KRama

Wow, I have a lot to catch up on! We just got back from our honeymoon last night so still have lots to do. I'll catch up soon! Promise!

Yay! Glad I could help!

Quote: Originally Posted by midnight24 congrats! great photo! i still need to write my review too...it's been a hectic couple of weeks. we just had our AHR reception on the weekend and now i'm back to work. i'll try and get it down next week for y'all. Quote: Originally Posted by swankster77 How are those reviews coming along?! haha just kidding ladies I hear ya midnight! We just had our AHR last friday. I tell ya, that was WAY more work to plan than the entire week in Mexico was! Now I'm in San Diego on our honeymoon (hubby's taking a nap so I'm sneaking in some BDW time!). I'll be back on Saturday and hopefully I'll have some time for a review once I'm back to real life!

I'm back! And like Erica...exhausted!! I'm waiting for a few pics to roll in before I post my review but I have to INSIST that there is NO NEED to get worked up or worried because the wedding coordinators there are PROS! They know exactly what they are doing and our wedding day was absolutely perfect! We had our ceremony at the Tulum gazebo (highly recommend it!), dinner at the Portfino and a poolide reception. People were telling us it was the best wedding they've ever been too!! Here's a sneak peek: I'll get to work on my review soon!

YAY Mrs. Scott! Congrats! Can't wait to read your review and see pics! We leave this Sunday and I'm beyond excited! My mom and step-dad are already there and they called me last night to tell me how fantastic everything is. I can't wait!!

It's my last day of work today too!!! I don't know how I'm going to make it through! We leave on Sunday for a week in Mexico, we come back for a week and have our AHR on the 21st and then take off on a last minute week long honeymoon on the 22nd or 23rd! That's THREE weeks off for me! WHOOP WHOOP!!

Quote: Originally Posted by MayanLily Awesome Planning Thread Kayley! Now I'm having some serious dress envy. I want to steal Boo's dress AND your dress LOL (not kidding- better sleep with one eye open ) Oh will do Boo! haha Quote: Originally Posted by Lindslou Love your planning thread Kayley and your dress, so pretty where did you get it? Hope you girls have a wonderful wedding next week, must be liking the idea of getting away from this beautiful weather I got it at Mena's Bridal on Centre St & 12th Ave. Mena was amazing. The sweetest woman ever! And I absolutely can't WAIT to get away from this snow and cold! My mom and stepdad are already at the resort and called me yesterday to tell me how awesome it is! This week at work has been completely unproductive. I just want it to be over so I can go!!

Quote: Originally Posted by L&C In Love Can I ask about your AHR postcard, did they already have that design or did you make it? Also how much were the lounge covers? Yep, VistaPrint already had that design and I filled in the text. On the back is all the details for location, time, etc. The lounge chair towels were a steal! Only $20 each! And the seller didn't make me pay more for shipping to Canada! The seller is Maddie's Attic on Etsy if you're interested. She said she's done lots of sets as bridesmaids gifts and they turned out great. Quote: Originally Posted by Boo I love your BM dresses too, I am looking for yellow, pink, orange myself and I love JCrew some of the girls are a little worried about shopping online but some of these dresses are just too cute! I'll admit, the online ordering was a bit of a hassle. At first, the girls had all picked a different style in the same color, we got them in and a couple didn't fit right, so we sent them back, ordered all the same dress then the size fit different, sent them back again...it was a bit of an ordeal. Thankfully J.Crew refunds the shipping costs too!

Quote: Originally Posted by MayBride2010 we are wedding shoe twins! Good call! They're so comfortable! I can dance all night in those!

Great strategies Boo. Love the dress you picked! Originally I had something very similar in mind and ended up getting something completely different! On that note, I posted my planning thread! http://bestdestinationwedding.com/fo...-thread-58704/

I completely forgot to included this in my planning thread! When I decided I wanted to send out a brochure I searched long and hard on this forum for a template I could use and couldn't find one for the life of me! *TIP - if you come across something you like on this forum, bookmark it! I didn't and had such a hard time finding those same things again!* Anyhoo - I finally took matters into my own hands and googled "how to make a brochure in Microsoft Word" and came across this website: Use Word to Create a Tri-Fold Brochure It was super easy to do. Hope this is useful for you! Travel Brochure.doc

Congrats Amy! Like everyone else said, you looked absolutely stunning!

