Here comes Lucky ‘13

Written By: Jaime Valdes-Riench, owner of Travel & Events with Style
Image by Kamp Photography

I love this time of year, and I love making a New Year’s blog post.  Like every year I like can’t believe how the year flew by.  I love looking back and at the best and the worst times.  Really, even the hard times just make us so much stronger and wiser.  I believe in growth at all times.  Whether we sign up for it or not, we always some how are moving forward.

Now, “Lucky 13”.. Hum.  I am not a superstitious person, but even the number 13 makes you think for a moment.  During my annual December prep for events (weddings, corporate and personal), I had the opportunity to have a few days of a quiet mind.  My thoughts brought me to this, 13 is only unlucky when we do not prepare and follow through with what life will serve us (so it doesn’t have anything to do with the number, but more with what we do with life).  In other words, I really don’t believe in luck, but rather being proactive rather than reactive in order to have a positive outcome.  It is all on how we work with the hand we where dealt with.  When we plan and take responsibility for our choices, we can then find ourselves in a “lucky” or prosperous situation.  This is just my perspective of course.

Now how does this apply to the With Style companies?  First off, all our dear 2013 wedding couples are getting ready for one of the most special days of their lives.  They planned, they hired professionals, and they followed through with a dream.  In the end, they are will have an incredible memory to start a new journey.  That’s not luck, that’s planning and hiring experienced people to help to be proactive with their dream.  I am not exaggerating that I literally smile ear to ear when I think about all the couples, one by one, and imagine their special days.  How I wish Tiffany, Jorge and/or I could be at them all.  Not because of the “trip”, but for that perfect moment when the bride comes around the corner to see their future life partner waiting for them to say “I will forever”.  I wish I was there for the moment when love binds and makes a new beginning.

Now for new beginnings and what is in store:  2013 will bring us more change, and has inspired us to push the limits even further.  Tiffany, Jorge and I really believe in increasing the value of our services every year.  What is in store do you ask?  Well, for one, we decided the beginning of the year we will invest in wedding planning tools for our new couples that will sign us starting 2013.  We are increasing services to our wedding planning packages, making a lot of online tools and a more thorough wedding website for our couples so their guests can feel a little more part of the planning process.  We find, especially with destination weddings, that guests want to feel a part of the process and want to be more informed.  With destination weddings, guests are making larger financial commitments so they are always looking for comfort that they are making the right decision to participate in the wedding by going.  So does the couple.  Among these positive changes, we always are working on building international relationships with vendors and resorts. That is something we take a lot of pride in.

How we are different: The With Style Team is not constantly trying to sell to our clients! You are not going to get a million email flyers from us for travel sales, we are not going bombard you with a million ads such as “heard you got engaged please sign up here” with posts on social media, and you are not going to hear us tell you that “you have to act now or will loose this great opportunity for this limited time offer” (unless of course it was a third party that made a deadline that is out of our control – still then we will give you both sides of the reasoning so we can help you decide).  Now why do you ask we approach it this way?  Isn’t that against everything marketing tells us to do as a company?  Why yes, yes it is.  Our team works really hard on building trust and pairing ourselves well with our clients.  If we wanted to make a sale I am pretty sure we could, but our main objective is not to make a million sales.  We understand we will be your partner for the next year to build your wedding dream so if you hired us based on hype you would not trust us once the hype subsided.  Our team wants to be able to look you in the eye and be able to give you an honest opinion at all times.  We pride ourselves in this integrity.  It is not a secret Jaime, yes I mean myself, has a BIG funny personality and Tiffany and Jorge have to be the sweetest humans on earth, but all of us can say we care deeply about our job and our clients.  We go to all lengths to help and support our clients over the course of the planning process (and boy, do we have a few interesting stories to tell).  The one thing we have in common is that we are compassionate, empathic, educated and most of all, are extremely honest in caring way.  We have a job where mistakes can take a huge emotional toll on our clients, so for that, we take that to heart to better ourselves every day.  We ADORE our jobs and we adore our clients!

So in closing, it is that time again to say thank you! Thank you to all our clients, to all the vendors we work with, and our amazing team.  Every part of this job is incredible, even on the bad days.  We have a job where we make dreams come true, not everyone can say that.  We really feel blessed to be able to do what we do.

So SALUD! And we wish you all nothing but the best in 2013 and beyond!            
Also, if you made this far in this article.. that is an extra thank you I must say.  This was a long one! (wink)