Wedding planning should be a relaxing, luxurious experience.

Next Sunday, March 14th will be a day that raises the bar for bridal events everywhere.

The Ultimate Engagement is the first ever complimentary bridal event that allows brides-to-be the opportunity to meet with the premiere experts in the luxury bridal industry. Not only will brides be able to access the extensive experience, knowledge, passion and talent of these individuals, but you get to do it all in a stress-free one-on-one setting.

Think of the crowded booths, lines, frustration and general mayhem of the typical bridal show, then imagine the exact opposite; a relaxing, sophisticated one-on-one sit down where you and the expert vendors of your choice chat about YOUR wedding and yours alone. Participating is as simple as visiting The Ultimate Engagement website, completing your free registration and scheduling appointments with the hottest high-end wedding professionals that you have watched, read and heard about. Have the opportunity to sit with the most sought after photographers, florists, caterers, venues, planners… the list goes on.

While you plan your stunning event, enjoy designer trunk shows, book signings, food & wine tastings, educational sessions, chic pop-up shops and more!

Our own Xochitl Gonzalez, Blogsmaid Extraordinaire will be on hand to help you turn your luxury wedding dreams into realities – and blogging LIVE throughout the day! Xochitl will be joined by other notable wedding experts such as Marcy Blum, Sylvia Weinstock, Lisa Johnson of Ceci NY, Ines de Santo and many more.  This amazing event was put together by the wonderful Maya Kalman of Swank Productions and Elizabeth Beskin from 5th Avenue Digital.

To ensure each bride receives the personal attention she deserves, space is limited. Please register today to take advantage of this one-time experience that will help you create a day of memories that will last a lifetime.

WHEN: Sunday, March 14, 2010

9:00AM – 7:00PM

WHERE: Gotham Hall, NYC

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER!

xx

-Sal

Don’t you think it’s about time you had a little GLAM in your life?

So excited to invite you to our Glamour Event, hosted by Always a Bridesmaid New Jersey & Bride’s Best Friends! Bride’s Best Friends is an adorable bridesmaid’s salon in Englewood, NJ with an incredible selection which includes dresses for mothers & flower girls. We are teaming up to offer you a lovely afternoon of fashion, cocktails, beauty and wedding planning rescue. Stop by next Saturday the 27th to enjoy amazing discounts on beautiful dresses & wedding consulting services. In true Glam style – treat yourself to a complimentary hair & make-up trial by none other than Model Bride. Oh wait, did I forget to mention there will also be trunk show from the lovely Liz Fields Bridesmaids Collection and a free raffle with sweet prizes?

Ladies, RSVP quickly on this one. Champagne and Mimosa’s on a Saturday afternoon. Love.

xx

Salome

I have been meaning to tell you all about the fab wedding map service that we used for our wedding. Wedding Mapper can be found at www.weddingmapper.com. A web based service, it is quite intuitive with regards to building your map and also for your guests who must navigate it.

This was super easy and actually really fun to create. The gist – you go to the site and create an account, then you can immediately begin building your map. They have a great list of local vendors as well and when you add yours to your map, they become part of the pool for other like-minded couples to choose from. This is especially helpful if your wedding happens to be in a small town or an area with fairly minimal wedding/vendor resources – also great for a destination event. I actually had a destination event that happened to be in a small town so it was a win win.

There are more resources than I could possibly mention and to be honest, as much time as I spent on this website I am still discovering other cool features. I can tell you that the feature I loved the most, was the ability to embed the map/link into our wedding website. While weddingmapper.com also offers a free wedding website, vendor manager, guest manager, etc., we chose to build a different website yet our map still integrated seamlessly. Plus, when guests click on your map and scroll over your icons/locations, an info box pops up with address & description info for each location that you can customize. It’s essentially a souped-up, wedd-ified version of Google Maps with multiple levels of customization. Guests can print the maps, type in their starting address to get directions to and from any location on the map – it’s all very magical in my opinion. Visit the site, take a minute to acclimate yourself and def look at some of the other wedding maps for some fun and creative ideas.

Here is a screen shot and link to a sample map they have on the site: (when you visit be sure to scroll through guest services on the left and click on the different map icons for more info)

Wedding Mapper Sample Map

xx

Sal

Last Thursday, Mayra and I got to have a night on the town in my hometown: Brooklyn.  I was so excited because too often, after hours cocktailing involves an annoying taxi ride home, while this was more of a light trot.

We started at the opening of Skylight One Hanson. For my entire life, the savings bank/clocktower building on the corner of Hanson off of Atlantic has been an icon of Brooklyn, but for years, it has just sort of sat there.  Its a stunning, architectural delight (which I’ve blogged about before) and its now been transformed from landmark into a grand event space by the team at Skylight studios. Skylight One Hanson is filled with architectural details- like these original bank windows. (you can see mayra and I ordering drinks from the windows to the left, and Anna from Just About Married and I in the main ballroom below. With fantastic lighting, its a dream, especially for couples with an oversixe guestlist.  Ask about the “vault” downstairs for afterparties! 

Though they had wonderful Hors d’eourves at One Hanson (provided by Great Performances) we saved out appetites for our second stop of the night: Mile End.  Mile End is the new Montreal style Jewish deli opened by my very own amazing clients, Rachel and Noah (you may remember them from their gorgeous invites).  The small, but atmospheric restaurant seats about 26 and serves absolutely some of the most delicious things I’ve ever eaten including a smoked salami  sandwich, fabulous turkey on the most amazing rye bread and a Montreal style bagel with lox and cream cheese. For those of you don’t know (which means me, until we went to the restaurant) a Montreal style bagel is baked in a wood, coal burning oven… And it’s amazing.  The final item I have to write about are the frites poutin… which in Brooklynese would be called Disco Fries- gravy (veggie or meat), fries and glorious cheese.

The portions (and prices) are perfect for sharing a sandwich and still having room to try a couple of things… which you can see in the pics below, we basically tried everything. Order the tomatillos and pickles, just cause.

For my Brooklyn brides out there, I think Mile End would be a fantastic location to rent out for an intimate, casual rehearsal dinner or a fabulous brunch. Rachel and Noah are open to buy outs and it would be an awesome location to have guest come in and out and recoup with some disco fries after an awesome night at your wedding!

So you just got engaged, you’re so excited, you’ve started looking for your dress – now what?!

We know that getting started is by far the hardest part, so to help get you off to the right start Always a Bridesmaid: New Jersey will be taking questions at the beautiful Rana Bridal Salon in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.

Next Thursday, January 28th from 5PM – 7PM I will personally be on site to answer questions from brides who are newly engaged, those who are fast approaching the big day and of course, anywhere in between!

Also, if any of you are considering hiring a planner, this is a great convenient and fun way to see what it’s all about. As an added bonus, AAB:NJ will be extending a 10% discount to event attendees who book consulting services with us that day.

Where & When to find us on the 28th:

Rana Bridal

485 Sylvan Avenue

Englewood Cliffs NJ 07632

www.ranabridal.com

5PM – 7PM

If you are in the area and would like to attend, please RSVP to the number or email below:

salome@alwaysabridesmaid.us

201.679.6767

*Appointments are limited so please be sure to RSVP*

xx

Sal