Business, economic development - the unofficial Chamber of Commerce

So, your marriage is on the cards? It is time for a Bridal Shower Party! At the bridal shower party, family and friends will give gifts and lots of blessings for you.

The origin of the bridal shower is quite interesting and can be traced back to Holland. It is an old story which states that a Dutch girl fell in love with a miller who was very poor. When she told her father, he forbade their marriage. So the young lady decided to marry the miller and stayed with him, despite his poverty. As the neighbors heard about the news of them nearly starving, they came with help. They showered gifts and money on the newly married couple. From the money and gifts showered to the couple, they set up a good home and a good life for themselves. Since then, this tradition of bridal showers has been in practice. Though, today the celebrations of bridal shower are grand and all full of gaiety.

No bridal shower celebration is complete without bridal shower games. These games will add life to your party and keep the guests entertained.

Bridal shower games really get the party going. You can even be creative while setting the games for your bridal shower party. In fact the more bridal shower games you play the better. With today’s tradition of inviting friends, work colleagues and family members to a bridal shower, games can be great way to break the ice for people who don’t know each other.

Who Am I Bridal Shower Game
The game “Who Am I” adds smiles and vitality to the whole party with the added benefit of being a great first icebreaker.

To play this game, all you have to do is to prepare some index cards. On each card write a name of a famous personality. As soon as the guests arrive, attach a card to everyone’s back. Attach them in such a way that the guest is not able to see it, while the others can. Then start the real test. The guests have to ask each other for the clues, so that that they can know the name attached to their back. The first person to identify the correct name is the winner.

The Wedding Alphabet Game
The Wedding Alphabet Game is really fun. The game involves a combination of wit and intelligence. The game is simple; the host initiates the game by describing a wedding item, ritual or tradition starting from the letter ‘A’. They will include in their sentence the item or the culture starting from ‘A’. The next guest adds another item or anything after that sentence starting from ‘B’. This game continues as the sentences keep on building. If a person is unable to add an item of the letter they get, they drop out. The guest who stays longest wins the game.

Caught In the Middle Game
The bridal shower game “Caught in the Middle” promises to bring loads of laughter and activity to the party. The game is quite simple. Everybody is made to sit in a circle, then a bag is provided to one guest. As the music plays on, the guest has to pass it over to the other guest. This passing goes on till the music continues. As soon as the music stops, the one with the bag in their hand gets caught in the middle. As a penalty, they are asked to perform a dance, an imitation, a mono act or anything. This bridal shower game adds excitement to the party. It also brings out the latent talent of every guest that gets caught in the middle.

Charades
Charades is widely known and played all over the world. This game can be played anywhere and everywhere. The game involves intelligence and recognition power. There are two teams made out of the guests. One member of each team has to perform a mono act on the name of the actor or a movie given secretly to him. The guest only has to perform and not speak. The name of the character or the movie has to be guessed by his team. Within a time frame, if any team member guesses the correct name, his team gets a point. In the end the team with maximum points is declared as a winner.

These are just a few ideas for bridal shower games to help create a great mood for the bridal shower party. They can add excitement and joy to the whole party and are a good way to get everyone involved, as there will no doubt be guests who don’t know each other. So, get your party started with lots of bridal shower games.

Michael Jason writes articles on a number of different topics. For more information on Bridal Showers please visit www.bridal-shower-ideas.com/ and for additional Bridal Shower related articles please visit the following article page www.bridal-shower-ideas.com/bridalshower-articles/

As a bride-to-be, the most difficult first step of preparing for
the wedding wasn’t deciding on which dress to choose, or what
colors would be incorporated for the event. It was choosing what
would best represent my soon-to-be husband, our families, and
me, as invitations.

My husband-to-be, my future mother-in-law, and I all met at a
local party supply store. What lay before us was much more of an
undertaking than we originally thought. The store clerk led us
back to a small section of the store with a large table and a
few chairs. The entire back side of the table was covered with
more than twenty thick catalogs! We were left to fend for
ourselves, with no idea of where to start or which catalog to
look at first.

