jandl2013

I think I'm now close to 120...Yaye!

We will all become an annoyance at Dionne point on this site...hahaha

Me too! I'm replying everywhere i can to get to 150 quickly

But I'm open to two anniversaries also...it could be fun to do that

My fiancé wants to do a church wedding and he absolutely refuses to do the courthouse thing, but i know if we do that, it will cause unnecessary drama because I'm not trying to invite a bunch of ppl to turn around and then have to pay to feed/entertain them when we'll be doing that in the DR shortly after. My cousin informed me that there is a nice gazebo by the courthouse so we're thinking about using that with our minister. I really only want our parents there to make it simple and private.

Very true RandL!! I can't wait to marry my honey in front of our family and friends...on the lovely beach. Can't wait!

I have definitely spoken to Virgilia a number of times, and we always end up talking for a long time. I really like her!

I didn't feel the need to check with multiple travel agents. I just did my own research online to see if the rates were better or not. That will also help you make sure that your destination is affordable and easily reached by your guests.The rates she gave me are pretty good so I'm happy. I've heard Babs name mentioned too. I don't think you can go wrong with any of them!

I forgot to mention that I also ordered stamps from Zazzle.com since I didn't like what the post office offered due to the cost of my save the dates.  I ended up ordering custom stamps for the save the dates and invites, and using the wedding cake stamp for our reply envelopes.

After a long period, I FINALLY got my save the dates out last week.  I initially planned on DIY, but i'm really just not that creative with arts and crafts and lacked the time to be able to do it the way I would have wanted it done as a slight perfectionist.  So I caved in and ordered save the date magnets from Magnet Street, and ordered my invites from Allurement by Rebecca (AWESOME!!!!)  I am so in love with my invites!!

I did an letter insert because I have a lot of older family that do NOT use the internet so to avoid a lot of questions ...this was the route we chose.  The insert is a word document that i placed on a design from Vistaprint, and it included our greeting, our TA info, and on the back of the insert, I included the hotel blocks, cost, and gift registry.  We bowed to family pressure regarding having a gift registry.  I attempted to make the inner envelope that was included with the magnet less plain so I ordered customized monogram stickers from Zazzle.com.  I also got gel glitter pens, rubber stamps and red and purple ink pads from Michaels. I traced around the sticker with the purple glitter pen and filled in the letter "O" in the word Love with the red glitter pen. Took a while but we're getting positive responses so that's great!  I whited out our last name and wedding site but you can pm me if you want to see our website. Hope you like!

I did a letter insert because I had a lot of people asking questions and we have a lot of older family that do not use the internet so this made it simpler.  the save the date included the website and is a magnet so it's a nice keepsake, but the letter provided a lot of the information that the invitation did not contain due to the size of my boarding pass invites.

Ok, let's try this again

Sure...here is my save the date.  I tried the DIY thing but I really didn't have time to dedicate as I needed so I ended up ordering magnets from Magnet Street.  I tried to add a bit o color to the inner envelope because I realized it was a bit too plain AFTER the fact. lol

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jennkn87 
 

 

Thanks so much for your positive thoughts! You are SOOOO right about reading and loving too many ideas you see on here! I'm already worried about budget and I don't even have my date set in stone yet!! I'm glad to hear you used Wright Travel...which agent did you book through? The one I have been talking to seems to be very good, answers my emails in a timely manner...even late at night!...and is seemingly very knowledgeable about the area I chose. Hopefully this continues! I have registered with The Knot, and Weddingwire...but I always find myself coming back to this site the most!! Thanks again for the gracious words of encouragement!

Your most welcome Jennkn87!  I'm happy to help as this site and other brides have helped me too!  I've spent a lot of time on here just lurking and occasionally writing, but i'm trying to actually participate more.  I booked through Virgilia, and she's great!  I think my coworker went through Patty?

I agree with you about this site most definitely.  It has helped me the most, but I have used all of them to gain better insight into exactly what I wanted because I had no idea about my vision, my colors, my location...nothing!  If you don't really have an idea of what you want then you will definitely get overwhelmed on here with the many many fabulous ideas!!  LOL

It was difficult, and also we changed our date/location because of home renovations that were done earlier this year.  My wedding was pretty much completely planned for St. Lucia 9/27/13 and when we changed the date to May we realized that St. Lucia wasn't going to work for us.  The airfare and travel arrangements were quite difficult for my family and friends considering everyone was coming from different countries.  It was EXPENSIVE, and my family is way larger than my fh family.  For those reasons, we had to start from scratch and we decided on Punta Cana because it was a bit more affordable for the crowd, and had more flights for the various people. It has finally all worked out, but it surely has been one serious roller coaster!

