Invitation Inspiration Nation

I found these the beautiful invitations the other day and thought they were just about the most perfect invites for us. They are letterpress invitations from Milkmaid Press. I love the tropical foliage and waterlilies, as I am a sucker for botanical prints and tropical plants. Perhaps, if I could change anything to them, it might be to lose the dragonflies, and hey, while I am at it, add a frog to one of the lilypads. Of course that would be a nod to our chosen career paths, as I study aquatic plants and the fiance studies frogs.

They are good inspirations for sure, but there is no way we could get the detailed line drawing to print well on the Gocco, my trusty tabletop screenprinter. But that is one of the benefits of letterpress, in addition to that lovely texture on the paper. Alas, you pay for awesomeness of letterpress - and I mean a lot. But talk about great inspiration for designing your own. Are you designing your invitations? If not, who is?

Destination wedding inspiration

Now that I have my dress and all, I have stopped looking at the ridiculously priced bridal magazines. Instead, my bridal porn of choice are bridal blogs. I can casually peruse them while doing things like pretending to watch college football with the fiance.

I visited the ritzybee blog the other day, and saw a beautiful wedding that I instantly connected with. I loved to see the natural beauty of the couples venue, which was in Negril, Jamaica. Their location was just gorgeous and was on beachfront property. They purposely didn't want to compete with the natural surroundings and didn't decorate excessively. They didn't go overboard with the tropical theme, having only a "subtle starfish" motiff on some of their wedding goods. They also incorporated some of the Carribean colors of the landscape into their decor, but only as accents, leaving white as their main color. The result was a thoroughly modern and serene tropical wedding. See here for the all beautiful pictures and details.

It isn't exactly what we will be going for in our wedding, but it is nice to see that someone else was able to pull off a relatively scaled back modern tropical wedding without looking unadorned or bare. With weddings being such personal events, have you ever just 'meshed' or 'got' someone's wedding? What is the source of your greatest wedding inspiration?

I want it all... I want it all... I want it all...

and I want it now. No, not really. I am not impatient, but I am a picky girl. I really am. I realize that I want alot and, what is even worse, I don't want to pay alot for it. Picky and frugal. This has been problematic for my hunt for the perfect hotel for our out of town guests see here, here, and here. I want, in addition to a good price, a good location, a good room, and the ability to have an informal rehearsal dinner (read pizza party - but with really good pizza), and a day after brunch. Yeah, it is a tall order. So those condo rentals that I blogged about previously really don't help me out here, since they are usually for just a single unit.

Then it occurred to me - what if we found a small hotel and rented out the entire place? Wouldn't we be free to do what we want there? Something like... a Bed and Breakfast. A quick search on tripadvisor (seriously my very good friend) , and I found several small B&B's in great locations.

First up was a great little place with 12 tidy rooms and wonderful recommendations.

This would be a great location for all of our soirées (credit)

Unfortunately, they were a tad too expensive for our guests budgets. But it was otherwise perfect. There were a few more listed to chose from, but only one other B&B is actually small enough for us to use up all their rooms and in a good enough location.


With only 10 rooms, this B&B is a little more rustic and cozy. And it is very cost effective.

(credit)

There is a beautiful palm garden in the back of the property which also has 2 sundecks. It should nicely accommodate our little pizza partee. (credit)

I hope to check this out during my 3rd 1 week wedding planning extravaganza in mid September. I only hope it is as perfect as I think it might be. Until then, no more hotel posts, I promise!

So, how are you organizing your out of town guests and all your wedding events? Are you having a hard time keeping everyone together and making things as simple as possible?

Keys to planning on a wedding from afar (part 1)

I don't have a wedding planner and I don't really have time during the day to talk to people on the East coast (damn the three hour time difference). Add in my routine trips to remote places out of the country, and you have very little time to get things done in regards to vendors and planning my wedding. Given this, I thought I would jot down a list of things that have made my life easier.

(A) Using as few vendors as possible. This leaves you with fewer people to coordinate with. Seems simple, right? Well, not necessarily... by doing this you might lose some of your originality/creativity and maybe even pay more.

For example, my venue includes, catering, cake, bar, tables, linens, chairs, and chinaware. They have a great menu, and their chef has been amendable to a certain dish that I will discuss later, but if I wanted something really out of the ordinary I might be SOL. As far as the rest is concerned, it is all standard white stuff. If I want something colorful and fancy, like what you see below, I would have to hire another company (or two) to accommodate me.

My reception venue with fancy linens, chairs, and charger plates supplied from an another vendor.

If your venue doesn't include catering, I found that some caterers will also will rent linens, tables, and chairs, but at usually higher costs. When they pad their rental fees with little things like $2 more per chair and $0.50 extra a napkin it really does add up.

THE most adored of wedding chairs - the gold chivari. Would you rather pay $10 or $6 to rent these suckers each?

So do be wary of all-inclusives. You need to know how much things cost. Which lead me to...