Flower Inspiration: Fun stuff! The tank my bridesmaids made for me. FI is a hockey player so the back has his number on it: And my beach themed shower/stagette during the middle of a freak blizzard! I think that’s about it! I tell ya, you girls sure made me ambitious. I maybe did a fraction of the stuff I wanted to do but I ran out of time and FI kept telling me I was going to way too much trouble! Again, thanks so much for all your wonderful ideas. You’ve totally made this planning process stress free and fun! If you have any questions about anything, fire away!

My invitations: We started by sending out a save-the-date via email telling people the week we chose, the destination we were thinking of and the price we were aiming for. We also told people that once we decided, we’d send out another email with the info and they’d have two weeks to put down their deposit. This worked out great because once we sent out that second email about a month later, our guests were prepared to book and pay their deposit right away. We had absolutely NO problem with guests dragging their feet or us being stuck having paid a deposit for someone that decided not to come. We had 4 couples that told us they were for sure coming but would be booking through other means which was perfectly fine with us. I would highly recommend this strategy! Here’s the tread on my invitations: http://bestdestinationwedding.com/fo...tations-56075/ I also included a VistaPrint post card as our AHR invite: We ordered mugs from Discountmugs.com and they worked out perfectly. Wedding Week Survival Kits: I loved this idea when I saw it on BDW! We have a bit of a rowdy group so they’ll get a kick out of this. Most of this stuff was from Minimus.com. I still need to put labels on these: We’re going to give out the mugs and kits during our welcome party the first night we get there. Décor: I really didn’t want to bring much down with us and decided that we’re just going to let the setting speak for itself. All I’m bringing are table cards that I had a very creative friend make up for me. These will be mounted on tent cards and placed on the tables. Keep going...

My Dress: I tried on about 12 dresses before I found this one. I had gone in saying I wanted something simple, strapless, no beads and no lace. Well as you can see, I didn’t end up with that at all! It gives me the best shape and FI is going to love how “the girls†look in it! Shoes: From Aldo Jewellery: I don’t typically where a lot of bling so I enlisted my bridesmaid who loves that kind of stuff to pick something out for me. And I’ll be wearing a diamond bracelet that FI gave me for my 21st birthday: Hair Inspiration: My hair is naturally pretty straight so I’m not sure how well this will hold up but I’m hoping the humidity in Mexico will help! FI will be wearing a khaki coloured pinstripe suit that we bought during an end-of-season sale at MEXX last year. He’ll wear a white shirt and brown shoes. The groomsmen will be wearing matching pants and a white shirt, all from the MEXX outlet (sorry, I don’t have a pic, you’ll just have to wait for wedding photos!) Bridesmaid’s dresses ordered from J.Crew: Bridesmaid Gifts: I bought the dresses for them and this necklace: I also bought them personalized lounge chair covers from a seller on Etsy. I thought these were too perfect for a resort wedding! FI bought the groomsmen sunglasses, sandals and funny T-shirts. He wanted to get them practical stuff that they could use on the resort. More still…

So I know everyone starts by saying they can’t believe it’s their turn. Well, I’m starting the same way! I really CAN’T BELIEVE that we leave in 4 days!! It’s come up SO fast and I’ve loved every minute of planning process and the excitement that keeps building as the date gets closer! Planning treads were one of my favourite parts of BDW so I hope I put together a good one for you ladies. I know you love pics! Almost all of the things I’ve done are a direct product of ideas on this forum so I thank you all so much for helping me impress my family and friends by letting them think I came up with it all myself. And I apologize in advance for the crappy quality of some of the pics! I have an old camera that doesn’t do close ups very well! Engagement: We were engaged on June 12, 2009, the day after my birthday. Long story short, I thought he was throwing me a birthday party but he kidnapped me (blindfold and all!) and took me to a hotel in downtown Calgary. When he took the blindfold off I was in a hotel room covered in tea light candles and rose petals on the bed in a heart shape with a tiny box in the middle. He got down on one knee and asked me to be his wife. The rings: He had my engagement ring made by a local jeweller and I’m totally in love with it. We went back later and had the matching band designed. FI picked out a tungsten band with a bit of detailing from the same jeweller. The Resort: We found the hardest part of planning was picking the actual resort. We were looking for a 5 star resort around $1600 CDN per person that offered a wedding package that didn’t charge per head (we were expecting 50 guests). We actually found one! Grand Bahia Principe Coba in the Mayan Riviera was everything we were looking for and I’ve heard nothing but great things about it! The gazebo is what sealed my decision: More to come…

4 days to go!! This Cinco de Mayo looks more like Cinco de Decembero!

