New Fairy Godmother of the Costa Del Sol

January is not one of my favourite months, it is coldish, all the sparkly things have been put away, we are all supposed to stop eating chocolate, embark on diets and everyone seems to be wearing tracksuits and trainers :)!   

All of us super women should by now have completely reorganised our storage in every cupboard, have a spotlessly clean house, be attending the gym twice a day, creating super, culinary, lean, healthy meals, given up the coveted glass of well earned wine and still of course be working and looking after our children.

We are also embarking on our newly prepared household spreadsheets, managing to budget and balance the books, finding cheaper utility suppliers (which in Spain do not exist!) and generally tidying everything up and preparing for another year which will descend into the usual chaos around Easter when we can eat chocolate again :)!  Better still Valentines Day which is now only 21 sleeps away!!

I also find if something can go wrong it will in January, so can you imagine my horror the other night when my dearly not so beloved emptied a glass of wine over my computer, he has not given up the wine or embarked on a diet and is very accident prone.  My heart and computer died and not so beloved partner escaped a near death.

But along came a Fairy Godmother in the tiny shape of Fay at My Destination Marbella.  

Fay recently, and very romantically, became engaged to a wonderful man called Mark and I was supposed to be meeting Fay for a pre wedding chat but I knew I had to get my computer and work sorted out asap. 

I was in a state when I sent Fay an email in the morning.  My state is usually a very calm quiet moment with lots of swear words ringing around my head of which there were quite a few followed by some louder swear words on this occasion :)

I have to hand over my Fairy Godmother of the Costa Del Sol title now to Fay, I think we could start something here!  

As soon as Fay heard about my predicament she efficiently starting waving her magic wand for me and her fabulous team of techies, including her H2B, at My Destination Marbella had rescued my computer and all it´s contents within 12 hours.  Never have I been so impressed and grateful.

My Destination is a global travel resource that is powered by a diverse community of hundreds of local experts. Passionate about providing the best value for money, they work closely with the global partners whilst supporting local businesses. As a result, they make travel experiences inspired, more enriched, and quite simply, better.

Their local experts are on the ground and personally experience what each of their destinations has to offer. Armed with this unrivalled local knowledge their local experts produce comprehensive information in the form of travel articles, local tips, guides, reviews, videos and panoramic virtual tours. 

They began in 2006, picked up numerous awards along the way, and today count over one hundred destination offices worldwide.   If you want any up to date information about Marbella and the surrounding areas, My Destination Marbella has it covered.

Reviva Weddings are featured on there as well in their services section, it is well worth popping over to have a look as there is so much information about Marbella.

So now added to my already long January list is to make sure I am even more super efficient and back up my computer every night!  I have been told :)  

I am also hugely excited about Fay and Mark´s wedding which will be held on one of our fabulous beaches here in Marbella, so watch this space!  It will be my turn to wave my magic wand again!

Hiring A Wedding Planner in Marbella

Google Weddings in Spain and a whole host of websites will leap out at you.
Some are gruesome, some are OK, some are quite interesting and some are fab and exactly how you see your dream day in Andalucia.

The heart of Spain is a popular destination wedding area and many couples dream of a beautifully hot sunny wedding on the beach or inland in the olive groves of Andalucia.

However, for busy professional people, and perhaps, the not so busy, the thought of spending over 6 weeks, in total, planning your wedding abroad becomes an impossible task so having googled all the possibilities available to you, you finally email a few companies, not the gruesome ones! to see how much damage they will do to your already over stretched wedding budget.

(Note to most of our brides at this point H2B is normally breathing down your neck and this is usually the first potential row on the horizon as you throw your organised wedding planning role in)!

You have contemplated doing it yourself to save on money and have found enough information on the internet to book your dream day, but as the wedding planning progresses you hit a wall, run out of time and the actual thought of your mobile phone lodged firmly down the front of your wedding dress on your actual wedding day is not appealing.

Worse still the thought of your parents manning the phones is just not even thinkable let alone acceptable, if they are anything like mine they can barely text! I am not even going to go down the best mate or sister is great route this is truly not on the cards!

This is normally when the sleepless nights and nightmares start!

You have no idea whether the suppliers you have booked even exist, let alone are reliable, and of course you want to enjoy your day and not be worried and at your wits end by the time you say I do :)

Having had yet another sleepless, harrowing night you have been up early and narrowed down your top 5 websites so you throw caution to the wind and email them, you might have even been super organised and booked the venue so you google that as well to see who has worked there.

