A Very Special Gift

Have you been shopping around for the perfect for that special someone?  Have you been frustrated by the countless hours that you ve spent shopping and comparison shopping without any success?  Have you tried you hand at online shopping and still failed to come up with anything that your special someone is going to like.  Well, you don t have to worry about that anymore!  I m here, today, to tell you that I ve got the perfect gift for that special someone: Blue Tooth-Dye cereal!   hat s right, the cereal that dyes your teeth blue, PERMANENTLY!

As you ve been shopping around, you ve no doubt been struck by the lack of originality that most products have to offer.  I mean, let s take a look at a few of the presents that you might have bought before you heard about our amazing Blue Tooth-Dye cereal. A watch: Oh, great.  You bought me a watch.  Great.  You re so preoccupied with the amount of time that you ve spent shopping around for me that you had to buy an instrument to measure the time that you re wasting, and now you re re-gifting it.  Or maybe you re trying to tell me that I m always late to everything, and that you d really prefer that I become a bit more punctual.  Great, what a thoughtful gift.  I was only late to your wedding and your baby-shower, and your graduation, and my own wedding, and I guess I was pretty late that time you needed me to bail you out of jail, and there have been plenty of other times& But really?  You re going to get me a watch for my birthday?

Scratcher Tickets:  Oh, well isn t that just great: you bought me scratcher tickets for my frickin birthday.  You ve got such a bad gambling problem that you gambled away my frickin birthday present, and you re trying to pass it off as anactual present.  You know what?  You can keep away from me and my family.  My kids don t need to know you for what you ve become: a hollow, ruined husk of a human being, so addicted to gambling and  irresponsibility that you can t even bring yourself to buy a proper birthday present for one of your closest friends.  Keep the tickets, you addict.

tickets to a sports game!  I don t even like hockey, you jerk.  And besides, it d be worse if I did like hockey.  Imagine that: you take me to a sporting event for my birthday and my favorite team loses.  Wow,what a great day!  I got to see my favorite sports team lose, and I don t even have anything to show for it.  I mean, couldn t you have spent a few extra bucks and bought a jersey or something?  I mean, seriously.  At least I can use that for something!  Come on!

Socks:  Oh, oh my & I can t even find the words to adequately express how disappointed I am right now.  I mean, if you gave me a couple of hours a thesaurus, I might be able to put something together that would help you understand just how badly you done messed this gift up.

Organizing Your Wedding Vendors

Getting married is an exciting time for the bride and groom, family and friends. Then the wedding planning starts. You now have to find the perfect dress, the perfect place to have the wedding, make sure everyone you want to be at your wedding is there and then put on a happy face when the people you DON'T want at the wedding show up. 

Not to mention the worry and stress money brings into the planning, trust me, there is a reason why people run off to Vegas. Three years ago, I started conducting workshops for brides to help them organize their wedding, now I'm the one organizing my own wedding. Organizing a wedding is completely different than planning a wedding. If you want someone to plan your wedding, I highly recommend hiring a wedding planner if nothing else for the Day Of, but if you are like most brides you want to do it yourself. Why shouldn't you? If you are organizing your wedding, there are 3 different aspects to your wedding that you need to be prepared for: 

1. Organizing Your Vendors 

2. Organizing the Events 

3. Organizing the Legalities Each aspect is equally important, but they also come at different stages of the wedding planning process. 

So, let's start at the very beginning! Before getting into the nitty gritty, let's make sure you have the tools you need to organize your wedding. 

 1. Maid of Honor - She will be able to do a lot of the leg work for you. Think of her as your personal assistant, if you will. 

2. Wedding Planner Tool - This one is all up to you and your preference. 

I chose to use a 6-prong Classification folder to help me organize my wedding plans. 

