Things We Love!

With photo booths exploding in popularity, we love these photo booth props for weddings! So quirky and cute! Check out the Etsy seller by clicking here.

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Friday Freebies!

If you're still looking for a photographer, today's deal is for you! Purple Sky Productions is offering one lucky bride $250 off any wedding collection!

 

Ryan and Jaime are a husband and wife team. Together they offer a fresh style of wedding photography and have fun working with every couple. Check out some of their great work below!

 

Click HERE to register! (Must enter by Monday, August 2nd to win)

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Bride Blogger Nicole

Hi everyone! I hope most of you got a chance to go to the bridal fair in Lincoln this past Sunday. I love going to the bridal fairs! Even though I have a lot of my planning done and a lot of my vendors lined up, it's such a great place to get ideas, chat with vendors, and get some great discounts! Plus, you can also pick up a free copy of the latest issue of Nebraska WeddingDay Magazine, which is a great tool for planning a wedding in the Husker state! If you are planning a wedding and haven't been to a fair yet, I highly suggest you hit the next one up.

We (yes, my fiance, Ryan, actually went with me!) went to the fair with a goal to get our limo booked and check out some of the event rental booths to get prices and color options for table linens.

Our first goal was easily accomplished, as Luxury Limousine had their Hummer Limo right outside of the Cornhusker Hotel and their booth was right inside the door. Ryan and I each have 7 attendants. We also have 4 ushers; I have 2 personal attendants; and there are 2 guest book attendants as well. We really wanted something big enough that the dates could come along if they wanted; and also have enough room to breathe. The Luxury Limo Bus seemed perfect for us! It holds enough people and it's really cool inside. Just looking at these pictures from the Luxury Limousine's website makes me very excited!

We were then off to check out the event rental places that were at the fair. We picked up fliers and spoke with representatives from AAA Rentals and also from Elite Rentals, and I will probably go to both showrooms and see what they have to offer. Both had beautiful displays and lots of options!

So, even though we went to the fair with not much to do, it was definitely worth our time. Plus, you can register to win all kinds of free stuff! We are hopeful our names get drawn for some good prizes. Have a good week, everybody!
-Nicole

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Important Notice!

Due to Center Stage closing abruptly...if you had a stylists there, here's where you can find some of them:

Dana P, Melissa B, Becky B, Brandi Z, Sara K, and Brianna T are now all at Utopia.
Becky M, Liz O, and Kristin C are at Von Hair.
Paula H is at J.C. Penney's.

Also, Advanced Aesthetics and Tranquility Spas are honoring Center Stage's gift cards.

A special thanks to Cali Hlavac with A Sound Impression for providing this information. NWD is so blessed to have wonderful vendors who truly care about the well-being of their brides!

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Inspiration Board #24: Purple Passion

For all those brides out there who love purple, this board's for you! Chelsea came up with a beautiful board full of jewel-toned purple to make your planning easier.

[click to enlarge]

From left to right:

Top Row: Table, Outside, Cake

2nd Row: Bouquet, Dessert, Favors, Center Piece/Invite
3rd Row: Invite, Bouquet
Bottom R0w: Wedding dress, Pew décor, Table Center Piece

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Bride Blogger Amanda: Invitations and Wedding Stationery

At first, my fiancé and I thought we didn’t care about our wedding invitations or having heavily themed wedding stationery (from save-the-dates through thank-yous). We just wanted to give our guests something simple with the needed information and call it good. We knew we didn’t want anything fancy, expensive or involved, and we also knew we didn’t have the time or patience to put something together ourselves. We figured we could find something chic and inexpensive online and that would be that.


Of course, things are never that straightforward.

When it came down to it though, we did care about our invites. While we didn’t want to spend a lot of time or money on something that – let’s face it – would end up in the trash can, we also didn’t want our invitations to look like we didn’t spend a lot of time or money on them. Funny how that works. As such, it took us a long time to find something we both really liked for a reasonable price. For something that was supposed to be a quick item to check off the to-do list, it wound up being much more time-intensive than I expected.

