Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to all my brides, past & future! Congratulations to all those couples that said "I Do" in 2008, to those that will say it in 2009 and especially to all those couples who said, "I will" over the holidays. Looking forward to an amazing 2009...

Happy Holidays from our "staff"!

I hope everyone has a warm & wonderful holiday season!

Sunset at Magen's Bay...

Congratulations Anita & Adrian on such a beautiful sunset wedding on Magen's Bay, St. Thomas! Blue Glass Photography did an amazing job - thanks so much for sending these to me!

Aw, shucks...

My brides are too sweet! I'm so flattered by all the nice reviews I've received on onewed.com since my post last week. They're so embarrassingly nice, I'm afraid people are going to think I made them up myself!!



I've sort of had the last week off - my parents were in town with another couple that they have been friends with for over 40 years. In fact, both couples were celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary (married just two weeks apart). We had a little surprise vow renewal for Ruth & Larry Timm - luckily, after 40 years, neither have of them had any qualms about taking the plunge again! Congratulations to Ruth & Larry on their vow renewal and congratulations to both couples for putting up with each other for the last 40 years! =) In all honesty, I'd like to credit my parents for showing me what having a strong marriage is all about. I think that is why I love my job so much...seeing couples join together and starting off on a journey of wedded bliss...and nothing is more touching than witnessing a vow renewal when two people have been together for so long and are still so very much in love.

My brides get it done!

This cracks me up!

Trash It Girl!!

I've been meaning to blog about this for awhile now - how great are these photos by EJ at Paradise Pictures?? You just have to love a bride that is willing to trash the dress!

Unexpected bonus...

So I was going to post this picture and talk about how it reminded me of all those holiday diamond commercials you see on TV around the holidays (anyone else have "A kiss begins with Kay!" song in their head?). But looking closely at the diamond (and green with envy over how gorgeous it is!) I noticed that the left side of the engagement ring is reflecting the beach that the bride & groom were married on! How cool is that? Look closely and you can see the beautiful blue water and bright white sand.

Review your wedding!

Wedding Planning Local Vendors Wedding Dresses Bridal Shows Wedding Photographers Bridal Shops Wedding Chat

If you are a past bride of mine and have wonderful things to say about me & Island Bliss Weddings (of course you do!), I would really appreciate a review at onewed.com - just follow this link, it won't take long and I'd really, really appreciate it!

http://www.onewed.com/vendor/1488004

If you are a current bride, I would highly recommend checking this site out.

We have been crazy, happy, blissful with weddings this week. I promise to post some pictures tomorrow!

My apologies!

First, for having not blogged in a long time and second, for no photos in today's entry. But mainly an apology to all my brides expecting an email. St. Thomas and St. John experienced a 2-day island-wide blackout last week that not only threatened everyones' Thanksgiving but have left our internet system completely srewy. If I owe you an email, please know I'm working very hard to get caught up and you should hear from me soon.

Name Cards...love this!

I can not take credit for this idea or this wedding, I believe all the credit goes to the bride and Havana Blue, but I just had to share this. I am definitely looking forward to a bride that wants to do this at her own reception. I think it is so beautiful!

Of course, not every wedding really needs name cards or a seating chart. But I have found that when you have a larger crowd and multiple tables, people actually do like to be told where to sit. I've been to too many weddings in the states where the bride decided to let people chose where to sit and what happens is, guests arrive at the reception and throw their purse or coat on a seat and walk away. So as you walk around and try to find a place to sit, you have no idea how many seats are taken up at a table, who you are sitting with, if there is enough room for the other couple you want to sit with, etc...Ok, I'm going off course. This really isn't a problem at destination weddings, but I wanted to vent my frustration to those stateside brides - use a seating chart! People expect and appreciate it!

So, back to the subject...place cards. I've seen them done a million different ways and my favorite is when they double as a favor (more to come on this subject later). But the other day, I stumbled upon a wedding and I was just delighted with the bride's decision to make the place cards work double duty as table decor. Check these out!



Overall, these may be a little pricier than your everyday card holder but on the other hand, you don't have to spend as much for table decor. The rose head is going to cost about $3 per rose, but you can get the glass votive fairly cheaply at places like save-on-crafts.com and orientaltrading.com. For me, the challenge would be to make the actual card, but that's because we don't have a craft store on the island. A bride could easily make the cards at home, ship them to me and we could make a gorgeous display of these at the entrance of the reception. Guest could pick up their name card/favor/table decor and head to their seat. These really looked wonderful on all the tables.

