Weddings | Guru Goddess

How to Become a Wedding Planner, Part 1

Becoming a wedding planner can be a fun and exciting job, but also a high-stress one as brides of every type come to you for help in planning what should be the most special day of their lives.

Every bride wants her day to be perfect. The trouble is that perfect means different things to different people. Some brides will want the best of everything, while others will want a more simple wedding, and one that reflects their own style and personality, or of both she and her spouse.

If you have a romantic side and enjoy planning and organizing, and in particular planning live events, becoming a wedding planner may be an ideal career to consider.

The first step will be to become as familiar as possible with the wedding industry. And yes, it IS an industry. There is big money to be made in weddings, even in a bad economy. People may scrimp and save in some areas of their lives, but a wedding will usually rate splurging even if they have to max out the credit cards to get what they want.

You can find a variety of top wedding planning guides online that will give you many ideas about the kinds of things that are considered essential, and which are only optional, when it comes to planning a wedding. Creating a checklist so you can run through all the essentials first, with gold, platinum and diamond level options, as it were, for each essential, can help the bride and anyone else involved in planning for and paying for the wedding all get on the same page.

Traditionally, the bride’s family would pay for the wedding, and in some cases this might still be an expectation on the part of the bride’s family, in which case you might also have to deal with parents as well as the bride in reference to cost and final decisions.

Modern couples, especially those who have already established a household together and might even have children with each other already, will usually pay for the wedding themselves, but might have a range of particular needs because of this, such as being more frugal, or wishing to incorporate their children into the ceremony as much as possible. So if you are great with people, and detail oriented becoming a wedding planner might be ideal as part time or full time consulting work.

In the second part of this series, we will look at other aspects of becoming a wedding planner to see if it is right for you.

April 1, 2015By admin Weddings careers, wedding planning, weddingsLeave a Comment

Bridal Bouquet Activities

When a bride orders her wedding bouquet, it might not seem that any “activities” will come from it other than as a thing for the bride to hold so she can look pretty and traditional.

But the bridal bouquet can be the source of many interesting activities to help make the wedding memorable.

During there ceremony there are all kinds of possibilities for the bridal bouquet. Certainly you can go traditional and have flowers for both the mother of the bride and mother of the groom.

But what if you turned that traditional gesture on its head and supplied flowers for both the mothers and the fathers?

If the bride supplies flowers to both the men and women, there are a couple of ways to do this. Dad’s flower could be enclosed in a verse that he will then get up and read at the ceremony? What if the flower is used as a symbol to recognize the members of the family who have passed, and it gives dad an opportunity to recognize those family members?

If the bride chooses not to have a unity candle, but wants to have a similar gesture, she can have her bridal bouquet designed by having several small bouquets put together.

At an appropriate time during the ceremony, the bridal bouquet can be “broken up” and various people might receive a share, such as the mothers and fathers of the bride and groom.

Now, if the bride wants to hang onto her bridal bouquet during the wedding ceremony, but is willing to have some fun with it at the reception, there are a few options there as well.

How about a dance involving the bridal bouquet? This is silly, but fun. The bridal bouquet is on display somewhere near the dance floor and guests must guess a flower that’s in the bouquet before they can enter the dance floor.

The first few guests might not have a problem as some flowers are obvious, like roses and tulips, but others might give people pause. Of course, this won’t work if the bridal bouquet is all roses or some other single and obvious flower but for a traditional mixed bouquet, it can work well.

For a naughty touch, the bride can hide her garter in the bridal bouquet and actually put it on her leg before the groom takes it off. Or she can have a couple of breakaway bouquets that are wrapped in garter belts, so hers doesn’t get thrown, but instead the tiny bouquets with garter belts attached are thrown.

When it comes time for the bride to throw her bouquet, there are several options. Some brides choose not to keep their bouquet and simply pluck one flower out of it before chucking the whole thing during the bridal bouquet toss. This is an alternative to having a special bouquet set aside for throwing, and there are others as well.

Are there are a lot of single women coming to the wedding? Maybe one thrown bouquet won’t be enough. Many brides these days are opting for something a little more fun.

One popular option is to have the florist create several small bouquets and then bundle them to look like one bouquet. They are tied lightly with a ribbon. When it comes time for the bouquet toss, the bride unties the ribbon, and throws the “bouquet” which is actually several little bouquets. Several women will catch the bouquet, rather than just one.

