Sandisk has offered TEN of their newest, cutest flash drives --"Cruzer Gators"-- for one of you to give to your bridal party. You're looking at a possible $400 value here, ladies.
You pick your color – red (4G), pink (2G) or black (4G) and Sandisk will ship them directly to you upon my selection of the winner. Consider the possibilities of loading these up with some of your favorite songs, photos, and other memories before sharing them with your dearest friends.
If you want to win these very customizable gifts for your bridal party, you need to prove to me that your wedding reflects that kind of customization. Here are the rules:
1. Post a comment below telling me how you're making your wedding YOURS. How will it be a reflection of you as a couple, rather than just another basic wedding? How are you customizing your day beyond the typical cookie-cutter format? Show me that you know how to "think INSIDE The [White] Box."
2. Only one comment is allowed per person.
3. Comments may be posted through next week Wednesday, May 21. No entry will be considered after the clock strikes midnight (CST) at the start of Thursday.
4. The White Box Design Team will select the response that we believe is the best example of inside-the-white-box design.
5. The winner will be announced on Friday. I will email the lucky bride for her address at that time.
Good luck!
14 comments:
We are having a casual/fancy affair. We would like it to be chic, but casual inexpensive at the same time. We are having a sit down dinner, but a nacho bar later in the night.
To save some money, I am having only my bouquet made and one of my super crafty BMs and I are going to make the BM bouquets the night before. We already practiced and are confident with this decision. I decided the bride bouquet is looked at/photographed much more anyway.
We sought out some great sales and had our GMs buy suits instead of renting (why doesn't everyone do this!?) They have green pocket squares rather than a bout. I am wearing a tea length dress with green shoes! We are planning on getting our whole wedding party green shoes to wear at the reception
So many other fun things I have swimming in my head, but I dont know if I'll have the time or money to do them all!
These are such a wonderful and non-traditional gift to share.
It is the strategic details that will make our wedding unique and representative of our personalities. Our wedding is booked at a historic mansion on the Connecticut coast-it has character just like the 100+ year old brownstone where we live. The groom and I are designing and printing all of our own paper products from the ‘Save the Dates’ to the programs on 100% recycled taupe paper with red text. Family members will be a vital part of our big day as my uncle marries us, our aunts’ decorate, and our siblings bring the celebration. My dress is pale antique gold and it was the only one that I tried on that even looked like me; it came straight off the rack and was under budget. The veil and cake are out, I will wear a creative rose wire hairpiece and we will serve a fall inspired chocolate torte with berries or apples. Our decorations, centerpieces, and color palate will be strongly influenced by the fall season and harvested locally. Guests will be greeted with gourds at their place settings. The Groom will wear brilliant new socks! (New socks are one of his favorite things.) Fish will be served to all at the Groom’s special request.
We are freely and joyfully modifying traditions to suit our personalities and while planning a wedding for 80 of our closest friends and family members this October. The decision to modify has been difficult at times but our families are embracing it. With each decision we make, we have been able to focus on the people and things that we love and (most importantly!) able to focus on the start of a marriage.
The way we have made the wedding our own, is that we have involved so many of our close family and friends in the process. The people are the most important part of the day, because the day will come and go but the people around us will be the ones supporting us throughout our lifetime of marriage.
We have had to be creative in every aspect of our wedding to reduce the costs of the wedding. We had my sister take engagement pictures, which she was able to make into save the date cards. For our invitations, my mom and I created the ideas, and put them into place. We had the help of friends and even my fiance! We have had great advice from people who have gone through this before. We have a great friend who will be helping with arranging our bouquets and helping with all the wedding coordination, I hear she is pretty good at the job!
We are looking forward to our big day and all the helping hand involed in every aspect of it!
My fiance and I are doing a lot of DIY in our wedding to fit our personalities. There will be lots of Louisiana flair in the wedding as well to make it more "us". Favors will be our favorite candies, and we want our cake topper to reflect how we are big sports fans (but from different teams). We haven't figured out how to incorporate our techie careers in the wedding, but we want to do that as well!
I have always wanted to be a June bride since my birthday is in June and my favorite color has always been yellow. My fiancé even proposed with a pearl ring. Our wedding will have a June theme (pearls and yellow). My grandmothers are no longer living, so I will be carrying one’s handkerchief and using the other’s sugar cookie recipe as the favors. They will be cut out in flower shapes and frosted in a matching yellow.
My fiance proposed at Magic Kingdom and it was truly magical...there were even fireworks!!! We desire to incorporate some of that "Disney magic" into our wedding day so my bridesmaids are each wearing Disney princess-inspired dresses and my dress is being designed by the extraordinary Kirstie Kelly (LOVE her!!!). My shoes are replicas of Cinderella's glass slippers and a friend has even designed a matching mini glass slipper for us to use as a cake topper!!! My prince charming and I can't wait to dance the night away to our favorite Disney tunes.
In an effort to save money, I have decided to enlist the help of my close friends and family to make our wedding a DIY project. We plan on making everything from dresses and bouquets to centerpieces and an Ipod playlist. This will allow for some fun bonding time and for everyone to get involved – it’s a real family affair! We don’t have a specific theme, just a color (purple) and polka dots. I plan on using a lavender polka dot ribbon to help tie up favors, flowers and even to be used on my cake (done by my aunt and decorated with snapdragons and purple roses).
Since we're a little older than the typical bride and groom -- I'll be 36, he'll be 42 -- our friends have been to countless weddings. Our hope is that ours will feel less like a traditional wedding and more like a big, fun, sweaty party -- and a party at which there's a real sense of place, friendship, and family.
For our interfaith ceremony, we'll be getting married under a chuppah (marriage canopy) made from my grandmother's linen tablecloth. (She passed away last fall.) My sister and her husband used the same cloth for their chuppah a year ago, so it has even more meaning to us.
My fiance's childhood minister died of cancer last year, so his wife will stand in and marry us on his behalf and in his memory.
I will be walking down the aisle to a song sung by two of my cousins, accompanied by a friend of ours on guitar. It's a song by a little singer-songwriter group called the Weepies; their music has special meaning to us, as we were listening to them during a picnic breakfast on my 35th birthday when my fiance proposed.
My family has a house near the water in Maine. The beach we spend lots of time on is filled with beautiful rocks. We have collected dozens and dozens of these rocks; my father will varnish each rock to bring out their colors and make them glossy; then I'll write our guests' names and table numbers on them with paint pens for organic and meaningful place cards. (All of the rocks will be sitting in trays of moss.) At the end of our reception, we'll ask everyone to deposit their rock in a basket so we can take all of them home and make a rock garden out of them in our yard. That way our garden will always carry memories of our friends and family who attended our wedding.
Smaller rocks that we've collected from the same beach will go inside our centerpiece vases.
Since I am from the Northeast and my fiance is from the South, our reception food will have a North/South theme: one station will have New England seafood, while the other will have Southern barbecue.
We got permission from our catering company to allow the head bartender from our favorite bar, where many of our friends hang out, to come to our wedding reception to make a specialty cocktail that he's created just for us.
We have two months until our wedding -- hopefully we'll come up with even more fun and meaningful ideas before then!
I'm making my wedding my own while being on a new college grad. budget. I love daisies along with pink and yellow. So the bridesmaids are each wearing a black tea length dress (something they will hopefully want to wear again) along with alternating pink and yellow ribbons around the waist line. The groomsmen will match a pink or yellow daisy boutonniere to the bridesmaid’s color of ribbon they walk down with.
A man from my church is also very crafty. He's using wood to make signs going down the aisle say "I take you Mike" and "I take you Lachelle." When you're looking down the aisle the words should say our wedding vows.
Out in the church foyer by the gifts there will be hanging daisies (also made by the same man in my church.) Each one will have pink or yellow pedals and inside of each will be a little bit of Mike's and my story. Such as how we met, our first kiss, etc.
In addition, as you come into sign the guest book there will be a old window frame filled with pictures telling the story of how Mike and I grew up and God brought us together. It's an old white widow pane filled with Sepia colored pictures. I plan to hang this in our bedroom once we're married and use the daisies telling our story as decorations in the kitchen. Nothing like making wedding decorations incorporate into future home decorations!
The food is all being prepared by women in the church as a wedding present to Mike and me (including our wedding cake.) We have some great cooks…so it should be wonderful!
My fiance and I have a very low budget, so our wedding is going to be thrifty, yet elegant and fun.
We have employed the help of many of our closest friends and family.
Our wedding is in December and instead of the typical reds and greens, we are having a brown and pink wedding. Pink rose topiaries will be the centerpieces at the reception. They have all been made in advance by a special friend.
My aunt is making our gorgeous cake with sparkly sugar and raised snowflakes. The cake topper was my grandmothers, who was married in the 1940's.
My mom and I are making our favors - at each place will be a snowflake shaped gingerbread cookie with light pink icing details.
I babysit for multiple families and I have had the children cut out tons of paper snowflakes which we will hang from the ceiling and sprinkle around the tables.
My mom is making my veil, and I will wear her ballet slippers under my floor length gown.
Our Groomsmen will purchase suits instead of renting tuxedos - for the same price! We are buying them baby pink ties to wear - which will also pose for our gift to them.
The Bridesmaids will wear satin chocolate brown dresses - I have chosen the color, fabric and company and the style of the dress is up to each of them. I want them to be comfortable - and purchase a dress that they might wear again.
The food is going to be fun, casual and inexpensive. A great friend of ours makes the chicken salad at a local coffee shop - she will make our chicken salad crossaints. Since there will be quite a few children present - we will serve lots of finger foods, including PB&J sandwiches.
All in all, we want our friends and family to enjoy their evening with us, and we want each part of the ceremony and reception to be "us-inspired."
