Erika and Lionel came up to Portland from sunny LA to have a subtly-Hello Kitty-themed wedding at the The Grotto with reception at The Nines Hotel. As soon as she said “Hello Kitty” you know I was already SO THERE for everything. I was also super excited to help them combine Erika’s Mexican cultural and family traditions with Lionel’s Filipino heritage. Some of these traditions were expressed in the traditional Filipino Catholic ceremony, complete with veil, cord, and coins ceremonies; and in having a cumbia band at the reception. All in all, it was an exciting, whirlwind day with lots of love, great food, and dancing; and we were so lucky to be there to help with it.
Now that the holiday rush is dying down, it's time to send save-the-dates for your 2016 wedding!
Normally, Save-the-Date cards or emails are sent about six months before the wedding, although they can go as early as one year in advance. This means you should design and order them about seven or eight months before the wedding to give you time to print, address, and send. Invitations are sent eight to twelve weeks before the wedding, so order four to six months out.
Do you have to send save-the-dates? No, there is no etiquette requirement for these, but they are highly recommended if you have more than 30 guests coming (where you couldn't just get the news out by word of mouth), and if there are a lot of out-of-towners who will travel in order to attend. This way they can get a heads-up on the date, so they can make arrangements to request time off work, to make travel plans, and in many cases, save up for the trip!
What goes into a Save-the-Date? The only required items are your names, the date, and city of the wedding. If you know your venue, and if you have a wedding website, it's a good idea go ahead and list that too, even if every last detail isn't fleshed out yet. Sure it's great if you know your overall design, but the save-the-date doesn't have to match exactly to what you decide to do down the road with the print invitation — it's OK for it to just be in the same general design family or color. Remember, it's just a save-the-date to give folks a heads-up – not all planning needs to be completed, so try not to stress!
Here are some great ideas in several styles:
#1 can be personalized to your specific location. We love the laser cut design of #2! And #3 is a coaster and super catchy and lighthearted – would be great for a casual or semi-formal wedding in the outdoors. All examples above come from Wedding Paper Divas.
Save the dates can also be sent over email as well. Make sure to include all the same information – name, date, city location, and your wedding website.
As the summer wanes, and our clients return from honeymoons, we receive a lot of inquiries about what to do with the wedding dress or sari.
EJP Events is an authorized dealer for the Wedding Gown Preservation Company, and we have had great results with them. You don't have to have had your wedding coordinated by us to take advantage of this service.
The gowns are expertly cleaned and wrinkles removed. Repairs can be done and additional items such as veil, train, and shoes can be cleaned and included in the box underneath a divider, in their own individual acid=free archival boxes.
Here is an example photo of a gown after the cleaning and archiving process in its archival storage box:
If you are interested in having your gown preserved and you can make it to our location in Portland, Oregon, email info@ejpevents.com and we'll take care of you!
Been meaning to blog about this one for a while! I was so pleased to pick up the most recent issue of Portland Bride and Groom magazine to find one of our weddings from last summer featured.
Thank you again, Erica and Rohan, for letting us be a part of such a big day, and many thanks to Portland Bride and Groom for featuring such a unique wedding.
I get a lot of requests for Wedding Day Coordination that begin: “We just want someone that can keep everything running smoothly, keep the flow going and keep us on schedule.”
Let’s break this down, then:
Keep us on schedule.
What goes into a schedule? And how will your coordinator know what it is? A wedding day coordinator will normally put in 20-30 hours of advance preparation before appearing at your wedding. This includes collecting and reviewing all of your contracts to ensure understanding of everything you have arranged and what you are entitled to; review of your wedding design, venue, and vendor policies; understanding you and your families’ preferences and decisions about what you want to achieve on the day; and speaking personally with all vendors to reconfirm arrangements. Often the coordinator will condense this information into an timeline event plan. Twenty to thirty hours. And that’s just pre-event.
Keep the flow going.
What is “flow” when it comes to a wedding, anyway? I interpret it as that magical mix of timing and logistics that makes your wedding feel joyful and unplanned, while at the same time using every moment allotted to you by the venue and your vendors to the best possible advantage.
