Baby Shower Invitations

A baby shower is one of the special events in the life of a mother to be shared with friends before the actual birth. Invitations should set the mood and make this occasion memorable to everyone present.

This baby shower usually happens a month or 2 in advance and making the right invitation can be just as challenging as planning the entire event.

One can get an invitation that has been made by a card company but for it to be special, it is best to choose a design then have it custom made. Since the host is usually a very close friend of the mother, that person can talk to the mother and other members of the family what kind of theme will be appropriate for the party.

After getting all the ideas in and finally choosing what theme will be used, the friend will already have an idea what kind of invitation it is and how it will look like.

For a girl, the theme could be a star which could highlight the future. An invitation can be shaped into a star with the nursery rhyme song inside.

For a boy, the theme could be a cowboy. An invitation can be made with the design of a cartoon character in the front and other special details inside.

An invitation can also be made depending on the season. In the summer, with the weather being a bit humid, the ideal theme will be a summer shower that comes with a lot of ice cream. The invitation can be made in the shape of an ice cream.

Just like any other invitation, it should have the name of the person to be invited, when and where the event will take place, the contact number of the one hosting the event and the gender of the baby if this is applicable.

The invitations must be given out a month up to a month and half prior to the event itself. This will give people time to make plans for that day and pick the right gift.

Babies are cute, smell good, can be quiet and the noisiest at certain times. It is all part of the phase of the baby growing up. There are other ideas and themes one can think of to make the invitation a good preview of what is to come during the baby shower itself. It just takes some planning and little imagination to make this baby shower stand out over others that people have gone to.

The host can do the planning alone or brainstorm with friends in picking the right invitation then having it made by the printers. When that is finished, the other details after that should already quite easy such as the food for the occasion, the registry of gifts for the party, and the prizes for the games to be played.

If the person needs help, then a professional can be called to assist in the entire process. With the many themes and invitations that have been done in the past, this usually comes in a package that includes a planner to help guide the person along. The host can find this people in the neighborhood or check online.

By comparing the packages and prices of the various companies that do this, one will surely get value for money for this special event.

Fun Ideas For Planning A Beautiful Wedding

We’re always looking for ways to simplify the complicated things in our lives. This definitely holds true for something as large and as complex as a wedding. Just the thought alone is enough to overwhelm you. Here are some great wedding tips that you can use to make the process a little bit easier.

As the bride, it is very important that you have a dress that you feel mentally comfortable in. If you are very self-conscious in your wedding dress, you will be very unhappy during the event. The wedding lasts a long time and it is your night, so you want to be happy and comfortable the entire time!

Having a guestbook or reception video is an excellent way for each guest to be able to share their thoughts and memories with you. You can look back on it later as your relationship grows and remember all the people who are most important to you and how much they factor into your life together.

Choosing a color palette is an important part of the wedding planning process. You have to take into account any colors of the location where your wedding will take place. You also have to think about the colors used in your bridesmaids’ dresses, the wedding invitations, and perhaps even the tablecloth and napkins at the wedding reception. But above all, you should consider what colors you will want to associate with your memories of the wedding.

Starting to plan your wedding? Use resources like StumbleUpon to select your interests (weddings, of course) and look through blogs, websites, and idea boards such as Pintrest during your free time. You will find many great DIY ideas as well as some ideas you may not have thought of otherwise.

Weddings are similar to many other major life decisions in that they have a financial cost. However, because a wedding is an exceptionally emotional event, it is easy once you begin planning to go overboard and spend more than you can afford. Before beginning the planning process, it is important to set a budget with your significant other and stick to it. While a wedding is a special event, remember that you are not marrying the debt!

If you want to have a traditional wedding, that is great, but you should really consider changing things up for your honeymoon. Many people try to leave for their honey moon directly after the wedding, but this is almost never a good idea. It is better to wait a day or two.

