• Bed Bath and Beyond: The ultimate one-stop shop offering items for every room in your home.
• Bloomingdale’s: Lots of luxury bed and bath lines, and a large variety of kitchen equipment and fine china.
• Crate & Barrel: Stylish products – from gourmet cookbooks to the book shelves you’d store them on
• Home Depot: DIY home-improvement items, plus grills, gardening tools and other outdoor gear
• J.C. Penney: Affordable appliances and kitchenware, bedding and linens
• Kohl’s: Everyday essentials (table settings, towels, and more) at bargain prices.
• Macy’s: Hundreds of brands of everything from furniture to flatware.  Registrants receive a Macy’s gift card in the amount of 5 percent of the total purchases made by guests.
• Target: A big selection of high-design products and low prices.
• Tiffany & Co.: Fine china, crystal and silver sets, vases and show pieces – and the signature light-blue box for every gift.
• Williams-Sonoma: High-end appliances, cookware and hard-to-find gadgets.

I am also a huge fan of www.myregistry.com.  You can combine items from every store listed above and many more and create one easy-to-use online registry.

Way back when I decided to open my own wedding planning business, a major goal was to keep wedding planning affordable and accessible to today’s bride.  One of the ways I thought to do this was to offer a course with some major pointers on organization, etiquette, design, vendor selection, and budgeting.

So long story short, I pitched my concepts to Rush-Henrietta Continuing Education and my idea was accepted! The course will occur on Thursday, Feb. 25th from 6:30-9:30.  The cost is $45 for a couple (bride and mother/marrying couple/any one marrying person plus a family member). For information on signing up, please visit Rush-Henrietta’s Continuing Education on the web.  The course number is YF 5014. There was a typo with the instructor name, so rest assured I will be there!  I plan on offering this every season as a cost effective way for DIY brides to get a crash course in planning. 

Of course I think the benefits of hiring a wedding planner far outweigh the costs (see my blog post on this subject here), but this is a nice option for brides on a strict budget.  Hope to see you there!

Try these easy tips to make your wedding more earth friendly!

Caterer: Ask him/her to use more organic and seasonal ingredients and make sure they remember to recycle after the reception.

Favors: Make a favorable donation to an environmental chairty, like Greenpeace, or give the gift of a small tree seedling.

Flowers: Ask your florist to use certified organic flowers and avoid spraying with chemical pesticides.  You can point your florist to a great company called Organic Bouquet.

Invitations:  Use 100% recycled paper and soy-based ink from a company like Green Paper Studio.

Place Cards: Get inspired by the outdoors and print guest names on leaves tied with ribbon or on small stones that guests can either return to a river or add to their home gardens. 

For more on Etsy, check out my cross-post on McKay's Photography blog.

Let’s face it, women really struggle shopping for men. The typical groomsmen does not wear a lot of jewelry; they don’t usually like fancy beauty products; and they don’t tend to appreciate the luxury of a cashmere pashmina.

So what to do? Well you could try putting your fiance in charge, but do you really want to risk wrapping thank you gifts the night before your rehearsal dinner?

Better Together Events to the rescue! To help in your wedding planning needs, I will periodically offer a diverse range of groomsmen gift ideas because, of course, no two wedding parties are the same.

Idea #1: IPOD shuffle (under $50)

• Con: a lot of people own an IPOD; Pro: but shuffles are perfect for working out and for doing stuff around the house, so it’s not a bad idea to have a shuffle in addition to a regular one.
• Con: Can be perceived as generic, especially when each member of the wedding party gets the same thing. Pro: You can make it personal by creating an individualized CD for each person to bestow along with each shuffle. Choose songs that speak to that unique relationship or that encourage reminiscing moments of that time in high school that you belly laughed until 2 am together. (Hmmm… do guys belly laugh? You see my problem – I’m sort of a girl’s girl, but trust me on this IPOD idea!). Anyway, Will Smith’s “Gettin‘ Jiggy With It” always takes me back to my high school days. Did I just date myself? Probably. Moving on, if you are ok with spending a little more, you can make a whole package out of this by placing the shuffle in a personalized beer mug and attaching the CD in a decorative way.

If my inner monologue is not evidence enough, it’s time for me to hit the hay! If you can’t wait for more groomsmen gift ideas, call Better Together Events today for your free initial consultation!

