Save BIG Money on Your Destination Wedding Dress

Here's an insider tip to save a lot of cash on your destination wedding dress.
Bridesmaids dresses can be ordered in white, ivory or champagne in addition to
lots of other colors.

Some bridesmaid dresses make the PERFECT destination wedding dress in the
right color. Alexia Design style # 2822 is a parchment taffeta done with a rouched skirt,
strapless and has a beaded and embroidered belt. Under $200!!! It even has a built in crinoline so you don't have to buy one.

Alexia also does style # 2818 in charmeuse which is a popular fabric. It has a strapless top and a hip belt. Very chic and if you were to order something comparable in a destination dress, you'd pay easily $500. This is under $185.00.

Or Alexia # 2120 which is a hip wrapped halter with crystal embellishments on the strap. The fabric is parchment taffeta and the style is HOT! Under $160.

I'm talking about quality, well made fashions with a great fit. These are not your junk store informals you sometime see on the internet.
Your bridal shop may not tell you but all the maid companies make dresses that will adapt well to a destination wedding. Some fabrics may not be available in your style, but most will. Plan ahead, order a minimum of 4 months in advance and you'll have a dream dress that looks uber expensive on a beer budget.

What's a Weddingmoon?

Doesn't weddingmoon sound romantic? A weddingmoon is a wedding and a honeymoon combined. Its your basic destination wedding IF you honeymoon at the same spot as the wedding.

A weddingmoon is the best of both worlds. Its a stress free wedding and you are immediately on your honeymoon. You've traveled in advance. You've done all the legwork in advance. You "I Do" and relax.

A traditional wedding is a wedding at home then you travel to your honeymoon.
A lot of time pressed couples choose a weddingmoon over a traditional wedding because of time constraints. They don't waste a day after the wedding traveling. You arrive, get married and instant honeymoon. Couldn't be easier!

You can weddingmoon on a cruise ship, at the beach, at a Caribbean resort, in Mexico, Hawaii, Europe or Las Vegas. The weddingmoon is all about you as a couple. Once they hotel or resort knows you are weddingmooners, you'll get special treatment!

For more information on weddingmoons and destination weddings, check out Beach Bride 2 Be. Its a free guide to planning your destination wedding! Stop in, digg the site!

My Wedding in Las Vegas!

My husband and I just celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary. For us it was a major milestone. I'm not exactly easy to live with. I'm disorganized, he's precise. I can talk to anyone about anything, he's a little shy. I'm out there, always ready for an adventure. He's always weighing the consequenses. I dance on tables, he's reserved. Life with me is not dull.

When we met, he was widowed super young with two little boys. I had 5 dogs and owned a bridal shop. Somehow, we survived 25 years! We were more surprised than anyone.

In my family, its a tradition to have a huge anniversary party and renew your wedding vows. Well, I didn't want a party. I always joked that I wasn't renewing our wedding vows unless I did it in front of Elvis in Vegas. I said it once, I meant it and I'm still here.

He goes with me twice a year to the bridal conventions in Las Vegas and he wanted to check out wedding chapels. My job IS weddings and I didn't want any part of spending my time off looking at wedding venues. Too much like work. I wanted to do Vegas.

So 6 months before our anniversary he announces that we're renewing our vows in front of Elvis and he already has the airline tickets. So suddenly, I'm planning a wedding. My wedding, again!

We choose the Graceland Wedding Chapel and the gold lame Elvis which turned out to be Kent Ripley. The chapel was amazing, it looked like a small church and the staff was very attentive, especially when a bee landed on my flowers and stung me.

Graceland chapel made planing so easy. We picked our flowers (yeah, I even had a bridal bouquet), the time which Bruce insisted had to be the exact time of our original wedding, our vows, our photography package and the songs we wanted Elvis to sing. A limo picked us up and there we were! I can't imagine an easier way to get married and I'm in the biz.

Kent was awesome! And he can sing! It was fun, it was romantic and it was way more than I ever could have imagined. Kent is a licensed minister and pronounced us "still married". We danced while he sang to us. He did a lot of Elvis moves and then we took the Elvis vows. We vowed never to step on each others blue suede shoes, to never OWN a pair of blue suede shoes and that Bruce would always be my hunka hunka burning love. It was hard to do without laughing. OK..so we laughed and laughed and we ended up high fiving each other on a job well done. I married my best friend and it was the best choice I've ever made. The ceremony ended with a rendition of "Viva Las Vegas" and as we walked back to the chapel door "Elvis has left the building".

I didn't want to do the Las Vegas wedding renewal, but it was the PERFECT way to celebrate! It was just the two of us, in Vegas, having a blast.

