KRama

Fantastic review Sunandsand! I loved how you were so postive and excited throughout the whole thing until the travel section...than your "voice" morphed into "don't mess with me" mode. Awesome. I hope you get everything worked out with the TA...let us know what happens! Oh, and LOVE your dress!

Quote: Originally Posted by Boo Oh wow, getting it local would be fantastic!!! I havent heard of it, its 7th Ave and Is that what the store called Pashmina? wow, this would be great to find out name and address, really appreciate the tip! It's on 7th between Centre and 1st St, right across from the train station. It used to be an arcade. It's funny because I look at that store every single day waiting for the train and I couldn't tell you what it's called!

Awesome thread girl! And thanks for Enrique!!

You know what's funny? It took hubby and I THREE days to notice that our wrist bands were a different color than the rest of our group! We never did end up checking out the Royal Golden section since we were always dining and hanging out with our friends and family. We chose Coba for the same reasons as HereFishie. It was a good couple of hundred dollars cheaper and we like the newer, bigger rooms. We didn't mind at all being closer to the pool than the beach and we could eat at any of the three resorts (although they prefer you to eat only at your own resort's buffet...)

Quote: Originally Posted by Princess402 Oh WOW this dress is gorgeous!!! Lucky girl Ha, me too! FI says "you don't need to watch that anymore!", but I still do in secret, hehe. My hubby says this too! I think we need a "Say Yes to the Dress" addicts support group...er...thread...

Quote: Originally Posted by msjulie5475 I enjoyed reading your review. Kudos to your husband's proposal! Thanks! He had to work really hard for it to come together. Since I thought we were having a party, ALL of my friends were in on it!

Love all of these! I think almost everyone has the standard "wedding party jumping" pic. I love mine too! Although it also appears to be proof that "white men can't jump". HAHAHA

Quote: Originally Posted by jennster_04 Hey, Love the thread, Do you have templates to share? What kind of templates are you looking for? I didn't do a whole lot of DIY stuff...so not me, but I did create a pre-travel brochure for our guests. Here's the link: KRama's Pre-travel Brochure

Love this thread! Here's one of mine. This was right after our ceremony. The WC handed out rose petals to all the guests before I came down the aisle so I had no idea this was going to happen!

Quote: Originally Posted by cookiemunchkin Yup, I'm in Calgary and would love to get together and chat! I think I saw July 29 somewhere on this thread... is that when you are thinking of meeting for drinks? I have a question for those of you getting married in January and February 2011... would you mind sharing with me what the package cost per person is for where you are booked? My TA gave me three huge books of resorts to flip through, but going through them isn't exactly easy to do lol. It would be great to get a feel for what different resorts may cost, would help me narrow down my location. I'm mostly concerned for the costs of my guests, since we've given them less than one year notice and a lot of them now have kids. So far I've been quoted around $1700 for Dreams Tulum, and am wondering if its possible to find something good that is priced lower than that. I found that to be the most frustrating part of wedding planning! I also was given books of resorts to look through but I was thinking "well these are all gorgeous but how do I know which ones are less than $1600??". We picked the Gran Bahia Principe in the Mayan Riviera which I would HIGHLY recommend! We booked with Air Canada Vacations, direct flight from Calgary, for $1549/person.

I've read through this whole thread and I'm completely baffled by your FI's idea of a wedding! The reception is the BEST PART of a wedding! That's the time you celebrate your marriage with all your guests and show your appreciation for their support by spending some quality party time with them! I know Dreams is much more expensive than the resort we chose (which is why we chose the one we did!) but it sounds like you are getting very reasonable prices. Frankly though, I think $75 centerpieces are rediculous if you're looking to save money and like OceanWonderland said...no one will even remember them anyways! I didn't even worry about centerpieces and the resort took care of it for me. Our head table had the flower arrangement from our ceremony and the guest tables had a few vases with a single bird-of-paradise flower and candle lanterns. It looked beautiful! Maybe ask your WC what the table set up looks like. I bet they have their own version of table decor that won't cost you anything. As for flowers, this was another expense that I didn't understand. How many BM's do you have? I had 4 and I got them each a bouquet of REAL flowers that only cost $35 each. If you chose flowers that are in season, it shouldn't be expensive at all! I'm beginning to think you're FI hasn't been to too many weddings or he's only been to super stuffy traditional ones. For his cousin's wedding, after they played football, did they have a dinner and dance? I'm guessing yes. Did they all have a great time? I'm guessing yes. Remind him of this fact! Find out exactly what he doesn't like about a "reception". Does he hate the speeches, bouquet/garter toss, first dance? Maybe you can compromise on those. Like "ok, it's really important to me to have a father/daughter dance, but I don't really care about the bouquet toss". We only had our first dance since we only had a handful of singles and it seemed awkward to just hand my sis the bouquet. This is the day you're getting married so THIS is the time to have your dream wedding! Not 10 years from now when you're toting 2 kids and 10 extra lbs! (hahaha) You'll figure out a way to do it within budget. Take it from someone who's just done it: the little things are nice but they don't matter! You can get so caught up in OOT bag crap, place cards, programs, etc, that you're head (and wallet!) can explode. The best parts you'll remember are the times you spent with your guests and how much fun you had with them and your new hubby! Tell that to your FI's sister! haha

HOT HOT HOT!! Those are amazing and I applaude you for getting your hubby to do it!

