Wedding Photography Giveaway from

Nicole at Nicole Polk Photography is having a photography give away for couples marrying in 2010. This is a great way to save about $6,000, so definitely give it a shot. Below are Nicole's requirements...

I'm looking for couples thinking outside the box for their wedding
plans - think cool locations, themed weddings, lots of diy details,
etc... This is for couples who truly appreciate originality!
I am so inspired by other original thinkers out there!

The prize (valued at $6000):
- Wedding day coverage by Nicole Polk and a
2nd shooter
- Engagement session
- Day After session
- 350+ files retouched with my signature flair

To Enter:
Please email Nicole at
nicole@nicolepolkphotography.com
with your wedding date, location, and as many details
about your wedding plans as possible. Please include
a photo of yourselves, a mood board with your
inspiration/ideas, and tell me a bit about yourselves.
The winning couple will be based on originality and creativity.

Travel:
Bride and Groom will provide travel expenses from
Philadelphia, 3 nights hotel & rental car if outside the
Philadelphia area.

Deadline:
September 4th, 2009

Winners Announced on:
September 25th, 2009

Enjoying the Planning Process

I know many of you brides out there must think I'm nuts, but I truly do believe it's possible to actually enjoy the wedding planning process. At least, I like to think the couple's I work with typically do enjoy the process and let it unfold naturally with my guidance. Every now and then I do work with a couple who really like to get things taken care of very far in advance. No problem! Great! I'm game! But, what can happen is there is so much pressure to get things done RIGHT NOW, that they stress themselves out unnecessarily. If you've given yourself at least six months to plan your wedding, there is no reason you need to tackle every item all at once. I recommend breaking your to do list down into three categories:

1. Building Your Team
This includes researching, interviewing and hiring your vendors.

2. Designing the day
This involves all of the fun stuff. Picking the exact linen and china, tending to floral prototypes and designing and tasting the menu and cake, choosing music.

3. Logistics
This involves creating the time line, floor plan, power requirements for bands, must have shot lists for photo and video, etc.

4. Final ordering and confirmations: (This is ONLY if you don't have a planner as she should take care of this for you) Make sure you allow some time two weeks before the wedding to finalize everything. Meaning, once that guest count comes in, you need to update the florist, caterer, rental company, linen company, etc. on all items where quantities are based on your guest count (centerpieces, food, linens, napkins, etc.) and don't forget the reconfirmations.

Now, of course, these things all flow into one another. You can't order invitations if you haven't set a ceremony time. And, you can't choose a florist until you know a bit more about your style, but for the most part, I recommend breaking the process down into these or similar categories. Not only does it make sense to plan things in the order that works, but it will keep your stress level way down. Bottom line is this, if you take things one step at a time and BREATH, I promise you will be so much calmer and happier both throughout the process and on the wedding day.

The New Mr. & Mrs. Kuo

I only have these two little teaser photos, but I can't wait to receive the entire lot of images from Helen & Mike's beautiful Independence Day wedding. And, yes, they saw fireworks! The wedding was shot by the talented and charming, Janey from Mary Jane Weddings and with video from Russell of Russell Fowler Video (see his blog post here), flowers from Carissa Jones of JL Designs, Entertainment from Nahchey of Dash and Supernova, the result could be nothing but amazing. Not to mention the venue...the stunning Ritz Carlton in Laguna Niguel...truly breathtaking. But, what truly made this day beautiful, was the couple, Helen & Mike. I see many, many couples cross my path, but rarely do I see such a gratitude and true appreciation for one another. They stood by each other devotedly during what can be a very stressful time and they were so open with their love for each other, that it was truly inspiring to be around them. They reminded me of all of the true beauty that comes only with marriage. So, needless to say, I hope to have both images and a little montage video to share very soon, but for now, enjoy the true emotion caught in these stunning moments by Janey.



I LOVE this one of Mike laughing! This true happiness can never be staged.

Winery Themed Welcome Party

A couple of weeks ago, I had the privilege of planning Terence & Kristin's destination wedding right here in Los Angeles. 160 of their closest friends and family flew in from the East Coast to celebrate the nuptials. The Friday before the wedding, we welcomed everyone in Southern California style with a winery themed welcome party including Spanish guitars, rustic decor and of course lots and lots of wine. Unfortunately, there wasn't a real winery in close enough proximity to host the party, but, the beautiful grounds and lovely staff at the Westlake Village Inn helped make the vision come to life.

Cocktail hour included a wine tasting along with cheese pairing from three regions here in California including Napa Valley, Sonoma Valley and Central Coast. Guests mingled while listening to the tunes of Flamenco guitars and tasting over 12 different regional wines hand selected by a personal sommelier. For decor, we used wine barrels in lieu of traditional cocktail tables, old rustic doors for table tops and brightly colored flowers and fresh fruit to accent.

After cocktail hour, guests were invited to a casual buffet dinner at rustic wood tables adorned with old wine crates filled with roses, dahlias and peonies all in the sunset color palette. It was just casual enough for comfort but sophisticated enough to celebrate the eve of a wedding.

I'm still waiting on images from the actual wedding day, but please enjoy the below pictures shot by my new best friend, Steve Steinhardt. Not only can words not describe his talent, but his charm and calm demeanor was a true treat to work alongside. Check out his work immediately!

