It started out being an ugly day. The reunion happened to be the same day as Colby’s birthday. It rained allllll day. It was an outdoor reunion, but luckily they had reserved a covered pavilion. The rain let up for a little while, but despite the rain, we had a fabulous time! David, Colby’s dad, and two of his 4 brothers came with their wives as well as Colby’s brother and his fiance, Colby’s cousin, and one of his sisters. We had a wonderful time and am so glad we had a chance to go! Oh… And no reunion would be complete without Shaquanda… For those of you who don’t know who Shaquanda is, here’s the gist of it… There is a guy who came up with these silly stuffed animals called “Therapy Buddy” that look hilarious… When you squeeze the belly of the smaller ones they say, “Everything is going to be all right.” That’s right. Not alright. All right. Anyway, Colby’s parents came to visit in early 2009 and told us about these things and they just had a great laugh about how dumb there were. So I automatically knew a therapy buddy would be awesome as a gag gift for them for Christmas. We went to Colorado the week before Christmas to spend our own little Christmas with Colby’s dad, David, and his step mom, Debbie, and I was sooo excited to see their reaction. It had been about 10 months or so since they had been to our house and we didn’t mention the therapy buddy the whoooooole year. I got their reaction on video! It was awesome! Anyway, while we were there, we decided she was a boozer and since then, we’ve had a TON of picture messages back and forth of her sucking on the bottle, if you know what I mean. We’ve baby sat her a couple of times… Anyway, on our way to the airport to come back home from Colorado, I decided she needed a name. We collectively decided Shaquanda was her name. Debbie later crocheted and sewed the dreads onto her so she would look like a girl. I love it!!! We also decided to have an intervention with her at the reunion, but she wouldn’t listen to us. She just kept saying, “Everything is going to be all right.” LOL! Here are some photos from the day.

It was very inspiring to hear the stories of where everyone started. From corporate executives to current interns, INROADS has done a tremendous job in helping to shape diversity in the corporate world. I was very honored to be documenting such a milestone in the company’s history. I had a fabulous time! Here are some photos from the evening.

I wanted to start with a collage of some of the attendees as each shared their current positions in the corporate world.

Jen Shannon Photography

Here’s Monty

From time to time, we have clients bring in their cats to be photographed. As you can imagine, this doesn’t usually go over very well… At all, actually. The training room that they give us to set up and do the photos in smells like dog, so automatically, cats typically don’t like the smell, but not Saturday. Nope. Saturday we had the most awesome cat in the world (which restored my faith that cats can be good) come in to get photographed. The cat’s name was Maverick and is a bengal!  It was the most beautiful cat I’d ever seen. Here are a couple of favs.

All in all, we had such an awesome time. Saturday was pretty slow but Sunday was pretty much non stop. I’m so thankful to all of the pet owners who bring their sweet animals by to be photographed and to PetSmart for inviting us back, again, to be a part of their Adoption weekend. And, of course, $2 from each session went back to PetSmart charities.

FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS: Here is our set up, in case you are interested.

We also had my friend, Stephanie, intern with us on Saturday. I hope to some day be able to pass the PetSmart legacy on to her for after we move!

Jen Shannon Photography

Below is a list of business’ from the cards I collected.

GSS, Inc

Down Under Endeavours

SuperMedia

Eclectik Design, LLC

Renee’s Raw Chocolate

Janelle Jansen Lake-Harpist

Karen Joy Handcrafted Jewelry

Rain Nutrition (one of my favs!)

NeatlySimple

The Anti-Cruelty Society (I truly believe in what this organization does)

Red Carpet Concierge

Enid Kent of Mary Kay

AMC Accounting Solutions

Neumann Family Services

Crescendo Apparel

The Body Work & Massage Source

CDM Software Solutions

Chicago Cosmetic Surgery and Dermatology

Jen Shannon Photography

Jen Shannon Photography, St. Augustine Wedding Photographer

Green Diva

Follow Green Diva on Twitter here.

Fan Green Diva on Facebook here.

*MY IPHONE VIDEO CAMERA SKILLS ARE TERRIBLE*

Jen Shannon Photography, Chicago Wedding Photographer

Venues

The Metropolitan Club (see Jillian Dodge) 312.876.3200

Jewelers

Green Diva Jewelry (see Kathy! She’s super sweet and is completely eco friendly!) 586.350.0311

Linens

BBj Linen (see Alicia Blumer) 847.933.5212

Florists

Scarlet Petal-773.486.0904

Designers

Botanicals (see Jesse) 773.269.3142 x117

Invitations and Paper

All Things Paper (see Jackie) 847.882.8142

Spilled Ink Press-773.754.7331

Event Planners

Just Say Yes Events (see Barbara Medina) 312.208.7833

Simply Perfect by Melissa (see Melissa Phillips) 312.576.7910

Kehoe Designs (See Chelsea Polk) 312.421.4622

Rentals

M&M (See Derrick Taylor) 60.871.9999

Revs

Rent-a-Rev (See Jim Rehnberg) 847.854.1230

Cakes, Pastries, and Candies

Sarah’s Pastries & Candies (see Sarah Levy)

