10 Years With Style - We made it!

Happy birthday to us.. Happy birthday to us...

A word for the writer: Jaime Valdes-Riench, owner of Travel & Events with Style and Destinations With Style

I can’t believe it! We are officially 10 years old.  We made to be 10 Years With Style!!

What a honour it is to announce our companies’ birthdays.  In some ways it has felt like it happened in a blink of an eye, yet looking back and going over the memories is puts me into a state of awe of all the ground we have broken to get to this point.  Our humble beginnings where nothing more than Jorge and myself looking at each other and saying, “So are you ready?”… us plugging our noses, and jumping into the deep end!  I personally have been doing travel for wow… 19 years and counting? But these past 10 years have been full of sweet successes and a few bitter learning hurtles.  Every one of them ending with a happy ending of course!

When Travel & Events with Style first opened it doors to serving its guests, it was a business model almost unheard of, especially for our little city of Winnipeg, MB.  I am a firm believer that most things are meant to be and every day is a gift ready to be unwrapped.  Every milestone we passed where truly moments to remember always.  Hard or easy, they are what gives us experience.

When Travel & Events with Style was created, the goal was to merge the love of travel with weddings.  Destination Weddings where starting to grow and to have a firm that offered the travel agency and the wedding planner firm under one roof only made perfect sense.  As time went on, we as a company started to notice the areas of challenges for our couples.  We then added services such as Officiant services to be wed prior to departure, wedding invitations, wedding websites, and really, the list always seems to grow.. we now even have fitness?! And a destination wedding magazine, book and bridal show?!  What?!  We are pinching ourselves!   We can honestly say that  when a service is added on, we educate ourselves in that area to offer our guests our very best.  The best part of passing this 10 year milestone is that we have now have had the chance to grow our relationships with amazing suppliers around the world!  One thing we have always strove for was to keep our company couture and boutique.  The only way to offer service that is beyond status quo is to keep the quality with hands on, personalized service.

To everyone who has stuck by us thorough these years, to every client that has honoured us as being our guest, and to everyone we have met along the way, I Jorge and I want to say, Thank you.  It is a blessing we are here doing what we love and YOU all where a large part of it!

Salud!
Jaime Valdes-Riench & Jorge Valdes

Making life a Novel not Manual - Progress, Success, and Motivation:

Letter from the editor:  text by Jaime Valdes-Riench

I usually like to write something heart felt around New Year’s, but it took until now to feel compelled and inspired to write.  I feel this blog post is from my heart now that we are entering our 10 year business anniversary and welcoming all the new changes that will come with that.  So please enjoy! The words are from my heart.

With Love (and Style of course):
Jaime Valdes-Riench

It is interesting that we all can be creatures of habit.  If you are like me, you take a certain comfort when you can forecast and look ahead in order to anticipate what the next hurtle will be.  After all, that is 90% of what an event planner has to do, right?  We trouble shoot by nature; it’s deeply rooted within us. Now what happens when you start allow that to creep into daily to business life and even your personal life?  If we all forecast too often we start living life like a manual.  But life is a novel, not a manual. 

If you among that 2%, who is driven to be a leader and innovator, following your “manual” will just choke your inspiration and motivated spirit.  Do not fall victim to the comfort of the manual.

Not everyone will believe there is such a thing as your true destiny.  Yes, we make our own destiny.  I do believe however there is an infinite potential we all have when we follow through will all aspects of our passions to the maximum of our given talents.  How do we achieve success? Constant and consistent motivation; moving that momentum into progress; and following through until we reach success.  Now here is the kicker.. there is no end. If you want longevity of consistent success you have to continue even AFTER you reach your goal, OR you start the manual mode.  You also need to take comfort that you are making progress, even when it is not as apparent (i.e. challenging situations).  Make your personal and business life a novel, not a manual.  Allow ups and downs to occur, but do not let them strangle you.  It is developing an ear to listen to life when it is forcing you to your true potential.  It is seeing that your where not thrown into a “hard time”, but rather catapulted into something that makes you uncomfortable, and in turn.. makes you better.  Sometimes things have to happen to push us out of the “manual” mode so we get back to making a riveting novel that other want to actually read.  Make your novel inspiring to others.  That ensures your life continues, even after your life ends.  2013 taught me to throw away my manual.  2014 is all about writing a novel.  I encourage you to write yours, and get ready for an amazing harvest of the best years of your life.

Thanks for reading.