Everyone likes Candles, right?

Friday, before we went to the coast, I went to a Partylite party at my cousin's house. (If you're not familiar, Partylite is one of those party sales companies where the product is sold from a consultant, via parties, to customers, much like tupperware, CAbi, passionparties etc.) I've used Partylite candles for years, I honestly can't remember how I first go exposed to it. Maybe a friend from work? I've hosted parties myself, gone to friends, worked off and on with several different consultants. The candles are excellent, the candle holders nice enough, the scents are amazing. It's fun, and it's nice to always have some candles on hand. The prices for the candles are reasonable, comprable to what you'd pay for any brand name candle, and you absolutely get your money's worth. The candle holders are hit or miss. Some are priced well, others over priced, some are attractive, some don't appeal to me. But what do you expect?

The reason I bring this up is because every time I go to one of these parties, at least for the last few years, the consultant picks me out as the person they think the can convince (I mean...would be good at...) being a consultant. I even nearly tried it out with Arbonne, mostly because the woman who approached me about it is someone I have a lot of respect for, and I do LOVE make up. Arbonne didn't work out for me. I wasn't very committed to it, I didn't jump in 100%, and the make up is more expensive then most of my friends could afford. Plus, after using the products myself, they didn't seem to be much better then anything else, so they had only their business practices (as far as how the make up was made) going for them.

Well, I spent a fair amount of Friday's party thinking "I could do so much better then this woman". Not that she was bad. She wasn't. But I could do better. And once again, I was the person that she honed in on when it came to the part of the party where she talks about being consultant. Usually I play along and brush it off. But this time it was different, for a few reasons.

Last time, I was in graduate school, aiming for a career where I was confidant I'd find work. I had goals, and a regular job. I was busy as hell, and I loved what I was doing. I was financially stable, even if I was relying on my parents and loans.

Things are different now. I have a Masters degree with no prospect of a full time job. I have tons of free time on my hands. I have no specific career oriented goals as I'm stuck with whatever opportunities arise. I live paycheck to paycheck, supporting my husband (more or less), and I'm STILL relying somewhat on my parents.

So this time, I really thought about it. And I asked real questions, and thought about what it would mean to me.

Basically - There is no start up cost for your display 'kit'. There is a recommendation/expectation that you find 6-10 parties to host the first month. That's the part I'm the most worried about, but after that, you can do as many or as few as you like. Take home pay is 25% of the profit on your shows. Most shows are about $400 they say, although I'm not 100% sure I believe that. There is opportunity for greater income should I decide to join their 'leadership' program, although at this point I don't anticipate that being something I'd be interested in.

So what's holding me back?

Well, I'm afraid that I don't know enough people who would want to host parties.
Luke is suspicious and somewhat dismissive of 'jobs' that aren't part of a formal company. He doesn't approve of busking, he's afraid that all consultant sales programs are pyramid schemes (although in one of his business classes they spent a class period on Partylite so he's actually supportive of their business model), and he's not into spending money.
When I mentioned I'd been to a Partylite party around Luke's parents, they were also dismissive.
I haven't talked to my parents yet, so I don't know what their thoughts would be.
I'm afraid I'll fail.

Reasons to do it?
I could use the money.
I could use the focus, something to be excited about and make goals about.
I could use the non-project/sewing/knitting/SCA stuff to do during the day when I'm just sitting at home on my ass.
It might be fun.

So, reactions? Advice? Thoughts? Has anyone done anything like this before? If I was a consultant, would you host a party?

(And if you think it's a bad idea, I especially want to hear your opinion!)

Waltzing Matilda...

Things have been quiet around here, I know. I haven't been doing much in the way of wedding stuff. We have a decent idea of what we want, and it's too soon to tell for most everything else. Everything is 'in progress', but not much progress is being made. We're still 15 months out from the wedding after all.

One thing has been bothering me though. Luke and I both love dancing, and have a decent amount of training. It's important to us to have dancing at our wedding. Not a long list of formal dances where he and I dance with everyone of the opposite gender from our families, ("...and now for the Mother of the bride's cousin and the groom...")

Our location (which we will book once we get a few questions answered) has an indoor space (the grange hall) and an outdoor space, which is basically field and forest. No manicured anything, not a lawn... not full of potholes, but not particularly flat either. (See this entry for a refresher on our location.

We initially wanted the whole thing (ceremony and reception) to be outside (barring weather complications) and so it didn't really matter to us that the grange was a bit...agricultural... All anyone but my 'staff' was going to see was the outside, which is a lovely shade of yellow anyways... But now that I am thinking more specifically about dancing, I'm thinking that in the grange hall might be the only place to do it! It's terribly obnoxious to dance on something that doesn't at least resemble a dance floor, and Luke and I want to show off!


The grange hall last November

Theoretically we could rent a dance floor, but they are expensive. The one quote we've seen on dance floors was nearly $300 fro 12'x12', which with a guest list of 300+ wouldn't really cut it if everyone wanted to dance. On the other hand, maybe everyone WON'T want to dance.

I just went to a wedding that had their reception at the Elks Club. It was lovely and all, and fit the couple wonderfully, but the pictures of old members staring down from the walls during the reception and the animal heads really killed it for me. Now I'm sure that the grange isn't as bad as that, but still I don't want to sacrifice the mood of my wedding, just because I'm snobby about dancing surfaces.

So it seems I have three options:
*Suck it up and rent a dance floor, even if it might be on the small side.
*Have dancing indoors, risking splitting the reception and adding a podunk feel to the party
*Have the dancing outdoors in the grass and just screw the whole dance floor thing, no one is going to care how well we dance anyways.

What do you guys think?

Dreamwood is a really cheesy name.

So we just had a little kink thrown in our awesome plans.

