Alfred Angelo Bridal Store Special Event

As some of you know, I used to work as a bridal consultant at Alfred Angelo before I began working with Beth at Flawless. I have maintained a great relationship with Katherine and the wonderful girls at the shop and was very flattered when they invited me back to the store for an upcoming event.
On Thursday, May 7th, from 5:30-7:30 PM, Alfred Angelo Bridal Company Store in Tampa is hosting a Wedding Planning workshop for all of their customers and I am the guest wedding planner! I will be discussing the planning process and giving advice on what goes in to planning a wedding. There are so many women who get engaged and are extremely excited, but then when the actual planning sets in, so does that overwhelming anxiety and a "now what do I do??" feeling. I can't wait to meet with all of Alfred Angelo's clients and of course, check out all the beautiful dresses that just came out this season. I already browsed a bit online so here are a few of my faves...
Bridal gowns:





















They also have awesome bridesmaid dresses. They are reasonably priced and the quality is excellent. I always enjoyed working at AA because I felt good about what I was trying to sell which makes it that much easier.





























And one last set of pics.. just for fun. Here is one of our brides from last December, Nikki, wearing a beautiful Alfred Angelo gown that I picked out for her before she even hired me for her wedding! :) I actually also helped choose her entire bridal party attire as well. They all looked great!




























So as you can see, I am definitely a big fan of this gown shop. Come by and see me next Thursday and if you are still in need of a bridal gown or bridesmaid dresses, you can do that too! The shop is located on S. Dale Mabry in Tampa, right at the I275 exit. You can make an appointment by calling 813-872-1881. Hope to see you there!

~ May Madness ~

I've decided this upcoming month is May Madness... much like March Madness and the NCAA Tournament except without the brackets and basketball. Hmmm.... so the only thing similar is the name I guess. :)

Anyway, Flawless Occasions has 6 weddings coming up this month! On top of that, we have the rehearsals to go along with them, our usual appointments and final consultations, and we were invited to be guests at a special event at the Alfred Angelo Bridal Store (more info on that coming soon).
Our weddings this month range from elegant and formal weddings to casual and fun beach parties. We will be all over the Tampa Bay area doing events at the Mirror Lake Lyceum, the Tradewinds Island Grand Resort (twice!), the Don Cesar, the Sunken Gardens, and Saddlebrook. We are going to be working with some of our favorite vendors as well as making some new friends with vendors we haven't worked with before. It's definitely going to be a great month.
So get excited for tons of blog posts... we'll try our best to keep up!


In the spirit of craziness, here's a fun photo I've never showed on the blog before from Athena and John's wedding back in Feb. The photo, shared with us by their photographer Roberto, was taken after the groom and groomsmen took off their shirts and ties and proceeded to lip-sync to "It's Raining Men". Enough said...

Fabulous Feedback!

We have been lucky enough to work with some really wonderful brides and grooms throughout our time as wedding planners. We've received thoughtful thank-you notes and gifts (like that Bern's gift certificate, thank you Athena and John, yumm!!).

But we especially love when our former clients' post their reviews of us on weddingwire.com. It's great to get feedback and know that we are appreciated and that we made their special day a success. It also helps our potential clients by showing them the experiences our clients have had in a non-biased setting (being on a third party website instead of our own). One of our recent brides, Kristen, left a wonderful review for us that we just had to share:

"Words can not express how thankful I am that Beth and Shawna were such an integral part of my wedding. These ladies made it happen. Flawless Occasions was the very first vendor I booked for my wedding, and I couldn't have made a better choice. Beth and Shawna are an absolute delight to work with. I planned my wedding from out of state and thanks to Beth's expertise I was able to book my venues sight unseen, and they were absolutly perfect. My husband and I had one face-to-face meeting with Beth and Shawna before the wedding and from the second we met them in person we knew we could completely turn our wedding over to them and not have to worry about a thing. At our meeting I was completely blown away by the amount of information they had for our wedding, Beth and Shawna knew more about our wedding than we did! Beth and Shawna were with us through every step of the planning process making expert recommendations, calming fears and conerns and taking care of every detail. There were a few small mishaps on our wedding day and Beth and Shawna took care of every detail. Thanks to the ladies at Flawless Occasions I was able to have the wedding of my dreams. And, most importantly, I was able to enjoy every second of that amazing day."

