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« October 2009 | Main | December 2009 »
I am so incredibly grateful for the grace that is given to me every single day. I am grateful for my wonderful family and my fabulous clients. You are the best clients in the world.
I am so thankful for the ability to do what I love every day. And I consider the opportunity to write on this blog an honor, and I am grateful for each and every reader that stops by to check it out.
What makes you thankful?
Love & Soul Always, Kay
(Photo: Mike Paul, The Reputation Doctor)
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Here are some of my "oldie but goodies" for surviving the holidays at your house. Enjoy!
Love & Soul Always, Kay
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I am not sure where I found this recipe, but it is a keeper for homemade Biscotti!
I try to make a batch for Howerton+Wooten Events associates every year. I place the cookies in a mason jar with the a Starbucks gift card attached. And, voila! A holiday treat on a relaxing snowy afternoon.
Ingredients
1. One (1) eight-ounce package of cream cheese, softened
2. Three-fourth (¾) cup of butter (I actually think that soy butter works better for baking)
3. Three-fourth (¾) cup of sugar
4. One (1) teaspoon of vanilla
5. One-half (½) teaspoon of anise extract
6. Four (4) eggs
7. Three and one-fourth cups of flour
8. One (1) teaspoons of baking powder
9. One-eighth (⅛) teaspoon of salt
10. One-half (½) cup of sliced almonds, toasted
Recipe
1. Preheat your oven to 400° F.
2. Beat the cream cheese, butter, sugar, vanilla and extract in a large mixing bowl at medium speed until well blended. Blend in the eggs.
3. Gradually add combined dry ingredients; mix well. Stir in almonds.
4. On a well-floured surface (with your floured hands) shape dough into three 12” x 1½” logs.
5. Place the logs 2” apart on a greased and floured cookie sheet.
6. Bake 15 to 20 minutes or until the cookies are a light golden brown. (The dough will spread and flatten slightly during baking) Cool slightly.
7. Take the cookies off of the cookie sheet. Diagonally cut each log into ¾” slices. Place them back on the cookie sheet.
8. Continue baking the biscotti for five to ten minutes or until light golden brown.
9. Allow them to cool on a wire rack.
Go ahead! Dunk these crisp cookies into wine or coffee! That's the Italian tradition.
Love & Soul Always, Kay
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Washington DC area friends,
If you are looking for something to do this weekend, check out Much Ado About Nothing at Folger's Elizabethan Theatre.
To give it a little spice (literally), the director, Timothy Douglas has created a Washington-specific adaptation of Shakespeare's play inspired by the annual D.C. Caribbean Carnival. The story involves the preparation of a wedding-themed float for the annual Caribbean carnival's parade through Northwest Washington.
Much Ado About Nothing will play at Folger Elizabethan Theatre until November 29, 2009. Folger Theatre's street address is 201 East Capitol Street, SE. Tickets cost $30-$60.
Love & Soul Always, Kay
(Photo: Folger Shakespeare Library)
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Marriage is an act of will that signifies and involves a mutual gift, which unites the spouses and binds them to their eventual souls, with whom they make up a sole family - a domestic church. -- Pope John Paul II
Love & Soul Always, Kay
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Did you know that approximately 12 million Americans have food allergies?
According to many reports, the most common food allergies in adults are shellfish, peanuts, tree nuts, fish, and eggs, and the most common food allergies in children are milk, eggs, peanuts, and tree nuts.
So how does this affect you as you plan your wedding menu?
First and foremost, there are so many more food allergies than the ones noted above, so it is almost impossible to take care of everyone's needs. But with some careful planning (and flexibility), it shouldn't prevent you from selecting the food you love.
In most cases, wedding guests with serious food allergies are already going to take the necessary precautions for their reception meal. But they will consider you a rock star bride if you offer some menu options that might be able to accommodate their dietary needs.
Communication is Key -- If you know that you have wedding guests with food allergies, let your chef know so that they can plan the menu (and recipe) accordingly. Work with the banquet captain to ensure that the banquet staff is prepared to describe each menu items if asked.