My mother-in-law, being the go getter that she is, picked up a
catalog and started flipping through the pages. We had already
discussed what we were looking for, previous to going to the
store.

What we had in mind was a little less formal than the average
invitation, but still nice enough to attract our friends and
family to come. We didn’t want anything too religious or frilly,
and we wanted something that would reflect our combined
families, all without being too pricey. After looking through at
least ten catalogs, we started to notice that many of them
repeated the same designs, only replacing the verbiage on the
inside of the invitations. We finally settled on a design we had
seen in several of the books, after deciding that we weren’t
going to find anything less formal without having to pay for the
extra postage due to size.

After thinking back on the entire planning process, we would
have been better off having our invitations custom made. I
wasn’t completely happy with the invitations we had, and when we
got them from the printers, half of our reply cards had been
printed wrong. We almost sent them out that way, but luckily
caught the mistake after being halfway done putting the postage
on them.

With a custom invitation, we could have had the style we wanted,
with the verbiage we wanted, without the hassle of finding what
we wanted ourselves. At that point, the cost would have not been
an issue because the headache of trying to find something we
could agree on would have been eliminated.

I have several friends that are planning weddings now. When they
ask me about the best place to go for invitations, I advise them
to go to a place that works with their wants and needs, rather
than one that sits you in a room with catalogs and lets you go
at it yourself. Planning a wedding is already hard enough
without having so many choices to make about an invitation. It
should be easier than picking out your dress or colors, not a
headache with an ocean of catalogs to spend hours sifting
through.

Choosing the Style of Your Wedding Gown
Your wedding dress sets the theme of your wedding and is one of the most important purchases you make when planning your wedding. It is never too early to start looking. Load up on Wedding magazines and attend Bridal shows.Being aware of current trends styles will give you confidence when you are out shopping.

Set a Budget for your Wedding Dress and Accessories
Make up a realistic budget of how much you want to spend on your wedding dress. Don’t forget to include accessories such as shoes, veil and undergarments.Generally the cost of bride’s wedding gown is 10 percent of the wedding budget.

Fabrics and Styles of Wedding Gowns

Necklines of Wedding Dresses

Fabrics

Are you in the process of planning a destination wedding? Don’t forget your seasons. And, no, I’m not referring to Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall. I’m referring to Fire, Hurricane and Tornado.

The recent fires in the western United States are a reminder that Nature can sometimes take an ugly turn. But, often times, these “ugly turns” are really part of predictable “seasons” that, if we are aware of them, can help us make informed decisions.

Let’s take a look at some of these “seasons” and how they might affect your wedding plans:

Fire Season:

The western United States (California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah) has what is called a “fire season” that usually runs from late April until the end of October. Fed by drought (as in the case of the Arizona), low humidity, lightening strikes and winds, they can burn thousands of acres and threaten communities and resorts. What are some popular wedding destinations which might be affected by fire season? June, 2006 saw the evacuation of parts of the resort town of Sedona, Arizona, including the Oak Creek Canyon area, a location very popular for destination weddings. This fire also stranded visitors to the Grand Canyon, who were cut off from other northern Arizona towns by road closures.

The resort areas of Big Bear and Idyllwild in California are also destinations for those wanting to get married in the mountains of California. In recent years both areas have been hard hit during fire season. Fire season also affects the Rocky Mountains in Colorado and the mountains surrounding Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Hurricane/Cyclone Season:

The Atlantic hurricane season officially lasts from June 1 to November 30 and affects the Southeastern United States of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and parts of Texas (in addition to bringing heavy rains and flooding to neighboring states). The Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean are also affected. The cyclone season in Australia extends from November to April. What popular wedding destinations might be disrupted by hurricanes? Myrtle Beach, South Carolina is a popular wedding destination, as are the beaches of Florida, Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean. If you’re planning a quick elopement to these areas, it’s good to get up-to-date hurricane news from the National Weather Service National Hurricane Center Tropical Prediction Center, www.nhc.noaa.gov. Globally, September is the most active month and May is the least active month for hurricane/cyclone activity, according to the Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML) (http://www.aoml.noaa.gov.)