Here’s some tips on creating a stylish and personal wedding website… because you know here at Better Together Events we are totally anti-cookie cutter!

• MUSIC! Yea so the google bots don’t like it, but who cares? You only want your guests to find the website anyway! Pick music that speaks to you and your fiance. But make sure it’s not all sap-central. Include some fun tunes to get guests pumped and excited for your incredible party. Also, think outside the box with music. Sure Etta James has a phenomenal voice, but we all had to hear “At Last” at every single inaugural ball last Jan. You get the point.
• PICTURES! We are a visual society, and most people, saps and cynics included, truly enjoy checking out baby pictures, couple pictures, friends, family, etc. Pictures are great for multiple reasons… 1) Your Aunt Barbara gets to see how cute your fiance was as a 5 year old. 2) It gets the families interacting before the forced interactions and offers some potential sources of ice breaking during the wedding weekend. 3) They’re just plain old fun.
• IT’S LIKE FACEBOOK, BUT FOR YOUR WEDDING! A wedding website presents a forum for people to send good wishes and notes to the couple in a public setting, and it can get to be a lot of fun.
• INFO ALL IN ONE PLACE. The more information, the better. It’s so nice for guests not to have to bother the mother-of-the-bride for registry or hotel information when they can just hop on your website and view everything for themselves.

Oh and just think, at the end of the process, you can call yourself master, web master that is!

I leave you with evidence of why photos are fun… even if it’s one of you and your sisters circa 1984 in matching pink overalls no less.

It really is such a help to have all these little supplies available on your wedding day, and it is a must for any wedding planner. Don’t have a planner? Definitely consider putting one of these together because the last thing anyone should spend their time doing on their wedding day is running around trying to find clear nail polish or a band aid! You don’t want to waste a moment of your day worrying about such things.

Of course my first recommendation would be to hire a wedding planner like myself to provide my tried and true emergency kit and handle the entire day with ease. But if you don’t have a planner and don’t have time to put together your own kit, these P.H.E.W. kits come stocked with items like bobby pins, fashion tape, clear deodorant, pain reliever and antacid, tissues, tampons, chalk to rub over grass stains, etc. for under $30. Don’t forget to toss in your lip makeup and you’re set! Check out their website PhewKits.com to order on-line and to see their other great products like Travel Kits (good for the honeymoon!) and Diaper Kits (great baby shower gift idea).
My kit is a bit less official looking (it’s an extra large quilted makeup bag from Pottery Barn – a gift from a dear friend), but includes more items than in P.H.E.W.’s kit, like moleskin for tired feet, oil absorbing sheets for fresh looking makeup, emery boards, clear nail polish, mints, needle/thread, buttons, scissors, hand lotion, lip balm, powder, small mirror, tweezers, comb, hairspray, batteries, and beyond! I apologize in advance for this pun, but…: All materials needed to get hitched without a hitch!

I’m a particular fan of this new 44 cent “King and Queen of Hearts” love stamp. I especially love that the Queen is bestowing flowers onto the King… very open-minded and representative of the modern woman and modern bride. My husband and I also love the game of Hearts, so I suppose that may have something to do with my affinity for this stamp.

What I’m getting at with that personal reference is that couples can use stamps to add a personal tough to their invitations. At Better Together Events, we are all about making weddings unique and personal; why not add an individualized touch with the stamps? I know of one couple that even put Star Wars stamps on the response cards to honor the groom’s love of all things Star Wars. I say kudos to his fiance for being so open minded!

You can even have fun with invitations that require extra postage. I just received an invitation in the mail with this colorful and summery Dragonfly stamp, which I absolutely love!

And there is always the classic heart stamp, which is always changing colors.
Want something different, but still wedding-ish? Try this new Wedding Cake stamp for heavier envelopes.

Many times couples will throw multiple stamps together to create a unique look. Martha Stewart is a huge fan of combining vintage stamps on one envelope. This is a great look, but comes with a heftier price tag of course, which is not a good thing Martha!

All I know is that I’m glad The Simpsons stamps weren’t out when I got hitched. I can just picture my mom’s face opening up her invitation dressed with Homer Simpson’s screaming mouth…