skp1

Yes, DIY projects like do take a lot of time. it's rewarding in the end though. I tired to spread everything out over a month so as not to get overwhelmed - do one thing each night while watching TV. I definitely have not mastered the art of efficiency - I bet if I tried selling them and added up the hours I spent, I'd end up making about China's minimum wage Funny thing is I'm am a CPA - the most boring, uncreative (well except for those Andersen folks working on Enron) profession there is. I guess that's why I go overboard in my personal projects - I need an outlet to express myself. Kiwibride-I may need some recommendations for Nassau items - I'm looking to have a low key (ie not Senor Frogs) bachelorette party 2 nights before the wedding. Any ideas?

That was me about the bachelorette and I actually did e-mail Jose the same time I posted here. He did have some good suggestions but I guess I'm just not that into it. He also had some for rehearsal dinner like a harbor cruise. I liked that but am trying to keep it simple. Another Atlantis bride was having her welcome party outside with just a dessert bar and a fire dancer. That's a good option if you don't want to have a full blown meal. I'm having a welcome party at one of the pool bars (not private) and just running a tab for our guests - my WC suggested making some drink tickets so the bartender knows who is allowed to charge to our tab. We're stopping by a grocery store on the way from the airport to pick up snacks for the OOT bags so we'll also pick up some munchies for at the bar - just little stuff because people will be headed to dinner on their own.

Thanks so much for the compliments! And thanks for the nomination for the February contest! Oddly I haven't heard much from our guests - I got so many e-mails/texts/calls on the boarding pass STD's but only about 2 for these which I think are far superior. Oh well. akamikey11 - I made about 50 invites which didn't seem too daunting. It cost me about $200 total but half of that was "press" printing the covers. You can totally do it for less if you don't have the special printing. I figured the rest of my printing was free so I could justify it. I'm sure you'd be fine with a home laser printer. You might want to stick with a more white color but I think its fine. The weight is thick enough for the invite (especially since I basically doubled up the covers by gluing them) but not like cardstock which I think is harder to feed through printers. And I think envelopes would be easier on a smaller home machine and might not need "tricking" like mine did. I used a $.61 stamp to mail them which is standard for wedding invites. If I hadn't have made the folders it would have been a regular $.44 stamp but that extra paper pushed it slightly over an ounce. Good luck!

OMG - I had no idea! I'm sooo sooo excited. I was just trying pay it forward for all the help I got from other BDW brides- this is icing on the cake!

I had this on my list but don't know where to use them!

Awesome! What a great idea. I think my resort only allows their signs outside of the reserved venues so I'm sure they will be ultra boring.

These are great! Love the 3 photo idea and how you made it B&W except for the hats and flowers. Is that something you did in photoshop before sending to Vistaprint? I'd love to know how to do it.

Not at all. I can't think of any wedding I've been invited to where they matched. there is usually such a time difference between the 2 that it doesn't matter.

Thanks - I'll definitely look into the Poop deck - those drinks sound fun! I really am fine with something low key - I just think some of the other girls may try to make it more of a "party" so I want to know the options.

I noticed this same thing on a few other BDW posts. Not sure what is wrong. I tried uploading again. if it still doesn't work, PM me. cocktail labels.docx

Sounds like we have a few regulars here We also picked Atlantis because my fiance & I have vacationed there a bunch of times so it has some meaning to us. It definitely helps having some familiarity. I'm currently deciding between Luciano's and Carmine's for our rehearsal dinner. I've heard great reviews about food and service at Luciano's (never been though) but Carmines is just so darn convenient - no worrying about transportation or people running late. We rarely go off property during our visits so I'm not so familiar with outside areas. We are also looking to have a little bachelor and bachelorette parties Thursday night. I don't want to do anything crazy right before the wedding and I'm a little beyond the Senior Frog days. Any ideas? I've thought about the Green Parrot or Bambu but don't know anything about them. I'd like to do something outdoors so figure we'll need to leave property for that. We're doing Aura after our wedding so I've eliminated that. As for room rates, that came from the wedding sales department (step before WC was assigned). Ours is definitely lower but I think it depends on peak vs non-peak travel dates. Porcell, when is yours? Mine is mid June - I know school has not let out up north yet so it might not be a high demand time. another bride is scheduled memorial day weekend and has higher rates. I think most of our guests will be staying at the resort since there are so many options price wise. My experience with Wildflowers was more structured - I showed some pictures of things I particularly liked - some even from their website. We're trying to keep that part simple so I didn't leave too much room for creativity. But that's one thing I loved about them - they didn't push anything more. The other company we met with proposed something waaayyy beyond our vision.

I posted a similar question about sending invites to people i know couldn't come and the general response from BDW brides was to send anyway. I did include the stamped RSVPs - I want to go through the excitement of receiving them in the mail even for those who i know booked. But also, I included other info for guests to fill out like arrival date and where they are staying. This will help me keep track and make sure welcome bags get to everyone.

