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Sure it may be the most magical memories in your memory bank; but no bride should ever suffer or stress.  Planning a reception is really a happy time.  It should be fun!

Here are the stress factors for any wedding-

• The number of guests, (pick a number and stick to it!) – I promise that half the people you feel guilty or want on your list will probably not be in your life in a couple years.  Don’t fret over the guest list.  Keep it simple or keep it grand.  Just as soon as you make your guest choices stick with it.  Don’t rewish or rethink.  Invite and no turning back.

• The food service doesn’t always have to be about food. – You can have a low key event that is classy and centered around a theme.  I planned a chocolate and candles wedding once and it was beautiful.  Think outside the box or think traditional.  What ever you decide or think, make your decision and no turning back.

• The entertainment needs to be fun for your guests; but ladies/gentleman get a grip. – The day is about you.  Sure you need to be hospitable and make sure your guests have a good time but getting married is more then the wedding it’s about the marriage.  Don’t feel guilty about providing the best DJ intown or the hotest 80’s cover band HAVING to be there.

• The location’s availability is important but no more then your day. – The date should be about your date not about when the space you would kind/of/like to have is available for you.  This is your day, the start of your life together so don’t let some 4 star wedding reception location see when they can pencil you in.  Traveling isn’t that bad-especially when it comes to point A-the guest list.  Only those that love you will travel great lengths to your day.  This is “your” day you know. Claim it and and don’t let the vendors claim you.

picture provided by www.digital-photography-school.com

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This is a guest post from Liz Muirhead, who blogs about health and fitness at Looking Good (for a mom). Liz is a thirty-something working mom of two wonderful kiddos, who got fed up with using her kids to explain her flab and found a way to get the best body of her life!

In this last installment of our “How to throw a Make-over birthday” series, Liz will go over exactly how she scheduled the party to go.

Activities:

When planning out our activities, I wanted to allow some time for guests to arrive, and also plan some activities for down time, when girls were not at a makeover station. And, since my experts weren’t going to stay for the whole party, I wanted to make sure we used their time well. So here’s a breakdown of how we spent our time:

• 2:00 – 2:30 Girls arrived. We passed out shirts, and the girls selected microphones and glasses. I turned on Taylor Swift, and they sang and danced together. Totally cute, and totally fun!
• 2:30 – 3:00 Facial time! I passed out headbands, and my mom and I mixed up clay mud masques from my own personal supply. We applied the masques with facial sponges, and the girls had fun laughing at each other and watching them dry. I had individual facial cloths, which the girls used to clean their faces when everyone was done. There was a lot more singing and dancing until our helpers arrived!
• 3:00 – 4:15 I passed out schedules to the girls, telling them which station to go to in which order. The girl doing hair was kept pretty busy, as most of the girls wanted a full head of curls. My mother did a few french braids and a bun, and I helped out with make-up. Eventually, our second student was done with make-up and able to help finish the hairdos. Of course, they all had their nails done. When a few girls finished before the rest, I turned on Disney Sing It for the Wii, and they did karaoke.
• 4:15 – 5:00 We have pizza and cake. A few girls were still finishing their hair, so we did the singing and cake in the dining room, where the hair station was set up. After the cake, my daughter opened her presents!

In the end, the party was a HUGE success. The girls went home looking and feeling gorgeous (without being overly made-up), with great keepsake favors (their shirts), and I was a hero to my daughter, who said it was the best party I’ve ever thrown her.

Total Cost: $209. That’s a savings of about $100 over the base Sweet and Sassy party, even before counting the money I would have spent on food ($50 at home). And, it was over an hour longer.

Can you throw a party like this? Absolutely! Now that I’ve done it, my advice is to seek out and book your guest helpers in advance, and raid your own product and supply stash to see what kind of make-over related activities you can add to your party without having to go shopping. It also might be fun to have a craft for some girls to do while others are getting their makeovers, if you don’t have something like karaoke to keep them busy.

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This is a guest post from Liz Muirhead, who blogs about health and fitness at Looking Good (for a mom). Liz is a thirty-something working mom of two wonderful kiddos, who got fed up with using her kids to explain her flab and found a way to get the best body of her life!

Expert Staff:

As I mentioned, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to handle everything on my own, and I didn’t want to call in favors from friends, so I went looking for people I could pay to help with the party. I called around to some of the local beauty schools, looking for students who might be interested in some extra income and practice. What I learned is that many schools can’t send their unlicensed students to go out unsupervised, even for a kids party such as this. So I talked to some people at a few local beauty supply stores and found out that they knew most of the students attending cosmetology school at our local high school in the afternoons. Why didn’t I think of that? Within minutes, I had a phone call from a High School Junior, Kelsey, who said she would love to help and would bring a friend. I promised them $25 each and hung up, relieved. Since there would be so many manicures to give, I didn’t want a student, but a real pro. So my mom asked her manicurist to come. As a favor, she agreed to do it for just $50 ($5 per manicure, as it turned out), even though her normal rate was higher. It was worth it. She brought her own nail dryer and was quick, friendly, and efficient!

