We work with a lot of talented entertainment vendors but one of our favorites is the guys from wedding DJ service MyDeejay.com.  Evan, the owner, is always professional and committed to his clients.  It’s always a pleasure working with anyone from his team since we’ll know the guests will have a great time.

Recently, I was interviewed and featured on their new blog!  Find out what inspires me, some cool things I’ve seen at weddings, and a few things I simply can’t stand.  Take a minute and check it out!

We’re thrilled to announce that Lindsay & Sam (remember last year’s Indian/American wedding on the eastern shore?) were featured as one of the ‘real weddings’ in the Washingtonian’s Bride and Groom magazine:

I was ecstatic when I flipped through the pages and saw their smiling faces.  Here’s the first page of their beautiful spread:

Second page:

A big special thanks goes to DC wedding photographer Greg Gibson who photographed this gorgeous event and submitted it to the magazine.  He really captured the beauty, emotion, and love of the day.

To read their full story you have to see it for yourself!  They are on pages 80-81.  You can pick up a copy of Bride & Groom at many local DC retailers (usually Barnes & Noble is a good bet).

We just received our beautiful June 2009 Washingtonian Bride & Groom magazines. These big bold babies are gorgeous! The Washingtonian publishes a bi-annual wedding magazine that is a wonderful resource for any bride-to-be.

This is our third time being featured in the magazine on the prestigious “They Know Weddings” list. We are thrilled to be included with some of the area’s best wedding vendors. Here’s what they have to say about us on page 134:

We’re thrilled for our other planner friends who made the list too!  Aimee, Pam, Sara, Katie, Laura, Lynn and Priscilla, Jodi, Kim, Jamie, Sara F., and Jennifer all deserve a big congratulations.

I have a few extra copies!  Send me an email if you’d like to pick up a free copy (in Reston).  I believe these go on the stands sometime this week.

So often we’re asked, “so what do you guys do, anyway?”  I figured it would be fun to share a list of unusual tasks that a wedding day brings.  As a real-life example, I’ll use Melissa & TJ’s wedding from Memorial Day weekend.  Here’s a list of things we did in a span of about nine hours:

Ceremony Preparation:

• Pinned corsages on the mothers, godmothers, special aunts, and readers
• Pinned boutonnieres on the fathers, groomsmen, and groom
• Distributed bouquets to the bridesmaids, flower girl, and bride
• Tied reserved signs to chairs for the ceremony
• Poured sand in vases in preparation for the sand ceremony
• Determined the color of the table linen for the ceremony (a last-minute addition)
• Found an out-of-the-way place for the string quartet to leave their instrument cases
• Discussed cues and the ceremony with the quartet
• Gave the reader her copy of the reading

Ceremony:

• Cued the ceremony musicians
• Lined up the parents and bridal party before the ceremony
• Passed the marriage license to the officiant so he could fill in the form
• Held the wedding rings before the ceremony began
• Helped the flower girl down the steps to the ceremony so she didn’t trip over her long dress
• ‘Floofed’ the bride’s dress and fixed her veil before she headed down the aisle

Reception Preparation:

• Asked the caterer to get linens off the truck so the cake baker and DJ could begin setting up
• Made sure all the family members were in place for the formal photographs
• Worked with the florist when there was one table arrangement missing
• Asked the venue contact about where the DJ’s power supply was located
• Held up the bride’s train while the bridesmaids bustled underneath (often we’ll do the bustle on our own)

Reception:

• Politely invited guests to their seats so we could begin
• Lined up the bridal party before the introductions were made
• Worked with the DJ and caterer to ensure the timeline was upheld
• Brought the bride and groom drinks from the bar to their sweetheart table
• Updated the bride and groom before each major event of the reception
• Found the site manager when the one and only light bulb in the restroom was burned out
• Ensured the photographers and DJ ate their vendor meals when they wouldn’t miss a moment of the action
• Quicky taught the bride and groom how to cut their wedding cake
• Had a chair ready for the bride to sit on during the garter toss
• Boxed up two slices of cake for the flower girl and her father who had to leave early
• Boxed up two slices of cake for the bride and groom to eat in the limousine
• Passed out sparklers to the bridal party for the send-off
• Lit the sparklers once everyone was in place
• Had the driver move the limousine to the correct position in front of the house to allow guests to make a pathway from the front door for the send-off
• Made sure the caterer swept/mopped the floor at the end of the night (a venue requirement)
• Carried wedding gifts & leftover liquor to the family’s cars

Generally Making Things Smooth:

• Directed guests to the right location for the ceremony, cocktail hour, and reception
• Offset the timeline so the photographer could get all the portraits done
• Showed the photographer the venue and several location options for formal photographs
• Did a final sweep of the building to ensure nobody left personal belongings
• Served as an incognito test lighting subject for the photographer
• Distributed vendor tips on behalf of the bride and groom

If you’re not planning on hiring a wedding day coordinator, think of who will do all these tasks when they arise on the wedding day.  Also consider if that person will stick around through the end of the reception or if they’ll take advantage of the open bar and be worthless by midnight.  Most of these things don’t fall under the caterer’s or venue’s responsibilities so don’t asssume they’ll be handled by the professionals you’ve hired.

Our wedding day coordination service is a reasonable $1,525!  Compared to the cost of your entire wedding, I’ll bet this is not a big amount.  Why not invest a little bit to ensure you’re able to enjoy every minute of your wedding day instead of worrying about all these little details?

A few weeks ago, I got a suspicious phone call from Cristin, one of our coordinators.  “I’m out of town on a super secret mission and can’t tell you much about it.  But I’ll be back tomorrow and can meet with those clients this weekend.  Gotta go — bye!”  Cristin was up to something sneaky.

