One thing I’ve discovered about planning my own wedding is that it can bring out and help you discover talents previously uncovered. For me, I learned that I can do calligraphy, not professionally done but done well enough. If you don’t have the resources to afford a professional calligrapher and still want the personal look calligraphy brings you can buy a how-to book on calligraphy or do what I did. Go to the office or school supply section at your nearest store and look for a calligraphy kit. I actually found the task relaxing and fun and I think it added something personal to our invitations and place cards.

I found this fragrant French milled soap wrapped in luxurious paper and tied with a black cord on Anthropologie.com and fell in love. I just added a leaf tag to personalize this glamorous favor.

I am excited to reveal the new Wedding Paper Divas Press Center! This section of our website will offer updates on the latest Wedding Paper Divas news and highlight what the media is saying about our company and designs. To visit the press center, click here.

Meeting with a few of my vendors at the wedding site has been a thrill for me. Seeing a team of people I trust and chose work together for a common cause which happens to be my wedding is so exhilarating! Nothing makes me feel as special as seeing everyone involved. It has also inspired me to come up with more helpful tips for couples like me in wedding planning mode.

1. Using Google’s documents feature has been a lifesaver for me. Creating guest and to-do lists which can be shared with my fiance and anyone else that needs to be involved saves time and is easy to use.

1. Create an itinerary which details what each person will do at your wedding. Before the wedding give them lists with their names highlighted so that friends and family know specifically what they will be doing, when they need to do it and where they need to be.

1. Creating a timeline for yourself will be helpful as well from what time you need to wake up to when your vendors will need to start packing up.

1. Have a friend, family member or your coordinator distribute checks to the appropriate vendors. One of my friends feels terrible that at her wedding 5 years ago she forgot to pay her makeup and hair stylist. On the day of your wedding, leave those details to others so you can completely enjoy yourself.

We love when we receive kudos from the press! Currently on stands, InStyle Weddings is featuring our Solid Monogram wedding invitation in an article titled “Extraordinary Invites.” We invite you to check it out:

As your budget keeps growing and your wedding planning gets under way, take a little break by reading about how other couples in the United States in 2008 are doing their wedding this year:

Want to know what age other bride and grooms got engaged? The average US bride got engaged at age 26 and the average groom at 28.

What type of wedding are you planning? While I’m trying for a unique wedding with an untraditional theme, only 10% of couples planned this type of wedding. Traditional still tops the list at 51% with 19% of couples going casual, 13% going formal, and only 2% of couples planning an extravagant wedding.

How are you getting your wedding planning information? If you are like most people (84% to be exact), you depend on Internet sources for planning or go to friends and family for help (86%). Hopefully Diva Dialogues has helped you and will continue to help you through the wedding planning process.

Getting married in a church or other religious institution? Well 49% of couples are following in your footsteps.

The average number of guests at a wedding is 166 which does surprise me a bit. Most of the weddings I have attended in the last year have been on either extremes from 50 to over 300!

If you are getting married in the summer and are having a difficult time securing your favorite vendors, this may be the reason why. The majority of weddings takes place from June through August with August hitting a high of 233,413 weddings!

Probably the wedding fact that most couples are curious about is how much money other couples are spending on their wedding. With costs skyrocketing by almost a thousand dollars every year, see how your budget fits in. In the United States, total spending on a wedding in 2008 is…(drum roll please!) $28,800!

Sources:

http://www.theweddingreport.com/

So, it’s Friday afternoon and I am craving something sweet. This got me thinking of the idea of edible favors. What do you think? I, personally, love the idea. In fact, after my wedding everyone treated themselves to a full candy buffet featuring some of our favorite sweets treats from our childhood. The candy buffet was a hit with our guests, but there are lots of other edible favor ideas out there too. Here are so delectable delights to whet your appetite and spark some ideas:

Mini Cupakes

Image: Brides.com

Personalized Jam

Image: Modern Bride

Candied Apples

Image: Modern Bride

Chocolate Truffles

Image: Beau-Coup.com

Lolipops

Image: Beau-Coup.com

Candy Buffet

Image: My Wedding

I love how couples are interweaving special cultural customs into their wedding. Whether it’s through stationery or in their ceremony or reception activities, I think that adding personal, meaningful traditions can set your wedding apart from the rest.

Dynamic couples may add a traditional Chinese lion dance to add a bit of excitement and luck to their wedding. Can you imagine the vibrant colors, festive costumes, and how beautiful and fun the pictures will be? In following with this theme, another couple used the opportunity to incorporate their Chinese tradition by giving out lottery tickets in red envelopes as favors. This is relatively inexpensive and will leave guests with a little bit of luck and excitement even after they leave your wedding.

In Hawaii, a lot of Japanese couples work together to fold 1,001 paper cranes that will be displayed on their wedding day. Sometimes the cranes are hung up or put together to create a design that is mounted and framed. It makes a beautiful artistic piece to bring luck and happiness to the marriage and is a great way to share your culture with others.

You can also add cultural motifs or designs that have special meaning to you and your fiance in your stationery. Here’s a Double Happiness invitation from the Wedding Paper Divas line.

In honor of Wedding Paper Divas’s newest luxury letterpress line, I decided to devote an entire entry about letterpress printing. What is letterpress? If you are not planning a wedding, it’s possible that this word is not a part of your regular vocabulary.

Letterpress is a type of printing used hundreds of years ago that involves the pressing of movable type onto paper creating an impression of the image in reverse. This is how you get that great textured look and depth characteristic of letterpress invitations.

Chinese woodblock printing started as early as 750 AD with well-known printer Johannes Gutenberg being cited as the inventor of movable print in the 1400’s. This was originally created as a faster alternative to hand written calligraphy.

What was once a fading art for hobbyists has now emerged into a cultural revival. One place where you will see letterpress printing as popular as ever is in wedding invitations. Because of its beautiful, rich look, it’s obvious that this type of printing will remain in style and continue to capture the hearts and attention of couples for a long time.

Resources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letterpress

In line with my previous post about what no one tells the bride, I decided to continue with my own addition to the list. Although my fiancé will tell you I have a stack of wedding magazines as tall as him, there are some things that magazines don’t tell you. Or at least I haven’t read those that do. So here we go:

If possible, attend the wedding site with your vendor before you sign with them. If you are on a strict budget as most of us are, this will prevent either of you from adding things to the contract. What once started as a doable total, somehow went over by a lot! No one likes this kind of surprise so remember this before you get the impulse or get pushed into signing right away.

Go on dates. One friend told me to remember to go on dates once a week with my fiancé where no one can talk about the wedding. This is great advice. Make time for wedding talk on specific days and save date time to just be together. It’ll help to strengthen your relationship and remind you of why you’re getting married in the first place.

Consider hiring a wedding coordinator. While I was on the fence for awhile about this one, I finally decided to hire my own personal coordinator. This way everyone, including me, will be able to relax at the wedding. In addition, I learned that a lot of coordinators help with a variety of things including helping with favors, invitations and assisting you with planning the rehearsal dinner.

Everything won’t always go the way you think it will. This seems obvious but I think every bride-to-be envisions their wedding as a fairy tale day and it still can be. Like everything in life sometimes things happen better than the way you foreseen it. I say try as much as you can to accept your wedding for what it is, unique and different like you and your groom.

We have been so happy to hear all of the great feedback that we have received from both customers and the media about our new letterpress line. And, we were super-excited when Anne from iVillage Weddings’ blog “From ‘I will’ to ‘I do’” decided to feature both our new letterpress line and Diva Dialogue in today’s post.

To see what Anne has to say about Wedding Paper Divas, click here.