Tuesday, August 26, 2008

(Jen, Ashley and Tara being silly in photo booth)

To everyone who stopped by my bridal show booth on Sunday - THANK YOU!! It was such a pleasure meeting each and every Nashville bride, mom, bridesmaid and Nashville wedding vendor. It was great to finally meet you!

Also - thanks to everyone who helped - Tara, Jen, Jeff, Melba, Latrice, Hayley, my mom, Autumn, Kayla and Kya (the cute little bubble blowers). We greeted at least 500 booth visitors and I couldn’t have done it without everyone’s help!

The concept for my booth:

I believe your wedding should express your individual style versus mimicking others. Some brides are classy and elegant and their weddings are all about that. Others feel that they have to have a formal wedding when there is nothing formal about them. Your wedding should be consistent with your personality. Your guests should come and feel right at home and not feel they are in a stranger’s home - like “whose house is this?”.

I really wanted my booth to help brides visualize a different side of weddings - a fun, celebratory side. I mean, who doesn’t love to see platinum weddings and all of the posh details that you can incorporate. BUT, what if you want a classy yet fun way to celebrate your wedding?

The design and coordination:

I sat down with Tara of Lavish Event Planning and Jennifer of Reveal Event Style to create “Ashley’s Fun Booth”. (My cheesy idea - not theirs). Tara is an event coordinator and Jennifer is an event designer. So, I was in very good hands.

Fun and interactive was the goal for my booth. I really wanted a booth that would give brides a fun, not so stressful spot where they could be a kid again and not have to think about how their wedding budget was quickly exploding:). Once you set a theme for your event, the planning is much simpler. I knew I wanted a candy bar, a photo booth and my signature stripe colors. Simply request right?

I was so blessed to have an incredible duo create my booth. Tara and Jen are like top-notch wedding pros and I was honored for them to create the ABG booth. These ladies make Nashville weddings and events stunning and make them “seem” effortless (but we all know that they are not).

Tara and Jen got right to work and handled just about everything! That’s why I strongly recommend hiring a wedding professional. Why stress when you can sit back and relax- leave it to the pros. Jen is an event stylist. Tara is a wedding coordinator. They have a joint office in Hillsboro Village and they work superbly well together. They sketched some ideas, started shopping for the supplies and created a fabulous booth.

The details of the candy bar / photo booth!

Many of you LOVED the candy bar and the photo booth so I wanted to be sure to share every detail that you need to recreate.

Tara’s Touches:

• candy selection and display (candy from Walmart and Costco) - Tara organized all of the candy by color so everything would be perfect.
• jars and jar labeling - Tara, like most great coordinators, had a great supply of chic vases, jars, and other neat wedding/party supplies that they use for their weddings (another way that planners can save you money:). Anyway, Tara had these amazing jars (of different sizes) that she dressed up with ribbon and my business cards enticing.
• tier shelving for candy bar - Tara’s 3 tier shelf added height and dimension to the candy bar. This is a key component in creating a fab bar.
• candy bag packaging - Tara ordered bag ties, candy bags and shredded fill paper from Nashvillewraps.com; I ordered magnets from Vistaprints.com that were placed into the bags.
• linen - Tara and Jen ordered linen from Connie Duglin. They achieved the “stripe” effect using an assortment of chair sashes

Jen’s Touches:

(Photos courtesy of Lavish Events)

- floral arrangements - how gorgeous were my flowers!!! I mean, when I saw the flowers I was speechless. Jen designed the floral arrangement and the flowers were provided by A Village of Flowers. I love that Jen took the time to create ribbons in my website colors and added large diamonds to say “weddings”. The flowers were glads and prisms.

- diamond curtains backdrop and large jars (containing the chocolates) were provided by Village of Flowers
- ottomans were provided by The Visual Element
- picture frame with AshleysBrideGuide.com card that was draped on the Photo Booth with ribbons…(Jen - where was this from again?)

- custom ottomans

- oversized, paper flowers

- grass, turf flooring

Other Booth Touches:

Photo Booth Nashville - Jeff and Amy of are the owner’s of the photo booth. The booth was a huge hit and women of all ages loved taking their fun and silly pics. The booth can be rented for your wedding and other events, pictures are included with rental fee, copies of pictures provided on a cd. The booth is always a hit at my events and it will be at yours too.

Booth Signage: Wonderful Graffiti (Leanne is local contact) and Blue Nova Weddings (drapery)

My custom “bling t-shirt”: Opulent Favors created my tee, studded with hot pink rhinestones. Yes, the shirt grabbed a lot of attention and I really love my tee! The shirts can be completely customized and come in short or long sleeves, black or white and the rhinestones come in like 10 colors. It was fantabulous and oh-so comfortable. ABG readers get 10% off at Opulent Favors, enter ABG as coupon code.

More tips for your candy bar

I knew that brides loved the concept of a candy bar and have for some time. BUT I really never understood whether brides liked them because they were pretty (as we tend to do) or because they (and their guests) really liked candy. Well, after seeing how fast my candy went, I am a believer! I see why they remain so popular. They candy went super fast. Everyone turned into kids on Halloween — they couldn’t wait for me to replenish and even had specific requests “anymore blow pops?”.

With my new found expertise in candy bars:), here are some things to consider as you create your candy bar:

1) Make it accessible - leave the lids on before the party (great for pics and makes a great impression) but remove the lids of the jars once the bar opens

2) Sort candy by color and don’t buy candy mixes (unless you have time to sort into colors) - after the first batch of candy was gone, I asked John (hubby) to make a dash to Walmart to get more candy. Now, I asked for bulk candy but he returned with some pre-mixes. NOOO!! The pre-mix candy didn’t have the same color “pop”because the colors were all over the place!

3) Make sure someone monitors the candy bar — the candy bar will get messy and empty fast! Your planner should take care (or have someone that can) but be sure to have extra candy readily available (some boxes open already - but not all b/c you can probably return whatever you don’t use). Make sure you have bags ready to go and double sided tape in the event that your labels/ribbons get knocked over.

4) Don’t forget the bags and ties and use shredded paper to pre-fill bags to make bags colorful and to save the amount of candy per person

5) Add height using table shelves and different jar heights

6) Consider this - your bar is prettier using unwrapped candy BUT wrapped candy is more sanitary. Some venues may require you to use

Contact Tara or Lavish Event Planning or Jen of Reveal to discuss the design for your wedding day. They are talented, resourceful and very easy to work with. They are among the hottest wedding professionals on the Nashville wedding scene and can bring any concept to life.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 26th, 2008 at 12:02 am and is filed under Cakes/Sweets, Event Decor / Flowers, Bridal Shows, Daily Scoop. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.