September Re-Cap!

It's that time again - recaps!! I love doing the monthly re-cap and sharing some of my favorite photos from the past months weddings. Please keep in mind that I do not have photos from each wedding so if you were married in September and do not see a photo from your event, its just because I don't have any to share! Feel free to email me your favorites and I'd love to do a blog post on you!

The water at Lindquist Beach (above and below) has been soooooo blue lately.

It only took about 30 times to get them all jumping at the same time! :) 

Gorgeous morning light at Hawksnest Beach, St. John

 One of my favorite parts of my job is checking out all the rings! I love jewelry.

Everyone loves our palm trees. These at Lindquist Beach are tall & majestic!

This bride made her own boutonnieres and you know I love it when my brides incorporate my seahorses!

 Don't you LOVE our new sign?! I posted a photo of it on Facebook and 114 Likes!!

I like to give a little love to our florist - they always do such a great job for us! Some of the great bouquets from September.

 

And a cute little vegan cake by VI Desserts!

 

I snapped this before a gorgeous sunset wedding on Trunk Bay for a couple visiting all the way from Greece (well, both are from Greece, he lives in Atlanta and she recently moved there to be with him!)

 

But this couple?! This is my favorite couple of the month! Why? Because she is an awesome freind of mine from college! Erin just visited this past week her with fiance and will return next May to be married at Sand Dollar Estate, St. Thomas. I can't wait!!

 

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. :)

Oriental Trading Co...who knew?!

I'm not new to Oriental Trading Co by any means. I've always used them for fun kids craft projects, inexpensive holiday decor and of course, birthday parties. The selection is vast and the prices are wonderful.

My oldest daughter is turning 7 at the end of this month and we're giving her a nautical theme celebration. I headed to Oriental Tradings website and typed in "Nautical" to get some ideas on decor and favors. What I found in this section for weddings was what surprised me. I went ahead and ordered some items to get an idea of their quality and if they would work for a wedding.

I ordered a set of these starfish which I thought would look great dispersed through a long table/centerpiece. They are a little pricey at $24 for the set though. They look pretty cute in my office next to our coral pieces.

 

Another centerpiece idea I saw was this $20 terrarium. I filled it with shells and a starfish - a piece of fan coral would look great in here too but I didn't have a piece small enough. The top does not have a glass piece so this would work well with a candle inside.

If you're having a cruise ship wedding, you can get A LOT of great stuff. I ordered these bags for my daughters party favors.

 

They must have been a big hit because I can't find them on their site anymore. I did find this replacement though which I think would actually work better. The tote above is very thin and being white, you can see through it with stuff inside of it. This tote is all navy so you wouldn't have that issue.

For my daughters party, I bought these to put inside but they could be fun for a wedding too.

But there's a lot of other great nautical themed gifts you could put inside such as this, this and this.

There was a whole slew of nautical themed wedding ideas. A popular idea these days are the wishing tree and I was surprised to see one for only $5! I ordered it just to see what the quality was like and I have to say, for $5 - it was a good deal!

 

Guests add their well wishes to the bride and groom on the little tag and hang it on the tree.

 

The tags are not very big though, so there probably isn't much that they could really say before running out of room. But it's a cute idea and only $5. One of the best deals I saw was this: wedding cake bunting. These are really popular lately and sell for a much MUCH higher amount of Etsy. These are only $3 on Oriental Trading! For something that will most likely get thrown away at the end of the night, $3 is a good deal.

You can see the entire Nautical Wedding Theme Collection they have here. But don't stop there...shop around and see what else you find (and if it's really cool - let me know about it!). I'm there today shopping for some back to school goodies for my girls to take on their first day and I can never resist checking out the fun stuff they have for Halloween!

(This is not a sponsored post. Oriental Trading has not asked me to write about them nor are they paying for this post. I just really like them!)

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! =)