(B) Being knowledgeable about costs. I did some homework early on and tried to get as many quotes as possible. For me, it was all through email or from internet sites. This is great as it helped me make a reasonable and realistic budget. It gives you a very quick idea of the vendor you are working with. Are they totally trying to fleece you or are they too good to be true. It will also give you an idea of what figures to throw out when negotiating. It also doesn't hurt to get non-wedding costs (i.e. catering for a non wedding 4 course meal). I tried as often as I could to not mention the W word - but it wasn't always easy.

(C) Communicating with other brides. This has been a lifesaver for me. By talking to other brides, I was able to get valuable vendor recommendations. In the case of of my DJ, due to the overwhelmingly perfect reviews - I only had 2 interviews to schedule and only one I actually attended. It was so wonderfully efficient. For each service needed, I have had about 2 to 6 vendors that I have deemed appropriate to contact based on reviews and price range. I can generally get this list culled down to 2-4 by the time I actually need to interview them in person. And when you have only a week at a time to visit your hometown, this is a key timesaver.

As an extra bonus, by communicating with other brides, I also became privy to all sorts of deals and discounts. Two really great ones included 25% off my total venue and catering costs(!!!) and $150 off my bridal gown. I would have NEVER known about these hidden little gems had I not talked to others. Two great sites to meet other brides in your neck of the woods are the local forums/boards at theknot and weddingbee.

A recent wedding cake eating contest - nothing like healthy(?) competition in the bridal community

I have many more thoughts on this, and will leave it open as to how many parts might remain in this series. In the meantime, what (or who) has helped you the most in planning your wedding?

Who needs a hotel...

when there are empty condos all over Miami Beach? I don't know why I didn't think about this sooner. There are TONS of condos all over Miami Beach.

(credit)

All those tall buildings on the beach and in the distance, which is downtown Miami, at least 75% of them are condominium buildings.

Many of the vacant properties are bought by people for investments properties and/or vacation homes. Some hotels even own some rooms in select properties. And some hotel buildings actually have floors that are condos. This has been a very interesting revelation. Why? Well, beacause the owners of the condo unit usually rent it at a much lower cost than the hotel itself. Take for example the queen of the beach, the Setai.

(credit)

The average cost to stay in this hotel, according to my friend tripadvisor, is $1451 a night ($2195 in March!). However, if you pop over to VRBO.com (which stands for Vacation Rentals By Owner), you find rentals in this building for as low as $395 a night in the low (summer) season. That is amazing savings for the same location, view, and sometimes service (depends on hotel).

The other advantage to renting a condo, is that you get the amenities of a home: a full kitchen, more space, a dining area, usually a sofa couch, washer/dryer, and sometimes there is even some recreational equipment to use (beach chairs, floats, etc...). I looked into some of these rentals for us after the wedding, and for our photographer and videographer. Of course everything is more expensive in March, but I received some decent quotes. This one is my favorite, and costs the same as the suite at the hotel that I waxed and waned upon too much.

The best part is that it is located in the best part of the beach. It also has a pool, and we would get our own private garden off the unit.


Sure it isn't super luxe. But we wouldn't be paying a luxe price for it either. Plus, I like the idea that we would be helping someone pay their mortgage bill, rather than feeding the Hilton's pocketbooks. I have more thoughts on this and other alternatives to hotels coming up.

Hotel hunting makes my head hurt

This has honestly been one of the most exhausting parts of planning to date. But I have finally made some decisions. I have displayed my unhappiness with the hotel we are courting for our room block contract a few times. There are a few problems with it... (1) the inability to have the reception dinner and day after brunch there, (2) the bridal suite isn't that sweet, (3) the location is ...eh. , (4) plus they gave my momma the run around a few times when it came time to view the actual rooms. As a result, we aren't floored by the hotel. But, the price is right for the quality of the rooms and decent proximity of the beach.

Our contract, which we were able to get with hotelplanner.com, is set up so that we have no obligation to the rooms - no deposits, no guarantees to fill a certain percentage of rooms, nada. The rooms are only set aside for us to reserve up to 30 days before the wedding. Since there are no repercussions, we decided that we will just go head with the contract and hope to find a better hotel that is closer to the action of South Beach, without breaking the bank.

View from the beach of Ocean Drive (credit)

I still have a few more tricks up my sleeve for trying to find a decent-priced accommodations for our out of town guests that can also host our little soirees. More on that soon. But, I am curious, am I the only one who has had a hard time finding a decent place for her guests to stay?

Inspiration without the perspiration

So as I alluded to earlier, I finally made an inspiration board for our "Modern Tropical" wedding.

It actually was really easy to do with polyvore.com. These inspiration boards, which, to me, were more akin to design shows (HGTV and TLC how I love thee), have become quite common in the wedding world. I will admit, I was a little hesitant to make one. I don't know, sometimes I am the reluctant bride. But that, in itself, is another post or more.

