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How to Avoid Things Going Wrong on Your Wedding Day

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Endless love

Any wedding is likely to involve a large number of different elements and a hundred different things that could go wrong. The cost of a wedding is only really surpassed by the scale of the administrative and logistical undertaking, and the stakes are of course incredibly high. So how do you make sure that nothing goes wrong on your wedding day and what are the things you need to look out for? Here we will look at some precautions to take to avoid common problems.

My Wedding Invitations

Start Organizing Early

There is an awful lot to organize on any wedding day, and a lot of this is going to be time-sensitive. Things like booking venues and churches all require you to get in early to avoid them becoming fully booked, while getting the invitations out as early as possible can avoid people being unable to be there for this important occasion. The sooner you start organizing, the more you can avoid the myriad problems that crop up when organizing any big event.

Use Save the Dates

Another way to ensure that everyone you want at your wedding is able to attend is to use ‘save the dates’ which are invitations you send before you have the official invite.

Near Odessa's Registry Office

Use the Best Services

A chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and unfortunately when you plan a wedding you will be relying on many other people to ensure everything goes smoothly. Using the best services means finding the best florist, the best hair dresser and the best makeup artist to ensure that you won’t be let down and that everything is going to look great on the day. Also particularly important is your transport and booking a good wedding limo while making sure they have all the accurate and up-to-date information is a crucial element to remember if you want to make sure everyone arrives on time.

Dessert Bar 2 - Il Barocco, Palazzo Versace

Order Extra Food

Catering is an area that can often go wrong at a wedding and which can leave people in a bad mood if they’re hungry and kept waiting, or if they don’t get what they ordered. Start your event with canapés to make sure no one is starving no matter what happens, and make sure your caterers have spares of each dish to ensure that people who change their name or forget their order don’t ruin everything. Likewise it can help to send a reminder confirming what everyone ordered, or if you want to make things easier still – just order a buffet instead.

Split it Into Parts

There are many stresses that can come from having just one big event – for instance what if your rowdy mates from back home don’t get on with your Grandma? Having several smaller parts to your wedding solves this problem by allowing you to invite some people to the whole thing and others to parts. This could mean Gran comes to the ceremony, and that your friends come to the disco afterwards. This can also save you money and means that your whole day is less reliant on one venue or one menu.

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When Vicky is not busy with work, she loves spending time with her books or painting. She also likes photography and traveling.

Home Improvements That Will Enhance Your Way of Life

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When we make changes to our homes, often we do so because we are planning on making them look better or increasing their worth as an investment. Most of the changes then tend to be either practical or aesthetic, but if that’s all they’re doing then this is quite a limited approach to take.

While your property might benefit a lot from getting an attractive new paint job you see, and while it might be able to benefit to a large degree from having double glazing put in, other projects for your home can do much more to change the way you actually use your property and even alter your routine on a daily basis and your whole lifestyle. Here we will look at the changes that will have the biggest direct impact on the way you spend your days and probably your happiness as a result.

Kitchen/Bathroom Renovations

These are two of the most practical rooms in the house that we use on a daily basis in a very functional way. There are jobs we do in our kitchens and bathrooms that we simply can’t avoid, but having the best utilities and layout here can make those jobs easier and more pleasant – whether it’s adding a hot tub for your bathroom or adding a washing machine and more draining space in your kitchen.

Home Gym

If you’re struggling to get into shape, then giving yourself a home gym will make that a lot easier and mean you are much more likely to stick at the routines you come up with because you won’t have to leave the home to do so. This will then mean that this simple renovation helps you to look and feel better and to avoid illness or obesity – which is a very significant thing to change about your life.

Terrace or Patio

Having a terrace or patio area in the garden allows you to actually use your garden in a much more effective and pleasant way. Rather than just using this as somewhere practical to grow plants/work this then becomes somewhere that you can sit outside with a cup of tea while you read the paper, or somewhere that you can entertain guests. This will mean that you spend more time outdoors, and that in turn will mean that you feel much less stressed and aren’t as likely to get cabin fever after a day at home.

