nolacruiser6

One more piece of exciting news before I leave for the night.. My shoes are almost most done! I found this AMAZING website called Figgie Shoes, they also have a facebook page. These shoes are absolutely amazing. You send your shoes, and 12 items or words you want painted on your shoes, and then they are hand painted. I figured since I paid almost nothing for my dress that I could splurge on a pair of hand-painted shoes You must check out her facebook page https://www.facebook.com/FiggieShoes . Anyhow, I received my email today that my shoes are complete and are being shipped..Thank goodness cause I was starting to panic that they might not make it before I leave on April 12th. YAY! Here are my original shoes that I sent to be painted. Please ignore my nosy dog in the background, I cannot sneak anything past him! I will post the new version of my shoes when they arrive!

If you haven't figured it out by now, I am obsessed with Vistaprint and getting items for free Here is how I made out on items for our OOT bags and I am making a bag for each room. Welcome postcard Calendar Magnet Canvas Tote Bag Hats Magnetic Note pads Mousepad Mug Notepads-these are my favorite, they have lined paper inside too! Keychains Postcards And I bought our parents T-shirts (MOB, FOB, MOG and FOG shirts). They were $2 each so I could not resist. I was able to place enough orders (over the last 9 months or so) so that everyone will have each item in their bag. I was able to get all the items for free and just had to pay for shipping. It was kind of a pain b/c you can only order one free item per order, so I had to place 9 or 10 orders and pay separate shipping. However, it was totally worth it! Each order for shipping cost about $7-10, therefore, I still saved a ton of money. I also had other items in my orders like invitations, postcards, business cards, thank-you cards and others items all for free Until next time!

So after digging some things out from the closet and under the bed I found somethings I had forgotten about I guess that is what happens when you plan something for a year! Since we have a small amount of quests traveling with us (16 in total) I was able to splurge for our OOT bags. I bought ring dishes on etsy for all of the girls on the trip. And found some great toiletry bags on clearance (75% off) at Target just after Christmas I bought some starfish jewelry from another BDW bride For the guys I bought flasks and ties

They are Martha Stewart punches and I bought them at Michaels.

Hi Ladies, thanks for all the great compliments!! Here is what I have been working on this week since I only have 12 days til we leave and need to ship out all of our reception items to St. Thomas tomorrow Lollipops: I had some extra logo stickers (free with vistaprint) and I was trying to figure out how to use them. So, when I was at Michaels yesterday I saw they had a pack of 24 lollipops in their wedding section for $9.99. I of course used my 40% of coupon which made them very affordable and will be a cute touch on our tables. I also had plenty of extra ribbon so tied little bows around the sticks. Gift bags: I wanted our guests to have someway of carrying (without breaking) their sand dollar escort cards back to the boat safely. Yesterday at Michaels they had a pack of 16 bags for $2.99. I used my seahorse punch and punched both sides of the bag, put extra tissue paper I had in them, and attached the "Thank You" tags I had made previously. Room key holders: I made all of our guests a room key holder. The card holders are from ID Specialist. I printed the tag inserts on white shimmer cardstock and attached different colored lanyards. Very simple and easy, and hopefully useful! Enjoy! I will be back later with our OOT bag items, they are currently scattered all over my living room, I am attempting to count and organize Room key holder print template.ppt

I came upon the shimmer paper by accident and so glad I did, because it really puts that extra touch on things.

Totally agree, don't go without the coupon (available through your phone app store too, then you don't even have to print them . Here in New Orleans the Martha Stewart paint was on $1.99-2.99 a bottle. Very affordable!

Thanks everyone for the comments. I am back with more...So I have been busy painting...painting and more painting Only two more days before I have to ship everything to St. Thomas... Here are some sample shells that will be decorating the table I was going for silver, white and different shades of blue. I based coated the shells and starfish with a Martha Stewart Pearl paint, and then use the Martha Stewart glitter paint on some of them so we had variety. I also purchased a clam shell at Hobby Lobby and painted it for a ring dish. I wanted to soften the dark purple on the dish, so I used an acrylic pearl white color an mixed it with a little bit of a clear base coat to soften the color of the shell. I had some extra ribbon and raffia and used the glue gun to secure everything with a pearl on the top! me playing with my rings And last but not least..our sand dollar escort cards. I had other intentions...like writing the 2012, and St. Thomas on the actual sand dollar so it could serve as an ornament, but it didn't work out so great with the pens I had (they bled and it looked terrible, thankfully I bought extra sand dollars just in case I screwed up), so I had to scrap the writing idea because of time and just went with making a name card for everyone and attaching it with ribbon.