My sections were broken down by; Calendar pages I printed from Outlook, guest list, vendor contact information, To Do list, contracts, and an envelope that I stored all of my swatches and samples. You can choose any system you feel most comfortable with, just make sure it has a place for everything you need. For me the classification folder helped me organize the entire wedding process, including my vendors. Organizing your vendors is essential in having a successful wedding ceremony and reception. 

Pick the wrong vendors and you could end up at a reception with no food, no photographer, or no reception hall. These are all unfortunate occurrences and they do happen, but how do you ensure they do not happen to you? Referrals. Referrals. Referrals. Referrals can save your sanity. If you already know where you are getting your dress, ask the shop owner if she can refer a great photographer or if you know of a friend who recently got married, ask her who she used during her wedding. 

Did she like them, was the outcome everything she had hoped for, were they prompt? Ask questions, keep notes, and by all means choose vendors whose personalities compliment yours. You will be bride-zilla, you will be stressed, you will need to be made to feel secure, so pick people who can handle it. 

Once you have your vendors narrowed down, place them into your contact management system in your computer. I use Outlook so I have my vendors in my Outlook Contacts, I also included pictures inside the contact card. You have no idea how handy having a picture of my wedding cake was when I met with my florist. Since I chose to use my classification folders, I printed off the hard copy of the vendor contact card so I had it with me at all times. 

It will amaze you how often a vendor will ask you for the contact information on another vendor. It is also a very good idea to keep all of your vendor information in one consistent place. Sometimes you won't talk to a vendor again until 2 weeks prior to the wedding. I booked a bagpiper back in June and yesterday was the first time I spoke to him in 7 months, if I hadn't printed off his contact card I don't know that I would have remembered his name to even search for him in my contacts! If you have decided to organize and plan the wedding yourself, be sure and contact all of your vendors a month prior to the wedding to review arrival times, logistics, timing of events and any other special considerations they may need to know. 

Follow up with them a week prior to the wedding to make sure everything is set for the day of and be sure and get the cell phone numbers of those vendors coming to the wedding. Just in case someone is late or you had a last minute thought, you will be able to get a hold of them without worrying. Which brings us to most important thing to remember on the day of your wedding, bring all of your vendor information with you. No matter who needs to call whom, you will have all of the details.

Wedding Websites - A Must Have

If you are planning a wedding, you should know that there are many resources to help make wedding planning easier and ensure that your wedding day is a memorable one. A wedding is one of the most important steps in a couple's life together - naturally, couples want to do everything they can to ensure that no detail is overlooked in planning their special day. 

Creating your very own wedding website is a great way to not only help you organize many of the details that must be planned for a wedding, but also to memorialize your wedding day. When it comes to staying organized in planning your wedding, your very own wedding website can help in a number of ways. For example, while you can certainly send traditional wedding invitations in print, you can also send electronic invitations and have your guests RSVP online. Nowadays, the reality is that most of us are online a lot of the time, and people are more likely to respond electronically than via telephone or postal mail. 

Your website can also make sure your guests arrive easily at your ceremony by listing important information including the date, time, and location of the ceremony, with links to maps and directions. This not only makes things easier for your guests, but ensures that you and your wedding party won't spend precious last minute preparation time trying to give directions to wedding guests! Putting your gift registry on your wedding website is another way to stay organized and let your family and friends know what you need as you start your new life as a married couple. Your wedding guests and loved ones will have an easy way to see what gifts you've registered for without having to wade through different department store lists to find the right gift that fits the giver's budget. 

Another great feature of wedding websites is the ability to upload photos of your wedding. This is a great way to create albums for all of your friends, family, and acquaintances to see. Organizing your photos online makes it easier to manage and decide which photos you want to print and display in your home. Viewing, sorting, and organizing your wedding photos online is much easier than sorting through bulky proofs and having to figure out where to store them. Apart from allowing you to stay organized and on top of invitations, guest lists, gift registries and more, personalized wedding websites let you do something even more important: they memorialize your wedding day and create a space where you can tell your story. You can post videos, photographs, quotes and readings - the possibilities are endless. A wedding website is like your own personal wedding organizer and scrapbook, all in one place.

