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Shan's LONG overdue Moon and Sun Palace Wedding Planning Thread

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shan0487

shan0487

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Hello ladies!

After some persuasion from recent brides (cough ChelseaCat802), I am posting my LONG overdue planning thread!

I was married last year- November 23, 2012 and could not have done everything I did for my wedding without this website! I had been a member of the website almost a year prior to getting engaged as I knew it was coming at some point and I am quite a planner and need to be prepared.   I like to think that I did a really good job budgeting for our wedding and took full advantage of the free perks that Palace resorts offers.  With my fiance just graduating Law school and having to start paying his student loans and buying a new house in Oct 2012- we could not afford to go all out and pay thousands of dollars for lounge furniture and mariachi bands and all those extras. I kept my head on straight and only bought what was necessary and splurged on the few things I really wanted.  In the end I do not regret a single thing- getting married in Mexico was the BEST decision we ever made- our group of 41 people had the time of their lives and we are returning back to Moon Palace for our 1 year anniversary in 2 months! We did not get any “honeymoon†time as we stayed 7 nights with our families and the majority of our friends stayed 5 nights.  So I think our anniversary trip alone is well deserved- or at least that is what I tell my husband! :)

We got engaged on Christmas Day 2011 after dating 7 ½ years!  After the holidays and my fiances birthday I started kicking it into high gear and picking a date for our wedding.  We met with a local travel agent and set our date by the end of January 2012. I already knew I wanted to get married at Sun Palace and have us and our guests stay at Moon Palace because my fiance had been to Moon and loved it and with our group of 41 people I knew that Moon would be fun for everyone and people could sneak away from the group if they wanted and make it their own vacation.  I did not want my wedding at Moon Palace because I wanted the beautiful blue water that the “hotel zone†offers and I also did not want to share my wedding with other brides that day so that is why I went with my wedding at Sun.

I knew I had to order my save the dates right away and get them mailed out ASAP as the room block rate for the rooms was only good until the end of February.  I knew I wanted to do postcard Save the Dates to save money on postage so I went to good ol trusty Vistaprint and created our Save the dates there and sucked it up and paid for rush shipping- which I couldn't complain as this was when they still had 100 postcards free! 

 

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For our wedding invitations I waited until the “normal†8 weeks to mail out the invitations as I already knew who was coming and who wasn’t because they had to put their deposit down for the hotel in Feb. I did have my fiancés aunt and uncle decide to come in August and 3 couples cancel after they put down their initial deposit but other than that it was nice knowing all along about how many people were coming so I could purchase the correct amount of items for everyone.
For everyone that was making the trip to Mexico with us, I made boarding pass invitations with the assembly line help of my bridesmaids (fun weekend project! Since we only had to make 25- it took us less than 2 hours to assemble all of these!) I adapted a combination of templates from these website and went to Office Max and had them printed as the paper I used for the outer envelope was incredibly thick and there was no way I was going to be able to print it myself. I ended spending about 2 hours at Office Max on a Friday night waiting to have these printed as they had a HUGE order in front of me but I ended up getting all the invitations printed and cut for $8! Can’t beat that! :) I made “normal†invitations on Vistaprint for the people that I knew were not attending the wedding but we had sent a Save the Date to.

 

 

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Normal invites that went out to those not attending Mexico

 

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shan0487
shan0487

Rings   My fiancé picked out my wedding band and engagement ring with no help from me! I had told him that I wanted a band with diamonds on it- he searched for 3 months until he found the perfect r

DWBride2015
DWBride2015

Nice job. I love your colors

shan0487
shan0487

Thank you very much!

shan0487

shan0487

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Attire
So I started dress shopping MLK weekend and planned on taking months to find a dress but after going to 4 different bridal stores the last dress I had tried on at David’s Bridal I fell in love with. I went to David’s on Sunday with my mom, sister and a bridesmaid as they were having their giant dress sale so it was very crowded but thankfully I had an AWESOME girl at my appointment that caught onto my “style†very quickly. I knew I wanted a lace dress and I didn’t want a strapless dress as everyone has strapless and I wanted to be different. So after trying on about 15 dresses at David’s I knew I really liked my dress but I wanted to go to other bridal shops just to make sure there was nothing else I liked better. So Monday I took my mother in law and we went to 3 other bridal shops.. I tried on a ton more gorgeous dresses but none of them were wowing me and I didn’t get the “beach feel†with them- they all seemed too formal for me not to mention they weighed 20 pounds! I did fall in love with an Allure dress that I could not afford but I ended up buying a knock off on ebay for my trash the dress dress! :) So after shopping with my mother in law I went back to David’s that night and Said yes to the dress with my mom and sister!! I cried so I knew it was the one! :)

 

Wedding Dress

 

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Trash the Dress Dress

 

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Up next... Jewelry 

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shan0487

shan0487

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Jewelry

I ordered my jewelry from a wonderful lady on Etsy. I knew I wanted blue jewelry for a pop of color and since blue was one of my wedding colors and my husband was wearing a blue tie it all coordinated nicely! I originally had a necklace in blue like my bridesmaids and blue earrings to match but 3 weeks before my wedding I decided that jewelry wasn’t “fancy†enough to be my bridal jewelry so I did some etsy searching. Her shop is called sugarplumcottage

 

 

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Shoes

My husband’s grandma made my hair flower for me as I wanted something in a champagne color and she volunteered to make it for me! She also altered my wedding and trash the dress dress- she was great and saved me a few hundred dollars! :)
My shoes were from JcPenny- I knew I wanted wedges because I was getting married in the sand and I wanted orange since I was getting yellow shoes for my bridesmaids- I went to the mall one night after work with one of my bridesmaids and just so happen to stumble upon these shoes and went home and ordered them in my size! They were high enough that I did not have to get my dress hemmed- double bonus as I have this problem constantly (I am 5 foot 1 ½ inches tall lol).

