An actual reason for our tardiness…

Hiya!!

Tis’ me, the part-time blogger……..and now ‘Mommy’. Yup, that’s what has happened since our last update:

I got fat. See example 1A:

then gave birth to an ACTUAL human! The newest member of the Be Our Guest team, Dougie! See example 2B:

But never fear my Padawan learners, I am still totally obsessed with weddings and haven’t diverted my attention towards baby blogs and the like. If I’m honest, I find all the stereotypical baby shiz, all a bit vomit inducing. The frilly, cutesy. ‘ooooo, lets all use words shorter than the real word and repeat it twice because the baby will understand me then’ type stuff. Why can’t we talk to our little smurf’s like a normal person? Why do people use words like, ‘neigh neigh’? It’s a horse! A HORSE! You are actually using an extra syllable to describe something very simple, dag nab it!

But anyway, I digress……

So yeah, I am somebody’s Mom now. Very strange but totally awesome too. I took a bit of a break from stationery to get my head around things and to learn how to look after him (thank god for the husband’s 5 week paternity!) but I now feel I know how to not drop him, feed him when he’s hungry and entertain him. We’re quite accomplished at all the above now 🙂

Orginally I was only going to abandon Hannah for a couple of weeks. Our conversation went something like this:

Me (at 8 months pregnant): “I think I might have to duck out of the stationery world a bit earlier than planned as I’m getting a bit snowed under” FYI, there was no cot built and this didn’t happen until 1AM of the day we went into hospital….oops!

Hannah: “yea, that’s totally fine, you should be chilling out now”

Me: “awwwww thanks friend, don’t worry, I think I’ll only need a couple of weeks after they’re born and I’ll be back with you”

Hannah: “Phahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!”

Me: “No seriously, I reckon I can pick the admin back up after a couple of weeks”

Jess returns when Dougie is 6 weeks old. What do we learn from this? Hannah is always right and it takes time for your body to get over birthing a person.

So normal service has now resumed and I promise I can have a conversation with out mentioning Dougie’s bowel movements or how many ounces he drinks 😉

A special mention has got to go out to another Mommy, of the Hannah’s kind. We’re very lucky to have such supportive families and we couldn’t have got through Dougie-gate without your priceless assistance. So, Thank you!

xxx

Errrrr, OK……where did the last 6 months go???

blog

blɒɡ/

noun

1. 1.

   a regularly updated website or web page, typically one run by an individual or small group, that is written in an informal or conversational style.

verb

1. 1.

   add new material to or regularly update a blog.

   “it’s about a week since I last blogged”

As you can see from the above, you may have been led to believe that a Blog is a regularly updated bit of webspace, with somebody’s ramblings. Well my dear reader……..you have been misled! Because as you can see from our Blog, it’s actually a webpage that is updated once every 6 months………so there!

OK…….hands held high, you’ve got me! I’m rubbish! But in my defence, we’re that busy and then Christmas happened and before I knew it I was saying to Hannah, “oh, I’ll have to do a Blog post about our ordering times as it’s January, our busiest time, to let people know our time scales. It must be a month or so since I did one”……..6 months people!!! SIX. MONTHS! Is it just me, or did 2014 just disappear??

I haven’t even told you guys about ‘Chalk & Cheese’, our blackboard inspired invitation range, that, let’s face it, is another awesome new design, put together by the talented Hannah, see……..

Now I know you know this already but I’ll say it anyway. As with all of our designs, all colours and wording can be altered to suit your wedding day and theme. Good huh?!

The other reason I wanted to pop by today is to just have a chat about our ordering schedule and time scales. The beginning of the year is always our busiest time, Christmas is over and couples then crack on with wedding planning. We get an influx, we love it but it does break our heart when couples expected time scales are out of our reach.

All of our stationery is designed and put together by the wonderful Hannah, she’s a one man, talented band! This is why we have a ten day design rule. Any changes, drafts and wording, can take up to ten days, depending on workload. Even if you love your draft design and just want some wording changes, this goes back into the pending work folder and can take another ten days. It’s worth it though, to get everything perfect, promise.

Then, when you’re happy with your fabulous perfect design, it goes to the production side. We do not out source our printing, we do everything ourselves, to ensure a finish that we and our couples are happy with. Then together, myself and Hannah, get our make on and we lovingly hand craft your stationery, as if it were our own. We quote a four week production schedule, once your design is signed off and printing has started. In busy periods, it usually is four weeks.

We always hate it when couple’s deadlines are out of our constraints. As a rule of thumb, it is never to early to start thinking about your wedding stationery. We would advise, that you would start the process and contact us, at least two months before the date that you would like to send them out to your fabulous guests. For example, our tightest time scale at the moment, for invitations that would be sent at the beginning of April, for perhaps an August wedding, would be now, or at least the beginning of February.