Thanks! the best part is it cost NOTHING!!!

I was able to finish the labeling of the hand sanitizers today, this was a long long process to figure out how to get them to stick with the paper I had! Luggage Tags that were sent to our guests with our pre-travel brochure Picture inserts for the luggage tags were free using vistaprint. The luggage tags were from another BDW bride who bought them from Specialist ID. Brochure was created using Vistaprint and was free. I have templates for almost everything I post, so please PM if interested.

This weekend I have been working on all the items I need to get shipped to St. Thomas prior to leaving, so I have been working feverishly. My FI thinks I am going crazy with all the paper, glue and scissors that have taken over the house, but I wanted to do everything myself, so a disorganized living room is a small price to pay Here is what I accomplished this past week: Our ceremony program fans My hands do sure hurt after cutting out all of these petals, but it was totally worth it. I found some great white shimmer cardstock at Michaels craft store (and of course used a coupon) and used the shimmer cardstock for all the white petals and for my menu's (see below). Unfortunately the picture really doesn't do it justice, the shimmer makes a huge difference and is really easy to print on. I had a template from another BDW bride and changed the colors and style to fit our theme. Our reception will be at a nice beach resort just a few miles from Lindquist Beach. We are having a buffet lunch, just because I couldn't decided what to eat We wanted a very relaxing and laid back lunch. Here is the picture of our reception area at Sunset Grille Menu's I used Microsoft Publisher to create the menu's and printed them on the same white shimmer cardstock as above. I bought the Martha Stewart sand dollar punches and used that at the top of each menu so the underlying cardstock would show through. I then couldn't decide whether to mount them on the turquoise or sea foam green cardstock because the seahorse background is a really nice light green and matched the green cardstock perfectly, but all of my other projects I had used the turquoise cardstock....So I decided to do half green and half blue and will have them alternate colors around the table. I couldn't resist making these really cute cocktail stirrers. I used some of our existing logos that I had made and used that for one side of the stirrer. I created these again using Microsoft publisher. I printed them on full sheets (8.5x11") of shipping labels, this made it so I didn't have to use glue I just wrapped them around the stirrers and then just cut out the triangle to make them look like flags. Here is how I picture them on the table Now of course I had a lot of extra paper and scraps that I didn't use for projects so I used my Martha Steward punches and made confetti for the ceremony and to decorate the tables during lunch. I'll be working on OOT bag items and sand dollar escort cards later today, so I will be sure to share them with everyone!

So we are getting close to our wedding date (4/19/2012) and I have been busy at DIY projects, so I figured now would be a great time to share these with everyone. I first have to say that most of these projects were inspired by other BDW brides from this site! So thanks to everyone for all the great advice and inspirations you posted. Here are our STD's and Invitations (previously posted on my other thread) STD Magnets (created using Microsoft Publisher and printed with the help of Vistaprint) Invitations (created using Microsoft Publisher and printed with the help of Vistaprint) Final Invitation product ready for mailing I'll be posting more today as I take pictures

Thanks! I hopefully will have time to post some of my new projects this weekend

I am now working on sending out the Pre-travel items for our guests. I created a pre-travel brochure on vistaprint (for free of course) and I was able to buy some passport covers from a BDW bride, and I also made luggage tags for everyone. I will be sending these out about a month before the cruise. Here are the luggage tags I made. I bought the hard plastic luggage tags from another BDW Bride (they were from idspecialist). I printed out the beach scenes using vistaprint again . They had a promo for free invitations so I cut and pasted the beach scenes into the exact size of the invitations offered on vistaprint, I did this using Publisher. I then uploaded the complete image to vistaprint, ordered them for free, and when I received them in the mail all I had to do was cut them into individual cards. They include the loops as well, they are just not in the picture below. I am also including passport covers in with each package. I bought a few different ones for my parents and siblings, and then for everyone else I bought the passport covers from Michael's.

Here are our invitations. I created the invitations in Microsoft Publisher, and again uploaded the file to vistaprint for free prints . I made RSVP postcards for everyone (saw this idea on another bride's thread). All for free...Again gotta love vistaprint I then took the invitation used a glue gun to attach a white ribbon, a few pieces of raffia and a white starfish. I bought 8x5 brown kraft boxes, used turquoise tissue paper to line the box and placed the RSVP cards on the bottom and then placed the invitation on top and folded the remaining tissue paper over the invitations. Here is how I wrapped the outside of the box with either purple or turquoise ribbon. I made printed each individual's name on shipping label paper (with adhesive on the back) and used turquoise stock paper to frame it. I love the shipping label paper because you don't have to worry about glue . After I had these all made, I bought some brown kraft-wrapping paper at Michael's and gift wrapped them all, created shipping labels on the computer (used a calligraphy font) and printed them on shipping labels. It took quite a while to make off of these, but they were totally worth it!!!

