How Online Shopping Gives Savings & Can Help With Wedding Planning In Los Angeles, San Jose, San Francisco, Oakland & Santa Rosa

Every day we find more and more brides turn to online searches and purchases to shape up their wedding day.

While we firmly believe it is important to shop local for the most important wedding day planning decisions, Important to meet personally and signing agreements with each of your vendors is vital to your being able to relax and enjoy your wedding day.  Confidence in who you hire is an underlying factor. Searching the internet is a very helpful beginning to any wedding planning. 

We found people today shop online for wedding dresses, bridesmaid dresses, great prices on wedding invitations and great ideas for wedding favors, The concern is the errors we make when ordering online,  Having someone wait on us and be involved with our purchase can be very helpful when we have so many things to do - to shape up a wedding day.
                              GiftShopping.Biz  Has A Great Wedding Store

These Shopping TIPS might help:

Receipts - Keep a printout of all online receipts in your records book. Note the date ordered and calendar your I phone for the day they should be arriving.

Invitations - use another set of eyes to proof for dates, times and spelling. We find people are inclined to put the wrong year in an invite. If you are having a Friday or Sunday wedding, then please indicate the day and date.  Friday, December 18th, 2015....people have been known to calendar the wrong day. ooopps

With wedding favors, ordering the correct number is important.  How do you know until the last minute how many guests are coming?  Very few companies can give you the last five or ten days prior to a wedding shipments.  So choose your company in the USA and pay for the fastest shipping.  Or order ahead and accept the left overs.

Ordering a wedding dress or bridesmaid dresses online is complicated - regarding the correct sizes.  Each company handles this differently.  You will likely have to order a dress too large and have it altered by a local seamstress.  Consider prior to purchase, if there is a good seamstress in your area who knows how to do wedding dress alterations. Many dress shops will NOT alter your purchase from another store. Because of color vat changes, order the bridesmaid dresses together, so the colors come from the same colored cloths.

Wedding Flowers ordered online - Please go with a reputable company....Yes, they often save money.  Yet you may have anxity over their arrival, have to store them in a cool area until you complete the bouquets.  If they come loose in boxes, someone has to arrange them and get them into vases and into the decor you outline.  Working with flowers can stain and give your hands a very bad look for wedding photos.  Decorating the cake can be a nightmare for last minute prep.  

Wedding Rings & Gift Jewelry - it helps to order these ahead with a company that guarantees refunds.  When your attendant gifts arrive, be certain to check their quality, if each item fastens correctly and count them out, to make certain your ordered the correct number.  Keep a printout of all online receipts in your records book.

Gift Baskets For Your Guests - Often brides want to provide a nice gift basket in the rooms for parents or grandparents.  If they are to be delivered to a hotel, make certain the room clerk knows ahead that you are expecting delivery. 

Manhattan to Sonoma Wine Country Wedding Invitations & Unique Wedding Invites

Photo by DUPhotography.com

Your Wedding Invitations have a great deal to do with how formal or informal your wedding celebration will be. Various parts of the country are influenced by formality while others are "anything goes".

                                                           DUPhotography.com

You are the best decision-maker on the theme, style and statement you want to carry through to your guests from your invitation.  There are some tips in this blog, but there is also an extensive article at 

http://www.weddinglinks.com/articles/invitations_mailing.asp covering major time line on completing the selection and mailing.  The invitation STILL sets the style of your wedding day celebration. There are so many fun ideas and beautiful papers to choose from with embossed, engraved, printed and monogram invites from various companies.   I'd Love To Have Your Input On This Subject!

Safety TIP...

Please, understand. e-mail is a great communicator, facebook, etc, your wedding webpage is a great communicator, but do not place your specific dates, times and places in these areas. There are so many break-ins while couples are at their wedding celebrations. (Hackers can find out when you are gone.)  Keep these announcements on your mailed invitations.

I suggest:  

1. Once you decide on prevailing theme or style for your nuptials (you will find a great list here) http://www.invitationsbydawn.com/index.jsp
2. Send out once you have the date Early "Save The Date" cards for destination guests and relatives.
3. Short on budget...Choose a light weight invite so mailing is less expensive. You can find reasonably priced invites at Big Lots or the Dollar Stores and print them yourself.  Yes, there is not much we can do about the postal rates, but hand deliver as many as you can to bring costs down.
4. Average cost to mail, if the weight is normal, for a first class stamp = two per invite, (one for the reply and one for the outer mailing envelope.

Join In The Conversation, Love to Have Your Input Wedding Coaching Blog...

