An Addition to the Amber Events Team

I am happy to introduce you to the newest member of the Amber Events team, Krista Malinin! Welcome, Krista!

Krista Malinin combines her passion for design and organization, her enthusiasm for working with people, and her delicate attention-to-detail in order to create the ideal event for you. She approaches each event with a modern, fresh, artistic point-of-view, yet has a deep love and appreciation for vintage, old-Hollywood style and glamour. When it comes to planning weddings, Krista absolutely loves what she does, which shows in her relationships with her clients and fellow vendors.

You can trust and depend on Krista's focus, creativity, and grace-under-pressure to create an event as unique and exquisite as you are. But don’t let the hard-working, professional persona fool you… she still tears up at every single one of her events.

Born on the East Coast and raised in the Midwest, Krista has that perfect combination of a strong work ethic and a warm heart. And as a recent Los Angeles bride herself, she understands the importance of trust, security, and care that a coordinator needs for her brides and grooms.

Whether it is a lovely, intimate affair or an extravagant, elegant occasion, Krista will strive to see to it that each detail of your day is flawless.

Engagement Photos: a great investment

The above photo, taken by the fabulous Adi Benner of Next Exit Photography, is of some of my clients getting married in August at the amazing Rancho del Cielo in Malibu. Adi wrote in the Next Exit Blog about the above photo:

"Eva and Brinton met at the Claremont Juice Company where we started on our little engagement photo safari. Their’s is an adorable story that involves unexpressed feelings, many many months of being “friends,” and lots and lots of juice."

How great is that photo above? It tells such a story!

In my opinion, Engagement photos are not only a time for you and your fiance to get great photos of the two of you in a spot that has special meaning (some of my clients who were high school sweethearts are doing their photo shoot at their school), it give you both the ability to bond with your photographer-- someone who will be with you during the most intimate parts of your wedding day. The few hours that you spend in front of the camera at your engagement shoot will help you start to relax in front of the camera in prep for your big day, will help your photographer gauge how long it takes you to loosen up, and will help your photographer take better photos of you as he or she will learn about what angles flatter you the best. It also helps you and your photographer develop the type of relationship where your photographer has no problem directing you on your wedding day ("lower your chin" , "pull your shoulders back", etc) in a way that you are comfortable with.

I have had some grooms in the past who were not too thrilled with being a male model (insert Zoolander joke here) for the day, but they told me that they were very glad that they went ahead and did it. It made for MUCH better wedding day photos.

I'm so looking forward to this wedding! Eva and Brinton are a lovely couple that is going to have a gorgeous wedding and have amazing photos to show for it!

God Bless America

Happy Birthday, America! The Amber Events office will be closed for the holiday weekend. The husband and I will be camping for a few days in the Sequoias and will be cut off from all civilization. No computers, cell phones, traffic, noise, or makeup! This is the same place where we had the camping fiasco last year (read about it HERE) but I'm feeling pretty optimistic this year because of the amount of preparation and oh yeah....a spare car key in my bag!

Enjoy your 4th of July Weekend!

And now, let us all raise our glasses to the Bride & Groom!

At the risk of sounding long winded myself, I have to talk about one of my personal pet peeves: unending "toasts". I put toasts in quotation marks because if it's that long, it's not a toast, it's a speech. Proper toasts are less than 3 minutes. Nothing is more of a downer at a wedding reception than watching the energy of the room fizzle away as the minutes slowly tick by during neeeeeeever eeeeeeeending speeches.

Dictionary.com description:
TOAST /toʊst/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[tohst] –noun
1. a salutation or a few words of congratulation, good wishes, appreciation, remembrance, etc., uttered immediately before drinking to a person, event, etc.

I've had weddings where a father or an honor attendant will go on for 15, 20 & 25 minutes while the guests hungrily sit there waiting for their food or for the dance floor to open up. I've heard of (thankfully have not had one of my own) weddings where the best man or maid of honor, after a day of drinking, launches into innapropriate territory.

My advice?

1. Try as much as possible to keep the number of people toasting to a minimum
2. Encourage family members who want to speak to speak the night before at the rehearsal dinner. They'll be the ones to appreciate the childhood stories & inside jokes anyway.
3. Schedule them as early in the reception as possible so you & your guests can spend the majority of the evening drinking and dancing!
4. Encourage the people who are going to toast to keep it short and keep the drinking until after!

Don't get me wrong, I am not against toasts, I just don't like the abuse of them! It is a wonderful thing to see a room full of teary eyes or laughter as a result of a beautiful, touching and heartfelt toast.

Now that I'm done preaching, enjoy Michael Scott of "The Office" ruining Phyllis' wedding.....AGAIN!

The Office - The Michael's Wedding Speech

Details are great, but don't forget the big picture!

I adore the gorgeous design websites ala Style Me Pretty, Snippet & Ink, and Elizabeth Anne Designs, and like you can't get enough of the pretty pictures, but as you are planning your wedding, make sure that you are looking at your wedding from a purely logistical standpoint and to make sure that the day will flow correctly and the guests will be comfortable. You could design the prettiest wedding in the world with the cutest favors ever imagined, but if the venue is impossible to find, parking a nightmare, caterer understaffed because of budget constraints, the blazing sunny ceremony site does not have shade or water, or there is one bathroom for 100 people, the hours you poured into the tiny details don't really mean as much.

Make sure you spend as much time thinking big as you do thinking about the details, details, details.

I know how hard it is to focus on everything at once. I consider myself a fairly creative person, but I can get bogged down in the logistics of each wedding. I recommend making sure that the who, what, why, when, where, how are asked about every aspect of the day.

Image taken from wwww.marthastewart.com