Food Identificaiton -- Always provide a menu card (even if your menu is a buffet). This allows your guests the opportunity to inquire about the preparation of a food option before they get in the buffet line. In addition to the menu card, work with the venue to identify each food item on the buffet with a small tent card. This will help your wedding guests avoid making an incorrect selection.
Shellfish – I live in the state of Maryland, which is the land of crabs (and crab cakes). Guests expect to see them on the menu. If crab cakes (or any shellfish for that matter) is a "must have," consider offering it as one of your hors d’ oeuvres and instead of the primary food on your entree. If you must offer shellfish during your meal, make sure that you have a tasty (and comparable) alternative available.
Tree Nuts and Peanuts – With so many people allergic to peanuts and numerous tree nuts, consider avoiding them in your menu altogether. If you have your heart set on a pecan encrusted sea bass, then make sure that your chef makes a few non-pecan options too. Also, try to avoid offering an open bowl of nuts on your buffet or dessert table -- the chances for cross-contamination are quite high.
Wedding Cake – As a former baker, I know how easy it is for cross contamination to take place with baked goods. Consider offering a dessert alternative such as fresh fruit or sorbet.
Buffets – Buffets are a great option for guests with food allergies and diet restrictions because it offers your wedding guests numerous food options. But, I feel obligated to mention that the small tent cards indentifying the each dish are key.
Prepare for Emergencies -- Sometimes the best laid plans cannot avoid emergencies. Make sure that your wedding planner has Benedryl packets on hand, and check with the venue coordinator regarding their crisis management plan -- Most wedding guests with food allergies carry their own Epinephrine (adrenaline) medication (aka EpiPen) to reverse the severe symptoms of anaphylaxis, but you want to make sure that the venue's security staff is able to react if needed.
For more information, check out one of the following web sites --
The Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network
Allergy & Asthma Network Mothers of Asthmatics
Finally, make sure that you have the address and phone numbers for the nearest hospital. (just in case)
Love & Soul Always, Kay
**Disclaimer: I am not a healthcare professional, nor am I an allergy expert. Therefore, you should not take this post as medical or healthcare advice. I am just giving recommendations that I believe would improve the overall experience of your wedding guest(s).
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Wedding veils are so beautiful, and they are often family heirlooms. So, you want to do your best to clean and store your wedding veil for preservation.
As you may already know, there are plenty of instructions on the web for storing and preserving your wedding gown (check out this post and this post), so here is a list of pointers for cleaning, storing and preserving your wedding veil too.
1. Immediately after your wedding, take your wedding gown and your veil to a reputable dry cleaner to ensure that all of the stains are removed before you store it.
2. When shopping for your veil’s storage, make sure that the tissue is acid-free. And try to purchase an acid-free box that is not buffered. As you may know, most paper materials contain acids that could cause the veil to deteriorate. And some of the acid-free boxes available contain an alkali called calcium carbonate, which can slowly ruin and damage the veil’s fibers.
3. When placing your wedding veil into its storage box, fold it gently between folds of acid-free tissue paper in each layer. If the veil is attached to the headpiece, position it delicately around the headpiece.
4. Consider placing the headpiece on a Styrofoam head (found at wig and beauty supply stores) to maintain its shape. If the headpiece is detachable, store it separately from the veil.
5. Don’t store your veil with your wedding gown because this could affect the shape of your wedding gown.
6. To ensure that the boxes remain protected, avoid placing them in direct sunlight, the attic or the basement, and don’t wrap it in plastic.
7. Each year (possibly on ythe eve of our wedding anniversary), take your veil out of the box to check it for yellowing and insect damage.
Now, even your best efforts may not prevent your veil from yellowing. If it does, check out this post that lists steps to cleaning a wedding veiled that yellowed.
Love & Soul Always, Kay
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1. Hire Your Wedding Vendors Wisely. When you are interviewing your wedding vendors, pay attention to their communication style. Is their written and oral correspondence clear? Do you feel as if they are listening to you? You will communicate with your wedding vendors quite a bit, so having a similar communication style is vital to your successful wedding planning.
