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Living for Pretty

Celebrating all things pretty, happy and inspiring. From renovation stories, to recipes, decorating, parties and little life lessons, you’ll find a little bit of everything here.

bridesmaid gifts (that your girls will love)



June 27, 2016

While always an honor, there’s a lot of work that comes along with being a bridesmaid. Your dress, hair and makeup will be dictated (which is hard for us control freaks), you’ll have to use precious vacation for pre-wedding festivities, and to top it all off, you have to agree to share your BFF for the rest of your life. Our girls are our life support. They were in our life first and they know every quirk and every past mistake, and they’ll be there for the inevitable bumps in the road. Make them feel special, and most of all, let them know that you appreciate all the help they’ve provided over the last few months.

 

bridesmaid-gifts

One of my issues with many bridesmaid gift trends is that the gifts seem to serve the bride, more than they thank the bridesmaid. Yes, those robes and totes that say bridesmaid on them are darling, they will look great in pictures, and will be used for one day, or even one week. But once you’re married, she’s no longer a bridesmaid and the item becomes a dust-collector. Give her something she will love and use, something that’s not specifically dated for your wedding, and if it happens to make for a great picture too, all the better!

Packaging is everything! Get them excited from the second they see it! I love the idea of filling cute clutches with gifts and trinkets. (And these clutches could match and look great in photos). You can also slip in a day-of schedule in it, thank you notes, lip gloss, miniature alcohol, and sugar to keep the energy up!

1 Comment CATEGORIES / wedding

beautiful wedding websites



June 5, 2014

Event venue? check. White dress? check. Bridesmaids? check. Wedding website??

One of the newest ‘to-do’ items on an engaged couple’s growing list of tasks is the wedding website. As an extension of an invitation suite, websites communicate the extra details carry the same aesthetic of the wedding. We spent hours on ours, researching options and finally creating one. The options are almost endless, there’s hundreds (maybe even thousands) of styles with a variety of colors and layouts to match any wedding theme, and many are free! No worries though, the below sites have made creating a wedding site easy, beautiful and affordable. Below are my top picks for the best place to host your wedding website.

Wedding JoJo

Free Option: Yes

Cost: $15 / month
Wedding JoJo has templates that are clean and polished. Pages
include an RSVP options for all events (wedding + rehearsal dinner, etc.), a
guestbook, photo galleries, registry information, and password protection. With
a paid membership you can get password protection, more theme options and a custom domain.
However, even with access to all themes, in comparison they are still limited and you are stuck with the existing page
structure and layout (i.e. about pages are in Q/A format).

 

WordPress

Free Option: Yes
Cost: Any special themes ($0-$80) + cost of custom domain
($14/year)
Wordpress is often considered the standard in today’s web design. It is easy to
use and the amount of themes and plugins available makes for endless options.
Plus, there’s no expiration, so you can revisit year, after year. One downside:
the nicer themes might cost a few bucks, and customizing html and css is
possible, but tricky. There’s a lot of themes geared towards weddings here at
a variety of price points. If you want full control of your site, this is a
great option.
Theme: Morena,
$35 

The Knot

Free Option: Yes
Cost: Custom Domain, if wanted
The Knot is one of the most popular wedding websites out
there. There are numerous themes to fit your day, they have matching invites
through Paperless Post, Wedding Divas and Minted, oh AND they’re free.

Riley and Grey

Free Option: No
Cost: ~$35/ month
Riley and Grey has really sleek design, but it is on the
pricey side. They do have an option to ‘pay now and publish later’ minimizing
the time you actually need it live. You can do all the prep work and only pay
for the time the guests need to use it. There’s only a few themes, with little
color customization. However, I do think there designs are thoughtful and
dynamic and can fit a range of wedding aesthetics.

 

Squarespace

Free Option: No
Cost: ~$35/ month
Squarespace is beautiful and the templates are polished and
responsive, which means the site will remain beautiful on mobile, so guests can
easily browse the registry while shopping in store. Speaking of registries,
Squarespace offers an easy tool to accept cash – usually something you have to
find a third party tool to accomplish.

My Wedding

Free Option: Yes
Cost: Custom Domain, if wanted
Mywedding.com is user friendly, and you don’t have to know
an ounce of html to get a great product. There’s also a bit of flexibility,
couples can create unique sub-pages like “In Loving Memory.” It also has tons
of themes that look sharp. Oh, and the hundreds of themes they offer? All
free.

 

Blogger

Free Option: Yes
Cost: Custom domain, if wanted 
Yup, those are our mugs in that screen shot. We  opted for a Blogger site, it was free, and we could keep it pretty much forever. I wanted to be able to revisit after the wedding and had fantasies of turning it into a couples blog site (like I could ever convince Billy to do such a thing). If your wedding has logos or specific graphics, you can incorporate them any way you like and stay consistent with fonts. Blogger and WordPress have a lot of the same pros. Where WordPress has a plethora of dynamic themes, Blogger easier to customize with little web design knowledge.  I’ll be doing a tutorial on how we created ours next week!

2 Comments CATEGORIES / wedding

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Decor and home with a little bit of daydreaming and real life sprinked in. My husband and I are slowly updating our 1900 Dutch Colonial. I love hunting for vintage and flying the pacific northwest and the world with my aviator husband.
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