Lisa Hanslip
Financial Planning Leads to Marital Bliss
Monday, May 9th, 2011 | media | No Comments
Money is at the root of most breakups
By Shaun Polczer, Calgary Herald May 8, 2011
The Wedding of the Century has come and gone, the cake has been cut and Will and Kate are man and wife.
It was an awesome spectacle of pomp and pageantry that took precision planning and the logistical skills of a tactician to pull off, in full view of the entire world.
But once the honeyoon’s over, what’s next?
That’s were the fairy tale ends and reality sets in.
Experts say most people put more thought into planning for one big day than the rest of their lives, with disastrous results. According to Statistics Canada figures, the sad fact is that one in two marriages in Canada are destined to fail by the 30th year. More often than not, the root of marital discord can be boiled down to a single cause: money.
After the ponying up for the cost of the tux, gown and cake, many couples fail to think about the cost of mortgages, retirement savings and contingencies such as insurance to make sure ‘I Do’ doesn’t become ‘I Don’t’.
“In my opinion, I would like to see couples put more time into the marriage than the wedding,” says Lisa Hanslip, a Calgary-based wedding planner whose company, The Wedding Planner Inc., has been organizing nuptials for almost two decades.
Hanslip, who has organized weddings that cost as much as $500,000 or as little as $5,000, says you don’t always get what you pay for and that there is no correlation between the cost of the ceremony and the quality of everlasting bliss.
Hanslip says she can often tell beforehand which marriages are destined to fail based on the way couples approach small details such as floral arrangements, but more importantly, how they’re paid for. In that sense, the big day is the template for the marriage.
Jennifer French and her groom Colum Furey are a lot like other couples getting married these days. Both are in their mid-30s with professional jobs; she’s a human resources professional and he’s an engineer for a large oil company.
This weekend they tied the knot in front of 85 invited guests in an intimate ceremony that cost their parents almost $40,000.
Although they didn’t have to pay out of pocket, the future Mrs. Furey says both are keenly aware of keeping it in perspective. “It’s a down payment on a house,” she jokes. “Every time you take out the Visa you get that sense of panic, it creeps up on you.”
To get married in their church, both had to take wedding preparation classes that dealt with issues such as financial planning. They already own a home together and have retirement plans through their employers. They both like to spend money, but have taken steps to save as well.
Although they’re starting on solid ground, French agrees money is the big stressor in any relationship.
“It definitely breeds its own sense of pressure, it can tear people up,” she says.
Read more: http://www.calgaryherald.com/life/Financial+planning+leads+marital+bliss/4746936/story.html#ixzz1Lth7hXJb
Get the Look: Purple Perfection
Monday, May 2nd, 2011 | media, testimonials, trends, weddings | No Comments
We’re excited to be featured again in the May issue of Weddings in Alberta:
This wedding is also featured on their site with 10 gorgeous images:
Inspired by the royal wedding buzz? Steal this fabulously regal look with help from The Wedding Planner!
For a bride who simply said, “I like purple,” The Wedding Planner put together this stunning reception style. Choosing to use the whole spectrum of the royal hue, shades ranging from pale lilac to deep aubergine create a stunning look with a lot of depth. To start, the tent was draped and chandeliers were hung from the ceiling. The feminine look was anchored with touches of black to add masculinity and modernity: a wide black runner was laid down the centre of each table, chiavari chairs were tied with a black sash, and all the printed goods involved black papers. Three shades of purple table linens were alternated throughout the room, and varying arrangements of purple, blue, and pink flowers were placed on each table. Each vase was wrapped in a different shade of purple ribbon, and alternated between square and round shapes to add texture to the space.
