DramaticAnnie

Do you guys personally use the EmergenC? I got the gatorade packs for my oots for hangover helpers and wondering if I should grab some EmergenC? I've never heard of it before these forums and wondering how it works?

WOW! I'm soo impressed! And you're a Carnival Bride too! I'm getting married on the Carnival Dream on April 28th, and I've been on the Liberty - I got engaged on it in 2010! Eeeek I love everything.. I love your bag, I wish I had spotted that one, I have a similar one but its' got navy trim, and I wanted something more closer to turquoise, oh well. I am uber impressed and so envious of your welcome packets with the timeline and everything in them, wow! I am getting married on embarkation day so they told us we won't even know what time we're getting married until 2 weeks before the wedding date. I have put most of my stuff in a 'wedding week survival kit' but I really like how you broke yours up into three little kits.. especially the fun stuff like star wars pez, my fiance would love that. But he would hate it if I broke up all of our survival kits now as we spent a lot of time packing them up.. lol.

Thanks! I'll be sure to check out those sites, I'm not opposed to a pre owned wedding dress since this dress won't be my main dress I'm thinking something like this: http://www.davidsbridal.com/Product_Halter-Chiffon-A-Line-with-Center-Front-Draping-9BR1007_Bridal-Gowns-Shop-By-Style-Destination but knee length! I probably would have ordered this already if not for the outrageous shipping and duty fees (almost another $100) and just got it hemmed to knee length We'll see!

We went the TA route as well. We cruised in 2009 for the first time, then cruise in 2010 and got engaged onboard the Carnival Liberty, and are set to get married on the Carnival Dream on April 28th, 2012 We had people pay deposits of $60 each at the very beginning just to hold their room, with full deposit of $250 per person due in order to confirm their room. Their full cruise price was due January 28th of this year and those were all done, then we booked a group flight again through our TA, a little more then what we were hoping to pay but there's no luggage fees and it's a DIRECT flight (thank goodness, just came back from a multiply delayed flight for work and realized my father would never stand for this lol). Best of luck!

Hi fellow BDW brides It is coming down to crunch time and I am exactly 2 months to the day from my wedding on April 28th, 2012. I am getting onboard the Carnival Dream cruise ship in Port Canaveral, Florida before departing on a 7 day Caribbean cruise with 39 of our family and friends. Aside from all of the other drama going on right now (one husband of a friend of ours is determined he's going to hijack one of my groomsmen and get drunk the morning of the wedding and be loaded before the ceremony, one of my bridesmaids father has just told her he does not want her to go and is being really rude about putting her down and accusing her of leaving her responsibilities behind (she's totally not), and generally everybody's money woes are being placed on my shoulders not to mention our own)... I have just decided that I need a second wedding dress. Am I crazy? lol The dress I chose was the one I fell in love with, it's got lots of color IN it... so it's a white dress with a lot of turquoise embroidery and trim and ribbon.. and it's big and heavy and I still love it. I'm going to wear it at our AHR too. The thing is.. now i'm thinking, it's Florida, I'm going to be really hot and aching to get out of the dress by suppertime, when everybody else is going to want to keep partying through the evening, which I don't mind, but I'd like to change into something lighter but still wedding-y for the evening. I'm thinking something white chiffon (very light and airy) that comes to the knee with little straps as opposed to the heavy satin strapless ball gown I will have on all day. It also needs to be plus-sized. I have other elegant dresses I'm taking with me, to wear to the 'Elegant Night''s on the cruise, one purple and one black and silver, but I want the dress I wear on my wedding evening/night to be different. Where am I supposed to get something like this at such short notice? lol And is it even possible? Should I just forget it? I've looked at lots of websites that have lots of nice plus sized dresses but nothing in white. I also don't want to be spending a lot of money on it. Any ideas?