The best part? How well they coordinated with the amazing wedding cake from VI Desserts:

Love these colors!

Remember that beautiful cake from my last post...see the groom's tie and the bride's fan? How perfect! These pictures were taken my our very talented photographer, EJ of Paradise Pictures. This little lookout spot is known as Drake's Seat. The views of Magen's Bay and the British Virgin Islans are unbeatable!


And I just had to share this photo of the bride and groom on Magen's Bay. I love how her dress is swirling behind her. The lighting is just outstanding.

Have your cake...

and eat it too! I just love this cake from our wedding last night at Havana Blue on St. Thomas. The blue matched the bridesmaid dresses perfectly. More pictures to come soon!

Election Day Celebration!

If you are already married, I encourage you to get out your wedding day toasting flutes and fill them with the finest champagne tonight - if your guy wins that is. If not, fill it with cheap beer!

If you are not yet married, let me use today's blog entry to showcase a few fun destination wedding flutes! A good friend of mine on St. Thomas owns the Hand painted Shoppe. She and her staff make beautiful gifts including holiday ornaments, dream catchers, t-shirts and a plethora of dishes, plates, etc. Of course, my favorite are her hand painted champagne flutes which I offer to brides & grooms. She can paint them with a variety of orchids, birds of paradise, bougainvillea, etc. She also does a playful underwater scene with bright tropical fish and a beautiful meadow scene with dragonflies. For fun, of one my brides had her paint two iguanas (which run rampant on the island). Here are a few examples below. She even adds the couples names, date and location of ceremony.




You can order these directly at 340-715-4024 or you can order them through me. We need at least three weeks notice to get them in time for your wedding.

Now...don't forget to go out and vote!

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween from Island Bliss Weddings! Having two small children of my own, this week has been full of dressing up and getting ready for the big day tomorrow. I couldn't help but think of a Halloween wedding I saw on the TLC Network a few years ago. The bride's father was dressed as the Phantom of the Opera (appropriate, as he was able to wear a tux!) and the groom was dressed like Dracula and the bride...well, she was a princess of course! All the guests were asked to come in costume...it looked like it was such a blast! I doubt I'll ever have the chance to help plan a Halloween wedding, being that we're pretty pigeon-holed as a Destination Wedding spot! But if I ever have a bride who chooses to have her ceremony on Halloween (which is all together possible if a ship comes in to port on Halloween Day), I'm going to have to strongly encourage her to celebrate the holiday in some small way or the other. What do you think about this amazing cake I found on pinkcakebox.com? I just love it!

Yummy Alternative

Mmmmm...our bride & groom on Saturday chose to have delicious chocolate covered strawberries from VI Desserts at their ceremony instead of a traditional wedding cake. Since their wedding was on Magen's Bay, it was really nice to have a sweet treat that guests could pick up and eat like an appetizer instead of balancing a slice of wedding cake on their plate. And what's better than champagne & strawberries??


I'm not one to discourage anyone from cake though (it's my favorite!). This particular bride had us deliver two cakes to her ship so that everyone could enjoy cake at dinner that night on the ship. You definitely want to make sure this is ok with your cruiseline though.

All about the color...

In the previous post you saw the color that nature provided for this bride's ceremony. Now check out the gorgeous colors she provided on her own!




I just love it when everything matches but doesn't...know what I mean? It all compliments and it all works so well!

Internet Issues

I have no idea why, but our internet has been out for the last two days. Finally we were able to plug in this morning (WiFi still isn't working) and so I am catching up on 22 emails that have been sent in the last two days! Slowly but surely getting there. It's crazy to me that during a storm like Hurricane Omar, we can stay perfectly connected but during two gorgeous days of blue skies and sunshine, it goes out. Island living.

I wanted to update the blog and post some pictures of our GORGEOUS wedding last Saturday. I was so worried that Omar was going to wash out the beach, but it stayed in tact!! I have so many emails to catch up on at the moment though so instead, I'll leave you to gaze at the beautiful pink clouds our couple had to enjoy during their ceremony...so pretty!

We Survived!

Island Bliss Weddings, US Virgin Islands and all the kin have survived the storm - what there was of a storm at least! At 11am last night, we were facing a Cat 3 hurricane. Omar bounced off a St Croix and headed in the other direction, leaving us to wonder where the storm was when all was still quiet at 3am!

I am slowly catching up with emails. If you have emailed me this week, I should be able to respond by Sunday. If you do not have a response by then, please email me again on Monday.