So in short:

• Initial contact
• Design work, ten days (every time it comes back for alteration)
• Production from agreed design, four weeks
• Receive amazingly, brilliant invitations!

Now I know it will take some time but I hope you will find it within your hearts to forgive me, for leaving it so long since my last update. I promise I will try harder to pop back and see you all more often…..and you never know, I might have some awesome bespoke designs to share with you 😉

Have an awesome weekend guys!

Going all profesh…

Now I know I said in previous posts that we would steer away from making this a weather blog BUT, I’m sorry! Have you not seen the big ball in the sky? We’ve only gone and pulled it off, old blighty is having an ACTUAL sunny summer. High five us 🙂

So, weather chat out of the way, let’s move on to business…..as that’s what we are, we can’t believe it ourselves sometimes. Sometimes it feels like we’re playing ‘shop’, like when you were kids. “Hello, this is Be Our Guest Designs, we sell wedding stationery and we have real life clients”, oh no wait, this isn’t playing, we really do do this for grown up real! And that’s all down to you guys. Which we can’t thank you for enough. Taking our new found grown up status into account, we thought it was about time to ditch the ‘we didn’t really know what we were doing a couple of years ago when we set up our on-line presence’ email address and get a spanking new profesh one. So now we’ve got a more streamlined and professional contact email address which is:

hello@beourguestdesigns.com

We hope you agree that this is far easier to remember. Our old email contact still works and we will get your emails but all replies will come from the above.

We’ve had a bit of a blank out on the social media front for a while, this being because the admin side of Be Our Guest (i.e. me!) went and selfishly moved house. This for me is awesome……for internet based services….this is ruddy rubbish! How annoying is it to have to move your providers, set up new ones and you just KNOW that it never works first time. I’ve spent the first few weeks in our new home, on the phone to our internet provider for about a million hours every evening. But, as you can probably tell from this post, “we now have the power!” Woop! Quick, cross your fingers so  it’s not jinxed. What did we actually do before we had the internet? It screws my noodle??

But anywhos, myself and the boy are now all set up and settled in to the new abode, so Hannah can now have her tech support back on hand.

 

If you follow our Facebook page, you probably would have already met our newest additions, Mr & Mrs Mousington. But if you haven’t, your day is about to improve dramatically!

 

The Mousingtons have been added to our ‘Off the Peg’ range on our website. They’ve been made to feel at home by the rest of our little pals and seem to be settling in nicely. As always, they don’t mind being altered to suit your day. Will the new Mrs be holding a rose bouquet? Perhaps the new Mr doesn’t like blue and has more of a penchant for pink? Don’t pull that face, it could happen!

I’m off now to pop my feet up on the new coffee table and indulge in some Pinterest décor. Bliss!

 

Farewell happy January…

Guess what?! We’ve only gone and opened an actual on-line store!

But before we get to the nitty gritty, first off, you may have noticed that our last post was drizzled with tinsel. Christmas is a far distant happy memory and if we are honest with you guys, we have no idea where January went.

They say that January is dull and depressing and is the home of ‘Blue Monday’. This Monday is meant to be dreary and depressing as the Christmas credit card bills hit the door mat and the month is full of long, dark nights with nothing to look forward to apart from the anticipation that it may snow……..then for the population to moan after one week that they want the white stuff to disappear.

Now, if you follow our ramblings and our Pinterest board, you would know that Hannah and I are quite partial to the winter months and we LOVE the snow, even after a week, dang it, even after two! We never get bored of the icy carpet. The only thing that depressed us from January 2014, was that there wasn’t any snow. We’ve keeping our fingers crossed on that front.

You may ask why we never fell under January’s spell and this brings me to the point of this post. We didn’t have time to. We couldn’t believe the influx of requests from fresh faced couples that were ready to hit the ground running with planning their weddings. Hannah’s illustrating pad hasn’t stopped and your feedback has been immense. This is where I would normally add an image of what we’ve been up to but we can’t spoil the surprise for our couples, so here’s a cute picture of one of our mascots 🙂

This is the first chance I’ve had to put fingers to keypad and update the blog. It wasn’t a good look being greeted by some reindeer when the fat man had been and gone for over a month.

The other reason we have been indulged with lots of drawing time is that we’ve took the leap and opened an on-line store. Here you can purchase a sample at the click of button and have custom orders created just for you. Taking this step has been a milestone for us and we’re super happy with the amount of custom requests we have received. Etsy is a fabulous marketplace that showcases amazing suppliers and their hand-made talents. If you are planning your wedding, you will be so over run with ideas and things that you HAVE to have, that you won’t even realise you needed them for your big day. So in advance, we apologise for the hit your bank balance is about to take. I’m sorry to say that even after the event is over, you’ll still be visiting for that perfect gift or ‘never before seen’ item for your abode.  So pop over and take a look…….you’re welcome 😉

So in a nutshell, we’ve got a shop *woo!* and we’re uber excited by how many of you guys have asked us to help you with putting your wedding ideas down on paper.

