beachbride08

The longest it took me was 3 hours, but that was mostly because I couldn't make a decision on the bathroom and bedding stuff. FI met me and helped me narrow it down. The other 2 stores took less than an hour.

Quote: Originally Posted by LyssaB80 Hey Michelle - we are actually doing Maracas for the place settings as well - I found some here 7'' GENUINE MEXICAN MARACAS from Windy City Novelties I liked these because they were fairly inexpensive but didn't look as cheap as most of the ones I have seen.....not sure if this is what you are looking for but I know I like to have as many options as possible!! These are cute! I will probably end up ordering these. They are the nicest ones I've seen so far.

Those are great pics, and it looks like it was a beautiful wedding. Your looked beautiful. How funny are the kayakers?

Our bridal shower was yesterday and it was so much fun! My aunt and cousin planned the whole thing, and had help from my MOH and BM with set up and MCing the games. They had light up palm trees as the centerpieces, a palm tree cake (which was pink and green on the inside and tasted so good!), champagne flutes filled with pink and green M&Ms with flip flop coasters attached, and FMIL ordered candied almond flowers from Italy and I printed out a poem (thanks to one of the BDW ladies that found it for me!) to attach to the stems. We played how well do you know the bride, bridal word scramble, how many things in your purse and bridal bingo. The prize table had some great stuff, luckily I got some left overs! We got so many great gifts and not that many duplicates so that was good. We got some gift cards to go shopping with as well, and a lot of beach themed gifts. Here are some pictures, but I must warn there are some not so flattering pics of me! Haha! Our Bridal Shower - a set on Flickr

OK ladies, I got some shower pics. It took awhile to download them from my email and upload to flickr so I don't really feel like uploading them again to photobucket. Here is the flickr link: Our Bridal Shower - a set on Flickr There is a really stupid picture of me being a goof ball so just ignore that one. I meant to delete it.

Quote: Originally Posted by LindoBride2009 Michelle - I just noticed your ticker...less than 2 months, so exciting!! I know! It is so crazy how fast time goes by. We just had our shower yesterday and it was 2 months to the day for our wedding. I just ordered our raffia fans now that we finally have the final guest count since everyone has booked their trip. I don't know if you say the custom cake topper that jenleopard posted, but I just paid a deposit to have one made. I was torn if I was going to get a topper. I liked the swarovski crystal letters, but they were SO expensive. I've hit my limit of DIY projects so I was glad to find that one. It was cute, reasonably priced, and personalized. I still need to finish our wedding programs. I have the template done I just need to print out a sample to make sure I have the spacing and margins right before I start printing the final ones out for cutting and assembly. I need to finalize our menu and print out the menu cards. I got white table tents from PaperSource and am just going to print a few menus on card stock and glue to the table tents and place a few along the length of each table. I still need to find some maracas to tie the placecards to. I need to get the fake rings and glue those and the ribbon to the seashells for the ring bearers. I need to put together the welcome letters and itineraries. OMG-I have so much to do!

Quote: Originally Posted by kacie3344 We have people coming from all over the states, and I'm needing to narrow down some places to register that people can access from all over. My china that I love is at a little boutique in Dallas, and they don't have ordering online. Neimans has it too, but I'm afraid that sounds too snooty. I'm torn between Crate and Barrell... Pottery Barn... Williams Sonoma... Just wondering what everyone else is doing We registered at Crate and Barrel, Pottery Barn and Linens N Things. We just had our shower yesterday and only two people purchased gifts from Pottery Barn, but we did get a few gift cards from there. We mainly registered for our dishes and wine glasses there and a few other things. The majority of our gifts came from Crate and Barrel (most of our out of state guests that didn't come to the shower shipped gifts from C&. I wouldn't recommend LNT because they filed for bankruptcy and are closing down a bunch of stores. If people buy you gifts from a store that is closing, the items are not returnable. We only got a couple duplicates so we will be going to see if we can exchange the items when we get a chance. They put a black line through the UPC if you can't return and I don't remember seeing any of those when we were opening gifts so I hope we don't have an issue.

Quote: Originally Posted by LadyCheese Okay, I need some help from my November peeps...I attached the invitation I'm working on right now, how does it look? two or five eyes are better than one...I always screw up the spacing...so i really need some feedback pls. TIA I think the invitations look good. The only thing I noticed was that the one on the left doesn't match up with the one on the right. The only thing I could figure out was the & sign with your names is up higher on the one side than the other. I tried clicking on it to fix it for you, but when I click on the names they disappear? I'm not sure why it wasn't working for me, but maybe if you lower the & sign they will be even. I don't think it makes a difference, but it might cause you less stress cutting them out.

Quote: Originally Posted by LindoBride2009 The reception is my biggest concern too, so I'm glad we all have each other here for ideas! I also love the starfish tealight idea, very nice. Is anyone doing anything for decorations at the restaurant? I'm not sure what the resort does. I was going to use the candle holders and rose petals on the dinner tables. Depending on how many we use I may have them use the extras in the Vitrales Room. I'm hoping people will just be dancing in there so I wasn't too concerned about decorations there.

