Create a map of suggested places to visit for your guests

giftbaginsert.pdf

Using GoogleMaps custom maps and simple word processing tools, we created this document for our guests to give them a timeline of the weekend and suggestions on places to check out.

Wedding Day Timeline

It may not be exactly as the day pans out, but having a single timeline that everyone who is part of your wedding can see puts everyone on the same page. Here is what mine looks like:

Our Wedding day timeline

9:00am – Girls / Moms arrive at the apartment to get ready. Hair / Makeup from 9 – 12.

12:45pm – Buses start rotating from reception site to Church

1:10pm – Bus pick up at Bride’s apartment and go to Church

1:30pm – Ceremony begins at the Church

2:15pm – Ceremony ends

2:20pm – Buses rotate from Church to reception site

2:30pm – Bridal party off for photos

4:00pm – Reception begins

4 – 5pm –   Cocktail hour, Bridal Party freshens up in Bridal Suite

5:00pm –    Guests enter the ballroom, pick up placecards
Begin “Special” Playlist, starts with light Jazz songs while people are entering

5:10pm –    Bridal party entrance with introductions

Couple entrance with introductions

Bride and Groom first dance
Invite wedding party / parents to a second dance

Seat for dinner (Switch to Dinner playlist)

5:30pm –    Dinner begins (pause music)
Blessing
Best Man speech
Maid of Honor speech

6:00pm –    Cutting of the Cake (Switch to “Special” playlist)
Father / Daughter Dance
Mother / Son Dance

6:30pm –    Dinner has ended
Regular dancing begins (Switch to “Early Dancing” playlist)

8:00pm –    Switch to “Late dancing” playlist

9:00pm –    Reception over, guests pickup favor

9:00pm – Reception ends

9:15pm – More night photos with photographer

Swallowing the David’s Bridal Pill

(Image from RackedNY)

ABostonBride has lots of friends who have used David’s Bridal to cover all their bridal needs and have had good experiences with them. You can’t beat the fact that they are located all over the place, so bridesmaids everywhere can look at and order dresses without being near you.  The same is true for Men’s Wearhouse. If your bridesmaids and groomsmen are spread out geographically, these are great options.

ABostonBride, however, chose to get her dress at the Filene’s Basement Running of the Brides sale for a great $250 price tag. David’s had lots of great styles, but they can be moderately expensive for what you get.  $700 may not seem expensive for a wedding dress, but the styles have become very common. I’ve been to 2 weddings with the same exact style…2 years apart!

David’s offers so much in one place, which can be convenient for the busy bride. On the other hand, I’ve gotten my veil, shoes, and other accessories from online places and other stores for significantly less than what David’s charges.

In the end, I decided to use David’s and Men’s Wearhouse for only bridesmaid and groomsmen wear.  I like having a more unique dress, but having a common color for the bridesmaids helped a lot. For example, all the wedding vendors we talked to knew exactly what David’s Bridal Apple referred to – from the tuxes to the florist to our cake baker – and that kind of consistency really helps. So maybe a David’s dress isn’t in your cards, but for bridesmaids dresses, it certainly seems the way to go!

Help us create the perfect Boston Guest Welcome Bag

I’m still looking for ideas for my Boston wedding hotel guest welcome bags. Fiance and I were talking and we thing going with edibles is the way to do it. You know the BostonBride is budget conscious, so here are some ideas she’s exploring:

• Plain old bottled water. Nothing beats a few bottles of free water when the hotel tries to charge you $5 for some!
• A couple bottles of Sam Adams!
• Boston Baked Beans. The candy! For $5, you can get a box of 24 small boxes.
• We’re thinking about Necco Wafers too, though not sure people will get that they are originally a locally made product. They are quite more expensive at $32 for 36. I’ve seen the mini rolls on eBay for $5 for 30ish.
• Boston Tea Party Tea

Any other ideas? What would you appreciate most if you were an out of town guest?

Which favor would you rather have?

I am trying to decide between two different favors and need your help.

1. A bottle of make-it-yourself Kahlua (recipe found here on MyOwnLabels.com). Kahlua recipe #2 looks better than #1, though #1 only takes 3 weeks and #2 takes 3 months. I like the bottle-it, label-it with cutesy labels, cork-it and foil wrap-it look. A lot!

2. These adorable little treasure chests (we have a luck theme intertwined in the Boston theme) filled with make-them-yourself truffles and stamped with our initials thanks to our new embosser. Only trouble with this is that you have to make them within a week and they should be refrigerated. Making truffles a week before the wedding is the last thing I will want to do! Another option is to fill them with chocolate gold coins. Do you think that is cute or tacky?

Basically, we are shooting for an elegant-old time-Boston theme. There will be lots of kids at the wedding though, so cordials will not be appropriate for all ages. Your thoughts?

Our song: Summer Samba (So Nice)

After much thought, we decided Summer Samba (the Bebel version, not the Astrud version) is the song for us. We have history with the song and we love bossa nova. Not to mention our wedding is in the summer, how fitting! Now, to find a band that can play and sing it like Bebel and her band!

Summer Samba (So Nice) Lyrics

Someone to hold me tight
That would be very nice
Someone to love me right
That would be very nice
Someone to understand
Each little dream in me
Someone to take my hand
To be a team with me
So nice, life would be so nice
If one day I'd find
Someone who would take my hand
And samba through life with me

Someone to cling to me
Stay with me right or wrong
Someone to sing to me
Some little samba song
Someone to take my heart
And give his heart to me
Someone who's ready to
Give love a start with me

Oh yes, that would be so nice
Shouldn't we, you and me?
I can see it will be nice…

Engagement photos are fun to do

I thought doing this would be stressful, but it was actually a lot of fun. A friend of ours took more than thirty pics of us in different configurations at the Esplanade. We started over by the Hatch Shell with the flower trees in the background.  Unfortunately, we did it on a day with less light and more clouds, but at least we got them done before the blooms were gone. Now, it’s time to decide what to do with them. Magnets are overdone, I think. We may do a print onto card stock with a vellum overlay printed with our date, tying the overlay to the cardstock with a ribbon.

We got an embosser today

We want to have our monogram on our favors and invitations. First, we tried ordering small oval-shaped stickers from My Own Labels. They have great designs and gave us lots of ideas, but the style we chose looked horrible 😦 It’s hard to pick out this stuff online. Anyway, we decided to try the $40 embosser on Living Victorian. It came today, and I’ve been embossing everything in site. Literally every piece of paper. I love the way the monogram came out – very classy! The monogram goes Bride’s first initial, Groom’s last initial, Groom’s first initial, with the middle one larger. So, if we were Angelina and Brad Pitt, it would be “APB”.