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What Brides (and Event/Wedding Planners) can Learn from Extreme Cage Fighting

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Chuck Liddell facing off against Rich Franklin...
Image via Wikipedia

What’s the one thing everybody knows about cage fighting? No holds barred. No rules. Can that apply to the bridal design world? Read on. And if you got to this blog by googling “cage fighting bride?” you have got to email me. Because that’s awesome. Etiquette books contain mountains of good advice- and we owe the people who write them a great debt of gratitude. Receiving line order and invitation wording – couldn’t do it without them. People notice sometimes though, that we don’t keep a lot of wedding planning books around the store. Happy to share why: we believe in the “Ultimate Fighting” school of wedding design. We operate by nobody’s rules but our own, and as far as we’re concerned, there are no rules.  That works for us on a few levels.

1)  There are no rules for us in the way we design.  Nothing is off the table, and so all our pieces are developed as individual ideas. We don’t do the cookie-cutter follow the trend thing.

2)  There are no fashion or style rules.  If a bride loves and wants a baby blue and pale yellow theme for her December wedding, we aren’t going to talk her into more “seasonal” colors. Velvet in summer, rhinestones in the morning, snowflakes in July…we color outside the lines.

"out of the box" Prom entryway display - La Quinta prom 2011

3)  There are no rules for who our clientele will be. We would never turn away a wedding for being too small.  Everyone’s celebration is important, and deserves beautiful wedding flowers. We take a budget, work out what can be done, and make it beautiful.

4)  Since we allow our ideas to develop from the ground up, it passes on the “no rules” ethos to our brides and quinceaneras.  They can tell us what they truly dreamed- not just what they think we can do or what the girl next door had at her event. We really listen – we don’t impose a vision of how things “should” be.

So as you plan (your wedding, or your client’s), make sure you’re following your instincts, your dreams and your heart.  Don’t bother so much with rules.  And the only holding that matters, is that of hands, and hearts.

bride and groom in gazebo

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Wait a minute Mr. Postman…I’ve never been to Lord &Taylor. Why do I get their catalog?

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Williams-Sonoma's primary and West Coast flags...
Williams Sonoma's Flagship in San Francisco
Opening the mailbox sometimes can be overwhelming as a wedding professional. We get ads for every new wedding product imaginable from really gorgeous new dresses to dreadful things like bridal toilet decor. (We passed on that, creative though it was).
New brides-to-be also are surprised to find themselves drowning in mail, particularly after creating bridal registries.  Everywhere you go, someone (legitimately) needs your name and address, and suddenly you’re getting catalogs from every store under the sun. Some of them are cool!  Before you go to the bridal salon, it’s good to find a few foundation garments that work for you to bring along, so that Bare Necessities catalog that showed up could be handy.  Williams-Sonoma, Macy’s, Crate and Barrel, if you haven’t firmed up all your registries, maybe these catalogs will help you figure out a few more things you want to add.  But then you start seeing CB2, Pottery Barn, and Restoration Hardware, and then Design Within Reach, the Home Decorator’s collection…and it eventually devolves into Country Curtains. Way too much mail order decor. You don’t need all of that, and neither does the environment.  But they keep coming.  And as the companies sell their lists, you get more and more.
There is a remedy:  a brilliant non-profit called  Catalog Choice . They keep your in-box manageable and give the forests a fighting chance.  They work with all sorts of junk mail – more than the name implies.  You can keep the stores you want, and stop the ones you don’t.   All from one easy to use dashboard.  For free!
After all, your mailbox needs room for all those phonebook sized bridal mags.  Plus, one of your great grand-kids might want an outdoor wedding of their own some day.  Let’s leave them some trees, shall we?

Wait a minute Mr. Postman…I’ve never been to Lord &Taylor. Why do I get their catalog?

by
Williams-Sonoma's primary and West Coast flags...
Williams Sonoma's Flagship in San Francisco
Opening the mailbox sometimes can be overwhelming as a wedding professional. We get ads for every new wedding product imaginable from really gorgeous new dresses to dreadful things like bridal toilet decor. (We passed on that, creative though it was).
New brides-to-be also are surprised to find themselves drowning in mail, particularly after creating bridal registries.  Everywhere you go, someone (legitimately) needs your name and address, and suddenly you’re getting catalogs from every store under the sun. Some of them are cool!  Before you go to the bridal salon, it’s good to find a few foundation garments that work for you to bring along, so that Bare Necessities catalog that showed up could be handy.  Williams-Sonoma, Macy’s, Crate and Barrel, if you haven’t firmed up all your registries, maybe these catalogs will help you figure out a few more things you want to add.  But then you start seeing CB2, Pottery Barn, and Restoration Hardware, and then Design Within Reach, the Home Decorator’s collection…and it eventually devolves into Country Curtains. Way too much mail order decor. You don’t need all of that, and neither does the environment.  But they keep coming.  And as the companies sell their lists, you get more and more.
There is a remedy:  a brilliant non-profit called  Catalog Choice . They keep your in-box manageable and give the forests a fighting chance.  They work with all sorts of junk mail – more than the name implies.  You can keep the stores you want, and stop the ones you don’t.   All from one easy to use dashboard.  For free!
After all, your mailbox needs room for all those phonebook sized bridal mags.  Plus, one of your great grand-kids might want an outdoor wedding of their own some day.  Let’s leave them some trees, shall we?