Hi Ladies! Now that I have been reading this forum for months, it is finally my turn to contribute. We have decided that we are going on a wedding cruise with 16 of our close family and friends. Our wedding ceremony will occur when we are in the St. Thomas, USVI port and we are getting married on Lindquist Beach I will say I have made almost everything using vistaprint.com. I just could not justify spending so much money on STDs and invitations. Here are the STD magnets I made. I created them using microsoft publisher, uploaded the image to vistaprint and voila

Sooo cute, could you tell us who the sellers are?

LOL me too!!! I really wanted the mango curd, but the FI wasn't into that So we played it safe.. I actually really wanted to do cupcakes, but the price was extremely expensive for cupcakes, so we went back to the cake idea.

I know, it is coming up very fast! I will be sure to post a review upon my return I sent my STD magnets out in August and I sent our invitations out in October. Looking back though I think I would have sent out the STDs a little earlier to give people more time to save. But it worked out ok, most of our family already knew are plans so it was a little bit of a struggle for some of our friends.

I had the same worries about missing our port due to bad weather and spoke with Janelle about my concerns and she said the same as above, it had only happened a few times. If you do miss port, you can reschedule with Island Bliss, but I suppose going back to St. Thomas is not always an option for us. I am trying not to worry about that too much, I figure there is nothing I can do to control it. We are getting married in April, so praying the weather will be nice. One of the reasons I picked St. Thomas was because the data said it was not a frequently skipped port. I was thinking about the bahamas until I read that Princess Cays were the most frequently skipped port due to bad weather. LOL We did chose our cake flavors, but it was a little difficult since like you said you cannot taste them. We went really simple, vanilla cake with hazelnut cream filling, with an almond vanilla buttercream. I was a little nervous about trying some of the other flavors even though they sounded pretty fun.

We will have around 25 people. Janelle is also helping us organize the transportation from the ship, to lunch and back to port. Prior to realuzing we were not in the Havensight port the transportation to Lindquist Beach and back was going to be around $20 per person. Unfortunately we found out we are docking in Crown Bay port so our cost will be a little higher, have not found out how much more though yet.

Another update on our wedding lunch...Our original lunch spot was going to be Wikked near the Havensight port but our wedding planner (Janelle) informed me that it is apparently closed, not sure if it is temporary or permanent since I never received a response back from the restaurant coordinator. But, I think it was a blessing in disguise, Janelle mentioned another restaurant close to Lindquist Beach (5-10 mins) called Sunset Grill at Secret Habour and I am so glad because it is amazing and turns out to be about the same price per person as the first place but much better seating and menu options for groups. We are going to have our wedding cake (that comes with the ceremony package) delivered to the restaurant and we can enjoy it after lunch. I just booked our group their today I Cannot wait!

A ton! I looked into using the cruise and it was probably a $1000. The cruise was charging double to triple to price just to get the marriage license done. And I have heard from other forums that the individual attention and response time is not that great from the cruise line wedding coordinators. Although each ship is different so I cannot speak for all. I have nothing but great things to say thus far about Island Bliss.

Ok Ladies, so I was at target today (big surprise and I found more great clearance deals for OOT bags. 24 oz. Embark stainless steel water bottles (BPA free) for only $2.50! Of course I bought 25 in the travel water bottle section. The colors that I saw where blue, silver, pink w/flowers and green. They had tons of other styles on clearance as well. You cannot beat that price. I have been scouring for cheap bottles to put in OOT bags and I finally found them. Really cute make-up bags (were blueish purple with lipstick on them) in the xmas section for only $1.50 (50% off)! Burt's Bees chapstick in the xmas section for $1.49 (50% off) None clearance items, but great deals! Eucerin calming lotion (regular price $0.99) make sure you print out a coupon (for any eucerin item) from the target website, it will make them free Nivea hand salve (in the small 2 inch tins near the lotion bottles) are also $0.99 and you can print out a coupon (for any nivea item) on the target website and they will also be free Maybelline baby lips chapstick is $2.99, print out a $2.00 coupon (for any maybelline product) on the target website and they will be only $0.99 each! Happy Shopping!

Sent you a PM, I am wondering if you have any pashmina's left?