simba1234

Wow, this is definitely new. When I got married at the chapel I never saw any 'guidelines' nor did anyone ever even mention it to me at all. I wore a strapless dress and so did all my bridesmaids.

What an ahhhh...mazing wedding!! I LOVE your color palette. I've never been a huge fan of purple but you just made me one. Everything looked stunning, modern and classy. Congrats!

Awwwww, you just gave me goosebumps all over. Awesome story! CONGRATS:)

You sound really, really stressed out and it sucks because you'll only get to do this once (hopefully) and you should enjoy it without all the outside negativity. I know it's easier said than done but try to forget about everyone else and do what makes YOU happy. Yes, be selfish!! I'm not a selfish person at all and I tried my best to accommodate all my guests as best as I could...but then I let it go! You can't make everyone happy and you shouldn't. This is YOUR wedding, your big day and you get to be a little selfish. You can tell your guests that their friends are not invited. You can tell people that you chose to get married in Jamaica because that was the best option for you. You can tell people that you will understand if they can't make the trip, but you're still getting married in Jamaica. You will feel so much better when you stop worrying about what everyone else thinks and says, and just do what makes you happy. You don't want to look back on this time and regret that you didn't enjoy planning your own wedding. And even worse, you don't want to look back and regret that you didn't get married in the venue of your dreams because of outside influences. These are your memories that you're creating. To everyone else, your wedding is **just** another wedding of the many they will attend in their lifetimes. But not for you. This is YOUR wedding, the one that you'll remember forever and you should plan it your way. Forget what they say. It'll be very liberating when you make the decision to forget about the world and do what you want to do. I know it's easier said than done, but I stressed over the smallest things when I was planning, and there came a point where I decided to let it all go and be a little selfish. From that moment on, everything was so much smoother and I enjoyed the planning so much more. In hindsight, none of those things were worth getting stressed out about. I ended up having the wedding of my dreams and one that I will never ever forget. When your wedding day comes, none of this will matter.

Kmsatter - I had 55 guests and they fit in the chapel just fine and with room to spare. No chairs were necessary.

You have to choose the "travel" photobook style from the drop down menu. That book style has all those images on the background. The rest of my book had maps in the background and other travel themes images. I used a few pics that friends and family sent me but mostly for the welcome cocktails and rehearsal dinner because my photographer wasn't there. But 99% of the ceremony and reception pics are from the professional photographer.

They have these promotions ALL the time! Just sign up for their newsletter and they'll email you everytime they have a promotion. Sometimes they have as much as 75% off!! Right now they have a buy one, get one free promotion so if you buy 30 books, you only pay for 15 and get the other half free. That's the deal I got when I bought mine but then the following week they had a 65% off deal which kind of ticked me off:)

Thanks! They were all printed and sent via US Postal mail. I think that's one of the things that made it really special. Nowadays hardly anyone prints photos anymore. Everyone sends online slideshows and CD's but to receive a printed mini travel book that told a story through pictures really made everyone re-live the week and they absolutely loved it. Plus the quality of the final printed book was amazing. Everyone had something to say about how great the colors looked when printed. The booklet was printed on high quality heavy stock paper and the finish was matte so it looked great.

I negotiated the welcome cocktails for free for getting such a big group to book at the resort. That's something I always tell brides to do. We sometimes don't even realize how much bargaining power we have with these resorts. If you haven't already booked and signed your contract I would definetly ask. Especially if you're staying at an all inclusive. My resort wasnt an AI and I was still able to get a two hour free welcome cocktail reception. At an all inclusive it should be even easier because the drinks are already free and all they need to provide is the venue. It can be a closed off section by the pool or something like that.

Mypublisher.com sends you each individual booklet wrapped in a clear plastic envelope which protects them and makes them look even more professional:) To mail them out, I left the booklets in the plastic wrapper and put each one in padded/bubble envelopes from the post office. But I really didn't mail that many out. I had 55 guests at my wedding and I only gave one booklet per couple,so roughly 22 booklets went out. Some of them I just hand delivered (i.e. my mom, brothers, in-laws). So, I think at the end I mailed out about 16 booklets which made it more affordable. As a side note to everyone thinking of doing these.... what really made this booklets special is that I made it ALL about the guests and not us (the bride & groom). I made sure that there was a picture of every single guest in there (I made sure I didn't forget anyone). There were barely any pictures of us except for the cover page and the last page of our trash the dress session. If the booklet has tons of pictures of the couple I think it defeats the purpose and won't make your guests as excited. I made everyone relive the week and they loved seeing pictures of themselves having fun.

Mypublisher had a free shipping promotion so I didn't pay to have them shipped to me. I don't remember how much I paid to mail them To guests - it was a couple of bucks. Maybe $1 or 2?

Thank you! I just realized that for some reason the picture of the cover page has some weird image over it so I'm re-posting it..

