Last month, Nuance Occasions was priviledged to be one of the co-hosts for the first annual Wedding Industry Night!

Our goal was to provide Edmonton wedding vendors with an opportunity to meet and network before the summer wedding gets into full swing! As a wedding planner, I understand the importance of great vendor relationships, and this night was designed to assist all Edmonton wedding vendors to enhance their relationships, and foster a greater sense of cooperation amongst all the various service providers.

And I have to start off by thanking Kelsy Nielson Photographics for being our event photographer and capturing these great photos!

Our night started with dramatic decor at the Crowne Plaza-Chateau Lacombe - with colors of black, red and sage green accents!

Our punch & food was placed on a dramatic centerpiece table instead of a traditional buffet.

The ice sculpture punch bowl was decorated with limes to match our color scheme.

Comfortable seating clusters were created throughout the room to enhance the mingling atmosphere.

We were graced with harp music of Terry McDade, and our DJ for the night was Nuance Sound.

Nuance Occasions senior coordinator Laurie was even on hand to help out!

Alley Kat Breweries, a local microbrew company was out to provide free samples to guests, and showcase how much fun it can be to incorporate local products at an event!

To spice things up - especially with the trend to choreograph first dances - we brought in Salsa dancers for a little demonstration…

…and then they got the rest of us moving to the groove…it was tons of fun, and even I learned a few new steps!!

…the night was elegant…especially with floral accents from Laurel’s Floral & Garden!

…surrounded by Edmonton’s top wedding vendors….

…and it was my distinct pleasure to be able to assist with planning such a fabulous event!

After I had the opportunity to thank our event sponsors, we continued on with the party…and plans are already in the works for the 2009 Wedding Industry Night - with hopes to make it bigger and better yet!

Thank you to our fantastic sponsors, and all the Edmonton wedding vendors who came out…and I look forward to seeing many of you at my upcoming clients’ weddings this summer!

Jolyn | Lead Wedding Planner
www.nuanceoccasions.com

I often see couples struggling to keep up with the endless papers that accumulate quickly while planning a wedding. Through the years, I’ve seen couples use many different methods to keep track of it all…from tabbed binders, to accordion file folders or the dreaded wedding box LOL.

As Nuance Occasions has grown, we had to find a software solution to help us keep all of our clients info organized, and in the process, we found a smaller version of what we use, that is perfect for the wedding couples to use to keep themselves organized!! The I DO! Couples Edition is a very easy to use, and easy to learn software package designed for helping you to plan and organize your wedding.

Allows you to manage your budget, your checklist, your guest list, and so much more. It has a full address database, it can track your rsvp returns, it can help you finalize your seating plan, and so much more! There is even a support forum, so if you need a bit of help to figure out how to work the software, the developers and other couples are on the forums to help you out. You can click on the image above and go to the product information page and scroll down to select the tour, which will walk you through all the features of this incredible wedding software!

To download FREE 30 DAY TRIAL VERSION and try it out for yourself!! We’d love to hear what you think of once you have a chance to work with it, so please leave a comment!!

Jolyn | Lead Wedding Planner
www.nuanceoccasions.com

Nuance Occasions is excited to be a part of 2 recent media features.

For those of you with children - be sure to pick up the latest issue of “What’s Up Kids” - I was pleased to assist them with an article on hosting a successful baby shower (we love talking about other events too, besides weddings). It’s in the spring edition and can be found at Chapters, London Drugs and Walmart magazine racks.

As part of a week long feature on weddings with Shaw TV - Nuance Occasions will be featured on Friday April 18 starting at 4pm on the SHAW TV network across the prairies.  We discussed the trend towards more eco-conscious weddings and how couples can take the environment into consideration for their wedding day. We enjoyed showing off a variety of favor ideas and eco-friendly products to help with the planning process. Tune in if you can!!

And now - get our blog updates sent right to your email account - just subscribe with your email address in the box in the right column….we don’t see your addresses, so you don’t have to worry about your information being shared. We’ve got some exciting format changes in the plans for our blog - so stay tuned!!

Wedding season is beginning…and I hope all of your plans are coming along effortlessly!

