J and G 2012

Originally Posted by Laurelyn 

 

Such a great help!! I've been trying to figure out exactly what I want to do for my AHR invites and these are defiantly right up my ally!  For the business card did you have her design it on etsy and then you just copied it to VP or did you design it yourself right on VP?

Glad you liked it!

I had her design the RSVP side and copied to VP. The Picture side was straight from VP

I've been so busy with work and planning our AHR that I forgot to post our invites!

Our AHR is going to be a very casual party. That's not to say it's going to be small because I've conservatively estimanted about 125ppl. It's going to be rustic and country and I think the Invites convey that, hopefully

I love how they turned out, and have had alot of compliments on them, But I am so glad that I will never have to make this many invitation again!

We sent out around 200 of them!

They were fairly inexpensive to make:

Printing = $60 (Created by Etsy Seller ALiBink ) Printed at Local Printer

Business Cards = $50 (So I got them for free (VP) but I upgraded with colour printing on the back)

Cardstock(100 letter size) and Envelopes(200) =  $130

Corner Punch = $13

Twine (2 packs) = $6

Labels = Printed at work, shhhhh!

And of course Postage!

Thanks everyone for your nice comments!

I've been so busy with work and planning our AHR that I forgot to post our invites!

I love how they turned out, and have had alot of compliments on them, But I am so glad that I will never have to make this many invitation again!

We sent out around 200 of them!

They were fairly inexpensive to make:

Printing = $60

Business Cards = $50 (So I got them for free (VP) but I upgraded with colour printing on the back)

Cardstock(100 letter size) and Envelopes(200) =  $130

Corner Punch = $13

Twine (2 packs) = $6

Labels = Printed at work, shhhhh!

And of course Postage!

Does anyone know when the Old Navy $1 flip flop sale is this year?

I know it's usually arounf the May long weekend, but I haven't seen any ads for them

I need some for our AHR.

I did! 700 in total.

As expected most of the good ones were posted on the photographer's blog.

That is not to say that the rest we not good, but mostly pictures with our family and our amazing party!

Right now I am tying up all the lose ends for our AHR reception scheduled for July 7th. Which means I need to get the invites out like yesterday!

ANyone else having or have had an AHR?

 

Originally Posted by JayKay 

I know this is awhile away from your last post, but did you ever get your photos! I would love to see them.

 

 

Thanks mxthan6,

I used the Logo in PowerPoint thread to help create our logo.

I created so many different logos using thw same image (hibiscus) I chose the one that we liked the most. My advice would be to keep playing with it. Choose an image that you like (and are able to edit) and make as many as you can. Look at what other brides have done, and try to recreate it in your own way.

Good luck!

 

Originally Posted by mzthan6 

I love your monogram care to share how you did them? Flowers are beautiful

No worrries Janette,

my order was the same. Really quick turn around for the order and then much less communication towrads the end. But she does amazing work and will have everything perfect by the time ou are ready to leave

Originally Posted by janette34 

Is anyone else using Bloom Bridal for their flowers?  I contacted Judy back in October to place my custom order and everything was great at the time, fast response, very positive sounding.  Now with only two weeks until the expected arrival date of my flowers I can't seem to get in touch with her.  I sent an email last Monday with no response and again today so I will try to wait patiently for her to get back to me.  For those of you who have used Bloom Bridal can you tell me when you got your approval pics.

NO!

There is no need for them to keep your originals (birth certifcicates anyways). They just need to satisfy themselves that you are who you say you are and then return them. Actually come to think of it, my WC didn't even ask to see the orginals.

Have you asked other brides that have been married at your resort?

Originally Posted by NLF313 

Yes, the original documents . We went to the courthouse and got a certified copy of our birth certificates, and his divorce papers, and then literally sent those copies in the mail to the specified address. We have our originals still here, so maybe I'll scan those and then just bring our originals? Did they KEEP the originals you brought with you?

 

 

Thanks!!!!

Nichole

What are you sending exactly? Your original documents?

