A few more April wedding photos...

All photos are courtesy of our Simple Island Photography team!

We've been using these lanterns and moss/twine balls as simple yet elegant decor. Do you like?

I had to share this bouquet - it was a special request from the bride for all greenery and no flowers. I love what the florist made!

Yay for April Weddings!

I wish I could share a picture from each wedding, but I don't always have access to them. If you have photos you'd like featured on the blog, please share!

Ocean Palm Villa, St. John

This was my first event at Ocean Palm Villa on St. John, way past Coral Bay. It's in a remote little location but you never even need to leave - it has it's own beach, pool and five star accommodations! This place is ah-mazing.

Jessica put a lot of work into DIY projects and we were there to make sure it all came together. One of my favorites was the photo booth.

I took this photo of the bride walking down the stairs to meet her brother would be escorting her down the aisle. I love happy accident shots like this.

The ceremony - the 2nd picture was taken from inside the house so the color is a little muted but I wanted to show the amazing view.

This was a fun group - the bridal party Gangham Styled down the aisle and during the reception, we staged the Harlem Shake! They went ALL OUT with the costumes, loved it!!

My youngest daughter is a huge fan of penguins - she loved the photo above! I may need to get one of these costumes for her birthday party this summer - I think my husband would look cute in it!

A smile at the end of the week.

Scott and Ashley were married at sunset on Trunk Bay. My husband told me, "you have to blog about them, they are just the CUTEST couple. They completely put a smile on my face after a long week."

The cutest thing? Scott and Ashley's first date was swinging on her grandmothers front porch. How cute!? And their photos captured by Sage Crown Parker at Crown Images are just lovely - thanks Sage!

Congrats Joanna & Gene!

Joanna and Gene had some touch and go moments with their wedding. First thing to go wrong was the airline sending their luggage to Bogota! The bag had tons of essential wedding day items like the grooms clothing, brides shoes, etc.

They started the day with a traditional tea ceremony at the villa. The weather was awful! The photographer described it as "snowing" - it was a very misty and wet morning and if you didn't know any better, it looked like winter in the Midwest! Both the officiate and the photographer wanted to move the ceremony to the villa instead of Hawksnest Beach as originally planned. But we had a lot of guests spread out throughout the island and little ways of getting a hold of them to tell them of the location change. I was pretty confident that the sun would come out so we proceeded as planned.

And the bag was delivered the night before, and the sun did come out! Island Bliss brides have the best karma...

A funny side story - Joanna wasn't the only one with touch & go moments on her wedding day. We brought our truck to set up the ceremony since we had chairs and a large, heavy bamboo aisle. We had to drive through a lot of rain to get to the ceremony site and once we turned the truck off, it wouldn't start again! By time the ceremony was over though, it had dried out and started up for us again. Phew! A Sunday morning on St. John with a broken down vehicle was not going to be a fun day! Joanna & Gene...I wish you the best of luck on your marriage - you jumped through enough obstacles on your wedding day! =)

Thanks to all our clients...

This is has been a fairly hard week, dealing with the shooting in Newtown, grieving for those lives lost, preparing for the holidays here locally, planning weddings and keeping up with emails. I've received a few emails in the past few days that have lifted my spirits:

From Jennifer, married on 12/3:


I wanted to take a minute to thank you for everything you did to help our wedding come together. It was absolutely beautiful and we could not have been happier. I actually could not imagine having a wedding any other way now that we have eloped! And Stuart was absolutely wonderful. He made our ceremony so very personal and it meant the world to us both. 

Thank you again for everything. We look forward to the next time we can come and visit St. Thomas! Our memories are ones we will cherish forever, and we are forever grateful that you both helped our dream come true. 

