X-Chan

Everything looks great and you look absolutely beautiful! I'm going to be an RD1044 bride as well. ^^

Here is what it said word for word. "One complimentary adult for every 20 adults booked (21th adult is complimentary) at BLAU VARADERO - ALL ROOM TYPE AI for the same package, dates and duration, lowest room category, excluding taxes." She keeps recopying this to me saying it is what it is. But I don't think it's clear at all?? I mean, it says "ALL ROOM TYPE AI" so I though that would mean as you said, it doesn't matter what room category is booked as long as the free one is a standard room. ughh >.<

I started another thread with this question but thought I'd post here since I didn't get any answers.. Were there any special conditions before you girls were able to claim the free package? My original quote said that I'd get 1 free per every 20 booked. That's great.. I have 46 booked, so I emailed my TA to see if I would get 2 free packages. She said no, the 20 have to be from the same departure city and for the same room package. I said ok.. I have 33 going from Toronto and about 23 of those are booked for ocean view rooms, can I at least get 1 free? Now she says it has to be 20 booked for the cheapest rooms, not ocean-view. Thing is, the standard rooms were sold out even before we submitted our original deposits so many people had to book ocean view 8 months before the date. I don't get why I can't get 1 standard package free for having 20 ocean views booked.. I'm just so bummed, I was really hoping to use this as we're paying for two packages on top of FI and I's.

In my original contract, it said: Note: One complimentary adult for every 20 adults booked (21th adult is complimentary) at BLAU VARADERO - ALL ROOM TYPE AI for the same package, dates and duration, lowest room category, excluding taxes. I have about 45 adults booked. Now I'm being told that it has to be 20 "rooms" booked from the same departure city for the lowest room package. First it clearly says every 20 adults booked not 20 rooms, and I do have 33 leaving from the same city but most are ocean view, not the entry room because they "ran out" of entry rooms 8 months before the wedding when everyone submitted their deposits 3 weeks after their quote. I already doubted them when they said the entry level rooms sold out so early on, how is that even possible, and now I'm even more annoyed because it seems like they're doing everything they can to make sure I can't use this perk. I would have had my 20 entry level room adults booked from 1 city had they not been sold out right after they quoted us for them. Was anybody able to use a similar perk? and what were the conditions of the deal?

My travel agent is Susan Gill from www.allaboutdestinationweddings.ca/ I'd be absolutely lost without her.. I consider myself pretty good on the net and always able to find great deals and such but she got me amazing group rates for our trip along with some great perks. It's also so nice to have someone take care of getting everyone booked in for you. A lot of my guests wanted to customize their trip and then there have been others who were just complicated and she's dealt with them all. The best part.. she always emails me back the day of. That was the main problem I had when searching for a TA, I had emailed 3 before finding Susan and they sometimes took weeks to get back to me, or just didn't get back to me at all. I'd definitely recommend getting a TA.

We requested quotes from Sunwing at the beginning of the month and they gave us great quotes but with a very short deadline because of some fuel tax savings. My group had just under 3 weeks to book into it. I had 25 people book, about 10 of which were standard rooms and the rest ocean view. We just heard back from Sunwing with this notice: FYI: all the oceanview rooms have been confirmed but the standard hotel rooms are on request. Sunwing has booked their full allotment in the standard hotel category and there is a possibility that they will deny the request. Please check with the pax that wanted the hotel rooms to see if they are willing to pay for the oceanview room instead. Did they really sell out in just 2 weeks? It's still 8 months til our wedding and I find that kind of hard to believe... is this just a scheme to try to get people to upgrade now? Any other brides experience this?

hi niajs, yay baking! I put the cup into the bag of flour and fill it then level it off usually just with the sides of the bag and take it out. Getting into more detail.. sometimes a recipe will call for sifted flour in two different ways. If it says 1 cup of flour, sifted, then you take a cup out of the bag and you sift it with a strainer before using it. If it says 1 cup of sifted flour, this is a bit of a pain but you have to sift the flour through the strainer into your cup until its full. Sifted flour is a lot less compact so it makes a big difference. For the butter, our blocks of butter have lines on the packaging that will help you with measurements. Basically, a big package of butter (1lb) is 2 cups. There will be a line showing 1 cup, then 1/2 cup, then 1/4 cup. 4 tablespoons of butter is the same as 1/4 cup so you'd cut on that line which is 1/8th of the block. Butter also comes in sticks of 1/2 cups each so if you're buying those then you'd use half of that for 4 tablespoons. Hope this helps! Happy baking!

i got the arm and hammer one too. i tried to close it about 10 times with it reappearing every time before I realized just to refresh the page to get a different ad..

