Welcome Willkommen Bienvenidos

In preparation for our Save the Dates to be mailed out, I've been working on our wedding website. Its not finished yet (so you'll have to wait to see it) but the reason brides have been making websites is really for the convenience of the wedding guests. Its important to just take a moment to recognize the special effort made by those guests who will be arriving by planes, trains, and automobiles in the days preceding the main event. The wedding website holds all sorts of information - like directions to the ceremony and reception, registry information, weather, local attractions, and really importantly, information about hotel accommodations.

You can start making your guests feel appreciated even before they arrive in town by reserving a block of rooms at a local hotel (or two).  A hotel room block is a group of hotel rooms that have been temporarily held for the convenience of wedding guest. Many hotels offer reduced group rates, and since you know the area better than out-of-towners, booking accommodations in advance is an all-around great idea. A room block is arranged by a contract between the engaged couple and the hotel then guests book and pay for the rooms themselves. Unreserved rooms are released back to the public after a specified date, such as one month prior to the wedding. Hotel blocks are also nice because then guests stay in one location, making it easier for them to socialize and making transportation and other issues easier.

We are wanting our wedding to feel kind of like a family reunion and so we are encouraging family and friends to come into down a couple days before the wedding - lets all have some fun together! Its important to us that our guests have a great all around experience in Yakima, not just at the wedding. So, I just recently called and arranged our hotel blocks and we decided the Hilton Garden Inn!  The Hilton hotel is right downtown Yakima, close to wine tasting, restaurants, and shopping. They gave us discounted rates per night and have reserved 10 room blocks (but will add more rooms if/when all 10 rooms are booked). I feel really good about the hotel, the area of Yakima it is in, the discounted per night rate, and the Hilton offers personalized websites so that guests can book their rooms directly through that site. We want to make it as easy as possible for everyone to be able to come!

Want to know what else is fantastic about the Hilton Garden Inn? Their customer service. I have spoken to two different ladies and they both were so helpful, easy to work with, and friendly! So if you're undecided about where you want your guests to stay the weekend of the wedding - do yourself a favor and call Alysia Cantu, their Group Sales Manager. She is fantastic to work with!

Another way to make guest feel really appreciated is to have Welcome Bags. The front desk may distribute OOT Welcome bags to guests in the room block. Welcome gifts are a wonderful way to extend a special thank-you to those guests who have traveled long distances to join you on your big day, and there are lots of options to choose from beyond the standard fruit basket. With a little extra time and energy, you'll not only be able to help your guests find comfortable lodging, but pull together a present that brings a smile to your travelers' faces (without placing a sizable dent in your wallet). Whether you opt for humorous, helpful, or just plain delicious, you will ensure that your friends and family remember the wonderful time they had at your wedding, not the stress and aggravation of the preceding journey.

Here is my list of things to include in our Welcome Bags : 

1. A Welcome note.  Include important phone numbers and addresses.

2. Water bottles.

3. A map (they’re often free). Also, directions from the hotel to the venue and information on shuttles.

4. Mints and snacks.

5. Decent coffee (or tea). The Starbucks Via coffee comes in small packets of 3 and there’s also a pack of 48 for $34.95 on their website.

6. A weekend timeline if OOT guests are invited to rehearsal dinner and/or other wedding events.

7. Advil or Tylenol (for the morning after the wedding)

Other cute additions I thought of - 

1. A bottle of wine from a local winery 

2. A couple little bottles of 5 hour energy

3. Homemade treats - like a couple cookies or brownies

4. Coupons/gift certificates for restaurants or spas within walking distance of the hotel. 

5. Shout wipes and a list of local dry cleaners (accidents happen!)

6. A list of local shopping malls (for the guest who forgot some article of clothing)

Did you reserve hotel blocks? Did you make OOT Welcome bags?

Paper straws, Matchbooks, and Other frivolous things

Oh hey! Hi! Sorry I'm a day late this week - I'm making a few changes in my personal life and its been a little consuming these last couple of weeks, trying to fit everything together in a perfect little puzzle. Its been sort of like a tennis match, I hit the ball on the "wedding" side of the court and it travels back over to my "school/job" side of the court... and then back again. Right now with no huge looming wedding tasks, school/job have the ball.  My brain can only really focus on one major task at a time, unfortunately.

(I've got a lot on my plate right now. Get it??)

But, you know me, even when I don't have big wedding tasks to accomplish, I manage to still do something. Like ordering little custom matchbooks for our reception cigar bar and paper straws for our drinks bar! 

