Wafflesmom

@@nkavanaugh we're going with Air Transat and we got wedding perks including complimentary seat selection, additional luggage allowance, priority boarding and I forget what else (off the top of my head) but will look into it. If you booked your group travel with them, you should get perks as well.

Thank you so much @@calgarybride2015 ☺️ I agree that the backdrop will already be breathtaking. How was your honeymoon in Vegas? Welcome back!

You sound like my fiancé who's always the calm and logical one. He always says that there's no point stressing about something that has already happened and to just calmly find a solution. I'm more like your fiancé, I'm reactive and can be pretty bitchy lol

@@Meandhim I just read your legal ceremony post and foremost, congratulations! Secondly, that's a crazy story but at least it makes it so memorable. You'll definitely have the most original story lol I love your perseverance throughout it all and how you managed to keep relatively calm is beyond me. I definitely give you props, especially with the garment bag idea lol. I'm just glad that in the end it turned out well. Hopefully the airline hassles are done and you'll have smooth sailing (well flight) to Punta Cana

I'm pretty certain Doug will be speechless when he sees you in this dress because it honestly looks beautiful on you. For someone who said they were exhausted and that the dress wasn't properly tied and poofed, you looked pretty good in those pics. And I think you made a great choice despite it not being your first dress choice. Once it's been altered too, it's gonna look even better

@@acw271011 Woohoo dress pictures! You look fabulous, I love the dress design and especially that key hole back. Absolutely beautiful

@@veryvalentine thank you so much. Everyone seems to be having bridal enterouage drama so it has really made me appreciate my friends a lot more. I honestly didn't expect her to come given that it was difficult on them financially but somehow, they made it work! She just texted me saying she's booked her flight and my TA has already arranged for her accommodations. It's a good thing I bought her a bridesmaid robe already (I was just gonna tell her to wear it on our wedding day while in Vancouver and we were going to facetime lol). @ thank you so much! You know I've been worried that my decor wouldn't create a cohesive vision so I'm glad you think it does. Yes the leaves are suede-y, I think they look awesome! And I was so happy to buy the marquee letters, you know I've wanted them ever since you posted them on here @@yycbride2016, thank you so much I know that it would be friendlier to our budget to bring décor from home but I'm glad we were able to make room for it. I'm excited about the photobooth. We're also going to use it during my stagette to make before and after partying shots. I think they'll be hilarious! @@acw271011 thank you for the lovely compliments! I hate to see flowers go to waste so reusing them during the reception is definitely a good way of doing this.

When I was a bridesmaid at a destination wedding, we all wore wedges for the beach ceremony. It was easy to walk in and none of us had any issues. Based on this, I've bought wedges for my wedding shoes. I'm 5'0" and wanted the height. Plus I wanted something I could wear for both the beach ceremony and the reception on a terrace. Those shoes are gorgeous by the way and really well priced!