I'm getting discouraged with my boarding pass invitation (wanted to do them for my bridal shower). The turquoise colored cardstock is available online for great prices but the shipping to Canada ranges from like $35-$55. It's ridiculous for shipping. Then when I get to a Canadian site like paper garden where the shipping is about fifteen bucks, the price of the paper is dramatically higher, like they don't sell packs I gotta pay per sheet. Boooo. My hopes and dreams are being diminished.. lol

If there are any CANADIAN brides who have a FREEBIE VISTAPRINT email that still works can you please email it to me?

Hi There, and Welcome. We got engaged on a Carnival Cruise ship in April 2010 - and right away decided to get married in 2012 to pay off some of our debt, we didn't want to go MORE into debt for the wedding. In March 2011 we decided to get married on a Carnival Cruise ship and asked some important people if they would join us (my dad, his mom) and once they said yes we told everyone close to us (wedding party, siblings) and others just booked because they like the sound of a cruise anyway. Now it is February 2012 and all of my friends who were telling me in March/April 2011 "oh there's over a YEAR to the wedding we have LOTS of time to save money" are almost all now crying over expenses.. so I would say once you book somewhere and are able to give people some $$ figures.. sooner the better.

Did Vistaprint get wise to us? I used to be able to go back to one of my old emails with all the 'free' offers but now I can't

Hi Guys! Sorry I haven't written in so long.. if anybody is just starting out planning their DW now and is feeling silly buying OOT bag items and doing various wedding research a year+ from their wedding date- DONT BE. I'm so lucky I bought a ton of my oot stuff last year when it was "way too early" according to my fiance to be buying things because I simply do not have the TIME or more importantly THE MONEY right now. Anyways! I have a question - did Vistaprint get wise to us? I tried going back into one of my 'free' items emails and it wouldn't load up. If anybody has one of these that still works for them can you send it to me? Thanks!

Whee! 80 days to my wedding April 28th Honestly the biggest 'stress' thing right now is the amount of my guests who have NEVER travelled before and seem to think that our flight is going to land in Florida, and they can simply walk to the cruise ship as they get off the airplane. They are freaking over "unexpected costs" (the hotel the night before, the shuttle/bus rides to and from the boat) but we're like.. seriously? In the grand scheme of things, another hundred bucks or so (so long as people bunk up in rooms or chip in on a rental car) is not much compared to what has already been paid. The wedding stuff is getting 'lost' in my travel woes.. but I have been told by my fiancee, my mom and my future MIL to leave the travel woes to our travel agent and worry about what's important. I can't believe I only have 80 days left and all my stuff I wanted to do (like order a custom cake topper) I haven't done! I finished paying Angel's Accents but the design part hasn't started re: my flowers.

Oh, you guys. I miss you guys. It's coming down to the wire for me, a little over three months to go. Everyone's stressing me out over their cost of their trip because final payments are due this month and they've had over a year knowing about this.. you don't know how many times I've heard "oh there's still lots of time to pay" while they blew their cash.. and now I feel BAD because it's our wedding...... eep. Oh well, I don't want to hijack the oot bag thread! This is my FAVORITE thread and now that like every spare bit of money we have is going to wedding things.. I hate coming on here and seeing all the great stuff and not being able to run out and buy it, lol. So, I just wanted to share that I found a nice bag from 4imprint.ca - I have always wanted a "boat tote" style bag and was supposed to get a bunch from another bride on here that she bought at the dollar tree in the states, but since her wedding date has come and gone she hasn't logged on here or emailed me back in months.. so I gave up on her. I know 4imprint has a minimum order quantity of like 100 or so and I only need like 20 bags, but when I found the one I wanted, I asked them if I could get less then minimum quantity IF I didn't get them imprinted, just paid for the bags, and they said yes. Granted, the only 'blue' they have is a navy (where my color is turquoise) but it's a great price for that style and I figure I'll use turquoise ribbon and our tags are being made by Allurements by Rebecca so I'm sure they'll match fabulously. So I am buying 20 bags from them, which are a good size and zipper at the top like I wanted, I was actually able to get a free sample from them beforehand to see what it was like (and don't think it hasn't crossed my mind to see if I could round up 20 friends and family members to all order a free sample, lmao) and I really liked the bag. I figure I'm just going to put a tag on it anyway with some ribbon - BUT if my budget allows and if I come up with something cool, I can iron something on, or take it to a local embroidering place to see if they can silkscreen it on to my bag's 'pocket'. I was going to go all DIY but after my first DIY project where I ended up BUTCHERING our fabulous passport invitations.. lol.. I decided maybe that's not my thing. So I mean, it doesn't hurt to ask! And a lot of the time they only ask for a minimum quantity of something because of the imprinting or whatever, I mean, the worst they can do is say no

