Black and white are a classic pair that can easily transform any wedding into a modern affair. Add them to your wedding decor for a simple and easy way to bring glamor back to your special day!

Camilla canisters from Pottery Barn are showing up in Halloween fashion but they also make your candy bar modern and sweet.  Pottery Barn Black Candelabra and stylish Flip Video Camera meld fun and function to make this black and white event complete.

This Two-Tone dress from White House Black Market and this handsome MW tux from Brides will keep your wedding in style.  And I love this black tie bouquet from Martha Stewart!

Invite them to this contemporary gathering with Dotted Floral Wedding Invitations. This Black and white round cake (photo from Brides) is a work of art, almost too pretty to eat!

I’m sure we all fell in love with movies like “My Bestfriend’s Wedding,” “wishing and hoping and praying” that while our wedding day won’t be such a disaster, our bridesmaids and we would one day look as beautiful as Julia Roberts and Cameron Diaz. If you haven’t seen this one or other wedding movies listed here, I’d say do some research. It’ll give you ideas, help you get inspired and have fun while doing it!

Who could forget that lavender dress that Julia Roberts wore as the Maid of Honor? Kimberly Wallace played by Cameron Diaz’s character definitely had an elegant wedding. Wedding Paper Divas Letterpress Collection and Floral Damask wedding invitations in Burgundy would be fitting.   (Photo from Yahoo! Movies.)

Sex in the City’s Carrie Bradshaw did it ‘Big’ on her wedding day with big hair, dramatic colors and couture dresses in the movie. Her invitations would have to have her signature piece, a big, beautiful flower. (Photo from NY Daily News.)

3) Though it took place in the 80’s, what makes, “The Wedding Singer” so inspiring is the songs, characters and that it is funny. And simple and sweet like the Sassy Stripes Wedding Invitations in Bisque.  (Photo from Yahoo! Movies.)

4) Runaway Bride another movie starring Julia Roberts showcased a variety of wedding styles. This one is country chic and my favorite in the movie. And Butterfly Love Wedding Invitations in Pumpkin perfectly matches the romance and beauty of the scene. (Photo from Yahoo! Movies.)

4) Runaway Bride another movie starring Julia Roberts showcased a variety of wedding styles. This one is country chic and my favorite in the movie. And Butterfly Love Wedding Invitations in Pumpkin perfectly matches the romance and beauty of the scene. (Photo from Yahoo! Movies.)

Now that the wedding’s over, what else do we have to look forward to? Lots that’s what! Many brides leap from wedding planning to the next biggest thing and that might be moving or planning for a baby. As I have graduated from wedding to marriage, I have also switched from my daily dose of reading tips from The Knot, a bride’s best friend in wedding planning, to their sister site The Nest. The Nest brings the same detailed, fun to read tips but for newlywed couples needing help on everything from buying a home to saving money. Being married also means a switch from buying wedding invitations to purchasing address labels with your new names on them or moving announcements to notify friends and family of your new residence. Smoothly transition to your new status as newlyweds with these. The Happy Mailbox address label is from Tiny Prints.

We’re still waiting for our photos and since I wanted to send everyone a thank you with a picture of us at the wedding, our thank you notes are also overdue. This is definitely a lesson learned. Remember to be careful when reading your vendor contracts. I had no idea that it would take 2 months to receive our pictures! Anyway, I decided to use the time to figure out what we should do about our thank yous.

Because so many guests complimented us about our wedding music, I thought of making CD’s for them. Packaging for CD’s can be found online and several companies such as Beau-coup allow you to customize your own wedding labels.

In addition, there are a lot of gorgeous thank you cards that you can send with the CD’s. And if you’re going to use your website as a thank you website like I mentioned in my last entry, having a thank you card you can personalize is a great way to tell guests to revisit the website to view pictures from the wedding. Here is a sweet and modern thank you card that would match well with our wedding colors.

If you choose this card, it will perfectly match your wedding website, invitations and the rest of your stationery.

