Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Wedding Planning & Essential Qualities And Education Of A Wedding Planner

Planning a wedding is not an easy job. You really have to work hard to plan a perfect wedding. Nowadays there are numerous courses being offered by various colleges for people seriously desiring to take wedding planning as a career.

So if your keen on making wedding planning as your profession there is an online wedding plannign course that can turn your dream into reality. The online wedding planning course is a distance learning course that offers certification within hours of your successful completion of the study.

It is not obligatory for anyone to enrol themseves in an online wedding planning school. It is open to all who desire to make a career as a wedding planner. These online schools provide a certificate that will help you take the challenge of a wedding planner professionally. Definitely wedding planning is a challenging task requiring wedding planners to help brides, grooms and family members organize all aspects of planning a perfect wedding.

The wedding planning course teaches students how to plan the wedding ceremony and festive occasion, make appropriate arrangements like arranging for photographers and videographers, pick and order flowers. A wedding planner also takes care of the wedding decorations, invitaions helps the bride select a perfect wedding gown for herself and offers advice to the bridal party on etiquette. Moreover weddng planners also suggests how to start a business in wedding planning.

So we see that the task of wedding planner is not an easy one. Its a tough, time-consuming competitive business job requiring patience and hard work. The online wedding planning course helps students acquire essential skills, savvy and confidence needed to take up the challenge of organizing a glorious wedding event.

Online wedding planning offers students the convenience of learning from their homes. It also allows students to study at their own pace, while working and earning at the same time. Visit various websites for more information about the online wedding planning course. Browse the internet and you will find a bulk of information about online wedding planning courses. Its a wonderful course that will teach you the skills required for planning and organizing big events.

So what are you waiting for grab this opportunity to make the most of the online wedding planning course.

A number of schools and colleges offer wedding planning and event planning courses. A bachelors degree and a masters degree is made available through various business degree programs to the students. Such courses give the students an opportunity to learn organizing and management skills that enable them to plan and organize any event like weddings, banquets and dances. They are also taught english and communication skills, mathematics, management, hospitality, sanitation and safety, computer skills for planning and carrying out the tasks given, foods, marketing and sales, legal issues, travel industry, and more.

Community colleges offer diplomas and affiliate degrees in applied sciences for wedding and event planners. Wedding planners also called as wedding consultants and bridal consultants are entrusted with the task of planning the entire wedding occasion. The wedding planners plan, prepare and organize weddings allowing the bride to have a relaxed wedding.

Wedding planning is a great career option for people who love socializing and meeting different people. Wedding planners get an opportunity to enjoy themselves in huge gatherings and are able to create a larger network of friends and get work likewise.

A wedding planner must have certain essential qualities to qualify for the job.The wedding planner must be amiable, easily approachable, a good listener and must have the ability to delegate for their customers. Moreover wedding planner should be flexible, have a great people’s skill, organization and time management abilities. The wedding planner has to take care of all the aspects of wedding arrangement like ordering for wedding flowers, hiring photographers, looking for caterers for the reception party, etc for their customers. Hence a wedding planner should not only be able to organize themselves but also be able to co-ordinate with the entire wedding planning team. The wedding planner should have the resources to arrange everything properly. Good communication skills are essential as the wedding planner has to communicate a numerous people. A strong and level headed person with good leadership qualities.

The wedding planners must be self disciplined and organized so that they can handle every aspect of the wedding preparation. The wedding planners also take care of their customers financial arrangement along with their own finances.

Its important for wedding planners to learn about the different customs and traditions of ethnic groups, religions, countries, etc so that they can plan and arrange things accordingly. Students who are keen on taking the wedding planning career seriously should keep abreast of the latest styles, colors, and trends for large and small events.

Tips for planning your wedding & Prepare wedding gift lists

Colours and flowers you want in your bouquet
Planning a wedding is exiciting but at the same very strenuous. It requires a lot of patience and management to plan a wedding. The bride, the groom and their parents are all engaged in planning the most special occasion to make it a memorable one in the years to come. Everything needs to be planned and arranged in an orderly and proper manner from setting the budget for invitations to the reception party.

Start your planning well in advance, ask friends and family for help as much as possible and chart out the details months in advance of the wedding. Always prepare a check list to avoid any confusion later.

Planning the wedding is definitely not an easy task and can be quite stressful. However stay organized and you will have a wonderful time planning your wedding. Here are a few tips to get you started.

