Hello Readers!
I got so many emails from clients teasing me about my bad joke at the end of the last email that I was inspired to do a Top 10 wedding jokes to keep tonight’s entry short and sweet. It’s late and I’m still in my office. Unfortunately, when I started surfing the web, I found that most jokes are about marriage and they’re not flattering about the institution. The about weddings are usually dirty. Not exactly what I had in mind. So I had to do a lot more research and call my cousin Traci again in order to come up with 10 jokes about weddings that are in the right spirit of wedding planning. I tried to find 10 that weren’t completely tasteless too. A few of them are actually funny, although I’m pretty sure this doesn’t qualify as a bona fide top ten list. Here we go:
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Hola Brides and Grooms!
Can you believe it’s yet another official holiday in Puerto Rico? I’m not sure what we call it — “Sober Up after Three King’s Day Holiday” maybe? But it’s quiet here on the island, and we woke up to a grey sky and drizzling rain. Good — maybe it will clean up the air a bit! I’ve been having allergies ever since the volcano at Montserrat went off again over the holidays. Anyway, today I’m blogging about 10 great ways to skinny down the size of your guest list if the numbers are starting to look daunting.
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Happy Three King’s Day to Everybody!
Three King’s Day is a big holiday here in Puerto Rico. In fact, for adults, it’s a bigger deal than Christmas. Christmas is for children, and Three King’s Day is for the adults. So I worked this morning and took this afternoon off with friends to celebrate on the beach. I’m trying so hard to be “Sorta Rican.” Then we came home and opened presents. Yep, we exchange gifts on Three King’s Day and on Christmas down here. Pretty cool. And my husband is the best husband in the whole world! He got me a pink 5-quart Kitchen Aid mixer. If you don’t cook, you don’t get it. But if you do, you’ll understand that’s the one thing I left in storage up in DC that I’ve really regretted not bringing. And my old one isn’t pink! Wheeee!
Okay, enough bragging about my super-cool mixer and on to today’s blog entry. This is a tough one for me to write because every time I say anything nice about any specific wedding venue on this island, I take a tremendous amount of crap from the other venues that I don’t mention. The thing is, I’m not writing this blog for the vendors or villa owners here on Vieques. I don’t give a flying you-know-what what they think. I’m writing this blog for you guys — new brides and grooms who are considering getting married in Vieques or Culebra — so the opinion of a bunch of grumpy people down here who just want more business from my clients doesn’t bother me in the slightest. But I’m telling you this because I want each and every one of you to appreciate the shit I’m going to take for posting this list for you! There are literally 100 cool places you could have your wedding and reception in Vieques or Culebra. There are some restaurants that do a nice job too. But this is the list of my current favorites as we enter 2010. I’ll start in Vieques.
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Hello Brides and Grooms!
Today was a general housekeeping day around here. We’re getting ready for all of our January weddings before the wedding guests start descending on us next week. That means we’re stuffing welcome bags and prepping tubs of materials for setup at the different venues. Meanwhile, everybody else in Puerto Rico is on vacation. I should go on strike!!! Actually, we’re going to go to a beach party for Three King’s Day tomorrow afternoon lest we lose our status as “Sorta-Ricans” for failing to observe the holiday at all. I need a dose of humor because I’m still in the office working at 8 o’clock at night with no hope of getting out of here in the near future, and I decided to blog ab0ut some funny and not-so-funny stuff I’ve seen that came in the form of emergencies and catastrophes at weddings. Most of the time we make lemonade out of lemons. Once we made bacon out of Swine Flu. But in general, nothing has every actually ruined a wedding planned by our company. But.. the top 10 worst emergencies/bloopers/close calls I’ve seen are as follows (in no particular order):
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Hi Everybody!
Today’s blog is for all the MoH’s out there who don’t have a wedding planner to count on for emergencies on the big day. If you’re the bride’s #1 girl for the day and she’s planned her own wedding, you have to be prepared for little emergencies that could pop up right before the bride is ready to head down the aisle. Some of the wedding magazines give you ridiculously huge, long lists of supplies. But there are really only a few things that you absolutely, positively must have handy in case you need them. In no particular order, the maid of honor should bring a small bag with the following items:
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Hi Everybody!