If you’re having an informal wedding ceremony and want the experience to be more personal and intimate, consider arranging for a close friend or relative to register as a justice of the peace so that they may wed you. It’s not a complicated process and can make your wedding even more special.

It might initially seem as if planning a wedding is something that couldn’t possibly be simplified, but all you need is some practical advice to help guide you along the way. What you just read are some tips dealing with weddings, in general. Hopefully, this information will help you out when that big day comes.

How To Plan For Your Reunion Event

The hardest part of planning a reunion is getting people to purchase the tickets for your event. It’s very hard to plan a reunion, it’s impossible unless you know how many people will turn up.

Could you imagine catering for 100 guests and then finding out that only 10 people turned up? Well I’ve done just that, and it’s very frustrating! It’s extremely important to know how many people are coming to the events that you are planning as early as possible.

Without this vital information you won’t know what size venue to book, what entertainment, and the amount of food that you should buy.

Sure you could just guess how many people are going to turn up, but that’s like walking around a china shop blindfolded, it will no doubt end in disaster. Anyway, why would you when you can follow our 5 amazingly simple tips.

1. Promotion
All good businesses know that unless they promote their products nobody will know about them. How is your party any different? You need to tell everybody when it is, and generate loads of interest in the event. Why not create a website that you can use to post all the details of the event.

If you’re cringing at the thought of designing a website there’s no need because there are reunion website builders that are capable of designing these websites without any skill at all.

2. Customer Service
You should also make sure that everybody attending the event will be satisfied. What will happen if the event is cancelled? You should guarantee that they get all of their money back should the event be cancelled.

3. Special offers
You want to know as soon as possible how many people are coming so that you can make plans. It’s an unfortunate part of human nature that we all leave everything until the last minute.

You can use incentives to encourage people to decide earlier on, why not offer a discount for people that buy their tickets early.

4. Prize Draw
As another incentive to get people to buy tickets, tell people that you will enter them into a prize draw if they order tickets before a certain date. You can decide what the free gift is, examples include free tickets, or a gift.

5. Payment Options
People like many different options when paying for things, they don’t want to have to come down to see you and pay in person. You should allow them to send a check by mail, pay cash to you in person, and also accept credit cards.

It’s much more difficult to pay by check than it is by credit card, by enabling credit card transactions on your website you are making it much easier, and so there’s one less excuse for people to worry about!

You can also use this reunion website to tell everyone else who will be coming to the event, use the website to encourage people to talk about the reunion party.

When You Need To Hire An Event Planner?

Planning a party is not always easy for everyone. It can be something that is a lot of hard work and may even be a little tiring to some. When you are trying to plan the party that has everything that you are looking for and so much more, you may want to have a professional help you with all the things that you have to do.
Having an event planner help you with our special occasion is something that you may not think you need, but you may be wrong. When you have a lot of things to do and not enough time to do them all in, you will want to make sure that you have the help that you need to get it all done in time.
Getting an event planner can also help you find different ideas that you could not get on your own. You will appreciate the ideas that you can get from an event planner that has a lot of different experience with planning a great party. They will be able to bring some fun and flair to your night and make it the best that it can be.
Hiring an event planner is nothing to be worried about. You will find that it can be something that will make your party a great success. Finding an event planner is not something that will be too hard either. There are many people that are looking to help you out with your next event. You will be able to check out the different options that you have and go from there. You will see that there are all different types of planners that come with different prices as well. It will depend on the type of party and amount of work that needs to be done.
You will find that the larger parties are going be difficult to take on by yourself. You will want to have someone that you can rely on and trust to make the difficult decisions about things that have to be done. You will the skill of an event planner to make this great time even better. Memories are the one thing that many people like to have of special occasions and you will want all of your memories to be great.
Weddings are an event that will probably call for an event planner to take charge. There are many preparations that need to be done and you will find it a lot easier to get help for them. When you have someone to take on all the problems that happen and take the stress off you, you will be able to sit back and enjoy more of the process instead of worrying about it all the time.
Surprise parties and larger sized birthday parties may also call for an event planner to help. Getting someone to find the place, food, entertainment, and all the hard to deal with problems that can happen with a party is going to take a lot of pressure off of you. You will want to have a good time at the party too and not be stressing over the things that need to be done. That is what you are going to pay the event planner to do.
After the party is over with and you have had the best time ever, you will then have to decide if you want to fess up and let everyone know your secret about the event planner, or let them think that you did it all on your own. Either way, you will feel good about the choice you made and actually be excited about the next party you have to plan.