Ice Sculpters

Nadeau’s Ice Scupltures-708.366.3333

Jen Shannon Photography, Chicago Wedding Photographer

Jen Shannon Photography, Chicago Wedding Photographer

Before I go into anything else I need to stop and say a bit about Colby, my husband. Colby and I work fabulously together. Aside from the occasional tiffs here and there (mainly my doing because I’m a perfectionist) we work together practically flawlessly. He is so strong and smart in areas that I am not and vise-versa. We really do make the perfect team. From planning to execution he is there every step of the way and does an amazing job with everything. When we plan he thinks of EVERYTHING. I mean EVERYTHING! My mind is focused on the creative side of it all while he’s thinking of practical applications, people interactions, technical details of execution, etc. He also keeps me grounded when I start freaking out about details and plans that aren’t going the way I envisioned them to go. He plans the budget then I find the items to stay within the budget. I give him an idea and he figures out all the technical aspects of the idea and works it all out for me. Aside from that, when we are actually at the events he is phenomenal. He does all the stuff that either I don’t want/like to do or mans the table while I go socialize and network. Whether it’s an event at PetSmart or this type of wedding show event, he does it all. I’ll go more into that in a little bit… So with pen and paper in tow, we planned out all the details over fabulous bunless burgers at Williamson’s (though his had a bun).

The first step was the pricing lists… Meet the pricing lists. To say these things were a pain in the butt is a severe understatement. It was like DIY wedding invitations all over again.. Ugh! We ordered the paper and folders, then printed the front, inside left, and inside right sheets, cut them, then hand glued them with Elmer’s glue sticks for the first 100 or so until we realized spray glue, while messy, may be faster. So we ended up finishing them with spray glue. Anyway, then once glued, they had to be folded, smashed to lay flat, then tie ribbon around them, clip the ends of the ribbon at an angle and pack up for the show. At first I couldn’t find ribbon I wanted, so we settled on red ribbon, though red is in ZERO of my color schemes. So I tied 200 bows and realized I hated them so went and got sheer white and silver (they didn’t have enough white) for me to just tie them around the middle. After realizing I sucked at tying bows that way I just double knotted it and cut the edges to make them fancy. After two virtually sleepless nights and many other late nights, this is the result. They are awesome! I have left overs for future events too so I won’t have to deal with those next time!

After the pricing list plans came the set up. We didn’t want a traditional booth. We don’t have huge gallery wraps and prints to display so we decided to use technology and furniture. We did a living room set up and use our tv and apple tv for a slideshow which turned out fabulous! I love being unique so I was happy to see we were the only ones there with that kind of set up, but honesty, the tables that everyone had were just beautiful! Here are some photos of our living room set up below. Our faux polar bear fur rug was freakin’ sweet but our coffee table ended up being too wide for it so we used it as a rug in front of the chairs instead of the display as a whole. Next time, I’m getting a huge faux polar bear fur rug! We used our table that we use at the front door as the tv stand (which matched flawlessly I might add!) and the lamps were from our bedroom. Love those too. Now I want to go back to Ikea and buy two more just to have for those tables now that it has a home in our second floor office! lol! The furniture was from Ikea, which we love! It’s simple, elegant and goes well for a classy show.

Now, the club was wanting to promote it’s view of the city, but of course, it had to be on the day of the wedding show that the fog was so thick and terrible that you couldn’t even see a foot in front of you at that height outside? We all thought the windows were frosted or something but nope, it was the fog…

A view of how intimate it looked after the sun went down. I just love it!

Next we planned the details of the event. We got some pens with my logo and website on it! They are of sucky quality so I’m glad I only ordered 10… I’ll have to look into a better quality pen vendor.

Info Sheets

Sucky pen…

You see the “metal” on it? Yeah, it’s really plastic… That’s why they are sucky. They feel cheap too. And the printing is terrible… That’s typical from anything I’ve ever ordered from Vista Print…

Pen holder! I love the glass with the iridescent marbles. We thought about doing coffee grounds so it would smell good but we figured the florists would have that covered… And they did. We happened to be right next to one of the floral vendors and those flowers smelled so good! They gave me a bouquet of flowers to take home and are sitting on my desk as I type!

Ok, funny story behind our raffle holder. They asked me if I wanted to do a raffle and price sort of thing. I said sure! So I bought raffle tickets and the glass cylinder with the marbles as the the “box” you drop your raffle ticket in. Well, turns out they were pulling people’s names out of their registry for it… So the raffles ended up being pointless. But we gave away a digital photo frame which the couple really liked, though Colby and I don’t think they came by at all during the show… Not sure.

Finally, the sign! I LOVE LOVE LOVE this sign! I know it’s stupid to love a sign, but I love it. First, I had my logo printed by the lab I use on an 8×10 piece of Kodak luster paper. Then I was just going to put it in a picture frame because I didn’t want a huge sign. I went to hobby lobby and found these FABULOUS photo frames that look like digital photo frames but aren’t and I said, “THAT’S THE ONE!” So I bought an 8×10 for the sign and a 5×7 and 4×6 for my photo samples.

One of the things I wanted to mention about Colby was that he manned the table while I buzzed around from table to table meeting vendors, collecting business cards, etc. I really love networking and it was so great to have Colby there to take care of potential Clients while I networked. I also manned the table for awhile and met many potential Clients that I am so excited about, but it was nice to have someone there so I could network too! Overall we had a fabulous time. There were some times where I didn’t think we were going to be able to pull it off but I think we did it and we did it well! Stay tuned for blogs of part 2 and 3 of the Willis Tower wedding show. I’ll tell you all about the fabulous vendors that I met and one, in particular, that I just think is fabulous!!! With that said, I leave you with these videos! enjoy!

The set up and my handsome hubby!

Me giving you a fancy tour! lol!

The brides arrive!

Jen Shannon Photography, Chicago Wedding Photographer

Jen Shannon Photography, Chicago Wedding Photographer