Jolyn | Lead wedding planner
Nuance Occasions
http://www.nuanceoccasions.com

Our red rose logo has done us well for 7 years, but as our focus on creating signature weddings has evolved, it was time for a new look…

 Watch as our website and other materials are changed over the weekend to reflect our new, more distinquished look…

I’ll be the first to admit, that weddings are often extravagent, and probably leave quite the carbon footprint in one day… and with a move towards greener business practices, there is also a move towards greener weddings as well.

Nuance Occasions has just added an environmental policy to our website (check it out here) - as we begin to take baby steps in ensuring our business practices leave as minimal of an impact as it can. But we are also shifting to assist all of our clients, even through very small actions, to lessen the environmental impact of their wedding.

Now, we don’t expect every client to have organic food, or a wedding dress of hemp fibres, but even simple items like renting as much of our decor as possible so it can be reused by other couples, using LED candles or natural wax candles, ensuring alcohol bottles are appropriately recycled, and possibly by giving guests living/growing favors…these small steps, over 30+ weddings a year, can make a difference on what ends up in our landfills.

Whether you want to add a bit of ‘green’ principles to your wedding, or you want to ensure you have the most minimal carbon footprint on your wedding day, our article ‘Reducing Your Impact…Green Weddings’ will be sure to give you more ideas to help you make your wedding more eco-chic and eco-friendly!

Jolyn | Lead Wedding Coordinator
Nuance Occasions
www.nuanceoccasions.com

 This past weekend, at the Canadian Wedding Planners Conference held in Toronto, I had the pleasure of tasting these beautiful champagne truffles that Oprah loves so much!

 These handmade swiss truffles are available in the signature green and yellow packaging or special packaging such as pictured above. Choose from 2 or 4 truffles per box. Your guests will be delighted with these unique truffles, offered by only one Canadian supplier - William Ashley China in Toronto.

 And now, as a special gift…couples workingn with Jolyn will receive a special gift from William Ashley China when our services are booked for full wedding planning services (view here) - you won’t be disappointed!!

For over a week, we have not been able to send or recieve email from Hotmail accounts. The issue is with Hotmail, in that they have blocked ours and many other legitimate business domains as spammers. Any emails sent to our regular email address WILL NOT be received, as hotmail will not deliver them.

If you need to contact us, and only use hotmail, please email us a nuanceoccasions@hotmail.com and if you don’t have a response in 24 hours, please call to ensure we have received your email.

We thank you for your understand!

Jolyn | Lead Wedding Coordinator

P.S. and don’t forget to check out our revised website at www.nuanceoccasions.com if you haven’t been for a while!

I just wanted to drop everyone a quick note - to say ‘HAPPY HOLIDAYS’ to you and your family.

May 2008 bring you health, happiness and prosperity.

I’d like to thank all of our 2007 clients - we have so many fond memories of the weddings we’ve assisted with over the past year…and getting to know each couple. We look forward to all the fun of seeing all of our 2008 weddings come to life after all the planning in the upcoming new year!!

We are truly blessed, and thank all of our clients - current and past - and all the fabulous vendors we work with - for making our job so much fun and enjoyable - we couldn’t keep doing this without all the support we have!

So best wishes, and we look forward to trying to blog more in the new year (I’ll try…but I’m never really good with New Year’s resolutions LOL)

Happy Holidays from the team at Nuance Occasions!

http://www.nuanceoccasions.com

I just noticed I’m missing some of my september weddings on here, so I’ll try to get those worked in soon. Our wedding season is starting to slow down a little bit, but we are very active planning and preparing our 2008 weddings, and even some 2009 weddings! I’m hoping to get caught up and do some more posting on the blog later this month!

It was such a pleasure to be the featured guest for the season opener of HelpTV’s wedding feature this week. Jolyn, owner of Nuance Occasions had 5 segments on the show, and spoke about getting started, budget planning, dealing with ettiquette and family issues, and also featured a number of ideas for making your wedding more personal.

A special thanks goes to Rachel J Photography and Crystals Creations for lending me supporting items for the show!!

Visit www.helptv.ca and enter to win a great wedding relief gift basket provided by Nuance Occasions - entry details on are their website in the contest section

Jolyn will be available at the upcoming Bridal Expo on Sunday, September 30 - so drop by and say hi!!