Dreamwood

It is practically next door to the Long Tom Grange, the location we have previously been planning on using.

But let's start with the one down side. It's $3000, which is nearly six times what we would pay for the Long Tom Grange.

It's privately owned by a family (one of the student teachers at my mom's school is part of the family that owns and operates it, that's how I heard about it).

They do everything there.

What do I mean by everything? Well let me tell you...

They have 6 staff members day of, one parking attendant, one bartender, one day of coordinator, the others are servers, set up, runners etc.

The space can accommodate up to 500, but for 300 or less they already have all the tables, chairs, linens (white), napkins (colored or white), dishes, flatware, serving dishes, sliver for a beverage table, pitchers, glassware for a dessert or candy buffet. They have a wide variety of decorations and centerpiece things such as: gazebo, chandeliers, hurricane glasses, candles, white paper lanterns, cut glass votive holders, and more. Not to mention various fabric and ribbon for decorating. They supply the bathrooms (so called 'black tie' port-a-potties), more parking then we could need, several big (semi-permanent) baskets of flowers, colored for the general area, white for the alter area, electricity hook ups, several big white couches, a large dance floor, two sites, about 75 feet apart, connected by a path. The bride is invited to use a room in their home in order to get ready and is treated to a luncheon (with her maids I assume) the day of the wedding. Once the contract is signed, the bride and groom are welcome to come out to the site any time, and they can start bringing stuff out to the site the Wednesday before the wedding, and have access until Sunday.

While we are welcome to bring out own food in for the rehearsal dinner, we would have to use their catering service, I'm waiting for a sample menu, which will be sent to me with the other info, the catch is their minimum is $20/person for catering. This is of course the other down side. The other catering services we are looking at are about $13.00/person, although that doesn't include gratuity, which the $20 for Dreamwood does include.

So now it all comes down to money. Luke and I both agree that this sounds fantastic, but can we afford it?

Here is a photo blog of a wedding there.

Bump in the Road

Right off the bat I knew that one of the big challenges for planning this wedding was going to be my FH's expectations. He simply has no basis for knowing how much Stuff costs. For instance, his only experience with photographers is the guy who does photos for the theater company we work for (incidentally also our wedding photographer, who's amazing btw. Michael Brinkerhoff). Since he sort of got his start with our theater company many years ago, he continues to give us a dirt cheap rate for shooting our shows. FH didn't know this, he just knew how much we paid him per show and figured "A wedding is smaller then a play, so it will cost a little less then that right?" So when I showed him Michael's website where the bottom tier was just over $1000 he flipped. After explaining the situation to him, he understood that he had made assumptions without actually having any info, and now realizes that things cost more then he thought they would, however, he's still definitely wants to find the least expensive ways to do things, as do I. He's just a bit more optimistic about finding things for cheap, then I am.

With that background knowledge, here is our hiccup. We finally got in contact with the location we wanted, the Long Tom Grange. It's pretty, and woodsy, more or less just what we want. We were anticipating a very inexpensive price, about $200. And we were right, it's $200/day. However, for weddings (and I KNOW I shouldn't have said that it as a wedding) they make you rent it for three days. One day for the rehearsal, one for the ceremony, and then clean up the next day. To me, this is reasonable, and they even give you a $50 break, and charge $550 for the three days. I think this sounds great. FH, wants to see if we can find somewhere cheaper.
The Long Tom Grange

The other issue is alcohol. I know a girl who got married at this location and they had a kegger. So I figured it would be no problem, but when I asked about alcohol, the woman said no alcohol, except for a champagne etc. toast. So obviously my friend was a bit dishonest about what they did at their wedding... Now we aren't having a bar at all, open or cash, but we are planning on supplying two or three bottles of wine per table, enough for people to drink it with dinner. I told her this was out plan, and she seemed to think that that might be ok, but we're looking into different insurance options (insurance is the reason they don't allow alcohol). So with the potential added expense of extra insurance, FH really thinks we should keep looking. Whereas, though I am willing to keep looking (and by we keep looking, that really means I keep looking) I am also pretty satisfied with the options laid out.

One thing I was thinking about last night was that if we had our ceremony at like 2pm, and then served a wide variety of hors d'ourves (sp?) with a small amount of wine, and then, at 9pm had a party back at our house (we have a huge back yard and a July wedding) for our friends, where people could party more, and drink more heavily if they wanted. I really like the idea, although I also recognize the issues with it, like paying for a location that we aren't using to its fullest extent, travel/driving time from the first location(for the ceremony and reception) to our home (about thirty minutes away), as well as the logistics of throwing a party in two different locations, the second of which we would be supplying minimal amounts of food and drink.

So what do you guys think? Anyone find a venue that wasn't a private residence for less then $550? (There are a variety of reasons we can't use a private residence which I'm happy to outline if someone wants me to) How about running into issues with alcohol? Any experience with event insurance that covers alcohol consumption? How about after parties? Especially of the BYOB&F variety. Thanks for any advice, and kudos for making it through my whole narrative!

Flowers, alternatives?

Wedding flowers totally kill me. I have the hardest time understanding why they are so expensive. I mean nearly $200 for a bridal bouquet? It is definitely an aspect that's price is inflated because of the societal insistence and emphasis on them. I've looked into alternatives a little bit. But alternatives either don't speak to me very much, or are just as expensive. Ribbon,Crochet,Glass,Buttons.

So I was pretty excited when I came across this idea over on Cup Of Joe. Buying supermarket bouquets, but then taking them apart and putting them back together in a more aesthetic and careful manner. I love it. Now I might opt for farmers market, rather then supermarket, but either way, I should be able to do all the flowers for less then $100!

I should have know the original article is from Real Simple, pretty much my new favorite magazine.