2. Set Up a Communication System.
· Create an e-mail account for wedding planning only. You are going to get a lot of e-mail messages during your wedding planning, and you don’t want your special message from your Aunt Hilda to get lost in your wedding e-mails.
· Set up project-specific folders within your e-mail account. File the e-mail messages (from both your in-box and out-box) within the corresponding folder so that you can easily find them when needed.
· Follow-Up to Your Phone Calls. To ensure that you and your wedding vendor are on the same page, send a quick e-mail message after your call to re-cap your conversation. It doesn’t have to be a long, drawn out message, but you want to be sure that the two of you are in agreement.
· Make Your E-Mails Count. Instead of sending numerous daily e-mails to a wedding vendor, jot down all of your questions from the day. Then put your questions together in one email rather than sending six different emails addressing the same concern. Now, this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t share as much information as possible! Your wedding vendors just want to be sure that nothing gets lost in the shuffle of e-mails.
3. Ask questions. You get married (for the first time) once – your wedding vendors manage weddings all of the time. Don’t worry if your question seems silly to you because it probably won’t seem silly to your vendors. There really is no such thing as a stupid question.
4. Be Visual/Share pictures. The wedding industry is a creative business, so your vendors are most likely visual people. Rather than trying to explain your wedding flowers, find a similar picture in a magazine or on the web and share that with your floral designer instead.
5. Save your difficult topics for face-to-face conversations. E-mails can be easily misunderstood, which makes any conversation difficult. If you need to address a difficult topic, ask for a face-to-face conversation. If that is not an option, then use the telephone.
Now, all of your wedding vendors should be communicating with you in the same manner. But this is your money – and it is important for you to stay of top of your correspondence with all of your wedding vendors.
Love & Soul Always, Kay
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To some, wedding insurance sounds like a financial investment you should make if you have money left over in your wedding budget.
Here’s my take.
Wedding insurance is a small financial investment you can make to protect a much bigger investment – Your wedding day.
While a large percentage of wedding days are free of incidents, there is a small percentage that is affected by theft, sudden illness, vendor closings, or a natural disaster. And, believe me. If you experience one of these issues during your wedding or wedding planning, you will definitely wish you had insurance.
Does wedding insurance still feel like overkill? Here are some true scenarios from our little world of wedding planning –
1. A bride has custom linen (in various colors) flown in from India. Her wedding is carried out perfectly. At the end of the night, the wedding planner is packing up the linen when she realizes that she is missing linen. In fact, she is missing one of each color. So, she and the banquet captain search the entire venue but they cannot find them. They come to the conclusion that the linen was stolen. This theft left the bride and groom, $2,000 in the hole.
2. A wedding guest was a little too, shall we say exuberant, on the dance floor. So, he slips and falls while doing the “cha cha slide.”
3. A groom gets deployed to Iraq five weeks before the wedding date. The bride and groom are able to get most of their money back from the wedding vendors. Unfortunately, their lovely wedding invitations were already printed, assembled and stamped. This resulted in a $1,200 loss for the bride and groom.
4. As a result of the failing economy, a florist closes shop three weeks prior to a wedding (taking the flowers and the deposits with them). The bride just made her final payment on her $4,500 order.
As you can see, there are a number of things that can happen. But wedding insurance gives you peace of mind that you are financially protected if something crazy should occur.
And, don't forget to insure your wedding rings! For your reading pleasure, here is a post on Engagement Ring insurance.
Love & Soul Always, Kay
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Starting tomorrow, we will feature a short series on the, "Not So Glamorous Side" of Wedding Planning.
We all know that wedding planning can be fun and charming, but there are some "less than glamorous" projects that must be addressed too.
Sure, these tasks can be a bit tedious, but a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do!
Please check back tomorrow for recomendations, tips and calculators to help you take care of ALL of the aspects of your wedding planning.
And, please let us know your thoughts.
Love & Soul Always, Kay
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