After spending a ton of time looking around, we finally came across MagnetStreet (MagnetStreet.com), an online vendor that specializes in magnets, as the name indicates, but also has an extensive collection of wedding invitations and other stationery. We finally found our modern, simple, inexpensive invites, including the invitation itself, an RSVP card, a reception card and envelopes, and were very pleased with the results. To cut costs, I elected to create the card with accommodation information, directions and a map. There are lots of handy DIY guides and websites to help you with this sort of thing, particularly the map. It did take some time, but we saved a lot of money doing this one piece ourselves – over 50 percent. To cut even more costs, we ordered simple black and white thank-yous from Target that match our invitations but weren’t part of the “invitation suite” at MagnetStreet. If you're looking for invitations, make sure to check out local Nebraska vendors as well as there are lots of great printers and designers in the area!

We also invested in an address embosser with our return address on it to add a little something special to the envelopes. We bought a house together recently, so we used our new address for it and figured we would get a lot of use out of it beyond just the wedding. Plus, it saved having to print labels for or write out our return address on all the envelopes. Because our invites were square, they did cost twice as much to mail, but we made lemonade out of lemons and got these cute king and queen of hearts stamps so we could put one of each on the envelopes.

We also sent save the dates this past January, and we went for a simple postcard. For those, we went online to Shutterfly.com and used one of their easy templates to insert a few of our engagement pictures (which we had digital rights to, thanks to our photography package) and add the important information. So easy and quick!

Whether you want an extensive wedding stationery suite or simple invitations, here’s a few things to keep in mind:

• Proofread everything well! More than once! I did, and I still missed something, but I’ll never tell where it is.

• Consider having someone else (a parent, for instance) keep track of your RSVPs. We’re having my mom do it for us because I know as the wedding gets closer, I’ll have less time to track responses. There are many ways to handle keeping everyone in the loop, including online RSVP managers that more than one person can have access to. My mom will enter our RSVPs in a spreadsheet that I can also log into and check on progress.

• One thing we did not do, which I wish we had done, is to assign each invitation/guest/family a number in your master guest list and then number the RSVP cards discreetly somewhere corresponding to the invite. That way, if an RSVP comes back without a name you can track where it came from by the numbers.

• If you’re the crafty or graphic design type, making your own invitations can save a lot of money. But sometimes it doesn’t. When making your own invites, make sure the materials you’re using and skills you have really will save money. Paper, printing and fancy supplies can add up very quickly. Also, consider the time factor – sometimes spending a tad more (and in some cases, the same amount) to have someone else do it for you pays off in spades in less stress and more time to do other things!

• If you do happen to have a friend or family member who is good at designing and creating invitations, ask them to help you in lieu of giving you a wedding gift.

• It’s not necessary to make your invitations the “color” of your wedding, especially if it is a hard color to match. Our colors are plum and black, but purples are difficult to match perfectly; we also couldn’t find any invitations with plum-colored accents we liked. Simple black and white invitations are always elegant and can be modern or more traditional based on design and fonts.

• Instead of cramming information into the invitation and inserts, consider setting up a wedding homepage on sites like Nebraska WeddingDay's website. Include your page on your save-the-date or invite and direct your guests there to get more information.

• By the way, it’s not really necessary to send save-the-dates. If you don’t, just send your invitations a little sooner. Traditionally, they only need to be sent to out-of-town guests who will need to make travel arrangements well in advance and perhaps those old college friends who might not expect to be invited.

• Be sure you have the RSVPs due back in enough time for you to finalize your reception plans. We have ours coming back a month before the wedding. That way, even those last-minute responders who miss the deadline will still hopefully send theirs in well before we need a final headcount. Also, remember to factor in your RSVP deadline when figuring out when to send out invites.

• Even if you go the inexpensive route, there are ways to make the invitations uniquely yours. For instance, since I’m a former English major, we included a lovely literary quote about love on our invitations in one of the customizable spots. We also embossed our address onto the invitation envelopes. Other things you can do: add a ribbon in your wedding color or a fun paper clip to keep things together or make one of the insert cards yourself and be creative!