For a more detailed method on completing your wedding invitations and our unique guest list form, please sign up for our free book and management tools. This online wedding planning book is colorful and offers easy steps to wedding planning concerns and a "DAY-OF LIST".

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Ideas For Adding Luxury To Your Wedding Day - Part 1 of 3

Photos by Dennis Urbiztondo

Wedding Coaching and Wedding Planning have a great deal to do with assisting the bride in her desire to complete ideas and concepts the way she wants them done. This can be everything from understanding what works well together, the current trends and within their budget.... be it clothing, table decorations, the wedding venue and the style wedding the couple wants. Join, author Judith Rivers-Moore on Facebook for Wedding Coaching.

Several brides have requested LUXURY STATEMENTS made in specific parts of the wedding day and a few who had high profile and celebrity weddings requested LUXURY throughout. The ideas you read in the next 3 postings will include both ways to add luxury statements to the various elements of your day.

LUXURY FOR THE BRIDE
Luxurious Ideas For Wedding Attire might include: having your dress created by a famous designer is the ultimate, but this still requires a lot of shopping to see the style and fabrics you are interested in. Your appointments need to be one or two years in advance of your wedding day. You can spend thousands on a dress but the neckline and color will give you the best results for spectacular.

BLING is in with crystals dripping everywhere giving the appearance of a bejeweled princess and her TIARA, SHOES and HAIR ORNAMENTS – are big touches of elegance.

We see the short dress making a comeback for a more casual wedding day.

Vera Wang is still a favorite along with many worldwide designers. You can find famous worldwide designer styles for the entire wedding party and men’s tuxedos on WeddingLinks.com in the Designer Gown Gallery.

Environmental and natural fabrics are a growing trend.

Giving back by purchasing a donated “Hollywood starlet gown” from BridesAgainstBreastCancer.org.

Highly luxurious wedding find the gown and the jewels set the stage for luxury.

Fabrics dripping with pearls, crystals and bejeweled party linens are setting the style.

Smaller groups of bridesmaid attendants using a variety of neckline styles in the same color and floor length dress.

The all-white wedding continues to be a luxurious look.

The gentlemen should be outfitted with tuxedos and have very high end neckties.

Military attire and swords bring a unique luxury to every wedding day.



YOUR WEDDING INVITATIONS & MAKING GUESTS EXPERIENCE AN ENRICHED WELCOME

Luxurious Ideas For Wedding Invitations: Invitations set the tone of the wedding. Very high style custom-made papers that include eco-friendly types with beautiful, hand–written calligraphy are available and add a special touch on wedding invitations. The gold leaf border (or a copper wax seal) might be enough trim. Create a personal monogram or watermark on the paper with your initials.

The style chosen can be used as a unifying element for your invites, reply card, menu card, envelopes and ceremony programs. Conveying your theme or the wedding colors on all the paper products including your Thank You Notes will add that touch of luxury. Whatever design you choose, make it's eye-catching. Be sure to indicate if your wedding celebration is a black tie formal affair, or a themed wedding with costumes etc. and/or is cocktails and dinner following and/or any uniqueness.

There are specialty services to assist with this and some brides have the invites addressed and mailed by the services with special LOVE stamps or hand canceling. When weddings are in major cities the added touch of messenger delivery is a possibility. We have seen:

Fabric boxes with the invitation set inside can be an outstanding delivery through mail or messenger. These may also be placed on the tables at the reception as an added display.

Gold Florist Boxes with your theme colored-flowers and invitations being personally delivered by a messanger.

Wine or champagne bottles sent by messenger with the invitation affixed as a label or attached in the envelope to the neck.

Boxes of candy or chocolates mailed with the invitation inside.

LUXURY TREATMENT FOR YOUR WEDDING GUESTS
Out of town guests can be very important for brides who want to make them feel welcome, they often order or create special welcome baskets with soaps, fruit or regional special items for each guest room.

Meeting & Greeting the Guests can be everything from a personal website (with your growning details), save the date cards, list of local hotels, maps to your event sites in the invitation to providing a location(s) with ample parking and good signage on where to go in a major hotel or larger event site.

Transportation in complicated areas leads to less-frazzled guests. An Entry Host to direct the guests and the serving of labeled water bottles (or a water or ice tea service) are especially appreciated on hot days. Making certain seniors and infirmed guests have someone assigned to pick them up and deliver adds to their luxury and welcome. An exciting luxury are the Parking Valet Services to assist the guests.

We also see couples deciding on a pre-ceremony bar set up or cocktail bar and canapes between the ceremony and reception.

Give us your input on what gives you a luxurious feeling at a wedding day celebration.