It was an amazing day and started beautifully in Long Beach at the Avia.  Beauty and the Beach came to do our make up and I loved it.

and of course the boys room....

Then it was off to the lobby for a first look. I got a little teary and am so glad that we did this.

Our Ceremony was at the Beautiful Wayfarer's Chapel in Palos verde

Our Reception was at the Long Beach Aquarium of the Pacific.  All of our flowers were done by flower Allie and I could not be happier.  They were beautiful!!! We had a great slideshow that my mom put together. My New Husband and I learned learned the East Coast Swing and danced to Better Together by Jack Johnson.  My dad is a real country dancer, and we dnced to Out of The Clear Blue Sky by George Strait.  We also had a Bridesmaid dance which I choreographed, (I'm a dance teacher so it fit.)

I also changed from a veil to a flower and then to a headband for all the dancing, I couldn't decide. Overall all I can not put it into words what a wonderful beyond my expectations night it was.  

We also had a cheesy photo booth and it was AWESOME!!!

We spent 8 nights at the Sandals Regency St. Lucia and Loved it! 

View from our balcony and the upper pool

Joe Knows Tour

Lots of great dinners

We are having Double Trouble Designs create custom paper products for us that we will print out ourselves.  So far we have a monogram. 

Save the dates we went with design number 2 in the top right corner! We are using Vista print to turn them into magnets and they turned out great!

The monogram was also used to create custom stamps through zazzle.

Double trouble also designed our invitation, I had them printed through Vistaprint and bought silver backing through envelopme.  Double trouble also designed a map for us and we had it printed through vistaprint on a postcard so the map side is shiny and the directions is matte.  They also created an RSVP postcard for us and we made a Zazzle postcard stamp.  The final product is below they turned out beautifully and were very cost effective!

We are doing the small picture holders below which guests will pick up with their escort cards.  We are also doing a photo booth with cheesy photo booth and people will be able to take home as a favor.   Picture holder below.... from http://www.beau-coup.com/ 

Our photo booth will also serve as our guest book and one of the copies of the photos guests will add to adn create their own page in our guest book.  

We went to two places.  One, a mass producing cake place that had okay edible cake... and we met with Erica O'brien.  She uses fresher ingredients and only makes a few cakes each weeken so you are guranteed to have them fresh. We went with Erica, her samples were delicious! I love the all white cakes, but wanted our cake to be fun... so currently our cake inspiration is below with te fish, but  not crooked.  Our cake will be 3 tiers

tier 1- Almond cake with raspberry conserve

tier 2- Chocolate cake with strawberry buttercream 

tier 3- Vanilla bean cake with chocolate buttercream

Here is the inspiration with the actual cake

I didn't think I was going to do these... but then I got really into the idea of making the water bottle labeles.  Our reception is at the Aquarium so I tred to theme them OOT guest bags will include

• 2 water bottles
• travel pouch with two advil
• finding nemos fruit snacks
• goldfish
• 5 pieces of salt water taffy
• 3 hershey kisses
• pack of gum
• crackers with peanut butter
• wedding map, with locations and directions to ceremony
• photo share card
• timeline of weding events and welcome note

I got the timeline layout from http://weddings.shanbritedesigns.com/templates.htm

Waterbottle idea and format from Marchbride2010 the template is here. I made a few changes to the format and did it slightly differently than Marchbride.  I used regular printer paper, printed on the hgihest quality settings then used arrowhead water bottles which worked great because after peelng off the label they left a slightl sticky part to hold the paper while I wrapped it around.  I then put one piece of double sided tape, (the really good stuff I got to make my invitations) for one side then another small ipce on top of that and taped down the other side.  They look great.