Justine & Adam 4-21-12 SBP/LSS/SCP--Updated 9/30

[Sccrmnky2005]

Yay for the 10 month mark!!!!

 

[irishwishes]

I just used my own Mickey head programs for our outdoor wedding at the Germany pavilion. Thy never told me I wasnt allowed and it's seems they're more restrictive with inside the park weddings too. I don't see you having a problem. Oh and I brought my own place cards and table numbers without a problem to LSS

 

[donald&daisy]

I just used my own Mickey head programs for our outdoor wedding at the Germany pavilion. Thy never told me I wasnt allowed and it's seems they're more restrictive with inside the park weddings too. I don't see you having a problem. Oh and I brought my own place cards and table numbers without a problem to LSS

Awesome!!!! I bought those place card holders without even thinking, so its good to hear I have a nice shot at using them. Did you like LSS?

 

[donald&daisy]

A while back I ordered a groupon deal for $50 for $15 to Mixbook.com because I thought it was a good deal. I couldn't hardly find any reviews, but did find one positive one. A couple of days ago I sat down and made a book with our engagement photos because Adam's parents have been wanting one. I LOVE this site! I have used Shutterfly in the past and I like it, but Mixbook has so much more going on--its much more like digital scrapbooking than just placing photos in an album. I made mine in an hour or so and I know I could've done a lot more with it, but I was in a hurry. Here's a link to the book I created:

http://www.mixbook.com/photo-books/romance/love-birds-5637218

 

[LuvLuvLuv]

A while back I ordered a groupon deal for $50 for $15 to Mixbook.com because I thought it was a good deal. I couldn't hardly find any reviews, but did find one positive one. A couple of days ago I sat down and made a book with our engagement photos because Adam's parents have been wanting one. I LOVE this site! I have used Shutterfly in the past and I like it, but Mixbook has so much more going on--its much more like digital scrapbooking than just placing photos in an album. I made mine in an hour or so and I know I could've done a lot more with it, but I was in a hurry. Here's a link to the book I created:

http://www.mixbook.com/photo-books/romance/love-birds-5637218

I LOVE Mixbook! I've been playing with it and can't wait to actually make one!! It's so much fun!! We don't have enough pictures right now, so we need to get to snappin I'll take a look at your link when I get home!!

 

[elleinad16]

The book is adorable!!! The colors and patterns and quotes and everything really flow nicely. I love the proposal part too. Very nice!

 

[KristiLyn]

Your book is adorable!!! I really love it!!!

 

[donald&daisy]

I LOVE Mixbook! I've been playing with it and can't wait to actually make one!! It's so much fun!! We don't have enough pictures right now, so we need to get to snappin I'll take a look at your link when I get home!!

It is fun! Not so much of a chore...

The book is adorable!!! The colors and patterns and quotes and everything really flow nicely. I love the proposal part too. Very nice!

Your book is adorable!!! I really love it!!!

Thanks!! I really liked that they had so many templates to play with.

 

[donald&daisy]

We’ve got our wedding bands!! We actually bought mine earlier this year. We were out shopping and noticed a going out of business sign for an independent jewelry store that has been around for a long time. We stopped in and looked around and I tried on a few bands. This was actually the first time we had even thought about wedding bands.

I knew that I wanted something that wouldn’t compete with my engagement ring. I LOVE the sapphires in my e-ring and I thought if I had them on my wedding band too it would be too much. I also knew I wanted something with some sparkle, but I didn’t want it to be that expensive. My e-ring in insured, but I liked the idea of leaving it at home when we go on vacation, etc. And although my e-ring is platinum, I was open to white gold for the wedding band. So, with all of that in mind, I tried on a pretty, dainty, white gold band with channel set diamonds that went spanned the top half of the band. I loved it and we bought it. It was probably the easiest thing I have done for the wedding and we got a great deal on it. They sized it for us and we picked it up at their main location a couple of days later. I will confess—sometimes I go try it on for fun!

As for Adam’s wedding band, we discussed some options. I gave him a brief overview of popular options and then he came up with a great idea: let’s include sapphires in his band so it matches mine. He wanted something a little different than a standard band, but he didn’t want diamonds in the band because he thought he would look like Mr. T. So we stopped by a couple of local jewelry stores and he wanted to go with a popular local jeweler that specializes in custom pieces. I have to be honest—I’m not cheap, but I HATE overpaying but I took a step back and realized that no matter what he picked out it would come nowhere close to what he paid for my e-ring so I decided to suck it up and let him use that jeweler and I actually didn’t even go with him again past that first visit.

