Last night I ordered a new DMX light controller. This will give me more control over my LED par cans, enabling me to produce better quality light shows for my own band and performances, not to mention other performers I work with.
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On Sunday, I set up a Facebook Page for my PA and Light Show Hire. I should have done it years ago, within 24 hours I received 1 booking, at Lynton Town Hall, for a Pink Floyde tribute band, and one very good enquiry for a festival in Bude. Looking good I think. Please drop by and give my page a like https://m.facebook.com/PA-and-Stage-Lighting-Hire-133247160415564/
Music lessons are booming across the UK Telephone 07866 650015 to book your guitar or ukulele lessons in your own North Devon Home or anywhere in the world by Skype, FaceTime, or Google Hangouts. When people ask the question: ‘why spend so much money on one day?’ it’s easy to feel embarrassed with answers such as ‘I want to show the world how much I love that person’ or ‘the thought of some remote island with none to see me makes me feel sad’ or the most secretive of all ‘I want as many people as possible to see me in a beautiful dress and beautiful setting and tell me over and over again just how beautiful I look.’ But it’s your day, and you need it to make it what you want- you’re only planning on doing this once, so make it a day to remember!
At the point Iain (my husband!) and I (finally) got engaged none of those reasons applied. I just wanted to get married to my best friend, have his surname and see him with a ring, signifying our commitment to each other. It wasn’t until I started planning that I began dreaming up possible themes, venues, food choices, decorations and of course dresses! Of course the vows and the life-long commitment is the reason you marry and yes everything else is superfluous, but let’s be honest, you want the perfect day and a venue people walk into gob-smacked by how you managed to organize such an amazing event AND look as amazing as you do! You want your wedding to be the one guests rave and talk about for days, months-heck years afterwards!
So what makes a good wedding? Is there really a winning formula? Nope, but there are ways of making sure your day is perfect for you and your future husband. As an ‘unconventional’ bride-forced into heels, ear piercing, hair, nails and make-up I have a few ideas/tricks/pearls of wisdom to pass on in the build up to your special day.
The Dress • Try on as many as possible- even ones that resemble your Grannie’s toilet roll holder, or something from ‘My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding’. You need to exhaust all possibilities- and let’s face it- dressing up is fun! Try and take a few different people, it’s important they’re honest and aren’t the sort of people who would let you walk down the aisle looking like you’ve made a Kirstie Allsop type attempt at making your own dress. • Don’t make it too tight! Yes it’s great to be fitted, but you must be able to breathe and food and drink must be able to enter your body and not have its journey cut off by a ribbon/bodice tied so tight your legs turn blue! • It has to be ‘wow’- you want every person in your wedding to hate you for looking so incredible, you want married women wishing they could get married again in YOUR dress, single girls to get straight onto match.com to find the man who’s going to get them into that dress, AND all the men wishing they hadn’t let you get away! BUT you must feel and be happy in your dress.
The Venue • Choose one that reflects you and your partner- if you aren’t showy people, then don’t choose a stately home- sounds obvious, but once people start giving their 2 cents, the water can become a little clouded. • Hidden costs- don’t be drawn in by a hire price- there can be hidden catches such as the requirement to use their caterers, which can mean expensive bills and A LOT per head! • Find out about restrictions- what time is kick-out? How can you decorate? When can you get access? When do you have to clean away all your decorations?
Decorations • Do you have a theme? Do you even want one? • If you are going to make it all yourself-consider time, stress levels, who can help? Sometimes it only works out a little cheaper to do it for yourself once you have bought materials etc. Don’t underestimate the importance of accepting help and getting the right people around you . • Research different suppliers and wedding companies- it’s nice to have kind, friendly people who understand what you are going through as a couple working with you and supporting you in the build up to your wedding and on your wedding day.
Guests • Ahhhh the dreaded guest list! It’s always been a tad tricky, with both parents forgetting whose wedding it is! Stay strong! No matter who’s paying the bill! You’re essentially taking all these people out for dinner and a dance- make sure you’d be happy to do that on any day- if you wouldn’t, maybe reconsider? • Allow each set of parents to choose four guests- that way they’re kept happy and you can stick them all on the same table! • When writing the seating plan and to avoid any altercations, tell no-one, then, when they see where they’re going to be sat on the day they won’t dare moan- not to the blissfully happy bride!
