Emily Edwards featured on The Smart Planner

For the very few of you out there who have not heard of Liene Stevens and her two very popular blogs, you absolutely MUST check her out!

Liene (pronounced Lynn and pictured above) is also a wedding planner. Her company is called Blue Orchid Designs and she has not only been busy growing her company, but has also found great success in writing both the Blue Orchid Blog (geared towards brides and grooms) and The Smart Planner Blog (geared towards wedding professionals).

I am a fan of both. They are chocked full of relevant and straight-to-the-point advice, which is not only helpful, but also extremely refreshing.

Every Friday on The Smart Planner Blog, Liene features a different wedding planner from across the country. And last Friday, it was my turn in the spotlight. You can check out the post by clicking here.

Thanks Liene for putting yourself out there and sharing your voice. I wish you all the success your heart desires! ;)

Winner of 2009 Bride's Choice Award

WeddingWire, the nation’s leading wedding technology company, just announced that Your Heart's Desire has won the 2009 Bride’s Choice Awards™!

In its inaugural year, the Bride’s Choice Awards recognizes and honors vendors from the WeddingWire Network that demonstrate excellent quality of service, responsiveness, professionalism, value of cost and flexibility. This year’s recipients represent the top three percent of WeddingWire’s vendor community, which includes over 100,000 wedding vendors from across the US. That means Your Heart's Desire is one of the very best Wedding Planners!

Unlike other awards in which winners are selected by the company, the Bride’s Choice Awards are determined exclusively by recent newlyweds through surveys and reviews.

“We are excited to launch this annual award program to honor high-performing vendors based solely on the experiences of our WeddingWire community,” according to Timothy Chi, WeddingWire’s Chief Executive Officer. “This year’s recipients have set the bar high, exhibiting excellent service and expertise in the wedding industry.”

Your Heart's Desire would like to thank our past clients for speaking on our behalf and helping us win the 2009 Bride’s Choice Award!

Blogging Bootcamp - Completed!

I really enjoyed the Blogging Bootcamp workshop on Wednesday (that's me, front & center). I gathered a lot of great information and tangible resources from the very knowledgeable Liene Stevens to help develop my blog.

So stay tuned as I start trying to implement some new ideas... This should be fun!

Photo Credit goes to MelissaJill Photography ...Thanks friend!

Blogging Bootcamp

I thought it was blog-worthy to mention that today I am attending a workshop called: Blogging Bootcamp.

It is being given by Liene Stevens of The Smart Planner and Blue Orchid Designs.

Since the launch of the Blue Orchid Blog in 2006, it has grown to include over 3000 unique daily visitors! At this Blogging Bootcamp (which is designed for wedding professionals), Liene will be sharing specific strategies and techniques she has personally used to grow the Blue Orchid Blog to where it is today.

I am really looking forward to hearing what she has to say. Hopefully you will see the effects of what I learn here on my little 'ole blog!

Stay tuned!

OneWed.com: Best of 2008!

I just received an email informing me that I made the Best of 2008 list with OneWed.com. Yay! Just thought I would share...

Bridal Fashion Debut

To kickstart to 2009, I decided to participate in the Bridal Fashion Debut which was held on January 10th & 11th at the Phoenix Convention Center.

It turned out to be a really amazing show and I am really glad I was there!

One of the florists that I work with is always so generous to provide me with decorations for my booth and because she does this for me as a favor, I typically just work around whatever she has available at the time and it always comes together really nicely.

But this time I got a bee in my bonnet (who says that anymore?) and decided to go to Fabric Depot to select some fabric and make my own booth decorations. So, I picked out a really pretty floral fabric and some bead trim (see a close-up picture below) and made a valance and table runner out of it. Then I selected some Mossy green satin fabric and made some panels out it. And Voila! It made for a really pretty little display.

Of course, I still borrowed an arrangement and table drape from the florist (Thanks Karen!) and rented some fruitwood Chivari chairs from Tri-Rentals (Thanks Shelly!) to finish it off. I think it looked really pretty and it was very affordable!

Once again, my sister Sara (that's her in the picture) helped me in my booth and here is a picture of how it turned out:

I met some fantastic new vendors and enjoyed getting to see the vendors I already know. I also met some really amazing couples and I am really excited about seeing them again in the initial consultations we scheduled.

So, overall it was a great success!

Phoenix Bridal Show

On Sunday I participated in the Phoenix Bridal Show at the Cardinals Stadium in Glendale. It had good attendance and as always, it was nice to see some of my fellow wedding vendor buddies!

I had my beautiful sister Sara help me to greet brides (and grooms!) and pass out postcards. She was such an incredible help, as always! (Thanks baby girl! I love you!)

I scheduled a handful of initial consultations while I was there and I am looking forward to meeting with them in the coming week.

Normally, Tyler's Custom Design is able to bring me a beautiful arch for my booth, which makes setup very easy and quick, but this weekend they were not available because of two very large weddings they were setting up.

So, I did something a little different this time. I wanted my booth to have a feeling of fall, but I didn't want to use the standard reds and oranges. So, I incorporated this really fun blue & gold shimmery fabric and accented with a copper-brown crushed fabric. I also borrowed a mini curly willow tree that Tyler's created and hung little amber votive cups from it with battery operated flickering candles. It think it came together really nicely.

Here are a few photos:

So, overall it was a really fun day and a big Thank You to those of you who stopped by my booth!

Award Winner!

So, as you know I have been at the Wedding MBA the last few days. It had a much bigger turnout this year than last year and I personally liked the format and content better this year as well.

The schedule consisted of a seminar every hour on the hour with a 2-hour break for lunch, networking and browsing the trade show booths. Last year they did "break-out sessions" which always left me feeling like I might be missing something.

The speakers were all wonderful. The topics were fresh and relevant. It reinforced my confidence in the things I am currently doing, as well as brought up some new ideas of things that I can/should be doing.

I also received the honor of the being the winner of the 2008 "Best of the Best" Award!

So, like any good conference, it left me with a mile-long list of things I want to do with my new found knowledge and the motivation to go out and make it happen!

So keep checking back in with us and see what's new!

Wedding MBA

Today was the first day of a 3-day conference I am attending with the Wedding MBA (Wedding Merchants Business Academy). So far it has been really informative, and I anticipate it will continue to be.

Some of today's speakers included: Alan Berg, Vice President of TheKnot.com, Tammy Elliot, President of Perfect Wedding Guide, and Christine & Gary Thomas, co-founders of AboutWeddings.com, among others.

But my absolute favorite speakers today were the CEO, Tim Chi & the CMO, Sonny Ganguly of WeddingWire.com. I personally love WeddingWire and was looking forward to what they had to say.

They started out with a huge laugh as they introduced themselves as Harold and Kumar, and had a huge picture of Harold and Kumar on the presentation screen!

Their presentation was about todays "Wired" Bride... no, not the one who drinks a ton of Starbucks (that would be a whole other seminar!), but the Bride that is completely wired into technology.

One of the things that stood out to me most was about understanding the trends. Sonny told us that he enjoyed surfing... leading us to believe he was talking about the water sport, and proceeded to tell us about his Top 10 favorite places to Surf:

1. MySpace
2. facebook
3. Ning
4. WordPress
5. twitter
6. YouTube
7. digg
8. flickr
9. upcoming
10. Yahoo Answers

All of these sites have millions of viewers every year and are the newest way to reach todays brides & grooms. The best thing that he pointed out about each of these avenues to promote yourself, is that they are completely FREE!

Since I was not familiar with almost half of them, I was excited to get home and start doing some surfing of my own!

So without further ado...