The final details? 12,000 purple and lavender rose petals created a luscious ceremony aisle, half-pomanders in vibrant purple shades were strung from the sides of the ceremony chairs, glamorous candelabras were centered on the head table, and customized M&Ms were gifted to the guests (purple, of course!).
http://weddingsinalberta.com/articles.php?articleId=609&image=11
happiness…
Monday, April 25th, 2011 | Uncategorized | No Comments
The three components of happiness are:
* something to do
* someone to love
* something to look forward to
“Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart: Thirty True Things You Need to Know Now ” – Gordon Livingstone, MD
princess bride
Monday, April 18th, 2011 | etiquette, trends | No Comments
Over the last six weeks I’ve been interviewed on multiple occasions by writers and radio hosts from across Canada with questions relating to the impending royal nuptials of William & Kate. We don’t have any clients getting married on “that” day – but even if we did it would never occur to me to compare their wedding to the royal wedding.
There’s enough pressure on brides to feel like a princess, lose weight, look perfect, etc. I think the pressures for a wedding spectacle get bigger all the time. Even if a couple has a $25,000 budget they still feel a certain expectation to have their wedding look like all the six- and seven-figure celebrity weddings.
I received an email this morning from someone concerned that royal wedding comparisons can overshadow a bride…and she speaks from experience:
Dear Lisa
I had the misfortune of getting married two weeks after the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana. My wedding was always being compared to the fairytale wedding and beautiful bride. No one spoke of my dress as they couldn’t stop talking about Lady Diana and how beautiful she was. If people only knew what a bummer that was to an already stressed out bride!
During my ceremony the preacher stated, “We know this can’t be as beautiful a site as the wedding of the royals, but the love is still there!”
Every bride should feel like a princess on her wedding day – just don’t worry about competing with “the” princess (unless the Queen is planning to pay for your wedding too). And to all you Officiants out there with weddings on April 29th – DON’T MENTION WILLIAM & KATE during the ceremony!
where they take the cake (pt 2)
Monday, April 18th, 2011 | media, trends | No Comments
The two women met in 2005 while studying at Le Cordon Bleu Ottawa Culinary Arts School. Pellegrino founded Cake Opera Co. soon after. “All my instructors said, ‘You should be making showpieces in Vegas,’” she says. The timing dovetailed with a growing cultural fixation on cake, evident in the emergence of the golden age of cake TV – a spawn of shows including Ace of Cakes, Wedding Cake Wars, Cake Boss, and Ultimate Cake Off. In 2009, Pellegrino asked Smith, then head pastry chef at Toronto’s Truffles restaurant, for help on a Food Network cake challenge. Within months, they were in a partnership. Grace Ormonde, editor-in-chief of the US magazine Wedding Style, was an early supporter. “I had worked with the best and thought I’d seen everything,” she says. “And here come these two women who blew me away.” Their cakes taste as delicious as they look, she notes: “That’s not always the case.”
Their custom design work, which begins at $300 and rises to $6,000, tends to focus on weddings, which isn’t surprising. Once cakes only had to be pretty, says Ormonde: “Now everyone wants their wedding to be unique. They want sculpture.”
When consulting with brides, Pellegrino asks for visuals – the dress, flowers, a brooch – then brings her imagination to bear. An opulent three-tiered, chocolate, 24K-gold and burgundy cake created for a Venetian-themed wedding last year took its cue from the invitation. “I was drawn to the envelope’s lining; it had a beautiful pattern,” she says. For the top, she created a sugar replica of the masks worn by the bride and groom.
They’ve made black and purple cakes, but Pellegrino says she loves all-white cakes, with a twist: “I like to recall that traditional wedding feeling and then there will be something on it like, ‘Whoa, where did that come from?’” Given the work required, their cakes can exist as a metaphor for the marriage to come: under the showy surface, there’s a carefully constructed infrastructure necessary to keep it all aloft. A black-and-white pirate-themed cake took 150 hours to build, says Pellegrino: “It requires the mind of an engineer.”