They are very pretty.

That is seriously the cutest thing ever! I want one! I'm going to email her right now. Thanks for sharing.

I love Halloween and can't wait til we move to a bigger place so we have a costume party. I LOVE the coffin invitations. I would be so excited to get one of those in the mail. Be sure to post pics of your party!

Hi Ladies, I just wanted to check in quick. We had our bridal shower today and it was amazing! My aunt and cousin put the whole together. We had a huge palm tree shaped cake and the inside of the cake matched our wedding colors of pink and green, and it tasted awesome! They had light up palm trees on each table as the centerpiece with champagne glass filled with pink and green M&Ms and attached to the bottom were flip flop coasters! Mike's mom had ordered these almond flowers. The Italian tradition is to give 5 candy almonds at a wedding, so she insisted on getting them. Luckily one of the BDW girls found a poem for me to use so I had printed out tags with the poem saying what they represented and FMIL tied all of them on. We got a TON of gifts! We only got a couple duplicates so that was good, and we got some stuff we didn't register for. Most of the non-registry items were beach related things that went with our theme so that was cool. I passed out the BM swag bags and ring bearer and flower girl gifts. Everyone loved their gifts so that was good. I managed not to cry the whole day until I got home and noticed the notebook that they got to write the gifts down, everyone wrote little notes in it on the other pages. I cried at that, but luckily that was at home so no one saw me but Mike. Ha ha! I brought my camera, but didn't take one picture! I was too busy mingling, but my cousin took a bunch which she said she is putting on a CD for me so I won't have pics til I see here next weekend. I will post them then, unless someone else from the shower sends me some.

I don't think it will last much longer.

Interesting! I can barely remember my passwords, now I have to make up fake answers to remember? Ugh!

Do you have to push the date back a whole year? Can you do it later in 2009?We started planning our wedding 18 months in advance and that felt like it was an eternity away, but really the time does go by so fast. I can't believe our wedding is in 2 months. In regards to the budget. Initially we wanted to stay within $8-10K, and now we are around $12K. However, that includes our trip cost which was a little over $5k for the two us. The rest includes photographer (and fee to resort to have outside photographer), videographer, wedding package, per person fee, dress, and all the wedding extras. We saved a bunch of money doing the STD and invitations ourselves. We could have saved even more, but I really wanted to do the message in a bottle so the postage kind of killed us. We also extended invitations to extended family which we didn't initially plan on inviting. If you stick to a small guest list you can definitely stick with a small budget. I would just make a list of what things you are flexible on, and definitely shop around for deals. I picked out my dress, but didn't buy it until the weekend after Thanksgiving when they had a sale. I saved money on my dress and got my headpiece for free. I bought some items on the forum that would have cost me more if I bought on my own.

Quote: Originally Posted by MsShelley YIPPEE!!!! Finally, I know, I haven't officially told the forum yet lol We are going down next weekend to look at reception places, so that is the date we chose, I just hope everything else falls into place!! That is awesome!

I am so ready for this day to be over! I am having such a crappy day, and I am really hating my job! I am excited for this weekend so at least I have something to look forward to. Tomorrow is Mike's b-day so we are going to dinner and to the Chicago Fire game. Then Sunday is our bridal shower. I am so excited for that.

Quote: Originally Posted by Kristy! Didn't MTV learn their lesson from last year? That's what I was thinking, but maybe they are giving her another shot since she has been getting her sh*t together.

Congratulations! Hope your wedding day is everything you planned it to be.

Quote: Originally Posted by SoontobeMrsE I love them! Those are the earrings I was talking about! Can you give me her number or contact info for the earrings? I would love those for my BM's! I will PM you her email. She does a great job, and can make any style you want. She actually did a smaller version with just one strand for my sister, and the necklace has an adjustable clasp so she can grow into it since she's only 5. Here's my dress BTW...it is ivory. I am wearing a fingertip length veil with a scalloped edge that has embroidery and beading along the edge. The veil is pretty ornate. I also want to wear a flower behind my ear. Once it's all on it is very Spanish looking. I LOVE your dress! That is really cute. The hairstyle will look really cute.

A lot of people say pop for soda, but for some reason that bugs me as I have always called it soda. A living room is a front room, but pronounced fronch room. Da Bears, da bulls, etc instead of the. We refer to where people are from based on what side of the city they live on, or their area code. Sneakers or tennis shoes are called gym shoes. You all is you guys (even if your referring to girls). I know there's more, but that's all I can think of.

Your pics are so cute. I love the pics with the horses.

I finally uploaded my hair inspiration pics to post (other than the one Tara already posted), and I think I finally decided on my bouquets. I am going to get the pink roses and the bridesmaids will get the ivory roses. I have some fat green ribbon that I can use to tie around all the bouquets.