You! • Take care of yourself and remember your groom proposed to you knowing what you look like in the morning and at 2am when your head is down the toilet and your mascara is halfway down your face- no radical changes hey?! Honeymoon • Yes! Your chance to relax- you’ll both be exhausted, so try not to plan an all action-packed trip- well not for the first few days anyway! If you are interested in finding out more about me or want to have a chat (generally over a piece of cake!), then check out my website-http://homemadeevents.moonfruit.com/ Ellouise ‘It’s going to be great, because we are going to do it all ourselves, we want a beautiful wedding with everything homemade!’ It would be great if we all had the time to make our weddings as personal as possible by making the decorations, making the favours, spending weekends at car boot sales or rummaging in charity shops. But in all honesty you’ll still be working full time whilst planning your wedding and things can get tough and they can get stressful. That’s where Homemade Events come in! We are a small wedding and events planning company based in Somerset and Devon. We understand just how important the ‘homemade touch’ is to any event, so we are here to give it that special touch. We can organise your whole event, or do snippets, basically we do whatever you would like us to do. We want to make your day and the build-up to your day as stressfree as possible. We endeavour to make every single event that we do as personal as possible. Personal = Special. Want to know who is going to be planning your wedding or event?! Well two very lovely ladies that’s who! Two sisters who, having planned a very successful wedding in July 2014 got the bug and realised that this was what we wanted to do! So we did it! We realised that life is too short to not take the plunge and do what it is you want to do. So that’s what we are going to do. If you are interested in finding out more about us or want to have a chat (generally over a piece of cake!), then check out our website- http://homemadeevents.moonfruit.com/ We can’t wait to hear from you! Ellouise and Flo Researchers have discovered music lessons boost young people's brain power Find out more about my guitar and ukulele lessons here http://paulclews888.weebly.com/guitar--ukulele-lessons.html On the 12th April I will be taking part in National Learn an Instrument Day's called Play it Today, hosted by Soundpad in Barnstaple. The idea is to inspire people to take up a musical instrument. I have been invited, as one of the leading local music teachers to be instore to talk to people, and to show them some basics on guitar and ukulele. Often, people do not know where to go for advice when learning an instrument. Play it Today is a great opportunity for people to try a new instrument and get all the advice they need to start playing. If you are interested in taking up music, even if it is not guitar or ukulele, pop along and say hello. Soundpad http://www.soundpad.co.uk/ Facebook event https://m.facebook.com/events/487665374671182 This post will be updated when more information is available, so please check back. YouTube guitar lessons are free. They are worth less than that. Let me explain that comment. I spend an awful lot of my time as a guitar and ukulele teacher correcting students who come to me having tried (some cases for years) this method of learning. They learn bad habits and incorrect information from YouTube. Consequently, time and money is wasted as I put things right again. Students find it harder to relearn than starting from scratch. When I started to learn in the Stone Age, YouTube didn't exist. I'm not saying YouTube is all bad, but sorting the good from the chaff is really difficult as a beginner. Let me give you an example, I searched in YouTube 'how to play G on guitar'. The first 'lesson' I saw was this. The smart ones amongst you will notice it's F. I don't think this would have tripped too many of you up. So let's look at the next video. This time Justin explains how to play a G chord. He rabbits on a bit, has nice graphics. Further on down and you get this. This guy teaches G completely differently. Which one is correct? Very confusing if you're a beginner. If you hit the wrong version first, you could learn the chord the incorrect way, screwing up your guitar playing career before you have really got going. Let me give you a clue, Justin has lovely graphics, but his guitar playing is not so lovely. It's the 2nd video on YouTube. Don't forget, F was the first one. Hopefully you get my point. Here is another. This guy has got hundreds of lessons on his YouTube channel. He does not even know the basics. He does not know what the strings are called, constantly mixing up the top and bottom strings. Please don't waste your time and money trying to learn on YouTube. Get professional advice from someone in the know. I give guitar and ukulele lessons around North Devon homes and schools, Petroc and anywhere else in the world by Skype, FaceTime and Google Hangouts. An article in the North Devon Journal, about ukulele workshops for Mother's Day. It's 20th February 2014, Ilfracombe, North Devon, 1:20 pm. A 4.1 magnitude earth quake shakes North Devon. I felt myself thrown forward, and Purdy, my cat, lept from my lap. She has been asleep. I was a little puzzled to what had happened. Seconds later the Twitter and Facebook world confirmed the tremor. Many in North Devon tweeted, I tweeted this.https://twitter.com/paulkclews/status/436493248341999616 I later tweeted this picture. This lead to the great British press requesting use of my picture. Here are a couple of the requests. I said yes to them all. These articles were the result. None of them asked me how the lamp got broken. They all seemed to assume the earth quake broke the lamp. Well here is the full story about the broken lamp. Well at the beginning of this blog post I explained how I had been thrown forward and Purdy jumped. We were both frightened, Purdy far more than me. She jumped so high, she landed on the lamp an broke it. So there you go, did the earth quake damage the lamp? Well, yes and no. |
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