More Living Space

Added more living space in general to your existing rooms by extending them can make a huge difference to your daily routine and make you generally feel a lot less hemmed in and give you many more options for how you want to use your rooms. For instance if you use home extensions on your living room then this could give you more space to entertain allowing you to host dinner parties or have more people round without worrying about the lack of space. Likewise if you use them in your bedrooms it means you can have a larger bed in there, or add some of your other belongings whether they’re decorative or practical.

Donna Shepard is a very artsy person and her taste in taste in design is impeccable. She gives tips, ideas and advice on house decoration in her blogs.






How to Make Sure You Can Get Work Done on Your Business Trip

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If you are going on a business trip then this may mean a free holiday for you where you will get put up in a nice hotel while having the benefit of somewhere to explore in your free time. Ultimately though you will still be on company time for much of it, and that means that when you’re not doing whatever it is that you were sent to do, you should still be finding ways to be productive and do some kind of work.

So the question is, how do you make sure that your hotel will facilitate this work, and how do you make yourself able to work when it doesn’t?

Equipment

First of all you should make sure that you are bringing the right equipment with you, and specifically this should of course mean a small laptop or netbook you can work on, and anything ese you might need to do your job.

Something that can make a big difference here is to bring with you either a dongle, or a smartphone that provides internet tethering. While most hotels these days will offer you WiFi, carrying these things with you will ensure that you can access the internet even where they don’t and this will allow you to do research and answer e-mails on the train/plane as well. Bringing a spare battery can also help as this way you can keep working even when you can’t find a place to recharge.

Hotel

When you choose your hotel it makes sense to try and find somewhere that will offer WiFi, but also a good desk to work on and of course coffee making facilities in the room to keep your mind sharp. If you can get a room that’s away from any noise, and that has a good view, then this will be even better.

Meanwhile you should also try and limit the time you will waste doing other things. Look for a B&B that offers you breakfast for instance and this is time saved when you would otherwise be looking around for a place to eat. Likewise if you can find a hotel that provides good transport links then you can spend less time walking and more time working.

Another aspect to consider is how comfortable the place you’re staying is. Choosing somewhere nice isn’t just an indulgent way to waste money – if you sleep better then you’ll find you are more likely to wake up feeling recharged and able to work the next day.

Nearby Amenities

It’s also worth looking into the nearby amenities that are on offer where you’re staying. If you can find a good coffee shop to work in then this will provide you with somewhere you can operate that will be likely to have power sockets, free internet and a fairly quiet atmosphere. Other great places to work while you’re travelling include libraries, gyms and university campuses so look for these in the area when you’ve had to sign out of your hotel.

Jason Coffey loves travelling and is never in the same place for more then a week. He has travelled all around the world and has come to the conclusion that there is no place like home.

How to Afford a Property in the Economic Crisis

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When it comes to finances, we’ve all been through the ringer these last few years. While reports on the current state of the economy vary greatly, it’s generally safe to say that it’s been better and that we aren’t completely out of the woods just yet. While we might be climbing our way toward the end of the tunnel (please say it’s so!) we’re still not as well off as we were before this whole sorry mess began.

And this has affected all of our lifestyles of course, and all of the larger industries. Nowhere though is it more apparent than in the housing market which has slowed right down with fewer and fewer people able to take the plunge with such a large purchase. This is particularly bad for first time buyers of course too who don’t have anything to sell to raise the capital, and who are generally younger and not as well off to begin with. Without investing in real estate though, those same people are going to be spending large amounts of money regularly on renting and thus making it more and more difficult to ever get to the point where they are able to invest in real estate.

