TauruSmith's May 2013 Planning Thread

[TauruSmith]

I find the planning threads to be so helpful, so I thought I would start one of my own and will start at the beginning. We have all the big things taken care of but I'm going to continue to work on the details over the next few months. 

 

 

My fiance surprised me with a proposal on Leap Year Day and we spent the first few weeks just enjoying our engagement. After a while, we decided a Destination Wedding would be the best choice for us because all of our family and friends are spread out all over the US. (We live in WV, went to college in OH, I grew up in NY, he grew up in 4 states). After deciding on Mexico due to the ease of travel and familiarity for most people, we started researching resorts. We knew we wanted a true reception and many resorts only offered a la carte reception options. I "attended" an online seminar through bestdestinationwedding.com and fell in love with the Now Resorts.

 

We decided on Now Sapphire because they had availability on the day we wanted. So we got in touch with Wright Travel Agency and sent out Save the Dates.

 

 

 

to be continued...

[Marymack]

Great start and I love your save the date!!

[mstigger]

Beautiful save the date!!!

[TauruSmith]

Bridesmaid dresses: We found the best deal for bridesmaid dresses!! Around Thanksgiving, J. Crew put last season's bridesmaid's dresses on sale! They are usually $250, but were on sale for $99.00, which was a great deal. On Black Friday, all of J. Crew's clearance items were marked as 30% off, so the dresses were marked down to $70.00!!  The ladies chose from all of the options in "Gallery Green" silk chiffon and 4 decided to go with the Arabelle and one went with the Sinclair.

 

Arabelle

 

Sinclair

 

They will be wearing white flip flops from Old Navy and I am currently searching for jewelry!

[Lydia1120]

Congratulations!  Love the colour of the girls dresses!  

[TauruSmith]

 

 

 

The invitations! These were a true labor of love. Ever since we decided on having a destination wedding, I had an idea of what I wanted for our invitations. I found EncreStudio on Etsy. I loved the coral, starfish, and shell combination of this design, so I sent them a message and we discussed custom options. I was able to select the wording, colors, and font. I was even able to add a personalized logo (see above) and separate enclosure card rather than the Thank You card that they offer in the package. I sent Nadia the language and format for the invitation, information card and RSVP and heard back from her within 24 hours with a first proof. We tweaked a few things, such as fonts on certain lines and I had a final proof a few days later. Another thing that I loved about this company was that they offer both paper and digital image options. They could either print everything for me or I could do it myself, which is the option I chose...well I had them printed by CatPrint. I used CatPrint for printing. I found them through Weddingbee and a lot of the brides on the message boards had great things to say about them. Another option for printing like this is VistaPrint or a local print shop.

 

 

                           

I selected the white linen paper because the weight and texture added something special to a pretty simple design.  After uploading my files and selecting the quantity, my order was complete. I was mailed a hard proof within a few days. I highly recommend this because my crop marks were off on the hard copy and I needed to address that issue with the company. Upon arrival, the invitations and enclosures were the wrong size, but CatPrint resolved the issue AND reprinted them in the correct size and mailed them out the very day that I talked to them. That is amazing customer service! I spent between 2-3 hours cropping the cardstock to size.

 

I ordered teal RSVP (size) and white inner (Size A7) euro flap envelopes from Paper and More. The aqua outer envelopes were ordered from Paper Presentation in NYC. I ordered a return address stamp from My Clear Stamps on Etsy. This took a while to arrive, but I use it on EVERY piece of mail I send now. It is so much prettier than return address labels. If I could do it again, I would have picked a font that was more legible when stamped.

 

 

 

 

If you do not have the Michaels app for your iPhone, get it! I've been able to get 40% off coupons each week, which has been so nice when I need to grab craft supplies! I was able to snag the embossing gun for about $12.

 

I wanted the look of calligraphy, actually, I wanted the same font on the invitation to be used to address the envelopes. I downloaded the font and formatted a Powerpoint slide in the size of the envelopes, typed in each name and address and printed them at 50% opacity. After that, I simply traced over the printed font with a silver uni-ball pen (found at Michaels). It gave the handwritten look without the headache (well, after I formatted the envelopes in Power Point) This took a LONG time, but we were sending out 80 invitations.  and a lot of our guests raved bout how the envelopes looked. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I will post a picture of the whole suite soon!

[AnaSteele58]

Thanks for the tip on the Michael's app!

[mckievme]

Love your save the dates! Thanks for letting me know about the Michael's app!