The first formal celebration of your journey to the altar is a real time to celebrate.   This short article highlights current trends such as hiring a planner, gourmet food and getting dressed up.  Enjoy!

Whether at home, at a restaurant or in a hotel ballroom, this style of engagement party is generally a formal dress-up affair with a great catered meal and a fairly large guest list. Faith often comes into the event with a blessing before dinner, and favors are elegant and expensive—think silver serving spoons, marble coasters and leather photo flip books.

“It’s very much a mini-wedding,” wedding expert and author Sharon Naylor.

But while a traditional engagement party always includes certain specific elements, there’s nothing typical about this type of affair. Bride and groom easily can personalize their party with distinctive décor, exceptional entertainment and matchless menu options. Before you start planning, consider choosing a theme based on a favorite book or stylish period in history, like the 1920s or 1940s. Think about hiring a professional wedding coordinator to help out, too.

“Now we’re seeing more wedding coordinators hired to transform a room into a new design,” Naylor said. “It may include great table linens and chair covers, dramatic floral centerpieces at each table and lighting effects. Decorations have come a long way from the crepe-paper-and-balloons motif that we’ve seen in past decades.”

When planning your meal, remember most of your guests likely will be family. Gathering to celebrate is nothing new to this crowd, so make sure your special event features different dining options.

Naylor recommends checking in with relatives before finalizing the menu: What was served at the most recent family events? Lots of lemon chicken and the usual sausage and peppers? Opt for something completely out of the ordinary, like French fare. You also could make your timing unique; if most family affairs are dinners that take place in the evening, you could host a brunch or a high tea instead.

Add in some exceptional entertainment, and your traditional engagement party is sure to stand out as a special event. If you want to do it yourself, create your own iPod or MP3 playlist for the day. Or you could hire a harpist, pianist or jazz band—or mix it up a bit.

“For the dinner portion of the evening, you can have a jazz singer with the pianist who can sing old standards,” Sasha Souza, a California-based event planner, said. “A strolling violinist could also work the room.”

Did you have an engagement party?  How large was it, did you have it at home or at a restaurant?   SHARE!

Melinda Wagner is a Wedding and Event Planner with Mrs. Hancock’s.  Allow her to be of service on your very special day or for your important event!

One of the services that Mrs. Hancock’s offers is our Day-of Coordinating Package.  It’s a common misconception that couples believe our service will only include the actual day.  Day-of Coordinators do a lot more than show up on the day of your wedding and we would like to give you a little more information on what Day-of Coordination involves.

Brides who choose a Day-of Package are often women who need little guidance along the way.  Our Day-Of Wedding Package means the Bride is responsible for doing the majority of her own planning.  But please remember, in order for your planner to do her job – and do it well – she will need to know every detail you have planned.  No detail is too small!  After all, it’s all about the details, right?

So, if you decide to have a cigar or espresso bar at the last minute, your planner needs to know.  If you want to include a wine ceremony with your vows or want to surprise your family with a special soloist singing at the ceremony, the planner needs to know that, too!  A good planner will be asking MANY questions about your day; perhaps even asking you to fill out some questionnaires, as sometimes those tiny types of details can fall through the cracks.  We believe that communication is imperative.

A reputable planner starts coordinating the final details of your wedding at least a month or two out.  We have time-lines to create, vendors to contact, coordination of deliveries, confirming of final payments and of course, going over every little detail with a fine toothed comb to ensure nothing has been over looked in your contracts.  We can, and have jumped in when hired two weeks out from the wedding!  However, the more time you allow us to be involved, the better.

Speaking of time; your planner should also be creating a detailed itinerary for you, your wedding party, and all your vendors; and this too takes time.  Scheduling all the vendors, letting everyone know where to be and at what time; those important contact names, cell numbers and emergency backup contacts … these things can’t be gathered on the “Day- Of.”  It all takes work, organizational skills and preparation on our part.

