Lydia1120

Tada I have picked my wedding dress and am so thrilled! I absolutely love it and can't wait to get it in April (I ordered it in white). I am contemplating on a single narrow veil that sits on the back of my hair and almost to the floor. Yes or no?

thank you CSHO. I've been to Varadero, Cayo Santa Maria and Holguin and for the beach Varadero is my favoriate. Holguin was really nice and we loved Blau Costa Verde Resort..the entertainment was just amazing! However, the beaches were a bit too weedy and water muddy. In Cayo Santa Maria, there were many old men in banana hammocks with young local prostitutes on the beach so needless to say we won't be going back there, ever! Now that was back in 2009 so just speak to people who have been there recently before considering there. Varadero had the nicest beach so that is why we chose it. Good luck and have fun planning! :-)

Waredirect does ship to Canada but it's very expensive. I know that Staples also carries them and much more afforable than having them delivered here. As for the travel mugs, you can buy full sheet label paper at Staples and then print them out and stick them on the mugs or make tags. I don't like to put permanent personalizing on items as most people won't use them after the wedding. I'm tagging my mugs. Here is the pic...let me know if you want me to email them to you.

We have a unusual situation. My FI and I have been together for 17 years and he has a daughter from his first marriage (21), I have a son from my first marriage (23) and we have a 10 year old together. We also have 3 more children as my sister was killed in a car accident 8 years ago and we adopted her 3 kids now aged 24, 21 and 17. With raising so many children, we didn't make too much time for ourselves and planning a wedding. Now that the four older ones are living on their own and attending college/university, we have decided to make some time for ourselves and are getting married. We are having all six children as our bridal party. They are all very pleased! However, the invitations etc. are exclusively in our name and do not include the children. With such an experience, I know that if we lived through raising all those kids (and all their friends, lol) that we definitely have the art of marriage down to perfection! I know that I will die with this man and will continue to love him more each day! Here are some tips to all new step parents.... 1. remember that the children will eventually grow up and move out, your spouse will be there with you forever so make sure to put him/her FIRST; 2. dont' sweat the small stuff; 3. don't compare; 4. don't become defensive when step parent is trying to discipline...always support them and don't fight in front of the children, wait until you are alone and then discuss what you disliked or disagreed with and find a compromise; and 5. Sit down as a family and create rules, post them of the fridge if you have to...make sure it's in black and white so that the entire family knows the rules (this saved us from many disagreements); Hope this helps. I have a bunch more where that came from, lol

Yes, we received them. The quality is pretty good linen and we'll definitely have to iron them once we get to Cuba. The shirts were pretty right on in size. The pants were a bit off though so I bought one size up in the pants and my mom is going to hem them.

Thank you! Yes, the guests absolutely LOVED the invitations! When we initially planned a destination wedding, we figured that we would probably have about 35-40 people attending. To date, we have 74 people who have put their deposits to attend and of course, I had already started on the OOT bags so needless to say, they are costing me soooo much more than what I had budgeted for but the good thing is that Transat has given us our tickets for free given the amount of people we are bringing. Also, I'm only going to give one OOT bag per family. But don't feel guilty....I have so much done as we own a business and I won't be able to do anything from April to September so I'm trying to get as much done in our off season months. So far, I have the following: 1. Personalized flip flops for all the ladies (same as picture above) 2. Bridal Entourage T-shirts (I cleared out Walmart in the fall, when they had black halter tops on clearance for $1.00 and picked me up 25 black and 1 white for me) Then I ordered the "Bridal Entourage" Rhinestone Iron Ons from E-bay for $3.99 each and the "Bride" for $4.99. 3. I made my own Luggage Tags and ordered the clear plastic from www.waresdirect.com for $7.64 for 50 and I ordered the colourful coils from www.orientaltrading.com for $3.09 for 12 4. I ordered Love Playing cards from www.orientaltrading.com for $8.76 for 12 and will personalize them with my dyi labels 5. Tote bags from www.orientaltrading.com for $32.46 for 50 bags (I'll just decorate them ....i chose these as people can re-use them for grocery bags) 6. Mini Purell bottles; ordered off e-bay $25.99 for 100 which I will label "Spread the Love Not the Germs" 7. Buttons for the men (My fiance always says "Are you F*&^% Kidding Me?" so we had buttons made for $54.50 for 50 buttons, lol 8. Travel Mugs I bought at our local Dollar Store for $2.00 each and only got 25 for the men...tagged with "to Have and to hold and to keep your beer cold" 9. White Silk Fans I ordered from E-bay for $36.88 for 30 10.First Aid Kit from the Dollar Store for $1.25 each (i just added Advil, Pepto and Gravol tablets to the package which I purchased at the local pharmacy) Tagged "Party On, We've Got your back" 11. Made my own 'Activity Book" for the children 12. Made our own passport which has all the information about the trip, wedding, etc. (got my template from here which was sooo great) 13. Printed a little Spanish Book for all the bags. 14. Package of travel size Kleenex at the Dollar Store $2.00 for 12 and created personalized labels for them "Tears of Joy, Tears of Laughter, Tears of Happliy Ever After" 15. A bottle of water wherein I will personalize our own label (these can be so expensive online and yet so cheap to make...just buy sticker paper and create your own label) My fiance says that I over did it, and I probably did, but I just love to give! LOL...Here are some pics. I don't have everything assembled yet but just organized to assemble later on. Let me know if you need any templates. this is only one of the pages but I have 12 pages in total I'll post more as I complete the projects. All in a big tote so that I can work on them in February, lol.

MsTigger try going to the discussion "Where to get Married in Cuba" I think you may be able to see the pictures there.

Hello everyone, After many years together, my fiancé and I have perfected the Art of Marriage. We are best friends, lovers and soul mates. We have grown together to have the same sense of value and common objectives; we have learned to speak words of appreciation; we have learned to compromise and know that being the right person is just as important as being the right partner; we are able to forgive and forget; we never go to sleep angry; we stand together and face the world; we say "I love you" at least once a day; we form a circle of love that gathers all our friends and family and we will never be too old to hold hands. We are getting married knowing that our love will last a lifetime! Now, time to start planning the wedding. We decided on a destination wedding as we love to travel. We’ve been to Belize, Cuba, Dominican, Barbados, Mexico, Jamaica and Cayman Islands and I have to say that Cuba has pretty good beaches. We also chose Cuba as it is the most cost effective for our guests and has the best nightly entertainment (Costa Rica comes in 2nd). My future brother-in-law had been to Blau Marina Varadero (formerly Barcelo Marina) and he absolutely loved it! I checked out the packages and compared with some of the other local resorts and decided to go with Blau Marina as that where we got the most for our money. After getting quotes from Sunwing, Trans-At and Signature Vacations, we booked with Transat Vacations…. $1032 for regular rooms and $1104 for oceanview rooms and some really impressive incentives. I paid the $30 so that can start quickly accessing the templates and pictures. This website has been so very helpful and want to Thank all the brides who contribute to it! Looking forward to hearing from people who have been married in Varadero Cuba in particulary would love to hear from you if you were married at the Blau Marina (formerly Barcelo Marina).

For the invitations, given that we have such a large party going, I made 30 "Messages in a Bottle" for those people who had already put down a deposit to travel and sent cards to the others. The postage for the Bottles are $10 each so I had them all prepared before Christmas and handed them out personally during the Holidays. The bottles I purchased from Michael's for $.74 Sand - from our own lakefront (lol) Shells - ordered from Florida Shells and Gifts https://store02.prostores.com/servlet/floridashellsandgift00/InvoiceAccount?smode=checkout The mixed Nassa was $.99 and I bought 2 (I also bought other shells for decorating the table and had the parcel delivered to friends in Michigan to save on shipping) Umbrellas - purchased from Micheal's for $5.00 for 100 Labels - ordered return address labels from Vistaprint and paid $8.00 for 50 Ribbon - purchased from the Dollar Store for $2.00 Boxes - ordred from invitationinabottle.com If I had to do it all over again, I would have just ordered the DYI kit from invitationinabottle.com for $1.99 per bottle...it works out to be cheaper. The actual invitations, I ordered from www.magnetstreet.com for $2.25 each. The straw is from a Hawaiin skirt I bought at the dollar store and just cut it and the Tags I created in Powerpoint.

Hi Jolene028 I've done a bit given that we own a cottage resort on Rice Lake so I won't be able to do too much from May to September. We decided on a destination wedding as we love to travel. We’ve been to Belize, Cuba, Dominican, Barbados, Mexico, Jamaica and Cayman Islands and I have to say that Cuba has pretty good beaches. We also chose Cuba as it is the most cost effective for our guests and has the best nightly entertainment (Costa Rica comes in 2nd). I'll elaborate a bit and provide some pics. SAVE THE DATE CARDS We immediately ordered our Magnet Save the Date cards from http://www.magnetstreet.com/. Paid $2.05 each in total (incl taxes and shipping). See picture attached. GIRLS DRESSES: Given that people are paying for their trips, I wanted to pay for the bridal party’s attire. I bought the girls dresses at www.venus.com and paid $39 each. The girls love the way the dress fits and love the fact that they can wear it again after the wedding. For the ceremony, I purchased barefoot sandals for the girls from e-bay for $13.49 for a pair. For the reception, I ordered personalized flip flops from www.partyflops.com. I ordered 25 pairs for my guests as well and with shipping, it came out to $9.48 each. I would suggest going to Wal-mart and buying the $3.00 pair instead, albeit they came out fantastic! GUYS ATTIRE: My fiancé wanted to wear Cuban attire for the wedding. I did plenty of online surfing before I found a reasonable price www.guayaberascubanas.com . The guys shirts were $28.99 and the pants were $39.99. I also ordered the ring boy attire from there for $32.99 for the shirt and $34.99 for the pants. I ordered the Leis in black and white to match the girls dresses from ebay. I've ordered my wedding dress and can't wait to get it in April. I'll start another response to show you my invitations and what I bought for my OOT bags.