Entries from January 2008 ↓

Happy Friday everyone!  You know what that means!  It’s time for the Top-5 Wedding Blog Posts of the Week!  Got a wide variety of topics this week so kick back, relax and enjoy.

1.        The number one position goes to the Earth Friendly Wedding Blog this week.  Jennifer has a very detailed post that would make a great resource for anyone planning a green wedding, especially a big green wedding.  Checkout her post Green and Grand!

2.       This post makes interesting reading over at Fabuluxe.  Terrica made a great list of the Top 20 Concepts/Trends that Changed the Wedding World.  Definitely an interesting post.  Check it out!

3.       What are you doing with your name after you get married?  If you plan on changing it things can get pretty complicated, Social Security card, drivers license, bank accounts, etc.  Want to make it easy?  Melissa at Masterpiece Weddings can help you out!  Checkout her post “What’s in a Name?”

4.       Okay it’s time to get something to eat!  Want to make a hit at your reception.  It will definitely be a hit if I’m there.  You better stay out of my way!  Checkout this cute cookie buffet idea from Toast and Tables here… “How Sweet it is:  A Cookie Buffet”

5.       Still hungry?  Well here’s some great ideas for your Super Bowl party this weekend!  Checkout The Big Game over at The Hostess With the Mostess!

Have a great weekend!  And let me know what you think of this week’s Top-5!

Last week I entered a blog contest over at Daily Blog Tips in which you had to write a tutorial post.  My tutorial was call How to Order Wedding Invitations Online.  Now to finish the contest I have to post a list of my favorite entries, so here they are!

1.  Fussy’s Handy Ways to Ruin Your Marriage - This one is appropriate for all my brides out there!  If you want your marriage to last make sure you don’t do these things.

2.  Zero to Rhythm in 12 Days - Worried out that first dance?  You or you fiance have two left feet?  Check out this entertaining post.  Wonder if it works?

3.  Protect Your Blog and Counter Copyright Thefts - This one I found interesting and I think all you who have blogs would too.

 Hope you enjoy and you might learn something too!

With gold over $900 per ounce, wedding rings can be pretty expensive!  Here’s a wedding ring idea that will not only save you money it also saves the environment!

It’s been a while since I wrote a green wedding post so I was glad I came across this info to pass on.  I wrote a post a while ago about how much gold mining can impact the environment and some unique wedding rings that had minimal impact on the environment.  I recommend you check it out.  Now here’s some info on another great option!

Ecological jeweler GreenKarat.com has a jewelry recycling and registry program that allows you to turn in old unused gold jewelry and they also allow other people to turn in old unused gold jewelry in your name that can be credited to you!  The old jewelry can then melted and made into your rings or you can get a credit based on the weight for new rings.

This not only can get you free wedding rings they can also have extra meaning made up of old jewelry your family donates for you.

If you choose to go the “gift registry” route you can get you own registry page with instructions for your friends and family to donate.  Here’s an example registry page.

For more information go to GreenKarat.com.

See you tomorrow with the Top 5 Wedding Blog Posts of the Week!

Don’t Miss IT!

Thanks Amchu for the picture!

The wedding industry is booming, do you want a piece of the pie?  Here’s your chance.  The Wedding Planning Institute provides wedding planner certification training online and has just announced that it is providing hands-on training at hundreds of colleges across the US.  WPI’s certification is recognized by The Association for Wedding Professionals International.  The hands-on training will allow students to assist at actual weddings, tour venues, and meet with professional wedding vendors.

The training is 10-weeks of classroom training.  To find out more check out WPI’s website.

Want to leave it to the professionals?  Find a certified wedding planner here!

Do any of you wedding planners out there have experience with WPI?  Please let us know the real deal! 

There’s alot to think about when planning your wedding. Not to mention it is something you probably haven’t done before. Everybody has advice, you try to get information from wedding blogs but who can you trust?

Well, here’s 5 videos covering some of the most important aspects of planning your wedding. Each one has advice and tips from wedding professionals!

The first one covers shopping for a wedding dress.  This can be a duanting task as well as a very important one.  The folks over at My Wedding Hero put together this great video with some wedding dress shopping advice from a shop owner.

This second video has some great advice about selecting and working with your wedding venue and caterer, especially if you are looking at booking an “all in one” venue.

Here’s a video from Get Married about designing your bouquet from none other than David Tutera, Preston Bailey, and more.

