Wednesday, September 21, 2011

You hired a wedding planner?!?!


Yep.  Miss DIY, Bonnie Projects, Martha wannabe hired a wedding planner.

I think it’s because of the way I make decisions.  Pretty much every decision I make is based on laying out all the available options, carefully weighing the pros and cons, and coming to a rational and well-thought-out decision.  If you apply that to the twenty bajillion decisions a bride has to make when planning a wedding, it gets overwhelming very quickly.  Come on, it took me six weeks just to pick out my last car!

The sheer multitude of options available was becoming completely overwhelming for me, and sucking all the fun out of wedding planning.  So I called around, talked to a handful of planners, and picked an energetic, organized, experienced young woman who grew up in Charleston, where we’re having the wedding, and is also an alum of my university!

I still have oodles of decisions to make, but she’s been doing a great job of narrowing the choices and providing the necessary information to proceed logically.  Just today, she sent me four recommended photographers in varying price ranges and with varying styles, and I picked one!  No endless internet searching, no calling around, just checked that decision off the list!  

On top of that, she’s also skilled in negotiating prices for her clients, and I get the impression she’ll probably save us enough to pay for herself.

Aside from saving me from drowning in decisions, she’s also going to make sure my family gets to relax and have fun on the big day.  Rather than subjecting aunts and friends to slave labor on my wedding day, she’ll do all the set-up and headache-inducing stuff, and we’ll get to let go and have a great time.  

What this means long-term, aside from being able to maintain sanity, is that I’ll be able to focus on stuff I actually care about, like all the fun projects I already have brewing in my head : )

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

I'm no Martha

I’ve been writing this post in my head for a while now, and since I’ve been traveling too much to get to do any new projects, I figure now is as good a time as any to go ahead and write it!

After hearing about the projects I get myself into, more than a few people have taken to calling me Martha Stewart.  I want to just put it out there, in full disclosure, NOT EVEN CLOSE!

I’m actually not all that talented.  But I do possess a different key skill – courage.  

The projects I take on aren’t ever really all that complicated, and don’t involve much in the way of artistic talent.  I don’t design things, I don’t paint, heck, I don’t ever really even do brand new stuff at all!  What I do, though, is notice my surroundings, read articles, and google search.  When I see something I like, I consider how tough it would be to try myself.  Most of the time, it’s really not that difficult of a project, and I try it at home!

More than anything, what I hope my readers can gain from my blog is this: my projects aren’t hard.  Just do a little research, and muster up the courage to try new things.  

Will they take longer than anticipated?  Yep.  Will they turn out like they look online?  Nope.  But the feeling you get from making your own stuff and personalizing it for your own tastes is incomparable.

So no, I’m no Martha.  But I do have courage, and I hope this blog inspires you to try something new.