The Graceland Wedding Chapel was another great choice. Kent Ripley is and always will me our personal Elvis.

Wedding Vow Rings , Your vows engraved inside!

My husband and I were flying back from renewing our wedding vows in Las Vegas for our wedding anniversary. We renewed our wedding vows with "Elvis" at the Graceland Wedding Chapel. Cheesy? Not really, it was fun and it was romantic. So Bruce says "This is what we should have done for our new wedding rings." I'm like what NEW wedding rings? OK..he shocked me during the ceremony with a new ring, but we didn't get new wedding rings.

He showed me this ad in the onboard magazine:



I've never seen a wedding band with the vows written inside and thought it was cool. Our original wedding bands had our initials and date engraved. There wasn't room to engrave much more. We were limited to like 20 characters. Its hard to say what you feel in 20 characters.

Laser technology has made it possible to engrave your wedding vows inside the ring..and you get 225 characters. You can have your entire wedding vows engraved, or a love poem or a secret saying known only to the two of you.

I am buying one for my husband for Christmas with the renewal vows we exchanged in Las Vegas. I thought about putting inside "take off this ring and I'll hurt you" or "Forget your married and I get the dog, your car AND the house", but my husband is a super guy. So I'll get the vows engraved inside...the Elvis vows. And I have them on a DVD, so it will be easy to get them exact. And I can't wait to see his face!

An Affordable Hawaiian Wedding on NCL

Do you think a wedding in Hawaii is out of your price range? Think again.
7 Day Hawaii Cruise starting at $599

Norwegian Cruise Lines offers affordable wedding packages in Hawaii. You can get married on board the ship or on land. Their wedding packages include EVERYTHING you need to get married including the services of a wedding coordinator. Your ceremony, legal officiant, music, wedding cake and professional pictures its all included when you book your wedding package.

Compare a land based wedding on one of the islands to a cruise ship wedding. All your meals, entertainment and lodging for a week are included on a cruise ship. The price makes it very affordable. It just makes sense to marry through NCL for a romantic wedding in Hawaii.

The cruise ship is your floating hotel and you are automatically on your honeymoon!
You can do it all on board the ship or free style cruise. You can eat when and where you want, participate in activities onboard or just lounge on deck and soak up the rays.

NCL cruises the Hawaiian islands. If you are a US citizen, you don't need to have a passport like you would if you were traveling to the Caribbean.

A wedding In Maui goes under....

This poor bride took a dunking...

Getting married in Hawaii

Hawaii is romance! The swaying palm trees, the tropical breezes, the sunkissed beaches, the tropical flowers, the windswept beaches. Its romantic and a perfect place for a destination wedding.

In Hawaii you can have your wedding your way from the traditional wedding, beach or mountain wedding to Hawaiian lei ceremony where you exchange tropical floral lei's. You can marry at a state park beach, a private beach, a private estate, a large beach resort, the choices are endless as are the price ranges. From budget to lavish, you can do it all in Hawaii.

We recommend if you have no knowledge of the islands, that you do a lot of research. Molokai is the least touristy and the most true Hawaiian. Hawaii is the "big island" that has everything from beaches to snowy mountains
including Kilauea, the most active in Volcano's National Park. Kauai is the northernmost island in the chain and is known for outdoor adventures and the "Grand Canyon of the Pacific", Waimea Canyon. Oahu is the capitol of the
islands and the most populated island. You can go to the legendary Waikiki beach or watch the world famous surfers conquer the waves on the North Shore or go to Pearl Harbor. Lanai has not ONE traffic light and is the place for privacy. Lanai has golf , hiking, off roading and dolphin watching.

To continue reading and for information on getting a marriage license in Hawaii, click here.

Long Range Wedding Day Weather Forecast

A bride challenged me to help her to schedule her outdoor wedding on a day without rain. What do I look like, God? That's why you develop a plan B for your outdoor wedding. If it rains you move it indoors. Its not rocket science. But she insisted there HAS to be a way to know for sure.

So I hit the web. I vaguely remember seeing a web site that said you could predict the weather way in advance for beach weddings. I couldn't find it.

There are a lot of sites that talk about weather prediction. The amount of weather statistics made me break out in a rash. There are even some sites that for a fee will guarantee you 85% accuracy of their long range prediction. I don't know what they will give back if they are wrong. How you can even prove that it rained where you were if they said it was going to be dry? You can't just plug in a date and a place and read the forecast. Wouldn't it be awesome if we could? Weather is science and Mother Nature is not always predictable. How many times are you looking out on rain and the idiot on the radio is talking about sunshine?

Instead I came to the conclusion that not much trumps the good Old Farmers Almanac and a plan B.