Stay with us...in the hotel block we reserved!

Planning this wedding would be so much easier if I lived in the state. Not just in the southern part. Florida period. For starters, it requires you to do a lot of extra planning – because now you have to plan to plan. All vendor meetings (if you want to meet them in person) need to be set up significantly far in advance so as to make personal travel arrangements, accommodate different vendor schedules, and make the most of your time in the destination city. You’ve all seen my posts from when I go home…my trips usually end up being this crazy wedding whirlwind that require me to take some time off from the wedding to pick up where my sanity dropped off.

But anyway, today I’m going to let you in on one of my planning secrets.


This site single handedly saved me and MamaP an unfathomable amount of time when it was time to block out hotel rooms for our out of town guests. This was on March's list, and we were able to easily get this worked out while I was home for Spring Break.

How it works is that after you register with the site, you set up an event. An event is simply a way of saying "Hey, I need hotel rooms for my people." The site asks some basic questions about the event - where the event will be, the occasion for the bookings (e.g. wedding, family reunion), how many nights, how many rooms you'd like to block and approximately what you'd like to spend. Then you wait for the hotels to come to you. That's the beauty of this site. No calling around to see what rates they'll offer and what the terms of the block would be.

Area hotels will respond to your rate (some within about 20 minutes) explaining the rate they are willing to give you and what the conditions are of the rate. For example, almost all of them require that you book by a certain date. Many will allow you to tack on extra days before or after the event at the same rate. Some require that a percentage of your rooms be booked, and others require a deposit. Its up to you to determine what conditions you are willing to live with. We knew that we didn't want to pay a deposit, but that we would be willing to live with committing to filling up a percentage of the room blocks if it was a hotel that we really wanted to use.

So after reviewing the bids, declining those that are not good fits for the event (Boca Raton, Jupiter? hello...downtown West Palm Beach please), we narrowed the list down to three hotels that we were interested in discussing further. At this point, the site provides you with an opportunity to email the hotel sales manager directly through the site, AND provides you with that persons full set of contact information (name, address, telephone, and email) in case they do not contact you before you are ready to contact them. Was this built for over-achiever brides or what?

After establishing contact, the next step I took was to set up several hotel visits. I don't believe this part is required. If you're okay with the pictures and reviews of the hotels online, the sales manager will likely email you the contract, you sign and fax it back in, and they send you the discount code/instructions to pass along to your guests. Then you are free to disseminate it however you want. I'm putting it on our wedding website.

However, if you decide you want to see the hotel before committing, you can set up visits. While there, the sales manager will likely give you a tour, offer you some snacks (or cookies), show you the amenities, and discuss what your plans for pursuing the block might be. Despite this not costing you any money, this is still a sales contract for them and they try to make the best impression. None of the sales managers we met with were pressuring us for the block. One sales manager and I particularly hit it off because were about the same age, and she's getting married in May. Bridget (yup, totally on a first name basis) even wanted to see our website and my lil ol blog :)

At this point, its on you. If you want to move forward with the room block, you can let them know. Like I mentioned before, you'll have to sign the contract, return it, and then will be given the discount code/instructions to pass along to your guests. If after touring, you decide the block is not for you, you can go into the site and decline the bid. If you do not do anything, someone from hotelplanner.com will probably contact you asking what you decided to do. I wasn't expecting that, but it was legit.

Overall, I had an awesome experience with HotelPlanner.com. It was extremely user friendly, and I love how I felt like I saved so much time! I highly recommend you check out hotelplanner.com for any of your event-planning needs.

I'm going to go all soap-operatic and save sharing our decision for for tomorrow's post (unless of course you've visited our wedding website already). That's okay, right?

Great. See you then!

♥

2-getha 4-eva

Initially I was going to talk about this with the other website post, but I realized that even my most faithful readers were probably ready for me to hush. So today I wanted to (briefly) discuss an unexpected by-product of the website redesign. Yes, I have another reason to thank Ellie.

See, when we first started discussing fonts for the site, I was still firmly in the land of Scriptina - even when I started seeing it all over the place (most recently last night on a billboard for a new subdivision). Well, when I mentioned it, Ellie gently told me that it might be hard to read (even as titles) and that she had some suggestions for scripty/readable alternatives. One of the combos? You guessed it, Freebooter Script and Century Gothic (a Microsoft Word staple).

