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Queen City Coterie A collaborative event planning company curating the best vendors, ideas, and items together to help

06/06/2022

Whew! I realize that it has been a bit since I’ve posted, but we have been BUSY (which I am so very thankful for)! Can’t wait to share what all we’ve been up to soon, but in the meantime, I just wanted to pop on and say hi, and thank you for continuing to support us in this fun little venture! For now, here’s a photo from my daughter’s 4th birthday “in Oz” - detail posts coming soon 😉 🌈

12/04/2022

With it being Easter AND my daughter’s 4th Birthday this week, I can’t help by think back to the vintage Easter “Some bunny is 1!” party we threw for her very first birthday back in 2019!

It was my first big personal party, tornadoes were in the forecast (just like the day she was born), we ended up doing it half inside and half outside so I had to nix some of my plans, but otherwise, everyone had a blast and it turned out beautifully. I’ll share all the details in the coming days because, like all my parties, it was chalk full of them, but I had to share some of my favorites first.

25/03/2022

Elle’s Lucky 4 - Vendor Roundup for Follow Friday!

One thing I’ve learned during all of my years of event planning is that you can’t do it all, so having good vendors is crucial. This party was no different - we couldn’t have made it happen without some amazing vendors.

Be sure to give them a follow and check out their amazing work:
🍀Cake & custom cookies:
💖Balloon bouquets & personalized jumbo balloon:
🍀Yard decor:

Did you know that we will be happy to hook you up with the perfect vendors too? Vendor recs come with our upper level packages, but, you can purchase it as a standalone option as well. Either way, we’ll make sure to match you with the best vendors for your event!

24/03/2022

Elle’s Lucky 4 - Theme Thursday!

Normally, I like to share a new theme on Thursdays, but today, I’m telling you all about how this one came about.

Last year, when I was starting my business, I asked about everyone’s dream theme and Elle’s Mama told me about this one. She loved green, there is some Irish ancestry involved, Elle’s birthday is right before St. Patrick’s day, and she was turning 4 this year so perfect idea! I was so excited that we got to work together to make it happen!

We went with a preppy gingham and added in hot pink and gold polka dots and sparkle, and focused on the shamrock aspect of St. Patrick’s day (instead of leprechauns) and I love how it turned out as a beautiful shamrock soirée instead of your typical St. Paddy’s Day celebration! 💖🍀

Here at QCC, we love unique themes like this, so whether or not you already have one in mind (if not, we can help you there too), let us help you make your dream theme a reality!

24/03/2022

Elle’s Lucky 4 - Food

Party food is often an overlooked element of planning, and while it is completely fine to throw out some cake and simple snacks, here at QCC, we like to use the food as an extension of the theme, and to make the party even more fun.

Did you know that if you book one of our upper level packages, menu planning is included, but, if not, we have an a la cart option for it as well. That means, we can also take that pressure off your plate (pun intended)

When planning the menu, I always ask about your guest list (mainly adults, mainly kids, a mix, etc) and I like to include a few family/guest of honor favorites if possible.

For Elle’s party, it was mainly adults with a few kids mixed in, so I wanted a menu that catered to both. I also found out that Elle loves cheese and chips and dip, so we, of course added those to the menu.

We tied in as much color as possible with the food items, but, we also plated everything on matching gold dot platters, and put the dips in shamrock bowls to make it more cohesive. I also designed table tent labels with “Elle’s Lucky…” to further tie in the theme. The food was all a hit (especially that treat tray), so we chose well.

What is your must have menu item for parties?

22/03/2022

Tidbit Tuesday: Color Scheme

When you are planning your event, I highly recommend that you to define a color scheme. This is especially helpful if you are working with very specific prominent colors. For sweet Elle’s party, I sent her Mama all of these color schemes (see last photo), and she chose a combination of Option 2, with the green gingham of number 5. I was then able to take this color scheme, put it in her invitations and party printables, take it with me shopping to ensure everything matched, and even take it to my vendors to guide them. As you can see, we were able to almost exactly match the colors (and if not exact match, at least not clash) in every aspect of the party. Green was a favorite color of this Mama, and her daughter likes pink so perfect combination that I was so thankful we were able to pull off.

If you are unsure how to create a color palette/scheme, just Google “color scheme generator” or “color palette generator” and you’ll see lots of options to play with. There are even some that allow you to pull colors from your favorite image!

If you were to design a party around your favorite color combo, what would it be? I actually had the chance to do this for our wedding (I took my favorite color, purple, and my husband’s, green and tied it all in together with peacock feathers and mixed metallics) and at my daughter’s baptism reception (we did different shades of purple and mixed metallics - a lot of leftover wedding decor).

21/03/2022

Elle’s Lucky 4 💖🍀 - Mock-ups

I’m a super visual person, so I love making mock-ups for my events to ensure everything flows well together and it makes setup day so much easier because I’m not fumbling around trying to decide where to put things. *Fun fact: if you book one of my larger packages, I’ll do a mock-up for you too!

