Enjoy your weekend!

I'll be off island from May 26th to June 1st for a wedding I'll be assisting with in the mainland. I will not have access to email during this time. Have a great Memorial Day weekend!!

PS Happy Anniversary to my hubby! Our 6th is on Saturday - he'll be here in St. Thomas covering weddings for me here. I'll miss you sweetie!

Cool little flower...

First - I want to let you all know we've had some computer issues in the past couple of days and I'm way behind on emails while still planning a few events this weekend. I'm hoping to be all caught up by Sunday evening...please hold tight!

Second, wanted to also check in and share this little photo. The bride decided not to get flowers for her wedding day, but bought some "flowers" from the guys on the beach. They actually make these little gems out of palm leaves

I am a nerd.

Every once in awhile, when I know a bride's colors, I will dress to match the wedding. Other times, its completely random. I was in the car on my way to the wedding when I saw a new necklace I had purchased sitting in the car mysteriously (something about having an almost 5 year and almost 3 year old gives me a small hint about how it ended up in the car). But when I saw the blue necklace and realized I was wearing a yellow dress, I had to put them on together...



Sigh...always the wedding planner, never the bridesmaid...

Carnations!....what?!?

I always get a giggle when brides tell me, "no carnations please". Carnations have such a bad rep as "cheap" flowers. I understand now wanting to have cheap flowers in your bouquet - I think the giggle comes from the fact that it is just so well known that carnations are NOT acceptable wedding flowers, that I tend to roll my eyes and think, "I know, I know...". You will not see any carnations in our bouquet albums.

Until now. But can you see the carnation??




See those fluffy little green things?! Those are a part of the carnation family! I immediately noticed them when I picked up the bouquet from the flower shop and asked what they were - completely surprised and tickled to see they were carnations!

See, they ain't so bad. =)

Floating orchids revealed...

I forgot to revisit this post about the floating orchids. We've done an arch like this before, but it had been a few years. I forgot how difficult this orchids are! We set up our normal bamboo arch (did you know this arch was stolen earlier this year?? Heartbreaking. The replacement arch took forever to get here but is finally on island!) and attached orchids to "float" down. The problem with this is the wind. Those little buggers whip around and get tangled like mad. We buried the end of the string in the sand to anchor them as best as we could. I joked with the bride that she may just be the last bride to get this type of arch!




Another thing I wanted to share about this wedding was the really cool idea the bride & groom came up with for the sand ceremony. We placed a seashell on each share:



And were invited during the ceremony to come up and place their shell in a special jar:



Close family used shells that they had found together on the beach:



After everyone had add their shells, the couple poured in the unity sand. The end result is a very memorable keepsake that unites all wedding guests together and is a great way to involve them in the ceremony.

One last thing to share - how great are these bamboo chairs?!



They just fit so well with the natural elements of the beach.

Congratulations William & Catherine!

And just a word of advice:



PS They're already selling knockoff's of Kate's dress on Etsy!

Awesome Welcome Bag Ideas

I had to admit this, but I am a knick knack kind of person. I watch the show Hoarders on TV and I'm pretty sure I could slip into that given the right conditions. Unfortunately, the home that I live in has ZERO storage space. It was build in the 1960s as a vacation home. Vacationers do not need a lot of storage, they live out of the luggage, right? So I neither have space to display knick knacks nor do I have space to store them (and my husband is so very thankful).

I think because this knick knack loving, hoarding tendency that I posses is the main reason that my favorite part about my job is favors and gift bags. I just love "stuff" and am always fascinated with what brides decide to do for these two items. I also have a lot of brides asking for ideas, so whenever possible, I do try to get pictures and add them to our Fun Stuff album on our Shutterfly pages. I think this particular album gets overlooked, so before I update it, I wanted to share some of these photos on the blog.

First up: welcome bags! I do have a list of items that I'm happy to send to clients with suggestions of what to put in the bags - but ultimately, those items and the bags themselves are up to you to decide. A recent bride gave me my own gift bag (yeah! love more stuff!!) so I took a bunch of pictures to share with you:

I love this particular bag because it's so practical and earth friendly! Instead of having the couples name & dates on it, which may make guests not really use it again, its just a simple reusable grocery bag:



And here is a peak inside:



I love the St. Thomas Survival Kit with Pepto tablets, Advil, mints, etc.



The bride & grooms initials were going to be AC and GC - so they did a little AC/DC thing and the groom made up a playlist - there were songs from each of their hometowns, their favorites, some island songs, very cute!

You can also go the more personalized route with a bag like this:



You can bet I flipped my lid when I saw the seahorse! The bride found these on Esty by seller beachchik - here is a photo from the Esty listing:



I wanted to show this photo as well because look how pretty the bags are just rolled up with a piece of raffia ribbon? You don't even need to fill the bags, but they could simply be gifts all by themselves.

Next up: favors! Check back soon for an update!