I can’t believe this weekend is already over. I spent most of it getting my household back in order before all of the January brides and their guests start arriving. This coming week is one of my least favorite weeks of the year because it’s not the holidays anymore back in the states and all of my clients expect me to be working. However, the Christmas holidays don’t end until January 11th down here this year. We celebrate Three King’s Day on January 6th in a bigger way than Christmas in Puerto Rico, so nobody goes back to work until two days after that. This year, Three King’s falls on a Wednesday, so nobody is going back to work until the following Monday. Except for me. I’ll be in my office tomorrow morning because my clients don’t live in Puerto Rico… Yes, I am pouting. But enough of that, here we go with today’s blog — the top ten reasons you should get married in Vieques!
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Hey Folks!
I love the way New Year’s gave us a nice long weekend this year. I just got home from a BBQ and pool party at my friend Colleen’s house and I wanted to pop off this quick blog for you to make at least the slightest effort of keeping my word about blogging every day. And if I’m going to post this in the next few minutes and get it in under the wire, I gotta go short and sweet. So here are the 10 songs I heard more than any other at weddings over the last few years. In no particular order:
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Happy New Year!
And congratulations to all of the new brides-to-be who became engaged last night. And congratulations to their fiances, the brave young men who actually had the nerve to take the rings out of their pockets and ask the big question. New Year’s Eve is one of THE most popular holidays for couples to become engaged. The only official holiday more popular than New Year’s Eve is Valentine’s Day. So I’m going to be very, very busy for the next two months talking to newly engaged brides and grooms who are considering destination weddings. And that usually means that I don’t have time to blog and once I start skipping days, it gets easy to skip even more. So I’m going to make a big commitment here today — let’s call it my public New Year’s resolution — I’m going to blog every day of January. And if you’re a regular reader, you know I love Top Tens. So, in honor of 2010, I’m going to post a new Top Ten every single day. I know, I know… I shouldn’t make promises that I can’t keep. But I’m going to give it my best shot!
And because we want to start out the New Year laughing, let’s start with a very funny top 10 theme — the 10 dumbest things I’ve ever seen or heard at a wedding I’ve planned (in no particular order):
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Happy New Year!
Or Prospero Ano Nuevo, as they say down here. But I’ve recently been informed that “ano” without a tilde over the “n” doesn’t mean year so I’m probably posting dirty messages on the Internet in my quest to bring you all good tidings! It’s hard to believe that 2009 has come to a close already. I mean, seriously folks — when did it get here? Time goes faster as we get older — that is soooo not just something old people say, it’s really true. And it seems like the more weddings I have on the calendar, the faster the weeks fly by. We had a banner year at Weddings in Vieques, and we successfully launched Weddings in Culebra as well. It’s hard to believe we’ve been doing this for more than two years already!
As with all things that are worth it, building a wedding planning business on two tiny islands off another Caribbean island was a lot of work. We’ve put in more time and energy than we ever imagined we would — I remember when our goal was to do two weddings a month. LOL. Now the rule is no more than two weddings per weekend. My, how things have changed. And with every wedding we do, we learn something new. Sometimes we’re just streamlining our processes, but sometimes we learn things we never thought we’d ever have to know. And those are the interesting ones. I won’t tell you how we learned to sort the lights differently to expedite setups, or how we bought our own buffet tablecloths that reach all the way to the floor since the rental company refused to carry them — I’m going to tell you some of the REALLY GOOD lessons learned. Let’s just hope all my former clients aren’t reading this!
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Hi there!
No blog today — just a quick note of holiday greeting to all of our readers — especially our clients. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. We hope you’re all having a great day and looking forward to your upcoming weddings. If you’re reading this, you’re either celebrating your last single holiday season or your first married one. Whichever it is — sit back and enjoy it and love every minute of it! Merry Christmas!
Sandy