Creating fantasy can be a slog. Fourteen-hour workdays are common; Pellegrino and Smith do all of their own deliveries. “Street-car tracks are the bane of our existence,” says Smith, the driver. “She’s crapping her pants,” says Pellegrino, the navigator. They’re more laid-back about marketing. “We’ve taken a very non-aggressive approach,” says Smith. “The work speaks for itself.”
“Alexandria is brilliant,” says Catherine Lash, creative director of Toronto’s The Wedding Co., a wedding show producer. “You will not see anything recognizable in her designs – it’s not Martha Stewart magazine. She’s going to the opera, she’s going to art galleries.” Researching Madden’s tattoos in the tabloids offered rare lowbrow trolling, Pellegrino says: “I got to read all of these wonderful, smutty magazines.” Her favourite period is 17th century northern European still life “vanitas” paintings, whose shadowy compositions warn the viewer not to invest too much importance in mortal wealth and pleasures, a message that might be lost on people planning $100,000-plus weddings.
A playful irony percolates through Cake Opera Co.’s rococo-chic website and shop, one reminiscent of Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, the 2006 movie that reinforced the link between sumptuous pastel pastries and the woman who never actually said “Let them eat cake.” Gilt abounds. In the front window, a French guillotine slices through a retro wedding cake bleeding edible 24-karat gold. Inside the shop, antique glass cabinets are filled with macarons, meringues, marshmallows and cupcakes with names like “The Lady Pompadour” and “The Musetta.” Pellegrino laughs at the mention of Coppola’s movie. “Never seen it,” she jokes. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.” That movie fuelled the macaron trend – and resultant backlash – “a tragic story,” says Pellegrino. “It’s such a beautiful confection,” Smith explains. “But now wedding planners are saying, ‘We’re so over that.’ It’s a slap in the face.” “They’ve been around hundreds of years,” says Pellegrino. “Cupcakes have been around 50 years. So throw them to the curb!”
Cake Opera’s theatrical flair attracted Beverly Hills wedding planner Mindy Weiss, who organized Richie’s nuptials. She’d heard of them via Ormonde. Their website blew her away, she says. “I would stare at it in awe.” When Weiss learned Richie wanted a Versailles theme, she contacted them with only two weeks’ notice. “Before I knew it I received an email with the most fabulous drawing of the cake,” says Weiss. “I did not change a thing. And I always change something!” The finished cake was “amazing,” she says. “It was an art piece that the guests would walk up to and stare at.”
Gushy coverage of the wedding in People and Hello! resulted in a flurry of requests to ship, which they won’t do. “Most people can’t afford to fly us in,” says Smith.
Weiss, who plans events for people who can afford it, says she can’t wait to work with them again: “They’re perfection.” Predictably, there’s talk of a TV show. “We’re open to it,” says Smith. They’d be naturals – photogenic, funny, and smart enough to know that if Marie Antoinette were alive today, her apocryphal command would be “Let them watch cake.” ANNE KINGSTON
We’re definitely not in the same camp with the wedding planners that are over macarons…we’re a huge fan of the scrumptious French confectionary: they are delicious, come in a gorgeous array of colours, and are gluten free…what more can you ask for?!? Throw the cupcakes to the curb?…why not!
Re-reading this article makes me want to watch Marie Antoinette again…which will inevitably send to the patisserie for a wee box of macarons…YUM!
where they take the cake (pt 1)
Friday, April 15th, 2011 | media, trends | No Comments
We have long been fans of the amazing design esthetic of the Cake Opera Co. so we were thrilled to see them featured in Maclean’s Magazine.
Nicole Richie could have hired anyone to make her wedding cake. She chose Toronto’s Cake Opera Co.
LAST DECEMBER, business partners Alexandra Pellegrino and Jessica Smith flew from Toronto to Los Angeles with carry-on that was as fragile as it was weird: a sugar-modeling-paste sculpture depicting Nicole Richie, the daughter of singer Lionel, and her musician husband-to-be Joel Madden, as Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI-before the royals’ decadent reign came to its bloody, tumultuous end. Richie was decked out in a white wig, black mask and ruffly gown and splayed on a chaise longue; behind her, Madden, in a white wig and mask, presented his bride with arms out-stretched; through his jacket, the rocker’s famously inked arms could be seen, each tattoo replicated precisely.
