Have you heard of ....

PhotoBookGirl?

Well, she's pretty flipping amazing and makes the world of photobooks a little easier to navigate!
If you are even thinking about making a photobook, you want to check her out.

• Reviews - different photobooks available from the different publishers.
• 'Photobook Wizard' - walks you through finding which company has the details you want for your photobook.<--Time saver!!!
• Coupons/Deals - lists the most current deals for different companies

Right now, she has a pretty cool giveaway in celebration of PhotobookGirl.com's 1st birthday: MyPhotoCreations giveaway.
Got to love it when the birthday guests have a chance at the gifts!

Check it out. The contest ends on March 7th at 11:59 p.m.

seriously?!?!

I have the wrong friggin' BM dresses. My wedding is in 33 days and I have no BM dresses. A pictorial explanation. I have 6 girls total: a Matron of Honor, a Maid of Honor, 4 Bridesmaids. My colors are aubergine and bordeaux. Which is just a hoity-toity way of saying dark purple and wine.
The MOHs are wearing the dress on the left. We wanted to keep the purple color at the top and dye the light orchid to the wine color. The BMs would wear the dress on the right.
The dresses just came in on Thursday, November 11. My MOHs live in my hometown and went to pick up their dresses on Friday. They came out gorgeous! (The picture really doesn't do it justice) And they fit just about perfectly. Great. phew.
I was going home for the weekend, so I could pick up the other dresses for my 4 BMs (who aren't in town. One is from the area and will...sorry would have gotten hers around Thanksgiving; one lives near me and I was going to meet her to drop off; the other 2 were going to get there's during my shower/bachelorette shindig the first weekend in December.)

It's after 2 on Saturday when I remember that I need to pick up the dresses. (They close at 4.) I run to the store because we were getting everything ready for DFSDs 5th birthday party.

What was waiting for me?4 of these, in this color. What is this? I did not go Bridezilla. I did not go off. The lady at the dress shop said she'd make some calls and call me on Monday.


She left me a message about the dresses getting shipped but they are somewhere else. Noone else has called in about wrong dresses and she just had them get started on new dresses because we need them here ASAP.

*side note* Soooo just to be clear: There was an order with the same dresses that I ordered for 2 of my ladies for 4 other women out there in the world somewhere who are the exact same sizes as the 4 girls I have in my bridal party. Riiiiight.

She said something about 2 weeks and that the dress makers (or whoever "they" are) know we are working on a tight schedule. I was thinking she was saying getting them here in 2 weeks, but I do believe this chick was saying 2 weeks before they would SHIP! And they would get here around the 13th.

of.December.

like 5 days before my wedding?

um, go to hell.

"and the company is going to cover all the alterations and the girls can go to my seamstress who is just 2 doors down from me, blahblahblah" says She.

Yeah, except for the fact that none of them live there, you nimrod! They will not be in town until Friday, December 17th.

le sigh

updates to come

WOOT!

And the honeymoon is BOOKED!!! Yeah, baby! We will be spending 5 days/4 nights at the Secrets Capri Riviera Cancun. I am uber-excited! These are a few photos from the website:

I have already found the Facebook page and check it pretty much daily, ha. I am sure I will be glued to Trip Advisor for the next 90-some-odd days. #cantwait

DIY Checks!

I finished my cake topper! WOOT!

I finally finished a mock-up of my invitations! WOOT!! WOOT!!

I made everything. I got the idea of the double-sided pocket from knottie lreeder. She even supplied some directions and measurements that she used. I eventually came up with my own measurements as I was designing. I believe I'll be printing at home and having them cut at Fedex Kinko's. They charge $1.50 a cut, but you have to remember that's through a ream of paper.

