mnicole20

I would be interested in any you don't sell to MissMeliss! PM me when you are ready! Awesome thread!

We used weddingwindow.com. I love our site and get SO many compliments on it. We also purchased our domain, so you can use your name and his name wedding.com or org. Its also nice because you can see who has been looking at your website, you can have your guests enter their addresses, then you can download them to excel spreadsheet and create a mail merge to print your labels. It costed about $69 for 12 months, but I think there is a special right now for $10 off. Check out our website if you'd like- www.mikeandmandywedding.org or visit www.weddingwindow.com to see all the options you have to choose from and neat things you can do with your website!

I think we probably could've done it cheaper for our guests, but I was in a hurry to book, so our guests are paying $1500/2 people for 3 nights, for the hotel. Our air is $460 (approximately) per person from Denver. It is about $1000/person based on double occupancy. Everyone keeps telling me we picked the most expensive hotel in Mexico, but I think they are mistaken. It's a pretty good deal for a 5 star hotel. We booked Azul Beach October 22, 2011. My TA is pretty good, however, I get a little frustrated because I did tell her my budget for the wedding and she said it "would surely stay under $5000 for travel and $1500 for the wedding" Wow, we are now thousands over the budget-so much for a small inexpensive destination wedding! My advice would be clear about your budget and the desired guest prices-no room to go over. Good luck in your planning and remember it is supposed to be fun!

I am so sad to see this! I have booked Caribe because their prices are inexpensive, and the wedding costs keep adding up! I only have the option of Caribe and I think one other. The rest of the photographers approved by Lomas say they don't go to Azul Beach any longer I feel so stuck! My cousin in law to be is an AMAZING photographer, but unfortunately not attending the ceramony in Mexico. Has anyone had any other experience with Caribe, or have any suggestions for me? Thank you for any help!! I really hate this "approved vendor" thing!

I am getting married at Azul Beach on October 22, 2011! I am very excited, but have run into quite a few bumps along the way. I had read on the website it was a one wedding a day resort, and then after I had booked and put a deposit, I was told there was another wedding looking for the same day and time as mine ! I didn't really get to choose the time, so they put me at 4pm and her at 6pm?? I was very angry and stressed since I want a sunset ceramony, so they switched mine to 6pm and said the other bride hadn't booked yet?! Why in the world, would they stress me out, when there was no confirmation yet! Ugh! I am a bit worried, but I know if I stay on top of the plans, this day I've been waiting 10 years and 2 kids for, will be as perfect as we are together

I love etsy too! For some reason nobody ever knows what I'm talking about though haha! That's okay, it can be my secret-more for me! Great job on the OOT Bags, I will be doing mine soon, and I'm so lost on what to include so this is a great start!

I have finally finished, and mailed, my boarding pass save the dates! I am so excited! These took a lot of work, and a lot of hours, but in the end it was all worth it! I got the template for the boarding passes from Ayleebits.com: (http://www.ayleebits.com/templates.htm). I love her site. I was able to get a ton of ideas for what to put on the background. Ultimately, I decided on a beachy scene. I hadn’t picked my colors (at least, not in stone) when I made these, so I wanted to make it neutral. I seriously had 7 different versions of this, but it came down to the wire, and I chose this one I entered all the pictures and the information myself on the template I got from Aylee using MS Word. When I was done with the template, I downloaded our guestlist/address book into a MS Excel document then created a mail merge in MS Word. I also downloaded a bunch of different fonts from www.dafont.com (Minya Nouvelle, Champignon, A Yummy Apology, Tropicana BV for the shapes like a starfish is P) I also got a few from http://kevinandamanda.com/fonts/fontsforpeas/. I really like both of those sites for fonts. The fonts for peas fonts are a little difficult to use due to spacing issues. Some of the handwriting fonts need to be such a large size, that they end up taking up the entire page of your boarding pass. My boarding pass was four pages. We requested a “tentative RSVP†since we need to get an idea of who all thinks the trip to Mexico for our wedding will be in their budget. I made the last page the RSVP and designed our own return label to attach to both the outer envelope and the back of the boarding pass, so the final page could be detached and sent back like a postcard (of course a stamp was on there too). If I were to do it over again, I would do the “tentative RSVP†differently. I had to buy stamps for all 66 invitations to be sent out ($0.81) and to attach to the return card ($0.44), so for all 66 invitations, we spent about $85! Ouch . Mistake! I have designed a webpage for our wedding (mikeandmandywedding.org) and there is an RSVP link that I should’ve put on the boarding pass, instead of using a return postcard-that’s my advice for future brides! So, back to the design of the boarding pass…I purchased white shimmer cardstock, and cream rectangle envelopes from paperandmore.com, then also went to Archivers and bought blue, teal, green, and coral shimmer cardstock for the boarding pass holder. (total spent on supplies (using coupons for cardstock at archivers) was $67.43. I purchased the Raffia, and ribbon from Michaels (about $3 each) and borrowed the supplies to emboss the boarding pass ticket jackets from my future mother in law. I used the template #2 (ayleebits.com again) and cut out my own version of the ticket jacket. I used sand stamps with golden sand embossing powder, and a blue/teal mixture of embossing powder for the seashells. I also put rhinestones on the outer jacket and the boarding pass front page. Kinkos was my second home for the cutting process. I took my white metallic cardstock and my thumb drive to Kinkos and printed 66 invitations onto the cardstock costing me about $13. Then they cut them for me into boarding pass sizes, and my Mom and I spent DAYS rounding the corners and cutting out the notches! Once they were all cut out, I used a special grommet tool, and put a grommet in the corner to hold the 4 pages together. Then tied a ribbon through the grommet, inserted the boarding passes into the ticket jacket, and put them in an outer cream envelope and tied them with Raffia. For the labels, I had purchased the clear mailing labels from paperandmore.com, so I used my mail merge to print out each address, and my return address, and mailed them out! That’s it! To summarize the supplies I used: 100 sheets White shimmer cardstock (www.paperandmore.com) 66 sheets blue, green, aqua, coral shimmer cardstock (Archivers $0.59/sheet, email coupons) Kinkos printing and cutting services ($0.19/print on my paper, free cutting because I batted my eyelashes Wet Embossing powder in blue/teal, and golden sand (found at Archivers for $5 each) 3 stamps-Seashells, Sand, and a “handmade with love†stamp all found at Archivers ($7 each) Embossing gun (looks like a blowdryer, but heats to ridiculous strength! Careful! Last I used sticky rhinestones, Raffia, and Ribbon from Michaels. This is the Boarding pass ticket jacket. Embossed with Teal/Blue, and golden sand embossing powder (looks so real if you add a touch of teal to it!) Another closer view of the ticket jacket. The inside of the ticket jacket. The Boarding Pass itself! Page 1) Save the Date, Pack a bag…. Page 2) Booking information/Travel agent information Page 3)Traveling information (passports, hotel website, dates) Page 4) Tentative RSVP –We’re on board or not… Page 2) Page 3) Page 4) Okay! That's it for now...on to the next DIY project!

I'm getting Married at Azul Beach October 22, 2011! I would love to hear some reviews and where everyone else is having their reception! We have a small enough group to book the Wave Lounge-any suggestions on decor with the limited space?