Tornado Season:

Tornado season is generally March through August, with 74% of all tornadoes occurring between March 1 and July 31. Although tornados can happen in many locations, they occur most often in the central part of the United States known as “Tornado Alley.” Tornado Alley affects all of Oklahoma, Nebraska and Kansas and parts of Texas, Arkansas, Iowa, Missouri, Colorado, South Dakota and Wyoming.

Keep the seasons in mind when planning your destination wedding. Of course, just because there is a season for these natural occurrences, it doesn’t mean your particular destination will be affected. Should you decide to have your wedding in one of these areas, however, it’s always a good idea to be informed of weather updates, and safety precautions you should take in the event of a fire, flood, hurricane or tornado. Being prepared and informed can help prevent the best day of your life from turning into a disaster.

Being disc jockeys, we get the opportunity to evaluate many reception facilities while having little or no bias to “sell” one location over another. Most Brides and Grooms know where they will be holding the ceremony before they decide where to have the reception, so we have compiled five observations that can help you when selecting your venue.

Distance - If people have to drive a long way to get from the ceremony to the reception, some will get distracted or decide to do something else. Try to keep the reception within a 15 to 30 minute drive of your ceremony. If it is not possible to get a reception hall close to your ceremony, make a caravan. Have the Bride and Groom lead the parade, and people will follow you to your reception.

Time - Time is just like the distance issue. If your reception is several hours after the ceremony, people will get busy doing other things and not show up for the reception. Try to start the reception within an hour or two of the ceremony. If you don’t want to start your wedding dance at 4 o’clock in the afternoon, have a Meet and Greet mixer before your reception. Serve some punch and get people to mingle. This will be one of the few times that both families will be together. Encourage family members to share stories about your childhoods.

Size - People like their personal space, and they have most likely spent an hour packed into a church for your ceremony. If you let them spread out, they will enjoy themselves more. Make sure your reception hall has plenty of room for your guests. The people renting the location might tell you it holds 200 people, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it will hold 200 people comfortably! Make sure to visit the venue before booking.

Climate Control - Having a summer wedding? Is your reception hall air conditioned? If people sweat while just sitting, they won’t dance. On the flip side, if they are cold they won’t dance either (who wants to dance in a parka?). Also make sure you know who has control of the thermostat so the temperature can be adjusted if needed. Chances are your reception will be warm and stuffy while all the guest are there, but as they trickle out during the night the room will begin to cool down.

Smoking - This is a hot button issue, but if your reception hall is non-smoking, you can fully expect smoker’s to leave your reception for 15-30 minutes every hour. If enough of them leave the reception area, you may find a large percentage of your guest just hanging out in the smoking area. This can be a big problem if you have many smokers in your wedding party. You don’t have to allow smoking, but it is something you should consider, especially if anyone has any health problems like asthma or allergies that could be triggered by smoke. If you decide not to allow smoking in the reception area, how close is the nearest place for a smoker to go? Is it close enough that you will be able to get needed wedding party members during events like the bouquet toss or garter auction?

Facility coordinators will no doubt bring up several other factors for you to consider when you interview them for your booking, but these are often missed items, especially if they don’t favor the potential venue. If you keep the overall picture in mind and work with your wedding planner or event coordinator on the decorating ideas, you will no doubt have an enjoyable and memorable wedding reception.

About the Authors: Tim & Tammy Smith operate By Request DJ & Karaoke Company, located in Fargo, North Dakota. They have been providing entertainment for wedding receptions since 1994 and belong to several professional disc jockey organizations.

