The Best gift you can give your Best Friend!

Just like every woman NEEDS the perfect Little Black Dress, I feel that every woman needs her own toolkit. And not just any toolkit, mind you, but the Little Black Toolkit! I have this toolkit in sassy PINK! It accomplishes 2 things by being pink: (1) It makes me smile because it is fabulous and (2) The fact that it is pink prohibits my husband from stealing my tools! He’s lost too many of my screwdrivers and hammers in the past. Now, he has his tools, I have mine.

I received this pink toolkit as a gift when I started building my Wedding Day Emergency Kit and it is probably one of the BEST gifts I’ve ever received! My girlfriends all agree that it is fabulous. Not only is the purse that it comes in cute, it’s just big enough to add a few more things to it. I added a tiny drill from Target and some miscellaneous nails & clamps.

Want to get something useful and different for your bridesmaids? Little Black Toolkit! Wedding Shower gift? Little Black Toolkit! Birthday present? Little Black Toolkit! Christmas? Chanukah? Little Black Toolkit! I love it.

To make a good thing even better, they donate 10% of their Sales to Breast Cancer Research. Good things all around.

Adam and Stacey's Wedding PRE-Ception

Adam and Stacey are very good friends of my husband and myself. They live here in L.A. but were planning their 7-7-07 wedding in St. Louis where Stacey grew up. My husband and I, like many other of the Los Angeles friends, were not able to make it to the wedding, so our gift to them was a Rock 'n' Roll PRE-Ception here in the city. I rented the music room at Los Feliz restaurant Tangier , had a 3 flavored wedding cake made from scratch by A Sweet Design bakery.
I had Adam and Stacey's favorite LA bands Just Off Turner , Astra Heights, Todd Beauchamp play. In between music sets, we had a DJ spin dance music, and I helped choreograph and perform in a surprise dance number to the song "Goin' to the Chapel" for Adam since he "wishes life were a musical!"

The night was such a hit and Adam and Stacey said that it was the best gift the could have received! Along with the approximately 100 friends and coworkers that came that night, Adam's mom and sister flew in from Arkansas and suprised them.

The time line for the night was tight, but with the help of a fantastic sound guy and wonderful musicians, the evening was a seamless flow of great music, toasts, and endless dancing.

Congratulations Adam and Stacey! We love you!

Blogging about blogging

Blogging seems to me to be one of the most narcissistic habits of the 21^st Century. If anyone out there in Internetland ACTUALLY cares about what I had for breakfast and how I felt about it, I'll give you a virtual gold star! Yet here I am on this blog train and who knows to what speeds we will attain and where we will end up? We'll see. Lord help me if I ever become one of those people who jumps out of an experience to rush home and blog about what just happened. I tell myself now that I WILL stay to experience it, good story to blog be damned.

Ironically, while I feel that Blogs are narcissistic, I love the fact that I can keep up with my friends, family, and colleagues in this busy life! We used to talk on the phone, but we barely have time for that anymore.

So this is my business blog. Friends and family: you aren't going to get the juicy stuff. Call me, ok? Or text me--I can keep up with that.

On to business. I feel that as wedding coordinators, our services are just one of the many intangible things that a bride "purchases" for her wedding day. In fact, I think that the photographs and the videos are the only actual products aside from memories and keepsakes a bride actually takes away from her wedding (side note: don't skimp on the photography!). Most of us wedding vendors don't deliver a take away product, but knowledge, experience, know-how, comfort, manual labor, and a mental safety net, so our personalities are one of the crucial factors that play into our matching with potential clients. Thus the reasoning for my starting a blog. I am a firm believer in the chemistry of matching wedding vendors, and the chemistry between coordinator and client is one of the most important relationships a bride will undertake during her engagement. Throughout the course of my client's engagement and wedding, I am her advisor, her negotiator, her liaison, her champion, her friend, her support, and her shoulder to cry on. Aside from the relationship she has with her fiancé, she and I share the most intimate relationship for that brief moment in her life called her engagement. I know about her mother issues, her bridesmaid battles, her mother-in-law pressures, and the wedding nightmares she is having. Heavy stuff.

So I feel like my brides should know me if they want to. Granted, the line I will walk will be a fine one. How much is too much to share? I'll decide. So I'll tiptoe this line to the best of my abilities. When I step over it, forgive my indiscretions.

Full speed ahead!

Dan and Dana's Desert Dream

Silly name, I know. Yet, I like to play with words. I like words like I like textures. I find that words are the texture of the mind—they can paint such a picture and cause one to actually feel and smell the things that are being described. If only I could write that well….

Dan and Dan’s wedding in Twentynine Palms, CA confirmed WHY I want to specialize in destination weddings. The vibe was so carefree, funky, eclectic, fun, and easy going. Dan and Dana have been going to the 29 Palms Inn for 4 years for an annual desert getaway by Joshua Tree State Park. When they got engaged, they knew that they wanted an intimate destination wedding, and so the oasis of 29 Palms Inn fit them perfectly. They love the Inn so much that Dan, a videographer, even created a video about the Inn.

Dana was the ULTIMATE laid back bride and pretty much left it to me and her husband to plan. She only specified that she wanted lots of candles. Lots of candles. They gave me total free reign of the decor at the 75 year Irene’s Adobe that they got married in so I filled the courtyard with 50 or more luminaries, twinkle lights, candles, and wild flower arrangements in mason jars.

With only 25 guests in attendance, the weekend was so stress free and such great bonding and team effort with family & friends. Everyone arrived on Friday and all of the setup for the wedding was completed that day. Saturday morning, wedding day, the 25 guests went out into Joshua Tree State Park and hiked on the boulders. After the hike, the guys played horseshoes and Bocci Ball througout the afternoon. Usually only the men get to relax or play on their wedding day. Not so at destination wedding! Since everything was fairly simple and already set up, Dana had time to do an hour long outdoor Yoga session by the lagoon. After Yoga, Dana had a relaxing massage before hair and makeup. Hiking, Yoga, Massage, and a Wedding! Now that's what I call a good day!

At 6:00pm, Dana was escorted into the courtyard to a guitarist playing and singing “Pretty Woman”. The guests could hear the music start from across the property and come closer and closer.

The ceremony was beautiful and touching and there were no dry eyes in the group as they spoke the vows that they had written for each other.

The reception was wonderful and laid back with a wonderful vegetarian dinner prepared by the 29 Palms Inn restaurant. The organic vegetables are grown right there on the property!

Congratulations, Dan and Dana! May all of your Desert Dreams Come True!

Photos by Lori Evelyn of Evelyn Studios in Los Angeles

Slideshow of their wedding