Happy Celebrating!

Kathryn

Setting the Scene
We’ll have everything in single colours - a rainbow of napkins, plates, balloons and lanterns. Our streamers will be rainbows. We’ll make it quirky by not matching a thing, but keeping the pieces complementary in style and purpose.

And because I am a fan of the dramatic and fun, we’ll have rainbow mirror balls and helium balloons in every colour dramatically tied with fun rainbow ribbon. We’ll lead our guests to the front door with a rainbow of upright flags down our driveway.

Stationery and Favors
We’ll have individually coloured and personalised invitations to set the scene for our one of a kind celebration. Our gifts will be in rainbows of colours and individually styled for each guest. I’m envisioning cupcakes in different colours and styles reflecting the personality of the recipient.

Games and Entertainment
We always recommend making first birthday parties very short - about an hour is as much as a baby can be expected to take before releasing his or her inner-demon! So, we’ll keep the entertainment simply to great Wiggles and Justine Clark music, along with terrific food and company.

I’m looking forward to celebrating Darcy’s birthday already!

Happy Celebrating!

Kathryn

Setting the Scene
Create a pretty and comfortable sleeping area with loads of soft mattresses, fluffy pillows and warm blankets in ample supply. Use complementary linen in shades of pastel pink, lemon and purple. You needn’t buy new linen for the event, but if you don’t have enough for the amount of guests, Target and Big W have gorgeous sheets and blankets in funky designs that won’t break the bank and can be reused over and over again for guests.

Set up a wide screen television, dozens of DVD’s (chosen by the guest of honour), speakers for your daughter’s iPod, as well as robes and slippers for each of the guests.

Organise a snack station with plenty of healthy (and some fun) snacks for the girls to pick at all night. Dancing to the High School Musical soundtrack is really hungry work! Make sure you also have plenty of fresh juices, mineral water and bottled water for them to choose from all night long.

Ensure that the room you choose for the girls to sleep in has a bathroom near by. Stock the bathroom with beautiful soaps, lotions and other pampering items such as eye masks so the guests feel pampered and relaxed during their stay. Fluffy, clean bath towels and face washers in plentiful supply are also a must.

Catering
You have your snack and drink station set up. Make sure you pop in every hour or so to restock the station, and also make sure the girls aren’t up to mischief! Catering can be easy - healthy finger food such as sushi or mini quiches make the best food for hungry tweens.

Set the girls up with a popcorn maker, popcorn boxes and icecream cones for when they’re wanting to relax with the DVD’s on.

Don’t forget that you need to cater for breakfast as well. Enlist the help of your husband and ask him to cook up a BBQ breakfast storm of healthy eggs, salmon and crepes. Also serve different types of cereals and milks to keep fussy eaters happy.

Entertainment
Take your entertainment cues from your daughter, but our picks are:

• Plenty of DVD’s such as High School Musical and the latest season of 90210 ready to be played.
• An iPod full of great dance and chill-out music with speakers.
• Table Topics Teen edition to get the girls talking.
• Dozens of celebrity magazines, as well as the latest editions of Girlfriend and Dolly at the ready.
• Manicure and pedicure sets so the girls can pamper one another when they’re ready to chill out and relax.
• Soothing scented candles for when the guests finally decide to settle down to sleep.

Favours and Guest Gifts
Send guests home with a little care package of relaxing bath salts, mini manicure sets and a scented candle so they can spend the next day catching up on much needed relaxation after a big night of partying!

Happy Celebrating!

Kathryn

Your parents are celebrating 25, 40, 50 or 60 years together. Congratulations! You’ve decided to celebrate the anniversary with a special dinner for them. Great! Now what? How do you make an anniversary celebration special? We have the answer! The perfect anniversary themed event is a “love’s journey” anniversary dinner.

Planning - Collect the Story
Spend some time talking with each of the guest of honour’s friends and family members with the intention of gathering stories about the couple’s time together. The stories don’t have to be glamourous, they might be little anecdotes from everyday family events. They should be stories that shaped the couple’s life together, family rituals and milestones. Using dates (years only if you don’t know specifics), create a timeline of the couple’s time together. It might start with them meeting in highschool in 1958, they got engaged in 1962, were married in 1963, had their first child in 1964, moved to another town in 1966 etc.

Organise to interview the most interesting characters on camera and together with family video, have a DVD created which becomes a biography of the couple’s journey. If you’re handy on the computer, video editing software is fairly easy to use, but you could also employ a professional to create a slick DVD that really bowls everyone over.

Invitations
If you are really creative, create a “Love’s Journey” invitation which includes the timeline you created before, with a little scrapbook motorbike or plane slipped into the envelope. The papers from Cristina Re are perfect for creating invitations which suit the couple’s personalities. Alternatively, a themed journey invitation is perfect for setting the scene for this event.

