Congrats to Anne & Jonathon!

Anne has such a great sense of style. I loved all the elements she put together. This gorgeous wedding was shot by Clary Pfeiffer at the Sand Dollar Estate. The adorable wedding cake was by Island Sweet Stuff. Adorable Pomeranian ring bearer? Brought from home. :)

A late thank you is always the best!

Matt & Katie were married last year but I just got this note from her:

Matt and I had the most FABULOUS wedding and we couldn't have been any happier with the way everything turned out. The transformation of the Sand dollar from beach house to wedding/reception site was great. We were worried that staying in the house for a week before our wedding was going to make it not feel like a wedding come our big day, but there was no reason to worry. The ceremony and dinner table turned out great and the flowers were just absolutely beautiful. We really wanted to keep things simple because the beauty of Magen's Bay was the true decor. We really could not have pulled our day off without all your help and advice. I'm sure it must get difficult organizing multiple weddings at once, but you always made me feel that you were giving your undivided attention to our wedding details in all the emails leading up.

Matt admitted after the fact, that he was so nervous to see how the day was going to turn out without having met you, Stu, or any of the vendors prior. Everything really went off without a hitch and we'd like you all to know how grateful we are. Getting married was such an important part of our lives and such an intimate affair and the wedding day really brought all our family and friends together. Please tell Stu that we loved our ceremony! Although it was the hottest 20 minutes of our entire vacation, we really felt that Stew captured the essence of who Matt and I are as people. It was so touching that I was fighting back the tears! So kuddos to Stu!

We just wanted to send a very late THANK YOU to Island Bliss Weddings for delivering our idea of the perfect wedding day!! All our family and friends still talk about how amazing our wedding was and tell everyone they know that destination weddings is where its at!  I've attached a few photos so you can see how our day turned out.

Thank you so much Katie! I love getting emails - even if almost 10 months later...that means you still think we're great! And thank you to Quiana Adams of Q Studio for these images - they are so lovely!

Thanks again Megan!

Megan sent me some additional photos of her wedding set up - this is truly a DIY bride and I love how everything came together. I thought the jute balls were used on the dinner tables but they were actually hanging off the chairs at the ceremony:

Megan used a lot of succulents - even adding one to each napkin on the table.

I love the jewel tones. The plum, gold, emerald...

Megan was soooo nervous about having everything come together, she was worried of the tables being too sparse. But what an amazing job she did! Congrats Megan! It was a pleasure working with you!

Goodbye 12/12/12! And two crazy weeks on top of that...

I realized today that my last blog post was on the 2nd. Oops! The last two weeks have been crazy busy around here - we have had weddings every day since November 30th! I actually have the next five days off and plan to get caught up on blogs, emails and getting my January in order so that I can enjoy the holiday season once my kiddos get out of school next Friday. It's such a magical time of year - definitely one of my favorites. I'm working from home this morning and as I look out over the ocean and the cloudy skies, it almost looks like winter! We've had a lot of rain showers this morning and if you squint, it almost looks like it's snowing. I'm thankful for some time off to get caught up and even MORE thankful that the rain held off until today and we were able to get through 12/12/12 with no showers!

I didn't really have anything planned to blog about today but I do have some ideas in mind for future posts. I want to start a "Helpful Hints" series that will go over various topics that I think will help brides through the sometimes stressful process of wedding planning. I'm hoping to get that started next week. For today though, I'll share some photos of some recent weddings:

Still one of my favorite set-ups: blue mason jars with flowers, bamboo chairs....

Not all of our weddings are at the beach. This wedding was at the Dutch Reformed Church which was all decked out for Christmas:

And on the deck of Sand Dollar Estates:

But lots of beach weddings of course! An afternoon ceremony at Maho Beach, St. John (the officiate is looking off at a ship in the distance that blew a conch shell when the bride & groom were pronounced husband and wife!)

Our lanterns in use at Secret Harbor Beach Resort (a nice shady spot for the guests!)

More to come over the next five days!

Special touches..

I love when a bride adds her own special touches to the wedding. Whenever I can, I try to grab photos of these items to share on the blog. I realize I've been collecting them for awhile now and figured I'd better get to posting!

This wedding was from way back in April (seems like ages ago!). The groom is in a band and the bride made a special boutonniere for him.

She also did these very pretty chair reservations.

Another trend I'm seeing is TOMS wedding shoes - so love these! The bride bought this beautiful garter from Etsy.com.

Another bride had a special touch just for her guests - flip flops for the beach ceremony! You can purchase these fairly inexpensively at places like Old Navy and of course, get them to match your wedding colors!

I really enjoy seeing cultural influences as well. This bride & groom brought their cake topper with them, a shout out to their heritage.

This bride also had a fun way for guests to find their seat.

I was a big fan of this too - a large wooden tray with moss & beautifully labeled envelopes.

Be sure to check back often for more fun ideas!

Deep love of coral...

Remember that new aisle decor I told you about? Well I don't have pictures of it in use as aisle decor quite yet. A bride of mine had sent down some elements for her centerpieces to be used at her Sand Dollar Estate wedding in St. Thomas. We were discussing back and forth flowers, no flowers, adding driftwood to the tables, etc...and I mentioned that I had just ordered some resin coral pieces and if they came in I'd be happy to let her borrow them. Mainly I was curious to see how they would work on tables and you know what? They looked awesome!

 

Look for a blog post soon on these little babies used as aisle decor.  And one last picture to show you her idea on the chair ties: