If I were to give advice to a bride...

1) Get a good photographer. Make sure you get to know them, take them out to dinner, out for a drink, whatever, just make sure they know you as a couple and it is really important to know what you want from them. We were lucky with Anna, we know her well and vice versa, but my advice to all brides, go with a good photographer, sacrifice other parts of your wedding just to ensure you have a good one!
2) Don't spend a stupid amount of money on your dress, but do splurge on your shoes.
3) Envision and plan YOUR wedding. Know what you want. Luckily no one interfered with my vision, my parent's were extremely supportive and Patrick trusted me. Except when it came to the bar, more on that later.


4) Pick your colors. Then pick your inspiration. I knew my color story before I knew anything else, it helped set the tone and feel of what I wanted our wedding to be. Light, fun, and whimsical. Above is the cover of a vintage American folk art book and to the right is our save the date artwork, it set the tone for the rest of the stationery suite.


5) Let me preface this next one with the fact that I am a product designer, then maybe you won't think I am crazy. CHAIRS - Think about them. The chairs that came with the resort (and free) were your sub standard banquet chairs draped with slip covers. NO WAY! So we had to rent the silver chivari chairs for the reception and the white folding chairs for the ceremony. I didn't want there to be a sea of white fabric, the landscape and natural setting was just too beautiful to be overwhelmed with more white than what was already on the tables.
6) Let your groom have what he wants (here and there). For Patrick, it was the bar, it had to be premium, top shelf liquor.
7) Music - If you have a DJ, like we did for the reception, make sure you go over what kind of music you like with him. Patrick and I are bit fanatic when it comes to music, so the control freaks we are, sent down multiple dvds full of music, labeled with dinner music, dancing music, etc. The DJ played everything we loved, with one exception, "Sweet Caroline" by Neil Diamond, one of Patrick's least favorite songs.


8) Table settings and flowers. Pick out your inspiration and go with it. Go with your gut, your first instinct is always right. I loved this Rebecca Thuss image so much that I had to have lemons somehow be a part of our floral arrangements. Going with the lemon theme, I had lemon drops as the candy favors. Chargers - The chargers the resort used for weddings were black and white, I happened to see the silver chargers at one of the restaurants and asked to have those instead.
9) Make sure you and your groom are on the dance floor for the last song of the night. It was probably one of my favorite moments of the night, most people had already left, and it was just Patrick and I dancing, a nice little moment after all that we worked so hard towards was (for him, finally / for me, sadly) over.
10) Don't waste paper! In our welcome totes we refrained from printing out activity booklets. There would have been about 20 pages of stuff to do in and around the resort, so we made a pdf of everything and sent it out to our guests a few weeks prior to the wedding. It worked out great.


11) Last but not least, every cake needs a cake topper!