Picture courtesy of: Forever True Photography

One of my colleagues, Reverend Leslie Bockian, of A Joyful Wedding, posted this information for all of her clients, that I simply had to share with you.

TIP FOR THE DAY:

The bride and groom had hired a great wedding coordinator who organized everything, handled the wedding rehearsal, and made it all go super-smoothly.  Unless you’re having a very small wedding, a wedding coordinator is well worth adding to your budget.  That professional touch will make everything much easier on you and your wedding attendants, and let you enjoy a relaxed, stress-free celebration.

FAQ: What exactly does a wedding coordinator do?

Most wedding coordinators will provide a range of services, depending on what you want.  They can just step in at the very end to conduct your rehearsal and keep things running smoothly on the day of the wedding, OR they can plan the whole thing:  suggest locations, find vendors for you, make all the arrangements, and organize the entire day, so that all you have to do is show up!  And best of all, the coordinator will “trouble shoot” for you during the wedding, so if the decorators don’t know where to put the balloons, or a bridesmaid needs to safety-pin her hem, or anything else, you have someone who will take care of it calmly, without you needing to deal with it.  You can relax and just enjoy getting married!

Well said!!!

1. The cost of obtaining a copy of your marriage license has changed from $13 to $14

2. If you plan on obtaining copies of your Confidential Marriage License by mail, (not in person),  you must include a Statement of Identity Form and it must be notarized and included with your Marriage Record Form.

Other important information for obtaining copies of your marriage license:

Guidelines for obtaining copies of your Public License:

• Once the marriage license is signed, traditionally it is the Officiant’s job to return the license to the County.
• You can obtain copies of your marriage license by filling out the pink marriage record application (it will come along with your license). The copies are $14 each and I recommend getting at least 2 copies. Make the check payable to RRCC (Registrar Recorder County Clerk).
• In Los Angeles County, it can take from 6 to 8 weeks to record and process your license and return it to you. You can request express processing for an additional $40 and it will reduce the process to about 2-3 weeks.

Guidelines for obtaining copies of your Confidential License:

• Once the marriage license is signed, traditionally it is the Officiant’s job to return the license to the County.
• If you want to obtain copies of your marriage license by mail, fill out the pink marriage record application (it will come along with your license). You also must obtain and mail with your record form, a “Notarized Statement of Identity Form”. Once the license is recorded you will be sent the copies you requested. The copies are $14 each and I recommend getting at least 2 copies. Make the check payable to RRCC (Registrar Recorder County Clerk).
• If you want to obtain copies of your marriage license in person, then you don’t need to provide a “Notorized Statement of Identity Form”.
• In Los Angeles County, it can take from 6 to 8 weeks to record and process your license and return it to you. You can request express processing for an additional $40 and it will reduce the process to about 2-3 weeks.

California has two types of marriage licenses available: Public and Confidential

Public License

• The license is recorded and made available to the public
• The ceremony can take place anywhere within the state of California
• At least one witness is required to sign the license

Confidential License

• The license is recorded, but is confidential and is only available to the two married parties.
• The ceremony must take place in the county of issue (Los Angeles County)
• You must state you are living together as a couple
• No witnesses are required to sign the license

If you have any more questions or concerns, please send me an email for further information on marriage licenses in Los Angeles County. lina@astunningaffair.com

I am officially obsessed with cake stands, not one in particular, but cake stands all together.  It feels as though a cake is naked without one. Here are some ways you can jazz up your wedding cake with a spectacular cake stand.

Place your cake on top of an acrylic stand

Bling it out!

On top of a silver or gold cake stand

On top of vases filled with flowers or candy

My favorite, on top of a box adorned with fabric

Surrounded by greenery and  wheatgrass

On top of birch or other types of wood

On top of an adorable pedastal

What type of cake stand will you be using?

Donna was not only a fabulous client, but a close family friend. She lived next door to me for 20 years and I was thrilled when she asked me to do the flowers for her wedding. Here are  some details from her big day!

I love wedding signs!

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Men’s fashion is really taking a stance in the wedding industry. More and more, I’m seeing grooms and groomsmen wear accessories that stand out or match the wedding day theme.

Here are some popular trends:

TIES:

SOCKS:

SHOES:

CUFFLINKS:

Last week I came across an amazing vendor whose work I fell in love with!

“Luke Sky-Walker Laser Engraving, created a new and unique way to invite friends, love ones, and the public to your special event.”

Frequently asked questions:

What types of materials do you work with? (engrave on?) laserable wood, acrylic, and glass

Do you work with us to create a custom design? Yes

How far in advance do orders need to be placed? 4 weeks prior to avoid the rush order fees from suppliers. But if the order is small, we may have some material at home. (we’re a home base business)

Can you create additional pieces to include with the invitation, such as a map/directions card and an accommodations card? Yes, we can do anything, but as of today we haven’t done a map or accommodation cards. It’s a lot cheaper in paper since guests usually end up throwing it in the trash.  The most popular are the RSVP cards, reception cards, and table numbers.

What other items do you create? Wow, where to start. We can personalized champagne bottles, cake sets, photo albums, picture frames, mugs/cups/shot glasses, mouse pads, t-shirts, cotton napkins, plaques, dog tags, tiles. We can also do cutouts of any shapes in wood and acrylic.  I’m pretty sure I’m forgetting a lot of things, but you can always email me or call me at 310-844-8104 my phone is on 24/7, unless I’m in the movie theater, parent mtg, or therapy with my sonJ

How long does the order take to make? 2 weeks is our norm after we receive the materials.  But if the client wants other items personalized that is not an invitation, we can do in a day or so.  For example, in August we engraved 105 shot glasses in 2 days.