It cost about $200 to make 50 invitations and literally half of that was the printing on the blue paper - so I can't stress enough - don't use dark paper. i had too much vested at that point to change it. I got the palm tree stamp and wax from Sam Flax which is a large art supply store - I think they have locations nationwide. It was in their paper/invitation department. I've also seen some on line with just Yahoo searches - don't know exact names but had contemplated ordering it first. Michael's only had the standard heart or wedding themed ones.

No problem at all! I've never uploaded a template so hopefully this works OK. cocktail labels.docx20k .docx file cocktail labels.docx

That looks awesome - I feel ashamed of mine now! I can't think of any sayings now - I did boarding pass STDs and used "check in on-line" with our wedding site but that wouldn't really work here. People always write "wish you were here" on postcards - maybe you can write that with the website afterwards.

Love 'em!

We're not hiring an MC. We'll have about 40 people so hopefully they won't need to much rallying either. My fiance & I love to dance and will be out there no matter what so we're hoping people will follow. My fiance also loves to show off so I can see him grabbing the microphone if need be. And we're not doing a lot of the typical announcing items - no father/daughter or mother/son dances, no bouquet toss, no bridal party introductions,etc so I'm not too worried. Jose is the only one I didn't get to meet yet. I had hoped to meet him on my next visit end of this month and see him in action but he said that's right in the middle of spring break and he has all private functions. Oh well. I'll see if I can make to the BB store downtown. We're headed downtown the morning our flight leaves to get our marriage license - if that's quick (which it should be since we are using Matthew) then maybe I'll have time to swing by. I'm not sure I'd make another trip in otherwise since we are only there 3 days.

Thank you, thank you, thank you! What a great write up. Looks like we have most of the same vendors - I didn't do a lot of comparison shopping - other than decor I met with one vendor in each category and decided so its good to hear your opinions than support my choices. My site visit was a little easier - I guess since we had already decided on Atlantis they arranged for all the vendors to come to us. They also wanted to bill us for a tasting but it was going to be credited toward our booking price so I was OK with it. But turns out they decided to waive it at the last minute. I've been e-mailing a lot with Jose and it sounds like he is expanding his business to include all kinds of wedding planning. We also booked the cigar roller and junkanoo through him. He also offered to arrange things like excursions, rehearsal parties, etc. I am SOOOO happy about your make-up info. I was disappointed when I called the Atlantis spa - I'm really nervous about unknown make-up and they really weren't very accommodating at all. I asked if they had photos of brides as samples and they had nothing. Make-up costs $100 and it was cost an additional $100 for a trial session. I also tried calling the make-up artist recommended by my sales person and its been a week with no response (I think she's more commercial than wedding so she's probably not interested). I will TOTALLY call Bobbie Brown. The great thing is I can do free trials at home and have them write up the instructions and just give that to the Bahamas location. I hope they will still come to the hotel since it will only be for 2 people (my wedding party is just my sister and me).

Thanks everyone - my guests should start receiving these today - can't wait to hear the responses!

