Practical, Posh and Pretty Bridesmaids' Gifts

I had a nightmare last night that it was our wedding day but we had forgotten the wedding favors and all of our guests were throwing temper-tantrums demanding little bags of candy. I woke up in a cold sweat, and then realized.."oh right, our wedding is almost a whole year away, we don't have to worry about that yet."  The favor's I'm not so concerned about yet, the bridal party gifts however have got me a little worried. What do you get you're bridal party? I found a few places and websites that have great tools to help you navigate the bridal party gift waters.

Macy's Wedding Shop
This cool little website helps you find pretty much anything you'd need for your big day. You can create a head to toe look for your attendants, find jewelry and shoes, and they even have great attendant gifts!

Wedding Star 
This website/magazine is a great one-stop-shop for, well, pretty much everything. They have great unique items for your attendants as well as inspirational tips.

Things Remembered
If you're looking for personalized gifts, lets say a engraved flask or compacts, then they're your go to guys. They have a wedding section with idea's for bridesmaids and groomsmen gifts.

Boudoir Photography

So keeping up with the theme of my last blog, I found another new trend in wedding photography, boudoir photography! I've been trying to scrounge together my venders for my wedding..which has been a blast so far since nearly 90% of the people I wanted are either already booked, or moving. Any who, whilst I was researching photographers in the area, I started noticing something, almost half of them had a "boudoir" section. Not really knowing what it was, I clicked and actually didn't find the shots that un-classy, gross, or pornographic. You'd have to be pretty comfortable in your own skin to do it, which I'm personally not, but if you can get over that, then more power to you! It might make a sexy gift for your husband or bride to be. If you do go that route, I'd suggest buying a safe to keep them in so no nosey relatives ever "accidentally" finds them ;)!

What do you think? Would this be a great memento of the glory days, or is it too much?

First Look Photo Sessions

Haven't heard of them? Me either, until today when my wedding photog friend Emily posted something on my wall. Basically, what they are is a photo session on your wedding day of just you and your fiancé seeing each other for the first time. Instead of you two seeing each other for the first time walking down the isle, you do pictures of the two of you in a more intimate setting, away from all the eye's of your friends and family.

This could either be really cool, or not so much, depending on the couple. If you've always wanted the big reveal of you walking down the isle, then this route isn't for you. However, there's something very special about seeing each other for the first time on your big day. And how awesome would it be to be able to capture the looks on both your faces when you see each other for the first time?

What do you think of this new trend?

Discount Designer Dresses

At my old high school we had to do these things called "Senior Projects". For those of you who don't know what that is, or had a sane high school that only required community service, it's basically just a opportunity to explore a career or passion. A year or two after I graduated, a girl decided she'd put together a discount prom dress day for her senior project. Fed up by the cost of having to buy a dress that would only be worn once, she petitioned the community to donate gently used prom dresses, to be sold at the high school gym half price the retail value. After I've looked at a few wedding dress stores, and seeing the prices,  I understand her frustration at women having to pay so much for a dress they would only wear one day.

Now don't get me wrong, I understand that a wedding dress is way more sentimentally important then a prom dress but wow, can they be expensive. At the same time buying a quality dress is important. So what's a girl to do? I don't know, BUT there's this amazing place online that my sister showed me called preownedweddingdresses.com. They have basically any designer you could ever want and the dresses are all significantly discounted. While some of the dresses have been worn once, I found a few that still had the tags on! Now, I've never used this site so it is a little "buyer beware", but I am noticing that physical shops like this, that either rent or sell wedding dresses, are popping up everywhere. While you might need to make some alterations and adjustments, you could save a pretty penny.

Doing it yourself

I love the idea of doing things yourself, especially when that means you save a whole lot of dough. The problem with it? The amount of times I mess something up before I get it right, and then making sure I can repeat the process without a huge glitter-glue catastrophe!

I live all the way up in Oregon and when I wanted to ask my would-be-bridesmaids to be in the wedding I ran into a problem. They live pretty much everywhere except Oregon. I couldn't just ask them all at once, or ask them individually without racking up a some impressive credit card debt for travel expenses. So I decided to figure out another way to ask. 

Our wedding's going to have a peacock theme so I was looking all over etsy for peacock related items. I found a few cute things but nothing that I loved. So one day I was getting school books at the Duck Store in Eugene, and all the sudden I saw them. They were these blank cards with peacock feathers and they were on sale!!! 

So I bought them and went to town, trying to figure out a way to squish in "will you be my bridesmaid" on the card, and avoid the somewhat ginormous feather. 

This was the first...few, attempts. It worked super well as you can see, but eventually after kicking my printer a few times, and enlisting the help of my fiancé we figured it out. 

The final product wasn't exactly up to Martha Stewart quality, but I was happy with them. Most importantly, all the women I asked said yes!

What DIY did you do for your wedding? Did it work out, or was it so not worth the effort? 

Dos and Don'ts of Wedding Planning (so far)

Do: wait out online vendors

This one I found by accident and it's borderline sneaky, but online vendors SOMETIMES will give you deals if you create something and don't order it right away. Now for the love of God, please do not hold me to this because I'm not saying it's always going to happen. 

When I made the save the date's I wasn't sure if we were going to order them or not so I just saved them and forgot. Low and behold a few days later, the company offered me free shipping on my saved order. It saved me about $15 dollars in shipping. 

I'm not saying that it'll always work or that  they'll give you some stupendous deal, but you may cut out a few bucks here and there. Just make sure whatever you're ordering isn't going out of stock soon!

Don't: go dress shopping alone!
Mike and I were checking out our now booked reception site (:D) and I decided to go into town and go dress shopping. Alone. Big mistake.
Now, I'm not saying that you can't find a great dress on your own, because I totally did,  but I am saying you'll be avoided like the plague by the sales lady. Especially if they have another client that has her mom, sister, grandma, and ten bridesmaids with her.
I was at the salon about an hour, picked out the dresses I tried on, and was left in the dressing room for 10 mins each time, and alone on the podium for 15 mins while she attended to the other bride... not fun. Sales people want to make sales (duh) and you might be the low man on the totem poll if you go in alone.


Do: check out Michael's for wedding supplies like invitations.
I have a friend that works at a very lovely little shop downtown that sells wedding invitations. Mike and I wanted to check it out so we set up an appointment and went in. The invitations they had were amazing and they could do just about anything we could ever want. Then we asked about price.
The invites themselves were $5-$7 each for about 100 invites. That's, well, you can do the math. What really got us was that the reply cards were as much as the invitations themselves!
It was getting a little pricey to say the least, so we thanked them and left. That weekend, my mom and I checked out Michael's and found that they have a wonderful selection of invitations, among other wedding related items. We found a set that included invites, ribbon, envelopes, reply cards and matching envelopes, as well as great instructions and templates for what to put on your invite. Grand total  $50.00 for a set of 100. That's $0.50 an invite, way more economical than the $5-$7 we were talking about.
We're going to add a colored backing and peacock feather on our own, but that only brings the cost to $1.50 per invitation! For something that people are going to inevitably throw out, Michael's, with a little Do-It-Yourself, is a great deal!


What wedding Dos and Don'ts have you experienced or heard of? Share them for everyone in the comments!