Guest Favors

Amber decided to give away plantable seed wedding favors. I love this idea because it is an absolutely useful wedding favor and it doesn't add to your waistline like a candy bar. The seeds inside were sunflowers, which is so fitting because that was her wedding flower! One place to order these favors is here.

DIY Decorations

Keeping with my friend Amber's wedding, she was on a tight budget and therefore decorated her own ceremony and reception. Her theme was "Fall". She used a pink purple, sunflowers, and mason jars to capture her theme. You can decorate your own wedding beautifully, just remember to stick with a theme and that will make your life easier. Two easy and cheap decorations that can make your event shine - candles and crystals (see below!)

Shepard's Hooks with Candles and fake flowers in her color

An October wedding with a nicely carved pumkin

Floating candles, rocks, and twine - nice fall theme

She took the lanterns from the ceremony site to place on the tables: Cost Saving!!

Head Table- look at how the crystals make the table stand out

Beautiful Location! Kingsley Lake, Starke, FL 

Wacky Wednesday: Wedding on Wheels

For this week's Wacky Wednesday, I'm taking you on the road! Reverend Darrel Best converted his 1942-edition American La France fire engine into a chapel on wheels. He is based out of Illinois. Now the truck barrels down the road sporting stained-glass windows, a pipe organ and an altar. The reverend charges a $200 fee plus $2 per mile. Best says that his truck fits himself, the bride, groom, and the best man and maid of honor.

Source

Source

Rope Braiding

Amber and Russell have a very close and personal relationship with God. Instead of a unity candle for their ceremony, they went with a ceremony called "God's Knot."  The three strands represent the groom, the bride, and Jesus Christ. "A cord made of three strands is not quickly broken." (Ecclesiastes 4:12)  

Ehow.com describes the ceremony as this:

1. Secure the ends of the ropes to a metal ring.

2 Give the groom the metal ring to hold. He should hold it tightly and apply a little tension so that the bride can braid the strands tightly.

3 Instruct the bride to braid the ropes. To do the three-strand braid, bring the left strand over the middle strand. The left strand becomes the new middle strand. Bring the right strand over the new middle strand. Alternate bringing the outermost strands to the center.

4 Secure the end of the braid with a clasp to ensure that the braid does not come undone. The bride and groom can display the braid in their home to symbolize their union.

The colors signify:

• Gold Strand - Represents God
  
  The divinity of God is represented in Gold. This covenant relationship is initiated by Him, will be built under His authority, and is intended to glorify Him.
  
• Purple Strand - Represents the Groom
  
  As a new creation in Christ, the majesty of the Groom is represented in purple. As the husband loves his wife and submits himself to the Lord, the Lord in turn will demonstrate His great love in the marriage relationship.
  
• White Strand - Represents the Bride
  
  Having been cleansed by salvation in Christ, the purity of the Bride is represented in white. As the wife honors her husband and submits herself to the Lord, the Lord in turn will nurture and strengthen the marriage relationship. 

Visit this website to learn more about it or purchase cords. This ceremony is exclusively meant in a religious manner, but you can make the other cord stand for something else, like an ideal: loyalty, love, trust, etc.  

Amber and Russell

This week is dedicated to my college friend Amber and her new husband Russell. I had the privilege of working closely with Amber in the beginning of her engagement to help her plan her wedding. This week I will be showing you pictures from her wedding and give you advice of things I saw that could be run a little differently.

Here are some pictures. Her wedding took place at Camp Blanding in Starke, FL. It was absolutely beautiful.

My first piece of advice is to hire a wedding planner to keep your wedding on schedule. This is where a day of planner is wonderful to have. Most of the weddings I have been to have been at least 30 mins late. This is awful because dinner gets cold and the dancing time gets cut by a half hour. You need to build in 1.5 hours for pictures if you don't do a first look. You need to budget even more time if you don't take individual pictures or attendant pictures before the wedding.

Veteran's Day

I am taking a break from normal posting to thank all the veterans and current military men and women for their service to our wonderful country. Please remember the men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice to keep us all safe. Pray for those who are over seas now and remember to support them.

A great organization that I was a part of for many years is Soldier's Angels. Each week you get sent a different address of a soldier that is overseas currently. Click Here to join! The soldiers absolutely love getting mail. A lot of them do not receive tons of mail, so it is really nice for them to get your letter. Most of the soldiers write back!

Noche De Gala VIP Room

At Noche De Gala, there is a VIP room that gets it's very own decor. For this year, the designers at Keith Watson Productions went with a turquoise and red color scheme with a birch wood accent. They shipped in the birch wood from Wisconsin! A lot of the accent pieces in the VIP tent was from IKEA.