Other vendors that made this event so wonderful include:
Holly Flora
La Tavola Linens
Cale Music
Town & Country Event Rentals
Westlake Village Inn
Aspect Lighting

Different Formats for Your Dinner Service

When deciding on dinner, most couples think of two options: guests can either wait in a long buffet line for a variety of starches and a roast beef carving station, or, they can enjoy tableside service typically divided into three to five standard courses including appetizer, salad, entrée and dessert. While both buffet dinners and plated meals will please most guests, they are definitely predictable. Here are a few options to spice up the dinner presentation at your wedding:

DINNER STATIONS
Hiring a variety of chefs to customize and prepare dinner right in front of your guests is always a crowd pleaser. The guests get to interact with the food preparation choosing what sauce to put on their pasta, or what temperature they would like their Ahi. Stations are a unique presentation of food which will not only fill their stomachs, but also entertain them as well. When selecting a station style menu, be sure to choose a station for each “course”. You could have a Sushi Station for an appetizer, tossed salad display, a risotto bar for the starch and then for the entrée, have a chef boil lobster or crab legs. While this is an impressive style of service to most, the men on your guest list will be talking about the meal for days after your event.

FAMILY STYLE
Just like it sounds, family style dinner service is where large platters of food are placed in the center of each dinner table. Guests take their food and pass the plate to the next guest. This style of service is a great compromise between plated and buffet style meals, as it offers the variety of a buffet with some of the formality of a plated dinner. It is also the best way to get your guests talking and interacting during dinner. When planning a family style menu, make sure to stay away from messy items like pasta, or any meats with heavy sauces. Offer two to three meat options as well as two to three sides. One salad should do.

TASTING MENU
While most tasting menus are coursed out like a plated meal, some people prefer to serve them family style as well. Take your pick, but no matter how the meal is presented, you cannot go wrong with small tastings of eight to 10 different dishes. This is perfect for your guests if they love trying a little bit of everything. Consider a theme such as an Asian inspired tasting menu with Pot Stickers, Miso Butterfish and Green Tea Brulee or and even an Indian menu with Tamoori Chicken and a variety of Curries. No matter how you design the dinner, be sure to provide a printed menu at each place setting so each guest will know what they're eating.

Who Will Clean Up Your Dressing Area?

You might think a planner would sleep in a bit after a big event as we often get home at wee hours in the morning, but I'm really not used to that luxury and I attribute it to the dressing room clean up. You see, after almost every event, some item goes temporarily missing. Be it a guest book, makeup bag, jewelry, etc. Couples very often leave their dressing area to be cleaned up by staff or the wedding party so they can dash off to their first night together as husband and wife. The one problem with this is, often, there are way too many cooks in the kitchen in regards to the clean up. Every person believes they are doing the couple a favor by taking home the guest book that was supposed to be retrieved by the mother of the bride or the wedding planner. Expensive jewelry gets slipped into the aunt's purse for safe keeping and makeup bags get mixed in with other wedding party's items. Groomsmen pick up random cell phones and sister's grab the gift envelopes. While, I always, always, try to control the situation to keep things like this from happening, this scenario is so common that I am very used to the 7am phone calls from panicked brides after they realize that one of their treasured items has gone missing (or sometimes even the drunk groomsmen who woke up without his cell phone or tuxedo jacket). At this point, I always recommend calling mom, bridesmaid's or any other "helpful" member of your wedding party. 99% of the time, the item is located in the hands of someone the couple knows who "forgot" to mention they were taking the item home with them and the other 1% of the time, the same type of "helpful" friend took possession of the item early in the evening, only to leave it sitting at their chair at the dinner tables never to pick it up again. Either way, I have planned over 200 weddings and have yet to have an item go missing for eternity. But, in hopes of putting an end to the morning after panic, I wanted to make a suggestion. First the disclaimer that I know you brides out there do not need one more thing for your to do list, but I promise it may stop a few tears and undue stress if you take the time to do this one more little thing. Here it goes:

Create an inventory list of your items. List everything out and assign people to be responsible for them. For instance, I almost always am responsible for getting items such as the guest book, champagne flutes, cake knife & server, etc. to a preassigned car for safekeeping. But, go a step further. List out things like gold hoop earrings, one black bra, a green hoodie, a pink glittery cell phone, etc. and assign each item to be picked up for you. Put it in a checklist format so your maid of honor or whoever you assign can double and triple check everything. And, though I know you shouldn't have to clean up after yourself on your wedding day, I still highly recommend taking a couple of minutes to put all of your items together before you walk down the aisle. Otherwise, whomever cleans up the dressing room, will never know that the purple makeup bag is yours and the turquoise makeup bag is your sister's or vice versa. If you can put all of your items in one central place, there is less chance of items getting mixed in with other people's things. And, lastly, if you are able, communicate to your mom, bridal party, etc. not to touch any of your items. Let them know that Aunt Cathy is in charge of packing your luggage or your best friend agreed to take the gifts home. With a little bit of organization and communication, you will have a much greater chance for a peaceful morning after!

Make Your Day the Inspiration

The other day I was chatting with one of my favorite florists about wedding designs and our clients. With both of us being fans of all things unique and charming, we were discussing how many brides are nervous to do anything unconventional. So often our clients will be up for anything in the beginning only to get nervous to be the first to try something new or to introduce guests to a completely unique experience. Whether it's because mom is a little more traditional or simply because they are scared of the risk, in the end a lot of couples choose to take the easy way out by copying another event to a tee because it's the safe thing to do. While there is nothing wrong with using another couple's wedding as inspiration, I mean, even I do it, but, I say, to all of the design intimidated Bride's out there: Let's design a wedding that other couples will copy off of. Let's come up with something so spectacular that bride's across the nation will say, "I have to have a cake like Jack and Sue's" or, "I have to have the shoes I saw in this one wedding!" Be inspired by others but when all is said and done, don't be afraid to make a statement of your own.