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.

The With Style Team 2013 - Best Destination Wedding Planning Team in Winnipeg

Our Photo Shoot at BDI Drive In in Winnipeg, Manitoba with Dwayne Larson Photography
text by Jaime Valdes-Riench

So here we are, spring of 2013.  After looking at all our head shots we noticed that some where out dated, and our team has grown.  It was time to freshen things up a bit before the next rush for local weddings in Winnipeg begun (even though we are still buzzing around doing our international weddings).

For those who have met us, you know we are professional, but playful bunch.  We know how to hold ourselves in negotiations while we plan destination weddings around the world, but we are also light hearted and down to earth.  One thing I personally take pride in as a business owner is that our team builds real relationships with our clients. To be honest, we actually get really attached to them, even though we probably shouldn't.  The way we see it is that we have a year or more to work with amazing couples to plan their weddings.  How in the world could anyone be able to infuse the couples' styles into wedding if you don't get to know them and their personalities?  So, it was time to take our head shots and let everyone see our fun personalities.  The better we are paired with our clients.  The more tailored, boutique services we can offer them. 

On this lovely Wednesday evening, we hired one of our brilliant photographer friends to take our photos at a location we could not see more fitting, BDI Drive In in Winnipeg.  The bridge is iconic to Winnipeg, perfect for destination, and let's face it, how can you say no to ice cream! I hope you enjoy! If you like what you see, we highly recommend Dwayne Larson for your weddings, local or abroad.  He is top notch to us! 

Hope you enjoyed this as much as we did!
If you are looking for travel agency services world wide and/or wedding planning services that are tailored to you, then consider hiring Travel & Events With Style.  We will find the right person on our team for you. 
 
Love: The With Style Team!

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)