1. the invite
I want to darken the wine shade of our names and am on the look-out for a different stamp to emboss on the side.
2. the backside of the pocket
I ended up with 3 enclosures: R.S.V.P., Reception and Accommodations. The monogram square will be larger; I just got tired last night and wanted to have an idea of what it would look like!
3a. first insert: R.S.V.P.
I have already enlarged and bolded the "We're taking requests" in the bottom right corner. FH didn't notice it and thought others might not know to flip over.3b. first insert backside: Requests
I put a place for guests to request songs they'd like to hear at the reception. I also got an alternate idea for the traditional slideshow played during the reception from another knottie. I put that information on this side as well.

4. second insert: Reception
I just made a reception card that lets guests know they will move to a cocktail hour in a different part of the hotel and then to the ballroom for dinner and dancing.
5. third insert: Accommodations
This card includes the information on the room block. I don't have the specific rates or deadline yet, so I'll add those later.
Can you see the pretty swirlies on the metallic paper?!?

I am quite pleased with it. I hope to get the missing information this week and start cranking these puppies out. I bought a circle cutter from Micheal's yesterday and plan to make the pockets this week. I have between now and September 30th to get everything printed, cut, stamped & embossed and matted. I'll be going home the 1st weekend in October and plan to stuff and stamp then. I'm such a control freak that I will probably just do the mounting to the cardstock backing myself!

Double digit countdown!

Well, here we are at 97 days and counting! oh.ma.gee! Where do we stand?

I got a phone call about 2 weeks with this message waiting for me:

Hi, I'm Raymond, your new contact person at the Hotel hotel.
blah,blah, blah.

At first I was scared, like seriously, this close to the end? But then I thought that it was at least a good sign that he was reaching out and contacting his clients with upcoming events, as opposed to just finding out on my own. It has been a good thing for the most part. We met in person last Wednesday and had our tasting and got our updated contract. This thing is really happening! He also had a copy of a reception set-up that I'd never seen. I love it! They are supposed to do a trial set-up to see if it will work in the space and send me the pics.

I am still in search of some sort of day-of coordinator or decorating/set-up/take-down team. I am calling a lady tomorrow to see if she's available and find out about her prices.

I have emailed my d.j. (who is not local to the wedding) to see if he'll be available for our next consultation in my hometown sometime soon so he can get a look at the space.

We are going to turn in our apps for passports tomorrow (I know, I know!), and I want this honeymoon decided and booked this week!

DIY updates coming in next post!

Wrap-around Labels

Well, I had my Save the Dates, so I needed to get them stuffed, labeled, stamped and put in the mail ASAP. (As of press time, I have one batch out, a second batch in the works and a few more addresses needed.)
I went to my hometown for my mom's 35th high school class reunion weekend; that Sunday night my mom, aunt and I got to work. They put the cards in the envelopes while I tried to decide if I was going to line the envelopes or not.

Ended up going with not. It was late and I didn't have a lot of envelopes, so I scrapped it. I had also considered stamping and embossing them, but they just were not coming out like I wanted them, so that was scrapped as well. Next, they added the adhesive magnet to the back of the business cards. It was justthismuch longer (or wider, I guess) than the business card, but it was quite easy to trim that little edge.

While they did that, I finished my wrap-around labels. I modeled my template after the DIY bride and this is what they looked like:
Simple directions:
1. Open a new document in Microsoft Word.
2. I got rid of all of my margins and then inserted a text box. My final size after tinkering was 1.43 x 7.03.
3. I inserted 2 more text boxes - one for the guests' addresses and one for our return address. I changed the text direction for the return address just because, you don't have to.
4. I made a template with generic wording to determine my font and size and inserted my monogram that I'd previously saved as a .jpg. You can add any design, background or flourish that you'd like. I left the the light outline around the large box to aid in cutting; you could alternatively go with no outline.
5. I then held down the control key (ctrl) and clicked on all four pieces (you may have to do this a couple of times; Word can be temperamental, ha) and then I grouped the elements as one.
6. I then copy and pasted the labels and was able to get 6 to a page.
7. Filled them out, saved each page as STDlabels1, STDlabels2, etc and printed on my HP wireless. Cut out about 3 pages at a time w/ my paper cutter and ran them through my Xyron.

Easy-peasy.

Soleil 100 Days

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