Little did we know that Cristin had entered her boyfriend’s mother in a Good Morning America contest for Mother’s Day!  Celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse cooks an annual breakfast in bed for one deserving mother.  Mrs. Susie Bratt received the surprise of her life this last Friday when Emeril showed up on her doorstep.  Susie’s family has dealt with an awful tragedy very recently and it was wonderful to see her big smile.

Here are the two video clips from Good Morning America:

Surprising Mrs. Bratt & the tearjerker story

One more surprise & the breakfast

An article from the Charleston, WV Gazette

Congratulations Mrs. Bratt!  We’re proud to have Cristin as a part of our family, too.

Just engaged and wondering how to budget for the wedding?  Already booked some vendors and just now realizing that you should have a financial plan of attack?

Join me as I talk about event budgets and how to stretch your wedding dollar!  From decor to flowers to catering and every detail in between, there are always opportunities to cut corners and save in unexpected places.  Here’s the info on this casual event:

When: Tuesday, April 21st, 7-8pm
Where: The Dandelion Patch, 111 Church Street, Vienna, VA
Why: Because everyone likes to save money!
RSVP: Email The Dandelion Patch

See you there!

Wish has always tried to the planet’s best interests at heart. Here’s a short list of the socially conscious practices we’re proud of:

• Maintaining a (mostly) paperless office
• Reusing and recycling as much as possible
• Purchased trees for Valentine’s Day gifts
• Make eco-conscious recommendations to our clients
• Belong to 1% for the Planet
• Have our own lending group on Kiva

Now we can add one more thing to our list!  Wish’s central office is now 100% supported by Green Power.  Our power supplier, Dominion, has recently announced that it will offer Green-e Energy certified renewable energy certificates (RECs).  Wish will be purchasing these RECs to account for 100% of the power we consume in the office.  RECs are used to support suppliers of renewable energy like Wind, Solar, Landfill/Biomass, Geothermal, and Hydroelectric.

Now that’s something to be proud of!

Guess what we got??

WeddingWire, the nation’s leading wedding technology company, just announced that Wish Special Events has won the 2009 Bride’s Choice Awards™!

In its inaugural year, the Bride’s Choice Awards recognizes and honors vendors from the WeddingWire Network that demonstrate excellent quality of service, responsiveness, professionalism, value of cost and flexibility. This year’s recipients represent the top three percent of WeddingWire’s vendor community, which includes over 100,000 wedding vendors from across the US. That means Wish Special Events is one of the very best wedding planning companies in the DC/Baltimore region.

Unlike other awards in which winners are selected by the company, the Bride’s Choice Awards are determined exclusively by recent newlyweds through surveys and reviews.

“We are excited to launch this annual award program to honor high-performing vendors based solely on the experiences of our WeddingWire community,” according to Timothy Chi, WeddingWire’s Chief Executive Officer. “This year’s recipients have set the bar high, exhibiting excellent service and expertise in the wedding industry.”

Wish Special Events would like to thank our past clients for speaking on our behalf and helping us win the 2009 Bride’s Choice Award!  If you had a positive experience with Wish and want to share, we’d love your opinion.  Just click here to see our WeddingWire page and review us!

Washingtonian’s Best Wedding Vendors List 2009

Transcript for those of you at work without sound:
“Hi everybody, thanks for checking out the blog today.  I wanted to introduce you to a new wedding planning magazine.  This is for the DC-area only.  This is Washingtonian Bride and Groom.  This is a brand new publication.  It just hit the newsstands on December 15th.  Those of you who are here in the DC area are probably familiar with the Washingtonian already.  They area  monthly publication.  Every year they publish a 100 Best Restaurants list and as part of that magazine they do the top wedding vendors in the DC area.  This year they’ve decided instead of just throwing it into the monthly issue, they would make their own wedding-only magazine.  It’s a nice big, fat, chunky magazine…I love the feel of it…it’s nice and big.  This is DC-only which I really like because there’s not a lot of DC-area magazines.  They ask local vendors questions, they have information on real weddings, and venues, and all kinds of great stuff.  We are on page 202 as part of their “Best of Weddings” list…we are right under a beautiful image.  I’ll scan that for you so you can read below what they said about us.  They said some really nice things.  I’m really excited that this magazine is out.  It’s going to be a bi-annual publication so it’ll be in December and in June.  We’re just so thrilled and proud to be in the Washingtonian again this year.  This is our second year we are being featured.  I wanted to tell you about the magazine so you can check it out for yourself.  If you are interested in a copy of the magazine, I have about ten extra copies which you can see by my big ol’ stack.  If you would like a copy, I have ten to give away.  Just leave a comment here on the blog and I will send one to your address.  Make sure you leave your email address so I can get in contact with you and we’ll either set up a time that I can drop it off at your home office or I’ll just pop it in the mail to you.  Have a great day everybody and we’ll chat soon!  Thanks.”

Did you visit us at the Washington Bridal Showcase earlier this month?  If you checked out the show it was pretty hard to miss us.  We shared a WHOPPING booth with The Dandelion Patch, our sister company.  Check out our digs!

Our sweet setup, showing the magazines we’ve been featured in and the potential reasons a bride would need us:

Rebecca and Jessica in a rare moment without brides to chat with:

Our brand-spankin-new brochures:

The Dandelion Patch decorated the majority of our big booth with these beautiful boards.  They’re covered in wedding invitation samples!  There must have been at least 14-16 boards chock full of samples:

They also had their in-house calligrapher come out and do some lettering for brides!  She’d write their names beautifully on little cards for them to take home:

We really had a great time at the show and hope you were able to come out and meet us.  If not, the next Dulles Bridal Showcase will be Sunday, February 1st 2009.  See you then!