Destination: Ojai, CA

Ahhhhhh. I am still in a romantic haze from my anniversary weekend. The husband and I wanted a quiet, intimate, weekend in nature and Ojai, CA won over Idyllwild, CA. We do love Idyllwild, but with gas almost at $5 per gallon, Ojai was closer and we have never spent a weekend there. We have stayed in the past at the fabulous Strawberry Creek Inn in Idyllwild. For you Angelinos looking for a romantic weekend away, we cannot recommend it enough. Their breakfast is sooooo good.

After too much money was spent at Victoria’s Secret (my husband thinks that statement is an oxymoron) we hit the 101 north Friday afternoon along with every other person in Los Angeles. Or so it seemed. Ojai is only 70 miles north of LA, but crawling at sometimes 10 miles per hour makes it seem much farther away. However, traffic and stress simultaneously melted away once we came into the beautiful Ojai Valley.

We rented an adorable stone cottage with a private garden next to the Day Spa of Ojai and the historic Theodore Woolsey house. It was too cute! They even had candles scattered throughout the cottage and a great surround sound system with an iPod dock. Nice!

Our weekend started with a couples massage in the garden of the Day Spa of Ojai where we got great recommendations from our masseuses of where to eat & where to hike. Our massages were fantastic! Dinner Friday night turned into the biggest treat as we found the tiny place that our masseuse Frances told us about—the Farmer and the Cook organic market & restaurant. Funky, hippy, earthy, and fabulous atmosphere and food. The live French folk music was icing on the cake for the evening. Or was it the chocolate strawberry cake? I don't know. It was seriously good, good food. The best we’ve had in a while in fact. The hippy people watching was extremely enjoyable as well--one of the cooks came out into the garden by our table to do a hand stand at one point. Much healthier than a smoke break! I think it's required to do Yoga to live in Ojai. I could handle that.

Saturday we followed the map drawn by Frances the masseuse. Armed with sunscreen, a picnic lunch, and water we set out to find the elusive hot springs. We never found hot springs, but we did find a wonderful place to swim in the river.

5 hours of hiking/bouldering, a picnic lunch, a refreshing swim in the river, and a beer(s) at the groovy Deer Lodge made us hungry. Dinner reservations that evening were for the garden at Suzanne’s Cuisine. Also a noted (mostly) organic restaurant. The people watching was not as fun as the night before, but the food was yet again fantastic. So was the wine. Who knew that Ojai was such a culinary Mecca? Yum!

Sunday brunch was at The Ranch house, another organic restaurant down yet another tiny road. It was again divine. I know I have been gushing this whole blog, but I'm not joking about how good it all was. This restaurant has had reviews some of the top culinary magazines and it was romantic and gorgeous. The gardens are stunning--they even host weddings there.
After brunch we swung by the world famous Ojai Valley Inn and Spa so I could see their wedding & reception sites—I’ve had that on my must see list for a while. The Spa is a five star resort and is faaaaabulous. I can’t wait to do a wedding there.

After that we headed up to Meditation Mount to see the view of the valley. Weddings can also be held up on the Mount, but no alcohol is allowed as it is a spiritual place.

Ojai is the perfect Southern California spot for a romantic weekend or a destination wedding. Whether you are a country club girl looking for a 5 star resort with a Mediterranean feel or a Yogi girl looking for that perfect earthy, green, organic place--Ojai is for you. And did I mention the food?!

June 9, 2001

7 years ago today I married my high school sweetheart, soul mate, best friend, future children’s father, travel companion, confidant, buddy, and partner in crime. It was a great day. Time flies by with big ups and big downs and the wedding day is only one day in the picture of our lives, but it was a big, big day. It was so wonderful to be surrounded by all of the people we love and be able to feel their love surrounding us. It was a blessing to have family members with us that are no longer here: Grandma Jean, Grandpa & Grandma Jones, and Henry. We miss you, but are so thankful that you were with us on that Big Day.

Happy Anniversary, Eric. Here's to the next 7 years. I love you.

So you want to be a Wedding Coordinator?

So does everyone else, it seems. I am now getting 5 emails & resumes per week about this, so I drafted a response. It might sound a bit harsh, but after you read this, go read the Best Blog on this: http://fabu-luxe.com/blog/2008/01/08/why-i-wont-hire-you/

Hello,

Thank you for your email and I do apologize that this is a form email, but I am incredibly busy and I have 5 other emails similar to yours sitting in my inbox that I need to address as well.

If you want to be a coordinator, you are starting correctly by emailing me instead of just printing up business cards & slapping up a website, but there is some information I want to pass along to ensure that the next crop of wedding coordinators coming up behind me is well informed, educated, and takes our industry seriously. However, I can only give advice from my perspective, if you really want this, only you can get it for yourself. Nobody is going to build a business for you!

First off, join an association and get certified. Association of Bridal Consultants, June Weddings, and Weddings Beautiful are all recommended. If you live in the LA area, you're incredibly lucky to have such good resources, but it's going to be a challenge as our market is fiercely competitive. I am a member and therefore partial to Association of Bridal Consultants. I would suggest starting out at our local chapter (www.abcgla.com) of the ABC (http://bridalassn.com/) . We meet bi-monthly to network and bi-monthly to continue our education. I am on the steering committee for the workshops and our topics have been things such as Public Speaking, Communicating Sales Success, Vendor Relationships, Videography, Floral Design, etc. The meetings are usually on the 3rd Monday of the month. Go to these, meet other coordinators, and intern with as many as you can to learn. Be up front and honest with however much experience that you have, but I would recommend stressing that you are a hard worker and not a flaky person. I would also recommend interning for other wedding vendors to get a better understanding of the industry and the production of the entire day. There are certain areas personally that I know that I need work on (lighting, AV, etc) that I have plans in the future to shadow some of my vendors.