I didnt plan on making font changes. But when I saw them together on our website draft, I was sold. Now I cant imagine them not being an item. Yes, they're going to be together on everything!

Freebooter Script + Century Gothic
2-getha 4-eva

You've been warned.
♥

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.

Gone but not forgotten

I know I fell off a bit this week. I'm sorry. Really, I am. But its been for a good reason. I've been using all of my spare mental faculties (if those exist) on this beauty:


I'll dish at length about what happened here and how Ellie singlehandedly salvaged my sanity and our website over Gmail.

Happy Sunday!
♥

Help is on the way

As much as I'd like to believe I'm a goddess about all things wedding, I do know when to admit when I need help.

These days, our website occupies the top spot on that list. You may remember, I was so excited to turn an ordinary blog into a wedding website. I'm still excited about it secretly being a blog...it just doesn't translate into spending the time to make it fabulous.

So whats my solution? I'm getting some help folks! I don't want to divulge too many details just yet, but I feel better already knowing that my blog, sorry wedding website is going to be in very good hands.

♥

Graphic Designer I Am Not: Website Update

Hola!

So ever since a couple nights ago (geez, its been that long? Maybe it feels like last night because I didnt really make it to sleep last night...I'm okay I think...no, I dont know what was going on but I have an idea).

I digress.

The point was, ever since mentioning that I wanted to do a site for the PHI...

Pause. Sorry, lemme explain. Jase read the blog about calling him FI and instead of pronouncing it "fee," he pronounces it "phi" which I actually thought was pretty cute. I told him I'd do him one better: if were going to call it phi, we may as well spell it that way. And for him, its double the joy because his fraternity has a lovely Phi in the middle, and now he'll get a PHI as hi moniker...if I remember to use it, lol.

Anway, after blogging about using a blog for our wedding website, I hit the ground running. Essentially, the theme is "simply stated, I heart u" and I created this header thingie last night that incorporates some of the fonts from the invites. Earlier I went in and souped up the blog to look far less bloggy - took off the nav bar, adjusted the margins of the main post section and the sidebar, made the posts a navigation menu, added drop caps to the first paragraphs of the posts, and added a guestbook...which mom has already signed (love her).

Right now I'm kinda stymied on the banner. And I want to do a footer as well. I emailed my cousin who is our resident knower of all things computer, graphic, and graphic design to see if she could point me in the proper direction. I know she is very busy, so hopefully she can help me get something worked out between now and September.

Long story short, its coming along quite nicely and I am pleased. I'm also fatiuged, but I think thats mostly a function of little to no sleep. Ooh, lets not focus on that...

xoxox

What A Girl Wants is a Wedding Website

I always knew that I wanted a wedding-website. Long before I even got engaged, I just knew that I wanted one. I figured one of us (us=bride or groom) would have out of town guests (OOTs) that would need to be accomodated , and that a website is an excellent way to handle that. I've just been struggling with it. There are lots of options, both free and paid, and subsequenty ALOT of ways you can go with it.

No offense TK, but I cant do it. Ya'll really need to step it up. Same with the weddingchannel, and a whole bunch of other peoples services. I'm not against paying for it, but it needs to be a pretty awesome set up, and so far, I am unimpressed.

I also was/am toying with the idea of doing a freewebs page. Its free (duh), which is great, but it requires alot of legwork on my end, and I am not entirely thrilled with the setup. I could also potentially have my cousin do a site from scratch for me, but ideally, this website would be a situation where I could update it regularly and from my lovely Toshiba (anywhere in the world - LOL).

Fast forward to tonight. Earlier, on Weddingbee (yes, its my new fave hangout), I stumbled across a tag for a website where they used good ol blogger to do it. Blogger! Who would have thought?! And a few other bees have followed suit, so there are at least tips to get you started, and a whole lot of options. Which is good for a girl who isnt 100% sure what she wants.

Like I've said before, there is a plus in having loads of time. I want our site to go live in October (lol, Idunno where I got "go live" from), but when it goes live, I want it to be equipped with bios, pics, our story, etc. All your standard website fare, plus some fun extras just for stopping by. And considering how successful I've been with my past attempts at a website, whatever I do go with will definitely be a process....just like everything else.

So the newest website plan? Blogger. Infact, I'm going to look into it as soon as I post this.

Yes, I'll keep you posted (pun intended) :)
xoxox