Westside Wedding iPhone Apps: Brides Iphone App FREE

The Brides iphone app is sweet and free too bad it was not around last year when I was spending countless hours looking for my wedding dress and the bridesmaid dresses. Check it out ladies, it is awesome!

Westside Wedding loves iphone Apps: iShoes

As you know I love my iphone and it has been my own personal assistant with this whole wedding planning, allowing me to email vendors right away, approving drafts for wedding related items with time constraints and especially with trying to find the right shoes, jewelry, dress etc. The free iphone app iShoes helped me find my shoes & my moms!

1. iShoes

I love that you can email your fav items! This is great if you need to email them to your bridesmaids!

I had initially wanted colored shoes but fell in love with these babies:

and here are my moma's shoes Nine West Women's Janika Sandals,in purple Satin

All you need to know about Wedding Lighting

I knew about Led Lights and twinkle lights but did you know about gobo or pin spotting? me either but thanks to GetMarried.com now I know a lot about lighting! whoop!

{image via http://trendsettingwedding.typepad.com}

DIY: CD Holders/Labels/Playlist for OOT Peeps

MOH here again. I was called upon last minute for a DIY project from WW. UM D you WHAT?! Not usually my thing, so I had to do some research. Things you need to start:

• Good eye for design, clipart, existing theme info colors etc. from bride we had some great starting points from our designer Jeff W.
  
• Photoshop
• Template (I used a really awesome one by Corrie Haffly.)
• Card stock paper
• Quality ink or laser jet printer
• Paper cutter
• Good permanent glue roller
• Martha Stewart Utility Bone Paper Folder (WTF, I know right?!)
• http://hypem.com
• Patience and a whole lotta heart

Can I just say that I really love this Martha Stewart utility bone paper folder?! I had no idea what it was when WW handed it to me and suggested I use it to fold the paper and it came with NO instructions on how it actually folds paper (it looks like a plastic butter knife) but it came to me in a dream on how to actually use it so I made a YouTube how-to video for those of you as clueless as I am. (I hope there are some out there.)





We did two CD versions one for the older generation attendants and one for the younger generation. Here's the first draft of younger generation tracklist:
01 I Gotta Feeling (Dirty Remix) - The Black Eyed Peas
02 Can't Stop Partying - Weezer feat. Lil' Wayne
03 Kings and Queens - 30 Seconds To Mars
04 Pumped Up Kicks - Foster The People
05 All The Right Moves (Danger Remix) - One Republic
06 1901 (What Kind Of Breeze Do You Blow? A-Mix) - Phoenix
07 Heads Will Roll (A-Trak Remix) - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
08 Fireflies Goin Down (Yung Joc vs. Owl City) - The White Panda
09 Timbaland feat JT - Carryout (Vindata Electro Remix) - Vindata
10 Roll Out (Robbery Remix) - Ludacris
11 Circus (Diplo Remix) - Britney Spears
12 (If You're Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To (Rosen Remix) - Weezer

Groomsmen RV trip and gifts

Mi amor had a groomsmen 5 day RV trip in February, it was a chance for all of them to get to know each other, and for some it was the first time meeting. I was very excited for them, I thought it would be time well spent male bonding! I wanted to get them each a car package to take on the trip, it was so much fun putting these together and I even got myself some of the items he he! Here is the list:

1. Party Mix
2. Nestle hot chocolate with mash mellows
3. Beef Jerky
4. Peanut Butter M&Ms - I thought they were the delicious Special Edition Strawberried Peanut Butter M&M's that I had earlier this year but they were just peanut butter. I've never cared for peanut butter & jelly, I think I have had one bite out of  my whole life and I spit it right back out but for some reason I loved the taste of the Strawberried Peanut Butter M&M's ! so freaking good! I thought the boys may enjoy them for breakfast :-)
5. Enamel Coffee Mug 10oz
6. Jack Daniels Coffee
7. Enamel Dinner Plate
8. Enamel Bowl
9. Roll of mentos
10. Stainless Steel 6 Oz Liquor Flasks. Amazon has a great deal on these - Set of 5 for $20, free shipping and no sales tax!
11. 6 Function Stainless Steel Camping Tool aka Hobo Tool I *love* this little tool, I bought one for myself to leave at my desk at work for my lunch!
12. Then I put them all in a Reusable Grocery Shopping Bag !

And since I was already on amazon shopping for the boys, I could not resist getting this stainless steel lunch box for myself :-)

Bachelorette Party Recount: How to Flawlessly Execute the Inherently Flawed

MOH here (and pictured to the right) just popping in to give y'all a recount of how things went down at WW's bachelorette party in Vegas.

In kind of went in several phases, I'll save you the trouble of the details but rather highlights of what to be prepared for (which I was) and questions to ask yourself or things to expect.

1) Know your bride (duh) when planning a party listen to requests and if you have known her long enough you should be able to get the "vibe" down pat. Although bachelorette's are typically a surprise, I don't think the whole thing should be, I mean it's this girl's wedding and shame on you if you should happen to make the wrong decision on venue, dinner, games, outfits, WHATEVER keep some things under wraps, but if you need feedback on something - ASK for it.