From Sherri, married on 12/11:

On December 11, 2012 I married the love of my life on Brewer's Bay beach.  My husband and I are spontaneous folks who planned to tie the knot on St. Thomas in only a week or so.  I contacted Janelle and she was able to pull off the ceremony, which included a photography package, at the last minute.  It was by far the most beautiful wedding I have ever been to.  The officiant, Stuart, did a fantastic job.  We told him what we wanted as far as the "sermon" was concerned and it was perfect.  I was so happy with the way everything was handled.  It was a simple, low cost ceremony with just the two of us but you would have never known it by the way we were treated.  Island Bliss Weddings is by far a fantastic operation that I would recommend to anyone wanting to get married on St. Thomas.  They are professional and truly care about their customers.  Thank you Janelle and Stuart for making our special day very, very special!

Congrats to Nancy & Steven!

We had six weddings on 10/11/12 and I think Nancy was the last one we booked! She is part of my "October favorites challenge" - I would have blogged it sooner, but I just got the photos late last week from her photographer. My favorite element? A blue jean'd groom!

Number one rule in wedding attire: Be Yourself, Wear What You Love!

Yet another addition to the giveaway!!

We have two more items to add to the October giveaway - come back later this week for the 2nd one!

Today I'm introducing this gorgeous, handmade necklace. I have a deep love for Haiti & it's people and have been selling these necklaces this year - 100% of the profit goes directly to the artist that made it, to help them support their family & improve their lives. Each piece is handmade by rolled scraps of newspaper, cereal boxes, etc.

Each piece comes with a card that tells you about the artisan that made it.

I'm excited to share this with the lucky winner!

How to enter the contest?!

Leave a picture of you and your fiance (or husband!) on our Facebook wall with your wedding date. You can enter a 2nd time by linking our website or blog in your Facebook status.

If you don't have a Facebook account - leave a comment on this blog post and that will count as your entry.

The winner will be selected randomly and announced the first week of November.

Gibney Beach Weddings

My husband did a wedding last week on Gibney Beach, St. John and immediately came home and said, "you have to do a blog post on Gibney, we need to do more weddings there, it is GORGEOUS". The photogarpher, Blue Glass Photography, was kind enough to send me some photos:

We don't really do too many weddings here because the site fee is pretty high at $500. But they have a wonderful beach for catering as well and it's only $500 more for the reception site fee (a total of $1000). A great feature of the beach is the villas - you can rent villas right on the beach for you & guests to stay in and enjoy. Check out Gibney Beach Villas by click on the link.

Congrats to Diana & James!

Yet another 10/11/12 wedding! Diana & James were married early on Hawksnest Beach, St. John. We chose an early time to capture the best lighting and to avoid the crowds. Hawksnest was crazy busy with weddings last year on 11/11/11 and I feared that could be true again on 10/11/12. Surprisingly, we were the only wedding there all morning!! Such a relief.

My favorite element to this wedding? The beautiful day lilies used to decorate the aisle - they fit in so well with a morning wedding:

Of course, I was also a big fan of this fun cake created by Island Sweet Stuff - loved the colors!

Congrats to Kerrie & Nick!

Another 10/11/12 couple, Kerrie & Nick actually live on St. Thomas - but spent a nice five day weekend "wedding-mooning" in St. John. We picked them up from the Westin and headed to Trunk Bay for the ceremony. 10/11/12 was a beautiful day, but in the late afternoon, darker clouds started to roll in. I think we were all a little nervous with the drive to the beach, especially when a sprinkle or two would hit the windshield.

So you know what my favorite element of their wedding day was? The AMAZING light that came out right after their ceremony. Looks at these gorgeous photos - thank you to Megan Biggs Photography for these images, I love them!

My favorite!!

A new addition to the giveaway!

If you haven't checked out the giveaway - check it out!

I have another fun item to add:

A fun little airplane luggage tag! So if you haven't come down to get married yet, you'll be able to add this to your luggage. If you've already been married with us, attach this when you come down for your vow renewal! =)

Congrats to Ric & Lynda!

Ric & Lynda were married on Trunk Bay this past Saturday. One of my absolutely favorite aspects of this wedding? Their gorgeous sunset!!!

I shot this with my iPhone in very low light, so it's a bit grainy, but it was really just a gorgeous night!

This post is a part of our October Favorites series. My goal is to post one picture from each wedding of my favorite part of the wedding.

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!