Alaska Wedding Collective

Five+ years ago my husband and I said “I do.” Our wedding was ridiculously fun and involved a lot of DIY (my maid of honor and her family actually BUILT US A WEDDING WALL complete with photos of our parents and grandparents on their wedding days and my mom made my wedding skirt) and pitching in by family and friends. Of course, plenty of wedding vendors were part of the day as well (favorites were Riza Brown and Josh Martinez, then of Chugach Peaks Photography) and I was lucky to find them (and would choose them 96,797,098,908 times over) during a time when Anchorage event planning felt fairly dated.

Since then, our local wedding scene has exploded with new wedding vendors, offering couples a seemingly endless array of options to create special occasions that effortlessly emphasize their personalities. On February 14, many of them displayed their talents at the Alaska Wedding Collective, an event offering interactive “action stations” to provide a truly special experience for attendees. Although my marrying days are long behind me I enjoyed every moment, probably because the evening felt more like a fun party than a wedding show.

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Give Experiences, not Things (UNLEASH Magazine)

YES

Black Friday. Cyber Monday. The horribly coined term “Thanks-getting.” Even Santa Claus. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think the holidays were all about THINGS. Buying things, giving things, getting things: Americans expect to receive an average of 12.9 gifts. This is, of course, a boon to the retail industry; Americans will each spend approximately $700 on holiday related items this year, totaling more than $465 billion (it’s also a boon to the debt industry, as the holidays lead to credit card overspending by an average of 16 percent).

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Love Note: Life in Color Book

Life in Color

Did you know that coloring books for adults are trendy right now? I read an article about it a while ago, thought to myself, “Well doesn’t that just sound fun?” and promptly forgot about it until a few weeks ago when phenomenal local artist, Annie Brace, started posting teasers of her Alaska edition, Life in Color Book, on Facebook.

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