Hopefully in my next post I’ll be able to share some of these designs. We are always amazed at the styles, ideas and themes that get thrown our way. You guys plan AWESOME wedding days. Keep up the good work.

Over and out,

Jess

x

“Christmas doesn’t come from a store……..

………..maybe Christmas perhaps means a little bit more ”

I love the sentiment of Dr Suess’s quote from ‘How the Grinch stole Christmas’, as we love Christmas at Be Our Guest HQ. Not just love but LOVES!

The smell of the Christmas tree (well, in one of the Be Our Guest homes, we’re 50-50 on the ‘real/fake’ debate. I love a real tree and wouldn’t be without one, shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, don’t tell Hannah!), the twinkling lights on the drive home, the bits of ribbon and tags floating around the house, the communal chocolates in the office, the first sip of your tipple of choice when you close down for the festivities and the cold, dark nights. We have to admit, we’re both winter babies and love the cosiness of winter, snuggled up on the sofa in just the shadow of your tree lights, with a hot chocolate in hand. But most important, MOST importantly, we love the family get together. It’s not often you get everybody together and if you’re lucky, you might get a game of treasure hunt or charades 🙂

You may have seen on our Facebook page that we’re taking a little break so we can whole heartedly enjoy the festivities. We pinky promise that we’ll tie up any loose ends before we wave goodbye on December 21st and we’ll be back on it with bells on, on January 2nd. So we’d like to take this opportunity to wish you all a fabulous Merry Christmas. We hope you all have a suitably drunken time* and enjoy every minute!

*Jessica and Hannah don’t condone excessive drinking and would like remind everybody to drink sensibly 😉

 

It’s all a little over whelming….

Hi peeps!

If you follow us on Facebook you’ll know that we’ve had a bit of a busy week in the world of old cyber space. First of all we launched a competition to find a name for our little buddy the bunny.

We needed a name for the little chap as he was going to be making an appearance as part of our new logo across all of our social media sites. After you lovely lot entered into the spirit of things, he’s been named Bert, which was chosen by the lovely Kacey Katt, who has won her wedding day invitations as a thank you.

Bert, now that he had a name, had his most important debut around the corner, looking after the bottom footer of our brand spanking new website. We’re really happy to have revamped the old site, making it a lot more ‘us’. It’s stream lined, cool and yellow! 🙂 A big thanks to the wonderful Thom Baker who had the patience of a saint dealing with us two. Here’s a sneak preview but if you’d like to see it in all it’s glory pop over to beourguestdesigns.com

It just so happened that the very same day that the spangely new website launched, a little Boho Bride was also launching her lovely blog’s new sponsors. And you never guess what?! We were only ruddy one of them! We were over the moon when Sarah at Boho Bride said we could put our little banner on her little bit of boho-ie goodness. It’s a lovely blog with lots of wedding inspiration and wedding musings. Sarah’s mantra ‘Love Blossoms. Marriage Blooms’, says it all. We are super pleased to be sharing this part of our wedding stationery journey with her. You can visit Sarah’s bit of boho heaven here.

Then last month we were contacted by Emma-Jane of Buckingham Events to ask if were free for her next event, the luxury wedding show at the Hilton in Leicester. Number one, it’s super cool to be asked as it is hand picked suppliers and only the best will do 😉 and two, Emma-Jane does an amazing job hosting it. So what do you think our answer was?? Yes of course! So cue the next awesomely lovely blog about us. We blushed A LOT when we read Emma-Jane’s words. We can never quite get used to such amazing support and feed back. As we’ve said before, the wedding industry is such a supportive environment. If you’d like to come along to the Luxury Wedding show, it’s being held on Sunday 22nd September and you can get your tickets here and they’re free!

And then to top the week off, we had our ‘5 minutes with….’ blogged about by the guys over at the Giant Wedding Show. It’s a great blog that runs alongside all the information you need about the Derbyshire show, held at Osmaston Park on 20th October. It’s a great way of getting to know all of the suppliers before you visit the show. Here’s what we had to say about ourselves.

So, that’s our blushingly, over whelming week in the world of the online blog. Thank you to everybody who has taken the time to write about and support us. We really do appreciate it.

Now I’m off for an early night, ready to tackle the remaining bits of our new wedding show stand tomorrow. If you’d like to come and see us, have a chat or just to say hi, check out our events page which has all the details of our autumn shows. Hope to see you there!