Twirl Boutique is celebrating the Grand Opening of their new store in Chandler and you're invited to join in on the festivities!  Twirl is the original bridesmaid boutique and even has a blog especially for the bridal party. They have some other great announcements in store that they'll be unveiling later this Fall, so be sure to subscribe so you don't miss out!

Here is the invite. I'll be out of town for this event, unfortunately, so be sure to give Keri and Jenni big hugs from me:

Here are some sneak peek pics of their new shop:

The window display:

The fitting rooms:

The entrance:

Congrats ladies!

We were recently contacted by Cristina, a doctoral student at the University of Virginia, who is doing a study on marriage.  If you are an engaged couple, she needs your assistance! Here is the info:

Engaged volunteers needed!

I am looking for volunteers for a study of attitudes towards marriage and parenthood among engaged couples. The study consists of a 25-30 minute online survey. To qualify for the study, you must be 20-35 years old, live in the U.S., and plan to marry or have a commitment ceremony within the next 365 days. You and your romantic partner must not have children, and this must be the first marriage for both of you.

You can:
-Help a doctoral candidate;
-Increase the pool of scientific knowledge;
-Support research on marriage and families; and
-Spend some time thinking about your relationship!

I am working with Dr. Charlotte J. Patterson, a Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia. This study has been approved by the University of Virginia Institutional Review Board #2009025800.

If you and/or your romantic partner are interested in participating or want further information, please email me at survey.couples{at}gmail.com. I will send you a link that you can use to access the study.

PinkFact: Four out of five women who are diagnosed with breast cancer do NOT have a family history of it.


Today is the first day of National Breast Cancer Awareness month, and if you are in the wedding industry, I would like to encourage you to become involved with Pink Initiative.

Founded by wedding photographer Emilie Sommer, Pink Initiative is a collection of wedding industry professionals and private donors dedicated to funding awareness, outreach, education and research for breast cancer.  After a nine month wait, Pink Initiative received it's official 501(c)(3) non-profit status in August (the effective date was made retroactive to October 2008, so all donations prior to August are still tax deductible).

If you or your company would like to be involved, please check out Pink Initiative's latest newsletter on how to do so, including some grassroots ideas from other professionals.  You can sign up for the newsletter or make a donation to Pink Initiative on the website (a new website is in the works) and see who else is involved so far. You can also follow Pink Initiative on Twitter, which features daily WedFacts, PinkFacts or PinkQuotes.

A prevention for polio was discovered in our parents' lifetime, which up until then was a feat considered hopeless. Let's press on together so that we can say the same about breast cancer in ours.



Disclosure: I am on the board of directors for Pink Initiative.
Pink Initiative tag designed by Kelly Ashworth Design; photo by Darby Elizabeth Photography; photo shoot for Bride and Bloom Magazine.

If you work in the luxury wedding market and haven't signed up for Engage!09 The Encore yet, get over to their website ASAP.  Engage! is in less than two weeks, so do what you can to clear your schedules.  Here are the details:


Before you sign up, please know that this is not a "how-to" conference: Marcy Blum will not lay out a step-by-step guide to being awesome and funny, Rebecca Grinnals will not give you the blueprint for how she built the Disney Fairytale Weddings brand, and Sean Low will not show you Excel spreadsheet case studies of his work with Preston Bailey. Engage! is designed to be a "thinking" conference: one that shifts your mindset, focuses your outlook on your business and moves you to take big, bold (and sometimes scary) steps to change what you are currently doing in favor of long-term growth.  I have personally attended all three previous Engage! conferences, have spoken at two of them, and can attest to the difference it can make in your business in a very real way, including the accounting books.

Kathryn gave me a sneak peek at the guests and some of the wedding professionals attending, including several who spoke at previous Engage! conferences. Some of the people who will be at the Encore include Sylvia Weinstock; Marilyn Oliveira the editor of Inside Weddings; Tatiana Byron, founder of The Wedding Salon; Maria Cooke, founder of Ritzy Bee (and who helped me come up with my company name), Christy Weber and Blair deLaubenfels from Junebug Weddings, and Michelle Rago, whose relatively quick climb to success in this industry is truly inspiring.

You can read my previous recap posts about all three Engage! conferences here:
Engage!09 Recap
Engage!08 The Encore Recap
Engage!08 Recaps: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3

You can visit the Engage!09 The Encore website to register and you can follow updates about the conference on Twitter by using the #engage09encore hashtag. 

One of the first Martha Stewart crafts I remember making were these little glassine Valentines. It was 1998 and a group of friends and I decided to make this project the subject of a Girls' Night In. They turned out pretty cute, as I remember, and were fairly low on the difficulty scale (and coming from me, you know that means super easy).

These would also make a simple and affordable DIY wedding project and could be used as bridal shower favors or even tucked into the wedding invitation.  You could choose a cookie cutter that goes with your theme and trace that shape on to the glassine paper. Choose a thread that matches your wedding colors to tie the look together. Smaller stitches are shown in this photo, but using larger stitches would give the packets an updated, more modern look.  The glassine paper was difficult to locate even eleven years ago, but we finally found a small independent art store that carried some.

Are you doing any DIY projects for your wedding?



Photo from Martha Stewart

When I first met Kim Jarman, she was planning to move to Hollywood to make movies that meant something and I was learning Farsi in preparation for moving to the middle east to do humanitarian work. I remember one dinner party in particular where we discussed, over a bottle of Australian Riesling, precisely how husbands, babies and everything else we deemed important in life was going to fit in with our lofty plans. We were young and had big dreams.

We are still young and we still have big dreams. Needless to say, those dreams look very different now and I find it a bit humorous that we both wound up owning businesses in the wedding industry; something that had never crossed our minds.  I remember when Kim told me she was starting her photography business "for real", I remember her complete excitement and subsequent nail-biting nervousness after she booked her first "real" clients (not family or friends or friends of friends), and I remember, in more recent years, her making the leap of faith to open commercial studio space.

Kim has now moved into a second studio, one more spacious than the first and one that will offer new opportunities as she continues to grow her company.  In celebration of this milestone and of all the milestones that have led up to this point, she is hosting a grand opening party next week, and everyone is welcome to come celebrate with her.  The event is being planned by the fabulous Heather and Jen of Outstanding Occasions, so you know that it will be, well, outstanding.  Here are more details:





photo provided by Kimberly Jarman

This is, by far, the coolest wedding invitation I have ever seen. Enjoy!



via Share Some Candy