Thank you all for the inspiration! I ended up doing a slightly different (but better IMO) version of this idea. My guests were wowed and really genuinely loved them to the point that they show them off to everyone who will listen lol. I posted an update of how I did it on this thread... http://www.bestdestinationwedding.com/forum/thread/74938/my-amazing-and-unique-thank-you-cards-update-with-pics

A long time ago I started a thread asking for opinions on a crazy idea I had for thank you cards (I get these crazy ideas in my head all the time:) At the time I wanted to create a mini magazine. Here's my original thread: http://www.bestdestinationwedding.com/forum/thread/60575/is-this-a-crazy-idea-pls-give-your-honest-opinion Well, I wanted to give you guys an update because the idea evolved into something different but really awesome and unique. I realized that doing a magazine would be more work, more expensive and not very durable. So instead I decided to do a mini photo book. The front cover had one of our Trash the dress pictures and it simply said "Thank You...." On the inside I told a story through pictures of the whole wedding week. I started with pics of the welcome cocktails, then moved on to the rehearsal dinner, next I had pics of the ceremony, then the reception and finally ended with a few pics of our trash the dress. On each page, I had really short one liners thanking guests for different things. So for example, Page 1 said "Thanks for traveling the distance...", page 2 "thanks for the great memories", page 3 "thanks for the laughter"... Page 4 "thanks for being there in our most special moment" etc... Basically almost every page thanked them for something. The front inside cover was a blank page so I wrote a personalized hand written thank you to each guest on that page. I sent them out already and EVERYONE was absolutely amazed by them. Every single guest called me and the first word out of their mouths was "WOW". Then every single one of them went on to Thank me for the thank you cards lol...when was the last time you saw that happen? It was really funny to hear people saying that. It's been about 7 months since I sent them and everytime I visit someone I see the booklets sitting right there on their coffee table or somewhere else you can see right away. Everyone showed it off to their friends and co-workers. Below are some pics of the book. I did these through Mypublisher.com which is super, super easy to use! All you do is drag and drop your pictures where you want them. The print quality was absolutely AMAZING and stunning! The colors were vibrant, the pages were premium and high quality. It looked really professional. A lot of people thought I got these as part of my photographer package. I LOVE mypublisher.com (you would think I'm a spokesperson for them Each book is small - the size is 5.75 x 7.75 (if you want a visual, just take a piece of paper and fold it in half - it's about that size). The cost for a booklet with 20 pages is $9.99 BUT they have these great promotions all the time so you can get a really good discount. In my case, I took advantage of a buy one, get one free promotion so each book came out to less than $5. I sent one to each couple. If you think that's too much money, they have a new even smaller booklet now which is only $2.49. This is something you can only pull off with a DW because it's less people so you can include pictures of everyone in the book AND you won't break the bank sending one to everyone. Hope this inspires someone to do something different. I wanted to really find a way to thank my guests in a unique way because not only did they take their personal time and money to travel far, they also gave us the best gift of all by giving us a week that we will never forget for the rest of our lives. It was worth the $100 bucks or so I spent on them.

My cousin had her destination wedding the year before mine and I saw how stressed out she was because she left everything for the last minute. She didn't get to enjoy any time with the family because she was always off running errands. So, I learned from her experience and was absolutely determined to get as much out of the way as soon as I got there so that I could try to relax the rest of the week. That's my big advice to you - get as much as you can out of the way early. I was the most relaxed bride the 4 days leading up to my wedding and spent a TON of quality time with my guests. As a side note - I did a site visit a few months before where I did food tastings and hair & make up trials so that helped out a lot because I didn't have to do it the week of. Here's what my week looked like...hope this helps:) Sunday (arrival day) - I arrived at the resort around 1pm and went to the local market to buy some local items that were still missing for the welcome bags (i.e. mini tequilla bottles). I started assembling all the welcome bags right after and was done that evening. I brought them down to the front desk. I had already made arrangements from home to have them distribute the bags to guests as they checked in. Then I moved on to assembling the favors which we worked on thru the night. Monday - I went to do some food tastings that I hadn't been able to during my site visit a few months before. I went through the final schedule of events with my WC. I paid off any balance that was due. I had my dress and the groom's tux steamed to smooth out the wrinkles it encountered during travel. Took all the favors, cake topper, guest book, flip flops (which would be handed out to guests during the reception) and aisle runner to my wedding coordinator. Went for a walk thru of the venue for the welcome cocktail reception. Tuesday - All the errands were pretty much done so my future hubby and I just enjoyed some alone, down time before everyone arrived. We hung out by the pool, went sight seeing, had a nice romantic dinner. Wednesday - All of my guests (55 people) had already arrived on Wednesday. We had a welcome cocktail reception that evening around 5pm. It was a great way to have everyone mingle and get to know each other. By the end of the night EVERYONE was one bigg happy family and loving each other. The welcome cocktail was probably one of the best things I could have done. It was a good way to break the ice. Thursday - Relaxed all day by the pool and beach with all our guests. In the late afternoon I went to get a massage and my nails done. That evening we had a short rehearsal at the chapel (about 15 minutes) and then had an awesome rehearsal dinner on the beach which turned into a really fun beach party. Friday (WEDDING DAY:)- I woke up around 8am, had a good breakfast and took a shower. My hair & make up guys came over at 10am and were done by 12pm. My photographer came over at 12:30 for pictures with me, my mom and the bridal party. At 2:30 I started to head over to the chapel for the ceremony. The ceremony started at 3pm and ended at 4. From 4 -5pm my hubby and I took pictures. The Reception started at 5:30 and ended at 11pm.