Goodbye July!

I'm so giddy over the fact that July is just almost over! We had our last wedding of July on Saturday night and it felt like such an accomplishment. Our "busy season" is normally April through June but this year we have been so fortunate to be busy with work that our busy season really extended from March through July. While we are still busy in August, it's not BUSY BUSY like the last five months have been. We start to ease into slow season now before things pick back up in November. It's this time of year that I get to go away (I'll be off island from August 15th to September 10th but only away from email from Sept 6th to the 10th). I get to head to the states and pretend to be a Statesider for a few weeks which means hundreds of trips to Target, the mall and of course my favorite fast food restaurants - none of these items are available here in the islands. It's also the time of year that we get to revamp packages, evaluate business practices and prepare for another busy 2013. Our packages are all going to be changing within the next few weeks and I have some pretty exciting things that we'll be offering up as well. I'll be sure to make an announcement when the new packages are revealed and of course, how the new packages won't affect any of the old pricing (if you are already booked, you'll have your choice of keeping your old package or switching to one of the new packages, you won't be forced into a new package).

I can't end a post without photos so I wanted to share this beautiful email I just received from one of our May brides and some gorgeous photos exquisitely captured by Elisha Orin of her wedding day...

Hi Janelle!

I hope you're doing well and enjoying the summer. I hope you're not
working too hard. I wanted to share with you our pictures from Elisha.

She did a great job and I can't help but keep flipping through them to
try my best and re-live that day. The day was bigger and more
beautiful then what I ever could have dreamed of as a little girl, and
to know that my family and friends had the time of their lives and had
an experience they never had before....was just priceless.

Thank you again for everything.

There's always at least one party pooper!

It's been a busy season!

And I'm so thankful for it - I really am! I hate that I haven't blogged as much as I would like but we've had so many weddings this month - and really, so many weddings since March! Our typical wedding season in the past was April/May/June but this year we have really been busy every month, and the "really" busy months have been March/April/May/June/July. I tell you, I'm ready for a vacation (which I will take next month!).

I take pictures at just about every one of our events and catalog them in a little zip drive thingy (I'm so not technical but I'm betting you know what I mean). I was putting some in there tonight and realized there are so many great photos I haven't had a chance to put on in our photo albums or blog about. So here are just a few of my favorites from this month:

A gorgeous crystal seahorse cake topper. 

Pretty shell decor at a Sunset Grille lunch reception.

Lovely sunset wedding on St. John. This set up - just palms and a burlap runner, was very pretty.

We very rarely do weddings at the Frenchman's Reef Wedding Gazebo but weirdly, we had two in one day last week!

And more gorgeous shell & coral centerpieces!

Hopefully more blog posts to come - soon!

No petals, no problem!

St. John has a lot of rules & regulations about what can and cannot be done on the beach. I posted recently about no glass on the beach but another rule is that whatever we wedding planners bring in to decorate must be completely picked up after the wedding or we risk fines and possibly even losing our permit to do weddings on the beaches. This makes sense though, right? Leaving trash or decor behind would not be a nice thing to do...but this includes EVERYTHING, even rose petals that your flower girl may toss as she walks down the aisle. Every single rose petal must be picked back up before we leave. Because this can be nearly impossible, we don't really allow anything on the beaches in St. John that could possibly be left behind and get us in trouble. A recent bride really loved this look and wanted to duplicate it for her ceremony:

This is a bougainvillea aisle - this petals can be cut from their branches much like rose petals can be plucked from their stems. But just like rose petals, they are a pain to get all cleaned up. Thankfully, our florist was able to come up with a wonderful solution that really turned out cool:

These hot pink carnations were placed in floral oasis blocks - easy for us to set down and even easier to pick up and gave us a very similar look. The cool thing is that bougainvillea only comes in hot pink...but these could be done is just about any color to match your wedding colors!

A very unique & lovely guestbook...

I know I talk a lot about Isola Bella Designs, but it looks like some of you listen! Check out the guest book that a bride recently used at her wedding:

My bride ordered  a customized canvas from Isola Bella and we used brown Sharpies for guests to sign the canvas this. I really loved this idea! But not as much as I loved the brides purse - loved it so much I had to take a picture of it - you know I love the seahorses!

I'll have to head over to Etsy to see if I can find this...and then come up with a fancy dinner out that I'll have to make my husband take me to!