Set a budget: To begin with set your budget properly. You should know how much you want to spend on the different wedding details and make sure you dont exceed the amount you have set for yourself. In some cases, the parents of either the bride or groom are willing to pay for specific things.

Select a theme: The theme should be selected keeping in mind the occasion. It doesn’t have to be something specific but can be anything that gives you a wonderful feeling throughout your wedding celebration. Make sure the theme is easy to plan and decorate. Everything should be consistent with the theme.

The size of your wedding: Decide about your wedding size. You can talk this over with your fiance.

Choose the wedding venue: Even church venues can charge fees.

Talk with your church pastor to perform the ceremony: Go and talk to your pastor and if he doesn’t charge a fee to perform the ceremony, be courteous enough to pay a generous amount for their time.

Set the date: The factors that play a vital role in selecting your wedding date includes the availability of the destination or venue of your wedding, friends and family.

Send out invitations: Send out invitations well in advance of the wedding day may be a month in advance so that you can make arrangements accordingly. You can utilize your creative powers and make your own cards adding a personal touch to the wedding cards.

Choose your wedding gown: Start looking for your wedding dress months before the wedding. This way you will have a lot of time to make your choice and thereby take care of the fitting.You can also select the wedding rings at the same time. Doesn’t this sound exciting.

Find a photographer or videographer: Engage a professional photographer and videographer to capture the special moments of this special occasion.

Decide the kind of food and refreshments you will serve at the reception: The food is the most important part of the wedding reception and hence a little thought should be given while deciding about the food. Make sure that the feast is a delight so that it is remembered by the guest in the years to come.

Choose a cake: A tremendous change has been witnessed in the variety of wedding cakes available nowadays. The wedding cake designers have become more creative and produce beautifully decorated creamy delight for all ocasions. However before selecting a cake make sure you taste a sample of it.



Preparing a wedding gift list is the most practical way of letting your guest know what you want for your wedding gift.

The tradition of preparing wedding gift list did not start long time back. The wedding gift list was prepared by the wealthy and upper class families and some brides were known to have placed very expensive items on their wedding gift list which many guest could not afford.

However during the 90’s a trend was started whereby ‘voucher’ books were prepared at home with pictures cut out from magazines and shop catalogues. These books were posted or given out to the guests’ months before the wedding. The guest made their choices by taking out a page from the book that they desired to buy for the bride and groom. In this way gifts were purchased by the guest and presented to the bride and groom.

The wedding gift list proved to be worthwhile for the couple as it helped to reduce the doubling up of the wedding gifts.

Modern Home Decor
Nowadays home furnishing have undergone a tremendous change and today’s modern woman likes her home to be more co-ordinated. She likes to choose her own colours, patterns and style for her home decor. Therefore it becomes important to let your guest know beforehand what you would prefer for your wedding gift. This way you can avoid things you dont need.Wedding gift lists can include a variety of items and be flexible. It does not necessarily include only household items.

Popular things you can include in your wedding gift list:
Home or Garden Makeover
Couples planning for home renovation or garden makeover need huge amount of money for fulfilling their desire. The couples can ask for help from their loved ones either through cash or vouchers.

Charity gifts
If you are lucky enough to have everything you need for your wedding and dont need anything more then maybe you would like to return something in gratitude to your favorite charity in some way, you could do this by asking your guests to donate gifts of money to them.

No Gifts
If you dont want any gifts for your wedding you can always mention this while giving invitations to your guest.

Household Items
Household items are the most popular items that can be included in the wedding gift list. Wedding gift list is the most practical way of letting your guest know what you need for your new home.

Small and Large Gifts
Prepare the list keeping in mind the fact that there are guest who cannot afford expensive items but still have to buy what is on the list. Therefore small items like books and music vouchers, candles, towels, fruit bowels, door mats that are not expensive can be added to your list as these things are needed for everyday purpose.
If you need something that is costly you can also ask two people to pool in money to purchase it for you.

Send Gift List with Invitations
You can send the wedding gift list with the invitations or if you do not wish to do so you can send it separately later on.

Wedding Gift List Department Store
There are big department stores that provide you with a wedding gift list. You can some spend time and go through the list to make your choices. Thus these department stores help those guest that live in far off places and save them the worry of carrying the gift to you on the wedding day.

Some stores that offer this service are:
Debenhams
Marks & Spencer
Harrods
Argos
British Home Stores
John Lewis
Selfridges (only offer vouchers)

Shop for your wedding gift list until you are satisfied that it is going to offer you enough variety, has a number of stores nationwide and is a renowned supplier.