This article may be reprinted without permission providing all URLs are live links only minor editorial changes are made. Please send an email to byrequest@byrequest.dj with the name (and url if the resource is on the web) of the publication.

Congratulations! Your big day is coming up and you want to have a memorable and successful wedding. A wedding planner is a very important part of keeping things in order. More importantly a wedding planner helps to keep the timing of everything in order as well.

Timing is the key to coordinating a good wedding. You need to schedule appointments for many people who all have different schedules. Knowing their schedules and synchronizing the appointments will help keep the flow of things going.

A wedding planner will guide you through this process. I have provided a link at the top of this page where you can find the wedding planner that I use. I have planned and coordinated many weddings for many different budgets. I still find the main key is to have this all timed correctly.

You should know how long it will take for each task to be completed. It is important to choose quality people and products. However you still need to bring all this together. This planner gives you a layout and will bring things to your attention that you may have never thought of.

Remember the old saying I wish I knew then what I know now. Or I wish I would have done that a different way. This wedding planner was written by an expert who has coordinated 100’s of weddings.

This wedding planner offers many tips that will keep you from making common mistakes and forgetting many important things. With this you can focus and plan with ease instead of frustration. You don’t want to have the most important day of your life messed up and disorganized.

If you are well organized your day will go smooth and you will enjoy your wedding day and remember all of the good things instead of the blunders. Remember it is your wedding day not some one else’s so take charge and plan your wedding the way you and your fiancé want to have it.

Your budget can be small or large. It is up to you how to make it your special and creative wedding. Your friends and family will be surprised when they see how well everything went. I strongly recommend a wedding planner.

Go to the link at the top of this page and click it to get details of the wedding planner tips. I will be posting here in the future on many other helpful tips and links to help you have plan and have a very successful wedding.

For more info please visit my web site at Wedding Planner

For more info please visit my web site at wedding—planner.blogspot.com” title=”Wedding Planner”>Wedding Planner

Nobody likes having an argument but sometimes it’s hard to avoid because we are all entitled to have an opinion. So instead of trying to avoid the disagreement, it may be wiser to learn how to make the most of it.

You often feel emotional when disagree with someone. So it’s best to try to avoid talking when you’re feeling too emotional. You tend to say things you would later regret if you lash out in the heat of the moment. Go out or leave the room for a while to cool off and gain a better perspective before you talk.

When arguing, we tend to bring up previous mistakes and compare them with current situation. Try to stick to the issue at hand. Nobody wants to continually be reminded of their past wrong-doings.

Take turn relaying your points of view. Try not to interrupt when your partner is speaking or launch into a monologue. Let your opinions be heard and at the same time try to understand and respect your partner’s viewpoint. The goal of the argument is not to bend your partner to your thoughts or side of the story but to reach compromise. Share your ideas and try to find a solution to the problem together.

Dating Chinese Girls - Asian dating site for men and women.
CamsFAQ - flirt4free vip webcams review. - Dating site for men seeking women abroad.

When planning your event you should go with the most qualified individual or company to produce the results your looking for, it’s as simple as that. In this illustration we list the skills we feel should be of high importance to you to achieve those results.

1) You need someone who will deliver the reception you want. Someone who will be able to pick the correct music, setup those personalized moments and realize the difference between customization and personalization.

2) Some one who has the experience and knowledge to provide ideas and advice during the planning process in all areas from the pacing of the day to creative ideas for entertaining.

3) You need a team player who is comfortable being the “Director of Entertainment”. Caterers can’t do it, they are too busy making sure the food service is good. Banquet Managers can’t do it because they are typically concerned with their checklists and the success of the event from the halls perspective. Photographers can’t do it since they are too busy trying to capture all the moments. This duty squarely falls on your DJ and its important to find one that can handle the responsibility.

4) You need an eloquent spokesperson. Someone who will represent you confidently and professionally because ultimately his or her actions will be a reflection on you.

5) They need the skills not just the tools. Putting it all together, building anticipation and creating a mood is a skill and not everyone can do it.

