Dishing Out Our Pics (the preliminary plan)

Lately, despite there being 94 (eek!) days til the wedding and my wedding to do list has taken to doubling in size daily, I've been thinking about our wedding photos. Yes, the ones that are neither paid for nor exist yet - lol. I love love love pictures and the idea of having lots more, taken by our fab photographer Chelsey, makes me giddy.

I haven't finalized the list completely, but this is what I'm thinking so far:

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For our guests, a photo collage to place on our Thank You notes, kinda like the one pictured above. The plan is to use Mrs. Daffodil's instructions, and have the photo be detachable so that our guests can have an additional souvenir from our special day. Right now, the plan is to send Thank Yous to everyone that attended (not sure if I told you about that part), so hopefully between the PHI and I, we'll be able to accomplish that.

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For the parents, I'm hooking up with my good friend Blurb to make them Photobook Albums. Both MamaP and MamaD love our photo guest book, so I think they'd really enjoy having their own to enjoy (and show off). Some of the pictures will be the same in both albums, and we'll include some family specific ones to each album.

Also for the parents, grandparents and other relatives, we'll do framed prints. Hopefully we'll have them just in time for the holiday season. The PHI and I did something similar this past Christmas, and gave MamaP, my grandparents and my aunt and uncle framed prints of our engagement pics. We (I) selected photos that we thought they'd enjoy and we were right. So we'll be doing that again for parents, grandparents, godparents and probably aunts and uncles.

Last but not least, I want to do something like this for our home:
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I love big wall groupings of photographs. Our new apartment has an empty wall thats just begging for some photos to go up on it. Although the central print is a very large 24x36, I think the whole idea can be scaled down nicely. I'd love to have them printed on canvas, but I'm afraid its going to be super expensive, so we'll have to play that part by ear. Either way, this has our name on it, and I'm going to start mapping it out as soon as we get our proofs.

So whatcha think? Any other ideas for ways to dish out the wedding pics? I can't wait to see them!

♥

I owe you a (kinda long) story

Bride begins wedding planning
Bride decides the couple needs a wedding website.
Bride thinks most pre-fab wedding sites are fugly.
Bride decides to turn a blog into a website.
Bride works tirelessly on website.
Bride starts to dislike website.
Bride stumbles across RainyDay Templates.
RainyDay Templates re-vamps website.
Bride is enamored with website.
Bride shows off site to anyone interested (plus those who aren't).

Totally true story. As you well know, I've been on an emotional roller coaster when it comes to our wedding website (you can read about it here). I decided fairly early on (possibly even pre-engagement) that we would have one and that it would be THE source of information for our wedding guests. Turning it into that mecca of information was easier said than done.

After the initial blog-turned-website-excitement died down, I found myself making silly cosmetic changes to the site while skirting around the real issues: content and organization. You see, we had entire pages that had nothing on them. I could tell you how to get to SoFla, but there were no suggestions on what to do while there. I had thrown a couple e-pics up and changed the background, but there were typos all over the place and no info on the bridal party. Its almost as if in my mind, a site could be ugly, but still be worth its weight in click-thru's if it had the information you needed. Kind of like an ugly person having an awesome personality. Except our site had neither - no personality, no bells and whistles.

So I decided to use some of my bridal perogative* and get some serious help for our website. If you remember, I only briefly mentioned here that I was even getting help, but no details. Enter Ellie from RainyDay Templates (she also blogged about her own wedding on WeddingBee as Mrs.Lovebug).

Basically, Ellie decided to open a blog template shop. In her work with her own blog she picked up lots of tips and tricks and figured she could use that to help other people. She offers pre-made templates and custom work, all for a nominal fee. I contacted her asking for her "expert" opinion, knowing full well our site needed work. She didn't see our site as the disaster I thought it was, but did suggest some organizational and cosmetic changes. After a few emails back and forth we both went to work: her with the cosmetic changes, and me finally facing my "content demons." Within a week or so we had completely changed the website...for the better. I went into the relationship wanting a website that was cute, but in a classic way, and informative. Now it is. And I have Ellie to thank:

Ellie, thank you. Thank you for taking a few adjectives, a newly revised color scheme and some e-pics and turning that into a website that I am proud to show people. Thank you for trying to accommodate all of my random requests. And thank you for not thinking that any of my ideas (or the time of day I Gmailed them) were too zany to address. Basically, thank you for being awesome. Thank you from the bottom of my bridal heart. I ♥ our website and I know it would not be what it is today without you. I cant say it enough...you rock.