7 Party Planning Tips for Building Your Party Timeline

One of the best things that you can have when you are planning a party or event of any size is a written party timeline and master shopping list. By making yourself a good solid timeline and comprehensive list for shopping, you can ensure that your party goes off without a hitch.

Here are seven tips from professional party planners to get you on the right track in planning your shopping list and timeline:

Tip #1 – No matter what the size of your event, if it is for children or adults, a wedding or a simple birthday party, you must have a master shopping list as well as a good timeline. Simply use a pen and paper and decide on how long things will take you to do and start filling in your timeline. And, while you are going through the process, this is the time to start a shopping list as well.

Tip #3 – Before you can start to build your timeline and shopping list, first you must decide on where your party or event will be held and how many people you will be inviting. If you will be using an event location or a restaurant, you need to secure your space before moving along to do anything else.

Tip #3 – Once you have secured your location for your party, then you can start to build your lists. To start building your timeline think about the things you will need to do before the party, such as send out your invitations. If you will be having them custom printed you will need to allow extra time for the printing before you can mail them out to your guests.

Tip #4 – Now that you have your date and location secured, and you have ordered your invitations, if necessary, then it is time to think about what you will be doing at your party, what type of food and drinks will be on the menu, and how long you want the party to last. Dedicate a single sheet of paper just to your party day and list everything you will need to do, in order, by time. For example, preparing food before guests arrive would be at the top of the sheet of paper, while giving out party favors may be at the absolute bottom.

Tip #5 – In addition to your timeline for the day of the party, you will also want to formulate a timeline for the two weeks or so leading up to the event. Here you will need to block out time for cleaning, shopping, decorating, etc…

Tip #6 – As you do each of the steps above, you will start to develop a good timeline and a great shopping and supplies list of things which you will need. This will be a great help to you and can even help you to remember to pick up things that you might otherwise have forgotten. In addition, you will also start to see if there will be any conflicts in your timeline where you might need to move a few things around or enlist the help of others.

Tip #7 – Once you have your lists generated then it is time to stick to them and make sure everything gets done. If you are finding that you have more work to do than time to do it in, it is perfectly acceptable to ask other people to help you with carious parts of the event. In fact, most people you will find would be happy to help you.

If you will be hosting a party or event, the best thing you can possibly do for yourself is to follow these tips, and others you hear from friends, and develop yourself a good timeline and master shopping list. By writing things down, you will much more clearly see what you need to do and what you will have time to do yourself.

Planning Activities for Your New Years Eve Party

Most people spend a great deal of time planning their guest list or deciding on food and decorations but do not devote a great deal of time to planning activities for their New Years Eve party. They may plan on having a live band or a DJ to perform but otherwise they may simply expect the guests to entertain themselves by dancing to the music or socializing with other guests but do little else in terms of planning activities to keep their guests entertained at the party. However, there are a lot of fun activities which can keep the guests entertained throughout the evening.

Planning on having karaoke is one excellent activity for a New Years Eve party. This activity encourages guest participation and allows the guests to entertain themselves throughout the evening. In fact karaoke can even provide a very cost effective form of entertainment for all the guests even those who opt not to participate. Karaoke will provide the guests with music and singing at a much lower price than it would cost to hire a live band or a DJ for the event. The music may not be as high quality as it would be if you hired a professional but of course that is also part of the fun of karaoke.