3 months between us. I just had my birthday in June and his is in Septmeber so I'm currently 27 and he's still 26.

I ordered the exact same mugs as you Angela! Mine turned out awesome and I had a great experience as well. As a fellow Canadian, I must warn you...we received our mugs in April and when we returned from our wedding in May we had a customs/brokerage bill of $64 waiting for us. We had ordered 50 mugs though and still thought we got a great deal.

Quote: Originally Posted by jjohnson30 i was just wondering i know some people used different DJ's i was just wondering who you used and how much they were and if you were happy with them?? We used the resort DJ and were quoted $210/hr for 3 hours (not sure if that's exactly what we were charged since I never did see a final copy of our bill!). We were happy with him but a bunch of our group scaned his laptop while he was playing and were selecting songs all night so we probably could have gotten away with just renting the sound equipment and using an ipod for cheaper.

Well, being from North of the border we actually had a four day weekend since Canada day is July 1st and my company gave us the 2nd off as well! Fun question! Even though it terrifies me that I'll actually be responsible one day for an infant, I don't think we're too far off! We've been together for 10 years already, we bought a house last December, we both have good jobs and have always wanted kids...I'm think maybe sometime next year Eeeeekkkk...(that's excited and nervous all at once!)

We did the same thing as MayanLily. We went with Air Canada vacations and it worked really well. We just didn't have the cash to put down deposits on everyone's behalf and we ceratainly weren't willing to lose money on guests that couldn't commit. Once we found out that we'd have to put deposits down within two weeks of the quote we sent out an email STD telling people the dates we wanted to travel, that we were looking at 5-star resorts in the Mayan and that when our next email came around they'd have two weeks to call our travel agent and put down their desposit. About a month later we updated our quote, sent out the official STD's and we had EVERYBODY book on time! We had a few couples that decided to book last minute and it all worked out!

Quote: Originally Posted by Patourn Hi ladies, Also for those of you that had a DJ instead of using an ipod....did the money go to the wedding coordinator for her to pay him or did you pay him directly yourself? We were told before we left that the DJ would be paid separately in cash when we met with our WC but when we got there Karla told us the DJ would be charged to the final bill so we ended up paying for everything except the videographer at checkout.

Quote: Originally Posted by jjohnson30 Krama, i was just wondering how much did your flowers in total cost. what did your mothers coursage look like?? do you have pictures of your bridesmaid flowers. Here was my budget breakdown for my flowers. I can't for the life of me remember where I got the prices from. I think it was someone on this forum and I never did get a final invoice to see what the actual prices were! I just know the total costs were very close to what I had calculated so we didn't question it. Bride Bouquet: Included Bridesmaids Bouquet: $36 x 4 (estimate) = $144.00 Corsages: $16 x 2 (estimate) = $32.00 Groom Boutonniere: Included Additional Boutonnieres: $11 x 7 (estimate) = $77.00 Hair flower: $6 (I asked for one but Janet brought 5 so all the girls could wear one. I don't think I was charged extra for this) Here's my bouquet with the BM bouquets. They were just a smaller version of mine: And this is the best pic I could find of the corsage that our mom's wore: They didn't ask me what I wanted the bouts or the corsages to look like, they just went off the pic I gave them for my bouquet. They all turned out great! If you have any more questions, ask away!

One bride on this forum really put it into perspective for me and I used this example all the time when people had comments about having my wedding in Mexico: So there's gang violence in New York. Does that mean you'd be afraid to vacation in California? Because that's about how far away the violence in Mexico is!

Quote: Originally Posted by Mrs D To Be! I can't believe you all have your pro pictures back already...i'm soo jealous! I'm being very impatient!!lol I was lucky that one of my good friends was our photographer so she busted her butt to get our photos done in 4 DAYS!! I can't imagine waiting so long for them! Hang in there though...it's worth it!

Quote: Originally Posted by MayanLily Awesome pics Kayley! Where did your FI and GM get their outfits? I really need to get mine on top of that! Thanks! DH's suit was from the MEXX outlet in Westhills during their end of season sale last August. We got it for $139! DH ended up finding the exact same pants at the MEXX outlet in Deerfoot this April and bought the shirts there too.

Oh yeah, me too! I didn't know they were going to throw petals at all after the ceremony either. There's a great pic of my hubby and I laughing with petals falling all over, and the aforementioned red carpet:

Amazing pics! I love the set up for your ceremony and reception! Looks gorgeous!

My wonderful friend Julie who was our photographer has posted some of our wedding pics on her blog! JB2 Bailey Thought I'd share!