I get by with a little help from my Friends...

Planning a wedding in Mexico has its ups and downs, ins and outs, and half the time I feel completely behind and alone in the process, while other times, I know many people who are willing to help and do so without even knowing it. Today is a gracious kind of day! Not only am I super happy to have a full Saturday without too many obligations on it, but I am also very thankful for my friends and family.

At this point, our 'people present' guest count for our Mexico wedding is 32 warm bodies. I have no idea how that happened, and I completely did not expect that many people to make a priority out of our wedding day (and a Mexico vacation in August...c'mon people, I'm realistic too). How amazing, especially in a year of economic recession, heightened concern for the drug war violence in Mexico, and crazy exaggeration of the "swine" (H1N1) flu by the media (many of the businesses in that country are suffering greatly due to travelers changing plans and heading to other countries for vacations). I often joke that we picked the worst possible year to have a wedding in Mexico, but at this juncture I believe it will be a wonderful experience for us, and for our guests.

In this same vein, in response to my earlier posting about my hair-flower-obsession, a friend took some time to look on the internet for similar hair pieces. She found 3 options, all of which were amazingly close to the original, and it means so much that someone would spend time to help me in that way. Here is a picture of the one I chose to purchase, for a mere 23% of the cost of the other flower! It was found at "Wedding Factory Direct" and I will update this post when I receive it in the mail, and include a full review of that vendor. Hooray for gracious Saturdays!

OOT Bag Addition...

Drumroll please!

We received the FI's favorite addition to the OOT bags in the mail on Friday. And, I have to say, I tihnk they will be my favorite too! We found an EBay seller who was able to take the monogram that I created and recreate it for their printing purposes...and voila, a super fun favor for guests at a DW who also happen to be at an all-inclusive resort (read: the guests can bring this to the bars and get their favorite drink anytime!).

The EBay seller we worked with is called Factory 21 (the woman's name is Kaylan) and they were fabulous. She even let me send her the font files that I used to create the monogram so it would be replicated exactly on the cups. She was very responsive and the cups were here in just 10 business days.

Bridal Accessories: Part 2

I forgot to mention - I'm completely obsessed with a hair pin that would not only match my ensemble amazingly well, but I feel like it would be 'the' standout piece for my ceremony-dress-ensemble. However, it is $125...and as I have said before, I get a bit stuck on the 'it's just one day!' business, particularly when every cent is coming out of our own coffers. This stuff is harder than it looks people!


Photo courtesy of glamgal.com, maker of said obsessed-about-piece

Bridal Accessories

Although I ordered my veil a few weeks ago and still have not seen it in the mail (I'm only concerned because an independent seller on Etsy.com has agreed to custom make it for me, and I haven't seen any estimated shipment information at all yet...), I actually was able to pin down a pair of shoes and a lovely little clutch purse for the wedding day. I still may purchase a second pair of shoes to better match the second dress that I purchased (for the reception and Trash the Dress photo session the day after the wedding) but both of these items work rather well even if I am unable to find a second pair. I like the idea of wearing flats mainly due to the fact that I won't have to worry as much about either taking them off, or falling face first into the sand while walking down the aisle. We'll see how that goes.

For all you DW brides out there, I purchased the shoes at TJ Maxx ($50) for half the cost at Nordstrom, and the clutch purse is from Target boutique ($15).

The Sounds of Mexico

In the case of our wedding, the sounds of Mexico will no doubt include a large percentage of the wedding guests belting out some awesome karaoke at the Desires Nightclub, located right inside the SMB resort. I found some photos of the festivities...get your pitch pipes out people and start practicing!

The OOT continues

Our OTT bags have some fun new contents! I have read many postings around the web about how much guests of DWs enjoyed having a little pen and game book to bring to the pool, so I grabbed some fun brightly-colored pens at the Dollar Tree, along with some word search books from Target's dollar bin section.

And who doesn't love a little pack of Chiclets?

I also nabbed a few boxes of randomly-sized bandaids (Walgreens/Dollar Tree), along with some great individually-packaged antibacterial hand wipes (Dollar Tree) for the first aid kit (and hope to add little packets of pepto and advil in the near future). I'm surprised that I have thus far been able to spend relatively small amounts of money and come out with some really fun stuff that I hope our guests will enjoy. It can be done!

Love Story meets Viva la Vida

I couldn't resist...you MUST listen/watch.

Secrets Maroma Beach website

Our wedding resort has finally decided to update its website, and I must say, it is fabulous! There are virtual tours of the property, and some great high-resolution photos that blow away what has been available prior to this change being made. It got me very excited all over again to get down there and get married in that gorgeous setting! (well, post-swine-flu I hope, but you get the gist)

Here is a link to the site: http://www.secretsresorts.com/maroma/photo.asp

There are, of course, the obligatory very-nice-looking people inserted into some of the photos at random ...hope this whets your appetite for Mexico!