Some stores are willing to offer discounts for incentives and some will charge you a consultation fee. The important thing to remember is that you need to find a company that will look after your guests and at the same time provide you what you want.

When choosing a store be careful to guide your wedding guests to a place where there is a lot of scope and variety for their purchases.

Wedding Gift Lists Gives Couple More Security
The wedding gift list has provided couples immense freedom and security whereby they are no more worried about unwanted gifts being piled up.

The couples can also keep their gifts safely in the store until they return from their honeymoon.

Best Wedding Dresses 2009 - The Latest Trends

Best wedding dress is a dream of a woman, best wedding dress for special occasion is must so what’s the big deal? But before shopping for a wedding dress few things should always be taken care of like the physique of the bride, colour of the bride, latest trends, choice of shop to purchase the wedding dress, a smart choice and suggestion maker, preference and liking of the groom and the final thing is genuine pricing. All these points when combined will definitely result in best wedding dress for the bride. Best wedding dress 2009 trends inspire us alot with new and trendy ideas for the modern, sexy, confident, beautiful and cute bride.

There are lots of options and choice, available in the market, being confused is natural but I will suggest to think of the kind of look your want for your wedding in advance so that selection can be easy and fun. Latest trends have changed whole look of the traditional bride, designers have added beautiful features to these wedding gowns making it a perfect look for your wedding day.

Few new features which can be adopted by you to look gorgeous on your special day are:

Simple Approach
Earlier crystals, laces and other heavy embellishments complete the wedding gown but now simple wedding gowns are hot favourites. These gowns give a smart and sexy look to the bride without any help of sparkly embellishments.
Use Of Bow
Bows were the beauty of gown earlier too, but they were secondary along with the crystals and lace but now feminine bows and ribbons have taken the primary place on the wedding gowns as an embellishment.

Splash Of Colours
This is another beauty features added to the wedding dresses for 2009. We can see the pastel hues used in wedding gowns or just the touch of colour on the white traditional gowns, which make it extraordinary. These colours can be added in the form of embellishments, ribbons and bows.
Bubble Wedding Dress
If you are a kind of person who want some extra drama to you special outfit, then you can go for the voluminous bubble skirts. This is a different and unique features added to the wedding dresses for 2009 by various designers like Carolina Herrera.
Trumpet Silhouette
Various kinds of cuts and silhouettes are being added as a part of new and latest designing and one of them is trumpet shaped wedding gowns. These gowns are body hugging and flared from the legs area, look sexy and divine. sheaths and column are other silhouettes which come under the body hugging cuts.
High Hemlines
Today’s bride are bold and beautiful, what’s the problem in showing little charm hence, all the leading designers have a high hemlines as there part of styling. Just to add oomph factor to the wedding dresses. Best wedding dresses of 2009 are more of tea-length and mini shift dress styles.
Tiered Skirts
Few can find it childish but trendy people call it a style and uniqueness in the wedding dresses. Layers of fabrics like chiffon, tulle, or feathers are the new trend in the fashion world. Perfect styling for the romantic bride to add little drama to her look.
Strapless And One Shoulder Gowns
Strapless wedding gowns are the hot favourite of today’s women, they give her a confidence and style. One shoulder gowns add charms to her body curves and hence make her feel like a complete women on her wedding day. Wedding gowns are always special and adding some charm to it makes it more valuable.
Practical Pockets
These trendy wedding gowns are not only beautiful but practical too, available with the invisible pockets in the gown so that bride can keep her essentials and don’t have to ask for it from others like lip gloss or handkerchief if needed.

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Dealing with Vendors

I love this tip about dealing with vendors:



“Do you dread negotiating with vendors on their prices? Wedding vendors need to support their lives too so most aren’t willing to drop their fees just because you ask. The best way to get a good deal is to tell the vendor what amount you’re able to spend. Then see how they can customize their services to fit your budget. Perhaps the photographer will knock out the parent album that you don’t need anyway. Maybe the DJ will leave the spinning club lights at home. Or perhaps the caterer will suggest that you skip the mini dessert buffet and only serve wedding cake. You may be surprised at how customized your vendors will make their packages in order to earn your business.” Laura Auer • Wish Special Events

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Rings

I couldn't help looking at rings today. These are my favorites:














Monday, February 16, 2009

Bridal Fair poster


This is the poster I designed in my publication layout class. The Whitewater Bridal Fair is a real event that I chose to advertise in this project.