A motif might begin right when the bride and groom set their date, and can carry through to the thank-you cards.  If they decide, for example, on a Beach theme with a Seashell motif, they might print their Save the Date cards or invitations with images of conch or scallop shells.  As the big day draws nearer, the bride might choose a mermaid dress and put her bridesmaids in sandy beige with pearlescent seashell (or shell-inspired) accessories.  Shells can inspire the choice of flowers, decorate the wedding cake table or adorn the centerpieces.  Then, each wedding favor can come as a personalized message in a bottle, with a small gift, a few shells and a small “Thank you for coming to our special day” note in a little plastic or glass bottle.  Finally, when the bride and groom send thank-you notes for the wedding gifts they received, they can use cards with shells on them.

Author Deanna Cassidy

Lord Thompson Manor

At the Lord Thompson Manor, Brides and Grooms often theme their Rehearsal Dinners on their Honeymoon destination.  For example, if a couple is going to Florence, we might decorate with burlap tablecloths and serve bruchetta, chicken brasciollo, tortellini and similar foods.  The Honeymoon-themed Rehearsal Dinners can share the Bride and Groom’s excitement for their upcoming adventure with their loved ones and provide the couple with a preview of their voyage.

We can also work with a Bride and Groom to produce a theme of their own conception for their Rehearsal Dinner.  If our wide array of decorations doesn’t cover it, we can assist in rentals.  If they aren’t interested in creating their own theme, or if they want to rest their creativity after the imaginative mental exercise of planning a wedding, they can choose from our list of time-tested and guest-approved Rehearsal Dinner themes, including the “Jimmy Buffet” buffet, the “Seaside Dinner,” and “Mike’s Steak House,” to name a few.

Author Deanna Cassidy

Lord Thompson Manor

A Wedding is the day a couple join each other in lifelong matrimony, when friends and family come together to celebrate the Bride and Groom.  Countless small, perfect moments build lasting memories, and the Lord Thompson Manor has found that the only thing better than a Wedding is a Destination Wedding.

Our experienced and creative Wedding Coordinator works with every Bride and Groom for a year before the Big Day, planning their ideal Wedding and arranging every minute detail exactly the way it ought to be.  As soon as the Wedding date draws near and Bride and Groom come to their destination, they can relax and have fun; we take care of everything for them.

The Lord Thompson Manor and its nearby sister property the Cottage House accommodate the Wedding Party in comfort and elegance.  Everyone is conveniently close together, with the relaxing atmosphere of a quiet vacation getaway.

Not only is the Wedding Party on vacation; Our Keep It Simple Spa pampers them the day before and the morning of the Wedding.  Manicures, pedicures, massages, hair cuts, hair styles, makeup: our professional technicians are happy to do it all.

For the Wedding itself, the Lord Thompson Manor helps coordinate transportation between the guests’ accommodations and our venue.  We also offer valet parking for the guests who drive themselves.  We find that these conveniences minimize stress, making it easy for everyone to have a good time on their weekend away.

Red is considered the most powerful warm color.  It often represents love and passion.  It appears in nature as attention-grabbing flowers and sweet fruits.  Its appearance on the robin’s breast connects it to springtime and the beginning of warm, lively times.

Orange is a fun warm color.  In ancient Egyptian and Chinese cultures, orange was thought to increase energy and vitality.  Orange appears most frequently in autumn, as a bright color in foliage or as fresh autumnal vegetables.

Yellow is a happy warm color.  It’s often connected to cheerfulness and good will.  Yellow roses are said to symbolize friendship, and yellow daffodils are a sure sign of warm weather’s approach.

Green is a natural, refreshing cool color.  It obviously reflects nature—grass, leaves, ferns and algae are all green.  People often associate the color green with fertility, bounty and wealth.

Blue is the most soothing cool color.  It appears in the sky and in bodies of water, and pictures from outer space show that most of Earth is blue.  It is a relaxing, empowering color, often symbolic of healing and respect.

Purple is the royal cool color.  Traditionally, purple dye was the most expensive, so only nobility could afford to wear it.  In nature, it ranges from sweet smelling lilacs to hearty eggplants.  Purple can symbolize femininity and romance.

Lord Thompson Manor Types Of Wedding Favors By Sarrah Beaumont.

If you can be very creative with your wedding dress and wedding motif, you can also get creative wedding favors.

If You Can’t Be that Creative

It takes some spunk to be creative; you take on new ideas and make them into tangible objects. According to Rollo May, American existential psychologist, “creativity is the process of bringing something new into being…” This can be well applied on wedding favors. Admittedly some people have this gift for creativity. Well if you share the same boat, you can borrow these ideas to bail you out of a creativity plateau.