Hosting a murder mystery event is another fun activity idea which is becoming very popular for New Years Eve parties. These events are typically a dinner theater where guests are encouraged to participate in the drama and work together or alone to try to solve the mystery of the evening. You can either hire a troop of actors to perform the murder mystery and allow the guests to interact with the actors to try to solve the mystery or you can assign guests to portray different characters including the victim, the murderer and the other guests. The guests should keep their identities a secret to keep everyone else guessing.

The food can also be a source of entertainment for the guests at a New Years Eve party. You can serve items such as fondue which require the guests to participate in the preparation of the food. Another idea for an activity is to design a party where the preparation of the food is a part of the party. For example you could hire a sushi chef to come to the party and teach the guests how to make sushi. The guests can all make their own sushi rolls and the sushi prepared by the guests can be served as appetizers during the party.

Activities as simple as viewing movies can even be fun activities for a New Years Eve party. If your party has a particular theme, you can select a series of movies which reflect the theme of the party to keep your guests entertained throughout the movie. You might even serve foods which are typically found at a movie theater to tie the theme of the event to the food.

If the New Years Eve party will include children it is important to spend some time planning activities for the kids. You might want to include some kid friendly activities as well as activities which are suitable for children and adults. If there will be adults in attendance there should also be activities just for the adults as well to ensure everyone has a good time.

Evaluating Your Team Building Activities

Team building has become one of the newest buzz words in the corporate lexicon. In fact, for at least the last decade surveys of business leaders in every industry have shown that the prime characteristic they look for in new hires is the ability to work with a team. And why not? Research has shown that when people work in teams, they can accomplish far more than a group of individuals working together. But not all team building activities are created equal. Over the last few years, some industry experts have leveled criticism at the ‘quick-fix’ attitude that has been adopted by many companies who attempt to create or sponsor their own team building activities.

In order to be effective, say experts in corporate teams, a team building event must:

– Be integrated with real work goals.
o It’s not enough to plan a fun day of activities for your team. The team building event that you plan should help focus the members of the team on what’s not working and what needs to happen for the team to work together.
– Be part of an overall company goal.
o Plan team building activities and events as part of the company’s overall plan for success. That means more than just a one off event to go buggy riding. Team building events should be an ongoing, annual or semi-annual event.
– Be planned by a team.
o After all, the goal is to promote teamwork. The planning team should model the behavior that you expect it to promote.
– Be followed up with real work integration.
o A one off event that has no follow up in the work world will be seen as a holiday at best – and a cynical attempt at manipulation at worst. To be meaningful, team building efforts must continue beyond the event day.
– Be reinforced by rewarding teamwork and team behavior.
o Once you have a team that’s working as a team, you need to reinforce that behavior by rewarding it. Recognition of teams that are working exceptionally well, specialcorporate events to mark team accomplishments and notice in the company newsletter are all ways to reinforce and reward teamwork within your company.

If planning an event that will do all that seems daunting, keep in mind that there are companies who make this their business. A corporate events planner can offer your company custom team building activities that are designed to help your employees and coworkers focus on the importance of working together as a team by providing focused activities that require each participant to work as part of a team. Don’t just hire on a company to throw a do for your organization. Seek out a real professional with experience and expertise in building exercises that build teams.

Do you ever stop and think about how your life turned out? My niece asked to interview me for one of humanities classes

In some ways my job does not have a title. I most often refer to my self as a planner. I am in charge of corporate event planning. I started by helping my sister-in-law throw a dinner party. I was unemployed at the time and not ready to go into the field of social work. I was tired of working through the paper work and expectations that the government places upon its workers. I had three months of severance pay so I was not in a rush to take the first job that came along. My brother-in-law is the general manager of a large insurance company. He and his wife had asked several corporate heads and their wives to their home for drinks, appetizers and dinner. A week before the dinner my sister-in-law broke her arm. She was in a panic on how she was going to get a caterer to prepare the meal in such short notice. I told her that I would gladly run the party. The evening was a great success. One of the corporation heads told me that I should be hired on for corporation events planning. I told him I would gladly do that. I thought he was just giving me a compliment and I was accepting it.

