LWPI is excited to announce that it has joined forces with world-renowned design icon Preston Bailey. Together, they will create and launch the first event-design course of its kind, based on Bailey’s 30 years of experience with such celebrities as Donald Trump, Oprah Winfrey, Uma Thurman, Joan Rivers, Donna Karan, Liza Minnelli, Matt Lauer, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Ivanka Trump and others.

Preston Bailey’s Signature Wedding and Event Design course will allow students to experience the step-by-step processes and techniques utilized by one of the globe’s leading wedding and event experts, industry pioneer Bailey. This new course is a comprehensive “how-to” for the industry, providing real behind-the-scenes footage, photographs and documentation, including insights into the wizardry that can make a wedding a one-of-a-kind, magical event for a couple and their guests.

Starting this summer, Preston Bailey’s Signature Wedding and Event Design course will roll out to nearly 2,000 academic institutions around the United States . Dependent upon each school’s administration, the course will be available to both full-time college students in regular classroom environments and adults in continuing-education programs. It will also be made directly available to students through an online program hosted by LWPI.

“Event design has been a life changing experience for me,” said Bailey, the founder of Preston Bailey Designs. “I am excited to share my passion for design by working with the experienced team at The Wedding Planning Institute.  It’s a privilege to help others harness their talents to create weddings and other events that are truly unforgettable occasions.”

Are you interested in enrolling? Good news! You can enroll today! (The class will be available in both English and Spanish.) Want more information on this exciting opportunity? Check out the following links:

* More about the partnership and the course.
* Enroll for the class today.
* Take a tour of the course (English).
* Take a tour of the course (Spanish).
* Visit Preston Bailey’s website.

You already know that the Lovegevity Wedding Planning Institute is the No. 1 place to turn when you want to begin a career as an event and wedding coordinator. But did you know that Lovegevity also offers a Green Wedding Planning Course? Going green is all the rage these days, and it’s with good reason: Doing so can be an affordable option for many weddings - especially for DIY brides - and it can leave everyone involved with a feeling of environmental responsibility. Environmentally friendly wedding ideas are exploding all over the U.S., and the Internet has a wealth of information on “going green.” As Lovegevity says, “A green wedding is a celebration of awareness. At a green wedding, a couple is not just affirming their commitment to one another, they are also affirming their commitment to a sustainable life together - one that takes the needs to the environment and future generations into account.”

Lovegevity’s Green Wedding Certification Course comes from a class designed by Kate Harrison and her book, The Green Bride. Harrison graduated from Vassar with a major in Environmental Conservation and Sustainable Development. She wrote The Green Bride after she and her husband, Barry, planned their own green wedding in 2007.

What are some ways you can turn a wedding “green?” Have you had any brides offer suggestions to make their weddings more environmentally sustainable?

Links you may be interested in:
*Take a tour of Lovegevity’s Green Wedding Planning Course.
* Enroll in Lovegevity’s Green Wedding Planning Course.
* Check out a blog by Lovegevity’s CEO, Cho Phillips, about Going Green.
* Read an excerpt from Kate Harrison’s The Green Bride or buy your own copy.

Wedding and event planner Nadia Digilov is back with Lovegevity’s Wedding Planning Institute to share more of her excellent planning tips. Want to read more? See her first guest post: Top 10 Wedding Trends for 2010.

10 Secrets to Feeding Guests without Eating Your Budget!
By Nadia Diglov

One of the biggest checks that you will cut on your wedding date will be on the cost of catering. Food and alcohol can really eat up your budget and typically accounts for roughly 40-50% of the overall wedding cost.

Hard to believe, isn’t it?

To put this into perspective, think about going out for dinner: the cost of a medium size dinner for one at a major city such as New York is about $30 per person with tax & tip and not including much alcohol (perhaps 1 glass of wine). If you take this number and multiply it by 200 people the total comes out 6,000. Not that scary yet? Well, take into account that most guests will have more than 1 glass of wine (more like 2 or 3), a cocktail hour and a full Viennese table for desert. This number now doubles!