2) Herd people. Attendants to bachelorette party can vary from 7-20 people - all of whom do not know each other. Start email chain of open communication or create an event on Facebook so people can talk to each other and get a conversation going before the party.

3) Check in, like, A LOT. People will typically ask you a lot of questions, (especially about cost) which you may not have the entire answer to, keep following up with people to let them know what's going on (waiting on xyz, should be hearing back from abc, etc) to deflect the possibility of a cancellation. (Out of town bachelorettes like Vegas are tough, especially because of travel expenses for the individual, hotel stay etc. the in town ones are too small scale at times and could leave the bride with a less than desirable "event" feel.)

4) Be flexible - don't kill yourself over what your itinerary (oh and BTW HAVE an itinerary for events for the weekend with venues, meets, times, etc and SHARE them with the party) make sure that the things that are most important to happen (games, strip club, dancing, dinner or whatever) - actually happen and smaller less important ones can be rid of accordingly).

5) Props - definitely fun, we passed on the whole "penis" theme with the exception of straws and went for a more fun going out attire and accessories so the bride didn't look the fool and was not afraid to take some pics.

6) Take feedback and listen to others... but at the end of the day the Bride trumps the majority. People tend to have eclectic friends, some who don't party some who party to much and when it comes to things like venues and activities some might be more willing than others, instead of answering questions or requests prevent such things by letting people know BEFOREHAND when sending itinerary that this is what the bride wants to do, loves to do, is excited about etc. I remember a few moments in Vegas when a couple of folks tried to move the party and came up to me for executive party movement. After a few nos I finally said, "WW wants to stay here." BAM! Just like that, dissolved.

7) SAVE UP!!! You *need* need to have several hundred dollars saved up or a clean credit card when anticipating bachelorette party, you'll have to cover all expenses keep receipts and later divvy up the tab among the crew (KEEP YOUR RECORDS.)

8) Be a spin master, if anything negative comes up (drunken brawl - oh wait, that was me actually hehehe), someone gets sick, passes out, or what have you. Be calm cool and collected, laugh it off highlight the bright side, after all the last thing you want is that one bad thing, ruin the weekend and be the only thing that the party and the bride walk away remembering.

Oh yeah and take good pictures, videos, and plan for back up peeps (bridesmaids are good for such things). Know your supporters.

Peace!!!

Happpy Blog Birthday to Chic 'n Cheap Living and a Giveaway!

Happy Blog Birthday to one of my fav bloggers Chic 'n Cheap! She's absolutely amazing, and has been with me & my lil blog since the very beginning, she has motivated me many times with her sweet comments! If you have not done so already you *must* check out her stylish blog and while you are over there check out the giveaways she is having in honor of her blog birthday! My jaw dropped when I saw the giveaway she posted - a Le Creuset 6 quart stock pot !! (insert squeal here).

Westside Wedding and Google RSVP wedding form!

My dearest readers,
I am so sorry for being MIA the past few months, once the 3 month mark hit all of a sudden work was extremely busy and wedding planning took over all my free time. I got so busy that I did not even have time to respond to personal emails which for me is crazy because I have an iphone! So I am so sorry about being MIA but I promise to blog about everything as soon as the wedding is over which is in 17 days! AH! But until then I will try to post about some more resources that have helped me along the way, most relate to my precious iPhone andGoogle.  Without further adeu I present you google form for RSVP!  If I could have only done online RSVP I would have but I was not sure that some of our guests would be down with it. These are some of the reasons that I liked about creating an RSVP form through google:

1. Linking the form to any website & therefor not being limited to any certain wedding website.
2. Choosing exactly what I want the RSVP form to say.
3. Being able to change the form at any time. In my case my parents had first said it was up to us what we wanted for the food so we chose stations & buffet, one month before the wedding they tell us they want sit down dinner, this was a problem considering we did not ask our guests what they wanted because we were doing buffet but for guests who went online we were able to update the form and ask them what their food choice was.
4. Making questions mandatory like leaving a comment he he!
5. The items in the form get automatically put into a google document that you can share with your significant other, you can get notified as soon as someone submits the form and you can use the information on the excel for placecards, thank you cards etc.

Screen shots:

How to make your own google form: Directions are here.

The link from our website:

The first page of the form, it asks for the person's name & email address. I created the form to take the person to a certain page depending on their answer. If they delightfully accept it then goes to the next page2, if they regretfully decline then it takes them to the last page and asks them to leave a comment.

If the delightfully accept then it takes them to Page 2 .

 Page 2: Asks what is their guest name, the type of meal they would like and if they are staying at the hotel. If they are staying at a hotel it takes them to a page that asks what hotel, if they answer no then it takes them straight to the last page to leave a comment.

If they answered yes to "Will you be staying at Hotel", they are taken to another page that asks them for their hotel info. We wanted this so we know where to take the OOT boxes.

No matter what they answer in any question, the last page is always the same - leave us a comment :-) This is my FAV! I love getting the comments :-)

Once the form is submitted it gives them a message from us thanking them for their RSVP

All the info is in a nice google doc!

The Bachelorette Party: Part 3 (Homeward)

The Bachelorette Party: Part 2 (Sin City)

The Bachelorette Party: Part 1 (Pre-Vegas)

On the way to Vegas for the Bachelorette: bride to be, the MOH and the bridesman.