Friday, February 15, 2008

Don’t forget to stop by my booth at Sunday’s bridal show and register for my giveaway, a spa manicure and pedicure!

As you know - I try to stay focused on “all Nashville wedding” goodies. But sometimes a girl finds something wonderful online that she has to share.

Here are a few things I’m loving that I haven’t found in Nashville. If you know someone who offers anything like this in Nashville, PLEASE let me know and I will update this post asap.

Enjoy!

Since I don’t have a legit reason for buying these amazing little pots, I am leaving 10 of these simply adorable pots in my e-shopping cart at Pottery Barn. But, that hasn’t kept me from telling every bride and wedding planner about them! They would make a wonderful addition to a bridal shower or even a garden wedding reception. They are super cheap now that they’re on sale and I just want them so bad! You know you want them for one of your wedding events…go ahead buy them so at least I know I can borrow them if I ever need to.

(UPDATE - Since I have zero willpower, I went back to my e-cart to buy the pots and guess what - they’re sold out! They had plenty at 10am but now they’re gone. Hopefully one of you snagged them and plan to let me borrow:)

I found these yummy cupcake bites at Bakerella but I am certain that one of our great local culinary artists (like Cuppycakes Bakery, Jo’s Cakes and Catering or Cakes by Shara) could do a swell job recreating. Makes me want to lick my computer monitor. Wouldn’t they make a great bridal shower or wedding reception buffet addition? I think so!

You know I’m all about custom paper wedding goodies so I just had to share these custom items from Take it Personally. These adorable invitations combine custom with fun illustrations - another love of mine. Imagine sending one of these cute little mini-me invitations…you’re friends will love them!

Thats it folks. Have a great weekend!

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone! Today, I will keep it short and simple so you can enjoy your Valentine’s Day. Oh - congratulations to all the ladies getting engaged today! We can’t wait to hear all the proposal details.

Ok…back to today’s post.

Signature drinks are all the rave these days. The last wedding I attended had the most wonderful strawberry lemondade concotion ever, available with or without alcohol. The color popped and was probably the yummiest I’d ever tasted.

Have you created your signature wedding drink? If not, here’s some inspiration:

Recipes -

- Tennessee Peach, perfect for southern gals!

- Pinky Vodka drink assortment - I don’t like vodka but I am loving these very girlie drinks

- Banana-Peach Martinis look yummy and you could probably do a virgin option easily

Tips for designing your cocktail:

1) Get colorful - choose colors that complement your wedding palette or vivid colors that pop

2) Complement the wedding theme or season

3) Keep it simple so the bartender can have it readily available for your guests, something easy to mix

4) Represent your unique style

I also ran across these these “Happy Hour Bouquets”, from 1800-flowers. They don’t offer them in Nashville yet, but, I am so sure that very talented, Nashville event florists, like Rhonda Patton Weddings (615-579-3255) or Sherrell Florals (615-289-5211), could help you repllicate this look.

I am not sure if I love the cocktail bouquets just yet. They are different. What do you think?

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Today’s Guest Blogger:
A Delightful Day, Nashville Wedding & Event Planners
http://www.ADelightfulDay.com

Brides are always looking for a fun and interesting venue to host their wedding reception. Looking for just that venue can be quite a tedious process. A Delightful Day hosted a wedding reception at City Hall back in December and we wanted to share this incredible event space with you. (Ashley introduced it’s new sister site last week, Aerial).

City Hall is a truly unique venue that is used for wedding receptions, but concerts being its main purpose. This warehouse space has large windows looking out onto the 12th Avenue nightlife and also to its other space, BarTwenty3 which is rented out many times in conjunction with City Hall for a cocktail hour prior to the reception.

Elissa, the event coordinator at City Hall, Aerial, and BarTwenty3, strives to fulfill brides dreams and create a elegant reception space. City Hall has a great rental price with the ability to bring in your own caterer and bartending staff is available on site. City Hall has some rentals available as well, but Liberty Party Rentals; is their preferred rental company for all other needs. This being located on 12th Avenue in the Gulch, valeting parking is needed which can be provided by Elissa as well. Here are several pictures from City Hall for the event that we did there back in December.

This is a prep photo to show you how the space looks at daylight - exposed brick, wood rafters, and a blank canvas for you to come in and create wedding magic!

Contact Elissa at City Hall for a site tour. Tell her A Delightful Day (and AshleysBrideGuide.com) sent you! It’s a hidden treasure.

Monday, February 11, 2008

I am doing a lot more events now that I have started AshleysBrideGuide.com. (That’s the extent of my event planning to the left. All online!) In doing so, I’m learning a lot about myself, event planning and how to hire and manage help.

Here’s what I have learned:

1) To enjoy an event, a bride should hire a planner. So, when I took Nashville brides to see 27 Dresses event, I asked A Magical Affair to do the heavy lifting. That allowed me to “do me” - chat!

Now, I am busy preparing for the upcoming Nashville bridal show this week and I’m a total stress ball. No really, bridal shows stress me out completely. It’s not the attending part - because I LOVE chatting with brides, moms and wedding professionals. No, it’s the whole booth design and set-up thing. We have such little space - smaller than a bathroom really and we have to make it fabulous enough so that brides will come and chat with us.

So, all this week, I’ve been IM’ing Kat (Selah Style) and Hillary (A Magical Affair), both wedding planners, about my booth.

2) The “micro-manager” bride tends to prefer micro-manager planners. I am a micro-manager bride type. I didn’t realize it until today but now I am persuaded. Christine of Wedding Dish says there are two types of brides - a CEO and a micro-manager. In my mind, a CEO bride hires great people and lets them do their job. She then shows up and expects everything to go as she set forth. A micro-manager bride hires great people, but still likes to know whats going on, likes to be apart of the planning and wants to know every detail.

3) A “micro-manager” bride can work well with other planner styles too, she just has to manage expectations. A micro-managing bride appreciates overcommunication. For instance, I like to know the when, where, who, and how. When I work with planners with a diferent personality, I can freak out because I don’t know what the heck is going on. Like this week, Kat had everything under control for my booth (Thank God!) but I was freaking out. She understood and we hashed out every detail. I learned that I must manage expectations and let my event planners know that I need A LOT of info:) Kat was awesome about it all. She gave me a detailed run down of everything.

My girl Tiffany (also a recent Nashville bride, bride of 2005) is just the opposite. Tiff wanted to show up at her wedding after a couple of meetings with her planner and didnt care about what happened in between their meetings. “Need to know basis” is Tiff’s motto. She doesnt care for details.

So, regardless of your personality - just be sure to manage expectations. Let your planner know your preference and make sure you know your planner’s personality. We can all get along and make life fabulous, when we communicate our expectations.

Oh - Kat has created the most beautiful booth for me. She’s building stuff, sewing and designing something unique to me.

It’s going to be fantabulous. You’ll see it on Sunday at the PWG bridal show. We’re going to incorporate some Wonderful Graffiti monograms and logos into my design. I love them! I really wanted their “suckers for love”” but I waited to long to order them. But, you should definitely check them out for your wedding day. Their stuff affords any bride an elegant way to customize while adding neat details.

First 10 responses get the tixs. You must be registered, of course:)