Capitalize on Your Locality’s Specialties

Look around you. What are tourists buying left and right from your shops? Are they buying delicacies or special sweets only available in your region? If your California region has the best peaches order the fruits and have them preserved. Package these in personalized bottles and you’re ready with your creative wedding favors. This is a special treat for out-of-town guests but local guests will equally love the preserved bottled peaches.

If sweets are not your region’s top tourist drawers, how about having a great carver do miniature caricature carving of you and your groom? This won’t be cheap, but this is fun, and something different in the wedding scene. If you are having 25 guests for your wedding, this idea won’t cost you a fortune. Hire an experienced caricature carver or look for this service online and don’t forget to ask for his portfolio.

How about flowering plants? If you are living in Oregon or Seattle, Washington you must have known about the stunning roses, which are the best in the US for their beauty and scent. Scout around for some potted tiny rose bushes. If this is a great idea for you, start making arrangements with the local nursery and have your potted roses readied months before the wedding. Pots of roses in the bud are romantic and irresistible wedding favors. You can plant this yourself if you love gardening.

Keeping the Budget Down

If budget is an issue, water down your plans for your wedding favors. Instead of expensive items, go for something practical that won’t ‘bankrupt’ you. If your guests know that you bake a superb chocolate cake and that the groom dishes up great steak, it’s time to share them your secret recipes. Add more family recipes and have these laminated; tied with a satin ribbon, you give the wedding favors flair.

Chocolates, jelly beans, and mint candies are great edibles to give away to your guests. Personalize these with your initials with custom-made molders. Edibles are inexpensive and if you have a hundred or more guests, you can keep the budget down with edibles.

For their wedding favors, some bridal couples ask the caterer to bake a small wedding cake for the sharing-the-cake ceremony and small cupcakes in special boxes for the guests. This is a concession to an age-old tradition of sharing the wedding bread. The tradition was to share the couple’s happiness and good fortune with the guests as a way of thanking them graciously for witnessing the big day and sharing the fun.

Lord Thompson Manor PR Edge Author Michael A Jones.

Thanks to Lord Thompson Manor for the post.

Here are some great public speaking tips for the introduction, body, and conclusion of your next presentation. To progress towards being a skilled public speaker, constant practice and improvement are necessary. It helps to get a partner to offer an honest appraisal or play back a video of your presentation and do a self-analysis. It can be very beneficial.

Here are some key public speaking tips to enhance your next presentation:

Introduction

Take a moment to stand before the audience, take a deep breath, and look around you. Don’t start speaking the second you arrive at the speaker’s stand. That initial pause can make you appear poised, relaxed, confident and in control. It can also help suppress initial nervousness. Deliver the first couple of sentences with an increase in power and volume. You want to grab the attention of the audience right away. A commanding voice is needed to do that, not a soft, apologetic tone.

Avoid an introduction that goes on and on. You don’t want to go on and on so the audience wonders when you are going to really get to the meat of the presentation. The introduction is the funnel which directs attention to the body of the talk.

Body

The body of your presentation contains your main points, why you are taking time to speak in the first place, and why people have turned up to hear you. So be sure what you say has weight and is meaningful. This can only be done through thorough research and good preparation. Even when speaking on a subject familiar to your audience, in the preparation stage always be on the lookout for an unusual angle, extraordinary facts, or a story or anecdote that gets the audience to view a familiar subject in a different way.

Make sure the main points of your presentation stand out by discreet repetition. You don’t want to sound like a creaking door, but carefully planned reviews can really sink the main thoughts into the mind of the audience.

A progressive summary is an excellent tool to that end. At the outset mention your main points, perhaps 1, 2 and 3. After point 1 repeat it and then say, now for point 2. After point 2 you recap points 1 and 2 and introduce point 3. After point number 3 you can again review points 1, 2, and now 3. This kind of progressive review makes sure your audience leaves with the main points firmly etched in their minds.

Conclusion

Don’t leave this part of your presentation as an afterthought. Prepare the wording carefully, especially the last sentence, as it will be the part the audience hear last and are likely to remember.

Also think about what you want to accomplish in your conclusion. Do you want your audience to take action? Then spell out clearly what needs to be done. Do you want to touch the hearts of your audience? Then weave some emotion into your last few sentences. Once you have identified your goal, you can create a motivating conclusion that will leave your audience very responsive.

These are just a handful of public speaking tips that can greatly enhance your presentations. Make sure you clearly understand the three component parts of any speech, and then work to accomplish a specific goal with each one. Pay attention to good thought content, and also your manner of presentation.

Do PR Well from Lord Thompson Manor Author: Clyde Lee Dennis.
Public Relations, often referred to as PR is the management of internal and external communication of an organization to create and maintain a positive public image. It’s a process that involves popularizing successes, downplaying failures, announcing changes, and many other activities.