A few days later my brother-in-law called me to let me know that the man had been serious and would like me to be hired to coordinate social functions as well as trainings and meetings. I would have an office in my home and would be given a phone line, computer, fax machine and copier. My job would be to coordinate the corporate events planning. Any manager that needed to have arrangements made for a meeting, luncheon, fund raiser or other event would call me with the number of people the type of event, the budget and the date. The rest is up to me to coordinate. I love my job and I am told that I am good at what I do. It is an interesting use of a social work degree.

You Can’t Go Wrong With Chocolate Cake

If you are planning a birthday party, a wedding or an event that requires entertaining others for any reason, then you know well what a challenge it can be to create a party that everyone will enjoy. You know all the details that go into planning a perfect event, and you are well aware that you cannot plan a great party carelessly. Instead, you need to be cautious about the details and take your time with each aspect of party planning. Choosing a dessert can be one of the most important yet hard decisions that gets made for events, but you cannot go wrong by choosing a chocolate cake.

The thing about all parties is that people expect to come and be filled with good food. You can have the most special games and activities planned for your party, but without a great menu in place people will leave your party disappointed and regretful. That is why it is important to take your menu planning seriously from appetizers and drinks to entrees and desserts. As a professional party planner, I often advise my clients to conside serving a chocolate cake for dessert. In fifteen years of planning great weddings and other parties, I have learned that offering a chocolate cake is a decision that rarely goes wrong.

People of all ages love chocolate, this we know, so doesn’t it make sense that we would use chocolate for life’s most special events? I am always in awe when people think that it is a good idea to make the menu for important parties entirely different from the things that people would normally eat. This is no way to keep people filled and satisfied. It is always wise to have at least a few things on a menu that people are familiar with and used to eating. Surprises are great, but not when it comes to a significant piece of the menu like the dessert. This is why a chocolate cake is the choice for all celebrations.

The whole point in planning great parties is for people to enjoy themselves. I guarentee that people of all ages and walks of life will enjoy a tasty chocolate cake. Now I am not suggested that you throw a couple of boxed cake mixes into the oven when you are planning your wedding, yet I am suggesting that you make the best chocolate cake possible because you know that everyone will love it.

Selecting A Party Theme

Coming up with a theme is the easiest way to create an atmosphere for your party. Selecting your party theme should be one of the first steps in your planning process. A theme doesn’t eliminate spontaneity from your event it makes it more complete. Before you create your party theme think about how some themed parties made you feel in the past. Was it the Hawaiian party theme, or the 60s flower child theme, or Mardi gras party theme was the most precious experience? Your theme could be a single theme or variations on other themes.

Whatever your party theme may be make sure you incorporate it in as many aspects of your party as you can. For example, if you go with a Christmas party theme make sure everything speaks “Christmas.” You should ask your guests to come dressed in Christmas theme close. Make sure you prepare foods normally served around Christmas time, and serve it in Christmas theme plates. The possibilities for decorating your house for a Christmas theme are endless. Even the colors you use should reflect your theme.

If you are having a party for your child, get her involved. Your child will have a lot of fun just choosing the party theme.

Because most holidays reoccur every year, you have plenty of time for planning and preparing. You can stock up on supplies long before your event. If you have a Christmas party every year, you may be able to save a lot of money buying decoration items after the holiday season. By planning ahead you are not only better prepared but you can also save a lot of money. Gift and party stores are full of great deals to be had after the holidays. It gives you an opportunity to pick up holiday themes plates, napkins, tablecloths, cups, and many more items you may need for your party.

The fundamental difference between theme parties and parties that feature themes is the amount of planning involved. With some thought, a lot of creativity, and careful planning you can create a great theme party everyone will love.