Chicago Event Planners
We would like to extend a very happy first anniversary to our dear clients, Courtney and John! We had so much fun celebrating you two at The Drake Oak Brook last year. May you have many more happy anniversaries to come!
Lindsey Kay Photography
Cheers,
Joan
Family, friends, current and past clients–I hope you are all well and surviving the madness! The Five Grain Team misses collaborating with you to produce events brimming with personality, vibrancy, and panache. We cannot wait until this virus is conquered so we can all gather again. The connections with our clients and vendor friends are so sorely lacking, and that has been one of the hardest parts of being in limbo in this way.
It’s been an interesting 6 months, to say the least. On the home front, my family welcomed our fourth child–Stanley Joseph–in May so I’ve been grateful to have a little extra time to snuggle with our last baby. It’s been fun watching my older three girls (2, 6, and 8) play together and become best friends. Even so, there is a part of me that doesn’t feel whole without putting some energy each day into the part of events I most love: LOGISTICS! Timelines, Templates, and To Do Lists: oh my!
Over the past week, as I worked to disentangle two daily virtual school schedules, baby sleep schedules, and work needs to create our family calendar in five-minute increments, I realized there may be families who don’t find as much enjoyment in a good color coding as I do. People who face mounting anxiety as we kick off another school year and are feeling helpless and hopeless on how to regain control of the day-to-day.
Enter, Five Grain Home Logistics! For all my past wedding clients who wished I could be their “life planner”, now’s your chance 😉 . I am going to be creating custom toolkits for the overwhelmed family. It will include a weekly schedule, daily checklists, and tips and tricks I’ve picked up on how to stay ahead of the curve and improve your family’s level of calm and organization.
Please reach out to me at joan@fivegrainevents.com to schedule your consultation.
We are often asked by our clients to help them to find invitations to help them announce the exciting occasions related to their wedding day. With more and more brides and grooms waiting until after they’ve explored the world to get married, we love the idea of including a love of travel into wedding events. Here are a few ideas from a great and easy-to-use source, Basic Invite:
These passport wedding shower invitations are SUPER adorable on top of being completely customizable to your perfect color scheme. From the color of the text down to the stickers on the suitcase you can change the scheme to match all the other decor of the shower. Basic Invite even has 40 different colors of envelope to choose from to give that spark of visual interest from the moment it arrives in each mailbox.
If you are taking your love of travel to the next level, and considering a destination wedding, save the dates are a must-have. Your guests will need some extra time to make travel and hotel arrangements, request time off, and start working on those beach bodies before your big day. Give your guests a sneak preview of what’s to come on wedding day with these destination wedding save the dates. After selecting and customizing the save the date you can even request a custom sample to feel the paper quality for yourself before placing a final order.
In addition to your wedding date and location, be sure to include a link to your wedding website in the save the date text. There you can include specifics for your guests on best places to stay and info. on the weekend wedding events they should plan to attend. Plus, it’s a great (and etiquette approved!) place to include your wedding registry information and a bunch of cute pics of the lovebirds for fun. Basic Invite has a huge selection of free, customizable, mobile-friendly wedding websites that you can match to your invitation suite for a seamless experience.
When you’re ready to send those invites, use Basic Invite‘s address collection tools to request all those pesky mailing addresses via email or social media, and get free envelope printing in a text style that is a perfect match for your invites. They offer over 900 different invitation designs which can each be further tailored by color to perfectly match your look. Looking for a truly set it and forget it invitation process? Select one of their 30+ “Seal & Send” invite suites which come pre-printed with your guest addresses and a tear-off RSVP postcard. All you have to do when the package arrives is add postage, fold, and secure with a seal. Then off to the post-office (and your guests’ homes!) they go.
There are so many great resources out there these days for making every wedding day detail tailored to you. How are you using invitations to help personalize your day?
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We are so excited to welcome our Summer 2019 intern, Emma Anetsberger to the FGE team! We look forward to sharing many exciting moments together as she learns all about what goes on behind the scenes! Read a little about her below, and make sure to say “hi” when you see her out and about with us 🙂
Hi all! My name is Emma Anetsberger and I am thrilled to be interning with Joan and the team at Five Grain Events this summer. I am a rising senior at the University of Richmond, pursuing a double major in Rhetoric and Communication and Spanish. Throughout my time in college, I have joined numerous on-campus organizations and have taken on many demanding leadership positions. It is through these leadership positions that I have had the opportunity to help plan and host several successful events, such as a professor’s brunch and several fundraisings events. During these experiences, I learned how well-suited my organization, time-management, and communication skills are for event planning. I also learned just how much satisfaction and joy I can get from seeing an event succeed.
This summer, I am really looking forward to exploring the events industry at Five Grain Events in my absolute favorite city, Chicago! From weddings, to street festivals, to corporate events, I am ready to give my all to every opportunity that comes my way, both in the office and on-site. My goal for the summer is twofold: to be the most help I can be to Joan, the team, and the clients here at Five Grain Events, and to gain knowledge of and experience in events that I can apply in my future career. I am anxious to see what this summer holds for me, and am so thankful for the opportunity Five Grain Events has given me to learn and grow.
A wedding invitation is more than just a fancy piece of paper that tells the who, what, where, and when of the event. It’s essential to help set the guests’ expectations as to what kind of wedding experience they’re going to get. Your invitation cards should embody your wedding, from the design and layout to the content and materials.
Planning your dream wedding begins with making the perfect invitations. Your wedding invites should match the motif and feel of the event. To do that, you have to take design, content, and invitation etiquette into consideration.
Most couples decide on a color motif and general theme for their wedding, which dictates almost all aspects of the wedding—from the decorations to the invitations. The materials, colors, fonts, layout, and design of your wedding invites should be in line with the overall theme of the wedding.
After you’ve decided what the invitations will look like, you have to come up with the content you want to put inside. Of course, you need to include important details like the time and location of your wedding ceremony and reception, but you may also want to indicate the dress code, a little about the itinerary for the day, and what type of reception you are having so they know whether or not to come hungry!
There is no way to include everything the guests need to know in the invitations without overstuffing your A7 wedding envelopes. So, it’s important to carefully select the most relevant information to include in the invites.
If you need some help, here’s a detailed infographic guide for making the perfect wedding invitations.
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