Wedding Video

For the past few weeks I've been hemming and hawing about hiring a videographer to shoot the getting ready and ceremony parts of our day. I'm still not sure I want to bite the bullet, seeing as how the average cost for only 3 hours of shooting time with 1 cameraperson is around $700, but on occasion I look for examples of good wedding videos. Well today, I found one, and wanted to share it here. Turn up the volume; it's a beautiful piece and I love the simple cinema and how it makes you feel like you're there and feeling the love. :)

Laura + Josh // The All Brevis Wedding // Mexico from StillMotion on Vimeo.

New Suit: Found

After some extensive staring at Christopher's (the FI) lower half in the suit pants from Express, it was determined that his muscular lower half needed something a bit more comfortable for the wedding day. So, back went the suit to Express Men (thanks anyway, it was fun while it lasted), and off we went to the Men's Wearhouse. Figuring we'd find nothing (I was in a cranky mood), I didn't even think to bring the sandals the FI will be wearing on the day of. Low and behold, we found a fabulous Calvin Klein linen suit, fully customizable to Christopher's body, and they actually had it in CREAM (not white!). We also found a wonderful lightweight cream shirt that he'll wear under the suit coat, and made some important decisions (i.e., no tie will be worn, and a tangerine pocket scarf is in order for that all-important touch-of-color). We pick up the suit from the tailor this coming weekend, and are ecstatic that the Men's Wearhouse came through (the suits were on a BOGO, so we actually purchased 2 suits, a dark grey and then the cream linen, for the price of one!).
Here is a teaser pic :o)

Random Excitement

In the midst of attempting to decide which kind of starfish or coral should comprise the men's boutonnieres, I ran across a photo that I didn't even know I had once found (a few months ago, according to the 'modified' date!). Here's the VS bridesmaid dress that eventually won our personal bridesmaid dress contest in action! How exciting! (My bridesmaids will of course look waaayyy hotter in it...)

OOT Bags: Filling up

Our OOT Bags are coming along rather nicely! So far, we have travel-themed playing cards, Spanish for Dummies (the pocket guides), pillow boxes that will serve as first-aid kits, bandaids to go into the first aid kits, the waffle-weave aqua-colored bags , some decorative raffia, and will soon have the imprinted plastic travel drink cups (steins with handles) in the mail! It looks like we'll now just have to grab some Advil and Pepto packets, maybe some gum or mints, create the welcome letter and 'guest information packet', and the Sudoku books. I'm on the lookout for fun tropical pens to include too, but haven't been able to track them down anywhere for a reasonable cost. I'm also hoping that we can stop in Cancun or Playa del Carmen to grab some local snacks. Is there anything I'm forgetting??

= our Frosty Stein Mugs
= the OOT bag (a reusable shopping bag)
= I like this idea that I found on one of the boards - a couple took a silly picture of themselves, and had it printed on a postcard and placed in the OOT Bag. The purpose of the card was to encourage guests to post their photos from the trip on one website to share them among all of the guests - they gave them all the same username and password, so it was protected but still available to all guests. Pretty cool, right?

Monograms

Hey all! I'm going to use this fortuitous snow day (woop!) for some excessive blogging, so watch out.

I have been hatching plans to design us a wedding monogram for weeks, but until recently, had not been able to truly determine what elements I wanted involved. Once we settled on tangerine and aqua as our official 'color scheme', I started playing around a bit with ideas. Most monograms that I came across on the forums and other blogs were square in shape, yet everything I personally made ended up being rectangular. I figured out (finally) that this is because my name is rather short, while Christopher's name is...well, 3 times longer. So it takes up more space. And since I'm a relatively big fan of symmetry...you can imagine things got more complicated than they should have been.

The other issue I've had is that we (I) chose "coral" as our theme. Believe it or not, coral is amazingly difficult to incorporate into a symmetrical monogram. Plus, finding decent clipart of coral (free clipart) is also not easy. But - barring these potential barriers - I have developed a few good (?) ideas. We're working on ordering some drink steins for the guest OOT bags, and I'd be interested in hearing thoughts about which of these you like best! We'll probably also stick the monogram on the wedding ceremony program, the menu, and the welcome letter...just to have some continuity in the design.

A post about posting

I'm having trouble articulating this next post topic, so I figured I'd throw it up here for now and let it simmer for another day...

The topic on the table is the inevitable argument that every couple about to have a wedding encounters: the "it's just one day!" versus "we only get married once!" argument. Perhaps it is had only internally to each individual person, or perhaps it's the case that there is one partner on either side of this issue. In either case, there must be some kind of happy medium we can reach, whereby we can be guiltless in planning a really cool party to celebrate our marriage, yet not go so far out that it leaves us in crazy debt for the first 5 years of said marriage.

More on this to come....

Oh, the food you will eat!

When you stay at Secrets Maroma Beach! (almost rhymes, almost)

When I first started reading the TripAdvisor.com forums on SMB, I initially got sick and tired of all the photos that were posted by reviewers - always of the exact same things. Last night, I took some time to review the photos again, and found quite a few that involved eating and/or drinking...which makes a little sense, considering the fact that it is an all-inclusive resort. After collecting the photos, I was not only excited, but I was hungry. So, I thought I'd share them here, just to give you all a 'taste' (hee hee) of the resort's fare. Enjoy!