I always envy brides who are able to effortlessly pull together an ensemble of complementary and matching themes and colors. For example, their dress compliments the linens, and the napkins and flowers go with their wedding colors and all of the wedding party’s attire. I’m hopeless when it comes to seeing the big picture and how everything goes together. The nice thing about Wedding Paper Divas is that you can purchase an entire matching set without having to think too much about it. Here’s an example of a stationery ensemble that would work well for any wedding.

There’s a lot of little things you learn about your own wedding that no one can really tell you until you go through it. I hope this post will help prevent the same thing from happening to you. When choosing your wedding stationery, don’t go conservative. With your costs exceeding your original budget, it’s easy to understand why some, like me, try to keep costs down by limiting the number of stationery ordered.

This was a BIG mistake! I later realized that there were a few people who we wanted to invite but thought we could not accommodate for. In addition, there were just some guests that we forgot to add to our original list. Talking to some other girlfriends I found out that this is really common. Some friends have had to ask families to return their invitations and RSVP cards so that they could reuse them for other guests.

As for my fiance and I? We were extremely embarrassed but were lucky that we found some extra invitations hidden among all our wedding things. Save yourself from having to ask your guests to return their invitations or worse, having to invite additional guests verbatim. Buy several extra sets to keep you covered and safe from having this happen to you.

Here’s a few new designs I love.

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

Earlier in the planning process, I was so not going to do favors. Like a lot of other people, I believed favors were something you get that you never use. But recently, my thoughts have changed. A lot of couples are giving out favors that are actually cool!

I heard of one wedding where the bride and groom gave away lottery tickets to each guest. A wedding that I went to recently incorporated their love for wine in their favors by giving beautiful bottle stoppers. A guest said that that was the first time he got something he could actually use.

I just had another idea that I’m sure your guests would appreciate. How about giving them thank you note cards that they can use. Both Tiny Prints and Wedding Paper Divas have a lot of cute cards that can be used for your wedding. Look at the ones I chose below. The first two are from Wedding Paper Divas and the third one is from Tiny Prints. Just personalize them to say, “Thank You.”

Beach Stripes: Green Tea

Batik Flowers: Sage

Baby Damask: Green

So I finally decided it was time, time to choose the all-important save the dates! Since the majority of my friends and family are coming from overseas, deciding to include these cards was a necessity. Not only is it fun to send out early announcements of your wedding but it is also out of common courtesy. Your guests will need the extra time to make flight and hotel arrangements and take off from work. I know because as soon as I got engaged my family was eager to know all the details of my wedding. The sooner you can get those out, the better! This will increase the chances that the people you love will be able to join you on your wedding day.

Wedding Paper Divas has a lot of chic choices to pick from. After perusing the site for several days, I finally decided to choose a photo card. This is a great way to make use of any engagement photos you have and add personality to your save the date cards. There were so many out there to choose from, some with juicy colors great for summer like the Canna photo cards and others with perfect nature scenes great for spring such as the new Little Bird Save the Dates.

But I finally selected a simple card that perfectly suits my fiancé and I am completely happy with my choice. I was a little indecisive at first. But who could blame me with all the great new designs? After a lot of flip flopping though, I finally made my decision. Can you keep a secret? Guess which one I chose? I couldn’t resist the new Wild Grass photo save the date cards in Sage.

Wild Grass

Doing all this wedding research can be so exhausting! As a bride-to-be myself, I get dizzy with all the choices out there from the food to the entertainment and all of the amazing details in between. One thing that’s great about Wedding Paper Divas is that ordering from them is so easy! And when you’re rushing from one errand to the next you’ll thank me. The process is simple. Step 1: Select a design. Step 2: Personalize your design. Sometimes I’ll personalize my wedding information to a whole bunch of different invitations just to see what it looks like. Step 3: Preview your complimentary electronic proof. That’s my favorite part. It’s not only fun but free! Wedding Paper Divas has revolutionized the whole stationery process. No more running around to invitation stores. I always feel like I need to get a workout in order to lift those heavy stationery binders. Bottom line: You already have too many other things to do, so leave it to them to do the hard work. Just relax and enjoy browsing our site!