Mrs. Cherry Blossom, San Francisco
Age and Occupation: 27, Administrative Asst.
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 26, District Sales Manager
Engagement Date: December 23, 2006
Wedding Date: May 3, 2008
Venue: Zen Garden in the East Bay w/ reception in a floor-to-ceiling window Atrium with views of the Zen Garden
About Me: After 5 years of dating, we're finally ready to get hitched! I am a lovah of all things wedding, creative, crafty, and definitely DIY bc I love to add a personal touch to everything I gift or make. In my free time, I like to bake, spend time with our family, friends, and my doggies, read my guilty pleasure celebrity gossip and catch up on TV shows.
Two weekends ago, I was beyond spoiled to death by the shower my girlfriends threw for me. Unfortunately I have no pictures to share… just yet. I have to wait patiently for them to pass it on to me. So many people showed up for dear ol’ me, I just about pissed my pants… it blew my mind! I CANNOT wait to share all the details with you ladies. Hands down, I bow down to my BMs. And a million trillion thanks to our friends who attended and friggin spoiled me (& Mr. CB) rotten. They totally helped us set up house!
Check it, this was only HALF of what we got to fill our empty new place!

Read more…
Ms. Dahlia, Detroit/Cleveland
Age and Occupation: 24, PhD Student
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 24, IT System Administrator
Engagement Date: December 31, 2006
Wedding Date: May 2008
Blogging Since: September 19, 2007
Venue: United Methodist Cathedral & historic downtown hotel in Cleveland
About Me: I enjoy cooking, dancing and swimming. I am a geek and apply game theory to my everyday life. Winter is my favorite time of year, especially when spent curled up with good coffee and a book by Madeleine L'Engle.
Way back before our invitations were finished, I found myself getting antsy one night to just take care of a wedding project.I present to you the recipe for our simple but tasty thank you notes.
The Dahlia’s Thank You Notes
1 stack of cardstock (I got ours from Office Max)
1 embosser*
1 paper cutter
envelopes (Ours are from Envelope Mall. They are leftover from our response card envelopes.)

The supplies
Read more…
Mrs. Penguin, Sacramento
Age and Occupation: 26, Video & TV Producer/Director/Editor
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 29, Doctor of Physical Therapy
Engagement Date: January 29, 2007
Wedding Date: June 7, 2008
Blogging Since: September 14, 2007
Venue: Winery in the Gold Country
About Me: I'm a silly mess of a girl who, above all else in this world, LOVES the Spice Girls. I eat sushi at least 3 times a week, and feel guilty about how much it costs the other 4 days a week. I love designer jeans and cheap accessories. I don't like sweets, but I love the UCLA Bruins!
Our first wedding gift rolled in a couple weeks ago! Four months early, wowwie! I think I’ll always remember these Salt and Pepper mills as “our first gift.” Were making memories here, people!

Cole and Mason Tower Mills, Williams Sonoma
I hadn’t even started to think about Thank You cards… I was going to take care of that after the wedding. But with the shower coming up, I realize that more than one set of Thank You cards may be in order. I’ve never been one to notice exactly when we’ve received Thank You’s from weddings/showers I’ve attended, but now that the tables are turned, I want to make sure I make an adequate attempt at “doing the right thing…” even though I’m not exactly sure what that means.
Read more…
Mrs. Lovebug, Tucson
Age and Occupation in 06: 31, Writer
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 27, Professional Game Show Contestant
Engagement Date: February 18, 2007
Wedding Date: April 19, 2008
Venue: Historic Inn
About Me: Likes: blogging, wikis, semi-colons, cuddling, fragrant flowers, syntax, and spooning. Dislikes: typos, dangling modifiers, flypaper, citronella candles, and run-ons. If I had my druthers, I'd exchange simple vows in a candlelit library. But I lost my druthers long ago...anyone seen them?
Ah, the joy of the first registry purchase. That buoyant balloon of delight…quickly burst by the realization of the need for thank you cards.Since we took the fancy schmancy train to Invitesville via letterpress, we wanted to do something more casual and relaxed for our thank yous. And personalized. Personalized is the name of the game. So in a spin off of a Martha idea, and with our “Sweetest Type of Love” theme as inspiration, we came up with some dorky, squinty picture postcards:

Read more…
Miss Magnolia, Atlanta
Age and Occupation: 28, Public Affairs and Government Relations
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 28, Lobbyist
Engagement Date: December 1, 2006
Wedding Date: January, 2008
Blogging Since: September 6, 2007
Venue: catherdral ceremony/private club reception
About Me: Mr. Magnolia and I are thrilled to be planning an evening, winter wedding for 200 people in Atlanta. We both work in politics and share a love of University of Georgia football, pop culture, and good food! I'm a runner who adores wedding magazines, bad reality television, and a
good glass of wine. Most of the time I like to think I'm pretty organized, but between wedding planning, house hunting, and a full-time job, I'm being put to the test!
Like just about every other bride out there, I have a big ol’ list of thank you notes to write. After being married three weeks, I’ve barely made a dent in that list.
However, earlier this week, I did sit down to write notes to several people who didn’t actually give us a gift…vendors. I have vendor reviews coming soon, but I can preface those by saying that I truly believe that I worked with some of the most talented people in Atlanta for our wedding. I didn’t hire a wedding planner, partially because I had this ridiculous need to be in control of every aspect of the planning, and partially because I had complete faith in every single person that I hired.
Mr. Magnolia thinks I’m a little crazy for writing thank you notes to our vendors after they’ve been paid in full (and in some cases tipped), but I think of it as a personal gesture of appreciation….as opposed to the very impersonal check. And as a friend of mine said yesterday, it kind of closes the loop on the relationship in a nice way, you know?
Read more…
Mrs. Petunia, Ft. Lauderdale
Age and Occupation: 31, College Professor
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 29, Engineering Student/Part-time Barista
Engagement Date: December 8, 2006
Wedding Date: March 2, 2008
Venue: Riverside Hotel
Blogging Since: August 6, 2007
About Me: Our original idea of running off to get married quickly turned into an event with 100+ guests once other people got involved and I, too, got swept away in the lovely madness that is wedding planning. Mr. Petunia and I are obsessed with all things World of Warcraft, Monopoly, and Nintendo, so we’re planning on including some fun “game-y” details into our wedding.
These days, with the bridal shower just behind us and less than 2 months to our wedding, gifts are finding their way to our home in all sorts of ways. They found their way to the shower in the most traditional of ways: people brought them, and since I opened them there as part of the festivities, I knew who brought what and why (no question that something was a bridal shower gift).

So writing the thank you note for my lovely glass domed cake plate will be - well, a piece of cake. (By the way, I loved Mrs. Kiwi’s recent post about becoming a grown up! I have to admit that I’m starting to feel like one receiving these gifts. I never thought my cakes/cupcakes needed a glass home before, but now I wonder how I ever left them homeless without it, and walking out of that shower knowing I was the proud owner of things like these did in fact make me feel, for whatever reasons, like more of an adult…).
Read more…
Mrs. Eggplant, San Francisco
Age and Occupation: 28, Human Resources
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 24, Associate Marketing Manager
Engagement Date: January 19, 2007
Wedding Date: October 20, 2007
Blogging Since: May 31, 2007
Venue: Ceremony at a cement and stained glass cathedral and reception at a boutique hotel ballroom
About Me: I'm a shopping junkie who lives to discover great deals and a craft addict that loves to scrapbook and knit. My profile picture was taken on the day I got engaged which is why my smile is so huge!
I (finally) ordered our thank you cards! Mr. Eggplant and I were married on October 20th, so it looks like I just may make the two-month etiquette deadline for sending out thank you cards (that is, if I can get myself to sit down and pound them out this week
).

Read more…
Mrs. Caramel, Los Angeles
Age and Occupation: 24, Art Gallery/Museums
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 24, Engineer
Engagement Date: January 8, 2007
Wedding Date: October 6, 2007
Venue: a beautiful church and hotel reception
About Me: I love dancing, singing, eating out, eating in, surfing on the net, and brainstorming fantastic ideas. I also love cats, coffee, and know every quote written on Sex & the City. I'm known to laugh really loud and have really crazy hand gestures while I talk. My fiance writes songs and I take pictures. What else? We're just a crazy young couple in love, trying to make a fabulous wedding!
Currently I have been working on our lovely Thank You cards. Ever since I fell in love with these adorable stamps at Michael’s, I’ve been dying to use them!

Read more…
Miss Peppermint, LA/Palm Springs
Age and Occupation: 23, Actress
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 24, Web Producer
Engagement Date: October 21, 2006
Wedding Date: December 2007
Blogging Since: July 2, 2007
Venue: historic estate overlooking the heart of Palm Springs
About Me: I am a Southern California native who enjoys cooking, writing, travel and all things in the arts. Mr. Peppermint and I met in college and he proposed on our four year anniversary in one of our most special places, Joshua Tree National Park. We're having a destination wedding in Palms Springs that will incorporate tradition as well as reflect our personalities!
I have a confession to make: I had my most bridezilla moment (at least to date… knock on wood!). I suppose it’s good to have gotten it out of the way, but nonetheless, there was a bit of a debacle last weekend…
It all started out very innocently. Mr. Peppermint and I were gocco-ing our Thank You cards. We agreed we wanted to get that out of the way so we’d be ready to fill them out in time. We had talked about a design and settled on what we wanted. Since Palm Springs (and the surrounding areas) is so special to us and he proposed in Joshua Tree National Park, we decided that we’d like a simple drawing of a Joshua Tree on the front. Inside we planned on text that would read “Thank You” in the top left, and “Mr. & Mrs. Peppermint” in the bottom right. Easy. We spent Friday night and Saturday morning making them and were really happy with the results.
Here is our view of Joshua Tree National Forrest:

Read more…
Mrs. Bell Pepper, Philadelphia
Age and Occupation: 28, Resident Physician
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 30, Resident Physician
Engagement Date: May 30, 2006
Wedding Date: June 2007
Venue: Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts
About Me: I love whimsical details and design, everything that *sparkles*, sipping on hazelnut lattes, pugs, shopping for antiques and second-hand goods, scenic photography, delicate flowers, and checking out new restaurants in the city with my fianc??. We are planning our wedding at a unique city venue for about 75 close family members and friends. I have a lot of DIY ideas and I like to blog about ways to save money on your wedding.

We still have a few thank you cards to send out to relatives who live overseas and couldn’t make it to our wedding. Rather than send them a few 4 x 6 photos from our wedding, I wanted to create a keepsake holiday card that would highlight some of our favorite photos.
Read more…