YaelM's Planning Thread **LONG w/ LOTs of PICS

[YaelM]

Ok so I know this is late…I got married over 3 months ago but as they say better late than never! I got so many great ideas from this site and as I mentioned in my review: Best Destination Wedding Forum ~ The Ultimate Destination Wedding Resource I really owe my whole wedding to Tammy (host) and BDW. As a side note: We had to switch locations at the last minute (4 days before departure!) from Mexico to Santa Barbara, CA due to the Swine Flu fiasco that occurred last spring.

 

Since I suck and didn’t take pictures throughout my planning process, 95% of these pictures are from the actual wedding and were taken by our AMAZING photographer, Nathaniel Thompson. So unless otherwise noted they are all by him

 

Rings:

DH proposed Oct 2007 on a look out view on our way to Amherst, MA. I was totally shocked and unprepared as you can see by my un-manicured nails. He got my e-ring from Blue Nile and I LOVE it

 

*Pic taken by me

 

His wedding band: Christian Bauer platinum wedding band (My DH has expensive taste!) but we got a good deal since the jewelry store was going out of business

My wedding band: white gold channel set

 

 

*pic taken by me

 

Save The Dates

For both Mexico and Santa Barbara we did email Save The Dates.

 

Invitations

We used Weddingpaperdivas.com and so happy with them. The quality is great, they are super fast and have great customer service!

*picture taken from website, not our actual invitation but looks exactly the same

 

Photographer

As mentioned above we used Nathaniel Thompson who is based in Santa Barbara (lucky us!) I wrote a detailed review here: http://bestdestinationwedding.com/fo...on-ever-44884/

He was AMAZING and I cant stop looking at all my 1062 pics We also did a day after shoot with him in Santa Barbara. Here is one of my favorites from that session

 

 

Attire

My dress which I loved was Maggie Sottero, Vernice. I wore a veil I bought at the bridal store and yes paid a lot but I loved it

 

 

DH wore a tan linen suit from Nordstroms. His tie is Thomas Pink and his shirt is from Brooks Brothers which literary arrived the day before we left…

 

 

Shoes

Jessica Simpson brand – got them from Nordstroms

 

DH again with his expensive/picku taste ;-) wore Cole Haan shoes. I think he got these like a week before the wedding.

 

[YaelM]

Jewelry

Its Carolee brand I love it. I wear it all the time now and get compliments every time I wear it. I also bought matching pearl stud earrings

 

* 1st pic by me 2nd pic by friend

 

I also wore my late grandmother’s mother’s wedding band (which she gave me as graduation present from college) as my something old on my right hand - but no picture and last minute my friend gave me her anklet (which matched perfectly!) as my something borrowed

Hair Inspiration

I had a print out of the different styles I liked but of course I couldn’t find it at the last minute when I went to get my hair done. I just described what I wanted and I think she did a great job! I got my hair done at the Four Seasons Salon. My florist stopped by and gave me a real flower (at no charge!!!) to put in my hair

 

 

Make Up

I had Shannon from Flirt Make Up in Santa Barbara do my make up. I'm SO happy I got it done professionally because it came out amazing! She used Mac products and fake eyelashes

 

 

Bridesmaid Dresses

I told them to pick their own dresses – I just asked that it be teal/aqua color.

My MOH got her dress at David’s Bridal (gasp!) – its the lighter shade one and my bridesmaid got hers from Anthropologie

 

 

Groomsmen Attire

We asked them to get long sleeve white linen shirts with khaki pants. DH provided the sunglasses as their gifts

 

 

Venue

We originally were suppose to get married May 8th in Mexico at Azul Beach. 4 days before leaving we had to cancel because of the swine flu hysteria. We ended up switching our plans and planning our “Wedding Take 2” (as we called it) in 6 weeks. We got married at the Four Seasons Biltmore in Santa Barbara, Ca and it was better than I could have EVER imagined. We hired a local wedding planner, Rebecca from Imagine... Weddings & Special Events, LLC who was a life saver!

 

*pic from website

 

Ceremony site

We got married in the Mariposa Garden overlooking the ocean.

 

 

 

Cocktail Hour

We had champagne and a full bar with liquor and wine in the El Mar Terrace. 5 different appetizers were served

 

Reception

Took place in the El Mar Room and yes we splurged on Chiavari chairs and it was worth it!

 

[YaelM]

“Guest Bookâ€

We had our friend write messages on a white board and take pictures. I 100% stole this idea from BDW. It was funny getting the pictures back because most of them were funny inside jokes.

 

*Pic taken by friend

 

Name Cards/Tables

We wanted a way to incorporate our dog, Chesdin so each table had an 8x10 pic of him and the each name card had the corresponding picture. We just used card stock and printed these our ourselves and bought cheap frames at target.

