DIY decorative jute balls

I had a bride recently that booked me for consultation only (did you know that was possible? If you don't need an onsite wedding planner for the ceremony & reception, we offer a discounted coordination fee!). This girl amazed me with all her DIY projects. She even left some items behind for me and I absolutely love these jute balls she made and am shocked that she made them! I asked my husband "aren't these amazing?!" and he says, "that's actually pretty easy to do". Well whatever! I know I couldn't do them and make them look this good!

I used two of them the other day to add a little "ump" to our aisle. They looked awesome with the palms and white shells:

My bride shared the link where she found the DIY instructions and you can find it here.

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!

Welcome May!

Can you believe it's May already? I'm in a little bit of shock. May is our busiest wedding month of the year and there is so much going on this month, so many exciting weddings & other events. I kind of feel like I need to put a seat belt on in order to prepare for it! I have some absolutely amazing events planned for this weekend and I can't wait to share photos with you next week (or after a really long and solid nap on Sunday).

I wanted to share a quick photo today of our bridal bouquet from yesterday. Some bouquets are uniform all the way around - it doesn't matter which way you turn it, it looks the same. Yet this one was like one of the hologram stickers - every which way you turned it, it looked different. Everyone commented on how gorgeous it was and the bride even said "this is the prettiest bouquet I've ever seen in my entire life!". That's what I love to hear.

And I have something I am dying to tell you - it's new decor for our aisles that I am over the moon about. I know you remember our newest addition to the Island Bliss family:

But just you wait to see what I have up my sleeve. I get giddy thinking about it. And you're probably thinking, wow....my wedding planner is a dork. Maybe. Or maybe you'll see what I'm talking about and you'll join me as we shout it on the rooftops. Probably not...I'm probably just a dork. =)