Entries from August 2007 ↓

I think we got a pretty good top-5 this week, let me know what you think. To start off, there were a couple of good posts about money. The first two I found via DIY Bride…

1. So, how much do you have saved up for your wedding? How much will you have to spend on your wedding when it’s all said and done? If these questions got you stumped you might want to check out this article, “The $28,000 Question: Why are we all hypocrites about our wedding?” This is a great post in the I will Teach You to be Rich blog. It has a lot of good advice on how to budget and ways to cut costs. There’s even a budget simulator you can play with to see how things affect the bottom line.

2. You’ve probably heard the average wedding costs $28,000. In fact you just heard it in paragraph 1 above. That seems to be the standard line out there but how true is it? Do you know a lot of people who had weddings in the $28k range. Well check out this article in the Wall Street Journal, “Weddings are not the Budget Drain Some Surveys Suggest,” to see the real deal. Things look different if you use the median instead of the mean for all you statisticians out there.

3. Okay, reality check time. Who out there thinks they are going to have the perfect wedding? Well don’t think you have to have a perfect wedding to have a great wedding. McKenzie from Something Old, Something New gave us the inside story of some Happy Accidents that happened at her wedding and it wasn’t the end of the world it actually resulted in some great memories. She had a lot of comments that were interesting too. Check them out at the link above!

4. This one is actually a five part series of posts by Melissa at Masterpiece Weddings. She’s a wedding coordinator. Not only that she teaches a class on how to be a wedding planner! This week she let us in on one of the things she teaches in her class, the 5-F’s. Checkout this post to see what they are… ”The 5 F’s” Then check out all this week’s posts on her blog to get tips on each of the F’s!

5. Last but not least, Liene from Blue Orchid Designs is a guest blogger over at createmyevent.com and she wrote a great post “Tips for a Memorable Reception.” I didn’t know Marble Slab or Cold Stone Creamery will come out to your event! That can be very dangerous for me!

Hope you have a great three-day weekend! I’ll see you next week!

Oh by the way, here’s a little Labor Day present for those of you in need of a wedding website. Checkout OurWeddingPlus.com for a 50% discount on a wedding website subscription! Use coupon code “laborday” it will expire next Friday, September 7th. You can try it free before you make your decision to buy, please give us feedback through the customer service tab.

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Rhonda
Our Wedding Plus

To end up a week of wedding invitation companies I’m going to feature one of the big boys…Carlson Craft. William Carlson started is company, Carlson Letter Service, in his house in 1948. The company has continuous growth since. In 1957, they changed their name to Carlson Wedding Service, and then in 1962 took on the name Carlson Craft. Carlson Craft continues to be the nation’s leading wholesale printing company with a nationwide network of dealers.
Here are a couple of examples of unique Carlson Craft wedding invitations…

For our full line of Wedding Invitations click here!

Check back in tomorrow for a great top-5 wedding blogs of the week!

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Rhonda

Our Wedding Plus

Today’s featured wedding invitation company is William Arthur. William Arthur has been in business for nearly 60 years and is located in West Kennebunkport Maine. They are considered to be one of the finest manufacturers of luxury stationary including wedding invitations. William Arthur is known for it’s substantial weight paper, creamy smooth texture, and high opacity.

Here’s an example of an engraved wedding invitation card

And a ecru letterpress card.

For more William Arthur letterpress wedding invitations checkout this link!

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Rhonda

Our Wedding Plus

Braun and Brown Designs was started in 1995 by Beverly Mattingly in Memphis, Tennessee. Beverly was later joined by her sisters in this venture and offer a very fine collection of letterpress wedding invitations as well as a custom designed wedding invitations through their shop in Memphis.

Here are some samples of beautiful Braun and Brown letterpress invitations from their Whimsy Collection.

For more wedding invitations from the Braun and Brown Whimsy Collection check out this link.

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Rhonda
Our Wedding Plus

This week I’m going to cover a different wedding invitation designer each day. There’s a lot of wedding invitation companies out there from the big ones like Carlson Craft to small independent designers. I’m surprised they are all able to make money!I’m going to start off the week with a smaller wedding invitation company that’s been around for a pretty long time, Rita Renning. Rita Renning started her company back in 1949 with her husband Philip Renning by creating “fresh innovative designs for those with a distinctive taste for fashion.” Her company lives on with “an array of beautiful invitations and trousseaus, each one inspired by Renning’s commitment to fine craftsmanship and their elegant flair for design.”

They describe their wedding invitations as “simple and elegant, playful, breezy, and colorful.”

They are simply beautiful and not only that they are affordable. I was surprised to see the low prices especially since they are on very fine paper and the paper is acid free! That will make it easy to archive them for many years!

