The Big Day pt. 1

I recently had the opportunity to plan a wedding for a co-worker. The experience was overwhelmingly amazing. As you all know my career goal is to be an event planner but I have gone back and forth on whether to be a wedding planner or an event planner. I have been told by a few professionals that it is wise to choose one. This experience has helped me decide that I would love to do both. I would love to continue wedding planning on the side, but make event planning my main career.
The first thing the bride and I did was go to the Bridal Extravaganza. This event is a huge event at the George R. Brown Center for soon to be brides. Brides are running around like they are getting married the next day. There are many booths with employees promoting their businesses. You can find anything from cakes to photography to great honeymoon deals. Catering businesses make it their duty to make the brides feel special by letting them taste test the food. The bride and I grabbed brochures and flyers from every booth she needed one from. I took each home and calculated which companies best fit her budget. Luckily we were able to eliminate many of the companies because so many friends and family of hers wanted to do her a favor.
Most brides have a budget, so it is very beneficial to have close family and friends that are willing to help. The DJ, the cake, a singer for the ceremony and the wedding planner (me) were all favors to her. The most important lesson I learned the day of the wedding is that favors DEFINITELY need backups. When people are not working for money, it may not be a priority for them to make the wedding number one on their list.
The day of the wedding I started off by running to the reception hall to check on the decorations, make sure the cake is set up and make sure the tables were labeled properly. Everything was amazing and beautiful in the reception hall. I was so excited and nervous.
Planning this wedding I learned that there are two things I would love to learn that could be beneficial to me as an event planner. The first was speaking Spanish. I am making it a goal of mine to become fluent in Spanish. A few minutes after I left the reception hall I ran into the maid of honor and we needed to find a place cool to keep the flowers for the ceremony. We found a man that works there that ONLY spoke Spanish. All I could think about was that the process of communicating could have gone so much faster and smoother if I was even decent at Spanish.
During the ceremony was when I figured out the next thing I need to learn in case of any emergency, which you can read about on my next blog.

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