Setting the Scene
Create photo boards of the couple’s lives sorted by decades. The first photo board might be their courting time together, then their wedding, then their newlywed years… Place the boards around the venue so they create talking points as guests meander around the room.

Copy or scan and print your favourite images of the couple as thumbnails and place them into origami paper planes which are hung from the ceiling or helium filled balloons.

Calculate the time in years, weeks, days, hours, seconds that the couple has been together and create a conceptual timepost for your table centerpieces.

Make long centerpieces with image of the couple in mini photo frames along a long journey from start to anniversary along the table. Take inspiration from the couple’s journey for the place settings. Do they love to travel? Name each place setting after a country they have visited. Do they love films? Name each place setting after a film that they enjoy together or a character they identify with.

Entertainment
Rope in a great MC from your guests, but ensure they will take the role seriously and know the couple well enough to judge the room and the atmosphere as they keep the night moving along smoothly. Play the DVD you’ve had created to the guests between courses. Ensure everyone has a charged glass and the guests are all comfortable. Keep the DVD short - no longer than 10 minutes - or you risk your guests becoming bored, no matter how enthralling the story is.

Set your iPod to shuffle, and play the couple’s favourite songs from their love journey throughout the night.

Menu
Have a caterer put together the couple’s favourite dishes and serve them to your guests. If the couple has instituted a ritual of a roast chicken lunch each Sunday, have the caterer create a sophisticated version of this family favourite for your guests.

A special anniversary cake is important to mark this occasion. This is one occasion, like a wedding or christening, when organising a professional cake is important. Ask your cake designer to put together a cake that reflects the journey of the couple. Perhaps an old fashioned car with a couple in it, and “Love’s Journey” on the number plate?

Guest Gifts and Party Favors
Send guests home with a “Love Story” personalised notebook favour which is both practical and a whimsical reminder of the evening for guests. Have copies of the DVD made and any guests who would like a copy can take one home with them to relive the story anytime in the comfort of their own home.

My own parents will be celebrating 40 years of marriage next year. I think we might just celebrate their Love’s Journey” at the anniversary party!

Happy Celebrating!

Kathryn

I am so inspired by the beautiful spring weather here in Sydney at the moment. Walking past the Chinese gardens at Darling Harbour every morning and seeing the willows swing in the breeze really has me thinking of the best garden weddings. One of the most beautiful themes for a garden wedding is garden creatures - the bees, birds and of course, butterflies. Pink Frosting worked on a wedding inspired by butterflies for one of our favourite wedding clients whose name is Vanessa. I wasn’t aware until we worked on Vanessa’s wedding earlier this year that her name is also a genus of brush-footed butterfly and for her glorious wedding plans, we took inspiration from this lovely creature. Here are some of the ideas I love from Vanessa’s butterfly inspired garden wedding.

Setting the Scene
You can find beautiful rice paper lanterns with butterfly designs which can be hung in clusters with coloured plain rice paper lanterns in various sizes. Use different lengths of fishing wire to hang the lanterns from trees, balconies and tall branches so the butterfly lanterns blow in the breeze throughout your event.

Make hundreds of origami butterflies in all sorts of shapes, sizes and colours and suspend them from wire stakes throughout the garden. They will sway in the breeze and look real. If you and your bridesmaids aren’t crafty, Christmas decoration butterflies are readily available throughout the year, as are scrapbook and craft supply butterflies from discount department stores and two dollar shops.

Stationery
There are some glorious examples of butterfly inspired letterpress stationery on the market, but if you want something really different, you could create a butterfly on a stake invitation which flutters on a magnet once hung on your guests’ fridge door. Otherwise choose plain stationery and adorn with scrapbook or charm butterflies which are available from good craft shops and even two dollar shops at most shopping centres.

Little Details
Organise a butterfly release for your wedding. Check out Butterfly Releases Australia for a trusted supplier that delivers Australia wide for your wedding day.

Butterfly wings are a whimsical addition to your garden wedding when worn by your flowergirls. Beautiful wings can be sourced through Fairy Magic Byron Bay and they’ll make a lovely gift for your flowergirls after the event. They’re sure to use them for the next fairy party they are invited to!

If you’re using parasols for yourself and your wedding party, glue a random scrapbook butterfly on your parasol to create a pretty illusion for your guests and photos.

Create smaller versions of your garden stake butterflies and have your florist use them as picks in your floral centrepieces and in your floral bouquet.

Butterfly Themed Favor and Bonbonniere Ideas
The best favor designers in the world recognise how beautiful the butterfly icon can be as a wedding symbol. They have designed some fashionable favors perfect to fit with this garden themed wedding. Some of our favourites include butterfly themed candles and bookmarks from Kate Aspen, though Pink Frosting.

For the more adventurous couple, try the mini tin pails or mini watering cans, and grow some wheatgrass in them, then create a tiny butterfly stake and place into the grass. Voila! You have a pretty and practical gift for your wedding guests.

Happy Celebrating!

Kathryn