Cost: $100 for 1-1.5 hours of three trained (or semi-trained) professionals with their own supplies. Well worth it!

Accessories:

To help make things a little more fun, I purchased some glittery sunglasses and blow-up microphones from the party store. I thought we’d crank up the music and the girls could sing and dance. This turned out to be money well spent, as I’ll explain below.

Cost: $15 for 12 sunglasses and 12 microphones

Next up: Activites!

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This is a guest post from Liz Muirhead, who blogs about health and fitness at Looking Good (for a mom). Liz is a thirty-something working mom of two wonderful kiddos, who got fed up with using her kids to explain her flab and found a way to get the best body of her life!

Favors

Favors are actually a pet peeve of mine. They seem like such a requirement, but most of the parents I know look for the first opportunity to throw away the junky “made in china” toys that come in most goody bags. Planning out the party, I knew we were going to be doing facials. I thought – why not buy shirts for the girls, that they can put on over their clothes to keep them clean during the facials. Then my mom stepped in and offered to use her embroidery machine to put each guest’s name on her shirt. I knew this would be the best favor ever – something useful and pretty! If I didn’t have access to an embroidery machine, the alternative would have been doing cute iron-on designs.

Cost: $44 for eleven matching pink shirts (supply your own awesome mom or friend with an embroidery machine)

Food:

I scheduled the party for afternoon, from 2pm until 5pm. I knew the girls would want some snacks but didn’t want to provide junk. So I bought some fresh fruit at the store, and made two large bowls of air-popped popcorn. I planned to serve a small meal of pizza around 4pm, and then finish up with ice cream cake (my daughter’s request) at 4:30pm, just before the party ended.

Cost: $10 for the fruit; $20 for 2 medium pizzas, delivered; $20 for an ice cream cake from Baskin Robbins; $0 for the popcorn, since I used what I already had in my pantry

Next up: Staff and Accessories

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This is a guest post from Liz Muirhead, who blogs about health and fitness at Looking Good (for a mom). Liz is a thirty-something working mom of two wonderful kiddos, who got fed up with using her kids to explain her flab and found a way to get the best body of her life!

As a working mom, there are a lot of things I miss out on doing for my kids. So when it comes to throwing birthday parties, I tend to go a little overboard. This year, my daughter turned seven. She’d outgrown a lot of the themes we’d used in previous parties, and a character-based party just didn’t seem appropriate. (They grow up so quickly!) So after some strategy discussions, we settled on a makeover party. Since my daughter’s birthday falls in mid-January, and I’m always too crazed by Christmas to plan ahead, I had just two weeks to plan the party.

Possibility #1:

Although it’s really not my style, I considered outsourcing the party. There’s a cute salon for kids called “Sweet and Sassy” near our home, so I called them up to see what options were available. Here’s what I found out.

Their parties had several things in common:

• Party is 60 minutes for the makeover and 45 minutes in the “cake room,” for a total of 1 hr and 45 minutes.
• No cake or food is provided
• Guests receive a favor in the cost of the party; favors vary with the party type

The entry level party was just under $300, and the top level party was just under $400. As an extra, you could pay an additional $75 for a 20-minute limo ride, which would take place during the 45 minutes allotted for the “cake room.”

Well, the parties sounded great, but faced with the option of dropping up to $400 on a short party (under 2 hours) and still having to buy food, I thought I’d consider…

Possibility #2:

Do it myself! While much more my style, I knew I wouldn’t be able to single-handedly give makeovers to the 9-11 girls likely to attend the party. And while my mother went to cosmetology school back in the day, I knew I would still need more help. Here’s how the party broke down, how I ended up tackling each area, and what it all cost in the end.

Invitations

After searching around on the internet, I managed to find an awesome graphic (collage of fashion magazine covers) that I used as a background for invitations. Printing them out on my home computer was quick and easy, and they were able to go off to school the next day. I found many free downloadable invitations on the internet, but chose to use the background graphic instead.

Cost? Free!

Stay tuned for favors and food!

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My son, The one that had the Elmo Birthday Party last year is getting older.  It sucks.  I think with the aging of this one I am more hesitant to enjoy the birthday parties because it symbolizes that he is no longer a baby.  He is getting bigger and is now going to be the big THREE.  I am getting over it and realizing that it is still a reason to PART’AY!  I love it.  So, he wants a Taxi Cab party because we recently had a trip to New York City.

As normal step number one is always invitations.  So, here lies the invitations that Taxi Cab Birthday Guest will receive.  I had fun thinking up the little Taxicab poem.  Hope you enjoy.

Attn: (receivers name)

“Hail” the Cab and Race on Over,

(Birthday Boys name) the 2 year old is not headed to Dover.

Nope, the racetrack is not where his party will be….

But @ his house In a yellow taxi!

“Hail” the birthday boy for it’s his special day,

Don’t worry about the taxi meter this one you will not have to pay!

The party will start when the clock strikes 5,

The dinner and dessert will be sure to worth the “drive”!

RSVP: must be done to license plate 555-5555, the taxi driver

Who’s that you ask? Who else than the birthday boys mother.

Join us where there will be checkered cabs galore,

Honking horns, traffic jams, ice cream, cake and more!

Beep Beep,
(Birthday Boy’s) Taxi Company

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So probably the easiest part of a Wii Birthday Bash is the decorations. However, it will require you to break out the scissors and constructions paper!

Start off with picking the colors for your party. Let the birthday boy/girl choose for themselves. I suggest using at least 3 colors just to give you a variety. Now go out and get latex ballons, streamers, plates, napkins etc to match. Or if your child loves Super Mario Bros. you can find some great plates and napkins to use at Amazon.

Next do an image search on Google for characters from your child’s favorite Wii games. This can include characters from Super Mario Bros. or better yet you can create some Mii’s using the site I provided in the last post. Print them off and then hang them from streamers you’ve stretched around the room. *Hint: if you print out some Mii’s make sure to create a stencil out of one to use for a craft, details in the entertainment post.*

Remember that the center of the party is the Wii tournaments and the birthday boy/girl. The decorations need to add to the fun atmosphere and get your guest in the mood to play!

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We are currently adding new contributing writers to our team. The Party Planning Professor strives to be the best party planning website on the net while offer free/new ideas to moms and dads (the true party planners)

Having your articles published on our site can be a great boost in publicizing your content, yourself as a writer, and your website or blog. Party Planning Professor is one of the fastest growing resources online and has an aggressive marketing strategy which ensures that our content is reaching a large audience in over 110 countries worldwide.

1. Our editor is a has worked with top-name brands and local companies as well.
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Please email a letter of interest to Elizabeth )at( Party Planning Professor )dot( com an introduction. Please include your name, picture, bio, and website link that you would like to be included below your submission articles. You will get a chance to pitch your blog and introduce our readers to your site (with links).You also get to list your contributing writer status on your resume and be featured in the about the party planning professors writers page.

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Here are the qualifications, benefits, and advantages for become a Party Planning Specialist Professing in a specific category.

We are now looking for a:

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Do you think you have the credentials that will pass the professor test?

Here is what is required:

• Once a month post of a fully planned how-to party including how-to invites, games, menus, and entertainment options. (word count article of apx-1,600 broken into 4 different posts)
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On top of all that, you will gain an inner look at the Party Planning Professor community ning, (for writers only) a party community, a blogging tribe of support, and a great small sized group of blogger friends.

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The Nintendo Wii is undoubtedly the best family oriented gaming system out there. So why not carry that further. Instead of going with a character themed birthday party for your child why not go with a gaming themed party!

*It’s important to note that this Wii party doesn’t only have to be for birthdays or kids, for that matter. You can plan an adults Wii get together just as easily and enjoy checking out various games without having to share it with the kids *

Here at PPP, we believe that the invites really set the tone for the party. In our opinion handmade invites really get your guests pumped about going, but we are moms and we know that parents are often busy juggling work, kids and about 100 other things. An alternate to making your invitations is of course buying them. Sadly, you can’t go to your local Walmart and purchase Wii themed party invitations, at least not yet. Another route is to use an online email invitation site like Evite.com. The nice thing about an email invite is not worrying about making sure you get them in the mail on time; however, you do need to know the email addresses for all your guests or their parents. Evite also offers some invites that tie in nicely with the Wii party theme. Check out their site for some great options.

If you are crafty or computer saavy you can create some pretty cool invites on your own. Below is a sample of an invite I put together on my computer.

Whether you create the invite on the computer or by hand there is one feature that should most definitely be included on your invite. The Wii Mii character. Now you may be asking yourself how I got those Mii’s on my invite. Thankfully, we’re here to help you all the way! Check out My Avatar Editor. It’s a free site that enables your to create a Mii and save it onto your computer. The great thing about this is you can create a Mii that looks just like the birthday boy/girl! How fun is that?!

Lastly, no matter which option you decide for your invite make sure to include what the guests will be doing. You don’t want them to show up surprised that they will be playing video games.

Remember, have fun with your invite. Create clever sayings using Wii or Mii. Much like food being better when made with love, a party planned with fun and excitement in mind will be a hit!

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