Monthly Archives: August 2012

Niagara Falls Wedding Packages | Wedding Etiquette: A Guide to Thank You Notes

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wedding planner niagaraHave you ever been to a wedding (or shower, or gift giving party) where you didn’t recieve a recieve a thank you note? It’s not too common as most people know this simple etiquette rule, but I have. It’s not a nice feeling when you spend hours looking for the perfect gift for someone, so perfect that you even go over your budget a little to get them this gift, and then you don’t get a personalized thank you afterwards.

I touched on this subject during one of my last wedding etiquette posts, but I want to go a little further into detail with this one.

1. You should send your thank you notes out within 3 months of your wedding date. Your guests know you are busy and likely were away on a honey moon. When things get settled, sit down and get organized.

2. Personally thank each person for the gifts you have recieved. ”Dear______, thank you so much for the toaster, we look so forward to making toast with it each morning. “

3. Tell each person what you will do with the gift you received (see above). If you recieve cash, tell them what you will do with it, if you don’t know yet, make something useful up.

Those are the simple rules to follow when sending a thank you note, but who should recieve one?

  • Anyone who attended your wedding, shower, or engagement party with a gift or money should recieve a personalized note.You bridal party.
  • Don’t forget to include a personalized note to some of your closest friends. It’s not always an easy job to be in a wedding party, so make sure your sincere thank-you’s are known.
  • Anyone who hosted a shower or party for you.
  • Anyone who housed or entertained your wedding guests while in town.
  • Vendors, if they do a job at or above your expectations.
  • Whoever hosted your wedding.

From Emily Post

Niagara Wedding Planning | Wedding Etiquette: Wedding Registry Guideline

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If you saw Britta’s recent post about her wedding registering process, you may be wondering what the proper etiquette for registering is. Do you have to register? What if you only want cash? What if you don’t want gifts at all? Below is a guideline to refer to when it comes time to register for your gifts.how to wedding registry

What is a wedding registry?

A wedding registery is simply a wish list of items you and your fiance would like to recieve as gifts. Stores have their own registry system, and a lot of the big chains have an online version so you can simply click and add to your list, or simply buy online as well. The Bay has a good online registery because it comes with pictures as well.

Where to register?

Decide what items you and your fiance will need or want to have for your new home together. Then decide what stores will sell those items and see if they have a registry system. It’s good to keep chain stores in mind so even if your guests are coming from another city, they can still purchase something off of your wedding registry.

Should we include my registry information in our wedding invitation?

In terms of etiquette, no. It is not proper to include registry information in your wedding invitation. You can however add a serparate slip of paper with your “wedding website” information and include the registry information on there. While it is traditionally not proper to include your registry information in your shower invitations, new age etiquette says why not? The whole point of a shower is to give and recieve gifts, so including your information in your invites likely won’t offend anyone.

If we are not including my registry information in my invitation, how do people know where we are registered?

Word of mouth. Make sure your parents and grandparents as well as your bridal party know where you are registered. If people want to buy you a gift from your registry, they will ask around to find out.

What items should we include in our registry?
This is where you get to have fun. Choose a wide variety of items with low to high prices that you need or want. Some people may want to purchase just a few small items and give those to you with a cash gift. Others may want to pitch in with other people to get you a big ticket item. You may feel that some of your items are ridiculous, but if they are something you either need or would really like to have, someone may surprise you by purchasing it. The key is to keep a list with lots of choices for people with different budgets and gift giving styles.

What if we only want cash?

Still register. You can’t properly request to only have cash given as a wedding gift. You will highly offend your guests by doing so. For example, I am a huge gift giver, I love to give gifts, I spend lot’s of time finding the perfect something for the recipient, if someone told me I could only give cash, that would offend me. Some people who are very close to you will want to spend the time finding something personal for you, it would be very rude to tell them to give you cash, which is the most impersonal gift you can give.

We already have a house, we don’t need gifts so we aren’t going to register, is this okay?

You should register anyways. Even if you tell people not to bring gifts, some people may not feel right not giving you a gift. Instead of recieving a bunch of gifts you have no use for, save everyone the hassle by registering for a few gifts that you would actually like to recieve.

Niagara Falls Wedding Planner | How to… Create the Perfect Ceremony for you

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When we think of weddings, the majority of us often think of the reception first. What can we do to have the best party ever? There is nothing wrong with wanting to have a great reception, but let’s not get carried away with the whole reason for the wedding in the first place. It is to celebrate your marriage to eachother. What better way to truly celebrate your marriage then you have a ceremony that you and your fiance will remember forever.

Location

Decide on a location that suits you as a couple. Are you religious? Do you need to have your wedding at your family church, synagoge or mosque? If not, what locations speak to you? Where did you first meet, where did he propose? What activities do you like to do together? Find a place with meaning and don’t be afraid to think outside of the box. Just because the place you want to get married at doesn’t offer weddings, doesn’t mean they won’t.

niagara on the lake weddingwww.daveandcharlotte.com

Content

Make sure your ceremony program is something you both agree upon. Write your own vows. What is a better way to celebrate your marriage then by making personalized promises to eachother.

Decor

Don’t forgot about your ceremony decor. When it comes down to it, that is the moment that matters, put as much thought into decor as you would the reception. You will want the photos of the ceremony to be just as a beautiful.

niagara on the lake wedding

Niagara Falls Wedding Packages | Tips for Tipping

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Tipping has always been, and probably always will be a touchy subject. When it comes to your wedding, you are already shelling out tons of money, so who are you expected to tip on top of that and how much?

I read a great post on a guide to tipping that I wanted to share. Before I do, keep in mind that a tip is a token of appreciation for a job well done. No vendor expects a tip. There is a ton of controversy when it comes to vendors who own their own business. Ignore that. We don’t set our prices to factor in a tip, it’s not about what you give us as a tip, it’s the fact that you thought about a little something extra for all of our hard work. With that being said here is a tipping guide written by A Paper Proposal.

For a whole other take on tips see this Bitchless Bride article (not for the faint at heart).

Niagara Wedding Planner | Real Life Wedding Planning: The Registry

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Our wedding is still 10 months away but we have already had friends and family members asking us where we are registered so we thought it was about time we checked the registry off of our to-do list. We decided to register at The Bay and Sears.  The Bay was our first choice because they had the most comprehensive list of housewares and their online registry system is the most up to date and user friendly. It shows the description, a picture, and even whether or not the item is on sale. It was also very easy to add to online from home.wedding registry

We started our Bay registry in store. It was nice to be able to see the products first hand. Unfortunately, we did not have nearly enough time to complete our registry. After an hour and a half of walking around scanning we probably accomplished about half of what we needed to. This was partly due to the associate taking over a half hour to get us to sign a piece of paper and explain the completion card while going off on random tangents completely unrelated to our registry process when we had a finite number of hours that day. It was also partly because of The Bay’s store layout. It was very difficult to find prices on anything (which is probably what they’re going for being big in the registry business in Canada) but when you’re looking at eight different toasters that all look almost the same and range in price from $30 to 250$, price does become a factor. We also wanted to make sure to choose a variety of price points so all our guests could find something they’re comfortable with. If everything is either $20 or $500 it either could make a guest feel like they can’t find anything to give or they feel they have to buy a multitude of inexpensive items just to end up with an appropriate gift.

It was still fun to walk around the store with the scanner and pick out things we would like to have for our future home together as a couple. We did it together so that it reflects both of our personal styles and picked out a few things that each of us wanted. I hope to go back in the future and add a few more home decor items in person and will make sure to give ourselves plenty of time.

wedding gift

For our second registry we decided to use Sears because they too had an online registry system which I always find most convenient as a guest. We decided to compile this one strictly online. The Sears online system is much less user friendly. When we tried to add items directly from the Sears website by logging in it led to an endless loop of asking us for our login and password and system errors. Each item from the Sears website had to be manually added to the online registry using the item numbers. Needless to say it wasn’t as quick and painless as The Bay’s online registry. The Sears registry also doesn’t show pictures or sale prices and the descriptions are more difficult to interpret. Luckily the Sears registry is more for filling in holes from our Bay registry with things that are either unavailable at The Bay such as power tools or items that are available at The Bay but are lower in price at Sears.

- Britta

Niagara Wedding Planner | Joel’s 25 Birthday Bash & Gillian’s Place Event

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This past Sunday we spent our night coordinating and managing a red-carpet birthday party for a local photographer, Joel Hannigan. Joel is not only an amazing photographer, but also a really great guy. He threw this party for himself at Cache with all of the proceeds going to Gillian’s Place, a women’s shelter here in the Niagara Region. The night turned out great! We were able to raise $2500, surpassing our goal!

Planning this event with Joel was super fun. We had so many creative ideas and we made them happen.

Some of the highlights of the night were:

  • VIP area. A lounge for the VIP’s with a candy table and designer cupcakes, provided by Candy by Katie and Designer Delights. Our VIP’s also got to take home a swag bag provided by Enchantment Makeup Artistry, with cookies from Sweet Beginnings.
  • Signature Drink Table. Everyone had the option to purchase drink tickets with 100% of the proceeds going towards Gillian’s Place. Cache provided us with the drinks, and boy were they yummy! We had a green coconut rum and pineapple, and a watermelon vodka cocktail.
  • Red Carpet Photo Op. All of our guests had the opportunity to have their photo taken outside of Cache, with a backdrop specially ordered by Joel.
  • Raffle and Silent Auction table. We had many prizes donated by numerous, generous business’s.
  • LMT Connection and the Chops Horns played live.
  • Cache’s amazing chef provided us with the most delicious hors d’ouerves, peaches and brie on a crostini, coconut chicken, shrimp, and sushi.

Photos from the Red Carpet:

gillian's place eventred carpet event niagara

 

Our Genourous Prize Donators

 

Wedding Wine Tips

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Reblogged from The Vine Inspiration:

Click to visit the original post

I’ve been spending a number of evenings over the past few months scouting some potential wines for my wedding. Lots of wine merchants and websites give tips for buying wedding wine. Tips on how much to buy, what should the split of red/white be etc. have proved to be quite useful but much of the other information seems to be targeted at people who have absolutely no knowledge of wine or have no interest in finding anything other than the cheapest, drinkable white and red that they can lay their hands on.

Read more… 542 more words

Wedding Wine Tips

Posted on by

0

Reblogged from The Vine Inspiration:

Click to visit the original post

I’ve been spending a number of evenings over the past few months scouting some potential wines for my wedding. Lots of wine merchants and websites give tips for buying wedding wine. Tips on how much to buy, what should the split of red/white be etc. have proved to be quite useful but much of the other information seems to be targeted at people who have absolutely no knowledge of wine or have no interest in finding anything other than the cheapest, drinkable white and red that they can lay their hands on.

Read more… 542 more words

Niagara Falls Wedding Planner | Real Life Wedding Planning: Wedding Inspiration Sites

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Now more then ever brides depend on the internet for planning their wedding. With so many wedding sites out there, it makes it really easy for brides to picture their perfect day.

Here’s a list of the most popular wedding inspiration sites.

Style Me Pretty

The Knot

Sash and Satin

Green Wedding Shoes

Once Wed

What do you think? Do you use these sites to help plan your wedding image? Are there any other sites you use? If so what are they?