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Real Wedding: Kerry+Mike

Nebraska is full of incredibly talented photographers, and I'm always so excited to share their work! I recently had the pleasure of coming across this wedding from Strohm Photography. I'm so impressed with their professionalism and friendliness, not to mention their talent! And the colors and flowers in this wedding are GORGEOUS!

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New Series: Marriage Advice

So often it is easy to get caught up in the wedding preparations without consideration for the reason: marriage. Starting today, NWD is beginning a Sunday series of advice from married women (and men!). All submissions will remain anonymous and can be emailed to holly@neweddingday.com. It can be something as simple as reminding wives to avoid picking fights over dirty socks on the floor to something deeper and more complex like dealing with a spouse's addiction. In a culture of divorce, NWD wants to promote the importance of lasting marriages and help all our lovely brides start their marriage off on the right foot!

Today's advice comes from Sally*:
"Make sure you have the same ideas about how you want to raise your children - what kind of discipline you want to use, how many kids you want to have, what church you want to raise them in, etc. It will prevent a lot of fights if you are on the same page with parenting."

*Name changed.

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Real Wedding from Snippet and Ink

It's always our priority to feature real Nebraska weddings, but every now and then I come across a wedding that would work perfectly in Husker Nation, and Kelly & David's Utah wedding, featured on Snippet and Ink, is a great example. You may know that I'm slightly obsessed with barbecue/picnic-themed weddings, so this wedding is a dream come true for me!

 *Photography by Kate Osborne.

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Friday Freebies!

Today’s giveaway is for the music-minded bride! If you’re still looking for that perfect touch to your ceremony, Heidi Beran is an incredible harpist who will make the day unforgettable. She’s offering $75 off a booking for one lucky bride!

Click HERE to enter! (Must register by Monday, July 26th to win.)

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Bride Blogger Nicole: The Flowers

Hello all! Yesterday I met with Pam, who is the floral manager at HyVee, where we are getting our flowers. She is so nice and has excellent ideas! I'm not much of a green thumb, so I had no ideas, really, on what kind of flowers I wanted, or what would even look good as far as bouquets and boutonnieres. She just guided me right along. I really wanted full-head flowers in my bouquet so we are going with hydrengea, peonies, lilies, and full roses in different shades of purples, some white, and a little bit of deep red.

For centerpieces, my original idea was to have large arrangements on 10-12 of the tables in the Grand Manse. However, the large arrangements that I wanted were going to be around $100 a piece. Our budget didn't really allow for that, so we are going with smaller, purple floral arrangements on 10-12 of the tables , and then on the others, we are going to do floating candles with red petals scattered around them. Here's some photos from theknot.com that will give you an idea of what we're going to do.

I was hesitant about not doing large arrangements, but the more I thought about how much character and beauty the Grand Manse has on its own, the more I was okay with it. That is a huge benefit of having a room that you don't have to decorate from scratch! Now we have more money to spend on other things! :)
-Nicole

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Inspiration Board #23: Summer Sunshine

Let's celebrate this oppressive heat wave by remembering all of the wonderful things about summer! Our intern, Chelsea, has created a fun and breezy inspiration board to remind us all why outdoor summer weddings are still a good idea, even in weather like this.

From left to right:
First row: Dessert table, Wedding cake

Second row: Flower photo, Lemonade photo, Lemon place cards, Plates

Third row: Boutonniere, Invitation, Bouquet

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Bride Blogger Amanda: The One

It’s true what they say about finding your wedding dress - when it’s “the one”, you just know. (I guess the same could be said for your future husband, but that’s another post entirely!) I had a pretty painless shopping experience when it came to searching for my wedding dress. I had a couple of places in Omaha picked out where I could try some things on, and I figured I would spend all day between the two places putting on dresses, taking them off, agonizing, putting on more dresses, not finding anything I liked, agonizing some more and then finally walking out with nothing and having to make more appointments to try on more dresses elsewhere.

Thankfully, my experience was nothing like that.

