The holiday season is a joyful time on many different levels – whether it’s due to its spiritual or religion significance, looking forward to the promise of a new year, delighting in the opportunity to spend time with extended family you see infrequently or simply excited about a few days off, everyone has reason to be merry during the holidays.

For employers, a corporate or office holiday party can be a great way to show your appreciation for all the hard work and diligence your employees put in over the year, boost morale and set an enthusiastic tone for the year to come. Here are a few tips to make sure your office holiday party is a hit that workers will remember fondly.

Keep It Seasonal, Not Specific
The “holiday season” is an umbrella term typically applied to all the various cultural holidays and celebrations that take place over the winter months. To fully celebrate the diversity of your workplace and the different cultures and values of your employees, it is best not to single any one religious holiday tradition out for celebration. Even if you have a sense that most of the people in your office are of a certain faith, you can never know for sure. Instead, opt for a nondenominational holiday celebration, focusing on the general warmth and goodwill of the season.

Pick Your Guests
The guest list at a holiday party is very important: obviously your employees are invited, but does the invitation extend to spouses as well? How about children? Once you decide on a budget and the preferred theme of the party, you’ll have a better sense of whether or not plus-ones are to be encouraged.

Decide When and Where
According to HR firm ERC, most organizations plan their holiday parties for the second or third week of December, giving them time to avoid the major holidays at the end of the month and keep productivity up throughout December. Fridays are the most common days for a party, allowing employees to look forward to the weekend and feel less encumbered by work at the party. However, the biggest decision you’ll make is where to have your party.

Holiday parties boost employee morale!

The key thing to keep in mind is whether to have your party on-site or at another venue. There are benefits and drawbacks to both: Hosting a party in the office can keep costs down and make for easier cleanup, but often employees are less than enthusiastic about the prospect of spending more time in the office. An offsite venue may be costly, but often includes certain amenities like food, drink and cleanup services, as well as more space to dance and socialize.

Don’t Forget to Decorate
What kind of holiday party would it be without the decorations? Having a custom banner with your business’ name and announcing the party can make the celebration feel that much more festive. Or why not try a custom step and repeat for employees to take red carpet inspired photos? Putting a little bit of effort into decorating can have a significant impact on worker enthusiasm and participation.

Be Mindful of Food and Drink
Most holiday parties provide food and drink in some capacity. Depending on the kind of party you want to throw, your food options could range from the fully catered buffet to simple hor d’oeuvres.

If you are opting for less substantial food, keep in mind that will impact decisions related to how long the party is and whether alcohol is being made available: finger foods may not be enough to sustain a longer party and drinking on a relatively empty stomach can be dangerous. To avoid hazards of over-indulging, consider providing your guests with a set number of drink tickets to be redeemed for alcoholic beverages.

Celebrate Workplace Achievement and Excellence
Holiday parties are a great occasion to shine a light on particularly exemplary employees or celebrate an interoffice accomplishment. As everyone gathers to enjoy the party, consider having a short ceremony in which you incorporate recognition and express gratitude for the year’s hard work. Something simple like a trophy or plaque are excellent ways to point out an worker who has made a real difference for the business over the last few months and can work quietly to get other staff more engaged. After awarding an exemplary employee, make sure to grab a picture of them in front of the branded step and repeat to commemorate the occasion.

Look no further than Sign Art Etc for all your custom printed banners and step and repeats. Whether it’s for a holiday party or any other occasion, we can ensure you will have the materials you need at an excellent price.

Weddings are supported to be days of celebration and joy – but all too often, they end up a source of incredible stress. Coordinating potentially hundreds of guests, catering, entertainment, seating arrangements, photography and countless more other aspects of nuptials is a true feat of event engineering – which is why you should hire a wedding planner.

Think about it: Most people wouldn’t attempt to build an entire house on their own, without any professional help. So why would you think that building the event the begins your lasting, committed relationship would be any simpler? Hiring a professional planner can go a long way towards keeping you sane on your very special day and in the months leading up to it.

Here are some of the best ways a wedding planner can help:

Budgeting
With weddings, the sheer number of different decisions that need to be made makes the scope of things hard to see clearly – meaning that costs can easily spiral out of control. A wedding planner will take a set budget and be able to give you a variety of options within a certain range. They can vet vendors and get bids, acting as your advocate and keeping everything manageable.

Resources
With any luck, your wedding will be a one-time event in your life. Planners, on the other hand, put them together every day. As such, they have a wealth of resources and connections, ones you might never encounter, including ones that can be used as backup. If a supplier or vendor falls through, your wedding planner will be able to act quickly and slot in an alternative they trust at a moment’s notice.

A wedding planner will oversee every aspect of planning you special day.

Mediation
Weddings should be about celebrating the love and connection of a bride and groom – but all too often, there are countless other voices all angling to be heard and to influence the ceremony. The opinions of two sets of parents, friends, bridesmaids, groomsmen and more can all make the happy couple feel like they’re being pulled in every direction. A planner can step in and act as a mediator between all the different parties, communicating what is required, registering advice (and complaints) and accommodating what needs to be accommodated.