Lo and behold you get prices, information and feedback from 3 out of the 5 planners you have contacted, three super speedy and efficient planners have replied within 48 hours, tick a box, good start.

The other two will reply after your wedding whilst you are on honeymoon in the Maldives 4 months later.
We are in Spain after all said and done!

Some seem cheap, great news, some have planning added on as bolt on to their company, better still, kill two birds with one stone, well hopefully not at your wedding!
Others even offer free wedding websites, yipee yet another saving in the wild and rocky world of wedding budgets :) H2B´s are normally impressed with this one!

But what do you really want, are you really interested in a free wedding website?
Let´s face it Google offer a whole host of wedding tools including websites to help you plan your wedding. Try googling free wedding websites and you would be amazed at what pops up, but that is a different blogpost!

So you want a run of the mill wedding, a venue or a church, or both as they are offered, that obviously churns out wedding after wedding or do you want something different, tailor made, created just for you?

I would hazard a guess that the majority of couples would shout yes please it is all about us and our day, it is special but we have a budget and want to use it to the maximum.

The 10K hotel conveyor belt is looking interesting and by now quite appealing, fitting within your budget and includes, if you are lucky, a free taxi to the church but is this really you?

Finally, thank the saving grace of Google, you have found the perfect planner, they have organised lots of weddings and only charge a few hundred euros, result!

Yet, apparently they will spend about 80 man hours running around for you and organising your dream day, they will be there for at least 10 hours on your actual wedding day, will recommend and organise suppliers, pay suppliers and all the things that tick the boxes. Heaven has just landed on your doorstep and you are sold.

But hold on a minute, think about it, are they really going to run around for you and devote their life and time to you for on an average of 90 hours for 800 euros? This is less than 10 euros an hour?

No of course they are not, many planners here in Spain only work with suppliers that will offer them a commission, it is normal apparently and makes good business practise?!

I quote this from a wedding planner here who was surprised when I stated I was not offering or accepting commissions. We have since parted company needless to say as I am not feathering their nest anymore. I also did not want to jump onto yet another conveyor belt wedding scenario belting out wedding after wedding at one particular venue as this is just not our style.

So they have charged you what you think is a fair fee but are you happy in the knowledge that they are probably raking in at least another 1000 euros from all the suppliers they book for your wedding? Normally without your knowledge or disclosing to you what they are being paid from the suppliers.

Do you think this is conducive to a close working relationship? Or are you left wondering how much that wedding cake would have really cost had you booked directly or how much the DJ really charges, how much the caterers, a large budget, hand over to the planner?

Are you confident that your planner is offering you the right choices of suppliers or is merely driven by how much commission they will get and perhaps not suggesting the right person for your wedding as they don´t pay commission?

I know planners that will not recommend photographers because they make such a huge commission from one particular one that is in my opinion rubbish, but this is all the client is offered. To be honest the stories I could tell are horrifying and it abhors me that this goes on in wedding world here.

I have two sides to my business, the design, decoration and floral business is fantastic and offers an amazing range of decorations and flowers and yet many planners will not recommend us because we do not pay commissions to them but why should we.

All it means is we cut the clients budget by 10% so they are not getting their true value spent, we would have to provide something that accommodated the price not what the client was actually paying, this for me is unacceptable.

Sad but true unfortunately and yet we are unique here in what we offer, there is no one else like us that provide such a great service and encompasses so many things from chair covers and sashes, linens, vintage furniture hire, flowers, stationery the list goes on and on.

But many planners will just recommend the florist down the road because they rake in yet another 10% commission from them. Is this right?

Our planning business charges a fee for our professional services, but we do not accept commissions from our suppliers so what does this mean to you?

For me personally it means we can develop a great relationship with you, we are not hiding anything from you. We are passionate about what we do and are strict when it comes to moral business ethics, we do not accept commissions from our suppliers. If we are paid a commission that is unavoidable from a hotel or caterer or gain a discount or get a commission we give it back to our clients.

We will offer you a supplier that fits your needs not based on our personal gain and if we can get something extra for you because of our relationship with that supplier then great.

I do hope next time you google wedding planners in Spain this will make you think before you leap and although some planners might seem slightly more expensive, really think about what you want from them rather than opt for the cheap version with the free website thrown in.

I will of course do a blog post on free wedding websites shortly as well but in the meantime just check out Google Weddings :)

Reviva Weddings one of the World´s Best Wedding Planners and Designers

What can I say:) I have earnt the title as the Fairy Godmother of Weddings but we are truly honoured today to be now recognised as one of the top Wedding Planners and Designers in the World by Junebug Weddings!