He figured what width suited his fingers and the jeweler said three stones would work best and so he ordered a white gold band with a mix of textures and they ordered in stones for us to look at. I did go with him to look at the sapphires because I wanted to make sure the color was similar to mine. So probably 3 months after we first started, they called him to let him know it was ready. Well, it was huge on him! It was a whole size too big! I felt bad for him because it sucks for them to screw up on something as simple as the size. They couldn’t just size it down because of the way the stones were set, so they had to make a new one. I encouraged him to ask for some sort of monetary compensation and they did give us $200 back in cash which I appreciated and we LOVE the finished product. So that’s our wedding band story! I’m glad we have them already and don’t have to worry about it later—even though I do want to wear mine already

With our powers combined....

 

[KristiLyn]

Love the bands!!!! Such a good idea to have both with sapphires!!! They look great!!

 

[irishwishes]

Beautiful!!! I absolutely love them together and your soon to be husband's goes great with all of them

 

[donald&daisy]

Love the bands!!!! Such a good idea to have both with sapphires!!! They look great!!

Beautiful!!! I absolutely love them together and your soon to be husband's goes great with all of them

Thank you! We love them! Now if I can just stop myself from wanting wearing it all the time...Adam is convinced its bad luck if I wear it beforehand, lol.

 

[LuvLuvLuv]

i just love the bands!! they are amazing

i would want to wear mine too! (if i had the band yet )

 

[GreenDisneyBride]

Your bands are beautiful, My ring came with a band but we found DFs a little while ago and he has such a goofy smile when he sees it so I knew it was the right one.

Your PJ is great, Can you believe we are less than 9 mo out

 

[donald&daisy]

Your bands are beautiful, My ring came with a band but we found DFs a little while ago and he has such a goofy smile when he sees it so I knew it was the right one.

Your PJ is great, Can you believe we are less than 9 mo out

thanks! I can't believe we are getting so close either!!! I just keep getting more and more excited.

 

[donald&daisy]

It’s been a while since I have updated and I feel like we have done a lot of stuff, but I will start with our wedding brochures and pre-RSVPs. So, we sent our STDs out a little less than year out from the wedding and the more I thought about it, I couldn’t stand the thought of ours guests not hearing anything else from us until we send out formal invitations after first of the year. I reached out to Vanessa who was nice enough to send me her newsletter template in Word, but I guess I just did not have the patience. I was going to just use Publisher on a computer at work to whip one out, but then I thought about the cost of printing color copies of a multi-page document and I got cold feet.

I sometimes read the boards at bestdestinationwedding.com and a lot of brides over there have used tri-fold brochures offered through Vista Print as sort of “pre-wedding info” mailer. Not quite a newsletter, but with lots of good info. I sat down and put together a brochure in less than an hour! So much easier and since we were limited on space, it helped me keep things more concise and gave me an opportunity to point people to our website, which has more info than I could ever print and mail.

I also decided to do a pre-RSVP like so many other brides on here have done. I figured it would help us get a better idea on how many people had already decided to come, so when we go to our PS in November we will have a better idea of what extras we can afford and how much we need to reserve for the basics (food, drinks, etc). I first decided to use Zazzle because they have easy to use software and I have used them successfully before. So I actually made the postcards and ordered them…..flash-forward to about an hour later when I discover Vista Print and find out that I can get the same postcard for FREE!!! Fortunately, my Zazzle hadn’t gone into production so I was able to cancel it and save myself $50 (for 75 postcards). I ended up getting 100 postcards free through Vista Print. In addition, they had free return address labels so I ordered those too!

I had a minor heart attached when I realized the post cards come in a myriad of sizes. The ones from Zazzle were actually slightly larger than the Vista Print ones and would have been really hard to put into a regular mailing envelope. The Vista Print ones were still a little tall for regular envelopes, but not enough so that I couldn’t just crease the flap a little higher and still make it work! Crisis averted *whew*

I also decided to add a little pizazz to the envelopes by ordering a custom stamp in the Disney font that says “See Ya Real Soon!” I used www.stampout.com and they were just wonderful to work with, seriously we were emailing back and forth on a Sunday evening—loved it! I hate waiting to hear back from vendors. Oh, and I have never stamped anything in my life and this was as easy as I thought it would be.
I thought I would include all of the costs of this project so others know what they are getting into when they decided to do something similar. Just FYI—I only needed 75 of each item, but Vista Print does things in increments of 25 and sometimes 50.

