Day: August 17, 2017

The Key To Successful Wedding Planning: Divide and Conquer The Responsibilities

Posted on by Aditi Malhotra

Once the butterflies and excitement have quieted down after your engagement, you’ll be hit by the sudden realisation that, oh gosh, there’s a wedding to plan – and boy oh boy, are there a lot of details to take care of! Like your eventual marriage, the planning will work best when things are equal, and when both bride and groom share the responsibilities of a day that will launch you into the rest of your life. Below, we take a look at how you can ensure this happens, all the while guaranteeing that your special day is just as magical as you hoped it would be.

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The List

Before you start handing out assignments to your partner, it’s important that you both sit down and write a list to determine what exactly has to be arranged before the big day. It’ll hopefully be no shock that there is a lot to take care of, but even if you’re expecting a heavy workload, you’ll be surprised at just how many little things have to be sorted before you can start looking forward to the event.

Your Skills

With your list by your side, it’s time to take a look and see what tasks are naturally suitable for each person in the relationship. If you’re a queen of talking to people, then it’d make sense that you would be in charge of chatting with the florists, caterers, and so on. If your partner to be is a boffin at spreadsheets and organisation, then leave all the tasks with nitty gritty numbers and the like to them. Things will run much more smoothly if the person in charge of a specific task has the natural skills to organise them without a hitch.

…But What Do You Care About?

That being said, not every surrounding your wedding will be a chore. Some will be fun, and it’s understandable that you’d want to be involved in those details, even if your partner has m0re of a claim to be suited to it. If you really care about one aspect of the wedding, then pipe up – we’re sure your fiance will be happy to let you have it. If they’re not, it might be time to think twice whether you want the day to go ahead (just kidding…)!

What You Can Live Without

The wedding, again much like the marriage, will be a question of compromise. You can’t always get everything you want, and if something is vitally important to your partner, the best solution might be just to let them get their way, especially if it’s something that doesn’t overall concern you. There’s no point trying to agree on the wedding DJ if your fiance is a music fanatic and you’re happy dancing the night away regardless of what music is playing.

The All Important Wedding Guest List

There’s one area of the wedding that simply can’t be left to one person: the guest list. Of course, you can both a long list of the people you would like (or think you should) invite, but in reality,

there will be practical limitations, both spatially and financially, regarding how many people you can have at your wedding. This might be the real first test of the wedding, as it’s not easy telling your fiance they might have to cut their great uncle Joe because the budget is taking a beating. Handle this one carefully.

Joint Decisions

Some issues can be organised separately, and some can be organised through compromise. Others, however, should be made jointly. This is, after all, a day when you’ll become a union, so it makes sense that there’ll be aspects of the wedding that you both contributed to! You should pick your wedding invites together, as this will be the first thing that any of your guests see from the two of you. Also, the big factors, the ones that you couldn’t possibly be ambivalent about – the venue, date, and so on – need to be made together.

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Travelling and Reporting Back

There’s a lot of decisions to be made, but actually, a large portion of organising a wedding will be deciding what you don’t want. You should both be doing to things like tasting the samples of various caterers, but other things, like meeting with photographers, florists, and transport companies can be done individually. As this can be a slog, it’s best not to overthink the approach: simply draw a line down the middle of the tasks that require travelling; one person takes one side, the other person takes the other.

Roping In Friends and Family

With all the will in the world, you won’t be able to organise every last detail just as a couple. You have regular lives as well, remember! However, if you ask nicely (and maybe buy them a beer for their efforts), then you might be able to rope in friends and family to help out where they can. All the big things will be taken care of, but stuff like picking up supplies, taking a tie to be cleaned, and other non-taxing but essential duties can be passed off.

A Helping Hand/Watchful Eye

Even if you’ve handed off some of the responsibilities to your partner, you’ll still want to make sure that you’re keeping a watchful eye on what they’re doing. This is your wedding day we’re talking about! As much as you’d like to think you can trust them to do everything, mistakes are always made, so it’s best to have four eyes on every task rather than just two. If they overlook a detail, you’ll be on hand to help them out.

What To Do When There’s Unequal Division

Everything sounds good in theory, but it can happen that one person is left with too much responsibility. If this happens to you, talk to your partner; it’ll be a good test of the communication skills you’ll need to have when you’re married.

All going well, you’re planning will be a breeze – as well as fun – and you’ll have a day to remember!

 

 

How To Have A Happy Retirement

Posted on by Aditi Malhotra

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Retirement has come at last, but you might not be thinking that everything is plain sailing from here. Whilst there are things to sort out now that you’re out of work, the important thing is focusing on relaxing and enjoying life from here on out. The following points might help you with sorting out the boring side of things so that you can move on quickly towards enjoying the more exciting side of life.

Sort our your living situation.

This is the second thing you’ll need to think about now that you’re retired. Perhaps your children are now adults and they’ve moved out of home. You and your partner, if you have one, might be looking to downsize from your current home. It might be time to move somewhere else. Perhaps a small cottage or a bungalow is more your thing. Of course, you might not want to live alone anymore, depending on your age. You might want to check out RiddleVillage.com if you want to look into options for retired living. There’s more out there than the standard care home; you could be part of a village community which encourages independent living with your peers.

There would be the added benefit of care and help on hand, no matter which kind of retired living community you chose to explore. Of course, it all depends at which stage you’re at in your life. You might have just retired, but perhaps you’re still happy living at home with your partner or your family. This is more something you might have to plan for the future, but it doesn’t hurt to get these things in order. As mentioned in the last point, regarding finances, it’s better to have these things set way in advance. An article over at usatoday.com explains that staying social is the key to happiness in retirement, so if you’re not finding that in a living community then you might want to find it elsewhere. The final point discusses this further.

