mrspfafftobe

I know this an old thread but I wanted to share some post-wedding DIYs! Here is a shadowbox I put together with mementos from our wedding day. Included is our invitation, invitation envelopes (we actually sent one to ourselves to see how it would go through the mail, lol), cake topper, my hair flower, my earrings (sorry for the glare from the glass!), cocktail napkin, wedding ceremony program (all of our guests' names are listed on the back so this was super special to save) and our dinner menu. I love how this turned out and I love seeing it every day! The shadow box itself is from Home Goods and I got it on a great sale. I actually bought two in case I want to do this again for our first baby (someday!). Here is a little project I put together for my husband for our anniversary (OK - I admit it was just as much for me but it was still special!). It's an 8x10 of one of our wedding pics, and I printed the poem we read at our ceremony on transparency paper and put them together in this great frame from Pottery Barn. I love the poem so much and I literally get teary-eyed every time I stop to read it. It's a really special memory from our wedding day. Hope you enjoy my DIYs and have some more inspiration for your big day!!!

Here is a breakout of our budget. We also took a honeymoon in Punta Cana which we paid for with a honeymoon registry and cash gifts from the wedding (about $5,000 total). This includes absolutely EVERYTHING we bought or paid for from day 1 - we literally saved every receipt and it's all included here. For reference, we had about 60 people and the wedding was not at an all inclusive resort. All in all, it was money well spent. We had a lovely wedding, much nicer than the money would have got us in Boston where we live. My one budget "regret" is the photographer, which is funny because in the beginning it was the ONE thing I wouldn't budge on and decided to splurge on. We hired the "best of the best" and our pictures were very good, but I think we could have gotten almost as good for a fraction of the cost. There are a LOT of good photographers in the Rivera Maya, so do your research and don't necessarily get sucked in by the big names. We originally wanted to have an AHR but we just couldn't afford it after how much our DW ended up costing. Almost everyone we really wanted to celebrate with was able to make the trip, so we didn't really see the need to have another party. Plus, I just don't think I could have taken on planning another reception. One was already too much. Maybe it's just me but I thought wedding planning was SO stressful! Paper goods (Invitations, Calligraphy, etc.) 2,478.44 Dress/Attire/Wedding Bands 6,332.33 Ceremony/Reception (Food and Decor) 22,580.32 Photos/Video 6,200.00 Flowers 3,068.00 Gifts (Welcome Bags, Wedding Party and Family) 3,166.79 Travel (Including Site Visit) 7,616.93 Other 1,079.19 Total 52,522.00

Thank you! Of course I'd be happy to share The bigger font with our names is called Aphrodite Slim Pro. The smaller one is called Scala Caps. Neither of them are standard fonts, but you should be able to buy them at a place like myfonts.com Hope that helps!!

Hi diddles - thanks for sharing this very valuable information. Esencia was our #1 choice for our wedding last year, but they wanted about a $25,000 deposit to save our date, which we just couldn't do. We were saving money and getting money from our parents month-to-month, and just didn't have the cash to pay that lump sum understanding we had other vendors and services we had to pay for up front too. I don't know if this is still their policy, but they wanted us to pay for 50% of ALL of the guest rooms for the 3-day buy out, then as our guests book they would transfer the room deposit to our wedding/reception fund. We ended up having out wedding at Le Reve and although it wasn't cheap either, it was much more economical and everything was just perfect - truly a dream. Best of all they let you work with whatever vendors you want. If Esencia is too pricey for anyone considering it, I'd encourage you to look at Le Reve. On another note, I cannot believe del Sol is that expensive now. We paid a lot less than that for 6 hours with a principal photographer (Matt) not even a year ago. We did get a discount through the Le Reve/del Sol/BDW promotion, but still... wow. We are actually going to Esencia to celebrate our first anniversary next week, so we will still get the Esencia experience even though we didn't host our wedding there.