100 postcards Vista Print FREE
140 address labels Vista Print FREE
100 Brochures Vista Print $74.99 base cost
Added pictures cost: 6 @ $2.49/each $15.00
Shipping $14.98—in retrospect, I would have gone for cheaper shipping b/c they shipped MUCH sooner than they indicated and I think that might be a pattern
1 Custom Rubber Stamp and red ink pad through Stamp Out: $26.60
Postage for postcards and for initial mailing: $49.15
100 cute envelopes from Office Max $16
Total cost: $196.72

Not super cheap, but not as bad as it could’ve been. Hopefully people will return the pre-RSVPs and the brochures will make them want to join us in Orlando! Oh, and another helpful tip I picked over at the Wedding Bee was to number my postcards in correlation to my address list so I would know who was sending back the post cards. Some people get really creative using invisible ink or color changing markers—I can handed DF a pen and said “number these.” He has much better handwriting than me and since they weren’t our actual RSVPs, I think it will do just fine! Pics below--I left some of them big because I know how much it helped me to read what other brides had written.

 

[mjshorses]

Your Brochures and Pre-Rsvp's came out wonderfully!!!!!!!!! You must be so excited to get them out!!

 

[donald&daisy]

Your Brochures and Pre-Rsvp's came out wonderfully!!!!!!!!! You must be so excited to get them out!!

Thank you! Yes, we are excited to mail them out. We plan on doing it this Saturday....I'm super excited about getting those post cards back, lol

 

[NicknNancy]

I love the idea of a brochure!!! I hope you don't mind...but I am stealing that idea! The awesome part is...we are getting married at SBP at 2:30 and our reception is also at LSS...so your brochure is the PERFECT template for us!!! Everything looks great so far! Keep up the awesome plans! And YAY for Vistaprint!

P.S. I laughed so hard at the Captain Planet reference in your band post ...lol I think I'm the only one who got it lol

 

[donald&daisy]

I love the idea of a brochure!!! I hope you don't mind...but I am stealing that idea! The awesome part is...we are getting married at SBP at 2:30 and our reception is also at LSS...so your brochure is the PERFECT template for us!!! Everything looks great so far! Keep up the awesome plans! And YAY for Vistaprint!

P.S. I laughed so hard at the Captain Planet reference in your band post ...lol I think I'm the only one who got it lol

Steal away! It was so easy to make and I thought they were a good price. I'm sure if you waited long enough you might even find an offer for free ones. Ah, Captain Planet---they just don't make cartoons like they used to, lol.


We mailed out all the brochures on Saturday, so now we just get to wait and see if people actually mail them back. We have officially booked our flights to Orlando, St. Lucia, and back home. We will be gone for a full two weeks

I'm ready to go right now! I will say it was soooooo hard to find flights that met our schedule. We ended up paying for the flights from home to Orlando, and then from Orlando to St. Lucia and using reward miles for the trip home. It kind of made me mad, but we couldn't fly Delta to St. Lucia b/c of their flight schedule--we could only fly them home. But whatever, its done! We struggled a long time over whether we wanted to stay at a resort or rent a vacation house and we went with the vacation house so we could have some real privacy. I love the place we ended up booking, I cannot wait to see it in person. And we will have a housekeeper who will cook for us if we don't feel like going out for dinner. Here's some pics of the villa:

The front:

the view from the back:

It has three bedrooms, but it was still cheaper than the two resorts we were looking at (Ladera and Jalouise Plantation). We are a little leery of driving on their roads, but we will manage! Now we get to plan what activities we want to do. I'm trying not to overbook us like I normally do on vacations....when we stopped here on the cruise we took a day tour of the island so I would like to do some more exploring. The closest beach is the one right between the Pitons--we took a water taxi there and did some snorkeling for about an hour and it was the most relaxing thing we did on the cruise. It was so peaceful. I can't wait!!!