It is National Coffee Day and we know how many of our readers love to indulge on this amazing beverage. This time of year so many brides are sipping their pumpkin spiced latte while updating their Pinterest accounts and flipping through countless magazines for inspiration.
We wanted to take the time to recognize National Coffee Day, especially since it is one of our favorite favors to recommend to our clients. That's right, coffee!
Most clients are opting out of the favor world, cutting it from their budget mostly because they don't know what to offer. Let's be honest, favors typically end up in the trash. But not when you offer something to eat or drink!
Using labels complete with your event date and a thank you message to your guests, why not send them off with something amazing and original like coffee? You can offer it whole bean or not, and really make it special by selecting a blend from a notable part of the world. Rothweiler Event Design recently met with Meahuna Coffee to try some of their amazing blends. They offer their coffee in all different colored bags and will customize labels for you as well. The most important aspect of this favor is that it won't end up in the trash!
Take a look at Meahuna Coffee to see what they are all about, and reach out to them for your next event. We promise you that your guests will be buzzing about this great idea, and we'll even let you take the credit for thinking of it: http://www.meahunacoffee.com/
Did you offer coffee as a favor? What do you think about this idea? Please share your thoughts with us!
This is becoming a "thing" now, so I feel compelled to help on the education side of this.... conundrum.
In New Jersey, we are very spoiled with banquet halls that are all inclusive. For those of you reading this from outside the Jersey border, allow me to explain. New Jersey is the banquet capital of the country. In fact, there are 4 on the same street as my office. These banquet halls come complete with things you would think of like servers and bartenders and things you wouldn't think of like chairs and floors. Yeah, floors.
New Jersey brides are spoiled because they don't have to think about a large portion of what actually goes into a wedding day, because the banquet hall has it all covered under one roof. You pay a "per person" fee and you get your food, alcohol, plates to eat off of and glasses to drink from. You need a seat? They've got chairs!! Did you want your ceremony in the same location? No problem because they can most likely set that up too.
But what happens outside of these banquet halls? More and more of our New Jersey brides are turning their noses up at the thought of "cookie cutter" weddings and want something different like a farm, or a loft, or a penthouse in upper Manhattan. The idea of a "blank slate" is sexy and appealing because they can make it whatever they want. And our destination brides don't even know what a banquet hall is.
Having a blank slate means bringing in everything and knowing what "everything" actually is. Thankfully, you've hired a planner (or are about to hire us, because, duh, why wouldn't you?) and we know everything that you will need right down to the silverware. These weddings tend to be more expensive because they are essentially "ala carte" and you are paying for things individually. Your caterer might be charging you $150 per person, and that will include food but it may or may not include: chairs, tables, linens, alcohol, etc. Each caterer is different and since we like to keep the vendor list to a minimum, we prefer caterers that can provide the most.
The chairs are the biggest issue we are seeing this year and a question that many of our couples ask us about. Inside the banquet halls, it's easy to move chairs from the ceremony to the reception space during the cocktail hour. They have the resources and the man power to get this done in a very short amount of time (moving 300 chairs in 1 hour takes at least 20 people.) Typically, they are moving the chairs from room to room, which is easier than say across a field, down a hill or around the courtyard. The more chairs you have and the farther they have to go, the more people you will need to move them. You know what that means? More of this: $$$
Many of our brides wonder if they can save money by using the same chairs. After all, the chairs for the ceremony will be used for all of 30 minutes, but the reception chairs need to be available for 5-7 hours. Is it worth it to rent a separate set of a chairs?
You bet it is.
Here's the thing: the money you would save by using the same chairs, will be wasted on paying people to move them.
I know what you're thinking (because this has happened): it can't/won't take that long.
Oh yes, it will. As much as we can advise our brides to not do this and to simply find a couple extra hundred dollars for more chairs, they don't always listen. The result? A 2 hour long cocktail hour destroying the rest of the timeline for the day (that cake cutting just got pushed to midnight now AFTER your photographer is scheduled to leave), and finding other people to help move chairs...those people are probably supposed to be doing other things like pouring champagne, but now they are pulled to do something else. Which means when your guests finally do get to sit down, there's no champagne on the table.
Pretty picture right? It's happened, it can happen to you and you should be very afraid of this happening.
To make it worse, we recently saw an episode of "Four Weddings" where the couple had their friends carry their chairs from the ceremony to the reception area. Women in dresses carried their own chairs. Honey bunches of NO. What?! I couldn't tweet about that fast enough.
The bottom line is this, outside of our fantastic Jersey banquet halls is a world of beautiful venues that offer nothing but a blank canvas. Your guests need a place to sit and it is far less expensive to rent a second set of chairs, than to hire people to move them. Again, don't ask your guests to do it, because that's just tacky.
Two sets of chairs. That's the answer. Problem solved. Ta-da.
"What's your budget?"
"What are you looking to spend?"
"What number is the maximum?"
These are all variations on a question you will hear endless amounts of times during the planning of your wedding or any other event. Put down the gloves and your defenses, because there is a reason you are being asked this question.
One of the first things we ask our clients, frequently before we even begin working with them is "what is your budget?". We need to know the overall budget so that we can break it down into categories, and we also need to know what you want to spend and where. For instance, if flowers are the be all and end all, we want to put a little more in that category and take from something else that is less important to you. If you have your heart set on a certain venue, then we will need to spend 50% of your budget there instead of 45% of the budget.
But we can't do any of that unless you are honest with us and tell us what you are willing to spend and what you are capable of spending.
Now I know, how do you know what anything costs? Countless websites will tell you how you can plan an entire wedding for $5,000, while others will tell you that centerpieces worth looking at start at $350 each. The internet is tricky that way, and like Web MD, if you rely on it to plan your wedding, you will be diagnosed with cancer.
When we ask what our clients want to spend, what we really need to know is the limit. This doesn't mean that if they say "$8,000 on flowers" that we are going to go out and get them a $7,999 quote. This means that we take that number and don't go over it. How?
You tell us: $8k for flowers (or photography, or videography or whatever)....We then take that number to our vendors and go through everything you are interested in, from the style of the flowers to the amount of photographers for the day to the labor, to the set up and break down and everything you are not even thinking about. We then make it very clear that we are working with a hard number. Then, after a day or two (and work, this involves WORK) we will come back to you with a rough proposal of what we can provide within your budget.
For example: $8,000 on photography and you want x amount of pictures, hi-res retouched everything, 4 parent albums, two photographers, 10 hours of coverage and a partridge in a pear tree. We will then work with photographers that we know, make sure they have the date available, the style you want, and put together a package for you to review. There is no need to waste your time with vendors that are outside your budget or cannot work with you and we do all of that homework for you and present you with your options.
But....if you say "I don't know", "I have no idea" or "I really can't give you a number"....what happens then can be tragic. We will spend hours, sometimes days, working with our vendors (taking time away from other work that we need to be doing) to put together something for you based on what you want, but not what you want to spend...because you haven't told us. We have NO IDEA what you want to spend because you have not given us a number. We're not guessing, we're not trying to bleed you dry, and we only have the information that you have given us.
From there, we can present you with a rough proposal. 90% of the time we either don't receive a response back or the response we do get back, is negative. Frequently, that number is too high and needs to come down. But needs to come down to what?
Look at it from our angle: you have given us nothing to work with but your ideas. We know the market, we know what things cost, and as planners, we can get you the best deals. So we are working to present you with something very real, and that work we do to put something together is no joke either. When you come back and say nothing or tell us that the number is too high, it's very frustrating on our end because how were we supposed to know?
I guess the point of this blog is: it's not a conspiracy theory. We want to get you the best deal for what you want, so that's why you will keep hearing that question "what is your budget?" The best advice I can give you is to have a number in mind that you will not be willing to go over and then proceed from there. Proposals and quotes can be tweeted, but if the blind is leading the blind, then nothing gets accomplished and everyone has wasted their time and is now aggravated.
Don't lie to your doctor, publicist, attorney and especially not your planner. We cannot help you if you do.
Questions? Comments? We would love to hear them!
Every single bride we work with has a Pinterest account and we always ask to see it when we begin working together. We like to see what visually attracts them, where their minds are, and what ridiculous concept they are dreaming of that is more expensive than they could ever imagine.
Pinterest is a blessing and a curse.
Chock full of unbelievable photos and amazing inspiration, Pinterest is a great site to find foundation ideas for your wedding. You can find out what types of flowers you are drawn to, what colors look good together and really explore both traditional and non traditional designs. We love to use Pinterest to put together what the general feeling of a wedding will be for our brides.
However, Pinterest is full of death traps like linking brides to blogs about how they too can plan their entire wedding for under $5,000, and pins and pins of ceiling flower installations. If a bride isn't careful, she will get sucked into the vortex of these pins and suddenly be wishing for a wedding that has a much higher price tag than she originally budgeted for. Or, a bride will be lulled into a false sense of security that her dream wedding complete with calla lillies and orchids, can be thrown together for her 300 person guest list for $10,000.
Hello, this is Earth, come in bride!
We wanted to take this time to offer a word of caution to all brides pinning their weddings on this amazing site. Take it for what it's worth: a ton of amazing pictures to give you ideas about your big day. Do not use it as gospel, bible, or anything other than just a fun site to browse. While it's helpful for us as planners to see what you really like, it's tough to fight the bride that wants the clear tent with lights and is convinced that it exists for much less than we are quoting her.
Put a filter on your pinterest. Go there to find colors and concepts, but don't get carried away. It's our job to help your vision become a reality, but let us keep you grounded along the way and not spend what was going to be a deposit on your first home together as a married couple.
Happy pinning!
Photo credit: Fusion Photography Studio
