Postcard Guestbook

Guestbook wise, I originally wanted to do a Quaker style wedding certificate, but in the end, I didn't have time to design one and didn't have the $$ to have someone design one for me. So, instead I went the route of vintage style postcards. I stuck 2 stamped postcards in glassine envelopes for each guest/family, one for them to mail to whomever, one addressed to us.

More on these here.

Well, with only 20 wedding guests in tow, that narrowed down to only about 7 couples/families. That means, essentially I should have received about 7 postcards in the mail. Nope. It was a postcard guestbook FAIL. Out of 19 people/7 families, I received 4 postcards, 2 of them were from the same person. hehe. Yup, my bestie mailed me back both her postcards.

I shouldn't really be surprised, I mean only half our guests mailed back their RSVP, so why would I think any different with pre-stamped postcards?!

In case you were wondering what the postcard said: "Hey Auntie! We have a groom over here!!! A traditional wedding $3000-10,000 plus dollars, seeing your groom shake his tail feather in a grass skirt and coconuts...priceless." Bestie is referring to this. Her other postcard talked about her daughter (our flowergirl) running away from the aisle. ;o)

Either way, I'm gonna show you how we decided to keep our (4) postcards...

In this super cute wooden album we got at the Aloha Swap Meet for $8.00! woot, woot!

I love this album because you can easily display the postcards and easily pull it out of the album to read the postcard. Double score. Not that it takes much to read 4 postcards. :oP

We had spare postcards, so I decided to stick them in the album too, that way the album looked more "full".

It's a shame my idea didn't work as hoped, but ehh..what can you do.

Staying Organized

I can't speak for everyone and I'm definitely not some organization queen. In fact, if you were to see my work office, it's what I like to call an "organized mess", but I do know where everything is located. Okay, I know where things should be located. BUT I did manage to stay pretty organized during my wedding planning. I kept everything in one binder. Everything.

I know some gals buy those nice, fancy, overpriced wedding planners, but with planning a destination wedding, a lot of what they had in those thorough binders didn't pertain to me and my minimalist destination wedding. And I'm cheap; I used a plain, 1 inch, white binder. Now don't get me wrong, I did spruce it up in my own way.

I had dividers separating different sections, ex. Ceremony, Reception, Travel, Receipts, etc.. In each section, I had not only the agreements and contracts of each vendor (I had all my vendors that had to do with the ceremony in one section and all the vendors that had to do with the reception in another section, my hotel reservations, car rental info and travel itinerary in the travel section, etc.)

but I also kept all printed email conversations (if I dealt with them via email) and receipts of payment. I also made sure that I had every vendor's contact information, just in case.

I had ALL papers for each vendor placed in a page protector. So, if I had a 1 page contract with my photographer, plus 2 pages of emails and 1 page invoice, they all went in one page protector. That way if I needed to find my invoice from my photographer, I knew it would be within that page protector. I also used a single page protector to keep my one-time purchases (ie. ribbon from the art store, shoes from zappos, etc.), so that I could keep track of all my purchases (great for figuring out your final cost of your wedding later).

When traveling, I kept this in my carry-on, that way I had all my information and I didn't have to worry about me losing proof of payment or vendor contact information in any possible lost luggage.

It was real convenient to refer to my binder for our plane itinerary, then double check it for our car rental, and check again for our hotel address and reservation information...all in one swoop.

How did you stay organized?