Choosing your registry.

This is the fun part! However, when choosing to provide your guests with a registry list, you may feel overwhelmed. Do you feel like you are pushing your guests to buy you certain items or do you even feel rude assuming they would want to buy these for you? Don't! Friends and relatives will be looking to buy wedding gifts as soon as they hear about your engagement. Really! Take the guesswork out of gift buying by making sure they know what you really want.

Firstly, to decide what you need, take inventory of the things you already have and see where the gaps are. Talk about the style of home you'd both like, and what would fit in with your lifestyle (Do you need a stand mixer? You never bake!). One thing to consider is local shops vs online mega stores. If you are a Target shopper, you may feel comfortable choosing to register there. Target has thousands of options and is accessible to every guest, both in location and in price points. If you have a favorite local shop, go in and ask the owner if they have a gift registry option. You may be pleasantly surprised! Even smaller online shops have them now! It may be a bit more work but will be worth it in the long run, and you could be happily supporting a small business!

Another incentive to look for is discounts from vendors. When S and I were registering, I noticed companies like All-Clad and Le Creuset offer free merchandise when registering for a certain amount of their products.

And don't forget about Etsy! Contact vendors for special registry requests!

A final idea is either a honeymoon fund or having a list of fun things your guests could contribute to for your honeymoon, such as a snorkeling day trip or a couples massage. Contact your hotel or resort to find out about setting up such a registry!

You may also be wondering if you should include your information on your invite. We also pondered over this for quite some time but in the end, decided to add it since it was just easier than having everyone ask us or our parents. Some say it's a big no-no but we just thought it would make the process simpler for everyone!

Good luck!!

Message In A Bottle

How perfect would this be for a new take on an invite? Imagine your family and friends receiving this in the mail with little notes/invites! It could also be used as a wedding favor thanking each wonderful guest for coming inside the lovely keepsake bottle. Or how about pulling your vows out of the bottle during the ceremony? So dramatic.

Design your own wedding invitation, directions card and rsvp card!

Designed by Scott Palmer

We wanted our wedding invitation to look different from the standard. After all, our wedding was to be in a barn, so would it really make sense to have fancy embossed frilly script fonts with lacy trim? We thought not. So S set out to design a more kitschy and whimsical style invite that felt more like our personality.

It ended up being a 3 card set, printed dual-sided on 100# recycled cardstock along with a self-mailing reply card. (no tiny envelopes to address!!)

Since Husband is an amazing designer, he would be designing our invites. We started out brainstorming ideas for a theme and color scheme. Coming up with the barn idea was easy since that was the whole theme of the wedding. After testing out different shades of blue, we settled on this teal for most of the text and back of the cards. After that, the design came together rather seamlessly. We both agreed we loved the detail of the little bird holding the love sign on the back which later translated into our decor for the barn!

All the printing was done locally on recycled paper with soy based inks.

A unique save the date idea!

Designed by Scott Palmer

The idea for our save the date came late one night. S and I were freaking out, as we had to get our STD's out soon and we didn't have much room in our budget for pricey printed ones. By the way - you can get great deals on save the date and thank you cards from Vistaprint, check them out! We knew we wanted something with a homemade feel to it as well as something that featured us, not just text. We happened to have my parents fancy digital camera on loan and S had a roll of photo backdrop paper laying around so we had an impromptu photo shoot!

We dolled ourselves up and our lovely friend Charlie shot the photos. We came up with the photo strip concept after seeing several STD's that incorporated photo-booth strips. At first we thought about writing the words with markers but then spotted my knitting basket hiding in the corner and were inspired! We spray-glued the photo backing and spelled out the words with yarn. We tried out several different colors and styles and settled on these.

After choosing from 100+ photos, we picked these four. S then, being the amazing graphic designer he is, adjusted the quality so that it resembled the more grainy texture we wanted and we were satisfied!

We sent the file over to a local printer and in less than a week our STD's were ready to go! Also, we opted to send them out without an envelope (in keeping with our green theme) and instead decided to fold them in half and affix a small sticker to close. They looked great and we didn't need to waste any extra paper!