The mirrors, lamps, and butterfly burst decorations are all from Ikea. However, the butterflies were added to the bursts with U-GLU dashes. My favorite thing about this tent was the cracked ice vases, circular mirrors, and candle holders.

Wacky Wednesday: Bungee Jumping

This Wacky Wednesday I am going to show you another extreme, adrenaline pumped wedding! Bungee Jumping wedding, right after you say "I do" you take the plunge... so to speak :-)

Source

Source

Source

Exciting News!

Hello blog followers!

I have some exciting news to share. I just got a seasonal job with the Gaylord Palms Resort in Orlando. I will be the group coordinator for ICE!  Ice! is an event where Chinese artists come to Orlando and carve characters out of ice. Click Here for more information. The job orientation starts today and the job starts on Thursday. The job ends on January 2nd. The major stinky part of this job is that I have to work Thanksgiving day and Christmas day. I just wanted to let you all know that I will do my best to keep my blog up to date every week day. Hopefully, I will have some fun event information to tell you all!!

More really great information coming this week from Noche De Gala and next week, photos and ideas from my friend's wedding!

This is me from Noche De Gala. I had to take the place of one of the performers who called in sick! I was supposed to be a living flower bed. Keith Watson Productions hired about 15 performers to dress up as fairies, trees, deer, etc. all coming to life as part of the enchanted forest.

Decorator's Quick Fix

At this huge event, Noche De Gala, I learned that improvising is imperative in order to finish decorating for an event on time. The follow list are items that are a must have!

1. Zip Ties  - both black and white

2. Safety Pins - All sizes

3. Wire Cutters  - depending on how huge the event is having one wire cutter per every 2-3 workers is a good idea - these are used to cut zip ties and floral wire

4. Floral Wire

5. U- GLU  dashes- buy it off google

6. T-Pins

7. Paper Towels

8. Garbage Bags

These were the things we were constantly running out of. Zip ties are wonderful quick fixes for hanging up fabric and other large decorations. They can also be used to hang up fabric over poles to make pole covers... then use floral wire to make it look decorative, then the t-pins can be used to cover the pole completely with the hanging fabric.  Believe me, after my many hours (87 hours in 8 days) at this farm for Noche De Gala, take my word for it and when you are decorating a huge event, buy loads of this!!

Noche De Gala Decor

This post is to show the decor from Noche De Gala with the theme Enchanted Forest. All next week I will be discussing different techniques that we decorators used for the event to help you all better organize your party and know what you need!

Some of these pictures are from Footstone Photography and some are from my personal pictures.

Source

Five different centerpieces, Five different color table clothes and napkins, Two different color under cloths and chair covers 

Fairy Berries

Hello All.  From October 16th-23rd, I worked with Keith Watson Production in Gainesvile, FL. I was their spring intern, and they asked me back to help with their huge event called Noche De Gala, which is held at a beautiful farm called the Besilu Collection near Ocala, FL. This event is a fundraiser for the Sebastian Ferrero Foundation, which is a charity to build a specialized children's hospital as to minimize medical mistakes from doctors who aren't accustomed to working on children.

This year's theme was Enchanted or Enchanted Forest. It took Keith's team of 20 people or more including myself, a whole week to set up the party and only 6 hours to tear it down. This week and next week I will be showing you decor from this party and giving you cool DIY ideas for your own party!

Thanks for your patience with my blog!

The first awesome product I will tell you about are Fairy Berries. They are these little translucent orbs that blink on and off every so often so it gives the illusion of fairies or fireflies. It was incredible how much these little things could turn the event from just a forest into an enchanted forest!

Source

Source

The cost a little over a dollar per sphere and they last about 13-14 hours. My suggestion would be to place them in giant ferns that you can buy from Home Depot or any plant store. Use sticky stuff like this product called U-GLU. It's truly amazing! 

Source

Stick them to your centerpieces or in trees outside your venue! Enjoy! 

Wacky Wednesday: Sky Diving

Hello Everyone. I apologize for the delay in posting. My life has been super hectic as you will learn once I get some blog posts going. Thank you for your patience.

My friend Joey who is part of the US Navy was texting me on Halloween night that he was about to go sky diving! For me, that is one of the scariest things I could do. I grew up with the notion of that staying in the plane was a good idea, plus it doesn't help that I am super afraid of heights. Not my passion, but there are plenty of people who would love to jump out of planes all day! This Wacky Wednesday is for them!

Source

Source

Vegas (of course) offers packages for skydiving weddings, check them out: Click Here