So the question is, what can you do to get out of this sticky situation? When you’re between a rock and a hard place, how can you beat your circumstances and invest at a time when actually the housing prices are quite low? Here are some tips and suggestions…

Improve Your Credit Rating

If you’re currently looking to buy a new property then you should be saving as much money as possible toward making as big a deposit as possible. This is obvious, but what you might not have considered is the importance of improving your credit rating – which is a figure that dictates the way the banks see you and how willing they are to invest in you with a loan. In short if your credit rating is poor then your APR is going to be very high on any mortgage and you may not be able to get one at all – so look at ways you can prove to the bank that you’re reliable and in a stable financial situation so that when the time comes you are able to get yourself a good mortgage relatively easily.

Team Up

If you can’t afford to buy a property on your own, or if you are afraid to, then going in with someone else is a good way to invest your money and improve your quality of life without making such a large financial commitment. This doesn’t have to be a partner – it could mean getting help from a parent, or it could just mean buying a house with a group of friends. Either way you’ll be able to get money back out of the deal when you leave, and you’ll technically be a homeowner.

Cut the Other Costs

You should also look into ways you can reduce all the other costs of moving so that you can focus on the property itself. This means shopping around and seeing if you can find cheaper settlement agents and cheaper surveyors, and it means throwing out lots of your things so that you can forego using a removal company.

Schemes

There are plenty of schemes available specifically for those who are struggling to afford a property from ‘rent to buy’ schemes to ‘part-buy-part-rent’. Each has strengths and weaknesses and they won’t all appeal to everyone, so do your research and consider these alternatives to buying outright.

Jimmy Hendricks has done quite well for himself in the trading business. He gives simple trading tips and advice to his readers on his blogs.

How to Give Speeches Infront of Your Friends and Family

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My best friend is getting married this time next year and I’m terrified. I’m terrified partly because it’s giving my restless girlfriend ideas (we’ve been going out longer than he’s been with his girlfriend), but also because as best friend I’m going to have to take on certain duties – and the most nerve wracking of these is undoubtedly the prospect of giving a speech in front of everyone he knows (most of whom are people I know too) as well as the bride’s invites (who are Chinese speaking just to make life a little more complicated).

When I was younger I used to be pretty good at giving speeches. I gave the graduation speech at my university for instance, which I was chosen to do thanks to my record of good previous speeches; but it’s been a while since I last talked in front of an audience. Here then I’m going to go over a few of the tips I’ve collected previously to try and refresh my memory on just how to do it. And if you have a similar duty coming up some time soon then it may help you as well.

Keep it Flexible

In the past I’ve tried reading an exact speech off of cue cards or even pieces of paper and invariably these have been my less inspired talks. The problem with doing this is not only that it means you’re looking down and not at your audience, but also that it means you’re reading rather than talking. You’ll here be robotically regurgitating the information you see in front of you rather than actually addressing your audience, and this of course means you’re going to be much less engaging and natural in the way you talk.

What works much better is to have ideas on your cue cards but to just let these act as triggers that remind you of ideas you’ve had and of what’s coming up. This way you can keep the structure you’ve outlined and hit all your key beats, but at the same time you can improvise where you see fit and you can keep it more naturally flowing.

Talk Slowly

Remembering to talk slowly is something that’s very important if you want to sound confident and clear. When you speak slowly you naturally sound more at ease because you are taking your time, and at the same time this will make what you’re saying easier to hear. When we give speeches most of us will talk at double speed thanks to all the adrenaline pumping through our brains, so even if you think you’re talking super slowly, you might still benefit from dragging it out a little further.

Engage the Audience

When you speak it’s important to react to the audience and to involve them. First of all this means scanning the whole of the party venues with your eyes to ensure no group feels left out, but at the same time it also means reacting to what you perceive the mood of the audience to be. If you look around and someone seems to be dozing off then try to engage them by looking at them and posing a rhetorical question. Don’t forget anyone and talk with not at them.

Henry Washington is a party animal and that is why he so good at planning wild parties for his clients. He is your go-to guy if you want to plan the coolest parties that too a very cheap rate.

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