Wow! Crazy weekend Karen! We sent out our pre-wedding stuff over the weekend and everyone is super excited now that they have their tickets in hand. It's actually happening! The rest of this week I'll be packing, getting all my beauty appointments done and fighting off this crazy cold that is now a sinus infection! UGH! Hopefully the antibiotics kick in fast. The doc says I should be good to go in 3-4 days which is perfect because we leave on Sunday!

Quote: Originally Posted by Boo First off, Kayley that sounds like such a great time! what a fantastic memory to have and yet not take anything away from the big day!! On a side note, we were planning on getting legally married here as well 1. can you recommend any justic of the peace or commisioner (sorry not sure on the term right now) who perform these? 2. do we have to say vows? I was hoping to do as little of the 'wedding' stuff, like not put rings on either, etc. Kayley was this just a personal choice? 1. I would absolutely recommend Jackie. It cost $250 and she gave us a very nice program with the ceremony she read and the marriage certificate of course. If you flip back a few pages, I posted a link to her website. Or you can google Jacqueline Hoare and get her info. (That was another super funny moment, she said "yes, you heard my name right, you are in fact being married by a Hoare." Hilarious. Totally our style). 2. We didn't want any of that wedding stuff either. We didn't exchange rings and the only "vows" we said was the legal stuff "I yadda yadda solumnly declare that I know of no lawful impediment..." Jackie added a short poem, a hand blessing and some words of wisdom and that was it. I wouldn't have done it any other way!

Well ladies, I guess I'm officially a Mrs! We had our legal ceremony on Friday and it was perfect. Exactly what we wanted. Our friends showed up at our place and we said "we just need to do something before we go for dinner...we're kind of getting married right now". They just laughed and were thrilled to be part of it. We had the ceremony right there in our living room and our officiant Jackie had a great casual program and threw in stuff like "do you Kayley vow to never give Jeremy a hard time when he wants a guy's night out?" and "do you Jeremy accept that Kayley will buy herself a pair of shoes for each guy's night out?" It was really fun and we laughed lots. Then we went to the Keg downtown for dinner and told the waiter that we just got married. He brought over a bottle of champagne (on the house!) After dinner we went across the street to Spur to catch the last quarter of the Lakers game and the bartender there gave a round of free shots AND turns out she is also getting married in the Mayan on the SAME DAY as me! I don't feel married at all which is great because we really want the wedding NEXT WEEK (holy crap, I can't believe it's almost here) to be the real deal.

Thanks for the well wishes ladies! FI is actually being really cute about it. He called me this morning at work and asked if he should pick up some flowers and champagne for tonight. I said, "sure, are you excited?" and just said, "no" flat out. hahaha Liar. We're having a friend of our family officiate for us. She grew up with my dad's family and she did my grandpa's memorial service 10 years ago. She was super excited when I called her and she said she's done several "pre-wedding ceremonies" before. She said she has a great script that's informal but still sentimental so it's not just government legal speech. Her name is Jacqueline Hoare, here's her website: Home I'll let you know how it goes!

Yikes Alyssa! I'd be terrified! Glad you made it safe and sound! We're surprising our bestfriends (who are married themselves) with our legal ceremony. We told them to we wanted to take them out for dinner for all the stuff they've done for us (like planning the stag/stagette) and plus, we have gift cards! Our JP is meeting us at our place as well so when our friends get there we're just going to say "oh yeah, we just have to take care of a little something first". We'll have our little ceremony right there in our living room, then go for dinner and drinks. Should be fun!

That's what I wanted to do pamphilia...although it would have to be ice tea for me without any power (which I hear is STILL not on 8 hours later!)! I'm still trying to get over a nasty cold so I would have loved to stay home and read my book all day. The only reason I even went to work was because I had a lunch date with my bridesmaid and her mom who missed my shower and wanted to see me before we leave! Oh yeah, guess what...I'm getting legally married tomorrow!

Ahhh Daniella! Don't be nervous!! I get legally married tomorrow! And then we're nine days away from take off! For me, it's the last minute scramble trying to get everything done before we leave. I can't believe it's really happening. I remember last October being all jealous of the girls that were leaving for their wedding!

I know there's some other Coventry Hills girls on here. Anyone else without power this morning?? I slept in 2 hours longer than usual since my alarm was out, had a shower in the dark, then FI spent 1/2 an hour trying to figure out how to manually open the garage door so he could drive me to work (and save me from the 301 - I'd probably STILL be on the bus!) I leave in 10 days! WHOOP WHOOP!