Stalking the registry

So my bridal shower is this Sunday and I am super excited, but I have this problem.  I can’t help but stalk my wedding registry.  I’ve been checking it out all the time to see if another exciting item has been purchased.  My fiancé says I’m ruining all my surprises, but it’s just so tempting.  It’s like having access to all your Christmas presents before Christmas!  I have promised him that I would stop looking…so today will be my last day checking, promise!

A little over 2 months to go

On the To-Do list:

1. Put together and mail out invites
2. Choose and purchase wedding bands
3. Choose tuxes
4. Design ceremony
5. Choose songs for reception events (i.e. first dance, father daughter dance, etc.)
6. Finalize overall design of the wedding
7. Decide on favors
8. Choose place cards

More to be added soon I’m sure.

 

Good and bad vendor reviews

One of the great things about the internet is providing a gathering place for people to post opinions.  One of my favorite places to go for local vendor recommendations is the chat boards on www.theknot.com.  The local Baltimore chat board has an abundance of area brides talking about reception sites, photographers, DJs and any other aspect of wedding planning you can think of.  This has proven to be one of the most helpful sites throughout my wedding planning process.  Local brides always post reviews of vendors on the site, whether they are good or bad.  Recently the Knot has been deleting the threads that contain any negative comments about a vendor or notifying the person who posted the thread that they are not allowed to write negative vendor reviews on their site and it must be taken down.  This caused quite an up roar around the Baltimore board.  When you are in a forum looking for vendor suggestions and reviews, you want to hear who is recommended and who you should stay away from based on real people’s experiences.  Removing all negative reviews shows a false and biased view of the vendors.  The way I see it is if you [the vendor] don’t want a bad review, then don’t do bad business.  Plain and simple really.  I just wish there was a place where all reviews could be posted and shared, not only the good ones.

A modern guest book option

So the traditional guest book never has interested me.  Am I ever going to look back at a book with people’s names in it and fondly remember each of them for attending…nope!  There are several new twists on the traditional guest book and I am in the process of deciding which to use for mine.  My choices are a photo book or a signature mat. 

 

The photo album that I created at www.snapfish.com came out great!  I made sure not to add any text, except for on the title page and to leave plenty of blank space surrounding the pictures where my guests would sign. This would probably be displayed at the reception where all would be welcome to sign and leave a short message.

 

Option 2 is a large black frame that surrounds a white mat surrounding a 5 x 7 picture.  The picture would most likely be an engagement picture, until we have our wedding photographs back.  This would also be displayed at the reception with note asking guests to sign and leave a message.

 

The question now remains which to choose?  I like both so I’m still on the fence.

We have a best man!

So it is just a little over two months until our wedding and my fiancé finally decided to choose a best man!  Why is it that boys are naturally such procrastinators?  It was like pulling teeth to get him to choose his groomsman.  It wasn’t the choosing that was the tough part for him, but the asking.  I guess men just don’t enjoy engaging in any kind of emotional conversations with other men.  I, on the other hand chose my bridesmaids not too long after we were engaged.  I was very eager to do so and jumped on it.  My FI on the other hand put it off until the very last minute.  He only now decided because everyone is asking about his bachelor party, which has yet to be planned since there was no designated BM.  They are still tossing around ideas, but it looks like its going to be a weekend at the beach filled with golf and beer….two of his favorite things.  I’m sure they will have a great time, whatever they chose to do.  I’m just glad that we now have a best man!

The Honeymoon

I just realized that I hadn’t posted about the honeymoon we have planned.  We are taking a trip to Mexico and staying in Puerto Vallarta at the Velas Vallarta Suite Resort.  www.velasvallarta.com  It is a five star all inclusive resort right on the beach.  I can’t wait!

We had booked our airline tickets through American Airlines…big mistake!  Of course they were the best deal at the time, but now they have been repeatedly cancelling flights and are now charging you for each bag you take.  I am not happy about that.  We were originally flying out the Sunday evening after our Saturday night wedding, so we could bid farewell to all of our overnight guests at breakfast the following morning.  Well American Airlines is taking that luxury away from us.  They cancelled all evening flights the day we planned on leaving.  Our options were to either fly out at 9:00 AM Sunday morning or wait until Monday and not arrive in Mexico until dinner time.  Our 1 week stay at the resort is from Sunday to Sunday, so if we waited to take that Monday flight we would be missing about two days of our honeymoon and paying for time and food that we wouldn’t even be able to enjoy.  We went with the 9:00 AM flight on Sunday morning.  We will be missing the breakfast, which we were not happy about, but I would rather miss breakfast then two full days of our honeymoon.  So…needless to say we were not happy about an airline forcing us to change our plans.  I just hope that the reservations that we have now don’t get changed again.

Bridal shower planned!

My MOH and my mom have been working to plan my bridal shower, which will be held at my parent’s house in a couple weeks.  It is scheduled for Sunday, July 6th in the afternoon.  Invitations have already gone out and the RSVPs are coming in.  My only request was that it be super girlie with lots of pink.  As far as the details go, they have been pretty tight lipped about the event, which makes me even more excited to see the final product.  I supplied the guest list and they have taken it from there.  I can’t believe that it is in about two weeks.  It will be here before I know it.

Wedding Invitations are in!

I just received my wedding invitations in the mail yesterday.  After ordering, it took less then two weeks to get the proof to me, approved and mailed out.  I used www.now-and-forever.com.  I am so happy with the result.  They look amazing and will suit the formal tone of our wedding perfectly.  Now its just a matter of putting them all together, buy hundreds of dollars in stamps, addressing and mailing them.  I am hoping to have them out by the first week in July, which will be 8 weeks before our wedding.  The RSVP date is set for August 16th to allow for a week to hunt down and call all those who didn’t RSVP and give the final count to the caterer two weeks before the big day.

DIY OOT Bags

My latest do it yourself (DIY) project is making the out of town bags for our guests staying overnight for the wedding.  I have ordered personalized burgundy gift bags that have our names and wedding date on the front printed in silver writing to fill.  Other items I ordered were cellophane wedding heart bags with white satin ribbon to tie and personalized wedding mint tins.  After designing several labels to create my own personalized wedding water bottles, I will have to buy cardstock and print those out to adhere to the bottles.  I contacted the visitor’s bureau from Frederick, our hometown and Gettysburg, Pa and have requested visitors guides, maps etc. which they were happy to supply for me at no cost.  A few items are perishable and will have to be purchased right before the wedding. 

 

The final gift bag will include the following:

Timeline of the wedding events

Visitor’s information from Frederick, MD and Gettysburg, PA

Personalized water bottles

Cookies wrapped in heart favor bags

Snack size bag of crab chips

Personalize tin of mints

 

All in all it should be a nice treat bag to welcome our out of town guests to our event. 

Ordered Invitations

I placed the order for my invitations today!  I am in love with square invitations, although they cost way more to mail….I had to have them!  They are white with a raised triple pearl border.  Very elegant!  Fiancé really like the way black lined envelopes looked with them, so we added those onto the order.  The proof should be in during the next day or two and after approval it only takes 3-4 business days to print them before they are shipped out.  I am hoping to have them mailed out by the first week of July.  I might have to solicit the help of my bridal party to stuff envelopes and make sure things are ready to go in time.  I think its all going to seem very real once I see it in print….very exciting!