Weddingbee

Hi Bees,

I am now officially a ¢¢â€š¬…”Mrs.¢¢â€š¬? !

After a year of planning a destination wedding, it’s finally all over. I have read Weddingbee just about every single day (sometimes many times a day) since I found it online. Weddingbee has been my most favorite and best resource for all my wedding needs.

Now that I have been through the whole wedding planning experience, I would love to share some advice with you all who are still planning. So many things I worried about turned out to be silly in the end because my whole wedding went off without a hitch¢¢â€š¬¦ almost.

Let me break it down for you, mistakes, troubles and all. We arrived at our destination (beautiful, snowy Colorado!) the Wednesday before the wedding. The guests and family all trickled in from Thursday to Saturday morning.

The Mistakes

Mistake #1 - I did not take the day before we left off from work. If you possibly can, please do this. Take more time than you think you need - trust me, you’ll need it.

Mistake #2 - Another mistake (and ultimately sad) thing was that I had ordered an expensive, custom handmade garter from an online site. I ordered it about a month ahead of time and it did not arrive until the Thursday before my wedding. Needless to say I was already gone and the garter sits unused.

The Good

Welcome Bags - These turned out great. I bought some gift bags ($5.99 for 13) at Michael’s last year after Christmas and a ton of ornaments for 75% off from a Christmas store near my house along with 15 rolls of Christmas ribbon. We tied the ornaments to each bag with the ribbon, filled them with local information as well as maps and an itinerary for the weekends events, water, snack foods, candy etc. Everyone loved them! Were these a hassle? Sort of. Did my guests love them? Yes, so I guess that makes it worthwhile!

Bridal Party Gifts - I bought my girls totes from LL Bean, had their initials put on the front and filled them with all sorts of things: long velvet gloves for the outdoor ceremony, some fun stuff like candy and lip balm, a necklace, earrings along with a nice note for them both. For my flower girl I got a Hello Kitty tote bag and filled it with matching Hello Kitty treats - it was adorable and she loved it! For the best man we got a watch and a gift card to the Home Depot - just what he wanted!

Favors - I had the baker make trays of cookies and we bought some bakery bags with our names, dates and two little snowmen holding hands on them. Towards the end of the night we had the caterer bag up the cookies and put them on all the tables for people to take home as an extra favor. Everyone loved them - there were no cookies left at all! As for my actual favors, we bought some silver and brass snowflake Christmas ornaments from Target ($1.99 each!), replaced the ribbon on them with a red ribbon that had our names and wedding date printed on it and everyone loved those as well.

The Bad

My only vendor issue was my DJ. I made a list of every song I wanted played and sent it to him. He also had us fill out a list with what times things needed to be done, who should be introduced and in what order etc.

He was late and when he got there, everyone was already in the reception building, including us. No introductions were made, nothing was done in the order we had listed and he did not play the songs on my list. He actually played a few songs twice. We paid him because we signed a contract but have since stopped payment on the check and are addressing our issues.

The Tips

One thing that I found extremely helpful was that I made a spreadsheet of all the things I had personally bought for the trip (i.e. underwear, stockings, rehearsal dinner outfit etc, etc¢¢â€š¬¦) and kept it updated for months. I would move things from the ¢¢â€š¬…”Need to Buy¢¢â€š¬? to the ¢¢â€š¬…”Already Have¢¢â€š¬? column almost obsessively. Then, when I went to pack I just printed it out and checked things off as I packed them. I didn’t forget anything!

Make Up/Hair Trial. Please do this, especially if you are the sort of person who doesn’t wear a ton of makeup or do their hair obsessively. I went to Macy’s and Sephora and secured my make up stash months ahead of time. I went to the salon with my hairpins, pictures from magazines and my makeup. Ladies, make sure that you have a few options because when the stylist tried some of the styles I brought with me on my head, they didn’t work. Just because it looks nice in a magazine doesn’t mean it will work with your head/hair/dress style. I’m so glad I did this! My hair ended up looking incredible which is a real accomplishment since it’s thick, frizzy and overall just difficult.

The biggest money saver was buying our own alcohol. If your caterer allows this, by all means do it! We ordered it from a local liquor store after monitoring local sales ads for a few weeks to get the best prices, and after the wedding we were able to return any unopened cases. We only paid the caterer for the bartender fee. Also, we bought Prosecco, an Italian sparkling wine, instead of champagne. It was tastier I think and saved us about $4.00 per bottle.

Well, that is about all I can think of. Enjoy the process while you can. I really wish I hadn’t been so stressed ahead of time. Also, please please please-enjoy your ceremony and reception as much as you can! It flies by and if you don’t think about it, you hardly remember.

Good luck ladies and let me know if anyone is getting married in Colorado-I have tons of vendor information!

Love,

The now MRS. Snowbride¢¢â€š¬¦

• Mistletoe
• Sales!