SamIAm85

Wedding Invitations Our wedding invitations were semi-DIY. I made the ticket jacket myself for about $0.56/each. Everything was purchased from Hobby Lobby on sale or with coupons (Palm Tree Stamp: $4.19; Mr. & Mrs. Stamp: $3; Stamp Ink: $5.99; Cardstock: $35; Hemp Rope: $3; White Tags: $7.96) We ordered the Mexico Boarding Pass Invitation and Response Cards designed by La Bella Rue from Zazzle. After coupons, the invitations cost $1.35/each and the response cards cost $0.87/each.

Our wedding was 4 months ago and I’m finally getting around to posting all the details. This site was a HUGE help to me. I could not have come up with so many ideas, vendors, sales, reviews, etc. without the help of the brides before me. I would have been lost or spent a lot more money had I never stumbled upon this site. Our Story Lane and I went to the same high school, but did not actually meet until College (Lane is two years older than me). Lane was playing around on Facebook one day and noticed that we had a lot of mutual friends and we began talking. Our first date took place at a carnival, but we never talked to each other after the date. A year later, we ran into each other at a bar, got over the awkwardness of neither of us calling the other one back and the rest is history. Proposal We went on a vacation to Mexico and Lane got the idea to propose on our flight. He had spoken with the gate agents before our flight, met the lead flight attendant and got us bumped up to first class. About 5 minutes before we boarded the plane they announced that everyone needed to fill out emergency contact information form. We thought that was an odd request but complied. As we boarded the plane, the gate agent told us “Good Luckâ€. I started freaking out because they had made us fill out emergency contact information and it made me feel like the plane was going to go down. Lane was freaking out because he thought they just ruined the surprise. Once the plane reached cruising altitude Lane pretended to go to the bathroom. The stewardess handed Lane the microphone and he proposed in front of everyone. It was so sweet, but I was so embarrassed. Neither of us remember what all was said due to nerves, but I said yes and the whole plane started cheering and crying. Resort Our wedding took place at the Iberostar Tucan All-Inclusive Resort, Playa del Carmen, Mexico. The Iberostar Tucan is approximately 30 miles south of the Cancun Airport, just a few minutes from Playa del Carmen. You can find my review here. Save-the-Date My sister designed our save the dates and we purchased a magnet with a Groupon to Vista Print. We ordered 100 Large Magnets and Envelopes from Vista Print for $0.52/each. I purchased a $17 Groupon for $70 worth of product from Vista Print and we ended up spending an additional $35.00. Wedding Website After we chose a date and a resort, I spent hours creating our wedding website. It included information about the Riviera Maya, the resort, our travel agent, etc. Sometimes I don’t know why I even bothered spending so much time on the website, Lane and I had a TON of people asking us questions about the wedding, resort, passports, etc . and when we told them it was all on our website, the most common response was “oh you have a website?†Mind you we mentioned the website on our save the dates and our wedding invitations.

I just told Alejandra we wanted to include a sand ceremony and the minister had his own reading/script for that. We brought our own sand, vases and funnel. They will also play a song for you while you pour the sand. The whole for our funnel was so skinny, our song (2 minute 38 seconds) was finished before we were done pouring the sand (that was a little awkward). I asked a few times how long tables seating 12 people were. I got a different answer each time; 6.5 meters and 32 feet. It was so confusing trying to figure out what they really were that we just guessed and made our runners 10.5 feet. They turned out to be a little short, they just about reached the end of the table but no fabric hung down the sides. Let me know if you have any more questions.

Hello Ladies! I can’t believe it’s been 3 weeks since our wedding. Everything turned out great. The resort is beautiful, you girls will love it! We had our Welcome Dinner at Bonsai, the Japanese restaurant. Dinner included sushi, vegetable tempura, hibachi style steak, shrimp, chicken and fried rice. The food was delicious, the steak was my favorite. Our wedding dinner was at La Hacienda, the Mexican restaurant. The appetizers were amazing, and a lot of our guests loaded up on them, they did not realize a meal would follow. Tortilla Soup and Steak and Potatoes followed. For cake, we went with vanilla cake and vanilla frosting. Lane and I were quite impressed with the taste of the wedding cake. From our experience, desserts in Mexico don’t taste as amazing as they look, but the cake was very good. (La Hacienda Restaurant) (La Hacienda Restaurant) (Wedding Cake) Alejandra is a great wedding coordinator. She is very sweet, super helpful, and she worked her butt off. All my e-mails were answered with in a week. I brought 3 suitcases of table decorations, fans, maracas, guest book, etc. to her office two days before the wedding. She took care of everything and I did not have to think about any of it once I handed it off to her. I did not feel like bringing a ton of stuff back home and maybe selling it on the internet, so I left all of my candles, vases and floating flowers with Alejandra. Hopefully other brides can use them and not have to pack as much stuff themselves. I spent hours creating a music playlist for dinner and it turned out to be a waste of time. I assumed we could play the iPod during dinner, but since we had a semi-private dinner we could not play our own music. We had a total of 44 guests and pretty much had the restaurant all to ourselves. There may have been 2-3 tables of random people at dinner, I did not even notice them. As part of our package, a minister was provided by the resort. It turned out great. Hector was our minister and he gave a beautiful ceremony. I had no idea what to expect, all Alejandra told me was he had traditional vows. I was worried our ceremony would only last about 5 minutes but Hector had so much prepared. Between the vows, sand ceremony, reading, and Hector talking (he also threw in the blessing of the hands) our ceremony lasted about 20 minutes. We had the white canopy set-up that was part of the package. Carpet and white rose petals for the aisle were added at no additional cost. Also part of our package was a centerpiece, bouquet and boutonniere. We added boutonnieres ($10/each) for our dads and corsages ($15/each) for our moms. (Ceremony set-up) (Centerpiece and Groom's Boutonniere) (Corsage) (Bouquet and Dad's Boutonniere) I got my dress steamed and pressed once we arrived at the resort. It cost $30. Manicure/pedicure was included in my package. You could not give it to someone else or use that amount towards something else in the spa, so I just went with it the day before the wedding. I got the French manicure; it turned out just ok and was chipped by the wedding. I was pretty laid back in Mexico, but I wish I would have done shellac back home with mom and sisters. Their nails looked great the whole week. My biggest piece of advice is don't sweat the small stuff. I noticed once we arrived in Mexico I didn't care as much when the little things were not going as planned. I was so laid back at the resort, I was at the pool until 1 pm the day of the wedding. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions! Samantha

Thank you EVKnowsitall! I debated a long time about them and now I'm glad I went with them

Our wedding is May 11th and our AHR is June 8th. Ours will also be more of a laid back open house and party. I'm sending my invitations out the first week of May (so 5 weeks before)

Something Old: My engagement ring. It was my Great Aunt's ring on my Mother's side. Something New: Dress, bracelet, earrings Something Borrowed: My Dad's lapel pin with the Clan McLeod motto. I will pin this on my bouquet. Something Blue: My shoes