Public relations are a very important management function in any organization and it should be understood that it is not synonymous with publicity.

Public relations specialists are often times referred to as communications specialists and media specialists, among other titles, and serve as advocates for businesses, nonprofit associations, universities, hospitals, and other organizations, and build and maintain positive relationships with the public. They also handle organizational functions such as media, community, consumer, industry, and governmental relations; political campaigns; interest-group representation; conflict mediation; and employee and investor relations.

These specialists are the ones who draft press releases and contact people in the media who might print or broadcast their company related messages and material. As well as arranging and conducting programs to keep up contact between organization representatives and the public.

Public relations specialists work in busy offices and in smaller firms usually get all-around experience, whereas those in larger firms tend to be much more specialized. Concentrated in large cities, where press services and other communications facilities are readily available and many businesses and trade associations have their headquarters.

To become leaders they must show creativity, initiative, and good judgment and most importantly have the ability to communicate thoughts clearly and simply.

Public relations managers also evaluate advertising and promotions programs for compatibility with public relations efforts and serve as the eyes and ears of top management within a company. They may even confer with labor relations managers to produce internal company communications such as newsletters about employee-management relations, and with financial managers to produce company reports.

Public relations people working for a company may handle consumer relations or the relationship between parts of the company such as the managers and employees, or different branch offices and include ongoing activities to ensure the organization has a strong public image.

Lord Thompson Manor What is PR Author: Sue Currie.
Public Relations includes a variety of tactics that strengthen your credibility, enhance your image, develop goodwill or influence public opinion. As The Public Relations Institute of Australia defines it – PR is a two-way communication between an organisation and its publics.Put simply PR involves communicating who you are, what you do, why you do it and how you make a difference.

Forward-thinking organisations know that communicating – and doing so frequently and effectively – is a very important aspect to the success of their business. Public relations tactics used can include investor relations, crisis communications, community relations, special events, newsletters, annual reports, sponsorships, speaking opportunities, news conferences, media relations, publicity and other activities designed to mould opinion.

Marketing and Public Relations are often confused – what is the difference? Marketing covers all aspects of producing, promoting and distributing goods and services to the consumer. The main elements of marketing are the product, its price, distribution and promotion – which includes advertising as well as publicity.

Selling is one of the most vital functions of marketing and of course advertising is a very important part of this function. Sales promotions would also be part of a marketing campaign. An example would be a competition giveaway on the back of a cereal pack.

Marcomms is also a widely used term these days and stands for Marketing Communications. This role or department in a large organisation generally covers both marketing and public relations. There are also advertising agencies, marketing agencies and public relations consultancies that provide an integrated mix of these services.

Often marketing, advertising and sales will work together in a major corporation while corporate and internal communications, media relations and public relations will be part of a separate department. For the small to medium business owner as well as the larger organisations, all of these elements must work together to ensure a coordinated approach to getting your name, reputation or brand “out there”.

Advertising, marketing and PR must work together to ensure the successful roll out of your message, product, or service into the market place.

What is Publicity?

Publicity is designed to generate media coverage – it is not public relations. Publicity is part of media relations which is one of several major public relations functions. Publicity is a very important tactic of an overall PR campaign. Media coverage on a product, service, company or cause is vital for helping the organisation attain its objectives. Print and broadcast coverage far surpasses advertising in terms of credibility and delivering value for money. They say publicity is seven times more effective than advertising.

Skilled publicists are invaluable and there are many public relations companies that specialise in this skill only. To “get good PR” is a common view of public relations as only being publicity. Put simply publicity is making a suggestion to a journalist that leads to the inclusion of a company, person or product in a story.

Newspapers, magazines, TV programs and radio shows have large amounts of space to fill and depend upon publicists to help provide story ideas, interview subjects, background information and other material. But that doesn’t mean to say you approach every journalist there is and suggest yourself or your business as a possible story idea. You need to know the stories they want to cover whether it’s a business news story or a “feel good” piece for a weekend magazine.

Do your research; find out the most appropriate publications or TV or radio programs for your information. Put yourself in the position of the editor and ask yourself, “Is this something my readers are interested in?” People who read Financial Review are not the same people who read That’s Life. You need to give the journalist a story idea. Think of yourself as an editor coming up with ideas to fill space. Help the journalist do their work.

Publicists, PR agencies and journalists need to work together and develop good working relationships so that everybody achieves the desired result.

What’s a Media Release?

A media release is a release of a story to the media. The most important tool for making a suggestion to a journalist is the press or media release.A media release is a like a mini news story that presents the most newsworthy aspect of your product, company or service in a format and language familiar to the journalist.

