Wedding Survey

As seen in our newsletter delivered to our members early this morning - EK Success is looking to hear from our visitors. EK Success produces many products for scrapbooking and paper crafting. They would like to learn more about your wedding planning and spending habits.

If you are planning to get married or are involved in the decision-making process for an upcoming wedding, EK Success would love to hear from you. Upon completion of the survey, you will be entered to win 1 of 3 bridal scrapbook prize packs, valued at $150 each.

Please take the survey by 1/31/08 to qualify.

This survey will take less than 10 minutes to complete.

Good Luck.

We're featured in "His Cold Feet"

Andrea Passman Candell has written "a guide for the woman who wants to tie the knot with the guy who wants to talk about it later". The book, His Cold Feet will be in stores on January 22nd and you can pre-order your copy now on amazon.com.

We're so excited to be acknowledged in Andrea's new book - a while back, we had helped Andrea when she was looking for pre-engagement stories from our visitors. BestWeddingSites.com is listed in the acknowledgment section of His Cold Feet, on page roman numeral x.

While you can pre-order your copy now - be sure to come back to our site in February when we will be giving away 5 copies of the newly released book.

Web Site Find: Flutter Studios

We've received word of a great new online wedding invitation store called Flutter Studios - they provide fine wedding stationery from a fresh, modern perspective. Not only are the invitation designs beautiful, but the site design and layout is just as nice.

At Flutter Studios, all the designs are available on the site for you to personalize and preview, so there's no need for a consultation. You will immediately be able to see what your invitation will look like before ordering with their live preview feature. You can select from Flutter Studios wording templates or use the free form template where you build it your way.

Placing your wedding invitation order is done in 3 easy steps with your final price being provided to you in the first step.

Step 1: Select the products that you want to order and adjust quantities. You will see your final price immediately.

Step 2: Personalize the text for your selected products as necessary. Live previews will be generated to make sure it's just right.

Step 3: Proof each product just to make sure there aren't any mistakes. Then you're ready to submit your order!

Our favorite part of the site? The Invitation Schedule on the home page. While it's just a guideline - you simply enter your wedding date and you are given the suggested dates you should address and send out your invitations by, when to address and mail them, as well as when the guests should reply by.

PS - please look for our Web Site Find posts to be a regular feature of our blog.

Fortune Cookie Favors

If you are looking for a special and delectable wedding favor - Emily's Chocolates is now offering Chocolate-Covered Fortune Cookie Favors. Each cookie is coated with a special blend of smooth milk chocolate and comes individually wrapped inside a white, personal-sized takeout-style tote embossed with the Chinese character for love.

We have tasted other fortune cookie favors - but, Emily's are exceptionally delicious and the cookie itself isn't hard to bite into or break open (to reveal a fortune of love).

These Chocolate-Covered Fortune Cookie Favors are sold in a box of 70 and retail for $105. Each cookie contains 1 of 12 messages of love (one example is - "If you want to be loved, be lovable!"). Although these boxes can be left as they are, you can add a ribbon and bow with maybe a floral embellishment for the perfect presentation. At $1.50 per favor plus the cost of your additional decoration, these favors from Emily's Chocolates are an inexpensive and beautiful edible party favor.

Martha Stewart Crafts - product reviews

Recently I received some samples from the Martha Stewart Crafts collection. The entire product line is available at your nearby Michaels craft store and is very reasonably priced (ex. 12 place cards for only $1.99).

The Gingerbread House Favor Boxes are so cute - they are perfect as holiday wedding favors and/or place cards filled with cookies for your guest to take home and enjoy or as sweet gifts for loved ones over the holidays. This kits comes complete with the boxes, red ribbon for tying them closed and a label sticker.
Price: $7.99 for 6 boxes

White Cherish Place Cards (These are called tented on the package, but are easel backed placecards - a very unique idea and it works perfectly. Sometimes tented cards don't always stay open the same amount, but with easel back, they are propped at the perfect angle for reading). Martha Stewart has coordinating embellishments and accents for customizing these place cards. Please note: each place card has a different scallop edge, so if you want all your place cards to be the same, these wouldn't be the ones for you - but there are others available in the collection that are all the same in the set (Ex. Classic Place Cards)
Price: $1.99 for 12 easel backed place cards

Floral Place Cards - these tented place cards come in a package of 2 cards of each color (red, brown, green, pink, blue, and orange). These cards can also be used as gift tags and feature a floral burst design that coordinates with other products in the Martha Stewart Crafts line. There are 2 different floral burst designs (6 place cards of each design). These cards are a nice heavy weight of paper, but the design does tend to take over the card, leaving only a small white rectangle for writing in your guest names - on this card there wouldn't be any room for writing the table number on the outside, but, it could always be written inside.
Price: $1.99 for 12 tented place cards

The Embossed Eyelet Favor Boxes make unique place cards that double as favors for your guests. These white boxes would make a beautiful presentation at both bridal showers and wedding receptions. Please note, the weight of the paper is rather flimsy, so be careful when putting the boxes together. This kit comes complete with the boxes, pre-cut white grosgrain ribbon and tags for labeling.
Price: $9.99 for 8 favor boxes

For the DIY Bride, the bone folder that Martha created is amazing - it works beautifully, you don't have to press hard at all to get a score line for folding the paper - I currently have a bone folder (not a Martha Stewart one) that I have to score with a couple of times before getting a good crease for folding. I will definitely be tossing that one to only use Martha's.

Unique Place Card Idea

I've recently received samples of a beautiful and unique place card idea - the company is PlaceTile® Designs and they offer Erasable Ceramic bottle Stoppers™. They can be used as place cards for the wedding when placed on their side - and then the guests can take them home to cork olive oils, wines, vinegars, and more (making it easy to identify wine, dates when wines were opened, or describe flavors of wines or olive oils). Along with the bottle stopper/place cards, PlaceTiles also offers erasable ceramic menu and message boards, place cards, serving pieces and napkin rings. On their web site, you can view the large assortment of designs including the Nature Collection, Timeless Collection, A La Mode Collection, Vineyard Collection, Cosmopolitan Collection and Holiday Collection.

The one downside to the erasable ceramics - they do rub off if your finger should happen to touch them. This isn't so good if you have paid a calligrapher to write out your guest names and it should happen to be rubbed while being placed on the table at the reception, or if a guest happens to touch the PlaceTile not knowing it's erasable. My suggestion would be to write the names in permanent marker and then use nail polish remover to "erase" the names for future use. Plus, you can always experiment with other options.

These unique ceramics are absolutely beautiful and would make a great addition to any special event, just please be careful when using the felt-tip markers that are included with most PlaceTile orders.

Two new Holiday Rhinestone Tshirts

We now offer three Holiday Rhinestone Tshirts. In addition to our already very popular Santa Baby Tshirt, we now carry shirts with the sayings: naughty or nice? and Bah Humbug. All our custom rhinestone shirts our available in Baby Doll styles - short or long sleeve, spaghetti tanks or boy beater tanks and you select the rhinestone color of your choice. Order your shirts now to ensure delivery in time for the holidays. Of course, our wedding party tshirts and bridal tshirts also make great holiday gifts.