Want to cut a few corners and still keep your guests full and fed? Below are the 10 ways to feed your guests without breaking your budget. Using just the right fusion of psychology, imagination and practicality, you will be able to impress your guests without spending a fortune.

Here are 10 secrets of a luxury wedding dining experience without spending a fortune:

1.) Know your guests: the first step to designing an quality and budget friendly budget is to know your people! What are their priorities? Are they more drinkers or eaters, or both? What is more important, a bar that will have a variety of top shelf alcohol or 5 entrée options during main course? Your answer to this question will drive the rest of the decisions that you will make.

2.) Make a great first impression: One of my mentors once told me “you have only one time to make a first impression.” With experience I also realized that a first impression is really hard to break. A lesson in psychology for you: make a great first impression on your guests as soon as they arrive to your wedding! Set the tone with an immaculately dressed server greeting guests as they arrive to your wedding serving Champagne Bellini’s at the door! This will set an environment where your guests will feel welcomed and comfortable at your wedding, or in other words, at this time you will need to begin breaking a first impression of comfort and joy which most of the time will be hard to do.

3.) Cocktail hour: If you are having a cocktail hour, consider having the servers hand pass the pricier items such as shrimps and scallops. This will typically save an average of 30% of your catering budget.

4.) Not all seafood is priced equally: Calamari are about half the price of shrimp, make your choices for cocktail hour and reception keeping this in mind. Ask your caterer a lot of questions!

5.) Know your seasonal foods: Some dining options are perfectly affordable during a summer season and are expensive during the fall and vice versa. Scarcity of a particular food will increase the cost by up to 40%.

6.) Discount options: If you will have children at the reception, choose the caterer that offers 1/2 price for children up to the age of 16. This will save tons of cash especially if you have a huge family.

7.) Mix it up: Depending on the evaluation of your guests, consider a tasting menu that will offer up to 8 mini courses for your guests.

8.) Mix up the alcohol brands: Certain brands of vodka for example are pricier than others. Mix up expensive brands for guests that will inquire on brand and have your bar tender use the less expensive brands for guests that do not have a preference. This little trick will save you about 30% of the cost of alcohol.

9.) Close the open bar an hour earlier: Begin serving coffee and tea approximately 1 hour before you party will end. This will have tons of benefits by default. First, your guests will have a chance to sober up before leaving your party and second, it will save you up to 35%!

10.) Fore-go the full Viennese table: Go for a 5 tier over the top cake, with a chocolate fondue station and bite sized desserts that will be passed around. This will save you about $15 per person and that’s about $3,000, a nice chunk of change that you can use towards your honeymoon or (depending on your area of residence) a few months rent on your new apartment!

ABOUT NADIA DIGILOV & CELEBRATING IN STYLE:

Nadia Digilov is Manhattan’s premier luxury wedding expert and the founder and CEO of NYC event production firm Celebrating in Style. After seven years on the trading floors of the largest investment banks on Wall Street, her passion for production led her to begin creating luxury events that leave a lasting impression. Since 2002 Nadia has created weddings, corporate events, concerts, trade shows, and marketing events in major cities around the world including New York, Miami, Moscow, Tel Aviv and St. Petersburg.

He’s one part basketball coach one part … wedding planner? Chris Mooney’s duties as the men’s basketball coach at Beaver College were only part of his duties. He was also known to take a timeout from practice to talk to brides! Mooney had to talk with any bride whose wedding was going to take place in the Grey Towers Castle on the campus of Beaver College, now Arcadia University, in the Philadelphia suburb of Glenside, Pa. His coaching job was part-time, but as professional, certified wedding and event planners you know that planning any wedding is a full-time job!

* Fashion alert! Urban Outfitters, the brand of young, hipster clothing loved the world over, is planning to dip its toes into the world of wedding fashion. The new line is expected to launch around Valentine’s Day 2011, just in time for all the newly engaged couples of next year. We’re not sure what this line will look like, but we expect it to be heavy on color and funk. Full lines of bridesmaid dresses and wedding jewelry are expected, too, and the entire line will be designed with the help of Anthropolgie.

