**Guest Blogger Brittany Sobering is filling in for a post while Heather is traveling. Thanks Brittany! Heather will continue to update as internet usage permits**

Wedding Planning, Step 1: Prioritization

Newly engaged couples, take notice:  The first step in wedding planning that will get you on the right track is prioritization.  This step can be accomplished even before a date, venue, or budget is set in place.  When you think about a wedding that suits you both, what comes to mind?  Cuban food, salsa dancing, and photographs to look back on for ever?  A beaded ballgown, string quartet, and a champagne toast for every guest?  Use your mental image to compile a preliminary outline of what your day will look like.  This will help get your priorities in order.
For some, a fabulous (and expensive) wedding gown is of top importance and cannot be compromised.  For others, documenting the event with professional and creative photography and/or videography is of the priority.  Realizing your top three priorities will help you to adjust your budget accordingly, and may help you to stick to it.  Any former bride will tell you that throughout the engagement, unrealized potential projects and costs pop up than can leave a much bigger dent in your wallet than you originally anticipated.

At my own wedding, my priorities were 1) a beautiful outdoor venue 2) photography, and 3) live music.  Knowing this from the start, we were able to quickly narrow down and secure our venue, photographer, and band.  While the rest of the wedding was spectacular and tempting costs presented themselves everywhere, I know that these choices were really the easiest ones to make and made a huge impact on our satisfaction with our wedding day.  Though each bride has a unique wedding day vision and priorities, I can’t stress enough to invest in what lasts.  Your guests may not remember your specialty cocktail or what favors you offered, but I assure you that your photo album, prints, and video capturing your emotions during the ceremony and all your friends on the dance floor will be treasured for years to come.

For help with budget allocation, try Brides.com’s Budget Tracker.  When you’ve narrowed down your top priorities and their costs, lock in those prices in your personalized tracker and the sliding scale will automatically update to show you what you have left to spend in other categories.
Happy planning, brides and grooms!  For more wedding tips, tricks, and inspiration, please visit Brittany’s blog at www.tickledpink.typepad.com, or inquire about personalized planning services with Brittany of Tickled Pink Brides @ 407-455-0500.

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I am so excited to share with you some of my favorite Orlando vendors! I get asked all the time for recommendations for different weddings vendors. I decided to put together a short list of our current top 5 favorite vendors. These wedding specialists are listed in no particular order. Go take a look at these  websites if you are planning your Orlando wedding.

1. Lee Forrest Design – Florist -  Lee is one of the greatest guys that I know. He is super talented and he knows his stuff! Lee not only designs for weddings but also for events. I guess I am kinda biased on who my favorite florist is because Lee was our floral designer for our wedding a few years ago. Lee and I have worked together on a few weddings including: Yvonne and Rene &  Elisha and Nathan

2. Ashlie Hampton – Wedding coordinator – Ashlie and I met a few months ago while I was the 2nd photographer for another wedding. This girl is a riot! She is fun and super nice! I hope to work more with her in the future.

3. 2u Collection – Invitations – The 2u Collection just launched their brand new website! I remember looking for invitations a few years ago and finding a bunch of cheesy 80’s looking invitations. That was not my idea of an invitation that I wanted to send out to all of my friends and family. I ended up making my own custom invitations which took days and days to complete. I wish I would have known about the 2u Collection!  Amy works with you to create your own “brand” for your wedding. Her invitations are modern, hip, and classic. They are something that I would definitely save if I got one of these invitations in the mail.

4. Lauren Alane – Cake Toppers – I first learned about Lauren’s unique cake toppers at Yvonne and Rene’s wedding. Lauren’s custom bird toppers are the cutest thing that I have seen lately. You can view her feature on The Wedding Chicks blog!

5. Anna Cakes -  Cake -  Anna creates some spectacular cakes! She designed Brandi and Matt’s wedding cake. Oh yeah, and they taste good too!

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**Guest Blogger Aimee O’Boyle is filling in for a post while Heather is traveling. Thanks Aimee! Heather will continue to update as internet usage permits**

Hi everyone!  I am so honored to be stepping in for Heather today while she is away!  A little about me…

Together with my husband, we own Creative Montage, a custom stationery studio based out of Kansas City.  I started this business in 2004 while I was planning my own wedding and it quickly became my passion.  Today, we service brides of every type and every budget, including do-it-yourself brides!

Creative Montage actually started by only creating ready-made monogram designs that brides could use on their own printed items.  While the business has taken more of a custom turn, our roots are in our monogram designs.  Today we offer over 300 ready-made monogram designs!

We are often asked what the monograms can be used for and really the options are endless.  I thought I would break it down through the wedding planning process so you can get a good visual of how to use your monogram.

Save the dates: This is the first glimpse your guests will have of your “theme” in most cases. Try to select a monogram that utilizes only your first initials and/or wedding date to stay true to the monogram etiquette of not using your married monogram until after you’re officially Mr. & Mrs.

Invitations: By continuing your monogram into your paper products such as your invites, you are setting the theme even further. Use a printed invite cuff topped off with your monogram to tie the invite together. Create coordinating mailing stamps with your monogram to spruce up the outside of your mailing envelopes and VOILA!, instant repetition! All of our custom invitations include one FREE monogram of your choice!  Not sure what design direction your invitations should take?  Selecting a monogram is a great way to gather some inspiration for your designs.