 

 

 

Flowers and Centerpieces

We used Modern Day Design for our flowers per recommendation from our planner. For the centerpieces and bouquets she had sent us a word document with description of the options (no pics) so we just went with the one that sounded cool even though I didn’t know what half the words meant LOL. When I saw them my jaw dropped – they were so beautiful! You can see them on the picture above too on the tables

 

 

 

My Bouquet

This was the only thing I was sure of – I wanted white calla lilies

 

Bridesmaid Bouquet

Again we just went with the more “unique†option and they turned out awesome!

 

 

DH wore a single calla lilly for his boutonnière and same with my dad

 

 

OOT bags

We already had the OOT bags for Mexico and decided to still give them out even though they had our logo that said Maya Riviera May 8th. We ordered these from the Executive Advertising. We made our logo on PowerPoint and sent them the image. We gave each couple a bag.

 

 

Contents included: Granola bars, Purell hand sanitizer, Aleve, Gum, Shout wipes, Famous Amos cookies, Color Changing Cups, a welcome letter thanking everyone for their support and how excited we are to have them celebrate with us.

Bottle of wine with our own custom label –we had to somehow joke about the swine flu. We just made these on word and printed them on mailing label . It says Swine Flu Reserve at the bottom

 

[YaelM]

*** I had originally done a welcome brochure (Morgan’s template) and who’s who booklet for Mexico.

 

 

 

For the Who’s Who se had a different picture background for each page (6) that we had taken at the resort during the site visit.

 

 

I didn’t re do them for Santa Barbara because 1) I didn’t want to and 2) the who’s who took so long the first time and we had a different mix of guests I just couldn’t do it

 

Favors

Personalized mints. Again these we already purchased for Mexico so they have the wrong date but what were we going to do with 40 personalized mints...i dont think i could have sold them on BDW ;-). We ordered them from Oriental Trading Company

 

 

Gifts

DH gave the 3 groomsmen aviator sunglasses we got a Macys.

 

For my MOH and Bridesmaid I bought them each a clutch from beegeebags Welcome to Beegeebags.com The loved them and I got one for myself too

 

*my pic – they each got a different design

 

I also included coconut lip gloss from philosophy

Pear earring studs to wear if they choose to the ceremony (they did!)

Teal Old Navy flop flops

* all images from websites

 

We also paid for 2nights stay at the hotel all teh guests were staying at (Fes Parker Double Tree) for my MOH and her husband, my Bridesmaid and a few other friends since they all lost $ at the hotel in Mexico when we had to cancel

 

For my parents we bought them 4 Riedel wine glasses. They love good wine but never had any good glasses. They loved them!

 

For DH’s mom we paid for her whole trip so we didn’t get her a specific gift

 

I gave DH a boudoir book. I used Terra Tabbytosavit Photography. She is based in San Francisco and was SO great to work with! This is the cover page when you first open it

 

* Taken by Terra Tabbytosavit

 

Music

We made our own play list and had an ipod docking station. As you can see people had a LOT of fun and the dance floor was never empty. We asked my MOH’s husband to be our MC – he did a great job introducing us and working the ipod

 

[YaelM]

Cake

 

 

This was actually the cake we were suppose to have in Mexico. We just sent The Four Seasons the picture from the resort and they did a great job replicating it.

 

Programs

We made a basic program in word and printed ourselves on resume paper. This looked like our welcome letter. We used the same theme for the programs, welcome letter, and menus. All were pretty simple and easy.

 

Menu

Since our guests had a choice of 2 different entrees – menus were required. We did a simple one on word and also printed on resume paper. Kind of hard to see the menu but its there. We had our logo on top

 

 

Thank Yous

We made a picture collage from Nate’s pics and we ordered them from Vistaprint

 

 

If you made it this far YAY and thanks for indulging me and letting me relive my wedding!

[NaM]

Great review

We've been waiting for this one and it's was worth the wait. Everything looked fabulous and you did so much in such a short period of time.

Thanks for posting Yael!!

[autjo]

Yael I can't even imagine how you pulled of this amazing wedding in such a short amount of time! I really love the flower centerpieces and I really want to do the whiteboard guest book now. You and everything about the wedding was so beautiful. Congrats again )

[*Lo*]

Yay Yael! What a great planning thread! I love all the little details. Your wedding was beautiful and despite the swine flu cancellation, everything worked out so well! Congrats!!

[*Nadine*]

So awesome yael.. better late than never, and this was just awesome. I forgot how awesome your centerpeices were

[~*Kathy*~]

yay for your planning thread finally being posted Yael! It's so detailed, no wonder it took you so long! Love everything, especially your dress/shoes/necklace!