acireta

Save the Date We decided to do our STDs at the last minute; we did them as a replacement for Christmas cards in December 2010, mostly at my mom’s request. We got magnets, shimmery backing cards and envelopes from www.AGiftfulHeart.com. We got the return address labels for free from Vistaprint. Boarding Pass Invitations I fell in love with boarding pass invitations the moment I joined this site, and I had to DIY for financial reasons. I loved the results! Here’s my write-up and templates: http://www.bestdestinationwedding.com/t/76612/my-diy-boarding-pass-invitations-cruise-wedding. A few weeks before we left, I made and sent a gentle RSVP reminder postcard for the AHR, since I had included the AHR invite with the wedding invitations, and I wasn’t getting many responses for the AHR. I sent the reminder postcards at the same time I sent the invitations for the AHR to those folks we hadn’t invited to the cruise part of the wedding. Pre-Trip Packet Two months before the trip, we sent a packet to all booked guests to get them excited for the trip! They loved it! Here is the link to my write-up and templates: http://www.bestdestinationwedding.com/t/78031/pre-trip-packet-passport-packing-list-luggage-tags#post_1730684 We included a passport with info about the trip, packing list, wedding day timeline, weekly events and luggage tags. To be continued...

Beginning Planning We knew we wanted to do a destination wedding from a few months into our relationship, and we always used to joke about running off to St. Thomas to get married. When the time came to make a decision, Al was the one who really wanted a cruise wedding. I love cruising, so there was no objection from me. We chose our itinerary because it stopped at St. Thomas. We also knew we wanted to do a Spring Break cruise on Carnival. One of my BMs is a teacher, so I wanted to do an itinerary that wouldn’t make her miss any school. My first cruise was with my two BMs on the Carnival Liberty also, so everything just clicked and we booked. We had a nightmare of an experience with our first TA. Then I got smart and started working with Patty from Wright Travel Agency. I wish I had worked with her from the beginning. My family would have trusted her a lot more if they hadn’t had a bad experience with the first TA. Patty is fantastic, and she has put up with a lot of craziness from me and my family. I cannot say enough good things about her! Thank you, Patty!! Cruise lines’ wedding planning departments have notoriously bad reputations and high prices, so I decided to use an on-island coordinator. There are pros and cons to both ways of doing this, but we ended up going with Island Bliss Weddings, and Janelle has been great since the first email. I adapted a budget and to-do list from BDW member Lady Di. I have been super strict about sticking to our budget and adapting it regularly to keep us on budget. I also created a purchase list (a running sheet of crap I needed to order/buy) and a DIY organization chart, which helped me figure out craft supplies I needed, amounts of paper to order, etc. I asked my BMs to travel with us by sending them dress cards and starfish necklaces. We live in Chicago, two of my BMs live in DC, and the third is in Indianapolis, so there were a lot of phone calls and shipping to get everything set up with them. The “Will you be my bridesmaid†cards were from Etsy seller SDezigns, and the necklaces were from Overstock. I put the legend of the starfish on white paper and backed it with glittery teal cardstock. I was supposed to have three BMs, but one of them found out she was pregnant last summer, and she is due the week of our wedding with her first baby, a little boy! I can’t wait to meet him! Another BM is also pregnant, but will only be 16 weeks during the cruise so she can still travel with us. Blue is my and FIs favorite color, so I wanted to do a beachy kind of blue, with black and white as the accents, very minimal, with starfish and palm trees throughout. My FI had a lot to say about the SHADE of blue, so we settled on the Malibu color from David’s Bridal, since I figured that’s where we’d be getting the BM dresses. I didn’t make an inspiration board, but I did carry around a piece of Malibu cardstock in my wallet to make sure I was getting the right shade of shirts, ribbon, etc. throughout the planning. I made our monograms after playing around for weeks with fonts and styles. Here are some of our monograms that went on various wedding items: To be continued... Wedding Budget.xlsx Cruise Wedding To Do List.xlsx DIY organization.xlsx Purchase List.xlsx monograms for bdw.pptx

I can’t believe I’m actually posting my planning thread! This is going to be long… First of all, thank you to Tammy and the moderators who keep BDW a positive, wonderful community for those of us who are planning destination weddings of every kind. I would not have had such an easy or fun time planning this wedding if it weren’t for BDW. I know I will definitely still be checking BDW after the wedding to see all the new things the members come up with! If I have used any of your pictures as inspiration and not given you credit, I am very sorry. I will do my best to give credit where credit is due, and please let me know if I didn’t cite you!! Engagement & Rings Al asked me to marry him on our second anniversary, Halloween 2010, while we were spending our annual anniversary weekend at an indoor waterpark, a dorky thing we do every year. The ring is from Bella Cosa Jewelers in Willowbrook, IL, a great little shop. I knew it was coming, and it was more a matter of WHEN he asked, than IF he asked, since we’d been talking about it since three months into our relationship. This was us right after we got engaged, about to head down to the water park: These are our wedding rings from Michael Hill. Both are white gold with channel set diamonds. Al wanted a little bit of bling too! We also got ring finger tattoos a few weeks before the wedding. He has the key to my heart J To be continued...

Thanks everyone! Hope some of this stuff will help! Someone PMd me and asked me for more pics of the recipe cards, so here they are: Exceptional Mojito: Traditional Jamaican Rum Punch: Caribbean Rum Cake:

Love your tags! The font and the style are beautiful!!

That's my wedding day! :-) We start driving to Miami on Thursday, March 29. I cannot even handle it right now, this is going to be the longest two weeks ever LOL

Fun chaos! Moving and a wedding all at once? You are a brave lady! I just had my work shower today, they were so sweet - time to get my thank you cards out! Here's the cake they got - adorable and delicious!