Plan B

A note to all our clients: Email may be slow over the next few days as we are currently preparing for our first real hurricane threat in years. We're optomistic that we will only have rain & wind but you just never really know until it is upon you. Electricity is very unstable on the island and there is a good chance that our power may be out for a few days and even if we do have power, we are not guaranteed internet connection. I will be trying to respond to as many emails as I can in the next 24 hours while also trying to stock supplies and get prepared.

If you would like to track the progress of Tropical Storm Omar, www.nhc.noaa.com and www.wunderground.com are both excellent sites. We do have a wedding scheduled for Saturday - and yes, we are working on Plan B just in case!

New ways to preserve....

Occasionally I have a bride that asks me about preserving their bouquet. We do actually have a vendor on St. Thomas now that can help with this process. It does involve boxing the bouquet on dry ice and shipping it off island - overall, it's an expensive process. And in the end, you just end up with the world's best dust collector. Ever tried to clean dried flowers? Not easy.



Of course, you will always have photos of your bouquet to remember it by. The above picture is from my own wedding. I purchased the silver starfish on eBay and had the florist attach it to my bouquet. I still have that starfish tucked away in my jewelry box - it will be used again one day. For what, I don't know...but I hope it involves my daughters somehow. But the photo itself isn't something I would really frame and stare lovingly at, you know? The day after my wedding as I was sitting in our hotel suite, looking at my gorgeous bouquet, I wondered, what can I do to preserve its memory? I hated to just throw it away. Pluck a flower and press it between the pages of a book? That seems so high school prom to me. So I grabbed my camera and started taking pictures...wondering, what am I going to do with these pictures other than file them away somewhere?

Then inspiration hit me. I started shaking the crap out of my bouquet, snapping photos of it as I went. The result? Some pretty cool abstract photos! I loved the way the photos came out and have always planned to order them in an 8x10 photo, frame them an hang them in a collection of three. The almost look like artwork, don't they?





Have I actually gotten around to doing this? Well, after almost 3.5 years of marriage...no. I haven't done it yet. I'm too busy framing photos of my babies! But, one day I think I definitely will. In fact, I may go ahead and place the order. They're more apt to get framed if I actually print them! Don't you think they would look cool with a white matte and black frame?

And yes, the look of my new husbands face was priceless as he watched his bride shake her bouquet like a mad dog with a rabbit in its mouth! I'm surprised he didn't run screaming from the room!

Magen's Bay

Rated as one of the Top Ten Most Beautiful Beaches in the World, Magen's Bay is a wedding location favorite for many. Here are a few photos of a recent wedding we did there.



One of the most frequently asked questions I receive is, "What do we do in the event of rain?" (this question deserves it's own post and I will address it soon). Rain was threatening this couples ceremony all day and eventually, you have to roll with it. I think the rain clouds made for some pretty beautiful pictures.



And I had to post this picture of her bouquet. I love the orange calla lilies and white roses together. I think it looks seasonal in a way too - like the perfect "Caribbean Fall" bouquet...

Guest Books

We don't often have guest books at a destination wedding, usually there are only a handful of guests and it just doesn't seem necessary. That's why I'm a big fan of using a local photography book with enough free space to allow guests to sign their names & a loving note. Not only is it a record of your wedding guests but it also doubles as an awesome coffee table book with wonderful photographs of the island where you said, "I do".

There are a lot of different options out there - vitraders.com has a few of my favorites on their website but my ultimate favorite, a Virgin Island combo of all three islands, I couldn't find online. We're happy to purchase a book for you and add it to your invoice or tell you where to go once you arrive on island to find the perfect book for you. Here are a few samples from the VI Traders website:

For St. Thomas:



And for St. John:

No oil can needed...

Worried that I may be a little rusty, I had some pre-wedding nerves yesterday but never fear, it couldn't have gone smoother even if I doused myself in WD-40! It was definitely nice getting back to the office...



My favorite part of the wedding yesterday (other than the brides' dress, which I didn't get a photo of, but believe me, it was killer) was the wedding cake. How beautiful is this? Another gorgeous creation from VI Desserts.







Doesn't this look so yummy? Our couple boxed up the cake after the cutting so they could enjoy it with their dinner that night on the ship. I like this idea better than eating the cake at the beach, which inevitably, you'll end up with sand on your plate!

Ok, so not everything went smooth yesterday. We did have one wedding crasher...little booger was looking for some cake!

Wedding tomorrow!