I went to Suburban Bridal with a pretty good idea of what I was looking for - A-line or mermaid-ish, ruching, minimal beading, no lace, and something that set it apart from all of the other strapless dresses out there, whether that was straps, an amazing back or some other unique detail. I had a hopeful budget as well and didn’t bother to look at too many things that were way over what I felt comfortable spending. I tried on several dresses and found a few that I really liked. It helped to keep track of my top two dresses so I could compare all other dresses to those ones and decide if I liked something better than my previous top picks as I tried things on. I thought I pretty much knew which dress I’d likely end up with, until one of the bridal shop ladies pulled a dress, her favorite recent arrival at the time, that was nothing like I’d ever thought I’d want.

Until I put it on.

I wish I could show you the photo of me in the gown, but I wouldn’t want my fiancé to accidentally come upon my blog post and see it before I’m in it on my wedding day! Suffice to say, it is a gorgeous Sophia Tolli ball gown – a far cry from the slim, stream-lined dress I had had in mind going into my shopping experience. It has a pleated skirt, pretty beaded details (but not too busy) and an extremely flattering fit around the bodice – similar to the one pictured here. Once I was in it, I was hooked! My mom and sister gave it the thumbs up, too. And yes, it did have that special something that set it apart from all the other dresses I’d tried on. But I’ll save that for the wedding pictures!

It took me one store, two hours and 15 dresses to find my dress, but I know most of the time it takes a lot more searching to find the perfect gown. I blew my budget way out of the water, but this was the one case where I didn’t feel too badly because I wanted something that I loved and that I would feel good in. I didn’t want to look back on my pictures and wish I’d gotten something else.

Tips:

• If you’re going to try dresses on over a weekend, definitely make an appointment since most bridal shops get very, very busy on the weekends. You certainly want to make sure you have fairly individualized attention when all the other bridal shoppers start meandering in!

• Come with an idea or two in your head. Look at pictures; check out Nebraska WeddingDay magazine for the latest trends. But that said, try on dresses you think you might not like or you might not have picked out. A gown you never thought you'd like may look totally different on you than you expected, and you wouldn’t want to pass up your dream dress, now would you?

• Take a person or two with you, but not your whole bridal party. That could get overwhelming.

• It’s always nice, but not necessary, to find a place that will do alterations for free if you buy your dress there. And if the store doesn’t, it’s okay to go somewhere else! I found someone who will do alterations for a very reasonable price.

• When trying to determine which size to order, go with your instincts and fit it to your body now, not the one you hope to have come your wedding day. Remember that it’s easier to move little things like snaps, buttons, hooks and eyes and other details than it is to take a dress in several inches – the smaller size might be the way to go depending on where the dress is snug and how it could be remedied. I found this out the hard way!

• Shop early! For certain designer gowns, the wait can be six to eight months for it to arrive. Then figure in alterations, and you’re looking at nine or 10 months turnaround. Most dresses can be rushed for extra. I ordered my dress in October 2009 and it arrived eight months later in June 2010. I have three fittings scheduled with my seamstress which will take me into August, one month before my wedding and almost a year after I ordered my dress!

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Real Wedding: Lauren+Kyle

I am totally into The Leekers...I love their style. Their photos are truly art and this gorgeous wedding is no exception! An added bonus - the wedding was at Tiburon Golf Club, which is an absolutely beautiful location. Other things I love: The bride's gown, the flower girl's headband, and the photo of the dove release...I could go on, but I'll just let you see for yourselves!

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Things We Love!

...these pretty bridal combs for your big day. This seller on Etsy has a ton of different kinds available!

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Things We Love!

I'm an admittedly huge bibliophile, so I fell in love with this when I came across it on Etsy. Wouldn't this screen-printed Mr. Darcy proposal card be a perfect romantic touch at a wedding? Put it by the guest book, the gift table, etc...you don't have to be obsessed with Pride & Prejudice to find the romance!

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Friday Freebies

Today's giveaway is a great one from Lane Weddings! If you haven't heard of him, check out his website and blog, because he's extremely talented. And one lucky bride who enters will win a free engagement session from him! Here's a little sample of some of his work (from both engagement sessions and weddings).

Click HERE to enter! (Must register by Monday, July 17th, to win.)

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