How to Get Married On a Budget

You hear so many stories these days of people spending thousands and thousands of pounds, even blowing their life savings to achieve their dream of a ‘perfect’ wedding. But the good news is that you don’t have to spend huge amounts of money to have a wedding day you’ll always remember. After all, the day is about celebrating what you have rather than showing off by spending more than you can afford.

If you’re really serious about working to a low budget, then here are some handy hints to bear in mind:

Location: Find a reception venue that is flexible about letting you use your own caterers as many venues will charge unreasonable prices to provide their own food. Also, if possible you should find a place in an area not known for its expensive weddings. And whilst it may not be ideal, bear in mind that many places will charge a lot less for a weekday wedding.

Suppliers: If you need to get married in a place not known for its low prices, for example central London, then make sure you shop around when it comes to suppliers for items such as flowers or decorations. In London wedding flowers can cost a lot of money but they certainly don’t need to be through the roof if you speak to somebody who knows the best discount suppliers and can get you the best deal.

If you are getting married outside London, the wedding flowers will obviously be cheaper so even if you live in the city you could perhaps look at getting married slightly further out if you want to cut costs even further.

Guest list: The first rule here is to remember that you just can’t please everyone. Guest lists are notorious for getting out of hand – it’s the old ‘I invited that group of people so I have to invite those too or they’ll be offended’ situation. You really only need to invite the people who mean a lot to you. Some of the loveliest weddings are the small and intimate ones. How many weddings have you been invited to when you hardly know the bride and groom? Cutting the guest list will dramatically reduce your food and drink costs.

 Food: Do you have a good friend who cooks, or are you a whizz in the kitchen yourself? Either hiring a friend to be your caterer or preparing the food yourself beforehand are the most low-cost options aside from having no food at all – which wouldn’t make for a great day! Hiring professional wedding caterers can really eat into your budget, as it were.

Music: The great thing about the hi-tech world we live in today is that you don’t need to hire a DJ to ensure the music runs smoothly throughout your wedding reception. In fact, it can feel much more personal to you if you create your own playlist on your ipod or MP3 player and just plug it in to the venue’s sound system.  Just make sure before you hire the reception venue that you are able to do this.

Size Matters When it Comes to Getting Your Marketing Right

Right now it might feel as though it’s all doom and gloom, what with the current state of the UK and worldwide economy, not to mention austerity measures biting hard into the public sector. But, it might be surprising to learn that many small to medium-sized businesses are thriving even in these difficult times.

Indeed, recent figures suggest that the number of businesses filing insolvency in the UK have fallen by 10 per cent overall from the same period last year. In fact, regions such as Yorkshire have shown a 14 per cent drop.
This goes to prove that no matter how difficult things get generating income and persuading punters to part with their cash, there are rewards for firms that are willing to put in the hard work and strive towards a clear, common goal. After all, it’s much easier to build from solid foundations.

Of course, this demonstrates perfectly the importance of small business marketing, the need of ramping up interest in your service and products and thus making sure your intended customer base knows exactly who you are and what you do.

A small business may have a smaller budget than larger companies but it is all relative and, if things are done the right way, the various marketing disciplines can create a pretty formidable weapon in growing your business.
There’s above the line and below the line marketing and advertising, encompassing all the fundamentals from promotional spots in local newspapers and magazines, to holding exhibitions and other public events, as well as mail shots and canvassing.

Add that to a diverse and focused online commitment and you have a business marketing strategy that can really make a difference. An external business marketing agency will aide your company’s development, pursuing in-depth market research and analysis, creating the ideal marketing solution.

How to Build a Productive Workplace

It’s an old cliché: happy workers are busy workers – but it’s true, as most company managers will attest. To ensure your employees are working to their full potential you have to listen to their needs and provide a positive working environment. If you neglect this responsibility, the result will be de-motivated, resentful employees who will be looking to take their talents elsewhere at the first available opportunity.

However, there are many fairly simple measures you can take to avoid this – and here are just a few of them:

Offer training and support: Most employees who are worth their pay go into a job with the hope of improving their skills and knowledge in order to progress in their chosen career. If they are not given new challenges and opportunities they can become disillusioned and stop caring about their job performance. Variety is the key to maintaining a stimulating work life, so make sure you invest in training schemes or even sponsor your employees in further education such as Masters degrees if this is something that will contribute positively to their job performance.

Create a great work space: It’s very well known that the environment in which you work can have a significant impact on the way you carry out your job. Give careful thought to the spaces in which your employees work in terms of office design, for example. Do they have enough natural light to boost mood? If not, consider installing some rooflights which are an easy an efficient way to distribute natural light evenly over a large space. If many of your employees work at computers, then the use of rooflights to bring in natural light can also help cut down the number of headaches or eye-strain problems they experience.

Allow time for breaks: In addition to providing the best possible space for your employees to work in, many companies recognise the benefits of providing a rest area for workers to go during breaks. It’s important for employees to take some time away from their work stations during the day so they can come back refreshed and ready to begin again. With the best will in the world, concentration levels will start to drop if we don’t give ourselves adequate rest periods.

Positive leadership: If your managers don’t work to promote a cheerful and productive atmosphere then there is no reason to assume your employees will be productive. Most people respond well to positive leadership, so ensure the people you hire to run certain departments have a proven track record for getting the best out of their team.

Flowers For Every Occasion

Whether they are for a wedding, birthday, funeral or corporate event, well-chosen and tastefully arranged flowers will work for every occasion. And nowadays, of course, there are so many great quality flower shops out there – either high-street, local or online – that it has never been easier to buy them. Flowers can be ordered in bulk to decorate entire venues, or in single bouquets as a special gift.

A single bouquet of flowers is a perfect way to show somebody you care, or to express congratulations at the birth of a new baby, for example. And whilst people often complain about the impersonality of buying a bunch of flowers from a garage forecourt, going to a specialist florist actually allows you to put your own personality into the gift as you can choose the flowers you think best suit their personality of the recipient, and specify how you would like them to be arranged. For example, it is well-known that red roses symbolise love, whilst yellow roses symbolise friendship and a flower such as a lily can stand for innocence – perfect for an occasion such as a christening.

In big cities such as London, where you may not have the time to visit a shop in person, ordering bouquets online to be delivered on the correct day can sometimes be the easiest and most reliable option. In fact in London, bouquets ordered online are now one of the most popular gift choices as in such a busy metropolis you never know when you are going to be held up in traffic, on the tube or at your place of work.

But whilst in places such as London bouquets ordered online are a sensible option, if you need to order flowers in bulk for a special event it is probably best to visit a specialist florist in person so you can discuss your needs with them in detail. After all, you want the event in question to be right, and that includes the decoration.

Another good reason for going to visit a florist when you are buying flowers in bulk for a special occasion is that you can often agree a discount price for large numbers of stock if you are speaking to someone in person. Also, many florists can also arrange the flowers for you at the venue to display them in the best possible light so they will need to see images of the place first to know what they have to work with. Again, this is something best done face-to-face to avoid any confusion.

How Search Marketing Consultants Can Help You To Find New Customers

How can you be sure that internet marketing will help you find new customers and help your business grow in a way you can support? Read on for some information that could help you shape an effective internet marketing campaign for your business that provides great return on investment  in a way that your infrastructure can handle.

Research

Researching your market can help you find out which gaps you could fill for consumers. Researching your competitors can help you find out what gaps to fill so that you can increase market share --- wooing prospects away from competitors because you’ve created a better value added proposition.



Research can also help you formulate an effective strategy for dominating the internet in a way that brings about an excellent return on your financial investment and on the sweat equity you put into the process as well. That research can also help you prepare your business for an influx of new orders.

Testing

Once you’ve determined how to move forward with your internet marketing plan, testing is important. Running some split tests could help you carefully plan for the future and do so in a sustainable way. Controlled growth and controlled expenses are going to be important. Don’t skimp on testing before rolling out a large and expensive marketing plan. You may want to start smaller scale and get more aggressive as you start to see return on that investment.

Analysis

Analysis of your internet marketing campaigns can help you figure out where to invest going forward. Analysis can help you formulate new plans to expand and improve on a continuous basis.  Analysis can help you determine whether the plan and / or the professionals you’re working with are doing a good job for your company.

Expanding Your Horizons

Don’t get too stagnant. Your business direction should continually evolve, as should your internet marketing plan. Is today’s plan bringing you new customers? If not, it’s time for a change. Once your marketing efforts bring you five new customers a week, ramp up efforts so it brings you ten. As you expand your customer base, make sure your business infrastructure evolves to be able to support the volume boost.  If it seems to daunting to continually expand on your own, don’t hesitate to hire a search marketing consultant. Controlled and careful growth in your marketing efforts as well as careful and controlled expansion of your business could result in a well balanced company balance sheet!

Why it Pays to Hire a Wedding Planner.

They say that your wedding should be one of the happiest days of your life.  But if the run-up is fraught with the stress of planning and all the pitfalls that can come with this, you may find that when it gets to your big day you wish you had never embarked upon the whole business.

It shouldn’t be this way, and it needn’t be if you hire a competent wedding planner to advise you and coordinate every aspect of your day. Here are just some of the reasons why hiring a wedding planner can help preserve your sanity!

Organisation: Planning a wedding gives you a lot to think about – flowers, catering, guest list, venue – and sometimes it can seem endless. A wedding planner is well-skilled at coordinating all these different factors and can act as the single ‘go-to’ person for all the different suppliers and service providers you are using. You just have to tell them what you want and then they can do the rest. It’s what you’re paying them to do, after all.

Saving money: It may sound strange considering that you do of course need to pay for the services of a wedding planner, but in addition to the stress-saving benefits they bring, you may find they can even slash your outgoings in the long run. This is because the best planners will have a comprehensive list of contacts and will be able to use them to negotiate on price – particularly important if you live in high-cost areas such as London.
Essential items such as wedding flowers in London can cost a fortune if you don’t know the best places to go.

Saving time: If you choose to go it alone, tasks such as researching suppliers can take up hours and hours of your time. This is particularly true if you live in a big city where there are a huge number of companies offering their services, (like the above-mentioned example of London wedding flowers). You may also find it takes time to come up with the ideal design concept, for example, but wedding planners are experienced in such things and in fact can offer guidance on every aspect of your big day.

Coping with a crisis: It doesn’t matter how much you plan, sometimes things just go wrong. Perhaps your caterers will be held up, or perhaps – horrors! – the bakery sends the wrong cake. The last thing you want to do on your wedding day is go through the stress of trying to rectify these mistakes. Your wedding planner will be that little bit more removed from the situation and, what’s more, will be experienced in dealing with such crises. Think of them as a handy insurance policy.

The Benefits of Installing a Stretch Ceiling

When you are choosing a ceiling for your home, you need to factor in considerations such as energy efficiency, heating and cooling and what it will actually cost to install in the first place.

There are several options you could go for, but here we are going to look at the properties of stretch ceilings. These are suspended systems consisting of a perimeter track and fabric membrane which stretches (hence the name) and clips into the track. They offer a wealth of benefits to the homeowner and can be used anywhere from large office buildings to small rooms around the home.

Here are some of the reasons it makes sense to install them:

Variety: Stretch ceilings can take any shape, from triangular and rectangular to arched or even 3D surfaces. Because they are made from fabric, usually PVC, they are also available in a huge variety of colours to suit absolutely anybody. So if your taste is for the avant garde, a stretch ceiling system will certainly be able to cater for this.

Strong and lightweight: Because of the light weight of the material used, stretch ceilings are easy to install and are also relatively low-cost. The robustness of the material means they will not be damaged if something is thrown up to the ceiling, and do not require special care.

They hide a multitude of sins: Installing a stretch ceiling is an efficient way of covering up any defects such as stains, or perhaps to hide ugly but necessary building elements such as pipes or cables. They can be installed in a day if necessary, which is great if you want to cover up those unsightly ceiling imperfections in a hurry, without resorting to time-consuming plastering or painting!

Hygienic: A definite plus is that stretch ceilings are both moisture and algae resistant – particularly important if you are looking for a solution for the bath or shower room, or even a public swimming pool. They are also waterproof so can be installed in areas which high levels of humidity.

Lighting and acoustics: The versatility of stretch ceilings allows for the simple installation of lighting fixtures of any type, as well as ventilation or air conditioning systems. This makes them perfect for rooms such as kitchens which will include a large number of electrical systems, or for rooms which need to be especially well-lit. They can even improve acoustic levels or sound insulation – something to be thankful for if, for example, you have a budding drummer in the house!