Pre-Ceremony & Ceremony paper products: There are a few ways to add your monogram to this area of your wedding day. Pre-ceremony you can use your monogram on rehearsal dinner invites or out of town guest items. Include your monogram on your wedding itinerary for your guests and you can really tie your theme together. For the ceremony, aisle runners, programs, rose petal cones, bubble containers and reserved seating signs are all great places to include your logo.

Reception Paper Products: This includes placecards, menu cards, table numbers, favors, decorative vinyls for your reception doors, floors or walls…All fantastic ways to personalize your reception space. Stick with the same monogram that was on your save the dates and invites and your special day will seem more pulled together OR select a monogram that coordinates with your pre-ceremony monogram and use your new MARRIED monogram!

Post ceremony: You can now use your new married monogram on all things paper, including thank you cards and your wedding photo album!

We hope that you have a chance to stop by our site (www.creativemontage.com) or our blog (www.creativeoddsnends.blogspot.com) to say hello!  If you have any questions about incorporating your monogram into your special day, we’d love to hear from you!

A quick thank you to Heather for allowing us to guest post while she is away!  Hope you’re enjoying your trip!

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Crazy photobooth photos were taken at the Orlando Wedding Professional’s get together last week. The silliness contains:

Ashlie Hampton

Lee Forrest

Chad Pilster

&

Me!

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How do you actually plan a destination wedding?

HA! Photography has had the opportunity to photograph some really amazing destination weddings. One of those weddings took place last year in wine country, ca.

Rachel and Matt were married last March in Sonoma Valley, CA. Happy Anniversary you two! Rachel and Matt were married at the beautiful Madrona Manor in Healdsburg, California. Rachel grew up all over the place, but one of the places she calls home is Orlando, where we went to high school together. Planning a destination wedding was a logical choice for her, as she has many different places that she calls ‘home’.

Rachel shares some of her advice on planning a destination wedding:

Why did you choose to have a destination wedding?

Destination weddings are good if you want something intimate and, surprisingly, if you want to have a nice wedding yet keep costs down.  The reason for this is that only the most important people will make the effort to attend, and the easiest way to cut down on costs is to decrease the number of people you invite.  For me, most of the important people were spread across the country anyway, so no matter where I had the wedding it would have been a “destination,” but not having it in my home town gave an easy excuse for the next-door neighbors and colleagues that I’ve just met to not have to come.

What is special about the location you chose to get married at?

Identifying a location to get married was easier than I thought.  I had identified that I wanted to have an outside wedding, so for that time of year, I looked for locations that would be warm enough.  After I narrowed that down, I simply had to decide what was more my style: beach wedding in the keys, or garden wedding in wine country.  If I had wanted to get married inside, I might have identified the kind of architecture that would go with my style (perhaps a stone church in New England or a French style in New Orleans), and then find the part of the country that has that.

What was the hardest part about planning your destination wedding?

Like a home-town wedding, you’re still going to check things out online–prices, packages, etc.–but it might be harder to choose a venue if you don’t already know the area, or if you can’t visit.  For me, I was already out visiting my parents in San Francisco so we took the day to go and check out venues and found something I loved.  So I would have to say the hardest part was finding a hair-stylist.  Most didn’t want to do my hair on the wedding day unless I had seen them before, but after emailing around a bit, I found someone who would work with me.  It helped that I had a very clear idea of what I wanted, and that it wasn’t overly complicated.

What advice do you have for other brides planning a destination wedding?

Choose a turn-key venue, it will make all the difference.  What I mean by that is this: find a place that will do the food, the cake-cutting, provide the wine and alcohol, chairs…all of it.  If you’re not from the area, you don’t have the time to coordinate with the rental companies about what brands of wine you want to use, or the if you want the mahogany or oak dance floor.  Having a location that does it all for you simplifies things immensely, and honestly, not having the options for off-white or eggshell colored napkins just makes things so much less stressful for you.  Other than that, just relax!  Weddings aren’t as complicated as magazines want you to think.

What special touches did you add to your wedding to make it truly unique?

I absolutely love glass bottles, and had seen in a magazine that an easy decorating tip was to get lots of little vials and put different flowers in them.  I thought, such a brilliant idea!  I could get bottles and flowers for each person, and then not only would I have a unique decoration, but favors as well.  And with a little twine and brown paper with the guests names beautifully written by my matron of honor, they acted as name-plates as well.  The glass bottles took some finding on ebay, but the florist really liked the idea, and we decided use the same flowers I had in my bouquet to put in the bottles, and the whole ordeal cost around $2/guest, if that.

What websites were a big help to you as you were planning?

Google! Google and I became really good friends while I planned my wedding.  Oh, and theknot.com helped me keep track of my guests.  It wasn’t particularly amazing, but I could update information there and email all the guests if I had something I needed to say.

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“Who made your blog?”

That is the one question I have gotten over and over in the past few weeks since launching the fun new blog. The lovely people over at Treefrog Cinegraphix created this new blog for me. After meeting Christian for the first time at CoWorking I had this feeling that we were about to do something amazing together. Like.. no joke, I actually felt that. We talked about what I wanted the blog to be and set it into motion over the next few weeks after we had met. Treefrog Cinegraphix is located right here in Orlando, which made them ideal for me to work with. Having someone I could meet in person and discuss my ideas with was a big help. They took the time to get to know me and created a site that incoporates my personality, business, and life into a blog of wonderfulness.

Please visit their blog and tell them how amazing they are.

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