5 Must Have's on Your Wedding Day

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! My family and I did not stick to tradition this year but our holiday was definitely enjoyable! While preparing for our New Year and New Decade celebration, I realized a post was long overdue. Today I will share five things a bride should have with her on her wedding day.

1. ) Sanitary supplies (napkins or tampons): Even if your cycle is not due, certain stressful conditions could bring on either spotting or even a full blown cycle. Let's hope you don't need it, but it's best to be prepared.

2.) Band-aids: Yes, you may not have had to use them very frequently since your childhood, but again, it is best to be on the side of caution. A long day ensues and mishaps do happen. Even if you don't need them, someone else may find themselves in need and who really carries band- aids with them all the time?

3.) Breath-mints: You will in close contact with a lot of people on your wedding day. A lot of people will be hugging and kissing you, make sure your breath smells fresh all day long!

4.) Snacks: Yes, there will be food at the reception but ... the time between you waking up, getting ready, getting married and dinner being served at the reception is long. True, the time will fly by, but while it's flying by, you will be busy, being tugged in this direction and that direction and may not find the time to sit down and enjoy a meal. With all the activity, your metabolism will be working just that much faster and you will get hungry, trust me. In case the day begins to slip away from you and you find yourself famished, keep a snack near you during the day. Trail mix or an energy bar are good filling choices.

5.) Sewing kit (or at least some safety pins): Just in case there is a burst or bulge that occurs during the day, have a sewing kit on hand to mend anything that may need mending. If you aren't handy with a needle and thread and there is no one on your team whom is, consider bringing along some safety pins.

If you hire a wedding planner, they should be equipped with a fully stocked emergency kit, thereby making sure the things listed above are handy as well as a host of other things. Also, if you hire a wedding planner your chances of needing anything from the emergency kit become drastically reduced.

If you are in need of a wedding planner, contact 4 Wed Joy at 1-877-4-Wed-Joy for a complimentary consultation and together we will see if we are a compatible match. Your wedding day deserves special attention and your wedding planner should be someone you feel comfortable with, after all, this is someone you will be working closely with for the next several months.

Written by: Carla McCurthon

A budget for engaged couples

by Crown Financial Ministries

Because finances have tremendous potential to create either harmony or conflict in a marriage, engaged couples need to prepare their budgets both individually and together to demonstrate before marriage that they can live on their income. Couples who decide not to budget usually end up trusting credit instead of trusting God.

Engaged couples should talk about credit cards and how to handle them. They should agree to cut up the cards and never use them again the first time they are unable to pay the full balance at the end of the month. They should talk about savings. Usually, one will want to save and the other will want to spend, so engaged couples need to set boundaries before they marry. They will need to decide what type of insurance and how much they will need. They should talk about whether the wife will work after having children, and if not they should prepare early to live on only one salary.

If an engaged couple can't agree on money issues before marriage, they may need to postpone their marriage until they can. In the Articles section of our Web site under Pamphlets, is the online pamphlet, “Before You Say I Do”. Using this pamphlet as a springboard for discussion, engaged couples can start working through important financial issues. At some point they may want to talk about buying a home, but there are so many big decisions and adjustments early in a couple’s life together that we encourage newlyweds to rent for the first year of their marriage.
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The sales portion of this article (the last two paragraphs) have been omitted as they were a sales pitch to engaged couples to purchase books and tools to help them plan their finances. If you are interested in these materials, please visit: Crown Financial Ministries.

Seated or Buffet? The answer is shocking!

Many couples wonder if they should have a seated or buffet dinner at their receptions. Many wedding planners and caterers will say that buffet is less expensive. They say this because the type of food served at a buffet usually is of a lesser caliber than the food served at a seated and plated dinner. The lesser quality food is actually less expensive - seemingly but, I have shocking news. Buffet is not less expensive than seated and plated, but rather, seated is actually cheaper! Wow, did that shock you? Let me tell you why.

When you have a buffet meal, the guests are preparing their own plates. They have stood in a line and are hungry and probably a bit crabby because they had to stand in a line to get their food. They pile the food onto their plates for more than one reason. One reason guests pile the food onto their plates is because they are expecting they will eat all that food. They want to have their seconds, and thirds all on their plate to avoid standing in line again and just in case the food runs out (because they can't be certain that it won't). They also pile food onto their plates in anticipation that the food will be simply scrumptious.

You can curtail this by having servers at the buffet line to dish the food onto the plates with explicit instruction as to how much of each item to put on each plate, but then it's up to the server to adhere to your directives. But, here's the thing, even if they do follow your instructions, the food has already been prepared and yes, you will still have to pay for it. Therefore, if the food is not actually consumed at the reception, you will have excess food when the reception is over that you will have to either give away or take home. Now, how does this make buffet more expensive? It makes it more expensive because the caterers know that when there is a buffet dinner, the guests get greedy and their eyes get larger than their stomachs. The caterers know this and prepare extra food for this occurrence, and yes, you are paying for all this excess. So in reality, when you give your caterer your final headcount, the caterer figures in the amount of excess they will need to prepare, and you get charged accordingly.

Now, with seated and plated meals, all the food is actually prepared for the exact number of people on the list (and yes, you should feed your vendors the same thing you feed your guests). You will have waiters, but you don't need a lot of them to have an elegant affair. The portions of food the guests receive is predetermined and actually a lot smaller than if the guests were given free range at the buffet table.

Oh, but are you worried that with the lesser amount of food served, your guest will not get full? No worries. When you have a seated meal, there are various courses that are served to the guests. When a guest is finished with one course, they have to wait until a specific predetermined time until the next course is served. This lag time in between courses allows the body to start digesting the food and allows the guests' metabolism to begin working. This results in the guests getting fuller much quicker. A person who eats slowly usually eats less and gets full faster than a person who wolfs their food down and seemingly never gets full.

So which is less expensive? Seated or buffet? Now you know!

Written by: Carla McCurthon