How to Organize a Wedding

Couples everywhere are planning their own weddings. By taking some basic steps, you can make your wedding day a much smoother, fun filled day. Wedding organizing is essential to any wedding. Wedding planning will save everyone involved a lot of headache, when the actually wedding day rolls around. Expect that glitches will arise. No matter how much wedding planning you have done, problems may still arise. But by organizing your wedding, you will greatly eliminate problems that could easily occur. As with any wedding, there are million different things that need to be planned. So it is very important that you start planning your wedding six to twelve months in advance. 

This will ensure that you have enough time to get the wedding all arranged. By starting early, this will also ensure that you can book the right reception hall, photographers, videographers etc. The first part of your wedding organizing, starts by creating a wedding budget. There is a lot of free advice on creating wedding budgets online including online budget planners or excel spreadsheets you can download for free. Once you have put a budget into place, be sure that you stick with it. 

Having a budget in place will make sure that you have plenty of money for everything you will need for the wedding. If you go over in one place remember you will need to reduce the cost of something else. One of the next key tasks is to set a wedding date. This is probably one of the most crucial steps, since everything will hinge on the date you have selected. 

You will need to coordinate everything with your wedding date. Your choice of wedding date can also make a difference to the cost of things for example the reception venue. Then comes the guest list. If you create a guest list in advance, you will know what size reception hall you will need. The guest list also gives you numbers for the invitations and wedding favors. 

While you may have several months before the big day make sure you get out your invitations six weeks in advance. If it is even further in the future you might want to send a save the date card. After you have your budget, wedding date and guest list all sorted, you can then search for a place to have the wedding reception. You will probably want the reception location to coordinate with the theme and overall tone of the wedding. If the wedding is on the more formal side, then you will want a more formal reception hall. However, if you are planning an informal wedding, then the backyard might be ideal. So be sure to keep the tone of the wedding in mind when searching for the perfect reception location. If you are looking to have a church wedding, make sure the church is available. 

You will want to schedule a meeting with the pastor to make sure that everything will work out for your chosen wedding date. Be sure to find out if the pastor requires pre-marital counseling, as many do now days. After you have the major components of the wedding in place, you can then continue with the wedding organizing. No matter what type of wedding you choose to have, it is important that you remain organized throughout the entire planning and preparation process. With some simple wedding organizing, you can have the wedding of your dreams

Your Reliable Wedding Planner

When dreams are about to be fulfilled, one would hardly prefer them to be overridden with obstacles. Your wedding is one such dream occasion that you wish to make memorable. However, much effort and planning must needs be done to ensure a hassle-free wedding. Organizing a wedding the right way is a task of great responsibility. Due to time crunch, most couples find it difficult to organize their wedding in an appropriate manner. 

Thanks to the internet, people can now make use of wedding websites to chalk out every tiny issues related to their wedding. A quality wedding website helps you finalize your wedding arrangements within a specific budget. These websites not only assist you in chalking out your wedding schedule, but also in looking after other areas of concern. For instance, the number of guests invited and the replies received, along with the seating arrangements, are looked after by these wedding websites. 

The couples-to-be can also choose various settings for their grand occasion taking cue from the various options put up on the wedding sites. The sites also enlist the famous banquet halls, good restaurants and caterers that assist you to compare prices and the services offered. This ensures complete satisfaction on part of the hosts who want to offer the best to their esteemed guests on their wedding. Wedding websites perform lots of functions with the help of which couples not only send invitations, but also manage gifts and keep track of the 'thank you' notes sent by hosts to relatives and friends.

 Managing a guest list can be very confusing at times; in fact, these responsibilities are also handled by wedding websites, which keeps track of the replies made to the guests. Wedding websites enable the invited guests to send back messages in your guest book. This will add excitement to your wedding day when you hand the printout back to your guests. Besides, wedding websites also provide the exceptional service of keeping track of the RSVP and of designing your web page as you want it to be. 