Trust us, you don’t want a planner who says they’re just going to show up on your wedding day and “run everything”; making sure everyone is doing what they are supposed to be doing, when they are supposed to be doing it.  By then it will be too late and much more difficult to fix any problems.  Your planner is supposed to ensure that everyone is completing your vision.  So know up front: we spend at least 50+ hours to ‘simply’ “Day- Of” coordinate, so while you may want to lean towards the lowest price planner you can find, a ridiculously low price quote would tell me this planner is not going to do all she should be doing.  This applies to all wedding vendors; we believe you get what you pay for.  You do not want to take a risk on this special day.

You can ask ANY of our past clients and they will all agree that if you are getting married you NEED a wedding planner; or should we say you need us!

If you would like more information on our Day-of Coordination packages, please contact Mrs. Hancock at 602.234.1200, Melinda Wagner at 480.620.6470 or Kelley Hurley at 602.614.4669 or e-mail us at weddings@mrshancocks.com

Welcome to our Blog; enjoy our unique and special take on all things Etiquette and Wedding related…

Why use a Wedding Planner, you ask?

As we enter “Wedding Season”, there is so much to consider for the bride and groom as they begin the planning process.  Weddings are intricate and detailed and growing more so all the time.   Where to begin?  What is the first thing the couple should do?  One major question is, “are we going to hire a planner/coordinator”?  Certainly opinions on the topic are as varied as the planners that are out there.   Some guidance in this area is wise; lots of your questions can be answered in the following article.

 At every major event in life professionals are present! A doctor delivers a baby, clergy persons baptize and confirm children, city and school officials preside at graduation, directors take charge of movies and stage productions and licensed persons perform marriages and bury the dead. In each of these events rituals are involved. There is a system for each, carried out by someone trained to do so.

With the high cost of weddings and the time involved to pull all the facets together, it is all but impossible for the bride to do this while keeping her daily routine (which is already in overload) intact. Listen to some of the comments made by brides who did not have a wedding coordinator.

• “By the day of my wedding I was so overwhelmed by all the things I had to do I was like a zombie. I hardly remember repeating my vows and I never did get anything to eat.”
• “There were so many mistakes in my wedding that could have been avoided had I hired a wedding coordinator. I never gave a thought to coordinating the arrival of the vendors, so the cake was delivered before the linens and flowers. After the linens arrived, the cake table was set up and the cake had to be moved a second time. One pillar tilted, so I had a lop-sided cake. We were shorted one bouquet and no one realized it until it was too late for the florist to deliver it. Everyone was running around screaming–or so it seemed–blaming each other. I just stood there crying. All of this could have been avoided had I hired a professional coordinator.”
• A coordinator schedules the arrival of vendors–Example: The linens would arrive at 10:00 o’clock, the flowers at 10:30 and the cake at 11:00. Thus the cake table would be set up and decorated before the cake arrived. She would have checked the number of bouquets against the number ordered before the florist left. In a real emergency, she could simply pluck a few flowers from floral arrangements and, using tools from her emergency kit, make a bouquet.
• “I forgot my garter. I had really looked forward to having Dan toss it to his best man, hoping that catching the bouquet would cause him to propose to my best friend, Cindy, who was my maid-of-honor. Imagine her disappointment and my embarrassment.”
• A coordinator always has a spare garter in her emergency kit.
• “We forgot the Guest Registry Book so we have no record of those who shared our beautiful day. How sad, especially so since it was the last time my grandmother signed her name. She died the next week.”

A professional coordinator has a checklist, which she uses to be sure everything arrives and is set up. Some even carry an extra Registry Book. By now you get the picture. A coordinator is trained to plan and coordinate every minute detail and oversee all of it!

Are coordinators expensive? Some brides feel a coordinator is too expensive. Compared to what? The gown? The reception? The band? Overall, the money spent for a coordinator is a small percentage of the wedding budget, which is where the coordinator begins before she offers any suggestions. Many times she can actually save you money because she knows the “going” price. Frequently she can negotiate prices. The following is a true story–a telephone conversation I overheard while in the office of a Wedding Planner: Continue reading “Welcome to Mrs. Hancock’s Blog site…” »