Tomorrow is my first official wedding since the birth of my daughter on June 24th. I've had a few smaller elopements since her birth, but tomorrow is my first bigger wedding. Oddly enough, I'm a little nervous! I haven't been nervous about a wedding since I first started in this business almost four years ago. I'm glad my bride & groom have already left for their trip and are enjoying their cruise even as I type...last thing I'm sure they want to hear is that their wedding planner is nervous! Don't get me wrong, I know everything will go great (and I'll be sure to post pictures soon!), I'm just feeling a little rusty.

I'm spending today getting prepared for it - making sure the table cloth for the cake table is cleaned and ironed, picked up the colorful blue ties for the chairs from the rental company this morning, polishing the champagne flutes...very exciting stuff! Perhaps my most important job today is hugging my sweet Maya. She'll be left in the arms of a babysitter tomorrow for the first time while I'm at the wedding. Do you think she'll be able to forgive me?

Orin Foto

I wanted to share a few of the photos Elisha took for one of my brides this past summer. I just love her work and her website is just beautiful - www.orinfoto.com. She does a great job of capturing those tiny details that are so popular these days.

Elisha does not currently live on St. Thomas but is hoping to make the move here soon - possibly working here part of the year and in the mainland the other part (best of both worlds!). She offers a great destination wedding package to brides. We don't often recommend photographers unless they are local, but her work is just so special, I can't keep her a secret!

A new look for Island Bliss Weddings!

Check out our newly updated website at www.islandblissweddings.com We've added our new logo and streamlined some of our packages & pricing information. We've also added a Book It! page which makes sending your deposit easier.

The best new feature was added to our packages. We are now offering a court concierge service which will make filing and obtaining your marriage license effortless! This service has been added to all of our packages and is available as an add on service to those who do not have a package. We are offering this service for only $199 - which is much cheaper than any of the hotels charge (I won't name names but one ritzy hotel on the island charges $500 for the same service!).

If you have already received pricing information or booked your wedding with Island Bliss Weddings, the new prices changes will not affect you. With the rising costs of everything these days, we've unfortunately had to follow suit. Tell you what...as soon as gas drops below $3 a gallon (cheapest I've seen it on St. Thomas is $4.34), the first five booked weddings will get a free bouquet!

Ring Pillows!

Ah, lovely ring pillows! I have to say, I don't think I've ever had a wedding with a ring pillow in the Caribbean...except maybe my own! I had to dig DEEP to find this photo of my ring pillow - I had it saved on my shutterfly account from three years ago. I don't remember anymore which website I had ordered it from - if anyone recognizes it and knows, please tell me so I can give them credit!



Obviously you can see my inspiration came from the sea. I was hoping my nephews would be at the wedding and could be able to carry the pillow down the aisle for me but they couldn't come...so I had my 24 year old cousin carry it for me! I didn't actually make him walk down the aisle but he brought up the rings when the officiate asked for them. It was pretty funny, he's lucky I didn't make him wear knee socks. Ring bearers in knee socks are the best!

But to get to the point of my post, you don't need a ring bearer or a ring pillow in the Caribbean. Very few of my weddings have these elements. Although if you have a cute nephew you want to include - great! Kids are always so cute! But if you don't, or even if it is just the two of you getting married, it doesn't mean you have to "miss out" on having something special to carry your rings in.

I found this ceramic sea urchin on etsy.com by seller elementclaystudio that would be perfect for holding a pair of rings. Then you have a cute keepsake to keep of your wedding day - something to hold special jewelry in when you return home (I personally do not sleep in my wedding rings, so I would use this to hold my rings at night).



This is what was important to me about my own wedding - I wanted the elements of my wedding to either have a special meaning or potentially have a special meaning. So while some may think my starfish ring pillow is a little cheesy, after the wedding, the ribbon comes off and it looks great as a throw pillow on our bed. Actually...the ring pillow is made of silk and our tropical environment, as already mentioned, does not do well with such materials, so it looks great on my mother's guest bed...but one day, if we ever leave this island, it will look great on our bed!

I've also seen brides use a real starfish or clamshell as their ring carriers - this is a great way to bring nature into your ceremony. A recent bride brought with her this copper ring orb which I loved...



Of course, being a fan of anything homemade, I found a very similar one on etsy.com by seller palomasnest - imagine tying your own rings with color coordinating ribbon....so pretty!



Honestly though, we all know this is a small element of your wedding day. But for true shopaholics? The possibilities are endless!