What do the invitations start at? or a price range? Invites range from $3.00 – $15.00 depending on the art work and font style. Other items like RSVP’s or reception cards start as low as $1.00. The table #’s sometime can cost as much as an invitation, since the design and font are at a larger scale.

What is the average price for postage? We’ve had some RSVP’s with regular postage, but invite sets are more costly depending on how the client is shipping them.  I think the last time I mailed one for my own river center event, it was $1.75. It was a 4×6 invitation in a white shipping box stuff with colorful shredded paper.

Pictures of their work:

For more information: www.lukeskywalkerlaserengraving.com

luke@lukeskywalkerlaserengraving.com

Just in time for Halloween… Tuesday night, a few colleagues and I got all dressed up and  attended a fabulous networking event, that took place at Franklin Canyon Park. The perfect setting to host this “Vintage Halloween Bash”!

Here are a few detail shots from the event. Enjoy!

Vendors that showcased at this event:

Meg Perotti Photography, Yelena Johnson of The Stylish Soiree, Carissa Jones of JL Designs and Events, Nethanial Neubauer of Contemporary Catering, Melody Brandon of Sweet and Saucy Shop, Shay Scott at IS Vodka, Katrina of Calligraphy Katrina and Maison du Papier, Shae Mint Photo Lounge, Desiree at Wildflower Linen, and DJ Crash of Crash Entertainment

We couldn’t of asked for a more beautiful day for Joeleen and Miguel’s baby shower. We had the perfect weather, food, entertainment and company.  Throughout the day, guests played water balloon toss, ring toss, bean bag toss, and balloon dart throw. They also took home carnival Polaroid picture frames from the Carnival Picture Station and candy and treats from the Sweet’s Bar.

Here is a gallery of pictures from the day:

Pictures courtesy of : Forever True Photography

Please read this fabulous article written by the amazing author of “Inspired by this”,  Leila Khalil.

“For some reason I think its common knowledge… I mean haven’t we all heard from someone, stories at some point of things that didn’t go right at a wedding.  They happen at every single wedding no matter who is in charge. I know brides are working with a budget- especially these days but everyone seems to think they can save on costs by “doing it themselves”.  I have an idea… Lets invest in a great photographer to capture the moments and the details, lets hire a floral designer to make everything look pretty, lets spend money on linens, favors, and a dessert bar but when it comes to getting a professional wedding coordinator to pull together all the details I just mentioned so all of them work in harmony.. lets skimp on that? Lets invest all of that but then on the wedding day as a bride you can worry or pawn it off on an aunt, mom, or wedding party member (which lets be quite frank-they will be way more frazzled than you). Just to be clear.. I am not saying  I am against DIY. I’m not! I like that style BUT I am a huge advocate of bringing someone on board who knows what they are doing to put things at ease no matter the scale of the wedding.
After being in the wedding industry and planning or attending as many weddings as I have, I’ve seen it first hand time and time again.  However, the experience I had several weeks ago at a friend’s wedding was so unbelievable.

I now feel it is my duty to share. She got married at private estate and decided to go with the venue coordinator/catering liaison because they ensured her they would take care of everything she needed on her wedding day. Ummm…, NO!  I’m mean I was so upset with the way this catering /venue representative  treated the bride and the extreme lack of poise, class, and knowledge that I am going to list for you some specifics of the disaster that ensued:

You may want to hire a wedding planner or else:

1. Your “day of  stand in coordinator ” could forget to place an order which then leaves it all in the hands of the bride on the day of her rehearsal so that she and her  parents are 30 minutes late.

2. Your “day of stand in coordinator” could decide to make a change on one of your vendor contracts leaving you to pay the difference for their error and then when the vendor calls you the morning of your wedding to tell you and you verify it with your “coordinator” they may say, “you are ruining their day?” Really?? Who says that to a bride?

3. Your “day of  stand in coordinator” may forget to send the shuttle to one of the hotels and leave 30 guests behind minutes before your ceremony is about to start. Then when confronted with this situation may say “ I don’t give a f***k. Tell them all to take cabs! I am not starting this ceremony late!” OMG!!!!

4. Your “day of stand in coordinator” may not really know how to run a real ceremony and forget to cue wedding party or heaven forbid the musicians to know when the bride should walk down the aisle! What a disaster that can be as the guests all wait while nothing happens but the same song plays over and over again. Oh also they may forget to remove the ribbon that blocks off the center aisle so guests don’t go through it, but when its time for the ceremony procession to start its wise of them to remove it so that a guest from the second row doesn’t have to run in her heels sinking in the grass all the way to the back of the aisle and remove the ribbon seconds before the wedding party walk through while photo and video are rolling.

5. Your “ day of stand in coordinator” who in this case is also the venue coordinator and caterer- might run out of certain types of food and wine because of poor planning AND not even offer a certain dish that is listed on the menu and just tells guests “ Oh, we don’t have that tonight- I’ll just give you a plate of mashed potatoes and veggies instead”.

Can you believe that these elements really did happen all at one wedding? And these were just the highlights? Do you have any stories of your own?

One piece of advice: You get what you pay for! SO when you don’t pay for a friend who is helping you out as your “day of stand in coordinator” OR you find one that is only a couple hundred dollars…. guess what- it may not be that good of an outcome.

I have written this as an ode to all the professional wedding and event planners out there. There is a huge difference between a venue coordinator and a legitimate wedding planner. They have their responsibilities and strengths and wedding planners that actually service brides as a business and not as a hobby are indispensable. Do  your research OR you can also check out some of these blogs who have credible vendor directories and recommendations for wedding planners in your area.

Hollar to all planners who know their stuff. You are fabulous and deserve  big props but most importantly you deserve to be paid and respected. You help facilitate one of the most memorable days in a couples’ life.
Thank You!!”