Other brides are opting for silk bouquets, so that they will have a lasting keepsake. You can have more than one bouquet like this, one to keep, and one that is thrown.

Whatever you decide, the bridal bouquet is an integral traditional part of a wedding ceremony. To help make your wedding memorable, try a bridal bouquet activity.

Seated Wedding Reception Games Part 2

Continued from part 1

One silly game that’s always a hit really puts the groom in the spotlight. How well does he know the feel and touch of his new wife? In this game, everyone finds out. You can do this several ways. You can enlist just the wedding party in this game, or as many of the wedding guests that want to participate.

Line each participant up and blindfold the groom. Put the bride somewhere in the mix, and send the groom on a hunt for his bride. The participants can either shake the groom’s hand or give him a kiss on the cheek. In some versions, he might feel their hair or their leg. The details are up to you.

Depending on how far you want to take this game, you can add a fun element to it that is sometimes popular. You have the groom feel the leg of each participant. The best man, or other male member of the wedding party, rolls up his pant leg, puts on a garter and has the groom feel that. The groom has to kiss whoever he thinks is his bride, while still blindfolded. Often, he ends up kissing a man.

For an activity that allows the guests to be audience members instead of participants, consider the game of “feed me”. In this game, the bride is seated and the groom is (again) blindfolded. He’s given a piece of food and then spun around a few times so he’s a little bit dizzy. Guided only by the helpful words of his new bride, he has to find her and get the piece of food into her mouth. Be sure to have the wedding party shadowing him so there are no serious accidents.

Once the groom has fed his new wife, the tables are turned and she is blindfolded and must find him.

A few notes about this activity: when feeding the bride, don’t use wedding cake or a piece of bread with dip. In other words, don’t use anything too messy. If the groom has a hard time finding her mouth, he might likely smear the food on the bride’s face and that is something that won’t make a bride – prettily made up just hours before – too happy. And you especially don’t want to ruin your wedding finery.

There are many ideas for keeping your guests entertained at a seated wedding reception. The only limit is your imagination.

Fun Activities Before the Wedding

Planning pre-wedding activities are a little something extra that’s not required, but certainly fun and entertaining for the guests.

If the bride and groom keep in mind the distance some guests have traveled and keep activities relevant to that level of fatigue, they’re sure to hit on some winning activities.

As you go about planning activities for the wedding, keep in mind other factors as well. Do many people have children with them? Will you provide childcare or will the children be participants in the activities? If you have several guests who are older, or have a disability, perhaps activities can be tailored in a way so that they can participate as well.

Some of the more popular pre-wedding activities include things like a group manicure. All the women in the wedding party or who are close to the bride (and certainly this could include men if they like manicures and want to hang out with the ladies) can head to a nail salon and get their nails done.

This can be relaxing for many women and provide a welcome respite from the hustle and bustle of the wedding weekend.

If the men don’t want to go, they might choose to golf or play a game of tennis.

Many brides and grooms choose to provide structured activities for their guests prior to the wedding. If the wedding is on a Saturday night, for example, they might choose to provide a Friday activity, especially if most guests are local to the wedding. You might have a wedding luau. Many times pre-wedding activities center around bachelor and bachelorette parties, but what about a stag party that includes all the members of the brides and grooms families?

You could plan some fun (and appropriate) games and head out to a restaurant for a night of fun and games. Be sure to limit the drinking and carousing as this might not sit well with some family members, and everyone will be way too tired (and hungover?) to really enjoy the wedding the next day.

Here is a fun activity that can be done right before the wedding. Have someone begin a gift basket. The theme of the basket is “advice for the couple” and could be started by the best man or maid of honor. They take the basket to someone else’s house, perhaps an aunt or cousin and leave it on the doorstep. That person adds an item (a book on how to end spousal arguments? Or a CD of romantic music?) and brings the basket to someone else’s house. This activity can begin a week or two before the wedding and everyone should know it is coming around.

The basket can also be circulated the weekend of the wedding, but this will only work if everyone is local and if they know the basket is coming. In this case, it also might be helpful to have someone bring the basket to a house, collect the item and the take the basket to the next location, reducing the need to have each person take the basket to its next location.

Once it’s full, someone can be in charge of putting the basket items together, wrapping it all up to make it look nice and bringing it to the bride and groom. It can be delivered right to the wedding as a gift in and of itself.

You can also have an evening of share home movies, a trivia quiz in which all of the teams are mixed between the two families, or a board game evening.

