Destination Guest Book Ideas

I am seeing some hugely creative ideas on the internet for guest book ideas, from vintage typewriters set up on tables, so let's hope all your guests will type out a personal message and hopefully despite their drunken haze be able to hang this from a beautifully decorated wishing tree or be able to assemble scrabble pieces in a cohesive form :)

I of course love all these ideas as they are hugely creative, but let's be honest, they are not practical from a European wedding point of view.

Let's face it most of your guests by the time they are presented with a guestbook to sign would have downed the best part of a bottle of champagne or sangria and will not have any co-ordination to test their keyboard skills on an old typewriter or delicately hang perfectly formed cards on a tree.

A destination wedding as well also poses the problem of getting everything home. It is all very well to make up a park bench and have your guests write on it and put it in your garden, but if you are getting married in Spain or Italy it is going to cost you a fortune to get this creative artifact to your homeland.

Having been working on this idea with some of our brides for our weddings this year, by far the better options are to have a photo or video booth, this can be set up for you here in Spain by our wonderful Becky Sharpe, she created an amazing video booth last year for a wedding here.

Or to have a wishing well such as a birdcage where guests can post their messages into this (hopefully!) and you can take them home and mount them into your wedding guest book, a normal shop bought guest book just set out or another lovely idea I have suggested this year for our brides is to go onto a site such as Blurb and create your own personalised guestbook.

This is a fabulous idea, and if you take a look at the Blurb site, for example, you can create and design you own book.

Upload photos of you and H2B, some fabulous photos of the country and venue you are marrying in, in our case Andalucia, perhaps photos of your guests as well could be fun and leave blank pages for them to leave their messages.

You can also add in questions for them to answer such as, where do you see us in 25 years time, any tips for a happy marriage, etc and see what messages and replies you get!

I love this idea as it is creating something truly unique for your wedding day and such fun to look at afterwards, you could even follow this book up with another one about your honeymoon and the first year of married life, a sequel!

This is also an easy option to get everything home and to be practical, as much as us creative divas love to think we will create a fabulous scrapbook after the wedding, there are many of us that will become bogged down with work and back to a 'normal' life and this will take a back seat and may never get done.

By creating this personalised book with photos and fun questions plus the guests comments it is already done and dusted will save more time and effort when the honeymoon period is over and normality returrns.

You will have a wonderfully personalised guest book on your coffee table without any effort on your part apart from having created it in your wedding excitement and another lovely part of building up to the day!

I have certainly got some of my brides thinking about this idea which is very simple and not expensive and yet fun to do so I hope I have given you some inspiration too for your wedding day by creating your own personalised guest book idea.

Spanish Wedding Inspirations and Ideas

I do always feel that if you are planning a destination wedding it is a wonderful idea to try to incorporate some of that country's style and tradition into your wedding.

I am of course constantly looking at Spanish themes and details for our weddings, whether it be a full on spanish affair or just little touches here and there I hope to inspire our 2011 and 2012 brides with touches of Andalucian passion into their weddings!

There are some wonderful ideas to be had when creating your wedding with a Spanish feel from the fans (abanicos) of course, to the lace details, the spanish love their lace, churros and chocolate, tapas and soaking in the passion of Spain.

The combination of dramatic flamenco style dresses and lace veils, the beautiful spanish guitar music and the sultry, passion fuelled flamenco theme works so well for a wedding celebration.

I created this inspiration board for a lovely bride that is planning her wedding here this year and is keen on a truly full on spanish affair for her day, which we are hugely excited about.

Using dramatic deep reds, whites and blacks combined with lace and fans, but of course, as ever, done in a stylish understated way.

I love the element of teal in this inspiration board, combined with this colour scheme to break it up and create a more calming influence on the reds and blacks.

There is always I think a fine line between a stylish and tacky theme and it is easy to fall into the latter, with dare I say nylon lace, plastic favours and fans and castanets for me are a no no. I have only had this request once thank goodness and managed to steer them away from the idea.

What I did find interesting though is that castanets are actually a professional musical instrument that you can pay 100's of euros for the proper instrument so forget your cheap plastic version it is an art unto itself.

Pick the colour scheme, reds and blacks, dramatic colours but do always try to add in a third colour to break this combination up to create a more stylish effect otherwise you will look like a Halloween party.

As mentioned previously teal is always a fabulous colour to break this hard colour scheme up, as is saffron, orange, lemon, perhaps a lime or a fuchsia, but you need to lift this colour scheme with details colours and accents particularly for a wedding.

Garlands and bunting are huge this year so try to incorporate this into your decoration as it has so much impact at eye level, or above, and adds in that fun party element to the day's festivities.

Then add in the important details such as the lace embossed stationery, beautifully presented fans to match the decorations, some dramatic dark or lace linens and sultry lighting with lots candles and fire torches and you are well on your way.

(Clapping and stamping will have to come from the guests!)

Have pinatas strung up, particuarly if you have lots of children at your wedding, but they are just as much fun for the grown ups! this is a very popular tradition in Spain for parties, we love them!

Perhaps if you wish to go further offer locally pressed olive oils,miniature moscatels or brandies as favours, again beware of the tacky ones and have beautifully dressed bottles with carefully designed tags.

Get this wrong and it is awful, only as we were discussing this as well the other day, perhaps I am slightly too fussy but I just hate tack!

I get lots of samples all the time from potential suppliers and am amazed that they can't leave the cheap and nasty behind them.

Anycase perhaps I am waffling on, as I do but normally, but we buy the favours in strip them and decorate them in-house now as we cannot find anyone that does offer the stylish and elegant enough for us.

End your evening or start the next day's celebrations with a fabulous churros and chocolate bar, always a big hit anytime of day and brings in again that wonderful spanish theme into your wedding and who does not love churros and thick creamy chocolate :)

Another interesting idea I was discussing this week, with one of our brides, was the guest book dilemma. It is difficult when you are planning a destination wedding to make sure you can get everything home.

We do of course offer this service as part of our planning, you can send things to us to set up or you can leave things here for us to ship back to you.

But the guest book dilemma, I suggested she had time to create her personalised wedding guest book on a website such as Blurb.

Perhaps a book created using images of Spain, Andalucia and photos of yourselves and your families, how you met, photos of you on your holidays together, the engagement, etc.

You could head pages with questions such as where do you see us in 25 years time, any tips for a good marriage, etc and leaving pages blank so that the guests could write in it their messages and advice for you.

A sequel possibly with a honeymoon and first wedding anniversary book along with comments from the wedding website, an interesting idea I think and certainly one that is easily transported home and to show the kids when they are older!

Another lovely idea is to have beautiful Andalucian or personalised postcards made up (yes we do these as well) with stamps and your address on them that the guests can pick up at your wedding, go away and write a message to you and post them back to you.

When you get back from your honeymoon you will find a post box full of lovely wedding messages to place in your wedding scrap book.

On this note I am now dreaming of our hot summers and all the delightful weddings we are working on for the next two years and hope we are inspiring you with lots of novel and fabulous ideas for your destination wedding in the balmy Mediterranean, albeit it is cold, gloomy and raining here currently!

Country Valentine Inspirations

As we get ready for the romantic Valentine's day, I have been searching again for some beautiful inspirations and was delighted to find this fabulous blog, Postcards and Pretties.

I adore this Valentine inspiration board complete with the macaroons, gorgeously understated and being a packaging and twine lover this is perfect for some Sunday inspiration.

So refreshing without the red and pink bling we see everywhere this time of year.

I wanted to find something different as I was getting quite frustrated at finding nothing to feed my creative quest at the moment and this blog has just done this for me, introducing all sorts of ideas, new talents and inspirations so that is my Sunday afternoon taken care of now!

Honeymoon Murders

I have never posted anything sad on my blog as for me weddings are a hugely exciting and beautiful time, but I have been shocked and hugely saddened at the latest news regarding these beautiful brides being murdered on their honeymoons in Africa and Mauritius.

I would like to mention at this point that my heart goes out to these families that are left reeling from these heinous crimes that have been committed.

It is always lovely to plan a wedding and then to elope off to some exotic country for your honeymoon but having travelled extensively when I was in my twenties, I think people do need to be aware of the dangers of travelling to these glamorous resorts that have sprung up in what are basically poverty stricken third world countries.