6) You need great sounding music from professional grade equipment.

7) Above all else you need a reliable businessperson with the right attitude so you will have piece of mind that the event will happen the way you want it to and be able to enjoy as much of your event as possible.

Written by Ron Carpenito, DJ and Owner of http://www.WeddingMusicUSA.com - a nationwide directory of Wedding DJs, Live Bands, Classical Ensembles, and Soloists/Vocalists.

We meet him across the room, our eyes stare, and our bodies go into an overdrive of heat. We as women are dreaming about the wedding dress and the bride magazines. Our wishes are granted, and we’re married, and there’s happily ever after. “I don’t think so.”

This is a fairy tale myth we believe in as we are an infant, toddler, little boy/girl, teen-ager, and then an adult. We have this image of finding the right man/woman and living happily ever after. “I don’t think so!”

Now some of us are lucky to find our dream boats in high school, and get married, and some of us are lucky to get married at the age of eighteen. You can say that I fell into this latter category. I got married at eighteen and he was twenty-one years old. I was a romantic fool because I believed in love at first sight, and love all over the place.

I blame my lack of the real world on Harlequin Romances. I began reading them at fourteen and at this time, the 80’s, there was girl meets boy, girl and boy get married, girl and boy make love, girl and boy living happily ever eternally after. This is the way the Harlequin Romances read. At the time when I was reading them they didn’t have the modern romances now where you didn’t need to get married to have sex. Harlequin has come along way now, and they have entered into the real world.

You can say that I was a fool for love. I met him on the train, and later that year we got married. I thought I was in love, and I knew he loved me by his actions. We made the perfect couple, and we were so pretty and handsome.

We embarked on our lives as a married couple – getting the apartment, and furnishing it; going to work because we both had jobs, and coming home and making love to the wee hours of the morning. My husband and I were living in the fairy tale of a Harlequin Romance. I thought I had died and gone to heaven. I was the luckiest woman to be married to a kind, handsome, sweet, giving, considerate, and loving, cooked for me, took me to work and practically carried me home from work man. I was in a band wagon of love. I felt sorry for the other eighteen year old women who couldn’t, wouldn’t, shoulda been in my shoes.

My mother adored my new husband, my father was bias because he never wanted to see his little girl get married; my sister and brother was thrilled that he was in the family, and my cousins and friends envied me in a good way. I had the world in the palm of my hand and then some. I was a Taurus and he was a Gemini, and the two should not meet, but we clashed together and it was a rainbow of ever loving madness in the romantic kind, of course.

Three years passed and a daughter interrupted on the scene and she brought our family together in more ways than one, and we couldn’t get any happier. Again the fairy tale was one of the Harlequin Romances, and they could write about me because I had it going on.

Of course you know when something is going so wonderfully, you have to pinch yourself, and pat yourself a few times. The devil is whispering in my ear that I’m about to rain on your parade, baby, and the honeymoon is over. I tried not listening to Satan, because he didn’t get to me. When he couldn’t throw the match on me, he found another solace to conquer in the name of my husband.

He began whispering into his ears at every turn, telling him –“Find another woman, and sleep with her because your wife is sleeping around with other men, she doesn’t love you, and only married you because you were there; she’s in love with another man, she hates you, and she’s going to divorce you before you can say your name backwards. Cheat on the whore because there are plenty of women who’d love to be in your pants, and your bed. You’re the most handsome man in the world, and your wife doesn’t deserve you.”

The demon has risen and it’s his name of the game to ruin happy marriages, and my husband gave him the loaded gun, and he used it with bells on. He cheated on me left and right, and our marriage lasted for ten years, and I filed for divorce. I became a single woman, and it was the most devastating feeling in the world because I didn’t want to intrude on the dating scene. I never thought I’d have to fly down this route again.

