Wedding Kit for Dummies , and The Knot Guide to Wedding Vows and Traditions.

Whether you are a DIY Bride, Tight Budget Beauty, Green Granola Girl, Posh Princess or some of each, research is a MUST. As you plan, keep in mind to have fun. While everybody and their brother will have an opinion about the details of your day, realize that this is a special day between you and your significant other. Also feel free to enlist the help of family members, friends, or a wedding professional.

And thus it begins.........

This blog is the beginning of my chasing a dream which will soon come to reality and has come out of my love of all things to do with weddings and event planning. It goes beyond being a passion, more like an obsession.

Out of all events, weddings tend take on a life of their own. They require the most planning, thought, stress, anticipation, joy and tears (happy as well as frustrated ones.) The first thing to admit to yourself is no matter how much time, effort, and planning goes into an event, not everything will go as planned. During my own wedding, the hair stylist had a death in the family and the funeral was out of state the week of my wedding. I had exactly one week to locate a salon to accommodate five bridesmaids and me in the wee hours of the morning. I need not tell you what a daunting task that was.

As much as the wedding is about the bride and groom and two families/lives becoming one, another thing to keep in mind is your guests need to feel special. No kind deed, no matter how small, ever goes unnoticed or unappreciated. Many brides opt to leave welcome gift bags at the front desk of the hotel for out-of-towners. These items need not be costly. We will cover the specifics of items in a later blog.

As you begin the journey of planning the wedding, realize that there will be some stress (You want a beach wedding with white tuxes and your Nana finds the idea revolting……..) and all of this planning will be somewhat taxing. The best advise I got was to “Enjoy the planning process, write or blog about it, because once it is gone you might miss it.” Know this, while the process might be stressful, when all the right elements come together, a wedding can become something awe inspiring and magical. Most of all, whether you have a simple wedding on the beach, a grand event at a lavish hotel or even a barbeque, it should reflect the bride and groom.

My intension is not to become the next Emily Post or Martha Stewart of weddings with the hard core dos and don’t for weddings and event, but to simply gently guide and inspire you.

Who am I? You might be wondering……Well, I have always enjoyed event planning; be it dinner parties at our house, trips, birthdays, and of course weddings. I graduated from a smaller university in Atlanta, Georgia with a degree in Communication with in emphasis in Public Relations/Crisis Communication. Currently, I am pursuing a 130 credit hour Wedding Planning certificate from my aulmamater. I plan to share the knowledge I have (and will gain) with you as a whole and to aid brides in the greater Columbia, South Carolina area as an Events Coordinator.


Kind Regards and happy planning!