WedShare * Daily is brought to you by the creative force behind personal wedding website service WedShare.com and contributing bloggers passionate about each of their own areas of focus and expertise in wedding planning and the wedding industry.
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Posted by gift_girl on Wednesday, February 24, 2010
The Wishpot Wedding Blog is all about details this Spring. Setting the scene for your event can be a great planning tool. Finding specific colors and textures, or maybe favor items to use as inspiration, can help guide your vision. Create a wish list of ideas to help keep things in order. These small (or large) items can reflect the mood you want. Love the beautiful color or see the perfect place setting? Add items to your wedding registry that reflect the aura you want to portray. These inspirational pieces can make your wedding more original and personal. Here are some of the inspirational picks from our Wishpot Wedding Experts:
This necklace, sterling silver and black agate surrounded by diamonds, was picked out by Gekd Boutique and would be a beautiful piece of jewelry, not to mention such a great inspiration.
Bubbly Bride found these beautiful Victorian Globes. You could add flowers and use them as a vase, or wrap ribbons around them as a centerpiece.
Shell dishes are so unique and beautiful! wedangel found a perfect set that can be used as favors or decorations.
From the recent Golden Globes to famous celebrity weddings, purple is the new and trendy color for gowns and weddings! This month Wishpot gives you tips and ideas for your gorgeous purple wedding.
When it comes to a purple wedding, the bride can add a few little things to her white dress that will add some spice to it. Wearing purple pumps like these BCBGeneration Dante Pumps will make a statement while you walk down the aisle! You can also take tips from celebrity weddings like Khloe Kardashian. She had a gorgeous purple/lavender wedding which can serve for a great place for inspiration. Khloe sported one of our favorite new wedding trends today…the SASH! Putting a sash around your wedding dress is a great way to make any traditional white dress look more elegant and unique.
What about decorations and favors? One of our favorite wedding favors are these awesome personalized travel candle tins which are a fun personal way to say thank you to your guests. And for decorations, save money on these beautiful purple and lavender silk rose petals. Putting them in the middle of all your guests tables will add more sophistication and serenity to your wedding.
When it comes to the wedding party, the bridesmaid dresses should be flattering on all shapes and sizes. This is why this short dark purple bridesmaid dress from Nordstrom is a perfect match for your wedding! And last but definitely not least…for the groom, add the perfect touch to his tux with a purple tie!
Every bride needs a little purple in her life. For more ideas on wedding dresses, décor, and more visit www.wishpot.com/weddings!
Wishpot is a shop anywhere online wish list service. Find us on Twitter @wishpot and fan us on Facebook.
Posted by gift_girl on Wednesday, November 25, 2009
This month Wishpot brings you creative and fun ideas for wedding favors for a beautiful winter wedding! Trying to find new ways to personalize your favors and make them memorable? Wishpot wedding experts have so many great ideas for wedding favors that will leave a lasting impression this winter season!
Wedding expert Wedangel has tons of inspired ideas for wedding favors. Having trouble finding something to put your favors in? Winter snowflake favor boxes are a perfect solution for this. Also, a way to give a favor that can last forever is to use elegant snow flurry glass ornament place card holders. This way you can give your guests a gift that they can always use and cherish. Snowflake guest soap favors are also an inexpensive yet neat gift that matches your winter wedding theme.
Want to make your favors personal? Wedding expert Cherished Gifts & Favors has the idea of personalized candle party favors. This is such an imaginative way to give your guests something practical and personal. And what guest does not love chocolate! Wedding expert It’s a Jaime Thing suggests these personalized Chocolate Letters. This is a low-cost way to please your guests and be personal at the same time. And lastly there is my personal favorite which is the scented pine cone favors. These are adorable and affordable!
Don’t forget to heat up your winter wedding with these economical and inventive wedding favor ideas!
Wishpot is a shop anywhere online wish list service. Find us on Twitter @wishpot and fan us on Facebook.
This is the second installment of a three-post series on wedding gifts. Monday’s post discussed alternative gift ideas. Today’s installment will cover some popular online registry services available and how to integrate them with your wedding website. My wrap-up post on Friday will guide you through gift tracking and writing thank-you notes.