We scanned our notorized documents and emailed them, brought the originals with us.

Did your resort ask you to send the originals?

Has anyone used Picaboo to create a photobook?

There is a WagJag deal for 75% off and I would like to make a few books of our wedding to give to family.

Any experience with their creation program and quality of the final product, I would love to hear it!

Thanks!

Aven your photos are great!

I can't get over your TTD dress! What a steal, and it looked fab!

I'm still waiting on my photos as well. She told me 6-8 weeks, so end of this week hopefully!

Congrats Tori!

Your wedding looks beautiful! All the hard work and detials that you out into it really shows!

Can't wait to see your Pro Pictures!

These are beautiful! What a fabulous wedding present!

I love the day/week after the wedding pictures because the are so stress free and intimate!

Beautiful!

 

Originally Posted by MichCraw 

Hello Canadian Brides! I hope your planning is going well during the winter months! hehe ... I don't know how many of you are going to get married in Mexico or how many are thinking about it? However, I just got my pictures from my photo session with Del Sol in Playa del Carmen... and the pictures are amazing!! ( Atleast me and the hubby think so!) We were offered a gift for our honeymoon, which we took just after the wedding, and we went to Le Reve in Mexico. I had seen Del Sol's work and I just had to book them for a honeymoon present to us both! I'm telling you that if I had known of Del Sol before my wedding.. there is no way no how I would NOT have been married in Mexico. There work is so natural and fantastic, I can't compare them to anyone else i've seen. Here are a few pictures, hope you like them as much as I do! Good luck with your planning!!!

Hi Ladies! Just wanted to share our experience with Studio Suits.

We ordered Custom Linen Shirt (Ramie White) and Vest (Tropical White) and they came within 2 weeks, as we stated there was a rush. The linen shirt was very thin but it worked out perfectly, DH wasn't uncomfortable in the heat at all!

Thank you Allie,

The Bridesmaids dresses were from Victoria's Secret http://www.victoriassecret.com/clothing/multi-way-dresses-collection?pageAt=all

They don't have the short ones anymore but they do have the ruched ones.

I can't even remeber what the tag says for my dress, not designer anyways!
 

Originally Posted by AllieH 

what a beautiful wedding!!! 

 

sorry to hear you had some challenges with the resort. love your attitude though.

 

I just ordered our Thank you "cards" from Vistaprint. Love them! I will probably order metallic envelopes from papercircle.ca to send them.

 

I wanted to stay in the travel theme for the ones that we are sending to those in attendance so they are 'postcards' .

 

 

 

These ones are for those that could not come but sent cards/gifts.

They are blank on the backside so we can write whatever we want.

 

Love these! So glad I found them. Th edetailed instructions are perfect, I'm going to mock one up tonight!

How much did it cost you per-invite for postage?

Thanks!

Thank you Sharon,

The Bubba Kegs were from Canadian Tore (on sale of course) and I brought them to 'Thing Engraved' and they did them for about $50, but you pay by the letter and we had alot on them!
 

Originally Posted by Sharon99 

Wow, looks like you had a beautiful wedding. Everything looks great. I think you made the right choice with your dress, loved it! The catamaran cruise looked like so much fun! Congrats! Where did you get your bubba kegs? 

Thanks Sunshine!

We did have a blast! We didn't get a group rate for the cooling runnings (didn't know you could do that). We had originally planned just to take the bus over (some of our guests did) but we were convinced by others to take the catamaran and it was great!
 

Originally Posted by sunshine2413 

Absolutely amazing! I have to say one of the best planning threads I have seen (and trust me I stalk these babies). Not only was it a fun read, your husband seems like a riot (very similar to my dear FI), but everything seem like it turned out great, dispite the hiccups along the road! I could feel the love through the thread and it seems liked you guys had a blast!

 

I am happy you did the cool running excursion, we did that last time when we were in jamaica and wanted to share it with our guests. Did they give you a group rate? Did your guest pay separate or did you cover it all?

 

Congrats on being a MRS!! Don't stress too much about the AHR!

