So much attention is given to wedding planning during your engagement, that another important event is often pushed to the wayside until the last minute–the Rehearsal Dinner.  This dinner is special because it gives the engaged couple and their families a way to say thank you to all of those that are involved in the wedding.  To help make your Rehearsal Dinner every bit as fun and unique as your wedding, check out some of these links:

-iVillage offers some great ideas for unique rehearsal dinner locations and themes, many with money-saving tips!

-You probably already have your wedding gown picked out, but what about your rehearsal dinner outfit?!  You’ll still be front and center and will want to look great.  The Wedding Channel offers some great tips on the bride’s rehearsal dinner outfit.

-DearSugar offers a quick overview of Rehearsal Dinner Etiquette to clear up any questions you may have before planning the event.

-Although I fear them selling out before I am able to get one, I still have to pass on this amazing dress designer’s website.  Holly Stalder’s dresses will ensure that you shine at your rehearsal dinner.

-Last but most certainly not least, be sure you have an invitation that well represents both your personal style and the style of your rehearsal.  Wedding Paper Divas offers a wide range of designs…here is one of my favorites!

Lately it seems everyone around me is getting engaged and, true to form, all of the weddings seem to be within the same 2-month period.  Normally, this would be a really exciting time for me–I’d get to see all of my closest friends and family while celebrating at a great event.  However, living in California, I am anywhere from 500 to 3000 miles away from most of the weddings I have to attend.  This can pose quite a problem with plane fares being what they are, not to mention time off from work!  Throw in some showers, bachelorette parties and even some engagement parties, and I have quite the schedule to work out!

That’s why it’s important for every bride-to-be (and their families and friends!) to make sure they get the word out about their various events with time to spare.  Of course, they want all of the people closest to them to be present at their event.  But, depending on the date and number of out of town guests, that can be quite a challenge.

The general rule that most people should follow is to get party invitations out at least three weeks in advance, with a month being even better.  As far as wedding invitations go, anywhere from 6 to 8 weeks is best.  If you follow these rules, you’ll give all of your out of town guests time to  schedule and save on flights, take vacation time and truly get excited about your event.  If your event falls on or near a holiday, it’s best to give them as much notice as you can.

And don’t forget–Wedding Paper Divas has some great Save-the-Date cards that will let your guests start planning well before the big day.  These can be sent out anywhere from 4 to 9 months in advance, so you can assure that everyone will be available to celebrate!

Getting through those big stack of thank yous may not be your way of having a good time, however it simply must be done and I’d say the sooner the better. So to help you through the process, here are a few tips on ways to make writing those wedding thank you cards pain free!

1. Writing a thank you card actually begins when you start sending out your invitations. Make sure you keep everyone’s contact information in a spreadsheet. Google has a documents program that allows you to share files with others. This way you and your significant other can keep track of your information in the same place.

2. Either mail out all of your thank you cards at the same time or do it by family. If not, you’ll run into the same issues as me and have some people calling to find out what happened to their thank you card since they heard someone else already got theirs.

3. Clarify any questions early! As you receive each gift, look for a card or gift tag. If there are presents without any name attached to it or the card says from: The Smiths and you have two relatives with the same name, clarify things with the gift givers right away.

4. Order extra thank you cards. I’ve made so many mistakes on my thank yous and had to throw them away. Having 25 extra ones really made a difference especially since I didn’t account for cards to our vendors.

5. Do a little at a time. So that the task seems less daunting commit to doing say 5 or 10 cards a day. Then just push through the process. What I told my husband was that these people deserved a nice card for all of their efforts getting to our wedding and for their generous gifts. It was worth the bit of discomfort to get them a well worth the wait thank you card!

Whenever I get an invitation to a wedding, the first thing that pops into my mind is, “What should I wear?”  When thinking about this, you have to take into consideration so many things: is the wedding during the day or at night? Is it formal or semi-formal? Are there any cultural traditions that might offend someone? The whole process can be pretty stressful for a wedding guest.

So, I was excited when I discovered The Knot’s Wedding Guest Attire Cheat Sheet.  This is a great guide for someone who is trying to determine the meaning of terms like white tie, beach formal and dressy casual.

Also, to avoid any major faux paus check out the article that was featured today on Yahoo’s homepage: “9 Things You Should Never Wear to a Wedding.” Below are just a few of the recommendations that caught our attention:

1. White is Not Right - It is still the case that only the bride should be dressed in white.  Period.

2. Limit the Sparkle - The article recommends that you avoid anything lame, sequined or glittery. Let the bride shine at her own event.

