Category Archives: wedding planning

Wedding Planning: Don’t End the Marriage Before it Starts

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Marriage is something that should not be entered into lightly. A solid marriage will often be tested, and will go through growth spurts, challenges, and is never easy. If a marriage was easy I don’t’ think that more than 50% of marriages would end in divorce, right?

• So, are you or someone you are close to ready to take the plunge into a lifelong commitment of marriage?
• Are they planning a wedding?

A marriage is difficult, rewarding, amazing, and time consuming! What’s crazy is that about 67% of couples entering into a marriage or legal commitment also plan to have a wedding that will cost anywhere from $5,000 to well over $65,000! That alone can cause a divorce within the first year! All kidding aside, the truth is a wedding can cause much stress and in all seriousness challenges a couple to make crucial decisions that are both emotional and logical when planning a wedding.

Here are the top 5 stress factors and solutions when planning a wedding.

Set a Wedding Budget

A wedding budget is crucial. Before you just pick a magical number, sit down with your fiancé and go over your finances, what others (parents, step-parents, etc.) are contributing, and how much debt you want to go into from your wedding.

Before you pick your budget, I suggest you do research on the kind of wedding vendors you want to hire and how much their services cost in your area. This will empower you to have the wedding you desire knowing what the professional wedding vendors in your area charge so you are not surprised when you realize that you might not have budgeted enough.

Not budgeting enough is the most common problem. Couples often want a $50,000 wedding on a $10,000 budget. Unfortunately, the world does not work this way, and you will find yourself disappointed and stressed out if you don’t budget correctly for your wedding day.

How to Incorporate the Family into the Wedding Planning

Family can be stressful. You might have numerous members of your family involved in the planning aspect of your wedding. Many different opinions can cause a very stressful environment, so make sure you carefully pick what (if any) family members help in the planning process and/or financially. When family members contribute financially to a wedding they often want to help in the planning process. You might want this, or you may consider this to be a nightmare. Make sure that you and your fiancé really think this one out long and hard before asking family members to get involved in the wedding planning process.

Not Enough Time in the Day to Plan a Wedding

Do you already feel like there is not enough time in the day? Well, planning a wedding will more than likely feel like a part-time job, if not more! Make sure that you actually have the time to plan a wedding, if not I HIGHLY suggest that you consider hiring a reputable and professional wedding planner.

Too many couples think that a wedding planner is an unnecessary cost. Great wedding planners will pay for themselves, literally. What I mean is that you can actually save money on other services and items by hiring a wedding planner! Seriously, I am not lying. If you and your fiancé work full-time, I would suggest calling and meeting with 3 wedding planners and see if one is a match for you! If you don’t feel that you need a wedding planner to help with the planning, I do suggest hiring a day-of-wedding coordinator. A day of wedding coordinator will be the best investment ever.

Don’t Forget Date Night When Planning a Wedding

Like I said above, planning a wedding is like having a high-stressed part-time job. It’s easy to spend the time off you have planning your wedding and let it take over your life. Don’t neglect your marriage before it even starts! Make sure to delegate at least 1 day a week to spend with your fiancé and make sure the “wedding planning” topic is off limits! You will be very happy you did this.

The Wedding Guest List

You want to invite 100 guests and keep your wedding intimate with close friends and family. Your fiancé wants to invite 250 guests because he/she has almost 75 cousins and has a very large extended family.

You have done your research and you know that the average cost for a wedding is around $180 per person. So if you invite 250 guests you are looking at spending about $45,000. Your budget is between $15,000 and $20,000. The math speaks for itself, and you’ve already done your research on the professional wedding vendors you want to hire and you know that it will be near impossible to have 250 people and hire the wedding professionals that you have researched and like.

I have seen many couples and families fight about the guest count. When making this decision, do NOT try to cut corners, as you will more than likely be disappointed with parts of your wedding. Be reasonable, realistic, and remember the word compromise with your fiancé about the guest list. Make sure that you listen and take into consideration family tradition, how many friends are in town versus out of town, how long it’s been since you’ve seen people on your guest list, etc.

Please make sure to suggest this blog post and this website as a resource to help anyone plan their wedding, whether they live in the Pacific NW or not, this website has not only amazing wedding professionals but also tips, tricks, and videos to view that will help plan the perfect wedding.

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Local Celebrity Host Drew Carney – KGW News Channel 8

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We at the Wedding Experience are so lucky and happy to make the announcement that Drew Carney from KGW News Channel 8 will be the host for our mock wedding! His “Out and About” reports can be seen weekday mornings on KGW’s “NewsChannel 8 at Sunrise” between 5-7a.m. He will be guiding guests through the night and asking vendors questions about their business. The best part is Drew got married at the Benson Hotel 6yrs ago and is very happy to be coming back, and can’t wait to show couples how wonderful their wedding can be.