Wedding Décor: As many of you have heard me say numerous times, I do not have a creative bone in my body! So knowing this limitation, I knew I wouldn’t be able to execute a lot of the DIY projects I saw on Pinterest or even the ones you talented brides have posted on this site. My creations would probably make it on the Pinterest fails website. Plus, Derrick and I agreed that we don’t want to have to worry about bringing décor and have one of our guests set them up. He said he’d rather pay to rent decorations. So right away, I researched décor vendors that could help me recreate my vision: I wanted a simple yet sophisticated décor. I looked through all the vendor catalogues and fell in love with LatinAsia. I sent them an email right away and we discussed my wedding colours, vision, wedding size and location. Right away, Claudia, LatinAsia’s wedding coordinator sent me wedding décor that I may be interested in, as well as a link to their Pinterest accounts that had photos of what they’ve previously done for wedding décor. We went back and forth on a number of designs and this is what it will look like so far: We’re having our ceremony on the beach and there will be a white huppah with white draping and two small floral medallions on each side of the huppah (the flowers on the huppah will be reused as reception décor afterwards). Iron hooks with hanging crystal terrariums with coral and white colored roses will line the aisle, along with coral petals. We will be using the complimentary chairs (white avant-garde chairs). I may or may not add coral chair sashes but for now, they’ll be bare. On each chair we’re placing fans with a coral ribbon for colour and a ribbon wand to wave as we walk down the aisle after the ceremony. I’m purchasing these from Etsy, although Derrick said we may actually be able to do these ourselves. Do you guys have any other suggestions for the ceremony? As much as I would like to add more decorations, the ceremony is so short and I figure the beautiful Caribbean water would be a décor on its own. For my bouquet, as much as I love ranunculus, I knew it would break the bank to get them in Mexico so I’m going with a predominantly white bouquet with touches of coral and silver. It will be a combination of, coral and white roses, white tulips with a touch of Silver/gray dustin miller foliage. My bridesmaids will have a smaller version of my bouquet. Derrick and his best man will have a rose boutonniere. For the cocktail hour we will not be bothering with any décor, but we will be using these grey and coral paper straws for colour. They’ll be at the bar and will have a flag that says “Eat, Drink and Be Married”. For the reception, it will be at Tucan Terrace which is close to the beach. I love lights so we are renting four strings of white paper lantern (ten lanterns per string) as per the suggestion of our Palace offsite wedding coordinator. We’re going with the standard round tables with white table cloth. For our centerpieces, I wanted something that incorporated lights so we chose a led-lit tall centerpiece with natural branches and dendrobium orchids surrounded with votive candles. This was a splurge but we don’t have a lot of tables so for us, it was worth it. The blue water in the vase will be changed to white or coral. We have also rented silver plate chargers and silver chiavari chairs. Since LatinAsia didn’t have a lot of linen available to them, we bought coral cloth napkins to add the coral to our reception table. I initially wanted to tie the napkins as bow ties but that great idea was already used by my brother and his wife (oh nuts). So now we’re going to roll the napkins and use their tags as place cards. I was worried about the wind and it blowing the place cards. I found these napkin ring place cards on Weddingstar and they’ll work perfectly! One of my bridesmaids is a talented calligraphy artist so I’ll have her write the names on each of the place card. For table numbers, we are using photos of our French Bulldog, Waffle (hence my username) with a number photo shopped on the picture. That way, she’ll be a part of our wedding. We’ve also hired PSAV and have gone with the DJ and Lights package (Gold package) so there will be tons of light at our reception. We’re having a sweetheart table and we’ll be decorating it with an acrylic sign (that I still have to buy and will show you once I get it) that’s personalized with our married name. One of the flower medallions from the ceremony huppah will be decorating our table as well and our chairs will have Mr and Mrs signs that I bought from Michaels. For the cake table, we are using the other floral medallion from the ceremony huppah as décor and we’ll also have our light-up marquee initials we purchased from Michaels (inspired by @perianjay). We’ll have a separate table for our photobook for guests to sign (will elaborate on this in another post), and this table will also have our Instax Mini 8 for guest polaroids. I’ve seen this DIY photobooth on this forum and I think it’s such a fun idea. I still have to buy the mini photo album for the polaroids so I don’t lose any photos. We’ll be having Derrick’s nephew in charge of this station. As décor for this table, we’re using our complimentary bouquet and we’ll have our engagement photos displayed as well. And I found these silver foil prints on Etsy that I think will look beautiful on this table.

@@Janjin congrats on your engagement and at your 3-month mark, you must be so excited. I love your engagement story and love your outfits! Batman and wonder woman should be married lol. And your ring is gorgeous!!! I'm so sorry to hear about your best friend/bridesmaid. She'll always be in your heart so she'll be there with you on your wedding ☺️

@@deecol, good to know about the sizing. I've been eyeing so many dresses on that site and I had the same thought as @@acw271011 in that the sizes seemed small. Some of the mediums said 25 for waist size! And the proportions for bust, waist and hips seemed so off. Well now I'm gonna have to order lol

Wow, great review and I love the pics so far! Planning a morning at the spa on your wedding day sound glorious, that's definitely a smart way of trying to relax. And your coordinators were on the ball in suggesting decor for the ceremony because it looks picturesque! Honestly, your ceremony and reception setup looks like it's straight out of the wedding brochure. And although your first dance wasn't perfect per se, it was perfect in that it looks like you guts had fun and it was a memorable moment in your wedding. Again congrats and I can't wait to see more photos!

My MOH will already stand out a bit more since she's the only one wearing coral. The other three are wearing grey dresses And of course I support you, I feel like we've all become such good friends already! And that's such a strong statement from your friend, and at 25 years old? Wow! And to say that to you when you were newly single too? Ugh, I have no patience for people who make catty, bitchy comments like that. And soooo passive aggressive!

@@snswedding2016 I only have one bridesmaid left who hasn't picked a dress. The other 3 are wearing cocktail length so it may look weird right? I may take your idea of watching Magic Mike with my bridal enterouage. I'll take a second showing of it anytime lol And I think you handled your friend well. You were open with her and voiced your concerns. If she doesn't want to reciprocate by not talking to you about it, well that's all on her. I agree that you don't owe her anymore!

I love the design for your cups! I think it looks nice and very appropriate for a destination wedding

Congratulations and welcome back! I'm so glad to hear everything turned out well and better than expected. You all look like you had a great time. The resort did a fabulous job on your hair and makeup, you did look like a model Can't wait to see more photos, especially of your wedding day!

