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!