Thanks! I'm glad the instructions can help others. Nowwww..onto the next step!

I had the same dilemma with you when I was choosing my dress. Like JayKay says, lots of girls have had success ordering duplicates but since I had tried the real one on I was afraid that the duplicate would never compare. I decided to look for used dresses being sold by brides which cut the price in half.. now the problem was finding my size! In the end, I found a bridal shop in Pennsylvania that has a list of sample sales on their website and was ecstatic to find my dress in my size listed there for 1/3 of the full price. They shipped it to me and it arrived perfectly. There is just a bit of stain where the neckline is but I should be able to clean that up and even if I don't, it's so minor that no one will even notice. I hope you can find your dream dress. Good luck!

Wow I love it!! It looks amazing on both you and the model.

I love the box they come in! Wow! Very impressing

Thank you everyone!

Had to post again.. I just loooove pictures #128. It's so beautiful. You look like a model!

These are all beautiful! Good photographers are like magicians.. the things they can do!

These are so cute and fun! My favourite are the ones in the first picture.

I loooved her dress! I thought she looked incredibly elegant and beautiful.

Yes yes cute sun dresses and bathing suits! I think whatever date you choose that's not dead in the summer will be great The one time we went in August, I think I didn't even get a little tan because being under the sun was just torture lol. If we were outside, we looked for any bit of shade available and just hid there until it was time to go back inside.

ditto

It is hurricane season. When I went to Cuba once in late August-september.. we were hit by 2 hurricanes in 2 weeks. The hurricanes only lasted a day though as they passed through, the rest of the time was perfect perfect weather Any rain down there doesn't usually last very long. Hopefully if there is a hurricane in the forecast, it won't be passing by on your wedding day! Other than that it should be fine. I'm not sure what they do for weddings when hurricanes come but during the really bad ones, they usually make everyone stay inside the resort.

Woops! Don't let my post scare you. And anyways, it's the summers that are unbearably hot and May is no where as bad but still too hot for my personal tastes. We had to shower sometimes 2-3 times a day in May because we'd get sticky and sweaty fast if we spent time outside during the day. But a lot of people enjoy the May weather. My brother won't go down to the carribbeans unless its a constant 30+ cause otherwise it's not a real vacation for him. I prefer a 26-29 temperature which you'll get in the late/winter early/spring, and even on the nice days in the Winter. Quote: Originally Posted by deannamarie85 Yikes! I leave in 6 days, didn't know that May was "unbearably hot"! I was under the impression that the temps year-round are fairly consistent? I will hope for not too hot!

Thanks everyone!

The weather is definitely hit or miss in the caribbeans. That's too bad that you had chilly and windy temperature while you were down but I would still say Feb/Mar/Apr or Nov would be good months to go. Dec/Jan can have great weather too but likely to have chilly temperatures on some days. The summer's are unbearably hot and then it's also hurricane season so I wouldn't recommend that. I've also been in May and still found it too hot to be comfortable outside unless it was in my bathing suit going in and out of the water. Maybe April would be a good choice for you? Good luck!