I can speak to this as a child of parnets who eloped.

My dad remairried when I was about 12. I remember being very hurt that I was not included.

Being recently married away, I know that some ppl were disappointed that they could not attend (for financial or other reasons) but at least I gave them the opportunity.

I don't have the greatest relationship with my Dad (he didn't come to our wedding) but I think if he made more of an effort to include me in his life things might have been different.

To each their own, this is just my experience.

Forgot to post the link!

http://www.bestdestinationwedding.com/t/77997/j-and-gs-after-the-fact-jamaican-planning-thread-long-and-lots-of-pics#post_1729698

Originally Posted by J and G 2012 

I finally posted my planning thread! I wanted to wait until I got our Pro picture back but I couldn't wait any longer!

Jamie

I finally posted my planning thread! I wanted to wait until I got our Pro picture back but I couldn't wait any longer!

Jamie

`Rehearsal` Dinner

The resort didn`t offer a rehearsal and due to a conflict we didn`t have our bridal party together the night before the wedding we had however scheduled a post wedding dinner for the bridal party and their spouses. This was great because there was no stress and we got to thank everyone for all their support and tell them how much we loved them and being part of our week!

Experience with WC

The communication with the WC sucked. I’m sorry to be so blunt but that’s just the way it was. I know that they are very busy with lots on Wedding and only 2 staff but I didn’t find them very professional either. I had inquired about the cost of a rehearsal dinner early in our planning stages and she called me the day the payments were due to get the fees even though we had not discussed menu, location, etc etc. Thank goodness we really didn’t want a rehearsal dinner. In the very beginning of the process we chose to do the free wedding only at the resort, to avoid all the extra fees and hassle. The one thing I can commend the WC on was that she did get us a reservation at an a la carte for our 25 person bridal party.

In Closing

You can DIY some things, don’t tackle it all or you will go insane! I thought I was going to do it all in the beginning but after a few unsuccessful attempts, I left the important things to the professionals.

Don’t let the drama get to you. Sometimes weddings bring out the best in people, sometime the worst, but in the end, it all works out.

We will be having an AHR this summer in our backyard. I’m still in the planning phase, so I will be around on the forum until then if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask!

Here are a few more of my fav pics (so far!). I will post more when I get them back in the next few weeks.

Flowers

Another big decision for weddings! Originally I was going to make my own. After playing around with it for a few months I decided that some things are best left to professionals! I went with Bloom Bridal last minute. Judy was amazing to work with and turned out better than I expected! They are much more colourful in real life! I also ordered some loose hibiscus to but on the cake.

Just want to mention that my chest looks so fabulous thanks to “Flaunt†inserts!

The Wedding Day Details

Because our group was large we qualified of a free cocktail party with horderves which I had scheduled right after the ceremony while we were doing pictures. It was supposed to be outside but because of the weather it was moved to one of their smaller banquet rooms. I just recently found out that the horderves consisted of Banana chips…that’s it. Luckily my guests didn`t care, I I was too oblivious to notice.

The evening of the wedding we had dinner just the 2 of us. It wasn’t anything to right home about, I was hoping that the resort would have done something a little bit more elaborate. We just ate in one of their a la cartes. But it was nice to have the time together to recap the day’s events.

Reception

As I said before I didn’t do much research before we booked so I was surprised at the cost of dinner at an AI resort! I just couldn’t see spending that much money when all of my guests were staying at the resort and would be eating their anyways. So we decided to do things a little different. I started looking for Catamaran Charters for a cocktail party. DH went on a fishing expedition with Island Routes last year so I contacted them. Melissa Forbes got back to me with some quotes and I just had to go with them. She was so amazing to work with, I even invited her to the wedding! The Island Routes staff made our party that much more exciting! Besides being very professional they interacted with our group like they were part of the celebration! They partied just as hard as the rest of us! The menu included kabobs and crackers and cheese, fresh fruit etc. it was just what everybody needed! The thing we (and our guests) liked best about it was that it was so different than a usual dinner and dance that we could have done in Canada. We did our cake cutting, speeches and dances all on boat.