Anyway, I had the client send me pictures of the two rooms she wanted to use for the party, and I mocked up a couple of different options, and we chose our favorites - these in particular.

Swipe to see the mock-ups vs the reality. Although it usually varies slightly (if only real-life set up was as easy as clicking and dragging), mock-ups definitely help give you an idea of where things should go and how they look all together in the space.

Would you be interested in seeing more of my party mock-ups in the future? Let me know in the comments!

20/03/2022

3.19.22 Elle’s Lucky 4 Party 🍀💖

Still pinching ourselves after getting to design, plan, and execute our FIRST in-person event yesterday (as opposed to just our virtual planning services)! More details to come, but thanks to my sweet friend Dana Fannin for supporting my little business, and entrusting me with her little one’s birthday party, and to all the vendors who made yesterday a success! Stay tuned for more details on this sweet shamrock filled soirée! 💖🍀

🍀Design and planning: Queen City Coterie
💖Balloon Bouquets & Jumbo Balloon: Tuscaloosa Yard Party
🍀Yard signs: Eventualities Tuscaloosa
💖Water bottle labels, invitation, signs, and food labels - Maegie Sue's Boutique
🍀Cake & custom cookies- Alley Cake Co.

14/03/2022

Happy Pi Day! ⁠
⁠
Probably no surprise that we love celebrating anything and everything around here (including random holidays) so you better believe we're going to be celebrating Pi Day this evening!⁠
⁠
Now, before you roll your eyes thinking that I'm probably planning some over the top celebration, I promise I'm not and you don't have to either! Just grab a pizza and your favorite pie flavor (we're grabbing both from Fresh Market), and BAM! a fun dinner and celebration all in one! ⁠
⁠
If you could have any pie tonight, what would it be?

*Pro Tip: If you want to keep up with all of these random holidays, download the “Holiday Today” app - so easy, and you can even add the holidays you want to your calendar!

11/03/2022

Happy Birthday to US! Today, Queen City Coterie is officially 1! 🎉
To celebrate, we’re giving you 10% any of our virtual party plans in the shop for the next week! Just use code 1STBDAY when you order. Thank you all for making the first year so much fun! Here’s to many more parties in our future! 💜

08/03/2022

Happy International Women’s Day! Tagging 10 of our favorite party & gift, women-owned small businesses! Go give them a follow and share YOUR favorites (even if it is your own) below! 💜

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4.) .learning
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22/02/2022

Happy “Twos”day and National Margarita Day!

All the twos, and the taco/margarita references had me thinking back to this sweet Tacos & Tutus shower we threw for one of my friends back in May 2017. It wasn’t perfect, and we battled the rain and wind that day, but I loved how the details for this party came together.

Favorite details:
💜 We started with her nursery colors (navy and lavender) and planned the party around that so some of the party decor items turned into nursery decor items!
💜I created a custom talavera inspired pattern to serve as the background for the paper products.
💜We did a self-serve taco bar and “piñata cupcakes” I made to look like little ballerinas and filled with lavender candies.
💜For drinks, we had homemade Blackberry Lime Margarita, and lavender lemonade in margarita glasses with a lavender sugar rim. (And I purposefully chose the colors of these two drinks to match the color scheme). Also, my husband is a former bartender, so I love to include signature drinks!
💜The tiny margarita glasses with tutus filled with lavender and white Mexican gum as the party favors!
💜A taco night themed basket for the winner of the diaper raffle

Such a fun, and dare I say, “tutu cute” party idea! 😉

Check out my blog post here with all the party details and a link to a similar Blackberry Lime Margarita recipe!

https://www.queencitycoterie.com/post/real-party-tacos-tutus-baby-shower

Are you doing anything special for TWOSday and National Margarita Day? Share below!

01/02/2022

Happy Lunar/Chinese New Year! One of my daughter’s friends is from China, so they have been learning about the Chinese New Year at school, so last night, we continued the celebration with takeout and a few treats from our favorite local Chinese restaurant/Asian market and a viewing of Mulan. See my stories for how my mini event planner (she’s almost 4) styled her toddler table for dinner with Mulan toys, tigers, other animals, and even a random twig from outside - chip off the old block for sure! 😉

Wishing you and yours a happy, healthy, prosperous year of the tiger! 🐅

04/01/2022

🍝Happy National Spaghetti Day!🍝

I don't know about you, but we love some good pasta around our house, so any excuse to have it for dinner is good in my book! ;)

Speaking of pasta, this week's tip is all about food: Interactive Food Bars!

