tygrrlily

@@NJBride2014 - Marvin sent me the low centerpiece options, and I think I might go that route now. Haha my FI is understanding, but if I tell him we have to pay xx more so I could get tall centerpieces, I don't think he would be too happy. I'm debating between yours and the one that is a bit cheaper, but with more shades of pinks and corals! I have to say, it's refreshing to get a reply from him within a day... I'm still waiting on the hotel's flower options for over a week now :S

This thread is a great idea! I'm in need of a Michael's run - thanks for the tip

We asked people to reply via email or website, but we did put it on a separate enclosure in our invitation. We had 1 person give it back to us in person, and we've had a grand total of about 15 people rsvp at all haha We figured we're just going to keep track by actual bookings

yes, we wanted them for our cigar station too! I guess that saves me money, but I think my FI would loved it Where are you getting your sparklers from?

Decor Now for the really fun stuff . Call it the Pinterest or Style Me Pretty effect, but I really want our wedding to be beautiful! I started off wanting tropical hot pinks and oranges, but have since changed my mind. I don't want anything really beachy or Mexican (our welcome party will be more like that). So I've gone with a romantic, slightly glamorous theme. Our wedding colours are blush pink, fuchsia, coral and gold, with slight touches of mint green and a black and white striped motif. Ceremony Our ceremony is going to be on the skydeck rooftop of our hotel and it will be completely private which I love! I'm not going to go overboard here because I know the ceremony will only be about 30 minutes, so I'm going to add a couple of things I think will have a big effect in our pictures. I'm still trying to figure out how to bring in some pops of colour. We were originally going to have tall colourful centerpieces in the aisle, but I think we're doing low ones now because of avoiding vendor fees... hrm - Complimentary huppa w/ white draping, then add chandelier and crystal curtain (Zuniga) - Gold Tiffany Chairs (Zuniga) - Flower petals in shades of pink and coral scattered along the aisle - Complimentary bouquet in shades of pink on table - Sand or rock or glass ceremony? - Chair detail we are going to do with silk flowers from Afloral and ribbon for either the back row, or alternating aisle seats Reception This is what I want our reception to look like. We're having it on one side of the sky terrace, and the cocktail and lounge area will be on the other side of the pool. We're going to have 4 round guest tables and a rectangular head table. The tablecloths will be blush pink crease taffeta, and the accents will be in gold, black and white stripes, mint green, and brighter colours in the flowers - 4 132" round tablecloths and and 2 90x156" table drapes in blush pink crease taffeta tablecloths (On the Go Linens - ordered) - Gold beaded chargers (Web Restaurant Store or Save on Crafts) - Gold Tiffany chairs (Zuniga) - White napkins (resort) - Gold votives and candles (saveoncrafts or afloral) - Rose petals scattered? - Black and white striped runner for the head table and tied around the cocktail tables (Ikea fabric - bought) - Paper lanterns on bamboo and strung across the dance floor and pool (Zuniga) - Bride and groom rubber duckies for the private pool (Michaels - bought) - Lights wrapping the columns surrounding the bar (DJ Discomovil) - 20 person lounge area for beside the dance floor (Zuniga) - Bride and Groom chairs will have one of the free Bride/Groom printable signs from Wedding Chicks and silk flowers and ribbon (Afloral) Cake table Inspiration: I love this sequin gold table runner! They're super expensive, so I'm just going to do it here and hope it will have a big effect. I'm still debating on a cake topper - I love the Lollypop workshop custom ones, but they are soo expensive, so also considering a word in gold script, or maybe just flowers? I'm hoping the resort will be able to do some type of ombre or textured effect to the cake like in these pics - Dull gold sequin 120" round tablecloth for our cake table (On the Go Linens - ordered) - Monogram mugs spelling LOVE to fill with flowers and put on cake table (Anthropologie - bought) Flowers I decided to go the Real Touch route for our personal flowers. The prices from the resort were astronomical and I didn't want them to wilt. I happened upon the Bloom Bridal site and fell in love with Judy's flowers and figured it'd be a nice keepsake. The first pic is my inspiration image, and I'm getting just the bridal bouquet and groom's boutineire wrapped in black and white ribbon. For our centerpieces, I love the look of tall centerpieces and am still deciding if it's worth the possible outside vendor cost! We're getting quotes from Marvin at Maya Floral and through our resort right now. We're also going to use silk flowers in certain places (like the backs of chairs and in the mugs), and the complimentary rose bouquet from Beach Palace (All from Bloom Bridal - ordered) - 1 bridal bouquet (coral silk peonies, coral roses, peach blush and cream calla lilies, sunset orange/coral plumerias, cerise pha and cream orchids) - 2 bridesmaids bouquets (complimentary flowers, but with more cream and pops of colour) - 1 groom's boutiniere (cream calla lily) - 4 groomsmen and ring bearer boutinieres (peach blush calla illy) - 2 fathers' boutinieres (cream rose) - 2 mothers' pin on corsages (peach blush and cream roses) - 2 hair flowers (cream orchids) Paper This is where I am attempting some DIY, but with a lot of free templates! There are a ton of free wedding templates online for everything from invitations to menus to table numbers to signs. If you're not too picky about design, it's a great option. I'm working on our pre-wedding mailer right now. I used the Aylee Bits template to make a passport booklet with information. I have the inside all finished, but am figuring out what paper to use for the cover and am ordering it from Papercircle.ca. I should have those finished in the next week or two, and I'll post a pic then. They look like everyone else's basically, but possibly worse because I suck at DIY We are also going to include these luggage tags that I designed. Just waiting on the id holders (gcishoponline) and luggage loops (beandaddy-o) I ordered from Ebay. I got this custom arrow stamp made from Etsy (mancoostamp) and we're using the image as a logo to personalize some of our paper things. I made wedding announcements for my mom to give after our engagement party to her friends that aren't invited to our wedding. I used this free template, changed up the wording, and they turned out great. We printed them at home, and found cream envelopes at homesense. I'll take a pic of our actual completed ones later, but this is what they look like minus the enclosures. We are going to use the matching free program fan for our ceremony. I already designed them, and am just waiting to print and assemble closer to the date to make sure we have no drop outs haha. I got plain jumbo craft sticks from my aesthetician (haha! wax sticks), and we're going to use black and white striped ribbon to tie in our theme. They will look something like this when finished: I used the Wedding Chicks template and we'll probably use this as our thank you letter to place on everyone's charger at the reception. I will probably get table numbers from there as well, our bride/groom signs for our chairs and maybe a thank you or here comes the bride sign - all free! One thing I want to order is a sign like this from Etsy (KnottyPineSignsLLC). I think it'll look nice on our welcome table, and also be a nice keepsake afterward. Hopefully it won't weigh too much! Favours and Welcome Table We're going to get the mint green Maracas from Amols as favours, and attach a tag I got from Sandy (NJBride - thank you!) that says "Shake for a Kiss". We'll either put these on each person's plate, or on our welcome table with seating and guestbook. We may also do these hot sauce bottles we got from a store in Cancun on our site visit, but still deciding. For our welcome table, I love the hanging pictures above and we're going to do that with pics of my FI and I as a couple and growing up, and I also want to include some of my parents' and grandparents wedding pics, his parents' wedding pics, etc. We are going to do this fun shot glass arrangment for our seating arrangments, and it'll be on our welcome table with our favours and guestbook. I also really love the idea of the Polaroid / Fujifilm Instamax guestbook, so I might try to do something like this for our guestbook PHEW! So those are all of my ideas... now I just have to go and execute them

Hello Ladies! We’re about 4.5 months out, so I’ve decided to start one of these planning threads to help me organize myself and get me motivated to start executing all of my plans! I have all of these different folders and notepads on my desktop, and it will be nice to have one place where it's all laid out. This forum has honestly been such a godsend to me in planning my wedding. I’ve found it really helpful to read other brides’ accounts, and I’m hoping I can pay it forward to any future brides. I am a big planner and I love to write, so I am planning on detailing my whole destination wedding planning experience. Feel free to jump forward and just read the planning stuff! I will update pics and stuff once I get things ordered and completed. This first post is going to be really long because it'll be all of my ideas - I will post updates later once I actually execute and finish these. I can't remember how to put pics in so everyone can see them, so I'm uploading them on a separate site - sorry if the pics are huge! Our Story My FI, Tony, and I met online almost 5 years ago exactly. When we first met, we were both pretty young and neither of us was looking for anything serious. I had just gotten out of a long term relationship, and he was still very much in “single” mode and still enjoying it. Much to our surprise though, we found ourselves wanting it to become more serious pretty quickly and we made it "official" about a month later. We’ve had a fantastic relationship throughout, but I think it was really in our last couple of years together that we’ve really grown and matured as a couple. It took us 4.5 years of dating to get engaged - much longer than many of our friends - but I’m glad for it because I feel like we know each other so well now, faults and all, and have gone through so much together. I can confidently say that I love him to pieces and I’m so excited to spend the rest of our lives together. >> The pic on the left was our first pic taken together as a couple right after we started dating almost 5 years ago! It was for my 26th birthday and it pretty much describes what we were like back then (multiple drinks in hand!). The other is us in Peru last year after completing the Inca hike to Machu PIcchu! Our guide told us that you can really learn about your relationship after completing the hike because it's so draining and it can bring out people's worst sides. For me, I saw how completely supportive and strong Tony was and it made me fall in love with him all over again. The Engagement My FI proposed on March 20, 2014. I later found out this is actually “National Engagement Day” which is pretty funny and a big coincidence. I did have some inkling before because my FI is very open, oblivious and not sneaky at all, so he was terrible at covering his tracks. I actually found a jeweller’s business card on our coffee table with a post it on it with different diamond specs and prices! Hilarious. I left it there for him to “find” to see if he’d talk to me about it or not (and so I could give him guidance to my ring ), and I even stuck it directly under the remote control, but he was oblivious and didn’t notice it! I finally put the card away after 2 weeks because I couldn’t look at it anymore haha. He had originally planned a trip for us to go to Montreal over March Break (I’m a teacher), but he ended up slipping a disc in his back and was out of commission so we ended up not going. He had booked a room at the Fairmount, and had rose petals and champagne planned, but had to cancel everything 2 days before. So for his actual proposal a week later, I came home to find him cooking a romantic 3 course meal. I instantly suspected something because it’s been a long running joke between us that he should cook for me (I’m the cook in our relationship - he’s never made anything more than eggs!). It was super cute because he had found this menu on Martha Stewart and was really focussed and following the directions to a T. After dinner, he told me to go get the dessert (there was a cake box in the fridge), and I knew this had to be it because he’s usually always trying to avoid dessert as he’s a big health nut. Then he said to me “oh wait, I have to get something” and ran into our bedroom to get the ring box haha. I opened the box and it said “Lily, Will You Marry Me?” on it, and he got down on one knee and proposed . I love the way he ended up proposing because it was very sweet and kind of bumbly like him, and I love that he put in effort in doing something special for me. Thankfully, he consulted my best friend on the ring (like all of my presents haha) and he got me exactly what I wanted . I absolutely adore my ring! It’s a 1.5 carat round brilliant solitaire on 3 rows of micropave. It’s simple but gorgeous, and I still stare at my hand all the time Choosing a Destination Wedding After our engagement, my FI asked me what I thought about having a destination wedding. I was actually really surprised because I always thought he’d want a big wedding like all of his friends. He liked the idea of it being simpler, and he thought it’d be less work for us to do (ha!). And while the cost wasn’t a driving factor for us, it was a bonus that it would probably be a lot less than having it in Toronto. I’ve personally always wanted a destination wedding because I love the idea of a wedding and vacation combined, and having a whole week of memories with loved ones instead of just one day. I also don't like being the centre of attention, and I knew having a wedding in Toronto would mean at least 200 people, if not more. We checked with our parents, and both were on board because both families have already had big splashy weddings with our elder siblings. So we decided to go forward with having a destination wedding! I’m going back to school next year so I only have very specific weeks I’d be able to marry. I also wanted to get married sooner rather than later; we’ve been dating for so long now, I didn’t really want to wait over a year to get married. I had time in October, December, February or April. We ruled out October because of hurricane season, February because of spring breakers and high prices, and April was okay but further away than I wanted. We settled on December right before Christmas, and chose our wedding date of December 19, 2014 Choosing a Resort This was THE most painful process, and I completely empathize with all new brides that are dealing with this. It was so stressful finding a resort that checked all of our boxes, and yet also would be affordable for guests. Our main priorities were: - Beautiful and modern with a beautiful wedding area - Close to nightlife and entertainment (our friends are big partiers) - Under 2k for a week but closer to 1500 would be ideal - Not too far from the airport - Golf available and green fees included (FI’s parents are golf nuts - this was their one requirement) - Established wedding department with good reviews - Good, swimmable beach (we were asking our guests to come all the way to Mexico so we wanted to make sure the beach was gorgeous) - Family friendly (Our siblings have little ones, and a lot of our friends) Our first travel agent (more on this later!) helped us narrow down our choice of hotels. I did soo much reading of reviews the first couple of weeks. We decided that Cancun was probably our ideal location, and we started trying to find resorts that fit the rest of our requirements. We finally settled on the Now/Dreams, Palace and Karisma chains. I loved the look of the Now and Dreams resorts, but decided to rule them out for a couple of reasons. First, most were located more in the Riviera Maya area which was further away to nightlife/entertainment, and the beaches were inferior to the Cancun ones. Also, while I loved the look of the hotels, the cost of the weddings was actually pretty high, and I didn’t like the idea of multiple weddings per day. So we took them out. I’ve heard such good things about the Karisma hotels, but we decided to also rule them out mainly because of costs. We were afraid the price would be too high for our guests, especially because certain amenities like green fees weren’t included. This was hard though because I fell in love with the way weddings look here, and the whole gourmet experience was really appealing to me. That left us with Palace. We loved how Palace has really good amenities. There’s a $1500 credit per room booked that I thought would be great for guests as they could use it on tours, golf, upgrades, etc. Also, Palace has really good wedding benefits and freebies if we could book more than 75 room nights, which we were pretty sure we could. We first looked at Moon Palace, but ruled it our ultimately because of the beach, location (a bit isolated), and I didn’t like the idea that it was such a huge resort. We wanted to spend time with our guests, and Moon Palace just seems like it’d be overwhelming. We finally looked at Beach Palace and decided that it had the best combination of everything we wanted. We loved that it was right in Cancun, 10 minutes from nightlife, the beach is gorgeous, and we liked how it’s a smaller, more intimate resort. And to really cap it off, the Beach Palace wedding areas are gorgeous - we are having our ceremony on the rooftop sky deck, and our reception on the sky terrace with private pool - both overlooking the ocean and lagoon! >> This is where our ceremony and reception are going to be! I love the whole rooftop element The Booking Process and Dealing with Family While I was doing all of this, my sister was stressing me out SO much because she’s really cheap and she kept sending me links to these 3 star “deals” from travel zoo, cheap caribbean, etc. I told her it was our wedding, and we had very specific things in mind. We wanted to make it affordable for our guests, but at the same time I knew that a 3 star resort in Mexico wasn’t going to do it! We thought about changing the location to Punta Cana for a while, doing an off resort wedding and having people stay wherever, etc. Finally I just pushed her aside and focussed on what my FI and I wanted in our wedding. And despite almost booking with Expedia 100 times and literally bothering my TA and I to save what was essentially $30/person (I kid you not), she finally booked with our group. We did experience a period where we were a bit disillusioned and disappointed in certain people. We had expected more people to book, and we had had people telling us how happy and excited they were, and then disappearing off the face of the earth or coming at us with really disappointing excuses. I think every destination wedding couple goes through this - you expect your loved ones to be as happy and excited. We've since come around though, and we're now super excited and focused on the people that HAVE booked. I am determined to make our wedding week an absolute blast! As of right now, we have 36 adults, 2 toddlers and 3 babies booked! Our situation is a bit different than a lot of brides here because our date was so close and the hotel was already quite booked, we had to put down $300 deposits to hold rooms and we didn’t have that 90 day period. We decided to hold 10 rooms/20 air seats immediately, and those got snatched up right away. We’ve had guests continuing to book, and so far everyone has been able to pay the same price. We have guests coming from Toronto, Edmonton, the US, and Australia Everyone is staying at the resort and has booked under our group reservation except for my other sister, who decided to book at another resort and is just coming over for the wedding. Gotta love family! Travel Agents This has been my other stressful area. Our first TA was from destinationweddings.com - I did what a lot of DW brides probably do. Googled “destination weddings” and clicked on the first thing that came up. I liked their website, and decided to go forward and contact them. They require a $50 deposit which would be used at booking, so figured we didn’t have much to lose. Our first agent, Leslie, was nice enough and helped us narrow down our resort, but I didn’t love her response time and she ultimately wasn’t able to get us a really good rate for Beach Palace. I was finding cheaper rates everywhere else, and this was really frustrating. I posted on here, and got recommendations for another TA whom I contacted and she was great at first. Super responsive and on the ball, and ultimately got us a really good rate that we were very happy with. Even my FI was really impressed with her. I will be honest in saying since then, we’ve been really unpleased with her performance as it has completely gone downhill. I will be a lot more upfront and honest with these details when our wedding is over. The best suggestion I have for choosing a travel agent is to really take your time in talking to different agents, and try to get references from brides AFTER their weddings have already taken place. You want someone that is going to give great service from beginning to end. I also think we had a very short time period to work with (less than 9 months!) and that was me being over-eager haha. If we had waited until April 2015, I think we'd have been less stressed and we'd probably had had more guests come... but c'est la vie . Our Invitations We wanted to get our invitations sent out immediately because our wedding was only 8 months away after booking our resort. We sent out an email immediately to our VIPs with our TA’s info, and ordered invitations. We decided to budget here because we’ve never really cared about other people’s wedding invitations, and we knew we still had over 100 invitations to send. We also decided to forego save the dates, and just send our invitations early. I love the way passports and boarding pass invites look, but we didn’t really have time to design them and didn’t want to pay a ton to have them made. We also figured we could do passports for the people that actually did book with more information. I found Minted.com and I really liked their designs and prices. We found one that looked like a luggage tag, and thought this would be a fun but simple invite. I realized that the save the date version had all the same specs with just slightly different wording (that I could edit!), but was almost $1 cheaper. Done! I changed all of the info to make it look like the invitation, and ordered 115. Minted was great and I’d highly recommend them. They sent me my proof within 24 hours, and quickly made the changes I wanted. We got them less than a week later, I added some coral and white twine, and got them into the mail immediately. I ordered RSVPs from Vistaprint for super cheap, and put a small note with our website and booking information on the back of it to save money instead of having another enclosure. We decided to NOT put return envelopes and stamps because we’ve heard that many people don’t bother. Instead, we asked people to RSVP by email or our website, and we figured we’d ultimately know if they were coming or not through their bookings! We made the RSVP date October 1, 2014 which is around when final payments are due. I’d recommend both Minted and Vistaprint. The Minted designs and quality are a lot nicer, and I love that they print the address on for free (the envelopes looked gorgeous!), but Vistaprint is crazy cheap. We ended up ordering our engagement party invitations here, and they look great (albeit cheaper card stock quality and the envelope included is super thin and cheap looking). I got this custom address stamp from Etsy (SweetmintPress), and figured it was worth the cost because we’d be putting it on our invitations, pre-wedding mailers, thank you cards, etc. Great etsy seller, and I love the stamp The Dress I was probably MOST excited about buying my dress! I wanted a sweetheart neckline, lace, trumpet/mermaid style and some type of gorgeous detail to the skirt. In a nut shell, I wanted Vera Wang but for $6k less haha. My mom generously offered to buy my dress for me, and her budget was 2k. I know myself and I can easily have very expensive tastes, so I made sure to book appointments at stores where this budget would be respected. I didn’t want to be the girl falling in love with the 10k dress (which I could so easily do haha). My mom and my best friend/MOH came with me to all of my appointments. This was the perfect number - I knew they’d give me their honest opinions, and I also knew they wouldn’t overwhelm me either. I made appointments immediately and ended up going to 7 different bridal stores in about a 2 week span (and 1 trip to Kleinfield at the Bay later on - read about my experience here: http://www.bestdestinationwedding.com/topic/77084-kleinfield-the-bay-experience-and-my-dress/). I had a really good experience dress shopping. All of the salesladies were lovely, and I tried on a ton of gorgeous dresses. Luckily, the style I loved most actually looked best on me too, so I knew what I wanted. The first week, we had a bunch of dress names written down to possibly revisit, but none were “the one” yet, for whatever reason. I found some dresses photographed beautifully but didn’t have a lot of wow factor in person. I also found the opposite to be true - some dresses looked SO good in person, but once we saw it in a picture it’d be very meh. I also tried on some that would have been gorgeous if I was having a wedding at home, but just seemed too big or fancy for a small wedding in Mexico. I didn’t want to go super simple or beachy with my dress, but I still wanted to be pragmatic. I found my dress at Dina Alonzi - a high end bridal store in Toronto (they carry Lorenzo, Rivini, Monique L’huillier, etc.) Now this was totally out of our budget, but they were having a sample sale and I figured this would be my one opportunity to try on amazing high end dresses at a cheaper price! After trying to get a few on and not having them go past my butt (!), I tried on one that fit perfectly - Monique L’huillier’s Sahara - stepped out and looked in the mirror, and we all kind of just sighed at once. The dress was very simple and romantic, and it just fit so beautifully. It also had everything I wanted - a soft, sweetheart neckline, lace, a bit of ruching, and a lightly asymmetrical skirt. It was lightweight and very easy to walk and sit in. The sales lady put a veil on me, and I couldn’t take my eyes off of myself. There was no crying or anything like that, but kind of a breathless anticipation, if that makes sense. NOW this dress was still completely over budget. The retail original price was $5400, the sample price was $2700 - half price and a super good deal, but still more than we had been anticipating. With tax, it brought it up to over 3k which is a substantial increase and I couldn't do that. So I took it off, and we left the store, and I went to more dress appointments and almost settled on a couple of different ones, but I couldn’t stop thinking about that dress. This is when I decided to consider other options. I found preownedweddingdresses.com and I found my dress listed as a sample, in my size for $1500 US. I emailed the seller and found that it was from a bridal boutique in Atlanta, and that the dress was in almost perfect condition because the store was very good at being the only ones to handle dresses. She e-mailed me pics of the hem and lace close up, and I could see that it was perfect. My heart stopped. I went back to the original boutique to try on the dress again and make sure the size was good and that I still loved it. I did! So I bought the dress online and had it shipped to Niagara Falls to save on shipping, and my mom and I drove over to pick it up the next week. The dress was PERFECT - in better condition than the sample at the boutique, and we got it for about $1800 CDN total… under budget and a Monique L’huillier!! I still need to get it hemmed, but otherwise it fits pretty perfectly. So my advice here is be open to where your dress is coming from! I never thought I’d buy a sample, and I definitely never thought I’d buy my dress online. But overall, I managed to get my dream dress for less than a third of the retail price, and I couldn't be happier! My dream shoe is Jimmy Choo's Yvette or Lang sandal in Champagne or Gold on the left. My realistic shoe is probably Badgley Mischka's Landmark in Platino (right) - just need to find them in person to try them on. I don't want anything overly bridal because I do want to be able to wear them again. I'm still debating this, but I'm thinking of getting this dress made as a reception and TTD from Carabridal on Etsy. Bridesmaid Dresses I bought these almost immediately. I’ve been a bridesmaid 4 times now, and I personally have always hated the whole to do about bridesmaid dresses. I haven’t loved everything I’ve had to wear, but I always knew that was what I was signing on for as a bridesmaid, so I sucked it up and wore whatever dress the bride wanted me to. I’ve had to deal with other bridesmaids making such an ordeal about the dress, and I never got that. I know my 2 co-mohs VERY well as they are my best friend and cousin, so I just bought and chose their dresses for them. Bridesmaid dresses was not something I wanted to stress about at all. I liked the J Crew silk chiffon dresses, and basically bought what was on sale and matched my colour scheme. I made sure the dresses were in styles they liked (i.e. 1 loves one shouldered dresses, the other hates to wear a strapless bra so I got something with thick straps) and bought them! Got them for about $80 each and the girs are happy with them. They can wear whatever jewelry and neutral/gold toned shoes they want. I like the mismatched/ombre look for dresses >> My original mood board Groom, Groomsmen and Ring Bearers' Attire The one thing my FI was a bit excited about (haha) was being able to splurge on a new suit. He bought a light grey fitted Canali suit from Harry Rosen’s that cost more than my dress (ha!), and he’s pretty happy about it. We’re going to have him in a white shirt, black and white striped suspenders and a black bow tie. I want him to look more classical than beachy. The groomsmen are going to look complimentary, but not exactly matching. So they are going to be wearing darker grey dress pants, white shirts tucked in, black suspenders, and the checked bow tie on the left (no jackets). I got their suspenders and bow tie from an online store called the Grunion Run. Our 3 little nephews are going to be ring bearers (they will be 2.5, 3.5 and 9 months), and I got them khaki pants (Old Navy), white button up t-shirts (Gap), navy blue boat shoes (Gap), and little checked bow ties and navy suspenders (Etsy - Sweetnswag). I am so excited to see how they look - they are going to be so so adorable . Vendors I booked these almost immediately after setting our wedding date. It took me a while to narrow down our choices, but we ended up hiring DJ Discomovil for music and some lights, Styling Trio for makeup and hair, Indigo Wedding for vidography and Juan Carlos Lancelotti for photography. My FI didn't want to spend a crazy amount on photography or videography, so we did budget more here. If budget was no issue, we probably would have went with Elizabeth Medina or Del Sol, but the amount they charge for just 5-6 hours of photography was way over our budget, and I wanted to allocate that money toward other things as well. Our ceremony is fairly early at 2pm, and we're hoping our party goes until at least 11 - so we wanted a package with 8-10 hours! I found Lancelotti's website randomly, and I really liked the softness to his pictures and how he captures intimate moments. I was torn between him and Samuel Luna for a while (I still love his work!), but my FI liked Lancelotti more so we went with him. He is priced SO reasonably, and we're getting our engagement pics, TTD and 8-10 hours with 2 shooters and all edited pics for a really good price. We did our engagement pics on Isla Mujeres when we went down for our site visit in June, and here are some pictures he took: OOT Bags We want to make our guests feel very welcomed and appreciated, so we're definitely going to make welcome bags. I ordered the actual bags from Wedding Chicks when they had their 40% off sale. I got 20 bags with mint green writing, and 20 bags with peach coloured writing. My FI didn't want anything overly feminine as we're giving the bag to guys as well, so we chose the Hola Amigo design. They came out to $3.38 per bag! Each guest will get a bag, and we're also going to include personalized tumblers for everyone. We got the Dollarama ones for $2 each, and I'm going to order the "drink in my hand"stickers from Etsy soon. Each couple/single will also get a bath pouf (Dollarama), deck of cards (Bicycle - Costco), door knob hanger (Etsy) and an Oh Shit kit including Emergen-C packets, hangover pills (my FI can order these 2 things at wholesale costs), Advil tube (Dollarama) , bandaids, herbal tea packets, travel aloe (target?), condoms for the singles (haha), and a couple safety pins, bobby pins and hair tiers each. We're also putting in fun sunglasses for the men, and pashminas for the women (my mom can order these at wholesale prices). I'm estimating the singles bags will be about $15-$20, and the couples a bit less than that because they’ll be sharing some of the contents. For the kids, we're going to add sand toys, colouring books/crayons, bubble wands, stickers and a book each. We decided to also get a couple boogie boards and frisbees that we’re going to take down so everyone can use on the beach. >> We ordered these totes, but 20 with mint green writing and 20 with peach writing. I'll update the pic when our actual ones come in! They are being shipped to us right now >> I'm going to order these door knob hangers once we finalize our number! I may or may not also get the itinerary card (Etsy - OneEarDesign) >> I bought these from Dollarama for $2 each. I'm going to order the Davet Designs stickers on Etsy to personalize them, and I got some plain black vinyl stickers to put peoples initials as well. I also got little kiddie ones for the toddlers I apparently have too many pics to upload haha. I'll try to post my decor stuff later!

@@NJBride2014 - Yes, if you don't mind it, I'd love the template! We are doing maracas too. My email is lilyluu 83 @ gmail . com (no spaces). Thank you! AH I am jealous about the plated menu! We have to pay an extra $55 a person or something so we're just keeping it as a buffet, but I'd much rather have a plated meal

Haha I love the stripper pics!! You are sooo organized, and your wedding is going to be gorgeous. You have an amazing brother in law! So talented. How did he make the "shake for a kiss" tags? Is it cricut? Would love to do something like that Also, did you upgrade your menu or does Le Blanc allow plated meals as well? Palace just has buffets included, and it's like $55 or something to upgrade to a plated meal

@@TheBHolders - Yes, if the complimentary ceremony package is chosen, you can pay to upgrade things separately or you can bring things yourself to do it, but you cannot take elements from other packages. They want to make money of course. Even if you look at the Colin Cowie packages, only some of them allow you to use your credits and it's a maxinum of $1500. That's why I'm not getting any of those packages and am just going to decorate separately

@@TheBHolders - Dj Discomovil. He gets great reviews, and I like how on his website he has songs that you can request as must plays or do not plays. We want a really fun party and we love club/edm music and wanted to make sure our DJ could play that type of music, so it was reassuring to me that he had music we enjoyed, and wouldn't just be playing cheesy stuff all night You can only use the room credits for some of the decor packages.. it lists it on the brochure thing they send you of the Colin Cowie packages. Wedding deposits I'm assuming can be used toward the costs of the wedding as well

@@acw271011 - Thank you!! Haha I posted the nicer ones... we have more that are quite a bit cheesier . I think I'm just super critical about myself. We're happy overall though, and we're glad we did it because we also now know what we prefer for our wedding shots

Yes it's carry on! I don't know why I wrote checked in

I'm glad I checked this thread! I just googled, and you're only allowed 1 bic lighter or matchbook in your check in as well. I was thinking about getting custom matchbooks - good to know they wouldn't be allowed through

We asked before, but to people we thought were coming for sure. But my MOH is now pregnant and probably not coming, so I'm not sure if I'm going to have someone fill in to even the numbers or if we just leave it

@@kmk2016 - Your Gemma in blush is going to be gorgeous! Do you have any pics or style name of the reception dress? Would love to see what you chose!

@@acw271011 - I have no idea the meaning or origination haha. Luckily, we haven't really had any resistance to the white dress code. If anything, it's been more my FI whining haha but we got him pants finally so now he can't complain

@@acw271011 - I hope everything goes well and it doesn't get delayed! Will definitely have you in my thoughts. Then you can start planning your vow renewal in earnest Your hubby always sounds so supportive and amazing. I always remember the story you tell of your wedding in Jamaica, and how he said it's really just about you and him. @@NJBride2014 - Haha my family has complained too, but I basically told them to suck it up . I told them they can wear shorts, tshirts, anything - it doesn't have to be fancy. My mom loved the idea luckily, and she basically went and immediately bought white pants for my dad and brother, and a dress for herself. I think it'll be fun - hopefully everyone does participate! Like you, we really want people to have a good time. I hope our welcome party is fun. My FI is big into cigars, so this is something he got really excited about. I think we'll prob head out to Coco Bongo that night too, so it should be a blast. We'll prob. do the same for our actual reception as you with the cigars. Prob no budget for a photo booth, becuase we're thinking of maybe doing a fire show or mariachi band or something, but have to see how much it will all cost! And yay for crossing something off your list! I am still waiting for the rest of the installments in your planning thread

