Hey everyone!  I hope you all had a wonderful weekend!  I just wanted to share how our Saturday went over here……

I must start this story with Friday actually.  Friday morning I pack up little T and we head over to grandma’s house to get to work.  I get there and we make a list of things we will need to pick up at Lowe’s.  Finally after we eat lunch we get around to Lowe’s and leave with hardware and wood and white spray paint (my best friend), to make so easels.  I spray painted about 16 long pieces of wood only to leave the rest of the hard work for my mother to do….she’s going back to school to be an engineer so she’s got a knack for building stuff like that.

I swing by Eventures to rent a few items like a cocktail table and some linens for our booth.

We finally make it to the convention center about an hour and a half before the doors are to be locked and everyone has to be done setting up until morning.  I start pulling out all my linens from Eventures to put up my pipe and drape only to find out not all of the panels are the same color and I was sent out with the wrong size pipe.  This would prove to put a damper in my design.  So I called up Mike and he agreed to fix the problem and to meet us at 7:30am to get us the right equipment.  (I want to mention that I love Eventures and they do a wonderful job but in my haste and unpreparedness things got miscommunicated…… I’m pretty good about showing up to rent something I need the next day at 4pm, leaving no time for mess ups).  I left the convention center that evening with pretty much NOTHING accomplished as I had originally planned.

Well as you probably all know by now I have a new little one with whom we are still adjusting to sleeping around here. Oh the joy.  Friday night my little guy decided he wanted to wake up every hour making for a very long night!  So when 6am rolled around and my alarm clock went off, some how it magically got turned off and I didn’t wake up for another hour.  Let me remind you I’m supposed to meet Mike at 7:30 (and I live in Huntsville).  Period, it’s not going to happen, so I called up my wonderful mom and asked her kindly if she would go pick up the correct equipment, thank goodness she did!!!!!

I get little T all ready to go to spend the day with his daddy and I head out.  My first stop was supposed to be Fed Ex to pick up a print that I needed for the show……I know I’m so good at this last minute stuff!  I pull in and to my surprise they don’t open their doors until 9am.  Ugh.  Don’t they know this show starts at 10am!??!?!!?  I can’t have this!

I took off and decided I would go to Target and see if I could find some white rugs to cover the beautiful hotel carpet…… I knew I would need 4 -4×6 rugs total.  I actually already own one for my office but I thought I could just go buy 3 more and return them later!  Just my luck, I go to Target (thank goodness they open at 8am!) and there they are the white rugs……well only two of them!!!!  Ugh.  Nothing is going my way today!  I buy them anyways thinking maybe I could make it work with 3 or have extra time to drive all the way to Rogers and back (what a silly idea!)

I head over the the convention center and met my mother there.  She saved the day and brought in 4 easels and the white linens!!!!  We get started…..it’s about 9am at this time……we have less than an hour to get everything set up!!!!  AGHHHH!!  (In years past I would spend hours and hours creating my booth and making it perfect ….. the day before!)

Donnally saves the day too in this story.  I assigned the task of finding white flowers (anything but roses) to her the night before.  Well of course florists don’t open early either!  Well that turned out just fine since she’s the doll that ran up to Fed Ex to pick up that print I needed so badly and arrived about 15 to 10am!!!!  AWESOME!!!!  (Shout out to Donnally…..thanks so much we couldn’t have done it without you!)

Lisa who owns The White Dress Boutique and Creekwood Gardens had a booth a few spaces down and came and helped hang our sign and cameras on the back wall!  I’m so glad I had people to help me pull everything together at the last minute!  Thanks Lisa!!!

At 10am the doors opened to the public and I still haven’t had a second to get my makeup on!  I asked Donnally to man the booth (which she did great for never having done a show with us before!!!)  Whoops probably should have given her a run down before I just took off!  I came back and she said she just took notes from Mens Warehouse (the booth across from us)!!!!  Love it!

Wow!  What an eventful morning and it all looked so well and pulled together so great!  Thanks everyone!

We met with LOTS of new brides (Congrats!) and had a chance to make some new friends and chat with old ones, we ran out of brochures about an hour before the show was over (so we ended up handing out the Arkansas Bride magazines with our ad page bookmarked!, and had a good time!  What a great show and thank you for stopping by and checking us out!  Let us know if can do anything for ya!

Sorry for the terrible iPhone shot (my mom isn’t so talented at taking pictures) but it’s better than nothing.  And who would have thought that I would have forgot my camera!!! Ugh.

Enjoy!

-erika