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!