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Sort out your happiness.

It’s hard to be happy all the time as you get older, and you might find it difficult to deal with the lack of things to do once you retire. It’s important to find hobbies and ways of staying active. Join groups of likeminded people; that might mean volunteering, but it’s all to do with how you want to spend your time. Much like when you were young, being happy is a state of mind, and it’s something that has to be pursued.

One of our articles sums it up perfectly by stating that you need to still find the time to be active, whatever your age. That might just mean going on a leisurely walk around your local park with a family member, rather than heading off on a strenuous run. You need to keep your mind and body active because the mental effects of exercise, whatever your age, are huge. Of course, cardio is also great for your heart and it might help alleviate aches, pains, or stiffness which might be stemming from inactivity.

 

Throwing The World’s Best Bachelorette Party

Posted on by Aditi Malhotra

Whether you’re a bridesmaid or the maid of honor, we all know that the most important part of any wedding is what happens before the wedding: the bachelorette party. Much like bachelor parties, the bachelorette party is meant to be a wild and unforgettable night that marks the transition from one era of life into another. It doesn’t have to be risque, of course (but it definitely can be, depending on the requests of the bride-to-be). Still, there are a million different ways to throw a brilliant bachelorette party. If your goal is to throw the best the world has ever seen, however, then here are some tips to help you get started.

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Budget.

This is the boring part. You just want to plan all the fun parts of the party, and that’s understandable, but, as suggested at bridebox.com, you first need to have a budget to work with. The bride and groom might have set aside some money for this, but it’s just important that you know how much you have to spare before you get to work on planning the big do. After you have a rough figure, you need to make a list of things you want for the party and how much it’ll all cost. You just need to know that you can afford everything you want. Of course, if you’re not sure what you want for the party yet then here are some ideas…

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Venue.

The venue is obviously one of the most important aspects of the party. Maybe you’ll be throwing a crazy event in somebody’s garden, maybe you’ll all be heading to your local club, or maybe you’ll be jetting off to another country. Wherever you choose to go, it’s important that you know your friend, as explained over at huffingtonpost.com. You want to surprise them, but it’s important that you know the surprise is something they’ll love. Perhaps a lot of the other bridesmaids want to go to a club, but if you know a beautiful city that your friend has always wanted to visit then that’s where you should go.

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Stay safe.

Drink to your heart’s content, but make sure that you have a safety net in place so that all of you have a good time. As suggested over at bridalguide.com, you could arrange a limo or some other ride if you’re all going to be drinking. Perhaps one of you will designate themselves as the driver and the sober, caring friend of the evening, but there are other ways to make sure everybody gets home safe; you could pay the driver to come and pick you up from the same club later on in the evening, for example.

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Entertainment.

We saved the best for last. You need some entertainment for the evening if you want to put together a truly special bachelorette party. Let’s get the “normal” suggestions out of the way, first of all. You could hire a live band to perform a show. Dancing the night away whilst you’re a little bit worse for wear is always fun, of course, but there are always other options for music if you’d rather go a little more wild in terms of entertaining the bride-to-be. There are shows around the country from HunksTheShow.com if you’re interested in a real “hunk” putting on a performance for you and the other ladies. Let’s be honest; that’s the way everybody really wants to be entertained on such a crazy night.

Still, the most important thing, whatever you do for this party, is that it’s all done in the interests of the bachelorette. You need to think about what she likes and build a party designed to be her perfect night, so don’t make plans around what everyone attending the party wants to see or do. This is your friend’s last night of “freedom”, so make it count.

Building Muscle The Right Way

Posted on by Aditi Malhotra

Whether you want to build up your muscles to become built up, or you’re just looking to improve your general health and wellbeing you should take a look at this article before planning out your workout routines. Today I’m going to be giving you some advice on how you can build up muscle more easily than you thought.

I’m not saying that it’s going to be a walk in the park, you will obviously have to put a lot of work into your body to get the results you desire. If it’s done correctly, it can save you time, energy and money.

The gym is an obvious road to go down because there is access to the latest equipment and you could even hire yourself a personal trainer. If you’re a newbie to the gym this is a good idea. You can tell your trainer what your ultimate goals are and then they can talk through with you what the plan of action is. If you’ve got some experience within the gym and you know how to use all of the equipment, then do some research on how to best achieve the results you want. You might be looking on improving your arm muscle definition and be happy with how your legs and torso look, so you’d want to look for exercises to build up your arms.

Most avid gym goers like to increase their performance by taking in the right nutrients and supplements that their bodies need to endure through the workout. Aretheyonsteroids.com blog has loads of information that you could apply to your routine to increase your workout results.

If the gym isn’t really your scene, or you’d rather do it alone without spending lots of money on a gym membership, then there are other alternative ways of working out. Doing this will also save you becoming bored of the same routine, especially if you change your activities up regularly.

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What you’re putting into your body is important too. You can’t expect to become ripped with a six pack if you’re still bingeing on greasy, calorific foods. Change your diet to one with plenty of protein, as this is good for building muscle. Eating smaller but more regular meals will keep your energy levels up and give your body a chance to burn off the energy between meals.

Ensuring that you’re getting plenty of water is important too. When you’re working out, you sweat out a lot of the moisture in your body and it’s easy to become dehydrated. Being dehydrated while you’re working out is dangerous and can lead to you becoming overly exhausted, passing out and many other terrible ailments, so make sure you’re getting enough water.

As you can see, building muscle isn’t all about the workout, it’s about what you’re putting into your body too. Remember to eat well, drink plenty of water and get enough rest and your workouts will be easier. You will soon start to see results and you can begin enjoying your new and improved body.