I posted them in a thread a while ago! Let me find the link for you http://www.bestdestinationwedding.com/topic/77375-where-to-take-engagement-pics-in-cancunrm/page-2 Yes, this summer has been completely disappointing with the cold weather and all of the rain - This whole year has been a pretty bad one for weather actually. Definitely makes me look forward to Mexico even more! Your driving/flooding story sounds awful! We were actually glad we ended up just staying in town this weekend because of the whole Burlington bridge fiasco/detour. And it was kind of a nice peaceful long weekend. Definitely hope the labour day weekend is nicer - esp. because I think you go in for your surgery right after that? Haha there's nothing really to it other than a party where everyone wears white . I love the way it looks though, and I think it's fun to have a themed party. We're having our welcome white party on the beach - and we're going to get a cigar roller. I love this image:

Our Fiances sound totally the same!! He was complaining so much when trying on the pants. I told him to do it once, get it over with, and we wouldn't have to worry about it again. I'm actually not going to worry too much if they look good on our groomsmen or not as long as they fit haha - so we'll give them the receipt in case they need to exchange the size, but that's it. And they can get them altered however they want. My FI is fairly picky with his own suit, so luckily that's one thing I didn't have to push him to do. I just ended up ordering him the suspenders and bow tie I liked after he gave me his barely looking nod of approval haha. He's always like what are you doing on your computer? And I'm like planning our wedding! haha... the worst is when people ask him how wedding planning is and if it's stressful or not, and he's like "nope, it's great. Easy" and I give him the dirtiest looks imaginable . I really wanted a White Party so I'm pushing for it. My mom is telling her friends who are coming, and she's already bought clothes for my dad and brother (haha women). I put it on our website and I'm sending out a passport pre-mailer that has it emphasized in there too. I'm also probably going to bring some extra white things for people that forget

The airport would make for some pretty cool pics actually, but I'm not sure how close you'll be able to get to stuff I like the idea of the Scarborough Bluffs. Very cool area, and can be pretty dramatic for pics. I also like the Centre Island idea - lots of pretty scenery, and Porter is there so maybe you could get some airplane shots Also I know it's very typical but the Distillery district is really gorgeous for pics. If we had done our engagement pics in Toronto, we probably would have did them here

@@NJBride2014 - Haha my FI keeps asking me why we didn't just elope whenever I start asking him for his opinion I understand about how you feel about wanting to make sure everyone has a great time. I'm a big planner this way too, and I find myself really stressing about it. But as you said, things will happen. Also remember that everyone going is going because ultimately they love you and your FI . And you'll all be in Mexico! It will be amazing - I can't wait to see how your wedding turns out! @@acw271011 - An ulcer!! That's extreme but I can completely understand! When we were narrowing down our resort I was SO stressed I couldn't sleep and all I could do was read review after review. Haha I've given up even telling/asking my FI things unless it directly pertains to him. I made him turn off the TV so I could get his opinion on bow ties and it was like pulling teeth. We bought our groomsmen pants and his white pants for our white party this past weekend and it was a huge ordeal haha, so I think he's off the hook for a while now! And rain - ahh. I've refused to even consider rain Love the extra thoughts!

@@calgarybride2015 - I don't think I'd tip the photographer if it is his company and he's getting paid directly through the fee. If it was an associate or something, I probably would tip (and assistants). Same goes for things like hair, makeup, video, etc. Our tips will be based on performance. We tip generously, but we do expect good service. I've read some horror stories about WCs - I would definitely not tip a bad WC

I came across this picture and thought it was pretty funny!! This is exactly how I feel now. I especially love the tiny black dot for work and the "Look at my sparkly diamond" - sometimes when I'm driving, I just stare at my hand haha. I thought planning a destination wedding would mean that I would avoid a lot of this thinking - boy was I wrong! I swear I lie in bed before I fall asleep thinking about OOT bags, linens and room bookings. But with destination weddings, I'd probably add a couple of things: - What if no one comes to our wedding? - Why hasn't my TA replied yet? - Is it worth it to pay the vendor fee? Anyone have anything else to add?

Yeah, we're doing the same. I was really unimpressed with the Palace vendors for the prices. We're going to pay the vendor fee for our photographer/videographer, but we're telling BP that theyre under one company and hoping to pay it just once. We hired the same DJ as you but I'm not sure if we're just going to just pay his vendor fee, or try to book him a room. Our WC said we'd need 3 nights which is more expensive, so I might wait until we get switched to our onsite and deal with it then. Even if we do have to pay the vendor fee, he was still cheaper and included more in his package than the resort djs. And haha I love your last line - I call it MY wedding all the time haha, then remember I should say we . My FI has no opinion about these things so is just leaving it all to me haha

These are gorgeous!! We're looking at something very similar, but with some darker pinks and corals as well. I love the touch of orchids in there I'm going to really mull over the low vs. high centerpieces now. We were originally thinking to use the high ones to decorate the aisle of our ceremony as well which is why I was able to justify the price. Hrm... I would have to come up with something else. I really hate these vendor fees argh