About Me: Who created Wedding Themes and More?

Hello! Welcome to my web site.

My name is Rose Smith and I am the owner, publisher, and editor of Wedding Themes and More.

So, how did this wedding website come to be? Good question. A little background is in order so you can understand how I ended up here.

When I worked outside the home, I was always involved with the Social Committee at work, planning corporate events such as fundraisers, the annual Christmas party, and other large and small functions. I was also involved with my sons' Parent/Teacher Association for 5 years, and was often appointed the head of any fundraisers we did for the elementary school. This was due to the fact that I could come up with creative ideas, and yet put them together with very little money outlay. An obvious win-win for the school, as we could raise quite a bit of money, yet had hardly any expenses.

In other words, I've had a lot of experience putting interesting, fun, well-designed events together in business and personal areas.

As for weddings, my first marriage began with my mother-in-law taking over and planning pretty well the entire wedding celebration in an entirely different city 900 miles from where we lived (her hometown). Out of the 150 people that attended the wedding, I knew approximately 20 of them (I was "allowed" to invite 35 people)... the rest were strangers.

As you can probably guess, it was not the memorable, personal wedding that I had originally envisioned.

When I met my current husband, we were in agreement that we would plan our own wedding in our own way. And that's exactly what we did. Funds were very tight and our budget was only $4000. We invited 50 of our closest friends and family members, but we did have a full dinner, dancing, etc. The Swan and Heart Theme Wedding is based on our own wedding celebration in 1996. It was a huge success and I can still recall so many wonderful memories of that day, and the fun that all the guests had.

After a few more years of working in the corporate world, I made the decision to strike out on my own and chose to build a business utilizing the Internet. As I have always been entrepreneurial-minded, it was easy for me to focus my attention and time into learning HTML, how to market a site, etc. The first book I ever purchased to help me with developing a web site was Make Your Site Sell, by Ken Evoy (which you can now download for free if you are interested in building an online business of your own. I highly recommend it).

My own preferences led me to develop a site on weddings... or more specifically, to focus on theme weddings. I realized that many couples were looking for ideas on, not only on how to plan a wedding, but for planning suggestions around a particular theme. This was a perfect match for me, because I loved coming up with ideas such as this.

And so, Wedding Themes and More went live on the Internet in August of 2000 and featured my first themed e-book: How To Create a Beautiful Medieval Wedding.

Over the years, this website has gone through many transformations in the design as it continued to grow, but the main purpose of it has always been to help couples plan a memorable wedding around their personal preferences and interests such as: hobbies, flowers, favorite animals, unique themes, etc. Essentially, whatever has real meaning to you. This is what a wedding should be - a reflection of your combined interests and/or personalities. It makes planning a wedding easier, much more enjoyable, and personally yours. And that's what this special life celebration is all about, isn't it?