Princess Diana

* It was truly a fairytale wedding. When Princess Diana wed Prince Charles all the eyes of the world were on them … and on her dress. While it was indeed a showstopper it was also a dress that very few other brides could pull off. While the marriage didn’t end up as all had planned the gown has gone down in history. Now it’s Di’s brother’s turn to wed (yes, for a third time), and he’ll be saying vows with Lady Bianca Eliot. What kind of gown do you expect for this royal wedding? What kind of gown would you suggest, considering the circumstances?

* Move over Bridezilla because this Groomzilla may give you a run for your money! In our experience brides have the opposite trouble when it comes to wedding planning: Getting their grooms to participate in the planning at all is like pulling teeth! This U.K. groom, however, took the reins and took care of all the details, much to the delight of his bride. Well, almost. The bride did choose her own gown!

As certified wedding and event planners you may think you’ve seen it all, but as stories as these prove: Think again! Do you have any stories to share? Every wedding experience is one to learn from!

Jus as such things as invitations and programs set the tone of a wedding the favors can set the memory of the wedding in the guests’ minds. There are always the run-of-the-mill favors that we’ve seen time and again: CDs of the couple’s favorite tunes; miniature boxes of colored M&Ms; bags made of netting filled with Jordan almonds. Those are great ideas, and they always look cute on the reception tables, too. But as a certified wedding and event planner it’s always nice to have a few tricks up your sleeve, and presenting a few possible unique favor ideas to your bridal couple is sure to go over well. Here are a few really cute ones we’ve run across recently.

Photo courtesy of iDIY

1. When it comes to food trends these days we’re all about going local. Is your couple marrying on a farm? Consider offering guests small packets of seeds, tied with a pretty bow so that they can remember the wedding’s beautiful setting. If the wedding is taking place at an apple orchard a jar of homemade apple butter would be adorable, tied with string, with a wooden spoon attached. (And if the labels are hand-written? That’s all the better.)

2. Beach weddings will never go out of style because there are very few things more romantic. Choosing favors for wedding guests, however, can be difficult because if there is anything a brides doesn’t want to be it’s cheesy. Candles and picture frames and dried starfish or sand dollars are all nice options, but we can think of something a bit more romantic. These corked glass vials, filled with a small thank-you note from the couple, would be a cute touch to any beach wedding. Tied with a string and a note that says, of course, sealed with a kiss, they would be sure to be a hit!

3. There are many brides these days who are choosing to Go Green with their weddings. Favors don’t always fit in with this mentality, but there are ways to show a couple’s love for the environment and their guests. Anything that grows (along the same lines as the seed packets above) is a good idea: bulbs, flowers native to the area, tree seedlings from the Arbor Foundation (our personal favorite). For the couple who wants to avoid the physical gift but still honor their guests there are tree-planting programs where saplings are planted in honor of anyone a couple wants to name. If there is good food and good drink to go around guests may be more than happy to accept a favor in their honor instead of a trinket to take home!

Photo courtesy of Smitten Sticks!

4. We also absolutely love the idea of these smitten sticks. Can you even imagine how crazy the kids at the reception would go for these? Throw in a photo booth, and guests will be in love with the idea. And we can imagine them taking home these adorable sticks to make even more silly photos. The memories for the bridal couple would be great, and the guests would have a great time with them!

It’s obvious that favors are a great way to add fun and whimsy to a wedding and that they are a wonderful way to showcase a bridal couple’s style. As certified wedding and event planners coming up with fun ideas is one of the best parts of the job! These are a few great ideas to pack away in your folder, but the sky is truly the limit when it comes to wedding favors. Try to think outside of the box and let the sky be the limit when it comes to the creative parts of wedding planning. If your bride has an idea in her head of what she’d like to try - run with it! Make her day special and fun with unique favor ideas!