I had one more thing to tell you, but I'll save that for another post. What are you waiting for? Go see our wedding website! Feel free to let me know what you think in the comments section.

♥

*bridal perogative = taking everyone up on the sometimes rediculous notion that its my day and I can do what I want to do...because I'm the bride.

Surprise Wedding Gifts Rock

A couple of weeks ago a mysterious package was sitting at my backdoor. I was expecting my FM transmitter for the iPod to be back there, but this other books was truly a mystery. I know mom hadn't sent anything because she would have asked about it. I really didn't know who it was from and eventually gleaned that it was sent from the Greater Palm Beaches. Home! A package from home! But from who?

I didn't get a clue until I opened it. And on top was a print out of an email on how to vote for a girl I know who was vying to be a red carpet reporter at the Emmys. It was some People.com/You Tube contest which mom had told me about, so I now knew which family this was from. But a couple sheets of paper is not worth a box, right? The box was for some really gorgeous towels! Ivory with an Old Gold (yes, I did say old gold...look it up if you don't have a reference point....try AlphaPhiAlpha.net) patterned border. They wouldn't be something I'd typically pick out since I'm into bright colors and almost all of my towels are a different color, but they are perfect for like a guest bath.

And they screamed their sender. Ms. Lerna is really quite a lady. Immensely thoughtful and pretty fabulous in her own right, she's one of those people who you just enjoy being around. And she sent us our first gift! Interestingly, there was no card, but I knew Fran (the daughter and People.com red carpet announcer contest winner didn't send them. These screamed her mom.

And that meant our first thank you note was in order. I promptly ordered some pretty cute standard thank you notes from Target.com and patiently awaited for their arrival. I figure we can have a wide variety of thank you type notes - ones that match the invites, some that feature our gifts, and even just solid ones for before the invites go out. Plus, I keep thank you notes on hand. In my older age, I really wanted to be the kind of girl who sent thank you notes for gifts. So I became her and I always have some on hand.

I sent Ms.Lerna's TY note on Thursday and she should be getting it this weekend. It was such a lovely gift, enhanced by the fact that it was a total surprise.

Surprise gifts rock. The fact that its a wedding gift that makes the surprise that much sweeter. I ♥ Ms. Lerna. She rocks.

♥

Giving Thanks

I love stationary. So the idea that I get to send out stationary throughout this wedding process is extremely exciting to me.

It can also make you nauseous.

See, wedding stationary is terribly expensive. And because this is a once in a lifetime kind of thing, you want it to be as fabulous as possible - within reason. I added that last bit because as I've mentioned before, I know people are going throw these bad boys away. My goal is to find the proper balance between something thats fabulously me, but wont cause me to shudder at the thought of my friends and loved ones throwing them away. Which I have. More on that later.

Today's post is about another important piece of wedding stationary: the thank you note. Again, I love little notecards, particularly ones that are personalized in some way. I have ones with my initial, hearts, and polka dots - all Patti icons that once you open it you say "oh, this is so her." Naturally our thankyou notes needed to follow suit.

Today on my favorite wedding blog Weddingbee I ran across this idea on the message boards:

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What you're looking at what I believe to be the front of one couple's photo TY note - the couple surrounded by their gifts.

How cute is that? Pretty cute, I know. And if you do it right away, very meaningful. This could easily be turned into a postcard at vistaprint for mere pennies per card.

The TY note I selected/"custom printed" that will match our invites really isn't that thrilling. In fact, its mostly reality kicking in saying that 40 cents a card is a great price and that I would be hard pressed to get custom thank yous made elsewhere. Enter vistaprint. At vistaprint I could easily get 200 some odd postcards for like 40 bucks or so. Thats 20 cents a card!

Long story short, photo TY note is definitely a contender. The PHI likes it, I could do it for cheap, and it would be an interesting and different (dare I say, unique) way to thank our guests for their loving generosity.

File this one away folks...you may be seeing it again :)

♥