 Our first dance was one of the most epic I’ve ever heard of and it wasn’t even planned! We we’re on top of the catamaran at sunset dancing to God Gave Me You by Blake Sheldon.

The Week's Events

We didn’t want to plan too many activities because we understood that this was a vacation for all of our guests as well. But we did want to ensure that we had time to spend with everyone that came down.

Volley Ball Tournament

We had a volleyball tournament on day 5. It was an optional event but we had a great turn out. Because we had such a large group, it was nice to get everyone together and have fun.

Dunns River Falls

This was an awesome day, definitely a highlight for me! We took the Cool Runnings Catamaran to go snorkeling and then climb the falls. It was so much fun and exhilarating! After we came back down the mountain we had a great party on the boat. I’m really glad we did it this way instead of taking the bus to the falls, so much fun!

For decorations we paid a few extra dollars for tulle and rose petals. I created our program/fans using postcards from vista print and paper from Papercircle, everyone loved them! I made reserved signs using the same scalloped paper.

The Ring ‘pillow’ was a conch shell I’ve had since I was little. I spray painted it white and glued some ribbon to it. The flower girl basket was metal and I got it from goodwill for a buck. Spay painted it as well, a few bows and ta da.

I also brought bubbles down for after. Love this picture!

MY Dress

Finding MY dress was a huge dilemma. I had gone shopping with my Mom and Mother in Law early in the planning stages. I thought that I wanted something simple (which was what we were planning for the wedding). I chose a straight, plain dress for a great price. But as our planning went on and I continued to see more dresses, I knew the first was not the one for me. I am so glad I went back out to try on more dresses because I did find THE ONE! With a few alterations I was really feeling like the bride I wanted to be! If you are not sure about your dress, go try more on!

My jewellery was very inexpensive. Earrings were from Aldos  and the bracelet from The Bay.

The hair flowers were real and the hair dresser put them in last minute, I wasn’t really planning on wearing anything in my hair but I’m glad I did.

I also had a red belt made to wear with the dress but decided against it on the day of. I kinda wish I wore it, but oh well.

I do not like wearing heals and in the summer I always wear flip flops so I chose to be comfortable on my wedding day. I did however bling out my flip flops with a bedazzler! I did the same to the Flower girls shoes.

The Rings

His ring is titanium with laser Calladah because I am Scottish and Irish, and it’s also inexpensive, and he will lose it (again, his words).

My jeweler made my ring using the gold from the first necklace DH gave me. I’m going to get an eternity band to match for 1^st anniversary, fingers crossed!

Photography

This was a really tough decision for me (Here’s the link to my thread) but I think I made the right decision. We were on a very tight budget and really didn’t have a plan for the photographer. I knew that I wanted great pictures but wasn’t sure on which way to go. At first I played around with the idea of using a photographer down there but couldn’t find any info. about the photographer the resort uses. And we really didn’t like the vendor fee they charged to bring a photographer in. I got a few quotes from photographers down there with recommendations from this site, but nothing wowed me. I was I love we the work of a photographer that my friend used at home but I didn’t think it would be in the budget to bring them down with us. But then my TA came up with these cheap seats for our trip and we contacted them to see if they were interested.

I can’t rave enough about our photographer! Samantha made us look good! She knew exactly what she was doing and told us exactly what to do! She completely captured the mood in every session! Now I haven’t received the whole lot of them yet, but what I’ve seen on her blog, I love! I can’t wait to see the rest!

For anyone that is considering a TTD shoot, do it! I knew I wanted one, but I also knew that we would not look as good splashing around and laying in the water as some other pictures I’ve seen. But we got some great pictures! I love them because they are simple, capturing us on a more inimate level (without, having to be half naked!).