So any advice I can give to any newer members...i'm happy to do so!  The other advice I can give is try not to stress because planning a DW can be a bit more stressful than a stateside wedding at times.  Relax, and be comfortable with your TA and know that everything will be OK.  They are just not on US time so most places tend to move at a slower pace which can be frustrating...

Hi ladies!  Congrats on the planning.  This site can be overwhelming with SO MUCH wonderful information, but I would suggest using several sites to get a rounded set of ideas to help get your focus on exactly what you want.  I used The Knot (Weddingwire.com and Weddingbee.com just to name a few) to get a few ideas and also they (The Knot) have an online timeline directly on the site that you can use that might be helpful in creating a binder manually.  My other suggestion would definitely be to get a TA.  I also used Wright Travel Agency, and we even used them for our site visit last month.  Everything was great so I'm confident that once everyone is booked for our wedding, everything will turn out well.  One of my coworkers also used them a year and a half ago and she and her family had great reviews.

One other thing i'm going to suggest is that this site has a bunch of us brides that feed off of each other (in case you haven't noticed yet).  What this means is the flow of ideas make it very easy to end up WAY over budget.  Stick to your budget and your plans.  Nothing wrong with getting great ideas, but you can't use them all...LOL!

Just my two cents I thought I'd throw in there because that's been my experience so far.  I LOVE this site so it's easy to get caught up with the DIY projects, dresses, weight loss, long long lists of ideas, trinkets, and favors and then you are way over your budget and your fiancé has a heart attack.  Also, use this site to help keep you grounded with other brides since you might find that some of your family and friends might A) not like your plans initially so they give you hell or don't seem interested in your plans.  Other brides are in your shoes so it's much easier to vent, chat, etc. on this site to keep the people around you sane regarding your wedding and early planning pains which may include many changes....including the fiancé!

Good luck ladies, and happy planning!

We're getting married in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic at The Jellyfish Restaurant (Awesome place, we had a site visit and tasting in September).  Yes, I went through a travel agent (Wright travel agency).  We booked 15 rooms altogether because we already know we have a decent number of guests coming.  I did 2 room blocks with one of 5 rooms at the adult side of the resort then 10 rooms in the non-adult side.  We already need to add rooms to the adult block.  We have the option to add more rooms if needed in a few months.

I think we'll celebrate our anniversary on one date then maybe plan our yearly vacations (if we're able to) on the other date.

But in my opinion, you're doing great because I've been on here forever and i'm just now getting to 100

No, we're all lurking creepers...lol

LOL....we need to get it done so we can all breath easy!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Raquelita0715 

I am a couponer so I will be including items that I get from my bargain shopping. Will be stocking up on listerine toothpaste and etc. I'd like to stock them with stuff ppl will actually use rather than just looks nice and will be thrown out

I have more time on my hands now to coupon, but I notice very few wedding coupons right now.  I guess they are only for a season

This thread is AWESME!  Thanks for posting so much helpful information!

Yes, I noticed your name on all the posts i'm writing on so I think i'm helping out...hopefully.

I also need to stop writing paragraphs...LOL

I thought about doing the save the dates on my own, and by the time I could find some decent templates it just felt like time was working against me so I ended up getting save the date magnets from Magnet street.  The I bought legal size envelopes and put the save the date with small envelope in the larger envelope with an insert that including a message, information about our travel agent, the hotel and hotel rates, and our registry (which we were not initially going to do).  I just sent them out last week.

I decorated the outer envelope with a "love" stamp in red and the address label in dark purple.  I decorated the inner envelope with another stamp "Love begins with a smile, grows with a kiss" in purple ink and got a red glitter pen and colored in the O in Love (labor intensive).  I also put a sticker with our monogram on the inner envelope under the stamp and used a purple glitter pen to highlight the circle of the sticker.  Took me a little while but they were bad at all!  i'm going to post them separately at some point soon.