weddings

How To Pick Items For Your Wedding Gift Registry

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So, you are engaged to be married! Congratulations! What an exciting time of your life. There is so much to do to prepare for the big day. While you are making your to-do lists, remember that in addition to planning the wedding ceremony, wedding reception and honeymoon, there will be wedding gifts to be considered. Setting up an Amazon wedding gift registry and other registries that you may be interested in should be near the top of that list.

Your family and friends will give you gifts. Everyone wants to get you something really special but they have no idea what you and your fiance want or need. Setting up a wedding registry is the best way to help them out. It may seem a little soon – after all, you just got engaged – but this is the one thing the two of you can do far in advance that takes no more than surfing the internet. So why not get started!

Most stores offer wedding registries. The most complete and convenient one is the Amazon Wedding Registry. Almost everyone shops Amazon and many people are Amazon Prime members. Amazon lovers will be thrilled to see that you have set up a registry with them. Other popular stores like Target, Bed Bath and Beyond and Pier 1 also have registries. Pier 1 has a great Wedding Registry Checklist that anyone can use to help you think it through and make a plan! Just be sure to include a local store or two for guests who prefer to shop in-store!

How To Pick Items For Your Wedding Gift Registry

When? Set up and complete your wedding registries soon as possible.

What? This is all about the two of you! Select everything you want but do give your friends a lot of choices. You and your honey should work on this project together and have fun. You can window-shop online and also go visit some stores.

If your home together will be the first time you have lived on your own, you will need everything from measuring spoons for the kitchen to a new bed! If either of you have lived on your own for a while, you will have to decide what will come with you and what you would like to replace. Whatever your situation, enjoy learning each other’s tastes and do your best to select items you will both love.

Tip: choose a few items that can be cherished as keepsakes for years to come. Perhaps you would like a Waterford crystal mantel clock, a wedding album, special artwork or a Family Bible.

Where? Mix it up. Select a couple of convenient online venues, including the Amazon Wedding Registry, and then add a store or two where your guests can shop in person or online.

Tip: when selecting stores, for your own sake look into their return policies. How easy is it for you to return a gift if you need to? If they require a receipt, you may want to skip that store and pick someone else.

Price? Do a little bit of everything. Some people will want to go all out – extravagant is just what they are looking for. Others may not be able to afford higher prices but they still want to give you something you will like. So, go high, middle and a few low, too.

Tip: you may love surprises but discovering that the registry isn’t tracking purchases correctly is not one of them. Check your registries regularly. If you see something seems to be wrong, contact them for help. Monitoring you registries will minimize receiving duplicates and triplicates of the same gift later on.

Tip: also, do not select the same item for each registry or you may very well get more than one.

Announcements – send out “Save the Date” engagement announcements. As people start to congratulate you, some early birds may ask you if you are registered yet and where. Be ready so that you can tell them!

How to pick items for your #wedding gift registry. #giftideas #tips Share on X

Enjoy!

DIY Bridal Shower Invitations

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Yes, we had a shower. A bridal shower, to be exact. My dear granddaughter, Sara, was getting married. What fun it was to celebrate with her!

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This was the first really big event we held in our home since we renovated. The new dining-room and widened kitchen easily accommodates more guests and, since I was currently not employed, I had lots of time to put into hosting a nice party. The wedding was scheduled for March so we picked a February date for the shower and made it a Valentine’s Day theme.

First on the agenda: invite guests. Sara and her mother gave me a list and I took it from there. Though plenty of bridal shower invitations are available in stores or online, I decided that I would rather make them myself. That way I could apply the money I saved by making the invitations on other parts of the event.

Front of the Invitation

The backside of the invitation included date, time, location, etc.

It would have been nice to have super-software like Photoshop to design it, but that was not the case. So, I designed the invitation using Microsoft Word and adjusted, adjusted, adjusted.

The greatest challenge I ran into was getting everything centered so that we could get four, two-sided invitations on a sheet of card stock Plus, I was using text blocks to hold the heart-shaped images. Getting them to stay in place was interesting …a battle that I won, I am happy to report.

Bridal Shower Invitation DIY To-Do List

Design the invites

Create address labels

Purchase: Clear address labels

Invitation Envelopes

Postage Stamps (red heart stamps!)

Colored Index Cards

Heart Shaped Stickers

We asked the guests to bring their favorite recipe for Sara. I inserted blank cards in with the invitation for them to use. I bought pink and orange index cards for them to write on and decorated them with a glittery red heart sticker to make them look festive. Now, this is something you can purchase to make them even nicer. Amazon has a number of awesome recipe cards you will love.

Putting on a bridal shower with a small budget? Make your own DIY invitations and #save #money #wedding Share on X

Front of invitation with recipe card inserts.

Printing the invitations with a really crisp print was very important to me. Inkjet printers just don’t do that. So, I took the design on my flash-drive to Staples and had them print and cut them for me. They looked great!

Have you ever hosted a bridal shower?
Love to get your wisdom on it.
What worked? What not-so-much?
Tell us in the comments!

Wondering what food to serve at your party? Our guests loved the Pretty Party Punch, Italian Tossed Salad wth field greens, two kinds of quiche and cake for dessert.

Enjoy!

Seal Envelopes Without Licking Them

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Image design courtesy of Freepik.

Whether constructing a mailing at the office or at home, there must be a way to get those envelopes sealed. Repeated licking of a multitude of envelopes is not the best practice.

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USPS Love (Sheet of 20) Postage Forever Stamps,

Wedding, Celebration, Anniversary, Romance, Party

First of all, it tastes bad. Secondly, the glue may not be safe to ingest over and over again. Licking envelopes to close and seal them is not a great idea. For efficiency sake, you may wish to purchase self-sealing envelopes but, often, that is not a possibility. Invitation envelopes tend not to be self-sealing.

Here are some creative ways to seal an envelope without licking them!

Luxurious gold thank you notes with envelopes!

What kinds of bulk mailings might you be doing that require fluid to seal them? Is it bill paying day? Are you sending birthday party invites? Maybe it is an upcoming shower [baby or bridal] or wedding invitations? Graduations?

Mass mailings take place for all sorts of reasons including day to day outgoing mail for the business or volunteer job where you work. So, best practice is to seal the envelopes without licking them!

Pen style envelope moisteners 4-pack

How To Seal Envelopes Without Licking Them

Use a simple household sponge. Dampen it with water and seal. This can have quality control problems, just as the envelope sealer may. You could release too much water and have a not-so-neat look on the back of your envelope. If you overdo it and you could even dampen the contents, as well. Note: make sure you use a new, clean sponge to avoid getting your envelope dirty.

Use a cotton swab or Q-tip. Dip the end of the swab in a small bit of water in a cup. Lightly swipe across the edge where the gum is. Seal. This method is what I just used in sealing invitation envelopes for the bridal shower I hosted and, later, the wedding invitations. It works very, very well! Cheapest and neatest method I’ve found.
Envelope Moisteners work brilliantly. These hand-held beauties have liquid glue inside, or allow you to simply put water in them. They dispense the fluid onto the glue portion of the envelop – instead of licking it – and you simply press it closed.
Glue Sticks – good ole “envelop glue” will do the trick. You can either use the standard school glue sticks that you buy for your kids or you can purchase glue sticks that are designed specifically for sealing envelopes.