Get the Skiny: A wedding planner “secretly” getting married!

Happy new year to all! Hope New Year brings you lots of love and happiness. The arrival of January is also the beginning of the wedding planning season. I am sure that all you “brides-to-be” are already looking for your dream wedding dress, looking into the latest trends for 2012, some of you even getting inspired from all the Golden Globes beauty trends, browsing on several blogs to get ideas about your reception décor and so many other great tips out there. Have so many ideas to share with you, which I know will help you a lot start putting things into perspective. Will only share a few with you here and promise to post some more on my next post. Have really enjoyed this blog post were you can have a look at some 2012 wedding dress trends! Loved the Monique Lhuillier dress! You can also have a look at this folder were I have gathered many more wedding trends for 2012 But first of all I would like to share with all my readers my personal experience of getting married on December 2011 in Venice! Much excited and Jumping from Joy my wedding will be featured on Style me Pretty! Stay tuned for my next blog post! Until then here is a small preview just for you! photo: by Andrea & Marcus What does a wedding planner do when “I’do” arrives? Is an intimate elopement the way forward? Is she any different from a normal bride? How does she plan her wedding? Is it so difficult to plan a wedding? Will get to all those answers straight away! What does a wedding planner do after the “ I Do”? Being a wedding planner with an experience to both intimate elopements and large scale weddings gave me a good idea of what I really wanted as a bride. In my opinion the most important thing about a wedding is to be able to evoke both the groom’s and bride’s character. It has to be all about the couple wishes, hopes, dreams, character. So we decided that a “secret” Intimate destination wedding would make us both happy! Is an intimate elopement the way forward? Well I am sure most of you have come across millions of blogs and magazines analyzing this term. An elopement according to Wikipedia is often used to refer to a marriage conducted in sudden and secretive fashion, usually involving hurried flight away from one’s place of residence together with one’s beloved with the intention of getting married.Neither my husband nor I wished to have a large scale wedding and all that it entails. What do I mean secret? It was only us and two maids of honor (which came on board last minute)! We really wanted to be able to enjoy the ceremony ritual and feel like having beautiful moments in a beautiful place! I know some of you will already start wondering: no family? No friends? Well choosing to have an intimate wedding means that you have to let go of some positive and negative aspects of having family and friends around! Choosing to do so meant that I had to do everything on my own. Meaning no second opinion about the wedding dress, the flowers, the decoration or hair and makeup! We took the decision not to let anyone know in order to be fair to all our family and friends. Deep down I knew that all our family and friends would be really happy!!!!! Is she any different from a normal bride? A wedding planner does differ a lot from a normal “bride to be” but they have one thing in common “They both want a “dream “wedding in their own sense. Now this is so difficult to accomplish as I can reassure you that not everything goes as planned at a wedding! Why? For several reasons: family complications, a good friend cancelling last minute, make up artist getting sick, vendors not there on time, a bad experience with your wedding dress rehearsal; the list is endless! What experience has taught me -which makes me differ from a normal bride- is the awareness of all the above! This is something I always tell our “brides-to-be” and something I reminded myself: Stay positive and don’t let anything ruin your day! That’s because if you stress out then your whole energy is focused into negative feelings. This is what I did. Stay positive and my wedding was like a fairytale! How does she plan her wedding? Of course in the hands of an experienced wedding planner! Looking for a wedding planner is no easy job! Yes I totally agree. I think I must have sent up to 30 or more emails to several wedding planners in Italy and overseas. My suggestion to you is to follow your instinct and go with the one that you feel confident with and the one you feel you can trust. I was fortunate enough to have an affiliate partner in Venice! At first I couldn’t use her contact as my wedding was a secret and my sister and mother are the co-owners of StellaAndMoscha. At the end I decided to confide in her and ask her to keep my story a secret. The most important thing for me is to find a person I can communicate with! Andrea my wedding planner had 3 very important things for me: She was a good listener, She would never give me an answer before investigating well into the matter, she had back up plans (I love back up plans)! You can imagine that being a planner I had a pretty clear picture about everything I wanted: Photographers, design details, orthodox wedding logistics and so on. Andrea was able to make me feel like a bride for one day and not like a planner! Is it so difficult to plan a wedding? Let me rephrase this question: Is being a bride that difficult? Well……Yes and No! One tip I would give to every bride to be is: do not let anyone get to you! What do I mean? We all know that the wedding industry is a bit saturated. There is so much information out there about what a bride should, must, could do. Anywhere from the wedding boutique, to the jewelry shop people will start telling you about the protocol of a wedding. There is absolutely no rule nor protocol about a wedding dress, or a wedding band or a wedding cake! Everything should be the way you wish! Should I have not being through this experience I would never have thought that this is the case. However sad enough “protocol” still exists. Dear readers have you had a similar experience? How did you find your wedding planner? Would you prefer an Intimate Elopement or is a large scale wedding your preference? What is your dream wedding? Have you thought about your ceremony and reception decoration?