www.kellysherlock.com

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Welcome to "Bride's Best Friend - A Wedding Planner's Perspective"

Welcome to the first post of "Bride's Best Friend - A Wedding Planner's Perspective"!

My name is Kelly Sherlock and I am a Wedding/Event Planner in New Orleans. My profession gives me great insight into women of today and our modern etiquette, traditions, desires and more.

Being one of the top destinations for weddings in this country, "small" is not exactly the adjective that would best describe the majority of New Orleans weddings. Even when the guest list appears to be intimate, the additions that make a true New Orleans experience well surpass the fun, simplicity and expectation that come from most other cities.

Making the most of your wedding experience, whether as a local or an out-of-town bride, can be best achieved by hiring a wedding planner. From venues and vendors to favors and final payments, I am with you every step of the way to guide you to your dream come true. The typical wedding planner is expected to help you with such things as what vendors to use, what traditions to follow and how to carry out the details. Going beyond the expected is where I differ!

Taking the time to know my girls and treat this "job" as something more, is the main reason that most of my brides and I become best friends while planning their weddings. As the relationship builds and the trust is established, my brides will come to me with anything and everything they need (wedding related or not) and I will never change that. They invite me into their homes to meet their families, they confide in me and trust my advice and they utilize me to mediate against anyone in their way!! These are the reasons that I know my job, I know my clients and I know women of today.

The experiences that I have had working with brides living all over the country with diverse backgrounds and their own tastes and desires, made me realize that the brides of today are unlike any other generation of brides. The etiquette of our mothers and grandmothers is long gone and this generation has no intention of bringing back the "traditions" and definition of what was once "proper".

However, today’s brides may find it difficult to plan the wedding of their dreams because they are women with careers, families and responsibilities. But these commitments do not make them want their dream wedding any less. Modern brides have their own minds and have no desire to conform to the norm or the expected. Family traditions, religious symbolism and cultural customs are still important to these nostalgic brides, but "keeping up with the Joneses" has taken on a whole new meaning.

This blog serves as an updated version of etiquette; a discussion of new traditions that have come along as well as old traditions that are still with us (all according to my experiences). This is also an outlet for situations that occur when you are engaged - the stress, the joy, the in-laws, the planning, and the madness! Most brides go through similar situations with similar concerns and similar questions. Anything short of real planning questions (vendor referrals, etc) can be answered on this blog (after all, why buy the planner when you are getting the information for free?).

Feel free to post questions and post comments to my responses as well. I will have a few stories now and then but mostly, I will be picking questions that are emailed to me through my website
www.kellysherlock.com, through this blog, or have come to me verbally.

I hope you will find this blog useful, but most importantly, I hope that you will find this blog to be true and helpful in convincing you that you are not alone in the concerns, desires or excitement that may come from being engaged. Our lives as women are not what they were even twenty years ago, however the desire to get married and have the wedding of our dreams may never change; how we, as women, deal with these evolutions and expectations changes every day.

Congratulations and stay tuned!