KCB2011

I searched everywhere for passport invites as I had a similar # to send out and couldn't afford $5-10 per invite so I ended up DIY-ing them. You could purchase the $10 template from ayleebits.com and then have a printing company print and cut the inside pages so all you would have to do is the covers which are not too time consuming. You would have to spend a little time putting all of the information into the pages but that probably wouldn't take too long. I definitely found that the most time consuming part was printing and cutting the inside pages.

LOVE #2 and totally think it has a WOW factor! (I think maybe more wow factor than #3?) But all three are very pretty!

I tried on what felt like a million dresses (I think it was actually closer to 30...) - I also did not have a crying "this is it!" moment. I knew it was the dress I wanted because I didn't want to take it off! I had LOVED some of the previous dresses I tried on but then would say, "Okay, let's try the next one" but when I tried THE dress on, I didn't want to take it off! I would definitely recommend that you try to limit the amount that other's opinions influence your choice - I know my Mom likes bling and I do not so she thought that all the dresses I liked were too simple but in the end, she ended up being in love with my choice and she said it was exactly what she thought I would choose. The key thing about that is that it was exactly what I would choose, not her or anyone else, YOU have to love it and it has to be "you" or you won't be comfortable!

They look great! I am doing luggage tags for my place cards too (not quite as nice as mine will be DIY). Where did you get yours?

I think the duty is based on the cost/value of the stuff - I'm not sure what the limit is but I know for smaller/cheaper items I wasn't charged duty but I definitely was on my bags and towels (which I ordered a lot of and therefore the total cost was high). Not 100% sure though!

Dressa and MissTaken - your pics are both gorgeous! Looks like you had a fantastic wedding. DANA!! congrats and welcome back, so glad that things turned out well and hoping that the many bumps along the way were just minor! Can't wait to hear all about it. Noemi - your dress is really pretty, I love the skirt! Sabrina - Welcome! This is an awesome thread for DLR brides. If you have the stamina to read through the 200+ pages it is VERY helpful as there are not a ton of DLR brides! Whew, I have only been gone for 24 hours and so much action on this thread all of a sudden! haha. I posted a thread on my passport invites in the DIY forum since I FINALLY got them all sent out and am hoping that people will be sending their RSVPs soon! Also - dress, flowers and chair sashes have all been ordered so I've had a productive week!

If you are not home, they will leave you a thing that says they tried to deliver but will be back the next day and the driver usually writes the amount you owe on it. If you know approximately when it will be delivered you can call UPS and get the amount you will owe in duty/customs - then you can leave a cheque for them (made out to UPS) in an envelope that tells the driver that he/she can leave the package (and tell them where to leave it...ex. on the front porch, behind the flower pot). This is how it worked for me multiple times when I wasn't home for delivery and it wasn't a problem!

For the alignment I found it helpful to turn on the gridlines on Word (under the View tab) - On my printer I had to do the double sided manually (wait for all the first pages to print, then re-insert the pages in the printer for the second page to print) so I had to check the "manual duplex" box on the print settings. I know that some printers don't have this capability, but you can still specify only to print page 1, then go to print again and print only page 2. Like I said, if you print a couple trials, you can see how far off they are from lining up, then go to the Home Tab and on the far right click "select" then "select objects" - make a box with the arrow around EVERYTHING on one of the pages (ONLY ONE PAGE), then hold down CTRL and use the arrows to move everything side to side (make sure you don't click anywhere after this or it will unselect everything and you will have to do the select objects thing over again). Vertically, both pages had to be even when compared to the gridlines, but horizontally, both pages did not match up on the gridlines (one looked way further to the left than the other). Does that make any sense or is it more confusing? haha. To get the right order, I printed the template with just page numbers on it, then I cut it out as though I was making the invite and that's how I knew what page I wanted things to be on - I made a print screen of the two pages that I printed back to back to get my inside pages if that helps:

I finally finished my passport invites and I'm pretty happy with the way they turned out considering how much work they were! I should also mention that I am a very frugal bride so my goal with these was to save as much money as possible. I used the free template from www.ayleebits.com (which was so helpful) and then just changed colours and added background graphics. I thought I would post a thread on these because I had SUCH a hard time figuring out how to do this and where to get everything I needed here in Canada for reasonable prices so here is my list of supplies etc (brands in italic) as well as pics of my finished product. Steph's how to was posted after I had already started so I could only use a couple tips from there but it was definitely helpful so thank you Steph! Cover Paper: Stardream Fairway Metallic Paper - Text weight (81lb/120gsm) from www.paper-garden.ca - I couldn't decide whether to do this paper or the heavier card stock (105lb) but this paper was perfectly fine for me. Front Cover: Because Metallic Paper doesn't absorb ink very well (I have an inkjet printer), I decided to stamp the covers so I ordered 3 custom stamps: Passport, Kelsie & Tom July 19, 2011 and the palm tree from www.simonstamp.com - I got "Custom Art Mount Stamps" where you can pick your sizes, fonts, etc. The stamps were SO cheap and shipped really quickly for very cheap shipping cost (~$3) - they have free shipping if your order is over $40 but my order was cheaper than that. I used a Color Box (Gold) stamp pad - from Michael's - definitely the best one I tried and the ink was dark enough that the gold colour showed up well on the green paper. Archival Brilliance (also from Michael's) was also really good and would work if you were using different colours (their gold colour was a little too light for what I wanted). Page 1: I used the same palm tree graphic from our STDs and made it a watermark (Recolor - "washout" under Format Picture in MS Word) Passport Stamps: I made a bunch of different ones on MS Powerpoint (using shapes and text boxes) and I made them personalized to our dates, location, etc. I made these watermarked the same way I did for the palm tree on the first page and arranged them randomly on the pages behind the text. I made these Passport type stamps the same way - they just aren't watermarked. Last Page: I printed the little note from us on linen paper (see below for brand etc) and glued (Elmers Craft Bond stick from Michael's) it on to the inside back cover - I tried card stock and it was didn't stick very well. This actually made the back cover seem thicker. (I used a page from the ayleebits template to get the correct size for the note and I just printed 4 per page) Paper for inside pages: Staples Cover Stock AND Synergy Bond Linen finish paper (also from Staples) - I started with the cover stock but ran out and wasn't going to buy a whole package for 10 more invites! FYI: both weights of paper worked perfectly fine so whichever you prefer would work - if you had more pages than me, you might want to use the lighter/thinner paper. I used a cheap paper cutter (Fiskars) that I bought from Michael's on sale to cut all of the pages - then I used a corner punch (Marvy Uchida) to round the corners of all the pages - also bought at Michael's on sale. I folded everything in half so I knew where the line was that I needed to staple and then I staple from the outside. The last thing I did was stamp the front as the ink wouldn't really soak in to the paper so I didn't want it to smudge. A few notes: - I would suggest leaving the finished invites out to let the ink dry on the cover as there were a few that I smudged because the ink hadn't had time to dry - It was never completely dry/soaked in but it was not a problem once I started letting them sit for a bit. - I printed everything on my home inkjet computer with no problems but it did take a couple trials (I just used grayscale printing on cheap printer paper) to make sure that the inside pages were perfectly lined up for printing double-sided. Hopefully this will help someone!

I decided on an outside photographer for a couple reasons: 1. The hotel photog charges a TON for extra photos beyond what is included in your package (if you get a package) as well as charging a huge amount of money for the DVD of all the photos 2. The hotel photog also only includes ceremony pictures in the packages so if you want any picture of your groups/bride & groom from the little photo shoot following the ceremony those are all extra money ($15 per photo is what I was quoted) - this information is directly from Tropical Pictures not from the Dreams Wedding Coordinator. I am going with HDC which gives me more flexibility and more pictures for way less money!

I finally picked my shoes and my dress is supposed to be here May 15, YAY!! I'm getting most of the major stuff out of the way now but having issues with a very SLOW response time from our WC. It is really busy down there right now so it's understandable but July is only a couple months away and I have a lot to figure out still!! How's everyone's planning coming together?

I was at the Shoppers at Market Mall - they weren't a sale item though - looked more like a "seasonal" type item and there were quite a few when I was there. If you go to the MM shoppers - they are at one of the last aisles before you get the the Canada Post thing in the back corner and they are at THAT end of the aisle (not the end closest to the checkouts). Not sure how much they were though but I think they were under $5 each

I have to agree - I definitely think it is better to steer clear of asking for money. Since wedding gifts are a gesture not a requirement, I think that you kind of just have to be grateful that people are getting you anything. Nowadays, most people give gift receipts with their gifts anyways, so you can return the item if you get something you don't necessarily need. And even if you do have a "cash registry" of some sort, you will still end up with some gifts because there are people that like to give gifts not money. I'm a little biased on this though because I'm not a big fan of registries of any kind (gift, cash, honeymoon etc.) as I feel like it gives the impression that gifts are expected. Our parents have asked us for some ideas as people have been asking them what we may need/want so I gave some suggestions but really I want to get whatever people want to give me, whether that is a gift, cash or nothing at all. This is just my opinion though - you should do whatever you feel comfortable with!