A good media release answers the who, what, where, when, and why of a story. Start with an attention grabbing headline followed by an exciting lead paragraph. Usually media people don’t read beyond the first paragraph, so if you don’t capture them quickly, it will be hard to get their attention after that.

If it is well written, concise, and contains good information – your chances of getting published are increased. Paragraphs subsequent to the lead may include background information, spokesperson quotations and other information that can help put the newsworthiness of the story in perspective.

I hope this has given you a clearer understanding of the many different yet essential strategies that a business needs to implement to successfully tell people about their product or service. Fundamentally public relations is about communication and making an impression.

Lord Thompson Manor Public Relations Author: Sue Jan.
Public relations is effective in helping:

* Corporations convey information about their products or services to potential customers

* Corporations reach local government and legislators

* Politicians attract votes and raise money, and craft their public image and legacy

* Non-profit organizations, including schools, hospitals, social service agencies etc. boost support of their programs such as awareness programs, fund-raising programs, and to increase patronage of their services

Public relations in present times employs diverse techniques such as opinion polling and focus groups to evaluate public opinion, combined with a variety of high-tech techniques for distributing information on behalf of their clients, including the internet, satellite feeds, broadcast faxes, and database-driven phone banks.

As public image is important to all organizations and prominent personalities the role of public relations specialist becomes pertinent in crisis situations. Public relations agencies provide important and timely transmission of information that helps save the face of the organization. In the words of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), “Public relations helps an organization and its public adopt mutually to one another.”

Experienced public relations agencies have formulation press releases into which they can plug the company news, as well as a targeted list of publications for their industry. Truly good public relations agencies generally have a good working relationship with key reporters, boosting their chances of getting coverage. Some public relations agencies deal only with large, established clients, while smaller boutique public relations agencies specialize in certain areas.

At present public relations as a career option exists in private companies or government institutions that actively market their product, service and facilities. Public relations training courses are widespread in educational institutions. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 122,000 public relations specialists in the United States in 1998 and approximately 485,000 advertising, marketing, and public relations managers working in all industries.

Most public relations practitioners are recruited from the ranks of journalism. Public relations officers are highly trained professionals with expertise and knowledge in many areas, for example shareholder management during a crisis, the evolving role of the in-house public relations professional, account management skills for public relations, an introduction to financial public relations, an introduction to consumer public relations, an introduction to public relations software etc.

Public Speaking Training on Presentation Skills – A Beginner’s Guide

Thanks to Lord Thompson Manor

By David Portney

If you’re new to public speaking, then let’s start with an easy way of understanding presentation skills.

Simply put, presentation skill is the process of efficiently, effectively, and elegantly communicating and transmitting your message to your audience.

Your message may be simple or complex.

Presentation skills can vary depending on why you’re speaking in the first place and what you’re trying to accomplish: you may be attempting to persuade and influence your audience, or you may be trying to inspire and enlighten, or you may be required to impart new skills and abilities, or you may just be there to report facts and data.

Depending on what you’re trying to accomplish, you can use various presentation aids such as a flip chart, PowerPoint presentations with a projector or a whiteboard or flip chart.

In some cases nothing at all is just fine, again depending on what you’re trying to accomplish.

The tone of your presentation may be more or less formal depending on the context. If you know everyone in the audience such as a work meeting of coworkers, that’s different than if you’re making a presentation to a group of people you’ve never met before.

Of course the beginner public speaker may need to deal with stage fright. See my other training articles if you have fear of public speaking.

Presentation skills boil down to using various techniques that are very easy to learn. With a little practice, anyone can become a polished presenter.

The best way to develop terrific presentation skills quickly is simply to take a very good presentation skills training (see my training articles on how to evaluate public speaking training).

Here are some tips to help you with your presentation:

* If you use PowerPoint, have a one-page bullet-point outline of your entire presentation handy in case the computer crashes, the projector doesn’t work, or for any reason you can’t use your PowerPoint presentation.

* Use the “Rule of 3″: distill your presentation down to 3 key points you want to cover. Tell them what you’ll tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you’ve told them: design your presentation in 3 parts: first an overview of your key points, then the details of your presentation, then a summary (basically a recap and repeat of the overview in the beginning).

* “Use the 5 Minute Rule” to conquer stage fright: most of my students report that any lingering fear of public speaking goes away within the first 5 minutes once they get rolling with their presentation.

* If you use PowerPoint, never read your slides out loud: the audience can already read them. Just put up bullet points that remind you of what you want to talk about.

* Openings and closings are most important: psychologists call it “primacy / recency” but really the last thing you say is the last thing they’ll really hear and remember, so hammer your main points at the end and then say “thank you” and you’re done.

Best of luck in all your public speaking!