One day away: My two cents on preparing for BlogHer ’09.

How did it get to be July 21 already?!  Tomorrow morning the carpool road trip to Chicago gets underway!  I’ll be packing up  and heading on over to Her Bad Mother‘s place to pick her and her monster suitcase up.  From there we’ll be swinging by motherbumper‘s to pick her up and hitting the open highway on our way to Chicago.  They might be on back-to-back road trips, but this is my big summer vacation for the year, the last time I’ll be taking a trip with my friends that doesn’t include my own kids.  I’m making the most of this one!  (We’ll be tweeting with the hashtag #bloghercarpoolers if you want to follow us along the way.)

I’ve made the pilgrimmage to Chicago before.  In fact, this is the third year that I will have attended the annual BlogHer conference, which makes me a bit of a veteran, I suppose. I’ve learned a few lessons about attending this event, and I thought this morning that I’d throw my two cents into the pot.  I’ve tried to not write too much about this trip in advance because the blogosphere is absolutely FLOODED with posts containing advice about the conference.  It can get to be a bit much, sometimes, I know, especially for bloggers who aren’t planning to attend.

In any case, here we go.

Bring something fun to wear. This doesn’t have to mean spending large quantities of money beforehand.  Just bring something to wear that makes you feel good, whether it’s a new pair of shoes, a new cocktail dress or a t-shirt that pimps out your site.  This year, the thing I am most excited about wearing is my new Sorrelli jewelry.  Look how pretty!

I LOVE this necklace because it goes with just about everything I own.  It can be dressed up or worn with jeans and a t-shirt.  It’s going to be making many appearances over this coming weekend!  If you are as in love with these pieces as I am, there is good news.  Use discount code BLOGHER5 to get 5% off all of Sorrelli’s jewelry, even sale items (and this sale bin is worth looking into).  I think it will pair up really well with my new dress.

I bought this dress at Motherhood Maternity last week, with the intention of wearing it both to my brother’s wedding this past Saturday as well as on Friday night in Chicago.  (Now, bear with me, because I’m not the girliest of girls and talking about fashion and style is almost as foreign to me as a discussion of Middle Eastern politics, but I’m going to give this a try, anyway.  There’s a reason “Fashion” is not one of my caterories on this site.)  I like it because it’s a basic, pretty piece that I can accessorize in a lot of different ways. I hope I can wear it for a few months during my pregnancy.  What do you think?

Try not to stick with the same group of people the whole weekend. Whenever I’ve done this, I’ve found that in retrospect I missed out on getting to know new friends.  Don’t get me wrong; it’s awesome to hang with the women who are local to you, but let’s face it, you can see them all year ’round.  By the same token, don’t be surprised or hurt if the bloggers you see a lot already don’t have you high on their priority list.  If you’re invited to join some new friends for dinner or drinks, GO.  You will probably not regret it.  This year I’m attending a couple of events with new folks and those are the parts of the conference I’m looking forward to the most.

Bring business cards. You might not think of yourself as a business, but one of my post-conference rituals is to sort through the cards I’ve collected along the way, visit all of the sites I can and add them to my reader.  I’ve found some great new bloggers and twitter friends this way.

Just have fun.  Honestly, just try not to sweat it.  The whole weekend is a real whirlwind and there never seems to be enough time to do all of the things you want to do or to see all of the people you want to see so don’t waste a single minute.

See you in Chicago!  I’m going to be wrangling the mic again this year, so when you see me, feel free to rub the belly.  You know you’ll want to.

(P.S.  My first post is up over at Aiming Low…please go and show it some love!)