Not sure how many you are looking for but I have about 12 extra and I'm in Alberta. If you try searching online it should come up with a few places - I looked at a ton of different sites to compare the shipping etc because some places seem so cheap and then the shipping makes it more expensive than just buying the more expensive product! I ended up getting mine at www.koyalwholesale.com - at least I think that is the website....let me know if it is wrong and I will look it up in my email!

P.S. Dreams La Romana is in the Dominican Republic not Mexico....but thought I would add it because you never know if it might help someone!

Dreams La Romana has a gazebo that is pretty nice!

I found the shoppers luggage tags/passport covers here in Calgary - they were randomly at the end of an aisle but not on the end where they put sale stuff etc - it was on one of those hanging shelves they have at the ends of the aisles....not sure if that helps anyone or if that makes no sense at all!

Congrats Dana! That is so exciting and can't wait to hear how everything went. I hope you had the BEST time! KrystalKelley - I would probably get the biggest tulle to be safe but I'm not really much help because we are doing paper lanterns! As for makeup - I ended up going to MAC and doing a few lessons so that I can do my own makeup and I'm going to take a chance with the hair and bring stuff if I need to fix it a little (I doubt I will hate it so much that I will need to totally redo it so a few adjustments to their style should be okay).

Annie - check the dollar stores (like Dollarama or Dollar Giant) they have good chapstick and they have name brand or the dollar store brand - I've tried both and both are fine quality-wise. You can get 2 for $1 for most of the brands which isn't a bad price!

Hey! We had the same annoyance when we were searching for an "all-inclusive" for our wedding. We ended up going with Dreams and they do offer the option to set you up in a separate area of an a la carte restaurant for no extra charge. With a group as big as yours, you would probably end up with the whole restaurant by default but since you haven't actually REQUESTED the private reception, they may not charge you per person....probably just a set up fee. One of the things I have found with Dreams resorts is that they really try and work things out with you because they want you to be happy. It might be worth email the wedding coordinator at a few of the resorts Also, a good idea would be to contact the "group reservations" department at the resort directly to see what type of offers they can provide for a group your size. Destination Weddings are not typically as big as your group might be so most of the information that you will find on the websites will be geared towards smaller groups (10-50 people). I think a lot of resorts would be willing to work with you on a package that will take into account the number of guests you will be bringing with you! Check with a travel agent from this forum as I have heard AMAZING things about them and they will probably know a lot of the answers to your questions right off the bat! Good Luck!

Just wanted to let everyone know that these are now SOLD! Thanks!! I contacted a company in the US that sold them and they referred me to a Canadian company...I will have to double check the name of the Canadian company and I will let you know!

I don't know if you found any yet but they have them at our dollar store for 1.25 each. They aren't empty (they are the cheap version of the J&J ones) but you can't beat the price! I don't know if you are from Canada but they were at Dollarama if you are!

We are getting married on July 19!! We don't leave until July 24th so I will definitely see you there! I have pics of cakes and flowers that Tiara sent me a while back if you want - PM me your email and I will forward them to you! I am doing Real Touch corsages and bouts and one stem of my centerpieces will be Real Touch - for the rest I will be using real flowers from DLR. I chose this route because we are having green orchids and white calla lilies and the orchids are CRAZY expensive down there while the calla lilies are reasonable! I found it easier to send a picture of the bouquet etc. that you would like and then they will give you a quote on it - that way you don't have to try and describe it to them!

DANA - I'm so excited for you! Have a safe, awesome trip and can't wait to hear about everything. Congratulations in advance!! Mrs. Williams - I was having trouble getting a response from the WC (now Jenny since Tiara is officially on medical leave for her pregnancy) but lately she has been pretty good, responding within a couple days of my email. Initally to get her to respond I had to type URGENT in the subject heading (suggestion from previous DLR brides) but ever since has been fairly good at replying. I am currently a little confused with the whole menu situation as well. It looks like we will now be having enough people that it will be cheaper to reserve a restaurant ($1260) than to pay per person for the silver, gold or buffet menus - my question is: if you reserve a restaurant, does everyone just order off the menu like normal or do we have a set menu that we need to choose? Hopefully I will hear back - unless any other brides on here happen to know???

I finally found a pait at Nine West - they only had 2 styles in the whole store that were the right colour. Thought I would post these incase future green brides are trying to find green shoes and have trouble like I did!!