Guest Blogger: Wedding Planning Notes from the Groom’s Journal
I hope you all had a fabulous Valentine’s Day! This weekend, I had the pleasure of being the wedding planner for an amazing couple, Kristen and Sean. (Details to come in a future post.) While I was hard at work, my baby brother (who is engaged!) was sweet enough to be my guest blogger. I admit, he’s a little bit biased, but so am I – he’s pretty awesome too. Without further ado, allow me to introduce you to Jonathan…
Many weddings have the benefit of a professional wedding planner, and many do not. I am lucky enough to have one for a sister. Elisheva is literally a bride's best friend.
To put it simply, I don't know if I would be having a wedding this June if not for my sister. Having a professional planner means having someone who knows what goes into a wedding, how to choose vendors and locations, and has a network of professionals who love working together.
What goes into a wedding?
A wedding is much more than the sum of it's parts, and Elisheva taught us that. The very first questions she asked us about our wedding were "How do you want to feel on your wedding day? How do you want your guests to feel?" We didn't even realize that we should be considering such intangible things, but Elisheva knows how to define them and use them as a focal point for all the tangibles in order to create that feeling.
How do I choose a location?
Dione and I didn't know what we were doing before our first meeting with Elisheva. We found ourselves wandering around downtown San Jose looking at a handful of hotels that didn't suit us at all. After Elisheva asked what was important to us and our budget, she set up meetings at three venues we had never heard of and took us to all of them on our day off. They were in the much nicer areas, closer to where we live and that day we found the perfect spot to get married and have our reception.
How do I choose other wedding professionals?
Yet another perk of being closely related to a wedding planner is that Elisheva got Dione and I tickets to Wedding University where I met a dozen or so top industry professionals from lighting to dance instructors to florists. During the classes, I picked up on one common element when talking to a vendor you are considering: be honest about your budget. Tell your prospective vendors exactly how much you have to spend on them and they will tell you if they can make it happen. Bonus tip: a vendor is more likely to "make it happen" if they like you. So be friendly and open (and when the big day comes, pamper your vendors and they’ll go above and beyond for you).
What good is a network of vendors to me?
Elisheva already has relationships with all sorts of vendors, and she knows what it is like to work with them and what their work is like. It isn’t necessary that all your professionals have worked together before, but one of the benefits of having a team that knows each other is that they’ll go out of their way to help each other too. There’s no “that’s not my job”. Everyone goes out of their way to serve each other and the bride and groom.
Before Dione and I could blink, Elisheva had arranged for another top notch day-of coordinator for us (Elisheva will be busy being a sister) and an excellent DJ, Ron Grandia to be a part of our celebration. I am super excited to meet more of her colleagues as we finish planning our wedding.
It's only a few months to the wedding day, and Elisheva is keeping the planning process on track. I know most of you don't have a big sister with the professional background Elisheva has, but it's okay. You can borrow mine. Happy Wedding Planning!
Sincerely,
Jonathan,
A Bride's Best Friend's Brother
P.S You can see a slide show of The Wedding University via Janae Shields and a video of the day courtesy of Studio MSV
Wedding Traditions from Around the World
I have a confession: I’m a wedding geek. I don’t watch all the cable shows, but I never tire of talking with engaged couples, hearing about other people’s weddings and learning about different traditions. I just got back from visiting family in the Black Forest, Germany. One of the things I love so much about my European family is learning about their wedding traditions. I got to interview Anna from Sweden, Magdalena and Kerrin from Germany and Yazaret from Mexico about their wedding traditions. Here are some highlights:
Yazaret from Mexico
From Yazaret (Mexico): After the couples’ first dance, both sets of parents join the couple on the dance floor. Instead of only the traditional father-daughter and mother-son dances, the bride also dances with the FOG, as does the FOB with the MOG and so on…I love the way it symbolizes not just the joining of two people, but honors where they came from and shows the bond between two families as well.
From Kerrin (Germany): In addition to a guest book, the maid of honor might set up a table with loads of notecards, envelopes & pens. Guests are instructed to write advice to the couple with specific instructions on the envelope, i.e: “To open the day after your wedding” or “To open after your first big fight” or “To open upon the birth of your first child”. How about a note to be opened on their 25th wedding anniversary?
Anna from Sweden
From Anna (Sweden): It’s a common Swedish tradition that if the bride ever leaves the reception room, the male guests rush up to her and give her a kiss on the cheek (and vice versa with the groom). Spicy!
Me & Magdalena from Germany
From Magdalena (Germany): Games are very popular in German weddings, with a close friend of the bride or groom’s organizing the guests in advance. One game that any newlywed would love to play is this: In addition to the wedding gift, each guest writes down a gift they’d like to give the bride & groom on a paper heart. It could be as simple as inviting them to a pizza dinner or as extravagant as taking them to see a concert or sending them to the spa. The hearts are tacked onto a bulletin board and the bride and groom get a handful of darts. If they hit your heart, they get your gift!
What cultural traditions are you incorporating into your wedding day?
Be Well,
Elle
My Proposal Story
Congratulations to all the newly engaged couples of the world!
Christmas is one of the most popular days of the year to propose (along with Valentine’s Day, New Years and your birthday) and I thought it would be nice to share with you how Mr. Wonderful proposed to me way back in 2001.
On a regular Saturday morning, he told me we had plans for the day. Since I am the planner in the relationship, I was thrilled that he planned something for me, but still, I had no inkling about what was coming.
We lived in San Francisco near Golden Gate Park at the time. He didn’t tell me where we were going, but when we drove around Stow Lake (the biggest lake in GGP) I wondered why he was dressed so nicely for a day in the park. We got out and he led me to the boat rental area. We were students on a shoestring budget back then, and I remember thinking this was something we could do without…and I made the mistake of saying so! He looked so disappointed so I quickly changed my mind.
We got into a little rowboat and he paddled us around the lake. It was early September, the best time of year in San Francisco, and the sky was bright, the air was crisp without being cold, and he seemed sooooo nervous and out of his element. He rowed us to the little island in the middle of the lake, and rested the boat up against it. It was then when he pulled out the ring and asked me to be his wife. I was floored! Of course I said yes as soon as I could catch my breath. On our way back to the shore, we passed a couple on their wedding day getting their portraits taken…a good omen, I thought!
That’s my proposal story, what’s yours?
For newly engaged couples
Photos Courtesy of Jay Kelly Photography
5 things you can do right now to make planning your wedding easier.
Yes, you can have as much fun as Anna & Evan on your wedding day!
1. Bask! You don't get engaged every day - before beginning the project of planning the biggest celebration of your lives, give yourselves some time to just BE engaged. No planning, no deadlines, no budgets, just you & your beloved.
2. Count. After you've had a chance to enjoy your new status, put together your guest list. Most couples do this with some input from their parents, though the ettiquete on who makes the list and who doesn't is different for each couple. If it's starting to get out of control, group people into categories: immediate family, distant relatives, professional friends, etc...then prioritize those categories. Put together your dream list first, work on cutting it down later if you have to.
3. Imagine. Carve out some quiet time together to talk about your ideas and dreams. Beyond the way your wedding will look, think and talk about how you want it to feel. What will your guests see, touch and even smell? Will the environment be upscale and elegant? Playful and rustic? Edgy and rough around the edges? Write it down. Refine it until it's one paragraph. Viola! This is the mission statement for your wedding that you can refer to whenever you are at a crossroads in the planning. With your guest list in hand and this, you've made your wedding blueprint!
So Happy Together
4. Budget. You've already sketched out your dream, now it's time to see how the dollars and cents relate. If appropriate, gently ask your parents or grandparents if they will participate and what they can comfortably commit. Remember that those who pay may want input. Be comfortable with whatever you decide to do. Keep in mind birthdays and holidays from now until your wedding are great opportunities to ask for wedding related items: Your sister might want to gift you with a check towards your bridal bouquet, or maybe your step-mom might want to purchase the favors you've had your eye on. You may need to refine either your guest list or your mission statement to match the numbers, but doing so early will avoid overstretching yourselves financially or becoming disappointed late in the game.
5. Research. If you haven't already, investigate hiring a wedding planner. Now of course, I'm a bit biased, but as a former DIY bride who went without, I've experienced both sides of the coin. Certainly you can have a wonderful wedding without a planner, but depending on how much responsibility you want to pass off to a planner, you'd be surprised about how affordable we really are in the grand scheme of things. Many planners also offer hourly consulting, which is great for those projects that seem especially daunting to you. (For example, I’ve been hired to review timelines / contracts, create budgets and identify venues /vendors, just to name a few…) I'm always amazed with couples who invest thousands into flowers and decor, additional thousands on photography and videography, yet don't think that having a seasoned and experienced wedding planner who can be an unbiased and professional project manager is a good investment. After all, your photographer will be taking pictures of you all day and if the look on your face says: "I'm worried that my centerpieces haven't arrived, I don't know where my maid of honor is and I haven't eaten all day!" then those pictures will show it. My photographer buddies agree: Emotion is the one thing you can't photoshop into or out of a picture.
Do chime in: What has saved you time and stress planning your wedding?
Be Well,
Elle
Hello, so nice to meet you!
Welcome to my little home on the internet, "Wedding Planner At Large". This is my first blog post, so I suppose I should tell you a little bit about myself. Now let's see, I'm a wedding coach and planner based in the San Francisco Bay Area. My passion is bringing weddings to life that reflect my couples true personalities, wishes and hopes for the future. And making the wedding planning process as joyous as the wedding day itself. I'm married to Mr. Wonderful, the best husband ever. We got married in San Francisco over six years ago. He's from the Black Forrest in Germany, and I'm still trying hard hard, hard to learn German. It's tough. (Wie geht es dir?)
I love people who are passionate about their life and work. I love weddings because they are one of few "once in a lifetime" chances for you to be in the same room as all your loved ones, gathered for the happiest of occasions - to celebrate you! I also love brownies, goat cheese and home grown tomatoes (though not all together) and I dislike olives, licorice, standing in long lines, traffic and people who put own agendas above all else.
Now about this blog: If you’re getting married, I hope you'll let me know what it is you are most looking forward to and most dread about planning your wedding. I'll answer as many questions here as I can. Check back here from time to time for planning advice, musings, my fabulous clients and the wonderful weddings I get to plan!
Here is a picture of my global headquarters:
Headquarters of A Bride's Best Friend
Be Well,
Elisheva (Elle for short)