Floral Arrangements

This past weekend, my amazing husband bought me a bouquet of gorgeous flowers, but there was something off about them. The florist had added filler... oh so much filler. The poor flowers had been squished under eucalyptus, something that looked like cabbage, and long stems of tiny red leaves that I didn't recognize. So I tore the bouquet apart and piece by piece arranged the flowers into three mason jars in the living room. I have to say, I'm pretty proud of myself. Then today, he bought me some yellow tulips which I immediately separated into another mason jar and a champagne bottle.

Messing with my flowers got me to thinking about just how important florals/florists are to a wedding. They set the mood for the gorgeous event, whether it's to be formal or fun, casual, country, funky. Flowers are probably the most important part. Even if the decision is to not include flowers at all.

Springtime Inspiration

This past week, every weather man and woman in the District of Columbia has incredulously reported *almost* record high temperatures for the month of March and the end of a very mild winter. The weather has been gorgeous, and for a Texas girl, a comfortingly normal temperature for the beginning of March. And because of this crazy Maryland weather, every news man and woman in the District has been discussing the peek bloom date of the cherry blossom trees which is coming early this year.

So after many weeks spent holed up in our apartment, too lazy to make the hour long trek into DC, Ben and I decided to drive to the city and spend the 40 grueling minutes to find a parking spot in the over-crowded Mall. We've been here almost a year (well for Ben it's been over a year), and we still had not seen the Jefferson Memorial or experience the cherry blossom trees in full bloom. Of course, it was totally worth it to almost have a heart attack in that awful traffic yesterday because the flowers were gorgeous.

Our Saturday was filled with cheerful people, clear skies, fragrant flowers and the long awaited warmth of the sun on our faces. It gave me inspiration. Spring is amazing. Everything is new and fresh and hopeful. It's the perfect season for weddings and the perfect season for new life. I am getting fidgety with the excitement of getting to plan a spring wedding surrounded in fresh blooms, bright skies and young love.

Facebook can be super Frustrating...

So. After much frustration with my website, which, by the way, is still not done, (Don't get me wrong, my husband works so hard and comes home to work harder on my site- coding can be a real... well you know) I now get to be frustrated with Facebook. I've created my page To Last a Lifetime. Event Planning, and I make my cover photo, and I write my first post, and I go to invite all my friends, and half of them aren't even highlighted...

After about an hour of individually clicking to invite friends and family to "like" my page, I hopefully look to see if I have any likes. It drives me crazy, and when Ben gets home and hasn't bothered to "like" my page, I chew him out before I even realize that he doesn't even have a notification that I sent him the invite on his mobile Facebook Application. AND because he checked his notifications on his phone now it doesn't show up on his page. THEN I find out that some people didn't even get an invitation on the computer version!!!

So long story short, if you didn't get an invitation to "like" my page, please check it out anyways. I'm so close to being done with the website, and I want to share it with as many people as possible!

"Shabby Chic" Weddings

Today I spent my Sunday hanging out with the hubby and watching him work on my frustrating website. So I decided that I needed some wedding-love inspiration. What did I do? Of course I turned on WE TV's wedding Sunday, my favorite day of the week for Women's Entertainment. and of course my favorite wedding planner ever, David Tutera, was working his magic once again. I only caught the end of his show, "My Fair Wedding", but that's my favorite part! He had planned the perfect "Shabby Chic" wedding with old fashion cake stands holding the cutest cupcakes, a hodge podge of vintage chairs, and several styles of short and tall garden variety floral arrangements. I fell in love! I have officially become obsessed with lace and peonies, with vintage chandeliers and dahlias. I have become a "shabby chic" wedding girl.

Everything about this wedding reiterated the reason I want to plan weddings. It's about giving all brides and grooms the chance to feel surrounded in beauty and art and love on their wedding day. I just can't wait to see the faces of newly wed couples when I've given them the wedding of their dreams *sigh*. I just wish those days could come faster.

Thank God for pinterest and its abundance of ways to make me feel like I'm actually working while staring at beautiful wedding pictures :)

Welcome to the Blog...Waiting for the Webpage

Less than a year ago, I married my best friend, Ben. It was the best day of my life, the perfect wedding. I was thrilled that the day had finally come. Then we moved up to Maryland, and Ben went to work. All of the sudden, I was alone and bored.

I had just spent the last 22 months of my life planning a wedding. The last year and a half of college, my free time was spent poring over bridal magazines and showing dress after dress to the closest bridesmaid I had, my best friend. I read books about how to plan weddings before and after class, on the treadmill at the school’s fitness center, gawking over wedding pictures from every photographer's, wedding planner's, venue's and florist's web page. I re-watched wedding videos over and over again, imagining myself having that day. When I graduated from college, it was full steam ahead: buying my dress, booking the venue, booking the florist, tasting cakes. I couldn't get enough of the wedding world. And I couldn't imagine being done with that stage of my life.

So now that I was a married woman, I felt empty and a little sad. Obviously not about FINALLY being married, because I was loving that part! I’d heard that this happens to women after the wedding ends, but I hated stepping out of the beautiful world of weddings. I spent my days, sitting on the floor (we had no furniture at this point) and looking at the pictures I’d been tagged in on Facebook, wishing I could relive my wedding day. Then something wonderful happened.

A very dear friend of mine, who had gotten engaged the winter before my wedding, texted me. She was worried about how far behind she was with the planning of her own wedding. We talked for a while, and I told her that she would be able to ask me any question she wanted or needed to ask. Over the next few months, my friend texted me and called me occasionally asking for my help with information about where to get tuxedos, where to get the champagne I’d had for my wedding, and telling me that she was procrastinating in booking the flowers. She said she didn't know where to start. So I sat down and researched wedding florists in Houston. I ended up giving her inspiration for her bouquet and centerpieces and choosing her florist for her.

At first, when I was helping her, I didn't know if this was something I wanted to do for a living. I kept feeling like I just wanted it to be my wedding over and over again. So I helped her when she needed it but kept looking for a career that didn't involve weddings or anything around them. I tried to stay away from theknot.com and not look at the wedding magazines when shopping at the grocery store, but I just couldn't stay away.

And then another wonderful thing happened. Another dear friend, this time a girl who Ben grew up knowing, told us that she had gotten engaged! Both of us were more than thrilled for her and her new fiancé. We could tell how excited she was to be engaged to her best friend, but she was also very nervous about how to execute a wedding. One day, she texted Ben telling him that she was so nervous about the wedding plans and that she didn’t think she could go through with having a huge wedding. He told her to talk to me, that I would help her out. So we talked, and I spent the day helping her put together a solid budget and solid idea for the wedding.

In that moment, I realized that my obsessions with weddings had been sitting in the back of my mind since the first wedding I’d ever been to when I was about 5 years old. In that moment, I realized that the enjoyment I found in planning weddings wasn't just because I was getting married but because I love weddings.

After spending so much of my time researching and planning and learning about weddings, I want to use that knowledge to do something significant, to help those who don’t know where to begin or who think there is no way they can plan a wedding on their budget. I want to help every bride have the best wedding experience of her life. That being said, I can’t wait to jump start this exciting new chapter of my life and put together the best weddings, showers, and engagement parties I can possibly create.