My fiance Michael and I are doing two key things: embracing our favorite colors and our families. This seems simple, but it's going to be fun and creative on a tiny budget. First, we found a beautiful old church with a magical long isle to rent for free (because he is a pastor!) Our favorite colors are blue and orange, and so dresses/vests are blue and all the flowers will be bright tiger lilies and white roses. I am designing our save the dates, invitations, stationary and keeping it elegant on a budget! We are "keeping it in the family" by using my sister in law at the photographer, another sister in law is making the cake, Michael's family is italian so our reception is at a beautiful italian bistro, a friend is making the flower girl dresses (who are cousins and a ring bearer is a nephew), and i will be wearing my grandma's jewelry, and possibly my cousin's veil. In keeping with the theme, we are giving each woman that comes to the reception a tiger lily as her favor, and the guys will be getting a golf ball with our name/wedding date on it, because that is mike's favorite sport.
I know this may seem traditional, but we have had to be extremely creative to make an elegant and personal wedding with very little in the bank!
It’s important to us to have a unique, personalized wedding without being over-the-top cheesy. This is what we’ve come up with so far. We hope the unusual mix of a garden ceremony with an elegant modern reception will represent our love of the outdoors along with our modern tastes. Our ceremony will be in my parents’ backyard on the river. The ceremony near the water is great since we love boating, wakeboarding and all things Wisconsin lake related. Readings (Kahil Gibron) will support our views on marriage with respect to two people complimenting each other without the “two become one” mantra. Our sisters will be writing “wishes for the couple” specific to our interests and quirks which they will read at the ceremony e.g. May the bride find a hobby during the Tour de France. We’ll have a singer/guitarist for ceremony music playing songs we’ve hand-picked that are significant to us. Programs will tell the story of how we met and include a blurb about each member of the bridal party. I’ll carry a piece of lace from my mom’s wedding gown tucked into my bouquet.
The reception is at the ultra-modern Intercontinental Hotel. My piano teacher since the age of 3 will play the music at our cocktail hour. We searched long and wide for our band which will play the music we truly enjoy, from current hits to classic rock. Our late night snack will be a sundae bar as a tribute to my obsession with ice cream. We’ll also have descriptions of each of our favorite topping combos. We’ll do framed pictures of our parents and grandparents as well as a slideshow with pictures of us with friends and family starting with a picture of us together at each age (17, 18…26) as a look back on our relationship. Instead of tapping glasses for us to kiss, guests can make a donation to the Wisconsin Humane Society (where we got our 2 cats and dog) and ring a bell- $1 for a kiss, $5 for a dip kiss. We’ll have pictures of our pets with the bell. Bridesmaid gifts were to follow a different theme personal to each girl, e.g. garden theme for the girl who just moved into her new house and is attempting to landscape, LA/beach theme for my sis moving out to LA in a few months, etc.
Jon and I are what people affectionately call "characters". We each have distinctive personalities and interests that we are trying to incorporate into the wedding planning. Rather than trying to plan a "wedding reception" or a "wedding ceremony" we are trying to plan a party that just happens to be for a wedding. This opens us up to ideas that aren't generally labeled as bridal and gives us the freedom to explore a variety of creative ideas. Not to mention saves us a lot of money - bonus. We're especially excited about our pig roast and the magician that will perform during the cocktail hour. We feel it's the little, personal touches that make get-togethers memorable and exciting.
Our favorite idea revolves around our favors. Jon and I are huge film buffs so we decided to burn copies of our favorite vintage public domain horror movies to give out as favors (the wedding is the day after Halloween). The process has been a blast - deciding which to use, finding them online and designing the DVD covers and holders. We try to make each wedding project creative and fun.
Our aim is to throw a great party that people will remember with fondness long after the gifts have been opened (and maybe returned!) While we realize this is our special day, we are aware that our family's and friend's hopes and expectations are to be considered as well. After all, if the party is fun only for the couple, it's not much of a party!
Ok my fiancé is a huge Texas Hold'em Poker fan and player. I just absolutely love Calla lilies. Our theme for our wedding is poker with a touch of Calla lilies. Our center pieces consist of a clear beer mug, a menu holder to put poker hands in so our guests know what table they are sitting at and poker chips filling the mug and overflowing onto the table. There will also be cards spread out on the table for the centerpiece to rest on. Our cake will be 4 tiers. Each cake tier will be square and offset from one another. The bottom tier will be white with black spades all around it. The next tier up will be white with red diamonds. The second from the top will be white with black clubs and the top tier will be white with red hearts. Our cake topper will have a king and queen of hearts on it. There will also be a stream of calla lilies running down the side of the cake and poker chips strategically placed on the cake with our initial in the center of the poker chip. Our party favors for all the guests includes a deck of cards and some chocolate poker chips. Our place cards will have a heart, diamond, club or spade on it next to the guests name. We will have a bouquet of calla lilies for family and friends who have passed and couldn’t be at our wedding with us and depending on what the hall says we might have a memory candle lit. Our ceremony hall is unique too… our guest don’t face forward towards us… they face each other with a slight slant towards us. Now I know this isn’t everything for our wedding but it’s what we have so far. Oh and the calla lilies will be in the boutonnières and every girl walking down the isle will be carrying one and I will be carrying 3-5 of them. I haven’t decided yet for myself. I do believe this is thinking differently when it comes to what most people think of a wedding should be like.
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