I've already talked about how I like to provide activities for our guests to keep them busy and one way I like to do this is with interactive food bars! It is a fun way to present the food and avoid catering (pun intended) to everyone's tastes. We've done a shrimp and grits/mashed potato bar; a carving station; a salad-tini station; a popcorn bar; a hot chocolate bar; cookie bar; dessert bar; candy bar; drink bar; burger bar; taco bar; chili bar; etc - the possibilities are endless! We haven't done this yet, but how fun would it be to do a pasta bar with different sauces, proteins, toppings etc - YUM!

Some tips for making your interactive food bars run smoothly:
🍴Think about flow and put ingredients in the order that guests would add them. i.e. put the pasta first since that would be the base!
🍴 Provide a variety of ingredients and toppings - this is what makes it fun!
🍴Think about your ingredients and how it will be served. I like to lay out my table with serving dishes and tags (so I know where everything goes) to make sure I have what I need and that everything can be served the way it should be (cold items - cold and warm items - warm).
🍴Don't forget serving utensils!

Have you ever experienced an interactive food bar? If so, what was it?

03/01/2022

Happy Birthday Tolkien!⁠
⁠
Do I have any Lord of the Rings fans around here? I I'm not what you would consider a "fan", but between having to sit through all of The Hobbit movies with my husband's family, and listening to my husband read out of one of the "Lord of the Rings" books to our daughter every night before bed (her choice 🤣), I know enough to be dangerous 😉 and I think a Lord of the Rings party would be so much fun to plan! Any takers? 😉 🧝‍♀️ 🧙‍♂️ 💍 🌋

30/12/2021

Whew! How are we already at the end of the year?!? This year has been a doozy, so I've dropped the ball on social media (sorry), but I'm still here, planning parties and helping you all celebrate your events so don't forget about me! :) I've got some fun stuff coming up in 2022 that I can't wait to share with you all so stay tuned!

Anyway, since we're just a few days away from ringing in the New Year, I thought I would share some last-minute party inspiration and ideas - especially perfect for those of you who are ringing in the New Year at home in your jammies (like me 🙋🏻‍♀️). Check it out on the blog:

https://www.queencitycoterie.com/post/new-years-eve-ideas

Do you do anything fun for the New Year? If so, share with me below!

08/07/2021

🦈Theme Thursday: Shark Week!🦈⁠
⁠
I'm pausing my daughter's birthday recap to pick back up with our theme Thursdays in honor of next week's "Shark Week". Check out the blog (linked below) for my shark week inspiration board and stay tuned to social media next week as we try some of these out!⁠
⁠
Are you a shark week fan? If so, do you do anything fun! Be sure to share!

https://www.queencitycoterie.com/post/theme-thursday-shark-week

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Elle’s Lucky 4 - Theme Thursday! Normally, I like to share a new theme on Thursdays, but today, I’m telling you all about how this one came about. Last year, when I was starting my business, I asked about everyone’s dream theme and Elle’s Mama told me about this one. She loved green, there is some Irish ancestry involved, Elle’s birthday is right before St. Patrick’s day, and she was turning 4 this year so perfect idea! I was so excited that we got to work together to make it happen! We went with a preppy gingham and added in hot pink and gold polka dots and sparkle, and focused on the shamrock aspect of St. Patrick’s day (instead of leprechauns) and I love how it turned out as a beautiful shamrock soirée instead of your typical St. Paddy’s Day celebration! 💖🍀 Here at QCC, we love unique themes like this, so whether or not you already have one in mind (if not, we can help you there too), let us help you make your dream theme a reality!

Packing up for this weekend’s party! (Part I) 🍀💖

Whew! How are we already at the end of the year?!? This year has been a doozy, so I've dropped the ball on social media (sorry), but I'm still here, planning parties and helping you all celebrate your events so don't forget about me! :) I've got some fun stuff coming up in 2022 that I can't wait to share with you all so stay tuned! Anyway, since we're just a few days away from ringing in the New Year, I thought I would share some last-minute party inspiration and ideas - especially perfect for those of you who are ringing in the New Year at home in your jammies (like me 🙋🏻‍♀️). Check it out on the blog: https://www.queencitycoterie.com/post/new-years-eve-ideas Do you do anything fun for the New Year? If so, share with me below!

“Just join the circus like you wanted to, when you were a kid. Climb aboard before it moved on and you’ll thank your lucky stars you did” - Barnum Cast When planning a party, my starting point is always the invitation because it is the first impression your guest get of your event. This is one of the main reasons I love designing my own invitations, and have always done so for my daughter’s parties and this one was no different. I designed this pastel (but emphasis on purple) vintage circus ticket-inspired invitation and although I love a good paper invitation, sometimes, logistically a digital invitation makes more sense - and this party was a perfect example of this. My daughter (yep, she helped) and I had so much fun taking my design and turning it into this interactive evite that still gave our guests a similar experience to opening an actual invitation, but with an added element of some fun music (chosen by the birthday girl herself) to get our guests in the spirit. It was a hit and really set the mood for our party! #queencitycoterie #elizas3ringcircus

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