The painstakingly detailed tableau could be seen as a biting social commentary on over-the-top celebrity culture, but wasn’t: it was the topper of the extravagant cake served at Richie’s and Madden’s Dec. 11 “Versailles”-themed nuptials.
Smith and Pellegrino, the pastry chef and designer, respectively, at Toronto’s Cake Opera Co., had transported surreal confectionary before. In February 2010, US Customs officials were bemused by a suitcase filled with sugar roses for a cake they’d be making for a Tim Burton-meets-Alice-in Wonderland-themed sweet 16 in Scottsdale, Ariz.
That party they were invited to. The closest they got to the high-security celebration at Lionel Richie’s Beverly Hills estate was the back entrance, where they delivered their five-tiered cake edged in edible 24-karat gold, created at a West Hollywood bakery taken over for the occasion.
The commission was a high point in their two-year collaboration, says the 29-year-old Pellegrino, who attended the Ontario College of Art and Design before turning to making ephemeral art with fondant and cake flour. “We still don’t believe it. It’s like, ‘We were at Lionel Richie’s house! With something that came out of this kitchen.’” It was all really hush-hush, says Smith, 28, who studied culinary arts at Toronto’s George Brown College and has worked at London’s Michelin-starred Yauatcha. “We weren’t even allowed to take pictures of our work.”
Sitting in their uptown Toronto shop in chef jackets and over-the-knee boots, Pellegrino and Smith present as confident patisserie swashbucklers. Samples of their couture cakes line one wall – one looks like blue Wedgwood china; on another, a glittery black lobster adorns an ivory tower festooned with black roses, oysters and pearls; their “ode to Canadiana” features deer and painted “birch bark” on pale green fondant. Inspiration ranges from Christian Lacroix’s 2008 collection to ‘60s chinoiserie wallpaper, which resulted in a cake painted with sumi-e style brushwork and topped with a Japanese crane. Clearly, Richie, a Tinseltown style-setter, played it conservatively.
to be continued…
destined for a destination….?
Sunday, April 10th, 2011 | etiquette | No Comments
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE CALGARY HERALD, IN LISA HANSLIP’S COLUMN “I DO, BUT DON’T…”
Q. My fiancée and I can’t quite decide what to do about our wedding. She is the youngest of 10 kids and her immediate family alone now numbers about 52 people, not to mention all the cousins and aunts and uncles. I have three siblings (all married with kids), countless aunts, uncles and cousins, and my parents are both re-married. By the time we actually start inviting all of our friends our guest list will be huge. We’re actually considering a destination wedding because we know very few of them could afford to attend, but we’re not sure we’d be happy with this decision. What should we do?
A. The guest list can be one of the most stressful parts of planning a wedding – even without such an expansive family tree. Destination weddings are increasingly popular for many reasons. Although thinning out the guest list often falls near the top of the list, it’s not the best reason to run off to the islands to get married.
“Is there really a bad reason to get married barefoot on the beach at sunset?” you ask… Actually there is. It really depends on what you want to remember from your wedding day – the pool boy bringing you a Mai Tai in a coconut as soon as you say “I do,” or that your family was there to share it with you.
Destination weddings can be wonderful if you choose a place that has particular meaning to you as a couple. Many resorts do a lovely job with weddings, however most of the time it’s a crap shoot what kind of officiant, flowers and photographer you’ll end up with, so do lots of research before you choose a location. You also want to look into residency requirements – some islands require you to be there several days before you can get a marriage license.