Whilst the five star hotels and resorts are fabulously luxurious and have everything you could possibly want at your beck and call, you only have to walk outside of these complexes and the difference in culture is shocking, they are literally surviving on nothing, starving, desperate people living by their wits. The close proximity to which these shanty towns are surrounding the resorts are really quite scary and it is obvious they are there for a reason to live off the money that the resorts are bringing in.

I have always found this shocking contrast in lifestyles difficult to digest and vividly recall one incident. I was working on the cruise ships many years ago in Mexico, a friend of mine had a classic accident of diving into a shallow pool and hitting her head, which resulted in a trip out from the comfort zone of the 5 star luxury hotel we were put up in to a godforsaken place without basic sanitation to have a head x-ray in some mudhut.

The images I saw that day have stayed with me, children literally sitting in ditches of raw sewage with wide eyes, no shoes and dressed in rags, wondering who on earth we were, they had nothing, and yet this was a 20 minute ride in a taxi from a glamorous resort and we were in some ramshackle hut set up in the middle of nowhere having a head xray which was also quite barbaric and I remember lots of screaming.

I was aware then of the threat we were under having left the resort and wondering why the taxi driver had taken us to this desolate place and when we thankfully finally made it back to the ship I was relieved to say the least.

My friend was unfortunately very ill and kept passing out so she was airlifted off the ship that night by an emergency helicopter and taken back to Miami with serious concussion. She stayed in hospital in Miami for 10 days and still had black eyes when I met up with her again.

I have been lucky, I have travelled around the world and come back in one piece, but if you do have to book these fabulously exotic honeymoons take your wits with you. In the case of the poor Irish girl murdered I don't think you can prevent this atrocity as she had not left the resort and was murdered apparently by staff there (which is even more frightening) but be aware you are visiting hugely deprived areas and don't leave the hotels or complexes just enjoy your time there and then take a taxi straight to the airport.

Extreme poverty and luxurious settings together are always going to be dangerous places to go.

On this note I have had brides even here in Spain that leave their sensible notions and ways behind and have been robbed here, so please do be aware where there are tourists there is always someone that wants your money, phones and jewellery so please do just be careful and sensible.

Fabulous Inspirations for 2011 weddings!

OMG I have just stumbled upon this fabulous Zenadia Design, that is so worth a visit as it has everything I imagined possible for the 2011 wedding trends and sums the style of 2011 weddings up perfectly.

The blues are everywhere making a huge comeback from the elegant navy to the ice blues, combined with the corals and peaches and still using the vintage washed out ivories.

For me personally it is the first inspiration board I absolutely love, although I am torn :)

It was the navy inspirations I was looking for tonight and I was surprised how many colours work well with navy from the lime greens, oranges to the pale nude pinks, bright pinks and yellows.

We will be posting more navy ideas for weddings shortly as we are working with many beautiful weddings using this colour but all the shades of blues and greys are popular this year, however not turquoise though seems to have had it's day for now, but more sharper or subtle blues are the way forward with a warm coral or peach.

I also have a feeling watching the fashion world that the oriental theme will be back but with bolder colours which I think reflects on the third inspiration board we have posted on here tonight with the slight tropical theme. I will be also researching this trend and posting more about this as well.

I do hope this helps our brides and our readers to get creative, I love it when I stumble upon sites like this, they are worth their weight in gold and we thank them for sharing their ideas with us and I am grateful they continue to inspire me.

Pale Metallic Mood Boards

Whilst I was over at Wedding Nouveau this morning I found these two beautiful mood boards in pale metallics, one silver and one golds which I thought would be lovely to share with you.

The pale metallics are very much still the vogue for weddings, teamed up with duck egg blues, champagne and light corals. Truly elegant and stylish combinations and the top mood board has the fairy light tree photo that I purchased recently!

Free Wedding Websites

I think it is a fabulous idea to have a personalised wedding website, especially if you are having a destination wedding, as you can load up so much information on there for your guests travelling in from afar.

I have been chatting with one of my brides, Lauren, about creating one and found this fabulous free wedding website page this morning on Wedding Nouveau. In fact I am sure if you google free wedding websites loads would come up but I have to be out this morning to my accountants so dare not do this as I would be here all morning!

Wedding Nouveau offer these very stylish sites that include features such a photo galleries, guest books, online RSVP and group emailing. You can put on directions to your wedding, recommended places to stay, local useful numbers such as taxi's, restaurants, etc, how easy does this make your life!