Photographer's Blog

The Wedding

The Catamaran Reception

The TTD Shoot

Ceremony

We wanted to keep this as simple as possible while still keeping certain traditions and personalizing it to make it feel special. We wrote the ceremony using bits and pieces from the Unique Ceremony Thread. A welcome and a few readings, not to long but personal. Communication with the WC wasn’t all that great (more to come below) and at about 1 hour before the ceremony I was told the officient wouldn’t follow our ceremony. I went with the “no problem†attitude and let it go, but my MOH asked my brother to MC the ceremony and it made our day that much more special. He had such a hard time getting through it without crying, so did the rest of us!

You can kind of tell in this photo that DH has his back to everyone. I had told him that I didn`t want him to turn around until I was at the end of the isle. He took that to mean he wasn`t to turn around until I was right beside him!

I think Vista Print deserves it own section. Once I discovered how to use it, I got most my stationary there. It was so easy and inexpensive!

Our Welcome Letter was on a regular size postcard, I would have ordered an oversized one if I did it again. The wording came from other brides on here, so thank YOU!

Photo Share Cards with instruction on how to use Photobucket on the back side.

Postcard Guest Book

Great idea in theory but hardly anyone has sent theirs yet! I would have them fill them out on location and give them to you there instead of mailing them.

I picked up a handmade photo album in Jamaica and am placing all the completed cards in it.

Wedding Day and Week Schedule – Tried to keep in the same them as our inviatations.

If I’m going to give any advice about the OOT Bags its better to buy stuff during the summer/end of summer clearance. I wanted Inflatable rafts etc. and could only buy them on line at an increased price.

Our Wedding party

This is a huge stress for a lot of brides, myself included. When I had finally made all my decisions a few of my good friends were hurt that they were not included,… but I didn’t feel I needed to justify my decision. Originally it was just supposed to be the MOH and BM, but FI kept asking everyone he knew! I think he was just so excited everyone was coming! I had asked the women that I love and were involved it our lives. In fact I had asked DHs friend who is a woman and she asked to be on the groom’s side! We had an uneven amount of Groomsmen to Bridesmaids, but that didn’t matter to us.

The Bridesmaids wore the Victoria’s Secret’s Multi-way dress, I loved how they turned out! Each wore it a slightly different way to suit their own body. They wore whatever shoes and earrings they wanted.

For their gift I gave them a beach bag with a few goodies in it, including the necklace that they wore to the wedding (bought from Etsy Seller BellaJewelsInc). They liked them so much that they wore them for the rest of the week!

I also made ‘Bridesmaids’ tanks for the Jack and Jill and Jamaica. The Rhinestones came from Etsy Seller Rhinestone Wishes.

I also DIY groomsmen shirts by printing on iron-on transfer paper.

The Groomsmen wore Linen pants and a linen button up shirt from Old Navy, the best part was that they got a great deal on them at the end of the season!

MOB wore a gold cocktail dress from BCBG. I had always pictured her in gold on my wedding day.

Flower girls wore a dress that I found on sale a Winners, they just happened to have the same cute little white dress in two sizes for $15!

Ring Bear wore a Children’s Place White Linen shirt and Mexx Linen Pants.

I am so happy with how DH’s outfit turned out. I had bought him the Old Navy pants in white and beige and a linen shirt with some embroidery on it. One night when I wasn’t home and he was going out with his friends he decided it was a good idea to wear his ‘wedding shirt’! So then I was on the hunt for a new shirt in the fall, when there is no linen anywhere!. I bought a long sleeve linen from Tommy Bahamas but it wasn’t quite what I had pictured, so with a month to go before the wedding I ordered from Studio Suits. I ordered the long sleeve shirt and linen vest in his measurements, and it looked so good! With his hat on he was big pimpin (his words!). I love that he wore all white as well!

For DH’s wedding gift I had done a boudoir shoot. I am so happy I did it! It was such a confidence booster as I had just lost 60 lbs and needed to feel beautiful and sexy again before the wedding.

I also had a handkerchief embroidered  with a card that read “To wipe the sweat from your brown or the tear from your eye. I love you and can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with youâ€. It was from Etsy Seller designsbyGloria . At first he thought it was a bandana to wear around his head!