A Carrick House wedding is filled with elegance, grandeur and historic charm and Nicole and Lee’s wedding was no different. When it comes to choosing the perfect venue for a wedding, couples often seek a place that exudes timeless elegance and offers a charming setting for their special day. The Carrick House in Lexington, Kentucky, […]

How to plan for Plan B during the Covid 19 Pandemic (Photo by Ivan and Louise) So, you’re planning a Fall 2020 Wedding and who knows what that will look like, here’s what you need to consider. As the last several weeks have gone by in quarantine, with more and more Spring and Summer 2020 […]

Nicole & Corey’s Colorado Wedding Rocky Mountain I Do’s Nicole & Corey’s wedding was so special to me for a number of reasons. Nicole is my little (& only) sister.  We’ve always been close, but as adults have become even closer.  Planning this wedding for her was one of the greatest honors. Winding River Resort […]

Don’t let selecting a venue overwhelm you – follow the steps I used when choosing my own wedding venue.
When it comes to selecting a wedding venue it can be hard to know where to begin.  You can spend hours and hours googling and after weeks of hunting still feel like you don’t have a clue.  There’s so much info out there in cyberspace that it’s easy to become overwhelmed.  So using my own upcoming wedding as an example, I’ll break it down into four easy steps.

Lexington Kentucky has a rich tradition of bourbon and horse farms. When designing this inspiration shoot we wanted to make sure we included great representation of those Kentucky traditions.

“Time moves slowly, but passes quickly.” – Alice Walker

It feels like I blinked and suddenly I was at the end of my first year of business ownership. It’s incredible how quickly time passes.

One year ago, I launched Christina Burton Events. It was something I had been thinking about for awhile, but didn’t decide on until I learned we were relocating from Lexington, Kentucky to Indianapolis, Indiana because of my fiance’s job. Although not knowing a soul in the city you’re launching a company (especially one in such a relationship based industry) it can be a daunting challenge, it just finally felt like the right time to take the leap. I had spent the past nine years in the event industry, planning weddings and other events under different companies. Along the way business ownership never felt like the right fit, but when facing that move I felt as though the timing was finally right to tackle that new challenge.

Prior to planning our own wedding, I had plenty of clients express how frustrated they were with different situations revolving around their guest list. Frustrations such as, “there are so many people on our guest list and it grows everytime we turn around!”, “My mom just sent me her list and she wants to invite 30 people whom I’ve never even met!”, “My fiance wants to invite all his fraternity brothers but I don’t want to have 350 people at our wedding!”, or, “my future mother-in-law sent over her list and she’s expecting all 100 of their extended family members to be invited but they aren’t contributing to the wedding at all!”…

As I sit snuggled on my couch reflecting on the past year, I’m truly in awe of how much change and development can happen in a years time.  Had someone told me all that would come in 2017 I probably would have called them crazy, but here I sit with the first wedding season of business ownership under my belt and it was quite the first year!  So in order to celebrate and remember – let’s review the top 10 things that have taken place for Christina Burton Events over the past year.

Where do I begin?
With money – the thing none of us loooovvvee to talk about (at least, I don’t.)  But the first step to planning a wedding should be determining how much money you have to spend.  This is a line I’ve told clients over and over through the years, but shortly after our proposal (as friends and family are asking if it’s planned yet) I found myself going the wrong direction.  If you begin planning before you have a budget in place it’s really easy for things to get out of hand and for you to get entirely off track.  I’m now speaking from experience.  Even though I knew to start with a budget, I’ve been planning weddings for other people for ten years, I was SO excited to start planning my own, so I jumped in before I was ready.  Luckily, I very quickly realized that things were headed down a financial path I didn’t want to go down, so I pressed pause on all communication with vendors and went back to gather a budget.  

We’ve all seen the Hollywood version of romance. The Notebook, How I Met Your Mother or a host of other romantic comedies. It’s a simple formula. Guy meets Girl. Romantic things happen. Plucky best friend helps in some way. Guy does something stupid. Somehow, Guy works his way back into Girl’s good graces, and then it happens. Guy pops the question to Girl… doves fly, planets align, and everything is perfect…

The one thing all these films have in common is that the world makes it relatively easy on the guy. Things just work out. These guys have never fallen in love with a wedding planner.