How does flow happen? Well, it doesn’t “just” happen. A coordinator keeps the flow going by being present throughout the day and nudging things along according to what’s been agreed to and what current conditions may be affecting the flow of the day.
Keep everything running smoothly.
On the day of the event, in order to keep everything running smoothly, a wedding planner may have to deal with a multitude of issues behind the scenes. Here are the most common ones:
prep time, especially hair and makeup, not going as scheduled
transportation and parking woes
decor issues: wrong color, wrong piece or fit
missing items and going back for them
lateness of vendors or bridal party
Of course, a good wedding coordinator is going to prevent most of these from happening by doing some detailed research, outreach to vendors, and prep work well before the day-of.
Even if everything goes 100% perfectly (and the reality is, it doesn’t) a wedding day coordinator still must be constantly available to act as a surrogate host, direction-giver, traffic controller, scheduler, and people-mover. They must be on site well before you or any guests or vendors arrive, and stay on site long after everyone has departed. These duties will take 12-16 hours to complete on the wedding day itself. Not to mention 1-2 hours of rehearsal time explaining the procedures to the wedding party and family; and the little post-rehearsal errands that always seem to come up.
In sum, while your wedding day planner’s job is to “just keep the flow going and keep everything on schedule”, in order to do that, they and their staff must put in upwards of 48+ solid hours of work, both on- and off-site, that results in your well-run wedding day.
You’re engaged, you’ve got the venue and the date, and are so excited to get going on planning! Yet, you’re stuck on what the wedding will actually look like. Envisioning the final event means you need to pick invitations, table linens, flowers, lighting, and all the assorted goodies that go with your big party. And of course you’ve got to start with a color or two (or a few!) that hopefully go together.
“But I like everything!” you say. Or maybe, “Our site has this weird carpet and I’m not sure what goes with it.” Or possibly, “I don’t want my wedding to look too matchy-matchy.” How do you decide on a color scheme that, while not as lasting as a bedroom paint job, is still super-important and something you’ll remember for years to come? Here are five tools and websites I like to use when I help clients formulate their color ideas.
1. The Perfect Palette This blog updates several times a week with wedding color palette ideas and an explanation of each. You can search the whole site by color family to find exactly what you want.
2. ColourLOVERS A bit broader in scope, ColourLOVERS covers not just weddings, but other design solutions such as graphic, print, and web; interior design; and fine art. Users are encouraged to get social by creating accounts, uploading patterns, and sharing with the community. (A side note: ColourLOVERS also has the great widget Themeleon, for creating Twitter screen backgrounds. It’s where I got mine – look here.)
3. Adobe Color CC – Adobe Inc.’s Adobe Color CC tool makes it possible for you to take a photo of your site (or any photo, for that matter) and extrapolate a color scheme from it. Click on “Create” > “From an Image” and upload your photo and wow! You can also select different moods for the same picture. A great tool if you are feeling a bit stumped. You do need to create an account if you want to save your palettes.
4. Design Seeds Similar to The Perfect Palette, but not exclusively about weddings. This blogger takes hundreds of artful photos and applies her own aesthetic to draw out each custom color palette. A wonderful inspiration site.
5. You knew I would mention Pinterest. If you’re following my boards already, you know how addicted I am and how you can be sure to see a 2am pin from me on your dashboard now and then. If you haven’t had the pleasure of using this site, it is a sort of visual Twitter where you can “pin” just about any image on the Web to a virtual bulletin board, keeping all of your ideas in one place. You can create as many boards as you like and name them anything, from “Color Inspiration” to “Cute Pictures of Pugs“. Most boards are public, (you have a limited number you can set to “Secret”), so you can search the site for your desired color scheme or idea and re-pin other folks’ images to your boards. Also, all of the above-mentioned tools can be used in some way along with Pinterest.
Are there any other great color tools you’re using to design your wedding? Please share with me in the comments as well.
Update: March 12, 2018: Another great post about color palettes for 2018 from Azazie.com, check it out!
A version of this post appeared on The Portland Wedding Coordinator blog in January 2012.
