LaurenC3432

Thanks girls, this makes me feel so much better!

Hey guys! So, I got a really late start. My wedding is in July, and we just picked out bridesmaid dresses from David's Bridal. I didn't want to use them, but they were the easiest choice as far as letting my bridesmaids pick a style that works for their body type that's all in the same color and affordable. My question is - how accurate are their shipping times? The shipping date they gave me was June 30th for one, and July 6th for another....but they are saying those dates are worst case scenario and they should be here sooner. None of the dresses have to be altered so far, so I can't imagine why a store with as many locations as David's Bridal would take so long to ship a dress. Does anyone here have experience with David's Bridal? Should I be worried that the dresses won't get here in time?

Still waiting on everyone to RSVP - but right now I'm thinking 25-30. When I booked mine in January, I wound up getting a pretty great rate. This is all due to the fact I decided to go through a travel agent. Due to this being a new resort, the rates are all over the place right now. They are different every week. I would recommend contacting a travel agent and seeing what kind of rate you could get locked down for 2016. I'm working with an awesome agent who is free to use, and got me prices that were way cheaper than anything I saw online (Expedia, Apple Vacations, etc.) PM me if you want his info! The price per night depends on the type of room you're getting - but it was around $300 per night for my guests, based on double occupancy.

Hi girls! I just got all the pricing documents - so PM me if you need them! Quick question for anyone who may know the answer to this : it says the Sky Wedding Venue (for the reception) is $1000 plus the cost of the dinner, open bar, and decor. If we want to have our wedding and reception there, would there be an additional set up fee for the ceremony?

Hi girls! Just wondering: should I be nervous that I haven't heard from the wedding planner yet and received any information? My wedding date is July 11th. When I reserved the day, they said someone would be contacting me to start planning a few months out. I realize that it's still a few months out, but it also seems to be approaching pretty fast to not have any idea of pricing, venues, etc. - except from what I'm finding out on here. When did you guys hear from the wedding coordinator?

Hey guys! Well, I finally got my invitations mailed out - and I thought I'd share mine in case anyone was in the same boat I was in just a few weeks ago. Our wedding is in July, so we had to come up with something fast. Our predicament was that we wanted to include a letter explaining why we were doing a destination wedding, and have the invitation with the letter. Easier said than done, because when I started I couldn't find a way to package the two together in a way that looked presentable. Just a little background: both of us (my fiancé and I) are not really "wedding" people. If you would have asked us a year ago, we would have told you we were never having a wedding and just want to elope. However, our families would have been way disappointed. So since we love to travel, we thought a destination wedding would be the best way to go. We wanted our invitations to be fun, and really stress the fact that no one was obligated to come, even though we'd love for them to be there if they could. Our second predicament was that we didn't have time to get engagement pictures done, and we didn't really want to do formal invitations anyway. Solution: We decided to do a "cartoon" invitation, with a pocket card, and break our letter up into "cards". Here's the finished product - (keep in mind the lighting is really bad and my camera sucks): It looks a lot more vibrant and that pic doesn't really show the true colors at all, but you get the idea. It's a pretty goofy idea, but it worked for us! Here's what I did: The pocket card and invitation: I bought the A7 signature pocket cards and invitations from Cards and Pockets. We wanted the colors to be bright and fun, so we chose the "Sour Apple" color and for the envelope, went with the basic "Cream Puff" color. I was worried the green invitations would show through the envelopes, but that wasn't the case! The cartoon invitation: There is a website called icartoon.me and basically, you submit some good face shots of whoever you want drawn into a cartoon, and describe what you want to be doing in the cartoon. So I submitted five or six photos of my fiancé and I, and told them this was for a wedding invitation. I described that we wanted to be on a beach, what we wanted to be wearing and any additional props. They get it back to you in 24 hours, and you decide whether or not you want any revisions. The first one they sent back to me was great, with the exception of my fiancé's mouth - it looked a little weird and it was the only part that didn't look like him. I sent another photo of him, and they revised the photo and got it back to me within a day. Here's what they sent back: The cartoon is shockingly accurate! In fact, people told us they couldn't believe how much it looked like us. For the actual invitation, we decided to get rid of the hat. Thankfully icartoon.me sends you layered photoshop files so it's easy to remove anything you don't like if you know how to use photoshop. Cost: $85 - way cheaper than engagement pics! What I added: All of the text, and some of the clipart (the suitcase, beach ball, etc.) were added by me in Photoshop. I also had to change the sizing of the whole thing to make the dimensions fit an A7 pocket card. This is what the invitation looked like after I was done in Photoshop. I saved it as a PDF, sent it to a local printer, and they printed and cut them all to match the dimensions that Cards and Pockets suggests for the A7 signature pocket card. Cost to print: $43 The Cards in the Pocket: This was the hard part. I wanted to put a letter in the pocket, and I already had one written up. However, folding up a letter and sticking it in there didn't look quite right. After looking at a lot of similar pocket cards, I saw that many people used stacked cards - usually an RSVP, accommodations, directions and website info. I got the idea to break up my letter into "sections" since nothing about this wedding is non traditional. These were the 4 cards I had: Greeting: explained why we were doing a destination wedding and they were invited FAQ's: just answered some very basic questions we thought people may have Closing: thanked them for being in our lives, told them we hope they can make it to the wedding, but if not that was totally understandable. RSVP: told them to go to our wedding website to RSVP and get all the information on the trip. Using the Product Sizing Guide on Cards and Pockets, I knew exactly what dimensions my cards needed to be. I should have had the same print shop I used for the invitations print these cards and cut them, but I thought it would be pretty expensive, so I wound up making color copies of one printed sheet at Fedex Office, and having them cut them to the dimensions I needed them to be. I bought my own paper at Joann's for $4.99 per 50 sheets. It was good quality, white card stock. Fedex wanted $1.00 per sheet! The color copying thing wound up being a nightmare. For starters, not all of the cards had the same shade of blue text. Most of them did, but there were about 20 invitations out of 80 that didn't have the perfect color. The people we sent those to (that we knew wouldn't care) told us they didn't even notice. But after you spend this much time on something, you want to get it right. Total cost for cutting and printing the inserts: $115 Envelope Seal: While I was at Fedex, I saw these little blank envelope seals made by Avery for $9.99. There were 600 of them in there! The seals came with a template, so I created a little monogram in Photoshop and then printed them from home. (again, bad picture but you get the idea) Return Address Stamp: For $24, you can upload your own design and get a custom stamp sent to you from rubberstamps.net. So glad I did this! I found a few fonts I liked, and played around with them until I got a design I liked. Here's what it looked like: Address Labels: I'll be honest - I know people say you should hand write your wedding invitations, but that just wasn't happening. My handwriting is not great, and I wanted this done as easily as possible. Plus, if people were going to judge us for labels, they probably weren't going to appreciate our entire invitation. Lol. I bought blank Avery labels for addresses at Office Depot ($18.99), and found a font I liked - "Jenna Sue" on dafont.com. Printed those from home too, and I liked the way they turned out! --- Anyway, that's pretty much it - I just wanted to share in case it helps someone else out that may have been in the same predicament we were. We sent out 80 invitations, and got some pretty good feedback, so I'm glad we did these. Although I'm also glad I will never have to do them again!