I am getting married on the Carnival Dream on April 28th, 2012. I have asked about decor and if I could 'personalize' what seems to be the Carnival standard of white flowers on white pillars with my wedding colors, even a ribbon around the pillars or something, and I had to email the Wedding Experience coordinator. This is the response I got: We do not décor onboard because all the lounges are already beautifully decorated and the fact that we do not know the location until about two weeks before the wedding date. Carnival will provide a white runner with two white pillars that have white silk ceremony arrangments on top, this is the standard set up onboard. Annie, what you can do is bring a guest book for your guest to sign & favors. Some past brides have brought personlized napkins to place in the reception location (bar area).

Hi Brides I am booked on the Carnival Dream, getting married on embarkation day before the boat leaves Port Canaveral on April 28, 2012. I booked the deluxe wedding/reception package with carnival and I think that came to roughly about $2k. That includes 20 guests, and I have 36 guests booked in all, so I will need to pay an extra $35 a head over 20 guests. Yikes, I just calculated that to be like five hundred and sixty extra dollars I'm going to have to make sure to put away. I went with a DJ option for my reception and the 1.5 hour (which is the longest you can get) reception.

I've been to the states twice since I started my OOT bag shopping, and for the little tubes of Advil, you're not going to get a much better price in the states, it's about $2 there too, so grab the dollarama ones and save yourself the (increasing) exchange rate and any duty fees. Great place to buy those little gatorade packets though. If you are interested in the little packets, the Dollar tree does have them 3 packets to a box, but I figured everybody would need more then 2 advils for the week. Okay, so on my last trip to the states (Black Friday shopping extravaganza last weekend - was the best yet!!) I sent two of my boxes to the hotel I will be staying at in Florida before we depart on our cruise wedding April 28th. I had to clear it with the hotel first to make sure they can store it for me until then, but I sent two boxes via UPS (not USPS as I had planned) and with the help of a very nice lady at the Staples UPS counter, we shipped both boxes (about 20lbs each) for roughly 40 bucks total! The boxes were the storage boxes you see in offices and stuff ('borrowed' a couple of boxes from my office). You know the kind you put file folders in to archive them? Or the same sort of size boxes that reams of paper come in for your photocopier? That size. So yeah, 40lbs of my stuff is currently making its way to Florida. Everybody cross your fingers that it gets there and will still be there when I arrive in April! That's saving me almost a suitcases worth of luggage weight/space, so I'm pretty happy.

It's seriously the shopping experience of the year!

I bought Aloe from Avon when it went on sale. It's a pretty big size (not travel size but not jumbo bottle either) and I got them for $1.89 each. I figure more people would remember sunblock then aloe, and everybody always gets sunburned!

For those brides in the states, or my fellow canucks who are braving the Black Friday sales this weekend, I know I saw some of the 34oz Bubba's on in the KMart Black Friday flier for $5.99 - remember, Walmart will price match

I know! When I travel across it's different, when I order something on ebay or someplace it's like a random thing. And when you go to the post office and get that frigging card that says you owe this much, it sucks. Theres one website I order from every Christmas (its like the animal rescue site or something like that?) and I ALWAYS pay duty on my stuff from them. I know if a seller marks the parcel they're sending as a 'gift' (which is illegal) then you don't get charged for duty for a gift.

Nope, I cross the border between the US and Canada a couple times a year and from what i've gathered, duty is basically like HST. You don't pay for it in the states but you get dinged when you bring it home!

Sounds good!