If you do decide to opt for a destination wedding to avoid feeding all 52 of your fiancée’s immediate family (yikes!), just make sure you do a good job of selling them on your penchant for fruity umbrella drinks so no one gets offended. Aloha!
http://www.mystylishwedding.com/store/destination-wedding/paradise-in-vellum-wedding-invitation-set
chocolate-dipped honeymoon
Monday, March 28th, 2011 | travel | No Comments
I’m always a fan of anything that involves high quality dark chocolate. In fact, part of my 3 1/2 week honeymoon in Italy included a visit to the Perugina chocolate factory, a night in the Etruscan Chocohotel, and a six-course tasting menu – each of which included chocolate. So when I heard about this new, oh-so-fabulous resort in St. Lucia, I knew I had to find out all about it.
Hotel Chocolat is the brainchild of two British chocolatiers, Angus Thirlwell and Peter Harris .
On this 140-acre, 18th-century plantation, you can learn the entire chocolate-making process, helping to harvest and roast the beans and, of course, taste the finished product. Or you could simply retire to one of the six cocoa- and cream-colored cottages with gauze-draped four-poster beds, ocean-facing chaise longues, and open-air rain showers. (Eight additional villas will open in October.) The restaurant takes its inspiration from the hotel’s crop, with dishes like yellowfin tuna with cacao pesto. Talk about a delicious getaway. Definitely my idea of hot chocolate!
exceeding expectations
Friday, March 25th, 2011 | testimonials | No Comments
I just got this lovely email from Sonya + Travis. They are a lovely couple – inside & out – it was a delight working with them both! xo
My husband and I know that you were vital to making not only the wedding but the whole planning process such a wonderful experience. Our wedding was truly the happiest day of our lives – thank you for helping make that dream a reality.
Take care,
Sonya
PS We also owe you a belated thanks for recommending Giovanni. Finally a fashionable solution to Travis’ 14 inch drop. (Though he still LOVES his tux!)
You’re Engaged! Now What?
Thursday, March 17th, 2011 | etiquette | No Comments
Here’s some great advice from Emily Post:
1. Share the good news
Your parents, and any children you may have from a previous union, should hear the news first. Then comes other relatives and close friends. Whether you do it in person or over the phone, do it yourself. Those closest to you will no doubt be hurt to hear the news second hand. Don’t announce an engagement until a former union has been dissolved, whether by divorce or annulment. Post it on Facebook only after your family and closest friends have heard the news from you.
2. Meet the parents
Your engagement certainly signifies a change in the relationship with your fiancé’s/fiancée’s parents. Now’s the time to lay the foundation for a positive bond with your future in-laws. This is also when the parents of the bride meet – or at least make contact with – the parents of the groom. Traditionally, the groom’s parents call the bride’s parents to introduce themselves and extend an invitation to meet. But nowadays that first contact can also be made by the bride’s parents.
3. Make the guest list & set the budget
Your budget is the determining factor for the shape, size and fanfare of your wedding. But you can’t decide the type of wedding you will have until you have some idea of the size of the guest list. The easiest way to cut costs is to narrow your guest list.
4. Pick the date
The time of year you have your wedding is a key consideration. The most popular months for weddings are May, June, July, August, September and October. Popular wedding sites will be at a premium in terms of availability and cost during these times. Are you hoping for an outdoor wedding? Consider how many of your guests will have to travel when choosing a date as well.
5. Don’t forget the three C’s
Not clarity, cut or color. We’re talking about consideration, communication and compromise. How you handle your wedding plans can foretell how you will handle the other major decision of your life together. Along with the stress that will accompany the big decisions and little details should be a sense of adventure and fun. You are celebrating one of the most joyous milestones in your lives. Do so with a focus on consideration, communication and compromise and the process is sure to be less stressful and more satisfying.
Categories
Archive
- October 2014
- July 2014
- June 2014
- December 2013
- July 2013
- March 2013
- October 2012
- September 2012
- August 2012
- July 2012
- June 2012
- May 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- November 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
Meta
Search
