Répondez s'il vous plaît...

I think About.com puts it best so I will let them take over from here...

Lack of RSVPs - A Growing Problem
I hear more and more often, and have found in my personal experience, that hosts often do not receive firm indications whether guests plan to attend their parties, even if RSVP is clearly printed on the invitation. This could mean either one of two things. First it could mean that rudeness is a growing trend in our society. Or, as I would prefer to believe, people no longer understand what the term means. Assuming the best, and that the decline in RSVPs can be attributed to ignorance and not rudeness, I will clarify this for the record.

What RSVP Means
The term RSVP comes from the French expression "répondez s'il vous plaît", meaning "please respond". If RSVP is written on an invitation it means the invited guest must tell the host whether or not they plan to attend the party. It does not mean to respond only if you're coming, and it does not mean respond only if you're not coming (the expression "regrets only" is reserved for that instance). It means the host needs a definite head count for the planned event, and needs it by the date specified on the invitation.

Why It's Inconsiderate to Not RSVP
An incomplete list of respondents can cause numerous problems for a host including difficulty in planning food quantities, issues relating to minimum guarantees with catering halls, uncertainty over the number of party favors and difficulties in planning appropriate seating, among other things.

So the next time you see RSVP on an invitation you receive, please call your host and respond promptly.

{PREACH}

SC: Update

WARNING: This blog for the next four weeks may be 100 percent wedding-related.

So below is a picture of the magnolia submersed in water! I like this style of vase a lot along with the ribbon, wire, leaf and peacock feather giving it a little color. It isn't the hurricane style vase I was thinking but this definitely works. Officially excited!


Also below is the lamp post/New Orleans street sign idea we had originally had and are still doing just for eight tables only. This pic I got from www.theknot.com (a wedding-planning-organization lifesaver). It has the last name of the couple after 'Rue' which I think is a lovely idea! Only three and a half weeks!! Crazy - In an amazing way.

Centerpiece Surprise

A few months ago I received a phone call from my Aunt Margaret in Chicago. She had a marvelous idea for a New Orleans street lamp to be our wedding reception centerpieces. I was ecstatic! Especially since she said Uncle Charlie [a props master at Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago] could make them!!

I was telling everyone that my awesome uncle was making my centerpieces from scratch and how excited I was... Yesterday evening Aunt Margaret called with some bad news: "Uncle Charlie did a mock one and it looks like a 3-foot tall phallus." Good news: "I will do whatever it takes to make what you want your centerpieces to be."

I am proud to say that I did not freak out. I love Aunt Mar to death and could never get upset with her for anything. And some things are just out of people's control.

So we were brainstorming last night and the first idea that came to my head was a hurricane-style vase with artificial magnolia blossoms submerged in water with a copper, deep green or deep purple ribbon around the base with a peacock feather stuck in the middle.

I called around and the only local craft store that has artificial magnolias is Hobby Lobby so I am going by there this evening to get one and do a 'does-it-look-okay-submereged-in-water' test.

Wish me luck!

Below are a couple of images that sort of have in mind what we are going for:

There would be magnolia blossoms in this type of vase [maybe a slightly larger circumference vase].

And this is the best picture of an artifical magnolia I could find! Beautiful! Love our state flower!

Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day!

Although I am not off work for this holiday I still will surely celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr., his life and his vision...

Re-visit that famous August day below:

Blest

blest (blst)
v. A past tense and a past participle of bless.
adj. Variant of blessed.


I have a tendency to - when I think I'm right - be pretty arrogant about it. Most of the time I'm usually right anyways {told you - arrogant} but there are those few times that I am wrong and I end up feeling like a total jerk.

I recently asked a co-worker if she knew she was misspelling 'blessed' as 'blest' on her e-mail signature. She was really nice and said she had gotten the phrase 'Have a blest day!' from one of her friends. Well, this morning she came into my cube and told me 'blest' was in the dictionary. I have one at my desk so I immediately checked it out...there it was in black and white.

And even though, as I type, my Mac is putting a red underline under 'blest' I should have not jumped to conclusions. So -- this is me telling myself to give myself a moment before thinking I'm right all the time.

Another {This time funny...} Earth-related post

The Rotating Mudball...

... That is my Papaw’s nickname for the popular CBS soap opera ‘As the World Turns.’ Every time, without fail, my Papaw would utter those three words then continue to do his crossword looking up once or twice while Mamaw was immersed in it.

This morning while I was looking through my Facebook [what did we do before this social network! Oy.] friends’ statuses I saw one that really caught my eye...my Mom’s. Below is what she had to share regarding Saturday’s gruesome shooting in and how people are hungry for scapegoats:

“[I find] it seriously disconcerting that we, as a nation, must take every tragedy and turn it into a battle of sides. If our bodies acted this way there would never be any healing and a paper cut would kill us.” – Sandy Robison Trieschmann

If anyone was to blame it was the gunman who honestly thinks he did nothing wrong. Sometimes things have no rhyme or reason – they just happen. No matter how brutal, how awful, how unfathomable the event might be we, as a people, need to be more empathetic.

And for every darkness there is a light. We cannot forget those brave individuals that took the gunman down! If people can see a positive in most anything it will make their live a whole lot easier.

Thus ends my blog-post-word-vomit. Hope it made sense.