I have moved...

Hey Ladies...

I have moved to a blog I think more befitting of me. Hopefully more honest and insightful. I think it looks better, too!

apinkbride.blogspot.com

See you there!

Lesson Learned

For all you brides-to-be who are in the planning process, allow me to share a story.

A story of how a quick decision could actually have been a good one.

The venue we chose for our ceremony/reception site is not "glamorous." It is not a modern studio or artsy museum like my dream wedding probably would have been held at.

When I went to see it, at the encouragement of my future mother-in-law, I was excited. When I showed up, I almost immediately thought that we would pass on the place. However, it was not so horrible that it didn't tug a few heart strings here and there when I looked around. The gazebo and bride's dressing rooms were beautiful and give me butterflies.

That day, we booked it, to my surprise. My fiance and his mother in law put down the deposit after about 10 minutes of talking(Thanks to them!!!). Basically, they were sold on it and though I didn't mind the place, I feel i would have had to come up with some blasphemous comment that even I didn't beleive to discourage them from being sold on the place.

And guess what? Six months later, all of my family and friends have only been excited to hear about the wedding. I've showed some of them the website of the venue, and have only heard good things spoken about it. Soon, everyone's excitement and the realization of what's really important about the wedding pushed the idea of "absolute, editorial-worthy perfection," left my mind for what I thought a wedding should be.

As if to furthrer seal it in the bag that this was our fateful place to marry, I happened to look at the pricing on the website the other day.

Their prices have SKY-ROCKETED!!!!

We booked our wedding there, for 150-200 guests, with tables, linen and chairs. We have two dressing rooms, and a dance floor. They provide clean up and free bar service. We have 12 hours the day of and time the day before to set up.

Their pricing has drastically changed. If we were to book now, for 50 guests, 8 hours total prep/celebration time, the price would be more than double what we paid.

Sometimes it is good to listen to your heart, and what the people who love you are telling you, instead of stubbornly holding onto a "vision" that probably couldn't have ever been absolutely "perfect" in the first place.

In the end, I feel really lucky that we got a cutesy place that we can afford that covers everything we need to enjoy time with our family and friends on our wedding day. I would choose a stress free, comfortable place over a difficult, unaffordable impressive space that we would only use for one day.

Thanks for reading!

Any Requests?

(Image Source)
I wanted to know if any of you had any requests for blogs. Right now my wedding seems sooo far away and has been at the back of my mind. I need to pump some life into this thing. Now that I'm thinking I'm sure I'll come up with stuff. In the mean time, if there's anything you're dying to know or are interested in, suggestions always help!

Talk to you soon!

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)