I started Reviva Weddings in 2007 and despite the recession, we have gone from strength to strength, but of course this has not been without my passion and dedication to truly believing that what we create is brilliant, we offer a second to none 5 star wedding planning and design service to our clients and we are fabulous at what we do.

I am lucky, my journey of dragging Spain into the world of stylish weddings has meant that
I have met and developed an amazing team of hugely creative, organised and enthusiastic individuals who all support me 100% and live, eat and dream about weddings.

Without this fabulous bunch of girls I could not offer the services that create our stunning weddings. I have to reel off Loraine our floral designer, Carla my wedding planner extraordinaire and Anoulka, my right hand wedding chick who was Kylie´s dancer and now my assistant and stationery designer. All these women are wonderful and have completely transformed my life as I hope I have done theirs, well I know I keep them busy!

We are all fabulous at what we do and we giggle about the fact that
Reviva Chicks Rock Weddings!

Our design is stylish, up to date, trend setting and creative, our planning services are difficult to beat, we are with our clients every step of the way and our dedication and complete devotion to our clients weddings is hard to match.

Due to our popularity and professional qualities we now move further afield and have organised weddings in Barcelona, Madrid and are now covering Europe and beyond. Our team will move to your location whether it be Italy, France or beyond.

Can you imagine our delight to be now listed on the fabulous Junebug Weddings within their World´s best celebrity wedding planner and designer section, we had to undergo strict tests to be accepted and are delighted to share this wonderful news with you.

We will continue to update you on our progress this winter as we are attending some amazing courses which we will also share with you, developing many contacts, ideas and more wedding decorations, including our new prop hire services.

What makes Reviva different?

It is in the winter months that we are all able to take time out to evaluate our businesses, work out what are our strengths and get rid of what is not working.

It is a time for business soul searching, congratulating ourselves on our accomplishments and achievements this year of which there have been many but also learning from what we could have done better.

I have learnt than when we get busy in the summer months we need to be able to reply to email enquiries and be more efficient for our new clients. I had no idea how inundated we would be last summer with new enquiries and last minute bookings so I have taken action on this and been training up staff to provide this back up for me plus passing more work to my ever increasingly more efficient Carla, who now I don't think I could run a business without, she is gold dust as far as I am concerned.

I have also been thinking a lot about what makes Reviva different and how I have personally pushed the business forward over the past four years. It is the attention to details and creating a truly bespoke wedding that makes us different.

We are not florists that just deliver the flowers and disappear, we are not planners that will just offer you the conveyor belt weddings, we dream, create and design your day.

I have noticed this as we do work with many wonderful wedding planners as well that need that design and decoration service for their weddings and we are on site all day as the wedding designers and decorators.

The flowers play a part in our service but they are not all of it. We are there to create a truly memorable day and will stay there until this is complete and we are happy the festivities are well underway and our planners really do not need us anymore.

I have been at weddings this year where they have hired other florists and have been amazed that they literally show up, drop off the flowers, arrangements, etc and leave, they do not set them up or worry about what will happen to them, whether they are left in the sun, what they look like on the tables, etc?!

If we are planning an event or wedding we can offer so many different possibilites and are there to tailor make your day from the venue to the caterer to the suppliers. Nothing is set in stone and we have a wealth of venues, caterers and suppliers to pull together to create an individual event plus of course our creative talents to really pull off a show stopping day.

I think our testimony to this approach to our weddings is that we have created some amazingly beautiful occasions this year whether it be a small intimate wedding in a villa to some very large stage stopping affairs including some very famous clients, it is our attention to detail and our dedication to our clients, our discrecion plus my 110% philosophy that works time and time again and my enthusiasm is the same for any style or size wedding or event.

There are not many wedding planners and decorators that are making personalised wedding stationery and pom poms! In fact we do giggle sometimes as we pour over our weddings and the details debating about what colour raffia we should use and stay up all night creating fabulous placecard holders. We sweat over our flower orders and how many tealights we have left, but we love it!

I personally cannot wait for 2011 as we have so many fabulous weddings already being organised and designed at the moment and I personally feel we just get better every year.

It has been a long Christmas break here in Spain with the last bank holiday just over and for me wedding world is descending rapidly again which is hugely exciting and I have also lots of lovely news about some of our 2010 weddings where our brides are now expecting for 2011 which is lovely. We will keep you posted :)