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Garter-

I originally ordered a St Louis Blues (my husband is a HUGE fan and again- it’s blue my wedding color! ) on etsy and had a horrible experience -she lost my first garter and them mailed me a 2nd one that looked nothing like the picture- needless to say her shop no longer exits. So after a search on etsy and not being able to find one I really liked that wasn’t outrageously expensive I did a Google search and found this great store in CA- www.letsdancegarters.com/‎. She was great to work with and had my garters delivered very quickly!

 

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Men's attire

We bought my fiancés suit from Men’s Warehouse. We got the groomsmen’s linen pants from Old Navy, sandals from Kohls, they all bought their own white button down and belt and then we bought my fiancés, groomsmen and my dad’s tie from The Tie Bar online. It took us awhile to find orange ties as my husband wanted 100% silk ties and solid bright orange ties in 100% silk are kind of hard to find!

 

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Bridesmaid's Attire

 

Bridesmaids dresses were from David’s as well as they received a % off their dresses since I bought mine from there. I knew I wanted the royal blue- “horizon†color after seeing that the orange dresses wouldn’t match my wedding dress as well(made my dress look like it had a orange tint to it with my champagne color underlay). I had 8 girls- all different shapes and sizes so I wanted them all to feel comfortable and pick out a dress they would wear again so they all picked out their own style. I bought their shoes from DSW as part of their gift- their jewelry and hair flower were also part of their gift- necklaces were from Etsy- shop called kayemcj . She was GREAT to work with and made a custom royal blue necklace for me as well. Their earrings were from charming charlies- love that store- super cheap jewelry in EVERY color imaginable!
Hair flowers- I originally planned on making these myself.. but October rolled around- we just bought our house and I was running out of time- so back to Etsy I went..I found these flowers pretty cheap and worked with the shop owner to get 8 ordered and shipped before we left for our wedding. She was a sweetie as well and even threw in 2 extra flowers just in case one got lost or broke. Thankfully we didn’t need them but it was good to know just in case we had extras. She no longer has an etsy shop but here is her website- www.craniumdecor.com I ordered orange hydrangea flowers with pearls and metal combs. If you need a closer up picture- let me know.

 

 

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shan0487

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Rings

 

My fiancé picked out my wedding band and engagement ring with no help from me! I had told him that I wanted a band with diamonds on it- he searched for 3 months until he found the perfect ring and I think he did a great job! We ordered his ring from Kohls- they have a great wedding band selection for men- we went into the store to figure out what size and style he wanted- went online and ordered 2 rings and then returned the one he didn’t want. I think we paid about $70 for his ring! :)

 

 

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Pre-travel brochure

I made and sent out pre-travel brochures about a month before the wedding to get everyone excited- for my out of the St Louis area friends (about 5) I also mailed their luggage tags with these. I made these from Vistaprint as well.

 

 

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Bags – I purchased the $1 bags from Old Navy when I had 20% or 30% off coupons so I got then for 70 or 80 cents! I gave 1 bag per couple and then the single people got their own bag. In the bag I bought tumblers for everyone from Wal-Mart- I bought 3 or 4 every time I went to Wal-mart for a couple months so I didn’t spend a fortune at one time. I ordered waterproof initial decals from Etsy so that everyone would be able to tell their mugs apart as I had about 5 different styles. I ordered white decals for the girls and black for the guys. The online shop I bought these from is ACJInspirations. Again, she was great to work with and attached instructions on how to apply the decals- the first one wasn’t the best but I got the hang of it after the first couple! :) I also put gum in the bags and their luggage tags (made the inserts on Vistaprint from business cards and purchased the luggage tags from Michael’s with my 40% off coupons!) I handed out all but 3 of our bags prior to leaving for Mexico. I didn’t want to have to pack an extra suitcase to lug down all of these bags! Thankfully my brother in law had room in his suitcase to shove the 3 bags I didn’t get to hand out prior to the trip! I didn’t think it was necessary to give everyone a bunch of stuff that they had probably already packed (as I supplied a packing list with my pre-travel brochure). I HIGHLY recommend the tumbler cups though- everyone at our resort was jealous of our cups! 

 

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shan0487

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Starfish-

 

After seeing some awesome starfish aisle decorations and seeing what people charged to make them- I decided I would make them myself! I ordered the starfish on Ebay and the raffia from Nashville Wraps online. I can send you instructions on how I made them if you want!

 

 

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Table runners/chair sashes- I purchased orange organza table runner s and chair sashes online from efavormart when they were having a 20% off sale.

 

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Up next- flowers.. 

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