Hi elissae, We packed the matchbooks in our checked luggage and didn't have any troubles (they were the strike anywhere kind, too!).We thought they were prohibited but just hoped for the best - worst case scenario they would take them from us. All in all they only cost us like $10 so I wasn't worried. Maybe because we did the custom covers and they didn't look like matchbooks and they didn't notice them? We checked 9 bags total to bring with us. We got caught up in customs for a long time while they searched everything, but they were mostly worried about the value of the items and that we paid the appropriate amount of tax for everything. The only thing that they were concerned about was the marshmallows we brought for our s'mores bar. They had no idea what they were and thought they were something illicit. LOL! Here's my story about getting through customs in Mexico (page 13): http://www.bestdestinationwedding.com/t/41422/customs-in-mexico-an-effort-to-gather-the-info-in-one-thread/120 All of the pretty little DIYs in this thread got packed up here - if I had to do it over again I would NOT have brought the trunk-like suitcases

We just got our pictures back from our December honeymoon shoot with Karina Jensen and we couldn't be happier. I love how her images are so soft and romantic. I'm not sure if it her her shooting style, editing style, or both - but I really love it. As I said before she was super fun and nice and great to work with. Here is my favorite pic:

Thanks!! We bought the cards banner on etsy from a seller named LazyCaterpillar. She is really awesome and her work equally as great! We also bought a larger "Mr. & Mrs." banner for our sweetheart table, and we bought a "Merry Christmas" banner for the holidays from her as well. Here is a link to the cards banner on Etsy and a picture of the sweetheart banner: https://www.etsy.com/transaction/78571323

I know this post is old, but I just found some other pics of my DIY projects so I figured I would add them. These are our koozies that we gave to guests at the welcome cocktail reception. These were a HUGE hit with our guests and most people kept them around and used them for the rest of the wedding weekend. We ordered extra and just kept them out on the pool bar all weekend. We obviously didn't manufacture the koozies but we did the custom design to be printed on them. (The other side not pictured had our monogram.) Here is a closeup of our seating chart that I designed and printed, and then a picture of it set up at our reception. We brought the frame with us to Mexico and it kinda broke in our suitcase, but you could barely tell in the setup. My husband did some quick fixes with duct tape!

My husband and I just had a honeymoon photoshoot with Karina Jensen at Sivory Punta Cana today. She was so nice and fun to work with! She was great at finding the perfect locations and lighting and was really helpful in suggesting poses (we needed a lot of guidance in that area!). Overall it was a great experience and we're looking forward to seeing the photos! Will post when I get them

E Exactly - where there's a will there's a will there's a way! Great job being resourceful and innovative to save up some money. The three or four months leading up to our wedding almost our whole paychecks went to the wedding fund and we put pretty much everything else in our life on hold (except the mortgage of course!) and lived very frugally. All in all we paid for about 1/3 of the wedding ourselves. Our budget initially included a small AHR in both of our hometowns but those were the first to go when we extended the budget for the DW in Mexico. Plus we did so much planning for the DW I couldn't imagine planning two more receptions!

A while back I posted in this thread that our budget was $40-45,000. All in all we ended up spending about $55,000 on the DW in Mexico. As we got closer and closer to the wedding I found so many things that I was not willing to compromise on and just decided to spend the extra money to have my dream wedding. I would not have changed one thing except for having to pay the hotel $2,000 for rooms that didn't get booked. Our wedding was at Le Reve and we did a buy out for all 25 rooms and our contract required us to pay for any rooms that didn't get booked. Although we had 65 guess, many stayed at other properties and we ended up having to pay for empty rooms for the three-day buy out Other than that it was all money well spent!

Here are the contents of the too much fun kits along with where we bought the items: E-A-R Classic Earplugs, Pillow Paks, Uncorded, Foam, Yellow, 30 Pairs/Box - iBuyOfficeSupply.com Gojo PURELL Sanitizing Hand Wipes - iBuyOfficeSupply.com Johnson&Johnson Mini First Aid Kit - iBuyOfficeSupply.com Johnson&Johnson Motrin IB Pain Reliever - iBuyOfficeSupply.com Pepto-Bismol Pepto Bismol Tablets - iBuyOfficeSupply.com PhysiciansCare Antacid iBuyOfficeSupply.com PhysiciansCare Non-Aspirin (Acetaminophen) - iBuyOfficeSupply.com Single-Dose A-D Caplets, 36 Doses/Box iBuyOfficeSupply.com 3-3/4 X 1-1/8 X 5-1/4 WHITE FROSTED PILLOW BOX - PAPERMART.COM Shout Wipe & Go, Portable Stain Treater Towelettes - 12 ea - drugstore.com SPF Lip Balm Chap Relief, 2-ct. Packs - dollartree.com Idividually Wrapped Flossers - CVS

The font is called Aphrodite Slim Pro. I don't think it's a standard font on most word processing or design software, but you can get it at sites like www.myfonts.com