Sailing away....

Island Sweet Stuff

Isn't that cake amazing? Created by the talented Island Sweet Stuff team.

Even though it's a boat and not a plane, it reminds me to tell you I'm taking off tomorrow! The timing could not be any worse, but my big brother has decided to get married!! Unfortunately, it's HIGH SEASON around here, but I simply could no miss my big brothers wedding (pigs are flying! hell is freezing over!). It's an event I won't be able to believe unless I see it with my own eyes!

I will be working while I'm away - the laptop and I will be the best of travel buddies and my phone will never leave my hand. I have my staff in place here to make sure all the weddings will go off without a hitch.

I'm really excited to attend a wedding that I am not in charge of! It's going to be a new experience for me and I'm going to do my best to enjoy it as a guest and not critique everything. That may be hard for me! Wish me luck!

So I took the plunge and have been pinning away!

That's right folks...I couldn't deny it anymore. For months brides have been sending me links to the Pinterest boards and I hated going there, knowing that I was going to get sucked in to hours and hours of browsing boards. This site is amazing! So many cool ideas for people to share with each other. I finally decided to open an account for Island Bliss Weddings, pinning my favorite things. I already have an idea that I'm going to incorporate into tomorrow's wedding (a surprise for the bride!) that I'll definitely come back on and share.

I started a few boards - some of them are color inspiration boards based on the popular colors I am seeing this year....I named them Yellow Sunshine and Coral Inspirations. I also added "In the Navy" because I'm really starting to dig nautical themed events (and navy can look amazing with a few other colors...hot pink, apple green, yellow...love these shades together - not all togeher at once, but navy & hot pink or navy & apple green, etc). If you can think of a board that you'd like me to start...a certain color palette or a certain theme, please let me know and I'll happily do so!

Love of all things vintage...

I just loved the vintage blue mason jars with creamy white roses at yesterdays wedding...

Parasols instead of flowers...

I think this is such a great idea, especially when you have a large bridal party. A maids bouquet can be as inexpensive as $30 but a full sized maids bouquet is typically $75. If you have six maids...yikes, that can add up quick. I love the simple white against the freshness of their blue dresses...these parasols are a perfectly beautiful alternative to flowers.




Thank you Elisha Orin for the photos above. Here are a few others I found online showing different colors:

Something new...

I don't know about you, but I've been doing wedding for years now and I'm starting to get a little tired of our ol' conch shell & palm leaf aisles. I like fresh and I like modern and I'm on a hunt for new ideas. I've been toying around with the idea of driftwood and I came across this idea online today:



I'm not 100% into the pillars - they look like they could easily fall over with a good breeze. I did some shopping today as well and was able to purchase many of the elements above...the driftwood (although I couldn't find any that dark) and the moss balls...I have some new white starfish that I'm dying to try out as well. I'll update you again when all the elements come together - can't wait to see what I can create!

PS I love it when brides send me the pictures that inspire them...I'm always looking for new ideas.

Have a Safe & Happy New Year's!

I'll be celebrating tonight with friends at The Banana Tree Grille at Bluebeard's Castle, toasting in the New Year watching the fireworks over the harbor! And I'll be thinking of all my future clients who just may be getting engaged this very night.

See you all in 2012!

Safe sealife place card holders

This idea is not new to me, I have seen brides do this before and it's always really pretty. But what surprised me when I opened up the box that the bride sent me was the fact that these are resin starfish and sand dollars. You may not know this, but real starfish? Smell crazy bad! And sand dollars? Uber fragile. They can chip like crazy. I loved these so much, I asked the bride where she found them and she got an amazing deal on them from Christmas Tree Shoppes. I tried looking for them online but with very little luck. If you happen to find them anywhere, please post in the comments below for other brides.

Official Vacation Notice: see you in October!

Island Bliss Weddings will be on vacation from September 12th to the 30th. We will not be able to return phone calls during this time. We will do our best to respond to emails but may not have a lot of internet access while we are away. We look forward to serving you upon our return!

Cruise Ships & Flowers

Some of the cruise lines have a policy about taking fresh fruits/vegetables and flowers on and off their ships. Thankfully, I have never had a bride tell me that she wasn't allowed to bring her fresh flower bouquet back on board of the ship (if you are a past bride that couldn't get your flowers on board though, please do leave a comment and let us know!). I think the security guards don't have the guts to tell a bride all dressed in white that she isn't allowed to keep her bouquet!

Some brides have not wanted to take the chance - or simply want to keep their bouquet forever. If this is the case, silk bouquets are a popular choice. I wanted to share a picture I took of a bouquet that a bride brought down a few months ago for her island wedding. There are a lot of online shops that sell silk bouquets (to my surprise, at the same price or much more than fresh flowers). Silk bouquets are also a good alternative for brides that want phalaenopsis orchids (live phalaenopsis orchids are very fragile and do not hold up well in bouquets). In the bouquet below, there were pink phalaenopsis orchids. They really do a great job replicating these in silk flowers!



The pink phalaenopsis boutonniere:

A cookie after my own heart....

Can you tell what these are??



Seahorse cookies!! We had an absolutely GORGEOUS wedding this morning at Lindquist Beach for a lovely couple coming in on a cruise ship. Our bride is just as crazy for seahorses as I am and requested seahorse cookies instead of a wedding cake. Our bakery, VI Desserts, didn't have a seahorse cookies cutter, so I found one on eBay. Now...the eBay listing said it was 4" and I didn't really think to measure it but these things were much bigger than 4"! Closer to 6 in fact. They looked awesome and the bakery was able to do the icing in the brides wedding colors. VI Desserts can use my cookie cutter anytime, so if you like them too, don't be shy to order. They have their own starfish cookie cutter that makes a great awesome starfish cookie as well.

A big bonus of these cookies? The royal icing hardens, but isn't hard, if that makes sense. Very, very little mess involved - virtually none at all.

Congrats Cliff & Sarah! I hope you sail off into the sunset on the Ruby Princess with fond memories of St. Thomas!

Just a little cheat...

Ok, so I'm determined to make my goal of 17 blog posts this month and I realized I really need to do one blog post a day until the end of the month to make that goal. So I'm going to cheat today and just share a photo of a fun wedding we had last week. I promise the next blog posts will be more in depth, but come on, what's more exciting than a bride & groom hopping merrily into the great wide ocean/sea of marriage?? =)

Herve Restaurant

I had the pleasure of working with Herve Restaurant earlier this month on a wedding. It was a small group, less than 20, and Herve has the perfect wine room for smaller groups. I went up to the venue earlier to set up the centerpieces and grabbed a few pictures with my camera. I love the view from there.

I also took a picture of their main dining room that overlooks the harbor. You can rent the entire space for a wedding, or just the wine room. They also have an outdoor patio that can be rented seperately. But if you rent the entire place, the outdoor patio is perfect for cocktail hour before having everyone up to the main restaurant for dinner and dancing.



Paulette, the owner there, also informed me that they are happy to open up for lunch for cruiseship weddings - making it an ideal location for cruise brides! They can also do the patio for appetizers and drinks only. I really love the location and they do such a great job here (definitely Google them online - they've got great reviews!).

And I'm very happy to announce that I am taking the weekend OFF! We have a very busy spring ahead of us and my husband and I realized that neither of us have anything on our calender this weekend. We're taking a ferry to Tortola tomorrow with our babies and spending two days on the beach, no cell phones, no laptops (my husband has threatened to smuggle his laptop over, I'm hoping to hide it before we leave!). So yes, I'll be burning the midnight oil tonight trying to get all the emails in my inbox cleared out before we leave! Enjoy your weekend everyone!!