Design n Bloom

Start your wedding planning checklist!

There are many details you need to consider and keep track of when planning your wedding - guest lists, seating charts, caterers and bakery selections, appointments with vendors, budgets, to-do lists, photographers and musicians.

Wedding sites abound with free tools to plan your wedding - there's TheKnot, MyWedding, WeddingWire, Perfect Wedding Guide, GetMarried and OurWeddingDay. Now, there is even Google Docs!

This is the time of year a lot of couples get engaged, so it follows that a lot of wedding fairs and bridal shows are coming up. For most newly engaged couples, this is the first time they've gone through this and they have no clue about what to do next. They do what thousands of other couples are doing - they attend bridal shows (at least the bride-to-be does, along with mom and possibly the bridesmaids). We've done a wedding, or two, and have a few suggestions for surviving what can be more confusing than helpful, if you're not prepared - the wedding fair.

About 15% of all engagements happen in December and somewhere in the neighborhood of 25% of all proposals happen between Thanksgiving and New Year's. And that's just the ones that said "Yes". For most of you, this will be the first time you'll go through this and you're not quite sure of all that goes into planning a wedding. Most of the decisions you make are only made as part of this planning and there is nothing else like it. Ordering flowers for your mother/wife-to-be/girlfriend for Valentine's Day or Mother's Day is a simple affair compared to coordinating flowers for a once-in-a-lifetime event.

The southern suburbs of St. Paul/Minneapolis got 12-14" of fresh snow over the Christmas holidays, along with a little rain and sleet on Christmas Day, transforming our yards into new landscapes. I always enjoy looking at how a yard looks at different times of the year - how the light falls, what shapes are evident, what colors dominate and what activities are taking place. When you looked out your window this week, what did you see?

Having a lawn can be a high maintenance commitment for your yard, but it doesn't have to be. As a landscaper, my yard tends to be the last yard I get to work in, but the expectations for a good looking yard are high. So, I make the most of every opportunity I get. And in the fall, I get the most return for my efforts.