The whole process was so easy and fun, that I decided to make another one for my alter ego wedding. This is my my more feminine and vintage inspired "Garden Party" wedding. If I found the right venue this would have been my theme, much to my fiance's modern style chagrin.

Actually, I sometimes find myself eyeballing little vintage wedding details, like invitations. I have to reign myself from time to time. So I have found this whole theme business, which I slightly mocked before I was engaged, has actually been very helpful.

More Wedding Brazil-ness

These little bits of wedding inspiration came from the non-business portion of my trip and are a good excuse to show-off some of my adventures.

I'll start off with some pictures of the beautiful cathedral and church in downtown Manaus. If I was getting married in a church, it would be quite lovely in either of these.
This is the Catedral de Nossa Senhora da Conceição, built in 1875. This picture does not do it justice, but I was trying to be respectful of the parishioners.



And the the church of São Sebastião, built in 1859. The interesting story of this church was relayed to me by my knowledgeable Amazon tour guide, Victor. Most of the church, and other structures pictured here, were built in Italy and other areas in Europe. They sent pieces of it on boats a little at a time. The last pieces to be sent were the towers, which were on separate boats. Well, needless to say, one boat didn't make it. So there is the church with a single tower, while the other is sitting someone in the Atlantic.




This is the Teatro Amazonas, built in 1896. This gorgeous opera house was made from marble and frescoes from Italy, wrought-iron banisters from England, crystal chandeliers and tiles from France. It was built during the rubber boom and even the 'driveway' was paved in rubber so guests did not have to hear the clomping of horse hooves. It closed down after the boom went bust and even served as a storage facility for awhile. It has had numerous restorations over the years and now fully functions for a multitude of events. It really has become the cultural center of Manaus. I was lucky enough to attend a free piano concerto one night and snapped a few pictures of the foyer.

Again, these pictures don't do this justice. I kept thinking that would make for such a lovely reception. And the evening beforehand, when I found out about the free concert, was having the most beautiful catered event inside (no camera, damn). By the way, that is actually the Minister of culture in black.



Outside the opera house and just to the side of the church is a beautiful paved park, known as the Praca São Sebastião, that would also be just gorgeous for an al fresco reception.

(credit)

I spend many evenings at a cafe next to the Praca, drinking caipariñas or cappucino (usually the former), and enjoying the breeze of the Rio Negro. Really, if you are a Brazilian in Manaus, these are the places to have at it for a wedding shindig.

All in all, it was truly a lovely trip, mixing business, culture, and some wild adventures. And with that, I will leave you with a picture of some of the wildlife...

.
.
.
.
.

Back from Brazil!

Although I was in Brazil for work (and a little fun) for nearly 3 weeks, I didn't exactly have the wedding off my mind. At the conference, where I presented some of my research, I couldn't help but notice our wedding colors (minus the orange).


They even had the tables covered in our colors. I didn't get a shot of the blue ones, but rest assured, they were there.

Although this was a scientific conference, the organizers brought in a strong cultural component to all the festivities, complete with a showing of historical documentaries and a gallery of local artists. There was alot of wonderful art, including a performance artist whom painted the Virgin Mary in neon paint and then proceeded to light it on fire (but amazingly not to the detriment to the painting nor her image). I also really loved the painting below, which depicts a wedding or two in the famous and absolutely gorgeous Pantanal wetland (which I later visited). The title is Casamento no Pantanal, which literally translates to "Marriage in the Pantanal".


See, I told you I didn't get weddings off my mind. I have more Brazil-inspired wedding stuff coming soon....

Oh how I dislike greed.

So I have yet to decide on this whole hotel block dilemma. As I blogged about previously, the prices for hotels in March are astounding. Although, I believe that we have found a good hotel, with a nice location and value for the price, there has been one thing stopping me from signing a contract with them... they seem to be a tad greedy.

See they have a nice pool and courtyard and like an idiot, I asked them if we could have an informal pizza party there. Well, because the "W" word (as in wedding) had already been mentioned, they knew that really meant - rehearsal dinner. And, nope, they will not allow us to eat pizza by their pool. Instead, we can have a "really informal catered event" at their restaurant. Of course, this is at a cost of at least $30 a person. It is the same thing for the morning after the wedding - no bagels by the pool. Instead, they will serve us bagels for $20 a person. This is ridiculous considering that a continental breakfast is included as part of the hotel room cost.

An additional $50 a person for food is more than half our catering costs for the wedding as it is! We really wanted these get togethers before and after the wedding so we could mingle with our wonderful out of town guests. We wanted them to be super informal and the hotel seemed to be the best location for it. So if we decide to block a bunch of rooms at this hotel, what do we do? I am absolutely NOT paying them to serve us pizza and bagels. As an alternative , would a pizza reception dinner and day after brunch be ok to have on the beach right across the street? We could have blankets for everybody instead of chairs.