Another aspect of looking good on your wedding day is making sure your makeup is done right! Since you are going to spend alot of time in front of the camera you must do your make up a little different. Don’t leave it to chance. Checkout this video to find out how.

Finally, a big question that everyone wonders about. Do you need a wedding planner? Yes, the cost money. But, can a wedding planner actually save you money? Will having a wedding planner make your planning experience and wedding day alot less stressful? Find out in this video.

Buying Wedding Invitations online can be intimidating! After all they are very important, not to mention they can be very expensive. Why not just go to your local wedding invitation shop and see you invitations in person, make your selection, and have the shop owner order the wedding invitations for you? Well, there are a number of reasons, primarily of which is selection. On the web you get access to countless brands and you can compare prices in the privacy of your own home. You can find quality ranging from print-at-home to top-of-the-line letterpress wedding invitations online. Don’t let the fact that you can’t physically handle the invitations stop you. Many websites let you get a sample of the invitation at little or no cost. So now that you are convinced that you can order your wedding invitations on line lets find out how to do it!

1. Select a Style: After you determine the theme and color scheme of your wedding you are ready to select the style of your wedding invitations. Wedding invitations come in a variety of style to suite any taste, traditional, modern, destination weddings, etc. If you are thinking about the environment (which you should) there are also a variety of elegant eco-friendly wedding invitations. Do they have matching response cards, reception cards, thank you cards, etc? Scour the web, find what you want at the right price. It is never too early to start looking at wedding invitation styles, but you are still not ready to order them. Once you found what you want now make sure you are dealing with the right company.

2. Find the Right Online Vendor: there are a bunch of options out there so be careful!

Here are some factors to consider:

a. Reputation & Service: Look for the websites “Terms and Conditions” statement to see what there return policy is. Do they provide a physical address? Do they have a phone number where you can talk to a live person? How long does it take to get your order? Do they offer samples? Etc. Call them up, talk to them, ask all the questions you need to feel comfortable. Also, there are a ton of wedding blogs out there, see if anybody is talking about the vendor. If you hear some negative commentary about quality or service be careful.

b. Website Usability: Can you customize your invitation online and actually see what it’s going to look like? Many websites offer what looks like an online proof in which you customize the invitation and it is then shown on the screen as it will after it’s printed. But beware, most online invitation companies take the information you provide and then have to manually typeset the text into another system for printing. This can result in a change in the invitation’s appearance.

3. Get Some Samples: Okay, it’s not time to place your final order yet! We are getting there! First get some samples. I recommend you get samples of a few candidate wedding invitations that you like to select from. Then wait for them to come in the mail!

4. Customize your Wedding Invitations: Assuming you found the “right” wedding invitation and you have your wedding date, time, location, and venue finalized it is now time to customize your wedding invitations!

Most online vendors provide suggested wording, all you have to do is substitute your specific information for your wedding. So, take your time, check your work, then recheck your work, then re-recheck your work. Most online vendors allow you to save your work and even email it to a friend for them to review. So, save your work and sleep on it. Have your fiancé, your maid of honor, your close family members, and email it to some friends. Make sure they all confirm your information is correct! I think you get my point! You don’t want your $500 worth of wedding invitations showing up with the wrong time or address!

Also, customize your response cards (make sure the info on these are correct too!), and other wedding stationary accessories you will include with your invitations.

5. Place Your Order!: Are you ready? First, if you are wondering when is the right time to order your invitations, check out this post. Okay, it’s time to “pull the trigger!” But wait! How many should you order? Get around 25 more than you think you need. Why? You will need them as keepsakes, and just incase! Complete your order by checking out! You should get a confirmation email almost immediately. If you don’t, call the company and confirm your order was received.

6. Sit Back and Relax: …by your mailbox. In the next week or so you should be getting a wonderful package!

Frequently Asked Questions:

So, what if, after I checked, rechecked, and re-rechecked then had everybody I know confirm the information, I noticed a mistake in my wording after I hit the “Checkout” button?

Call the vendor as quickly as possible! They need to catch it before it goes to the printer! A good vendor will work with you. This is why you need to make sure they are reputable and have a good contact number.

What if I need more?

If you just placed your order, call the vendor immediately! If you have a good vendor and you can catch them before it is printed, it is typically cheaper to add invitations to an existing order than placing an entirely new order.

I’d appreciate any feedback on your online wedding invitation experiences!

This was written as part of the Daily Blog Tips tutorials group writing project.