Whatever activities you choose, be sure to keep in mind the needs of your guests and the limitations of those guests. If some have travelled far, or don’t have a lot of money, you will need to pace yourselves and pay for your guests.

If you want to plan an activity that includes everyone, and you choose golf, but a relative is in a wheelchair or uses a walker, that might not be the best activity to plan.

Nice Bachelorette Party Games Part 2

continued from part 1

Bachelorette party games are not only designed to bring fun to the party, but sometimes to help people get to know one another. This might be a good opportunity for the bride’s best friend to get to know the sister of the groom, or for the bride to get close to the groom’s cousin or niece. So an icebreaker game isn’t a bad idea.

This isn’t perhaps the most intellectual icebreaker game, but it will likely help thaw things out early in the evening before you head off to other events.

Play a game called “I never…” and see who takes the most drinks. So the first woman says, “I never…” and completes the sentence. The women who have done the thing the first woman says she’s never done take a drink, or get a point. Then the next woman claims to have “never” done something.

Some suggestions for this game are: “I never …”

*Lied about my age

*Lied about my weight

*Shoplifted

*Got a speeding ticket

*Ran naked through my house

The one with the most points at the end of the game is the winner. If you are playing for drinks, then the one who has the most points will definitely need a designated driver! Or the bathroom. Always be sensible about drinking at your bachelorette party, and make sure if it is taking place the evening before your wedding, that no one gets too exhausted and that it does not spoil the festivities for anyone the following day.

Wedding Reception Centerpiece Activities

The question of who will get to take home the centerpiece can sometimes be a real bone of contention with guests, particularly if the centerpiece is particularly pretty or original.

Making a game of who gets the centerpiece, then, can be an amusing diversion and one many guests will enjoy participating in. It will also take out the envy element, the bossy one and the sense of entitlement issue. Here are some ideas for giving away that reception table centerpiece.

How about a game of 20 questions? Give each guest a piece of paper and a pen or pencil. The MC or DJ asks a series of 20 questions, but first gives the guests the basic background information, that is, that the answer is place, person or thing. Once that’s taken care of, people can shout out questions and the MC or DJ will answer yes or no, and whoever figures out the answer first gets the first centerpiece, and that particular table is done playing. The game is repeated until one person at each table has won the centerpiece. Obviously, this will work with small receptions.

One of the most popular ways brides give away the table centerpieces is to put a number on the bottom of the centerpiece and give each guest a number. At some point in the evening, a number is called, each guest checks his or her number and whoever has the called number gets the centerpiece. There are many ways to put a twist on this traditional activity.

For example, you might provide each table with a number, but make it a lower number (ie. between 1 and 10) and the DJ or MC could move from table to table and have each guest do something a certain number of times. So, at the first table, for example, the guests might need to do “head, shoulders, knees and toes” six times and whoever does it first gets the centerpiece.

Or, at the second table, the guests might be required to sing the alphabet 3 times or sing “twinkle, twinkle, little star” three times and whoever does that first get the centerpiece.

Another fun activity for divvying up the centerpieces is to require guests to produce a certain item. The DJ or MC moves from table to table, announcing what guests at that table will be required to produce in order to get the centerpiece. Maybe it’s a Georgia quarter or a mint, or a doctor’s appointment card. Whatever it is, the guest at each table who produces the requested item will get the centerpiece.

You can always make it easy and offer the centerpiece to the oldest person at the table, or the one who took the least or most number of years to finish college.

Perhaps you could create an activity where the person who has the strangest talent (as voted on by the tablemates) wins the centerpiece. Then, if possible, that person might show off the talent for the entire reception party.

If you like musical chairs, you can play a game of musical salt shaker in order to give the centerpiece away. The music begins playing, and everyone at the table passes the salt shaker. When the music stops, whoever is left holding the bill gets the centerpiece.

Or this game can be played a bit more traditionally with the person with the salt shaker being eliminated, and the game continuing until only one person is holding the shaker. That person can then be awarded with the centerpiece.

Or, for a fun twist, the shaker can be passed around and when the music stops, the person holding the shaker is told to return it to the person who first gave it to them. That is the person who gets the centerpiece.

Some fun, and fairly traditional, ideas include the birthday person getting the centerpiece. At each table, the person who has a birthday closest to the wedding date gets the centerpiece.

Or if there are married couples at the table, the couple who have been together the longest can get the centerpiece, or the couple who were married most recently.

Perhaps the centerpiece should go to the person with the longest hair, or the strangest shoes (again, this would be voted on by tablemates).

The wedding reception centerpiece is an integral part of the wedding but it can cause a bit of turmoil if people set their eyes on the same flowers and won’t take no for an answer, so having wedding reception centerpiece activities can solve that problem and make sure there are no hard feelings.

FURTHER READING:How to Live on a Lower Income

GREAT WEDDING ACTIVITIES AND GAMES: How to Entertain Your Guests at Your Wedding Reception and Other Wedding-Related Gatherings

June 5, 2012By pc Reception, Wedding Planner, Weddings wedding centerpieces, wedding planning, weddingsLeave a Comment

Buffet Table Activities for Your Wedding

Most wedding receptions include a buffet-style meal where everyone stands in an enormous line waiting for ages while those at the food table decide if they want Italian or Ranch dressing on their salad.

There has to be a more unusual way to get people to their food, and a faster one at that, right?

There are several fun options you can employ to feed your guests quickly, and with a minimum amount of impatience, or groans of hunger.

Here are some fun options.

One of the most popular is the number system. Each table is assigned a number and the MC or DJ calls numbers at various intervals. The people at that numbered table then find the buffet and begin their feast.

You can place the numbers in a variety of locations. For the most utilitarian version, just place the number in the flower arrangement on the table.

Some brides don’t like this look of numbered table as if at a convention. In that case, you can put the numbers under the flower arrangements, or under the chairs. If you have place cards at the tables, you can write a small number somewhere on the card so people know which table they’re sitting at.

For a fun variation, you can have the florist play around with the table floral arrangements. If the arrangements are going to have a dozen flowers, you could have the florist add one extra flower to table “one”, two extra flowers for table “two” and so on and make the guests figure out which number table they are based on how many extra flowers they have in their arrangement.

The flower method could be cost-prohibitive, of course, if you have a large guest list and many tables.

Now, if the number system doesn’t thrill you or make you think “unique”, there are other options. Each table can have a color and the DJ simply calls out the color name. Depending, again, on how many tables you have at your reception, you could coordinate the tablecloths with the color of the table. So you might have white, pink, lavender, beige, and yellow tablecloths, and the guests sitting at that table simply move to the buffet table when the color of their tablecloth is called.

Another popular option for moving people easily to the buffet table involves having a little fun with your guests. You provide each table with a buzzer, either a bell like you might find at a store, or a small silver bell. Just something they can buzz or ring.

The DJ or MC asks a trivia question, or a question about the bride and groom. The tables buzz in with their answers. The guests at the table with the first correct buzzed answer move to the buffet table. You repeat the process until everyone is finally on their way to getting some food. Just make sure you know the correct answers to the trivia questions yourselves!

The trivia method is an especially fun way to help guests to get to know one another, as they might have to work together to come up with an answer.

If your guests are hungry, you’re sure to hear muffled groans and sighs of exasperation. But even with the small complaints, this is always a crowd pleaser because it’s fun and gets everyone involved.

Now, this next option is fun but can engender a bit of jealousy sometimes. When people get their place card, whether it’s placed on the table, or they pick it up when they look at the seating chart, you can put a number on it. But not everyone at the same table will have the same number. If you have 100 guests, for example, you might choose to have 10 people at the buffet table at a time. So each person would be assigned a number 1 through 10. This works best with small groups.

In the same scenario as above, the DJ or MC will call a number and those numbers will head for the buffet table. There are sure to be more than one person from each table heading for the buffet table, but the guests at each table won’t get their food at the same time.

This staggered feeding can be fun or a nuisance, depending. It solves the problem of half the room being finished with their meal while waiting for the “later” table to finish theirs before the festivities start, but it can also mean that one or two guests might be long done with their food (or wanting to head back for seconds) when others at the table haven’t even eaten yet.

You might also want to start the buffet with the people at the rear of the room, so they don’t have to climb over people milling around on their way back to the table, and risk spillage.

You also need to consider people who love to go back for seconds. Make sure everyone is served first before allowing people to go back for more. Also make sure that not all the food is put away when the cake is served, in the event you have latecomers or people who eat slowly or don’t like dessert.

Cheese and crackers, salad and so forth are ideal for this.

Whatever you decide, buffet table activities at a wedding can be fun and memorable.

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June 4, 2012By pc Reception, Weddings receptions, wedding receptions, weddingsLeave a Comment

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