Yay Lasallebabe! So great to hear everything went well with your wedding and the bags and the rest of us aren't slaving away on our OOT's for no reason.. lol! I am including travel sized sunblock in the OOT's. I bought them on a trip to the states for 99 cents each. I think I got banana boat and ummm.. coppertone sport. Yes, I know ppl will most likely (I hope) bring sunblock, but I don't like taking my big sunblock with me to excursions, etc. I'd much rather a smaller size. I did get the Aloe through avon when it was on for $1.89 and it is a bigger bottle but as far as my previous experience goes, nobody ever remembers aloe and always gets burned somewhere where they didn't slather on the sunblock (usually back/shoulders). When we did a dolphin swim excursion we had to shower off before getting in the water with the dolphins.. man we all got so burned that day.. anyways. Has anybody ever engraved their bubba keg mugs? I am sending some of our stuff through the mail to the hotel where we will be staying the night before getting on the cruise and I am going to mail it from Maine (I am going BLACK FRIDAY shopping in less then two weeks - lovelovelove Black Friday) to Florida. I've already made arrangements with the hotel people. I did not get mugs for everybody, just the guys really. And I want to get their names and like, it'll say on the mug: ERIC BEST MAN 04/28/12 something like that? idk but I want to know if you guys have ever taken them to a place to get them engraved? I know a nice trophy place here locally that I might try to get it done at, as opposed to money gouging Things Engraved or something. For the kids going with us, I bought the young girls Lip Smackers chapsticks when they were on sale, and I'll give them a whole pkg (of 3), and I have an inflatable tube and 'floaties' for my Godson/ringer bearer who will be 3 at the time. I also got those little 'luggage' stationary kits from Dollarama for the younger kids. I have notepads and pens and notebooks and sticky notes from Vistaprint too... and everybodys gonna have a personalized shirt.. lotsa vistaprint ordering has been going on by me and mom in the last uh.. almost a year now lol Oh and I couldn't find individual pepto products.. so I bought the chewables in 48's and hopefully a sheet of 6 for each adult will do me. Urg, I just remembered I was gonna buy that box of immodium on ebay.. I know pepto is supposed to work for that too but having the runs while youre on vacation is not a good time Hey I have a question for you guys.. I bought engraved flasks for the guys on ebay.. then the best man dropped out and one of the groomsmen got promoted. What do I do with the flask that says the old best mans name and what do I do with the flask that says Eric is a groomsman? They're probably ruined now eh? Like no use for em.. they were like 7 bucks each so not too big of a deal.. OH and another question I was pm'ing with a bride on here who bought too many bags and was gonna sell me her blue and green bags.. and we had all the arrangements worked out.. she was gonna go to the post office and weigh the package to get me a shipping price so I could send her the $.. then her wedding date was approaching.. finally it came and went.. and she hasn't been back on the site/not responding to my pm's for a couple of months now.. should I assume those bags are gonzo?

Thanks to everybody for your willingness to help, kellygrrrl and I have made the first couple of steps in ordering these fans and hopefully all will go well I'm certain that the shipping won't be like $100 even those we're shipping to her and then to me, hehe

Okay all you brides that said you would help.. lol I am a Canadian Bride and used to fall in love with favors on theknot until I found out they do not ship to Canada. They instead referred me to their sister site, American Bridal. Their prices are not as great, but this week the fans I have been eyeing for almost a year now are on sale for $1.40 each, the personalized sandalwood fans. I only need like 40 so I jumped at the opportunity - then my shipping was $86.21 and my duty fees were going to be another $28.75. The fans themselves with my coupon code only came to like $45! Then they want me to drop another hundred bucks to ship them? Eeeeeeeyuck. The shipping can't be that horrendous for you USA brides, I'm hoping. Anybody willing to help?

Oh neat, I need to go to Michaels tomorrow too and see if they still have these items. My Godson/ring bearer is crazy about Toy Story, I got him a couple of small inflatable toys so far and one of those little dollarama suitcases with the little stationary stuff inside, but this will be nice too.