Wow, your wedding dress fits you beautifully, you look gorgeous! You must be getting so excited!!

@@snswedding2016 I love the bridesmaid and MOH dresses. We're those from David's Bridal? I'm having all my bridesmaids look for cocktail length and now I'm rethinking that idea. Although I've already bought my MOH's dress and it's cocktail length so that may look weird. Your second dress is beautiful! I can't wait to see what it looks like on you. And we watched Magic Mike XXL for work as a team building event! Well team building for female employees lol Definitely got all of us giggling like school girls lol

@ I'm so glad I found paperless post! It was so handy, user friendly and best of all, we were able to send out our Save the Dates right away! And yes, I'm so glad my bridesmaid can make it ti our wedding. I wasn't expecting that at all so it's such a wonderful surprise. @@acw271011 I love the number of guests we have right now. I'm hoping my one other friend/coworker will be able to make it out. And we're still waiting to see if Derrick's aunt and uncle will join us. It was weird that they RSVP'd yes to our Save the Date and our wedding website but they never put down their deposit. I'm hoping sending them the formal invitation next month will make them tell us what they're planning. @@snswedding2016 I saw on your thread that you also used paperless post. Isn't it fantastic? I am really worried about the final payments. We all plan far ahead of time and it's so stressful to think that ppl can and may still back out!

Save the Date: Once we placed a deposit with Air Transat to secure a group booking, we had until December 8, 2015 to get our guests to place a $200 deposit. Given the short time frame, we knew that we didn’t have too much time to create and mail out save the dates. I researched online and came across Paperless Post. It lets you create online stationary, email it to guests and allows them to RSVP via the same medium. What was great about it was that it had tons of beautiful designs to choose from and it saved paper. Plus, once you email the invitation, it actually marked if your guests opened the message. It sure alleviated the worry of invitations being lost in transit! We chose a simple design of coral since we were having a destination wedding. In it, we also included the link to our wedding website that had more information on the resort. We also included our wedding hashtag: #jerrick 2016. It’s a combination of our names and sounded better than #derilee LOL. In addition to the Paperless Post Save the Date, our wonderful travel agent created a 4-page information package resort information, prices/package details, deposit deadlines and her contact information. It was so handy! Right away we had people replying that they wanted to come. Of course, like almost every destination wedding bride, although people said they would like to come, placing deposits was a whole other story. We sent out our save the dates in mid-October and the majority of our guests didn’t book until the very last week! I sent out friendly email reminders at different intervals: 2 weeks before deadline, 1 week, and last day. By the end we had 28 people place deposits (two people have since cancelled – my coworker and her daughter since she found out she’s pregnant and her due date is in January). So now we have 26. We will realistically have at least 2 more book , one being my bridesmaid. I’m so happy that she’s decided to come. I knew it was gonna be hard for her and her family to be able to attend due to financial restraints. I asked her to still be my bridesmaid since we’ve been friends since we were 11 (24 years of friendship) and she can still be a bridal party for all the local events. Well she and her husband have discussed it and she will be going for five days! Woohoo

@@maddjax another BC bride, and another Moon Palace bride too, I'm so excited! Yes, we will definitely be seeing each other since we overlap a few days. Unfortunately we miss each other's wedding day but still exciting. How's your wedding planning coming along? @@acw271011 thank you so much! My bridal entourage really loved the wine bottles, especially since we got to drink it after lol. And of course you can switch, though we've only ever seen your nice side I'm just drafting my next thread entry so I'll have more coming up ☺

@@acw271011 for a busy woman, you have accomp'ished so much! I live your second dress! Can you please post pics of you in both dresses? I think you owe us a dress pic with you wearing them Your cake toppers are so cute, and I. Glad you're personalizing them. Pandora your shoes? Wow, I love the blue. I know you've been looking for blue shoes and I think those are perfect! The cake is a hard choice. I'd say go for dulce de leche but that may be too sweet. Perhaps Doug could be the decider on that one. Derrick had me plan ecpverything as long as he had say with food choices lol

I will sadly be at work when you ladies start drinking but yes please, have a drink for all of us who can't make it. @@calgarybride2015, I'm an hour behind you and 3 hours behind Ontario. And @ that does mean I'll still be at work. Maybe I should leave early lol

I'm so sad that I'm all the way in BC and can't partake in the get together. It would have been so nice to meet all of you in person, I feel like I know you all so well already Have a great time today!

@@snswedding2016 thanks for the tip, I just watched it! So cool! @@TinkerSofi congratulations, you looked so beautiful and so relaxed! All the best to you and Juan