Hi guys! I just booked my wedding here for 7/11/2015. I've been sent their general wedding package info, but haven't received the a la carte menu yet. We're doing the free package, and then will be paying a la carte for everything else. I'm getting a little nervous about the pricing and how expensive everyone says it is! Hopefully I can just make some adjustments. I look forward to reading what everyone has to say! The resort looks beautiful!

Hey guys! We are trying to narrow down resorts for a mid to late 2015 wedding and we're feeling super overwhelmed. My fiance and I have no children, and have only been to adults only resorts. We'd prefer an adults only resort, but we have several friends and family members who will want to bring their kids. Which is fine, but I'd still like some of my guests that are not bringing their kids to have an adults only experience. So, these are the options I've found to accommodate families and adults who want a kid-free vacation: Hard Rock Riviera Maya: has both adults only and kid friendly. However, I've seen pics and am not sure I like their beach. Paradisus La Perla and La Esmeralda: has an adults only resort and a family resort. But, are you allowed to go back and forth between resorts? Can kids come to a wedding ceremony on the adult side? Gran Porto/The Royal Playa Del Carmen: sister resorts - one family friendly, one adults only. Can kids come to a wedding at The Royal? Do they let couples have a wedding at Gran Porto if you're staying at The Royal? Generations/El Dorado Royale/Casitas: same type of thing, with Generations being family friendly. Is this a good option if you have some guests wanting to stay at EDR and some at Generations? Which one can the wedding be held at, with kids at the ceremony? Am I missing any other options? Do any of you guys have any insight on any of these resorts, or have a better idea for accommodating both families and adults who don't want kids around? Also, do you feel like I will be sacrificing a better wedding at a better adults only all inclusive by picking one of these resorts? Sorry for the million questions, I just have to pick a resort by January and it's so frustrating! Thanks in advance.

Thanks Allie! I've been looking for a Travel Agent, I'll check out Wright Travel for sure. I guess my question now is what do I do next? Lol. I've been Googling so much, I think I've managed to overwhelm myself unnecessarily. We have a basic list of people we want to invite, know the time of year we'd like, and know we want it to be in Playa (but are open to other areas). Can I contact a travel agency without having a specific date or venue nailed down? Ideally I want to look at several dates and places for cost comparison. I want to have more concrete information to give potential guests, so I'd think I'd need to hold off on contacting them until after I speak to a travel agent? What's the first step you guys took to get things moving along?

You guys are awesome and know how to make a girl feel welcome - thanks for all the friendly replies! We don't really have a budget for our travel/honeymoon...but wanted to keep wedding/reception costs at a minimum so we can live it up on the honeymoon. This is some great info to get me started!

Hey guys! I've been lurking on here since I got engaged a couple of weeks ago in Mexico - and wow, there's so much great information and super friendly people on here. Excited to start posting more! We've talked about doing a destination wedding, because neither one of us want a super huge wedding. I get pretty nervous being the center of attention, so I had a couple of questions for you guys... We are looking at doing a wedding in Playa Del Carmen sometime in between July and October of 2015. (We're hoping to finalize this in the next couple weeks, we know we're starting this a little late! ) We're hoping for an adults only all inclusive, but we may have a few people that want to bring kids, so we have to keep that option open. We'd be inviting about 45 guests, and expecting maybe half to show up. With that being said, we both want a SUPER simple, quick ceremony without a lot of extras, decorations, etc. I think the beach is decoration enough for me. The only thing that's a must for me, is a private or mostly private reception with dinner, open bar, and music (whether it be from an iPod or DJ). Again, lots of decorations and extras aren't super important, just mainly want an area where our close friends and family can celebrate together and have food and drinks. Can any of you give me an idea of how much I'd be paying for a private reception, without all the decor, or a band, etc? We are on a budget, and would like to keep the ceremony/reception costs down as much as possible. And the most important part...can anyone give me any suggestions for a resort that's nice, but isn't outrageously expensive? We'd like our guests to be able to come from Oklahoma to Playa for about $1200 or less for at least 3 days. I know this is a lot of info, so sorry in advance. I'm already way overwhelmed, and I know this is only the beginning!