Supervision
On the day of your wedding, you should be able to sit back and let the machine take over. The last thing a bride or groom – even the family and friends of a bride or groom – wants to do on their special day is to follow the catering staff around to make sure they are doing their jobs. In addition to the prep work, a wedding planner will oversee the actual execution of the event, managing all the various moving parts.

What’s Left for You?
Now that all the hard parts are taken care of, you and your betrothed are free to get creative and brainstorm ways to make your day even more special. One such idea incorporates our specialty — customized backdrops where you and your guests can have pictures taken. With SignArtEtc, you can design your own background or send us the desired images or texts and we’ll take it from there. Visit our site or call us today at 1-800-799-7436 to learn more.

With the crisp weather and beautiful foliage arriving in waves, there’s few better ways to take advantage of the season than a fall apple picking party. Whether as a fundraiser or simply a fun change of pace from the typical way to celebrate the season, your guests will love the opportunity to leave stocked with ripe, crisp apples. Here are a few tips to make your party a sweet sensation!

Choose your setting and check local orchards
Many local apple orchards have space that can be rented for events and special occasions, making them the perfect setting for a picking party. Call around to get good local rates and to make sure that the apples will be in season on the day of your event. You can locate an orchard near you by checking out pickyourown.org.

If you opt to have the party at home, that’s OK too: You can invite your friends and family for an hour or two to a local orchard, then head back to your house for a backyard barbecue and drinks.

Apple picking bring families and friends together!

Decorate with rustic charm
Picking parties don’t need to be lavish – in fact, rustic or barnyard touches work well with the theme! Set out bushels of hay and blankets for guests to sit on, decorate with dried leaves and pumpkins and store your food and refreshments in picnic baskets. Including signage and customized banners can also help your event feel more special. Be sure to provide sturdy canvas or burlap sacks for guests to take their apples home.

Apple picking tips
When your guests are out doing the actual picking, be sure to give them the following tips:

• Apples on the outer branches tend to be the ripest.
• Look for apples that are firm, unbruised and lacking spots of discoloration.
• Lifting and twisting apples makes it easier to separate them from the stem.
• Limit shaking the entire trees or branches too vigorously, lest you find out what happened to Isaac Newton!
• Be careful of bees and other stinging insects around the base of trees with an accumulation of overripe apples.

Some orchards even have dwarf trees where the fruit only grows about three feet off the ground. These can be perfect for young kids looking to pick an apple or two for themselves.

Delicious snacks
Snacks that integrate the sweet taste of apple is crucial for your party. Better Homes and Gardens has a variety of options you can easily prepare, including Apple Pie Pops, Pork Sandwich with Tarragon-Apple Slaw and – of course – Mulled Apple Cider (both virgin and spiked). Want something even easier and  delicious? Bring along peanut butter, caramel or chocolate sauce or cheddar spread, cut the apples you just picked into bite-sized slices, and have a no-heat dipping bar!

Party activities
The main event is fun, but it likely won’t last the entire length of the party. Consider these other delightful fall pastimes:

• Make candied or caramel dipped apples.
• Have apple sack races.
• Have a pumpkin or apple rolling contest, where each player must use a stick to roll their apple or pumpkin to the finish line.
• Play apple tic-tac-toe.
• Hang donuts on a string and have your guest try and eat them without using their hands.

Send your guests home with recipes
Doing a little advanced research and printing out a few of your favorite apple-related recipes is a great way to send your guests home with something useful – and a perfect opportunity to make your party more memorable.

If you need custom signage for your apple party, or any other of your event needs, trust Sign Art Etc.

Like the song says, “ironic” rain on your wedding day can turn your carefully planned celebration of love into a soggy mess – although it’s unlikely you’ll simply be shrugging your shoulders and saying, “it figures.”

Oh, so very lucky! #rainonweddingday #weddingphotography #austinwedding #naturespoint

A photo posted by Eric and Laura (@anthologyphotography) on Nov 5, 2015 at 5:48am PST

Since weddings are such heavily planned events, often costing thousands of dollars, it pays to have a backup plan that can be put into place if things start to go awry. Here are a few tips to help develop a plan B just in case you need it.

For outdoor weddings, check weather trends
Given that most weddings are scheduled far in advance, it’s not like you can check the weather for the exact date. What you can do, however, is check historical weather patterns and trends for the area at which you are thinking of having your event. Is it traditionally the rainy season or dry? While understanding historical trends won’t always allow you to accurately forecast the future, it can give you a sense of what to expect and prepare for.

Look for venues with alternative accommodations
When picking a venue, ask the operators if there are both inside and reception areas available and what it might require to have the inside area on standby. Alternatively, investigate the possibility of coverings like tents and tarps that can be rolled out as needed.

A custom step and repeat backdrop from Sign Art Etc can provide the perfect scene for your wedding photos, as well as fun group pictures. You can design your own from our selection of templates, or the Sign Art team can help you create a custom banner using any images you’d like, such as your names and the date, or something more creative. For more information, visit Sign Art Etc.