These are finally done and in the mail today! I think I've been working on them too long because I was becoming super critical and thinking about all the things I should have changed. Anyway, here is how I did it - its long but hopefully will be helpful to future DIYers. Materials: champagne & dark blue metallic 80lb paper & envelopes from papersandmore.com Ribbon from Michaels Silk thread from Michaels Rotary paper cutter from work Scotch wrinkle free glue stick from Target Corner hole punch from Michaels and regular hole punch If I had to do it again, I’d go with different colors. I really wanted off-white – like ivory color wedding dresses – but couldn’t find that. I thought the white might be too blah since I was using that for envelopes too (too much of a pain to print on dark paper and my wedding color (turquoise) is not available in metallic). I do like the champagne but things print and look different on color paper than they do on white. And my one big piece of advice to everyone is DON’T use dark paper! Honestly you can’t do it yourself – you need it professionally printed and I’m not talking about Office Depot of Kinkos – you need a real print shop. Even they could not digitally print on the paper and had to “press†it. Maybe its just the metallic and plain cardstock is OK. But factor the extra cost into your project. Design: I used the Aylee template and did the whole thing in Word. I wish I had Photoshop and all the neat graphic capabilities that go along with it, but I had to just rely on fonts, pictures and colors. I kept the passport stamp watermark on the inside pages but changed the inside cover to look more like a traditional passport (not the new ones) with the hexagon shaped designs and centered emblem. I found a compass in clip art and shrunk that down, lightened it and repeated it for the background. I also used a large one for the center emblem. I took the invite wording from things I’ve seen on BDW and added something to recognize that we’ve been together forever. I’m really happy with the way that turned out. The inside pages are the standard info – accommodations, itinerary and travel info. The RSVP I designed myself. I thought about using the Vistaprint postcard everyone has used but I had a hard time trying to fit all the info on it the postcard considering the address and stamp are on the same side. Since I did boarding passes for the STD, I wanted something different so a luggage tag it was. The wording is borrowed from other BDW brides. One of my favorite things is the envelope liners I made. Since I wasn’t using colored envelopes, I wanted to do something to make them stand out a little. I used that same compass and changed the colors to navy and turquoise, shrunk it down and printed on entire sheets of paper. I cut the pieces just slightly smaller than the envelope and voile – it brings the whole thing together. Printing: Boy was this part a pain in the butt. First was the issue with things looking different on champagne as opposed to white so I had to spend some time tweaking colors and doing test prints. I used my work printer so it’s a good commercial quality laser printer. The one sided prints came out fine but the 2 sided ones didn’t. No matter how I changed it up (print 2 sided, print single side and reefed, wait between prints, etc) the second side always printed lighter – like the paper wasn’t absorbing any more. I finally gave up and figured nobody else would even notice – it wasn’t that drastic and really, once I set it aside for a few days, I didn’t even notice anymore. Then the second side just didn’t line up exactly the same. Left to right was OK, but top to bottom was a little off so I had to do some extra trimming. But once assembled you can’t notice a size difference. The covers were taken to Ameripress. As mentioned above, this could not be printed. I considered having a stamp made and getting a gold inkpad but was worried I’d screw that up. I also considered having a stencil made but same thing. Plus both were pretty pricey. I decided to bite the bullet and go ahead with the press job and it was costing me more anyway, I decided to go with gold. I was expecting it to be the gold leaf foil like a real passport, but it’s just gold color. I’m disappointed but nothing I can do about it now. Envelopes were crazy too. Neither Word nor my printer would accept the size of envelopes since they were too small – A2 and 4 Bar. I had to “trick†the system. For the RSVP, I used the Monarch but lined up to print in just the middle. Then I had to take a piece of paper and cut it to Monarch size and stick it under the envelope flap so it would feed into the printer. It took a long time to print because I kept having to swap out the insert into the next envelope but it worked. The main envelopes were a little easier – same method but used the #10 format and was able to use a real envelope to feed it. Assembly: I used a rotary paper cutter and after the STDs and other DIY projects I have become a pro at cutting. Folding wasn’t bad either since it wasn’t heavy cardstock. The real challenge came with putting it all together. I was hesitant about using staples because my center page had a picture going across the middle so the placement would have been odd. I’ve never used a glue gun and wasn’t sure if that work anyway with it being such a thin line. I don’t know what possessed me but I decided to sew them together using beading thread that is the EXACT same color as my champagne paper. I sewed the 2 champagne color sheets and then glued the navy covers to the outside. At the last minute I decided to make a pocket to hold everything together – it wasn’t in the original plan but I thought dumping everything into the envelope didn’t look right. I had a lot of extra navy paper so I just folded that to the dimensions between the passport size and the envelope size and its perfect. Once I put the passport inside it looked too dark so I had to add another champagne sheet behind it, but it looks like a real travel folder you’d get from a travel agent. I think my guests will be surprised. Lastly, I had to figure out how to close the folders. I considered a bally band but was out of paper by this point. Then I thought I’d tie it with colored raffia. I ultimately decided to do a wax seal with a palm tree and am quite happy with it.

I just put my invitations in the mail today and asked for RSVPs 2 months prior to the wedding date. I'm sure I'll still have to track some down. Some people look at me like I'm crazy when I say I sent the invites but its much different planning a destination wedding. There are so many personalized projects, that I will need to do during those last 2 months, I'd be afraid to have the cutoff any later.

zelda062 - My current plan is to use Just the Way you Are by Bruno Mars too. I felt I needed something upbeat otherwise I'd be crying as I walk down the aisle. The song always makes me smile and when I bought my dress a few weeks ago it seemed to match the song too. It hadn't occurred to me that it might be too fast - I don't think that will be an issue.

Hi sharlie, I'll PM you with the games - once I finish my book, I'll upload it on BDW but I'm since its one big Word file instead of individual pages, I want to wait a bit. Most of the games I took from standard bridal shower games and tweaked them. I'm not sure about handing in the mad libs - I think the couple on the Knot had it at the wedding reception and basically had a table and box similar to a gift box. I was thinking of just writing to bring it to the reception and having an area set up. I also was going to have a master book with the answer key because I'm sure some people will be racking their brains on some. I relied on the Internet A LOT to find the answers.

A lot of designers have a "destination" line. Stores carry the long ones in stock but very few in the short length. I never found one place to see everything but just hit a few bridal shops after searching on line. There is a thread on here about short dresses - there are a few options loaded on this thread that may be something you like. http://www.bestdestinationwedding.com/forum/thread/67257/post-your-short-wedding-reception-dress

We're booked - we ended up going with the Four Seasons. We booked through Delta Vacations and it came out a good deal cheaper than reserving flight and hotel individually. CAN"T WAIT!!!!!