Check out these fine designs.

For our full line of wedding invitations checkout this link.

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Rhonda

Our Wedding Plus

Sorry, no top-5 this week. I looked around and decided I’d be better off waiting for next week. If anyone found any good ones they want to share, please do!

So anyway, sticking to the staying married for a long time theme, I did read on Weddingbee about the “Longest Married” dance some people are doing at their wedding instead of the bouquet toss. Has anybody heard about this or seen it done?

Here’s how it works, all the married couples are called out to the dance floor then the DJ will ask people married less than a certain number of years to get off the dance floor. This progresses to higher and higher years until the couple married the longest is left. Then the bride presents her bouquet to that couple.

Seems like a nice break with tradition. What do you think?

I found a video on YouTube of one of these dances, you might want to jump to around the 3:30 mark on the video. The beginning is just the dj talking about something. (You have to click on the link below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdLYfmIgTjU

And finally to end the week an inspirational video from Louisiana…

Have a great weekend!
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Rhonda
Our Wedding Plus

While researching yesterday’s Secrets of a Happy Marriage post, I found another cute article that you might find interesting. This one is from 2005, its about Percy and Florence Arrowsmith who hold the world record for the longest marriage…eighty years!!!! They also hold the world record for the highest aggregate age…205 years at the time of the article!!! What an inspiration!

So how did they do it? According to them…

The secrets of the world’s longest marriage are don’t sleep on an argument, always share a kiss and hold hands before going to bed.

Florence Arrowsmith said, “He can’t settle down if I’m not holding his hand”

If you want to see the entire article click here!

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Rhonda
Our Wedding Plus

That’s what we all want, right? When focused on planning a great wedding it may be easy to forget that the important part happens after the wedding…the rest of your lives together.

Sharing your life with your spouse can be one of life’s greatest satisfactions. Unfortunately, many marriages don’t last that long in spite of the fact that everyone goes into their marriage with the best of intentions.

So, what is the problem? Why do so many couples that are so much in love on their wedding day, wind up mortal enemies?

The bottom line is marriage takes work. Even the best of marriages take work. If you go into it without that expectation you are setting yourself up for disappointment.

What is “work”? It is a lot of things, but it includes, commitment, investment, giving, respecting, and enjoying. It may sound easy in the beginning, but when life hits you in the face…bills, kids, illness, and a lot more that you will never expect…things can get real difficult.

But don’t despair, it can be done, as proven by the couples interviewed in this article, “7 Secrets to a long – and happy marriage.” This is a great article, which I printed out and hung on our refrigerator! I recommend you do too! It’s never too early to start thinking about this.

These 7-Secrets came out of a project conducted by two bachelors who traveled around the country talking to “Marriage Masters,” people married more than 40 years, to find out what the secrets are to their long marriages.

They also wrote a book called Project Everlasting: Two Bachelors Discover the Secrets of Americas Greatest Marriages which sounds pretty interesting, I’m going to try to check it out. If anyone else has read it I’d love to hear about it.

Anyway, I found this video on youtube. It shows the highlights of a couple as they go through 60 years of marriage. It must have been an exciting journey they shared. It demonstrates what I think life is all about.

So anyway…as you stress over your wedding plans, don’t forget this is just the beginning of a long journey. Invest some time and energy to make it a long and happy one!

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Rhonda
Our Wedding Plus

Finally, after 8 months of work! Researching, designing, planning, incorporating, and beta testing we are finally online!

You may have been following along as we kept slipping our launch date on our homepage. It definitely took longer than we expected. There were lots of issues that popped up, decisions to make, and tweaks that we wanted. I know my web developer wanted to kill my husband at times. But, we wanted to provide the best product possible.

I’d like to thank our beta testers for their great inputs. They helped us find and fix a lot of things! We are now ready for the masses.

So….

Checkout our website, Our Wedding Plus…where you can create an elegant wedding website, find the finest wedding invitations, and discover practical wedding planning tips.

Your premium personal wedding website will help you keep your guests informed of all your event information, build / manage your guest list, and allow your guests to securely RSVP online!Sign up for our free monthly newsletter!

Rhonda

Our Wedding Plus

I found a pretty cool site!

Bride-O-Rama says it is the “first online video network to give real bride advise from the recently married.” It’s a great idea because who would know better than those who just went through it. You get to hear what worked and what didn’t and you can learn from their experience. Not only that they also have a few video clips with some advice from wedding professionals. They currently have a couple featuring Preston Bailey. They are also running a wedding blog too!

Here’s one of the videos featuring a recently married couple giving advice on wedding planning, check it out!

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Rhonda
Our Wedding Plus