Raspberry Sherbet striped paper straws - It's love at first sight

And I need to rant about square envelopes. Remember how I mentioned that our Save the Dates are square? Well when I took one into the post office to assess the stamp situation - I learned that they are a tad oversize and are considered a package. Now, I knew I was getting into something a bit more expensive with these square envelopes... but I didn't know these tiny, 6in x 6in square envelopes would cost me .88cents per invite to mail. Thats right, TWO STAMPS! Ugh. So I left the post office $130 poorer, cursing square envelopes under my breath. The good news is that since each envelope requires two stamps, I purchased the King and Queen of Hearts stamps and every envelope will have one of each. Cute, right? 

As our "One Year Until" mark approaches quickly, I am definitely getting more and more excited. This time next year I will be one week away from my wedding - oh boy am I ready for that day! I can't wait to see everything come together and to be married finally.

Did you find it hard to juggle wedding planning with the rest of your hectic life sometimes?

Decisions, Decisions

Wedding planning can be so fun and exciting while being overwhelming and kind of stressful at the same time. Right now I'm feeling a little bit in limbo. On my master "To-Do" list, I've broken the tasks into three month segments and June means two things - 1) It's our one year until the wedding date! and 2) it means a whole new set of tasks are ready to get checked off the list.  I have a lot of wedding decisions on my horizon!

Guess what?! We ordered our save the dates! I'm so pumped about this. I won't give too much away until I mail them (no spoiler alerts here!) - but we ordered them from Minted and we will get them sometime next week. Yay! But this means we are now trying to finish our guest list and then gather all those addresses. And since I am wedding detail oriented and our save the dates are square (which means they require extra postage) I'm on the hunt for the perfect combination of stamps for the envelopes. I can't wait to mail them out in August!

A sneak peek at our envelopes and wrap around labels, woop woop!

But before we mail them I need to reserve blocks of hotel rooms for out of town guests and finish our wedding website. Whew! Who knew save the dates were so much work??

More to-do's and decisions on my wedding horizon? Registering (also known as setting up house) and booking a caterer! But more on those later.

Whats on your to-do list?

UPDATE:

Help! 

I need help deciding which method we should use to address our Save the Date envelopes - printing directly on the envelopes, using clear sticky address labels, or handwriting them. 

What do you think??

(official poll is on the right hand side of the blog) 

April Showers

You know the saying, April showers bring May flowers - but it also brought be right into Melia's office one late April Saturday to chitty chat about wedding flowers. I don't think I honestly considered having anyone else be our wedding florist - I have been following Melia's work since way before I got engaged, so I knew when the time came, I'd insist she was our florist.

That was Melia's work! (insert jaw drop)

April showers bring May flowers - but more importantly, they bring peonies. That’s right, marrying in June makes me lucky enough to have peonies for my wedding flowers. Perfect pinks and classic whites, these ruffly blooms pack a lot of pretty, feminine power in a short blooming season. And guess what? I'm obsessed. Truth be told, I insisted on a spring wedding just so that I could carry these drop dead gorgeous blooms. 

We decided that I will carry a bouquet of the dark pink/fuchsia peonies, my two maids of honor/sisters will carry a mix of white and light pink peonies, my 5 bridesmaids will carry all white peony bouquets, and finally my junior bridesmaid will carry a small bouquet of three white peonies. 

Boutonniere inspiration

See how those white peonies have hints of dark pink in them? We will be using those for our centerpieces and  we may have a couple floating peony centerpieces too. 

Melia is so super fun to work with and her prices are very reasonable - for all our bouquets, 32 centerpieces, church flowers, boutonnieres, corsages, etc her quote came in a whole $35 under budget! :-) If thats not perfect, I just don't know what is. 

How did you pick your wedding flowers? Did you pick by color or by type of flower? 

Eat Dessert First!

Thats what every email from Christie is signed with. "Eat Dessert First!" I had a meeting with her on Saturday to finalize our cake flavors and design (we put our deposit down back in January at the After the Rock wedding show), and let me just say, if I had cake lying around that tasted as good as hers, I'd definitely eat that first! I'm talking before breakfast, lunch, and dinner! (here I come obesity!)

Remember how I wanted a simple two tiered cutting cake? Well as soon as I tasted Christie's cake samples Saturday, I knew I'd have to add on another tier. No joke! Its just that yummy. And her prices are so affordable (starting at only $2 a serving!) adding another tier still didn't break the bank. I just know as soon as my wedding guests discover how yummy our cake is, there will be a stampede towards the dessert table!

We decided on two flavors - the top and bottom layer will be vanilla bean cake with raspberry filling while the middle layer will be lemon poppyseed cake with lemon curd filling. With of course, her to-die-for yummy, light as air, whipped buttercream frosting. (I'm drooling on my keyboard).

Topping the whole delicious cake off will be a couple big peony blooms. Swoon. Its going to be so gorgeous.

What will you be doing for your wedding cake? Make sure you first check out Christie at Christie's Cakes!