Have Wedding Business, Will Travel. Tips for managing the home front while you are away

by Danielle Andrews Sunkel

Whether it is for Destination Weddings, an Industry Conference or for supplies procurement, if you are in the Wedding Industry, there are times you will be travelling.

I travel a lot.  Tracey and I go on-site to resorts to train their wedding staff, we speak at around 5 or 6 conferences a year and attend at least 5 more, we participate in FAM trips, we go on sourcing trips.  One year I had 17 different country stamps in my passport (never mind the repeat trips to some of those countries).  Your friends and family will say things like, “Oh, must be nice!”, “Wish I had such luxuries.”, “What do you mean you will be working the whole time?  You’ll be at a resort!”  Yeah, I have heard it all.

Yes, it is fun to travel and see new places, but there is so much stress, and if you have a family, guilt, that comes along with it.  Travelling means you are doing twice the work.  You have to get your business in order, notify all your clients, tie up loose ends and find a way to manage your business remotely.  If you have a family, it also means sourcing child care, and getting your house in order for your time away.  While at the event, you are often in business mode from 8am-10pm each day, then you have to play catch-up when you get home.  It is exhausting for you, but it is probably harder for your family and the person left home picking up your slack.

One of the ways to help your family during your absence is to make their life easier while you are away.

• Do all the laundry,
• Do a deep clean of the house
• Prepare and freeze lunches so kids can grab and go in the mornings
• Prepare and freeze dinners so your spouse can just heat things up when they get home from work and school

This past trip, I was spending 10 days in Mexico, so I put together 10 dinners,  and 6 lunches for each child (they have breakfast at daycare while I’m away).  I created a cheat sheet, so my husband could decide in advance what meal they would have and whether he had to take it out of the freezer to dethaw or put it in the crock-pot the morning of.  It’s not that your spouse can’t handle dinner duty, it’s just that little things like this make life easier on everyone while you are away (and may go a long way to prevent resentment).

It wasn’t so hard to do,  I cooked double batches the week before, or marinated meats and then I would freeze them.  I also bought lots of frozen vegetables.  For lunches I toasted a whole package bagels and gluten-free English muffins, put on cream cheese and froze them in individual sandwich bags, inside a freezer bag.

Another option is to go to those dinner preparation companies like, Supperworks.  We used to get them to prepare the meals for us, but now that one child has to have gluten-free meals, we can’t.

So what did I make to freeze ahead?  Here is my Meal Plan and directions for my husband: