Details, Details, Details

Did you know you can design your own Kleenex Tissue boxes? DIY addicted brides, brace yourselves.

If you head over to mykleenextissue.com, you will find examples of probably their number one target market: soon-to-be brides. I believe this product will tap into any bride-to-be's obssession with all things sentimental. I say this half jokingly, half critically, and half personally. (Okay, that's three halves, whatever).

I do think this is a cute purchase idea for any bride who feels compelled to design her own box. I mean, who doesn't need to have tissues on deck at a wedding? Of all the crazy things that have become wedding-related, this actually somewhat makes sense to me.

Each box is about $4.99 plus shipping. In order to make your own design, you have to install a free mode of software called Microsoft Silverlight.

If you wanted to downsize and not spend money on enough personalized tissue boxes to accomodate all of your guests, you could definitely print up a few to have at key locations or for certain people. To be a little more practical, you could buy enough boxes to divide among your wedding attendants who will be standing at the altar, Mothers of the the bride and groom, immediate family and for yourself in your dressing room beforehand.

As far as providing tissue boxes for everyone else? I'd rely on good ole Dollar Tree. ;)

Maybe I'll do what I suggest and buy a few. But I typically am very conservative with my money, so we'll see.

Wouldn't This Be Fun?

I came across a few blogs out there that mentioned doing a final dance for the bride and groom. It's one last chance to have the spotlight on the couple before they leave the reception.

As I was going through my CDs and uploading them laboriously to my new laptop, I came across Nelly Furtado's album, Loose. While I was a big fan of her debut into the music world, she has since declined on my list of favorite artists. I still think she's gorgeous!

Her last saving grace with me was her song "Showtime" from Loose. I think it's representative of some of the feelings many of us will experience (or have experienced) on our wedding day. And why not have one more "Look at me!" moment? That's what the whole wedding is for anyway, right?

Perhaps the hubby and I will groove to this song before we say goodbye to our beloved friends and family for the night. I think it'll be fun!

***Disclaimer: Ms. Furtado never made a video for this song. This was posted by some entertainment group not related to her. I just wanted you to be able to hear it. And the video gets a little graphic at 2:15!! Lol

In Love With Our Website!!!

I have been cheating on this wedding blog with *gasp* our wedding website!
I'm addicted to it. I can't leave it and it can't leave me. Seriously!

I log onto it, and always find new things to do. New pictures to add. Text that I can re-word or ways to rearrange the pages. I am surprised I find it so entertaining and rewarding, but it is.

I have my website through mywedding.com. On my website are the following pages:

Home Page
Our Story
Wedding Events
RSVP
Accommodations
Guest Book
Photo Galleries
Registries
Music
Contact Us

Mywedding.com is really, super easy. You just sign up and you can plug in information at will. As far as I know, you don't use html codes and I don't think the templates are flexible as far as design goes. But that works out perfect for me! I hate getting caught up in little details, and I had a completely designed website, for FREE! It looks nice and coordinates with our invitations (by chance, I found a template that did. Although, they offer packages where you can buy matching invitations to their pre-designed templates).

They suggest pages for you to use, and then you can customize four pages of completely different categories, if you need to. I've taken to searching random names of couples websites to get ideas on what to put on my website. (that's where I got the weddingmapper.com idea).

Because my wedding is still so far away (to me) I have found working on the wedding website to be the most rewarding, and the most satisfying when it comes to relieving me of my unending questions of how this wedding is all going to come together. It's the one place I can go where I can see all things in my wedding, and how it will be presented to our guests in one neat little package.

I will be putting the link to our website in our invitations. I'm thinking invitations will go out around Jan/Feb. This gives me plenty of time to work out all the kinks and get the website to perfection before any guests see it.

Perhaps I'll give you a blow-by-blow of each page on our website, and why I thought it was important, etc. Above is a screenshot of our homepage!

Is anyone else really pleased with how their wedding website is turning out? Leave a comment!

Seat Sign Inspiration

I would definitely like a shot like this from our photographer at our reception on the big day. This was what I had in mind for the heart plaques I previously blogged about. These signs are super cute! I'm planning on spray painting ours silver and using white lettering and white ribbon. Too cute!

(Photo taken from a featured wedding on essence.com)

Silhoutte Inspiration

This image is from flickr. I couldn't find one of a bride and a groom, but this is the idea I'm going for with the dressing room signs. Maybe I'll just use fancy paper and I'll have the words "Bride's Dressing Room" on there somewhere. And one for the groom, of course.

DIY Signs

I'm starting to wonder if I'm running out of "juice" for this blog. I'm a pretty low maintenance bride-to-be.

I could come up with a million things to do, becuase there are plenty of bandwagons to jump on in the wedding planning world. But I don't feel compelled to do most things.

I went out today just to browse around Dollar Tree and found something I knew could be a bonafide DIY project. As a matter of fact, there were soooo many things there that could be utilized for a wedding. To be honest, I think I grabbed these up just so I could show something to my blog readers, lol.

So. I bought these hanging plaques. I bought two each of the oval and heart shaped ones. I'm sorry about the picture quality-I can't find my camera and had to use the one on my cell phone. And it's so hard finding a decent backround at home so say hello to my plaid bed sheets, lol.

I'm thinking of painting a silhoutte of myself and my groom on each of the oval shaped plaques to hang outside of our respective dressing rooms. The hearts will be hung on each of our chairs at our table at the reception and say "bride" and "groom."

I'll try to find some inspiration photos of this to give you an idea.

Wedding Map Idea...

So, some brides are super crafty and talented and know their way around a computer. They choose to make cutesy little maps to match their invitations and that's all good.

But me? I'm all for the easy way out on things (I feel) I can skimp on. Especially since I don't want a lot of inserts in the invitations.

That's where http://www.weddingmapper.com/ comes in. Here you can make an accurate map of your own, you don't have to worry about drawing the lines yourself (isn't that ludicrous?) and there are cute icons to show your guests things like your ceremony/reception sites, parent's homes, and any other location pertinent to various wedding events.

This way your guests can see everything all laid out on one map. Much better than having them lookup directions for each individual event, right?

Above is a screen shot of mine, with the address of my ceremony site blocked out to reserve privacy.

The online version is interactive. Guests (or you) can print the map and directions as well at will.

It is really easy to set up your own map. You don't have to necessarily have all of your addresses ready-you can just search your location and the results will pop up (so far all of mine have been accurate). You can type in inforamation for each location that pops up in a comic-book like bubble for guests to read. You can even add photos and links to the business' website if you want. There are also great zoom in features.

Initially, the map is free. However, if you would like to upgrade your map to include more icons, you can pay a one-time fee of 9.95. I say, work with the basics first, and then see if you want to spruce it up (I'm sure some of you will!)

The free version of the map comes with icons for airports, hotels, residences, restaruants, ceremony/reception sites, entertainment, and attraction spots. You cna upload photos as well.

I will definitely reserve a link for this on my wedding website. Let me know if any of you check it out!