I would HIGHLY suggest working as a catering/banquet server before you start out on this to gain a respect for what it takes to feed large groups of people. I hate dealing with food, but before I even started interning for other coordinators I spent 3 months spending my Saturday nights working at a large Persian Jewish temple serving at lavish weddings for up to 500 people. Try serving scalding hot soup over the shoulder of a woman wearing a fur wrap! I hope to never do that again, but I learned a lot. Speaking of serving food: I think that if you have never been a server whether fast food, restaurant, or bar you don't have what it takes to be a wedding coordinator. Call that harsh, but this is a service industry. We are staff. And we work HARD.

I grind my teeth each time anyone exclaims to me: "You're a wedding planner? That must be soooooo!!!! much !!!! FUN!!!!". It's not fun. But it IS rewarding. Putting out "fires" throughout a 12 hour day on your feet is not fun. Dealing with Catering Managers who don't communicate with you is not fun. Hauling chairs to another location is not fun. Having a DJ hijack a reception timeline is not fun. Not knowing where your bride & groom are because the Photographer did not read the timeline and took them away for romantic shots is not fun. Having a mother of the bride scream at you for a mistake her daughter made is not fun. Cake falling over? Not fun. Bad weather? Not fun. Washing dishes because there were not enough dishes ordered for this off-site wedding so the band can eat? Not fun. Playing the iPod for the ceremony? Not fun. Escort cards without last names AND non-alphabetized? Not fun. Drunk groomsmen & guests hitting on you? Not fun. Power outages? Not fun. Not having the time to eat dinner? Not fun. Pulling 300 pound bell carts loaded with gifts & then packing them into an SUV? Not fun. And this is all stuff I've had to deal with on just the wedding day alone. I won't get into cheap clients, budget issues, unpaid vendors, family problems, and non-communicative brides.

But this job is rewarding. It is rewarding to assist a couple through the maze of planning the largest formal event they'll probably ever throw. It is rewarding to be the last person standing with the bride as she is about to walk down the aisle. It is rewarding to be told by the couple that they could not have done this without me.

But know what is rewarding to you before you take on the most important day of someone's life. Don't just jump into this and call yourself a wedding coordinator. I compare coordinating a wedding day to directing a play when there has never been a rehearsal and all of the stage hands have never worked together. If and when something goes wrong, it IS your fault because you are the director. You need to have the foresight to see the problems coming, you need to have the grace to succinctly deal with the problems, and you need to have thick skin to be able to handle being blamed for the problems when they could not be avoided.

With all of this said, I can always use assistants on wedding days. If you are still interested in assisting me, come to the next ABC meeting and I'll introduce you around and you'll have more work you can handle. But I get first dibs on you :)

Joy

In the throes of wedding season, my husband and I moved last weekend to a new place. It's a long story, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. I've been moping around this morning in the June gloom overwhelmed by things that need to be done and as I was catching up on my cousin's blog of her adventures in New Zealand, I watched this music video on her blog by Icelandic group Sigur Ros. It makes me smile and reminds me that life is beautiful as long as we keep a child-like sense of wonder and joy. I love this. Take a few moments to hop through puddles with me.

Congratulations Mark & Marika!

Memorial Day Weekend I had the honor of coordinating the wedding of Mark & Marika at the gorgeous Canary Hotel in Santa Barbara. The hotel is in downtown Santa Barbara and just has the perfect Santa Barbara feel to it--a mix of Spanish-Mediterranean-Californian chic that makes the town so popular with people all over the world.

Marika was so organized and wonderful to work with and the organic palette & decor she & her fiance Mark chose was simple and elegant. Mark was a fun and involved groom and added his humorous touch to the wedding by choosing the dramatic processional music, the streamers that were shot off after the ceremony (I had to load Co2 cartridges in them!) and the PG-13, er, "Kissing Couple" cake topper!

The 50 degree misty weather became the biggest challenge of the day, but with the help of the wonderful staff at the Canary, I was able to move the 100 guests from cocktail hour on the cold rooftop down into a warmer part of the hotel. A bit of a challenge as there was only one elevator to the rooftop that could handle 8 people at a time. Even in sunny Southern California where it is gorgeous almost 360 days of the year it was crucial that we have a "PLAN B". We used that Plan B, but thankfully, the ceremony was NOT rained out!

With the gorgeous venue, the top shelf bar, amazing dinner buffet, 7 piece band Entourage of deBois Productions, and even Hungarian folk dancing (many of Marika's family traveled from Hungary for the wedding) the evening was a P-A-R-T-Y!

I got to work with Alex of Blue Silver Photography again and as usual, he took stunning shots. A slide show highlight of the day can be found here.

A big hug and thank you to my wonderful assistant Erin for all of your hard work--I could not have done it with out you!

Congratulations, Mark & Marika! It was an honor to be a part of your very special day!