Before a bridal couple can do anything else, i.e. order invitations, book venues or hire caterers they must set their date. As certified wedding and event planners it’s your job to know which dates should be off-limits if the festivities are to go off without a hitch. Here is a list of dates you may want to encourage couples to avoid in 2011. Yes, 2011! Since it’s March, and Valentine’s Day is just recently behind us, there are lots of newly engaged couples out there looking for wedding planners right now! You can never be too prepared in the wedding industry, right?

* January 1: New Year’s Day
* February 5 and 6: Super Bowl Weekend
* February 12 through 14: Valentine’s Day Weekend
* April 2 through 4: Final days of NCAA Basketball Tournament
* April 22 through 24: Easter Weekend
* May 7 and 8: Mother’s Day Weekend (and many college graduations)
* May 27 through 30: Memorial Day Weekend
* June 18 and 19: Father’s Day Weekend
* July 1 through 4: Fourth of July Weekend
* September 2 through 5: Labor Day Weekend (End of summer and last vacations for many.)
* October 29 through 31: Halloween Weekend (Although some couples may want to choose this weekend.)
* November 24 through 27: Thanksgiving Weekend
* December 23 through 25: Christmas Eve and Christmas Day
* December 30 through January 1, 2012: New Year’s Eve and Day

What do you think? As professional, certified wedding and event planners do you steer your couples away from specific weekends? It may be a good idea to discuss family birthdays and big anniversaries, as well as due dates for relatives and members of the bridal party. How do you help a couple choose their date or dissuade them from using one they may have already set?

Without realizing it at the time, Jessica Moore had been groomed since childhood to become a Wedding Coordinator Instructor. She grew up in the wedding industry as she watched and assisted her parents run their video-production company, which had deep roots in wedding videography. Not only did this experience provide Jessica with powerful background knowledge in event execution, but she also learned intimate lessons in running a small business while watching her parents’ business grow.

Growing up behind the scenes, Jessica learned that it was executing the small details that made a successful and stress-free event. It wasn’t until her friends started asking such questions as “When should we do the toast?” that Jessica realized she had unique knowledge! What was second nature to her was an invaluable resource to many friends who were now brides. Encouraged by friends and family, Jessica launched Something To Celebrate in March 2005 with enormous success.

Under Jessica’s direction, Something To Celebrate’s weddings and events have been published in numerous national and local publications. In The Knot’s inaugural Best Of magazine in 2007, Something to Celebrate scored 100% – the only wedding-coordinating firm in the nation to receive a perfect score from The Knot’s surveyed brides. Although The Knot no longer publishes grades for vendors, Something To Celebrate is proud to be included in the exclusive magazine every year. Jessica is repeatedly quoted in the media on wedding trends and is serving consecutive terms on the board of directors for Austin Wedding and Event Coordinators (AWEC).

Jessica is a graduate of Trinity University, where she studied education, and has 10 years of experience as a teacher. Through her role as Instructor with The Wedding Planning Institute, Jessica is able to marry (pun intended!) her roles as business owner, wedding coordinator and teacher into the perfect combination for her students as they take that important step in their wedding-coordinator career. Jessica recognizes the importance of obtaining your wedding-coordinator certification.

“Pursuing your certification sends a powerful message to your future clients and vendors. You didn’t just wake up and decide you wanted to be J-Lo (God forbid!), you made a well thought-out and researched decision to invest in a career, helping clients execute flawless events. When you register for this course, you’re demonstrating your commitment to excel in this profession,” she says.

The next Wedding Coordinator Certification courses taught by Jessica Moore at Texas State University will be held Feb. 1, 2010, to March 3, 2010, on Mondays and Wednesdays from 7 to 10 p.m. and March 16, 2010, through April 15, 2010, on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 7 to 10 p.m.. Tuition is $855 and includes classroom instruction, textbook, six months online curriculum and support access, and post-graduate job placement assistance. To register, contact the Office of Continuing Education at 512-245-2507 or continuinged@txstate.edu. Register online at http://www.txstate.edu/continuinged/.