Drew’s pursuit of a career in TV began almost 20 years ago while attending college at Temple University in Philadelphia. After graduating with a bachelor’s degree, he started out as a sports anchor/reporter with stops in small markets like Abilene, Texas, & Johnstown, Pennsylvania. In October of 2000, Drew moved to Portland and two years later made the switch from sports anchor to morning show feature reporter. Since then, he’s learned to call the Pacific Northwest home… marrying a born and raised Oregonian in 2006. He and his wife now share a home in the Portland suburbs with their twin boys. Drew is is very excited to to be coming back to the Benson, and will see you on October 27th 2012!


TICKETS: Click here to buy NOW!

What Is The Wedding Experience? Watch Our New Video & Learn!

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The Wedding Experience is a mock wedding, and not a bridal expo. This is a 5hr wedding starting with ceremony and going through: cocktail, dinner, dessert, and dancing. Eat a full 4 course meal, have unlimited beer & wine, and win prizes for both the groom & the bride. We will also have a guide available online, mobile, and on a native app for iPad/iPhone & Droid. It will have a unique matching system to pick the best vendors for you based on the criteria you fill out on our questionnaire. Watch and experience what this is all about:

More Information:
Simon Blanco
360-771-8745
weddingexperiencepdx@gmail.com

Purchase Tickets October 27th 2012 @ Benson Hotel:
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Referals – The Dirty Little $ecret!

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Many vendors have posted in the past on Facebook that they don’t pay for referrals, and that no one in the wedding industry should expect to pay. There might be a small group of professionals out there that work together that don’t charge each other, but that is definitely not the norm. The norm actually is people “Pay to Play” and it typically starts with the venues (but not all) with their “preferred” vendors list. The reason they recommend the vendors on their list is because each one of them paid hundreds, even up to $2,500 to be on a preferred list, or charge a percentage like 10-15%. This can mislead the bride because when the brides are asking for an opinion they want a real answer, not one based off of monetary gains. We all hate how lobbyist use millions to change laws in our Government, and paying to be preferred doesn’t mean anything except for the fact that you payed to be on their list. Some venues will even charge the client extra for choosing an “outside vendor,” the extra charge is so overpriced they just stick with the Preferred list because it’s cheaper.

With our other business we have chosen not to pay to be on lists in Portland. As a result MEGA Music Entertainment is only recommended by 3 venues. Sometimes when we do a wedding at a venue we are not preferred at we run into problems with the management & some of the staff in charge. They will intentionally make things harder for us to do our job in hopes that we look bad, and I wish I was making this up. We have had a manager tell us that our setup looks ugly, and takes up too much real estate, so we should take it down (even though our client hired us specifically because of our setup). I have had a very popular venue not call me back even though we have called 3 times & left 3 emails, but they have preferred DJ’s, so I don’t get any response back. I did a walk through with the clients and the weddings & event coordinator would not talk to me, and left as soon as she could. This is a high-end venue and I expected higher standards, but when money is involved, I guess I can’t expect much . . . it’s politics. The whole point of everyone’s job is to help the client as best they can, and money should not effect service.

If you are a bride that is looking at the list of “Preferred Vendors,” there is a good chance that the people on that list are paying to be there in some form, or doing “trade.”

5min Video Is Better Than 60sec!

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We chose to go above and beyond with our guide by actually providing a commercial for all of our wedding professionals. Women watch more video than men! It only makes sense that we provide a video of your business for them to watch. 90% of people change the channel when a commercial comes on for either TV or radio. Think about it, how many channels do you have as a “back up” channel the moment a commercial comes on?

Well it turns out that the only time that people actually watch a commercial is when they go to a website to get more information. If the video is good enough people will watch it over again and pass the link on to friends. In fact it turns out that people will turn to You Tube to try to find even more video on the business that they are searching for. So it pays to have a commercial, but not the the standard 30-60sec that you get on TV or radio, you need to have something that is 3-5min to give the kind of information that the client is looking for.

We had clients who looked at video that was 30 & 60 seconds long. We had up to 40 videos for them to view, and after they were done watching them we asked them basic questions about what they liked & didn’t like. The overwhelming majority of our brides liked the video, but said it was not enough information. They said they wanted to watch something that explained everything they wanted to know in 5min or less, but it had to be full of the information that they wanted. If it was too boring, or not informational enough they would just click on something else. This makes sense because when a vendor watches a commercial they are not trying to extract information, they are just watching. If you are a bride who is looking for the information, you will pay very close attention to that video, and play it again if there was something that you wanted to double check.

This might be radical thinking, but when you stop and think about yourself, what do you prefer? I know I look for video, so does my wife, friends, and family, but only when I am looking for the info. I will spend extra time looking for video, or watching video if it has the information that I’m looking for.

Please check out our first commercial of Holland Studios: