Manda123

Merry Christmas girls! Our families are all "skipping Christmas", so to speak, and we are mock packing all of our stuff today. We leave on Saturday at 6 am. EEK! I was just reading some of the fine print on the transat website. It says... Fragile or perishable articles, including medication or medical devices, money, jewellery, silverware, electronics, laptop computers, personal audio/video devices, negotiable documents, securities, samples of business documents or other valuables (other than articles of clothing) shall not be accepted as checked baggage. Any such items declared or found in checked baggage shall be subject to removal prior to the baggage in question being accepted for carriage by the Carrier. I was planning on checking all of the OOT stuff, including pepto and advil. Do you think it will be okay?

Looks great!! Nice job

JND - we've organized a Tulum ruins tour with Edventure. I will let you know how it goes when we get back!

Interesting discussion, ladies! Here's my experience: we ended up not doing a registry. I felt that if people saw we had a registry, they would feel like they would need to buy us a gift, even though we said "no gifts, please!". We aren't having an AHR, and we have almost 70 people travelling with us. I think people are spending enough to come, but I know some people - older family members especially - will get us gifts, regardless. My lovely BMs threw me a surprise wedding shower a couple of months ago, and since I didn't have a registry, they had a theme - Stock the Bar! Just an hour ago my FI and were counting the number of martini shakers we got - 4! The theme was a lot of fun, and we got a ton of bottles of wine, glasses, liquor, etc, but in retrospect, it might have been easier for everyone if we had registered somewhere in this circumstance. We have already received a few gifts from people who are and aren't attending the wedding in a couple of weeks. The gifts have been cash and gift cards. I think that if people don't know what you want, they will probably get you either cash or a generic gift card, which I think are great! All in all, we are happy with the decision we made not to have a registry.

Can't wait to hear about it, Nicole!

Love the dress! So pretty

Hey, We are using maracas as placecards. We have a little tag attached to the maraca with the person's name. They will be placed at each place setting. We ordered them awhile ago, but I know you can get maracas down there... Ihave been having luggage nightmares! It's not too early to start. I don't think I'll get a chance to start packign until the week before we leave, but I've already been harassing people to use some of their luggage space!

Love your flowers, J and G! I didn't even think about real touch flowers until you guys started posting these. Too late now! LOL. Just curious, what made you all go with real touch rather than fresh?

I also ordered convertible dresses for my BMs, but I got them from Beyond the Rack. I originally ordered the Victoria Secret dresses, but one of my sisters is fairly tall (5'10") and the dress was scandalously short on her.. so beware of VS if you have any BMs who are taller than average. BTR had the convertible Ravon dresses on sale once every couple of weeks in the summer. I haven't seen them for sale since then, though. These girls all gave great suggestions! I think it depends a lot on your budget. Good luck!

Thanks for the tips, Caroline. Did you book the group excursion with Air Transat ahead of time, or did you just wait until you got there? I think I might skip out DIYing menus. Thanks for that. For the ceremony, was there anything that you needed to personalize beforehand? Or did they have a standard script for you?

Hey, we are just in the process of doing this now. My TA is looking into it for us. I think that you can do a search on here and find a number of different excursion companies that will do ruins tours. I will let you know what my TA says.

This is a cool site! Never heard of it. Thanks for sharing Have an amazing time! Can't wait to hear all about it when you get home!

I got these bracelets and matching earrings for my BMs. Also, I picked up some nice straw beach bags at Aldo at the end of the summer. I also paid for their dresses. The etsy seller is RitaSoy. I have 4 BMs. All in all, I think I spent around $500, stayed in budget! Thanks for this info, J and G! I will be sure to make copies and get one notorized I would hate to lose that one silly piece of paper.

Thanks for the review! It sounds like you had a great time! The dinner serivce is slightly worrisome; we have a group of almost 70 now, so that could be a problem! The only big group meals we have are our welcome brunch, which is basically open to the resort but we have a reserved section, our rehearsal dinner at Portofinos, and the wedding, which will be private at La Laguna. I'd love to see any pics you have of flowers, centrepieces, etc. I have a lot of the same questions as JND! I;m debating doing menus and ceremony programs right now. Its been so tough communicating with Rocio about these issues, and now I feel like I am running out of time... YES! I'm having mini panic attacks when I think about it. We now have a few people who are possible last minute additions, so we are working all of that out, too. I;m realizing that we all chose a pretty expensive resort to get married at! Paying for the package and paying for the private reception and we are looking at an expensive day! Ah well..... I chose the more expensive package... Can't remember what its called. It includes having my dress steamed. What kind of shoes are you looking for??

It sounds like we are all having these last minute bookers. This is crazy!

JayKay, This sucks! DWs are tricky; some people see it as more of a vacation than a wedding, or, they don't understand how much planning goes into the wedding itself! There is such a misconception that DWs are easy, and we all don't plan anything and just show up and get married. I;ve been surprised how much I've heard this, and I;m sure that your FI's mom's friends fall into this group. WIth that said, maybe you are better off to give them the benefit of the doubt. They likely have no idea how much planning you've done, which sucks, but I think you need to include them in all of the wedding-related events. There will be WAY too much drama with your FMIL, which might take years to repair if you don't invite them. I think you'll regret it if you don't give them OOT bags, too. Is it too late to make extras? Anyway you look at it, these people are being thoughtless. WHy didn;t they RSVP like normal people!? LOVE THIS! Such a fun and unique dress

Yep, booked it a couple of weeks ago. You can also book for other people, too. Beware though - you need to put down a 50% downpayment. It was really easy. www.renovaspa.com . Had it all worked out and paid within a couple of days. I'd love to hear what Rocio answers... I've been waiting for a response for the same questions! Let me know

Are all Dollar Giants being bought out by Dollar Tree? Interesting... That would be awesome! I think my OOT buying is done, now I;m just putting everything together. I'll post a pic next weekend of everything and all the templates that I've made. Here is yesterday's project: Pepto packages! Couldn't find individual packs for a reasonable price online, so I bought the regular chewable packs from Wal-Mart. I think I spent around $35 for 144 tablets. Bought the little baggies at Dollarama, made the topper using a business card template in Publisher. Didn't want to put an ugly staple through my lovely cards, so I put a couple of dabs of hot glue on each side. Easy-peasy! The file is way up at the top of the post for some reason! LOL AandDpepto.pub

Ladies who were married at GP: did the WCs send you home with a translated wedding license? Or, did you need to wait for one to be mailed to you after you returned?

Well ladies, I took all of your advice and went and shopped around this afternoon and some big chain jewellery stores at the mall to see if I can get a better deal for my wedding band. Believe it or not, I couldn't find a store that actually carried platinum bands! They said they could order any style in platinum, but because of the shape of my rings, they'd have to have it custom made, and there just isn't enough time to do it before my wedding. I figure that by the time they would design it and such, it would probably be just as much as my original band - or more! So - I think I'm going to scrap the jacket band and get a single band for now, and maybe for our first anniversary I can get the matching band that goes around the other side Thanks for all of your advice!

AH! So exciting! Have an amazing time We will be thinking of you on Wednesday!

We are doing one per couple, one per single, one per kid. I;ll be making 40-45. I think it depends on how many you need to make, because if you are doubling up on EVERYTHING it can be quite costly. I budgeted $1000 for the bags, and should come in just under budget (I'm almost done! Just need afew more things for the kids). For the rooms where there are singles, we are only giving one of them a deck of cards. Pashminas are just going to the girls and sunglasses just to the boys. I think your best approach is to come up with a budget and work out your bag "must-haves", then go from there. You can easily get out of control with these things

AHHH!! It's December! Question about wedding programs: are you guys doing them? Are wedding ceremonies pretty standard? I sent my WC an email a MONTH ago asking for a breakdown of the ceremony and I haven't heard back from her. I want to put together ceremony fan programs this weekend, but chances she emails me back tomorrow are pretty much slim to none.... Any one have a program they woudl like to share ?

I was thinking of getting diamonds around half on both sides since it will be a jacket band. The jeweler said that the cost of having diamonds is pretty minimal; the reason it is so expensive is because of it needs to be made to fit my e-ring, and because it is platinum. What is blue diamond? Will they be able to custom make it? A regular shaped ring won't work! Do you think I have time to go to somewhere like Peoples and have it made? Thanks for the tip, AD. I might need to do that. I am going to email the jeweler and ask him how much it would be without the diamonds. Thanks I had the wedding blahs for a little while about midway through the plannign period. You will start to get into it as it gets a little closer! Just wait Next thing you know it will be xmas and time will fly after that.

Guess I should include a side view so you can see why I can't get just a regular band. The shape of it is awkward!