Begin Planning the Holidays for Your Business Now

You've sent the kids back to school, you’re enjoying those last warm summer days, and Starbucks is finally serving Pumpkin Spiced Lattes again: it’s almost Christmas time! Well not really, but close. If you haven’t begun already, now’s the time to kick it into gear and begin planning those holiday cards and events for your clients and employees.

Start with the holiday party. It can be very difficult to find a venue to accommodate all of your needs

this late in the game (some companies have already signed contracts with a venue a year in advance!) Don’t fret, just think outside the box, or call in some help. Etap Communications has event planners with experience in planning Corporate holiday parties to meet the goals of your event.

Next, look at your holiday card list, review and update it based off updated relationships or companies. Looking at the number of people on your list may help you decide if you want to do physical cards or an ecard, based on cost. Some companies do both and some companies do neither.

No matter what’s on your “to do” list for the holidays this year, don’t let time slip away further, and get to planning your holiday activities right now.

Alaska-Themed Bridal Shower

When my mom got engaged, I wanted her to have a bridal shower, especially since she didn't have one the first go-round. I wanted her to have a good time and be able to attend a party where her family and friends could celebrate her.

Initially, the plan was to have someone come to the house and do a mani-pedi spa day with mimosas, but availability was extremely limited, so the theme had to change. Instead, the theme became a little more closely related to something that was happening after the wedding - the honeymoon! My mom and her husband-to-be were going to Alaska for their honeymoon, so that became the theme.

I used plaid material for a table runner and gave some excess to have a customized princess hat made for the bride-to-be. I also commissioned a tree painting to be made with my mom and her fiance's names on it with their wedding date. All of the family and friends that attended dipped their thumbs in green paint to help create the "leaves" on the piece.

Living in Missouri, it can be difficult to procure specialized food and alcohol. I spent a few hours calling around to different liquor stores trying to find Alaskan beer or wine. I had to make alternate plans, but that could have been a little detail to help enhance the overall theme of the event.

Carrying a Theme Throughout Your Event

We're in the middle of planning a wedding, a bridal shower and a birthday party for a two-year old. All are happening within eight days of each other. All have something that will tie the various components of the event: a theme.

The wedding has a theme that incorporates blue and orange, but it also has a rustic feel. It's being held at the bride and groom's home and they are incorporating their theme with decorations. The theme was chosen right after they began discussing their big day. When I asked them if they had a theme, they didn't want to incorporate a typical "theme," however, I asked them if there were colors or other items important to them and they both really like the color cobalt. After consulting Pinterest, they were excited to choose orange as the complementing color.

For the bridal shower, an initial theme of "girls day at the spa" changed quickly once we found out that our in-home options were already booked. To ensure this was a personalized party that recognized the bride, the theme became her honeymoon locale. (The details are a surprise, but we'll post pics after the event.)

A birthday party for a two-year old can be low-key or a hands-down blow out that the Real Housewives would be envious of. A nice compromise was made and a low-key themed event was decided upon. This little boy absolutely LOVES trains. Thomas the Train, model trains, freight trains, passenger trains; it doesn't matter, he loves trains. We created a board on Pinterest to decide which details to incorporate into the big day including a bunting, personalized invites and envelopes, a welcome sign, and food have all been planned out. We'll post pictures from that event as well.

Just remember to think about all the details and how to incorporate your theme. You set the tone with the save the date or the invite and end with a favor or electronic follow-up with photos to reminisce on your fun event.

Save Money When You Buy Online

The easiest way to save money when you buy online is to do a Google search before you click that Purchase button. Let's say you're purchasing some supplies for an upcoming party at Zazzle.com. They have a lot of customizable products that could be great for a variety of uses. Anyways, let's say you have your products are in your online shopping cart and you're ready to check-out. Simply open a new browser or tab and Google "Zazzle coupon" and see what comes up. Usually a site called retailmenot.com is one of the first ones to pop up on a Google search. At retailmenot.com, you can see what the coupon is for ($10 off of $50 for instance), when the code was posted, when it was last successfully used and the rating from users.

Other ways to save include being signed up for discount deal emails from sites like Groupon, LivingSocial, AmazonLocal, etc.

Wedding: Choosing a Venue

One of the first things that you'll do as part of wedding planning is to choose your ceremony and reception venue(s). As exciting as venue searching is, one of the things that will determine whether you can or can't use a venue (besides budget!) is the number of people on your invite list. It's okay to research, visit and shortlist your venues, but you also need to finalize your invite list before committing to a venue. A lot of newly engaged couples have a number in their heads about how many people they'll be inviting, but until they actually start writing down all the people they want to invite, that original number is usually a lot lower than the invitation list.

A general rule is the number of invitations you send out is about the total number of people that will RSVP for your wedding. For instance, if you send out 100 invitations that invites a total of 175 people, you will likely get around 100 total people (plus or minus 10%) that RSVP. Obviously this is a general rule and some factors will affect the number; things like whether your invitees are mostly from in town (likely will have more people RSVP) or if you're having a destination wedding (likely will have less people RSVP). No matter what the situation, just make sure that you're overestimating the number of potential RSVPs when you decide on your final venue.

This is a good rule to help you estimate whether the venue you've fallen in love with will even be close in having the necessary capacity to house your family and friends as they celebrate your special day with you!