3. Jeans are Not Dressy Under any Circumstances - Forgo casual fare unless the invitation specifies that the event is casual.  This also goes for engagement parties–never wear jeans to event like this. It is just a big no-no.

As a part of a wedding stationery suite, most couples send out directions cards to help their friends and family find their way to the ceremony site and the reception. But, if you have guests visiting from out of town, you might consider something a little more high tech, like Wedding Mapper.

This interactive site asks you to enter the city, state and date of your wedding, then generates a Google map of the area that you can use to mark where the ceremony and reception will be. But the fun doesn’t stop there–you can add icons for you and your local relatives’ homes, your favorite restaurants, entertainment venues, hotels, airports and local attractions.

You can also add personalized messages and images that will pop up when guests first access the site and when they place their cursor over any location you highlight. Plus, you can use the site to look up local vendors and connect with the wedding community in the city you select.

This online tool is easy to use, really fun to do and totally free! I think it’s a great way to help your guests become acquainted with your city and to get everyone excited about your upcoming nutpials!

Do we sense a controversy simmering? Seems there is quite a bit of uncertainty regarding how to spell one of the most basic terms on our site: stationery…or is it stationary? We’ve done some research and come to our own conclusions, but would love to hear you weigh in as well.

We have to thank Mike over at DesktopSupplies.com for bringing the issue to our attention. To summarize, the evidence suggests that when people are searching for printed paper products online such as birthday party invitations, birth announcements, holiday cards and personalized stationery, they are frequently using “stationary” as part of their search term. As Mike duly references in his post, stationary is defined as: “standing still; not moving.” He goes so far as to say that people have written in to correct the spelling of “stationery” on their site to “stationary.”

This obviously creates an issue for us, because we’re in the camp that believes we sell stationery. However, many use what we’d politely call the “alternate” spelling to find our cards. Naturally, we’ve ruled out building new site utilizing the word “stationary,” confusing people with more than one spelling or sending out a mass e-mail to all English speaking people correcting them of their ways. But…we’re open to suggestions.

Yesterday afternoon, my sister’s best friend from high school asked her to be her maid of honor. Already thrilled by the news of her upcoming April wedding, my sister readily accepted and is now gearing up for nine months of maid of honor mayhem.

As she pours over bachelorette party invitations and bridal shower blogs, I can’t help but think that she is the ideal maid of honor–reliable, charming in front of an audience, always willing to host a stylish soiree and still the most flawlessly fashionable person I’ve ever met. Her input will undoubtedly prove invaluable from the flower shop to the bridal boutique, and her wit and charisma make her the perfect bridesmaid leader.

For those of you still searching for a maid of honor, check out The Knot’s list of Maid of Honor Duties while you consider your options. The perfect MOH doesn’t have to be your flighty college roommate or your favorite cousin who lives out of town. Choose someone local who understands your personal style, knows how to handle a crisis and always brings out the best in you, as my sister does with nearly everyone she meets.

Last summer, I attended a beautiful wedding in Orange County, California for two of my dearest friends.  Both the bride and groom are Indian, and they created an event that seamlessly incorporated Indian traditions with a modern Cinderella theme that showed the couple’s individuality.

The entire event featured bursts of bright colors and some really great ideas that we hope inspires your wedding planning.

Vinod & Seema

August 2007

For the ceremony, the bride & groom wore traditional Indian attire

Prior to the ceremony, the groom arrived on a white horse to meet his bride

The ceremony

The couple transitioned from the traditional to the modern in Cinderella’s carriage

After the ceremony, the bride changed into a Cinderella inspired Sari designed by a friend

The reception was adorned in bright hues of blue to reflect her Cinderella theme

This is the first post of a new series that Diva Dialogue is introducing called “Real Weddings.”  If you are interested in submitting your wedding to our blog, please email 5-10 photos and a brief description of your wedding to blog@weddingpaperdivas.com for consideration.

This past weekend, a friend and I were digging through her now 10 year old treasure chest of wedding memorabilia. Magazines and invitations looked so antique even though her wedding to her seemed just a few years ago. One of the coolest treasures was finding a handwritten thank you card that never got sent. We were laughing at how in-depth and detailed this well written note was and how unfortunate that with all her husband’s hard work it never got sent.

It got me thinking about the importance of keeping track of your thank you cards and also sending them early. I remember distinctly sending a gift to a wedding I never attended and not receiving a card until several months after the event. Later, I realized that the couple wanted to wait to send pictures of their honeymoon with their card. But at the time, visions of lost packages kept me awake at night.