It’s time once again for the Top-5 Wedding Blog Posts of the Week!  I came across some good ones this week.  I probably could have done a Top-10!  But I selected my “fave 5” for your reading enjoyment.  So here goes…

1.        Are you sure you are marrying the right person?  Do you have cold feet?  Don’t worry that’s normal…most of the time.  Just maybe, you are trying to tell yourself something.  Never teh Bride has a great post this week entitled “when nerves are nerves and when nerves are not” about what constitutes cold feet and when it’s time to run!  Check it out!

2.       Vane over at Brooklyn Bride raised an interesting question this week.  When she gets married she’s wants to change her name personally but keep her maiden name professionally.  This is not unusual, but it can be complicated to handle legally.  Check out her post, “So I’ve got a Question,” and the responses if you are wondering how to handle your name change.

3.       Here’s a sticky one.  Are you thinking of inviting someone to the shower but not inviting them to your wedding?  I bet your interested how this situation should be handled!  Thanks to Event Ethos you now have an answer.  Checkout “Q&A – Invitation to the Shower and Not the Wedding.”

4.       Want to make sure you put the right things on your registry?  Well Perfect Bound is here to help!  This week they are running a series of guest posts from several other bloggers in which they tell you what their Top-5 dream list registry items are.  I just hope your guests have some cash because a lot of these items aren’t for the faint of heart!  Checkout Perfect Bound!

5.       What happened to the good old days when all it took was one night of debauchery for the groom to get it all out of his system?  Now it’s becoming popular for bachelors to take an entire weekend and do a “destination” bachelor party!  Have you heard of this, are you doing something similar for your bachelorette party/weekend?  Check out “Bachelor Parties Grow Up” at Aisledash!

As always let me know if you found some other blogs or posts that deserve highlighting.  Comments are always welcome! 

See you next week!

Rhonda

I was contacted recently by Kee, the owner of Kee2Creativity, about her beautiful wedding invitations. I was amazed by how creative her wedding invitations actually were so I had to share! Here are some comments from Kee about her various lines of wedding invitations and some photos of her work. If you want more information checkout Kee2Creativity.

Chocolate Collection- Featured on site!
Rich and robust in color and texture, the Chocolate Collection is delightfully tasteful and full of flavor. Suitable for special occasion invitations and announcements to signature stationary and note cards, the Chocolate Collections fulfills our clients’ appetites for something new, bold and daringly different.

Cherry Cheeks Collection- Featured on the site!
Named with its ultimate goal in mind, Cherry Cheeks is a festive, fun and free-spirited collection that delivers the heartfelt essence of the holiday season. From celebratory and thankful, to cheerful and giving, this collection of seasons greetings is nestled with good tidings that are sure to leave your family and friends blushing with joy.

The Cherry Cheeks Collection was so successful we will be launching the Cherry Cheeks All Occasion NoteCard Collection February 2008!

Ga Ga Collection- Coming March 2008
If you’ve been waiting for a message in a bottle – here it is! A shower just isn’t a shower anymore. The Ga Ga Collection reigns supreme to the average baby celebration collection. With drops of color, patterns and other precious little objects, our clients go goo-goo for the Ga Ga Collection.

As a follow up to yesterday’s post, after your wedding you still have at least a couple of things to do, and there’s nothing stopping you from getting ahead of the game so you’re ready to go when you get back from your honeymoon. Yesterday we talked about letting everyone know your new address for those of you moving after your wedding. Today I’m going to give you some options for new personalized stationary with your brand new name on it!

Click on the image for more information or click here for a full selection of personalized stationary!

Robin Maguire has a cute line of modern and fun personalized stationary that you can have customized with your new name. Here’s a cute pink and brown option and it even comes in it’s own acrylic holder.

Looking for something more traditional? Checkout this beautiful option from Checkerboard. They even come with customized envelopes.

Don’t need it customized? Checkout this cute set of 18 folded blank note cards (6 cards of each style) made by Jill Smith Designs.

Okay, your married! You get to relax and kick back and enjoy your life with your new husband right? Not just yet. There’s at least a couple things you need to do. One, you need to send thank-you cards for all those gifts and two, you need to let everyone know where your are living!

That’s right, for many of you along with getting married comes a new name and a new address. So, first off you need to send “We’ve Moved” cards to all your friends and family and then you need to update your stationary with your new name.

Today, I’ll cover the “We’ve Moved” cards. I’ll cover stationary options tomorrow so stay tuned!

Here are some cute options.  For more information click and to order click the card.