Just finished and shipped out my wedding invitations so it's now time to share Our wedding budget isn't huge so I knew I wanted to DIY as many things as we could. I am an Illustrator (and sometimes Graphic Designer) so all stationery was definitely on the DIY list. I knew I wanted pocketfolds but I didn't want to spend too much money on supplies. I decided that pre-folded pocketfolds were out and so were 11x17 cardstocks due to the higher cost. Now I needed to figure out how to make a pocket fold out of an 8.5x11 card stock sheet. It was a bit of drafting and I ended up with a single folded card measuring 5" x6.5" with a little pocket (diagram posted later in the thread) For the inserts, I designed everything on Adobe Illustrator. There is 1 additional insert which is the itinerary card with a schedule of events. I also ordered postcards from www.vistaprint.ca for the RSVP card which saves me on rsvp envelopes. I only had to pay shipping on the postcards ($9.99). Other than those, I printed everything else on my printer which is just typical canon inkjet. The envelope is 5"x7" and I printed address bands to glue to the outside. Here are some pictures! Instructions and cost breakdown will follow. Front of the card + envelope and address band. Inside of card with insert and RSVP card. Inserts And now for the dimensions and how I made the pocket folds. Here is a diagram of how I cut the 8.5x11" cardstocks to make the pocketfolds. It's important to make the fold slightly narrower than the width of the card so that the front flap will fold over nicely. I learned this through trial and error as my first one wouldn't fold over smoothly since the pocket was too wide. After marking and cutting out the card, I scored along the fold lines with a bone folder and ruler (pictured). Then I fold along the score lines and smooth out the fold using the bone folder again. The bone folder works magic. Before I bought it, I had tried to make a card by scoring with the back of a table knife and it was still ugly. I recommend buying one if you intend on folding any type of cardstock. Then, I used double sided tape where the little flaps are to tape the pocket. The first one took me maybe 10 minutes but by the 50th I was a robot cutting and folding these in under 3 min Then I printed all the inserts on 8.5x11" linen cardstock. On one sheet, I could fit 1 invitation card + 1 itinerary card as well as a few monograms on some of them until I had enough monograms for all the invites. The invitation card is 4.75" x 6.25" which is .25 inch smaller than the size of the pocket fold so it leaves a nice border when I tape it inside. The itinerary card is 4.125" x 6.25" to match the width of vistaprint's standard postcard size so they line up. The monograms are 1.5"x1.5" and then I also cut out squares .25" (1.75x1.75") larger out of a darker cardstock for layering. Here is what everything looks like cut out (as well as a bonus picture of my cat getting himself stuck in one of the sheets after I cut out the cards ) Then I printed out a sheet of the yellow damask pattern on normal 8.5x11 paper and cut out belly bands that are 2.5" width. I bought some white ribbon and cut those out the same 8.5" length. I taped those to the inside of the card with regular tape. It didn't need to be pretty since I'll be covering it with invitation card anyways. For the outside, I used double-sided tape to tape the dark cardstock behind the white ribbon, then I taped the monogram on top of the ribbon for a layered effect. I also used double sided tape to tape the invitation card inside. I had experimented with different types of glues but all warped the paper and made a mess. Double sided tape ended up working perfect although my friend did tell me about this gun that rolls out dots of glue (or tape?) from Michaels that works even better for this kind of thing. I don't have pictures, but the final step was printing out the address bands and glueing those to the envelopes. I used a gluestick for that.. not the prettiest, but I wanted to make sure they were stuck on real well. I also made these single card invitations in spanish that we will be giving out to FI's family and friends who live in Cuba. The pocket folds were so much labour I almost wish I had just done these for all of them! In total I made 60 pocket-fold invites and 60 single card invites. Here is the breakdown of what I spent for supplies and per pocket fold invite: Supplies: Ruler + 2 glue sticks = $3.19 (dollar store) Bone Folder = $7.84 1/4" Double Sided Tape = $4.80 Exacto Knife = (I already had this) Total cost for supplies: $11.03 Pocket Fold invitation (to make 60) 8.5x11" Silver Cardstock - 60x $0.38 = $22.80 8.5x11" Anthracite Cardstock - 3x $0.38 = $1.14 (for the monogram backing) 8.5x11" Linen cardstock - 30x $0.20 = $6.00 A7 Linen Envelopes - 60x $0.22 = $13.20 White Ribbon = $7.68 RSVP postcards from vistaprint = $9.99 Total Paper cost = $60.81 not including tax or shipping costs. So just over $1 each. I ordered everything from papercircle.ca and I can't say enough great things about them. For all Canadian brides I recommend you get your paper from here! They are fast to answer any questions and very fast at shipping. They send a personalized thank you note after every order and also sent a few cute greeting cards and sweet thank you note inside my large shipment. Hope you enjoyed the post!

They have this metal thing where you go through security and it's supposed to be a size guide for your carry on. If it can fit into it then it's fine. I don't think an extra inch is going to be a deal breaker and you probably will still be able to squeeze it in there. All the flights I go on always seem to have visibly oversized carry ons stuffed in the top compartments. Occasionally if they run out of room in the compartments and there is just no way to squish and squeeze anymore, I've seen them tell the owners of the oversized carry ons to that they need to check them in but other than that, they usually let it slide but I guess that'll depend on the airline and the mood of the staff.