Etiquette says that you should send your thank you cards about two weeks after you receive your gifts. I think in the long run this makes sense since it prevents you from doing them all at once. I remember sitting next to a recently wed couple. They spent their entire return flight from their honeymoon writing all of their thank you cards! While some folks might like the idea of spending 5 hours straight doing it all at once, to me this seems like a nightmare and not the way I would want to end my much awaited honeymoon.

Whether you keep track of who gives what on your own personal created excel sheet or track them online (a variety of wedding websites and online registries gives you this option), I think planning ahead makes for a more sincere thank you card and less sleepless nights on both ends.

With so many modern and stylish cards, there’s really no excuse not to send them. Here’s a few I love.

Romantic Rosette: Lagoon

Sophisticated Monogram: Moonstruck

By guest blogger Jeanette Martinez

Once the last bit of bubbly has been drunk, and the final turn has been taken on the dance floor, one of the few lasting reminders you’ll have of your wedding day is your wedding stationery. Your wedding invitations, ceremony programs, and other wedding papers are some of the few tangible remnants you and your guests will have to remember your special day. Keep in mind that many brides even choose to immortalize these precious items in a scrapbook, wedding album, or have them framed as a decorative keepsake. Moreover, these items are also some of the first articles your guests will see that indicate what kind of event to expect when they attend your wedding. With all this at stake, it’s so important to make sure your wedding stationery is perfect - this includes grammar, spelling, and punctuation.

One of the most difficult punctuation uses to grasp is the elusive apostrophe. However, if you can remember a few simple rules, mastering its usage will be a cinch.

Rule 1: Plurals

In the English language, the apostrophe is used in only two situations: to indicate the possessive form of a noun or pronoun, or to mark the omission of certain characters, as in a contraction. One of the most common mistakes is using the apostrophe to indicate a plural. For example, when you want to indicate entire families, whether you’re addressing an invitation, or signing your new last name on your thank you cards, make sure you use the plural form of the last name, such as, The Smiths, The Foxes, or The Williamses.

Rule 2: Contractions

Unless your wedding is very informal (think Vegas drive-thru chapel), you’ll want to avoid using contractions in your wedding stationery. Particularly the invitation itself and all the accessories should be written in a more formal tone. Of course, thank you notes are often much less formal, and using contractions in this case is perfectly acceptable. When using the apostrophe to indicate a contraction, the apostrophe should always mark the spot where the characters have been omitted. For example, cannot becomes can’t, need not becomes needn’t, and it is becomes ‘tis.

Rule 3: Singular Possessive

Indicating possessives is the apostrophe’s specialty. Singular words are the easiest to make possessive. For example, if you’re throwing your friend Jane a bridal shower, you would say Jane’s Bridal Shower. This shows that the bridal shower belongs to Jane. The apostrophe follows the last letter in the name, and the apostrophe is then followed by an s. This format works for any singular word, including what we call sibilant words that end in an s, sh, ch, z, or x. So, if Tess has several bridesmaids, you would say that they are Tess’s bridesmaids.

Rule 4: Plural Possessive

Combination plural and possessive forms are slightly more complex. To use the party example again, if Jane’s family wants to throw an engagement party for her and her groom, and their last name is Smith, it would be The Smiths’ Party. The s shows that there are multiple Smiths, and the apostrophe on the outside of the s indicates that the party belongs to the entire family of Smiths.

The sibilant form of this rule is even trickier. To make a sibilant word plural and possessive, add es rather than just s, and then add the apostrophe at the end. For example, if Jane’s last name was Jones, you would say The Joneses’ Party. ES indicates multiple people with the last name Jones, and the apostrophe indicates that the party belongs to all of them.

Rule 5: Possessive Pronouns

Apostrophes should not be used with possessive pronouns such as yours, theirs, his, hers, its, and ours because they already indicate possession. Note that its and it’s are not the same, and have two completely different meanings. Its without the apostrophe means “belonging to it.” It’s, on the other hand, is a contraction for it is and therefore requires an apostrophe indicating the omission of characters.

Tip:

Remember, proper punctuation can be tricky, so keep these rules close at hand when addressing your invites or writing thank you notes. Your friends and family will never know you used a cheat sheet and eventually apostrophe usage will become second nature.

Resources:

The Economist’s Style Guide - Apostrophes - http://www.economist.com/research/styleGuide/index.cfm?page=841359

Bureau of Justice Statistics Style Guide - page 16: Punctuation, Apostrophes and Possessives http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/bjssg.pdf

http://www.gpoaccess.gov/stylemanual/2000/chapter_txt-8.html