Thanks for the kind words Kristen. We loved working with you and Jeff and hope you both are doing well! To read more reviews on Flawless Occasions, visit Weddingwire.com/flawlessoccasions !



And here is a photo Jason Angelini snapped of Beth and I working on the beach at Kristen and Jeff's ceremony!

Fun Find - Beachy Toasting Flutes

I'm starting another new blogging feature - fun finds. We are always on the lookout for unique wedding items and ideas for our brides, so in these blogging posts, I will share some!

This evening I had my final consultation with one of my wonderful couples who are getting married in 3 weeks. The bride-to-be had received a gift from a friend, a toasting flutes set. It is perfect for their beach wedding, and so cute that I just had to share as soon as I found a website that sold it. I love how the flutes rest in the sand and seashell-filled vase. It's so different and unique from the average toasting flute set and really would look great as a decorative element on a sweetheart table (and then later in the newlyweds' home as a keepsake).

Here is one of a few websites where you can find it - Daisy-days.com

A Fort Desoto Ceremony

Flawless Occasions recently added an officiating service to our coordinating packages. This weekend I was honored to officiate a ceremony for a wonderful couple - and this was quite a unique ceremony. The couple is French-Canadian so almost all of their family speaks French. Because of this, I had to have an interpreter, a friend of the family, translate the ceremony so that the guests could understand. It was a really fun, new experience for me!

Yves and Rachel were married on Fort Desoto Beach in front of 15 close friends and family.. along with several other holiday-weekend beach patrons. I helped them put together their ceremony which integrated my scripts with their own version of a sand ceremony and a champagne toast at the end. It was really cute - this couple was extremely excited to get married. They were so excited, in fact, that they were ready early and we started 15 minutes ahead of time since everyone was there!

Their children played musical instruments as Rachel came down the sand pathway to our bamboo arch. The family talked and laughed throughout the ceremony - it was very warm and informal. Yves and Rachel, congratulations and thanks for choosing me to officiate and coordinate your lovely beach ceremony!
Here are a few photos from the ceremony!

Kristen and Jeff's Wedding, Part 2

As promised, here are some more photos from Kristen and Jeff's Sand Key Beach/Island Way Grill wedding. There were so many beautiful details that I might have overdone it on the pictures in this post, but I couldn't help it! Beth and I both had our cameras and got some great shots. I can't wait to see the professional photos; the couples' photographer, Jason Angelini, just won an award from The Knot magazine! We are very happy for him and his wife, Lucia, who are always so wonderful to work with. Anyway, here are our photos, and we hope you enjoy them. Kristen and Jeff, we wish you the best in your future together and hope you will stop by and see us next time you come down to Florida!




Here is Darla adding some fresh flowers to Kristen's gorgeous hair.
















The beautiful bouquet of roses and tulips made by DD's Blooms.

Kristen and Jeff's Elegant Beach Bash

Kristen and Jeff were married last weekend on Sunday - our second wedding of that weekend. Beth had been working with Kristen and Jeff for a long time as they were planning their destination wedding from North Carolina. They came down and visited a few months ago which was fun because then I finally got to meet them and they are such a warm and kind couple. I ran their rehearsal on Saturday and we were a little worried about the weather, but it ended up being blue skies by the time their wedding rolled around and everything turned out wonderful!

They were married on Sand Key Beach with their reception following at Island Way Grill. Their style was very chic and elegant with beach-inspired accents. Kristen looked so stunning in her taffeta dress and was very calm the entire day. We picked up a fresh flower for her that morning that ended up working out perfectly in her beautiful hair-do done by Darla Stafford. Dr. David Cole performed their touching ceremony on the beach under our bamboo arch. The flowers were done by DD's Blooms and Island Way Grill provided the seashell centerpieces. By the way, the food and staff at IWG are both amazing - this is such a gem of a location. We dined on king crab and filet surf n' turf which was delicious. The couple also had a 7-piece band which added to the ambiance of this classy event. Beth and I took tons of photos but their photographer, Jason Angelini, beat us by blogging his first so here is a sneak peak --

Kristen and Jeff did a "first look" before the ceremony. It was a very happy moment!












The ceremony was full of smiles and tears as well!









Kristen's younger sister, Joanna, helped pick out the bridesmaids dresses in these tropical colors. She did a great job!



Check back with us soon, more photos of this wonderful wedding will be coming! You can also see a few more photos on Jason's blog.