Wedding websites are of great help in sending E-postcards to friends, which can be linked to your webpage that informs your invites the login name and password. Most wedding websites offer a list of wedding planners who have specialized training to handle such prestigious occasions. These professional wedding planners offer a number of suggestions to the couples-to-be in order to materialize their dream wedding with success. All this planning is carried out within the budget itself. 

Wedding websites perform an additional function as well- it allows the bride and the groom to select their range of apparels and that too, with bargaining options! The common benefits apart, organizing a wedding ceremony with the aid of wedding websites also provides a learning experience to the younger couples who would be engaged in the near future. It would be a good learning experience on their part to host the wedding of their dear ones, making use of the wedding websites. Your personal wedding website would serve as a learning school to future couples, who would try to improvise on the shortcomings of your wedding and make an effort to organize a much grander and hassle-free wedding for themselves.

Save Money on Wedding Planning

A wedding involves lots of expenses and you would like to know how you can save money when planning your event. Here are some excellent tips to help you with. Hire an organizer Although it may appear strange, a good way to save money is hiring a good wedding organizer. One expert has many contacts already in places ranging from wedding place, cakes, party ceremony, flowers, and also provides help on calendar, guest list, photographer and everything you need for your wedding. It is also very likely to get a better price than that will be given out to the general public. 

Another advantage is that it will save you time and gasoline to go from one place to another and to find rooms and gardens for your event. You can also forget about having to be dealing with suppliers, which will lead to hassle at the end. She will take care of all that for you. There is nothing better than having one person responsible for everything to perfection so that you do not have to worry about anything A fixed budget It is important to set a budget in advance for the wedding and try not to leave any missing portion. 

Remember that the wedding involves many costs; do not spend all the money in one place as a lump sum, as there are many other expenses to cover. Another tip you can give is to do things as early as possible. It is much easier to get a good price if you set aside a room in advance. The least time you would want to plan would normally be spending in May. When you go to visit a banquets then ask all your questions related to price. Sometimes the price they tell you does not include the price of the linen and tableware. 

You should always ask by the whole package that includes full service without any missing items. Choose a flower of the season There are many flowers that are seasonal and therefore more expensive if you choose one that is difficult to achieve in that time of the year. Ask the florist which one suits you both time and price, remember that all flowers are beautiful and there is no need to spend on a fortune. 

 Reduce the number of guests This can be a difficult task and can cause some trouble but if they agree, you can reduce the number of guests based on some rules as to invite only close friends or exclude children for example. Always read contracts When you go to sign a contract with a supplier, always read it with calmly look and any fine prints that are usually in small letters. Also be assured that the service includes everything that you have been provided and you will come away with no surprises.

Getting Married? Organize

You have gotten engaged and now wedding plans loom in front of you. A little organization will go a long way toward preserving your sanity. First, buy a thick spiral notebook. All of your notes will be in one handy place for easy reference. This will become your constant companion from now until the big day.

Should you choose to purchase one that is divided in three or five sections, you have the space to be even more coordinated. You may use these sections for contacts, actual plans and any other information you find useful. In this notebook, you can: Make lists. Keep records. Keep track of your guests. Jot down notes and ideas. Prioritize. Organize addresses and phone numbers of caterers and the like.

Another lifesaving technique is to set priorities in order of importance. Any part of the festivities that require a second party need to be planned for well in advance. Depending on the time of year you have set the date, you may be competing with other brides, prom goers and holiday celebrations. The sooner you begin contacting these people, the more options and better chance you have of shopping around for the best price. Some second party individuals you may need to contact include: Church, public garden, art museums--the setting of your wedding. Limousines and carriage services. Photographer. Disc jockey or band. Caterer. And don't forget your baker! Tips such as these will make planning your wedding run smoother and will ease organizational stress. Having all you need in one handy place will keep you organized and on track.