My daughter and I began living as a single family with no husband or father around. I was a failure because of my marriage. I was unhappy for a while because I never wanted to fail at anything. I was better off without my husband. He was now my ex and I had come to terms with my divorce, and was glad that the baggage was tucked away forever.

As the years passed and 2005 hit upon the scene, I kept in touch with the antics that were on going in my ex-husband’s life because my daughter kept in touch with him along the way. He’d call me from time to time, and we’d talk for hours. I didn’t hate the man, and my husband realized at this point that I was really a good woman.

Guess what, he wanted me back, and he didn’t waste time expressing his views about the subject. He was mature now, and wanted to settle down with the woman he should have never divorced in the first place. When he approached me with this ridiculous scenario, I thought he was on drugs or something.

I had moved on with my life, and my ex-husband wasn’t constantly on my mind zone. I met different men, lived with one, and almost married one, not once thinking about my ex-husband. He had made the mistake of living with a good woman, but he didn’t appreciate me when I was his wife, and now he was going to honor and respect me. I had this philosophy that “once a cheater always a cheater.” “A leopard was never going to change his spots.” Did I forgive him for his indiscretions? I forgave, but I would never forget.

My husband has been literally harassing me. He wants to take me to dinner, the movies, walks on the beach, the museum, amusement parks, parties, bars, restaurants, and the list is endless.”

It’s 2006 and we’re speaking on the telephone, but I haven’t agreed to go out with him. I don’t believe in going back to the past, and my ex-husband is definitely the past. Can we really go back? Can we really marry our ex-husbands and live happily ever after? I don’t have the answer to that one. I just know that my ex-husband ain’t no fool. He just knows a good woman when he sees one, and I’m a diet coke and a Matai all in one. (1,225)

I am a writer and I love writing. Check me out at http://www.freewebs.com/jcarolann and ride with me.

So you have come to the decision that in order to save your marriage or at the very least improve it, you need to get some professional help in the form of counseling.

This is obviously not a step to be taken lightly and in many cases one partner desires the counseling more than the other. It is important that the partner who is least keen on undertaking a marriage counseling program is at least prepared to be open to attending the sessions, listening and ultimately to open up and share. Counseling of any description can be a confronting, uncomfortable and in some cases a hurtful experience. The counselor will often touch on or bring up things that in many ways you would rather stayed buried.

It is important that the marriage counseling that you receive is from someone you feel comfortable with and trust. As far as you are able, check the credentials of the person who will be counseling you. It is also important to be clear in your mind as to what you wish to achieve out of the counseling. Ask yourself, why do I want counseling? What do I hope to achieve? What am I willing to put into the sessions?

Some people who undergo marriage counseling, even some of those who instigate the counseling are not actually willing to change themselves. They are in blame mode, they want their partner or environment or circumstances to change and cannot see that in order for the relationship to work, they need to change also. Change can create anxiety as it will often involve moving outside one’s comfort zone. A good counselor will recognize this type of person and guide them through the process of making the necessary changes.

We live in a world where many of us demand instant gratification. Many people are unwilling to go through a process which will take time and need to be persuaded that the time and money expended and in some cases the pain experienced will be worth it in the long run. It important to realize that your problems probably didn’t happen all at once and as such it is going to take time and commitment to resolve them.

The final factor to successful marriage counseling is having the faith that whatever issues you are experiencing can be overcome if you truly want them to be. What is the point of exposing yourself if you do not believe that things can improve? This is not to say that counseling will necessarily keep the marriage together. In some cases marriage counseling can be a useful tool in helping a couple to see that there is little point in staying together. Perhaps there is just too much baggage or perhaps the realization comes that you are completely incompatible.

Whatever the situation, it is important to be involved in the counseling process, show commitment and willingness to make changes that may be necessary to an ongoing and fulfilling relationship, be patient and have faith in yourself.

Sue Taylor has first hand experience of marriage counseling and is now happily married after 20 years. To see more resources regarding marriage counseling go to http://www.marriagecounselingnews.net.