Wedding gifts have traditionally been a way for guests to contribute to your new life together by providing you with all kinds of vital household necessities with which to feather your nest. Nowadays, couples are marrying older and are often combining households, or for whatever reason just may not want another blender or linen set. In Monday’s post, I covered alternative wedding gift ideas for couples who prefer not to receive wedding gifts, such as charity and honeymoon registries.
So who said registries need to be traditional? Beyond charity and cash registries, you can set up gift registries that include anything online or even offline that you can find. Combine traditional and nontraditional items. Include a honeymoon registry on top of that. Online gift registries are updated automatically when guests purchase, so you can see at a glance if available items are running low in any of your price ranges, making it easy to stay on top of your registry selections as time goes on.
Wishpot gift registry service: reserved items ensure no duplicate purchases
One of my favorite online registry services is Wishpot (wishpot.com), which lets you add any online item to your registry using a downloadable browser toolbar widget. Such shop-anywhere consolidation services make it really easy for you to build a single list of items for your guests to select from, containing items from any store online. Wishpot also includes options for charity and cash registries, by the way, so definitely check them out.
My Registry gift registry service
My Registry (myregistry.com) is another consolidation gift registry service that lets you add items from any store for your guests to view and purchase in one place. Amazon.com launched their own gift registry service as well, with the similar goal of consolidating all your gifts into a single list.
Amazon.com allows you to create a gift registry to consolidate your gifts as well
There are even online gift registries that cater to the groom’s point of view! Check out The Man Registry (themanregistry.com) to include gifts for the other half of the engagement equation.
Part of a groom's gift registry from The Man Registry
Getting the Word Out
Where guests traditionally had to be informed of your gift registries by word of mouth, today’s personal wedding websites offer the best medium to give guests the scoop. Guests will be there anyway, checking out your photos, signing your guestbook, posting their online RSVP, and finding hotel information. And it’s the same place they’ll access your registries. Embedding or linking your registry details is a snap, too. Most wedding website services allow you to embed third-party code snippets or, at the very least, links to your registry service(s); WedShare even has its own cash registry you can take advantage of.
As an example, see how simple it is to add a Wishpot gift registry widget to a WedShare wedding website in two steps:
Most services will provide link code for you to insert into your website's pages. Wishpot allows you to customize a widget badge and copy the code to generate it.
Step 1: Copy the code or link to your registry.
Edit your wedding website and paste the registry's code into your gift registry page. WedShare allows you to toggle to HTML view so that you can insert any third-party item or widget. Alternatively, you can simply add a link to your gift registry as you would any other link or item.
Step 2: Paste the code or add the link to your website’s Gift Registry page or section.
Here's our sample WedShare website with the embedded Wishpot widget.
That’s it! It’s really very easy to build your own consolidated wedding gift registry and add it to your wedding website. Having everything together in one place also makes it convenient and quick for your guests, which they’re sure to appreciate. And today’s online registry services provide options and flexibility to build and manage your lists like never before…I sure wish this stuff had been around back in the days of yore for my own wedding, I’ll tell you. Too bad that was circa the Triassic.
Friday I’ll delve into some great tools to help you track your gifts, and I’ll also share with you the art of the Thank-You letter.
This is the first installment of a three-post series on wedding gifts. I’ll start off today discussing alternative gift ideas. The second installment, to be posted Wednesday, will cover some of the more popular online registry services available and how to integrate them with your wedding website. My wrap-up post on Friday will guide you through gift tracking and writing thank-you notes.
Weddings and gifts traditionally go hand-in-hand. There are gifts for your bridal party and each other, possibly special gifts for your parents and others who you’d like to thank, and gifts for your guests (i.e. wedding favors). Likewise, your guests will generally be expecting to provide you with a gift unless you let them know otherwise.
There are a number of reasons why some couples prefer not to receive wedding gifts. Some want to give their guests a break in this economy. Others feel like obligatory gifts are tacky. Still others are combining households, already have a double dose of kitchen gadgets and linens, and don’t particularly relish the idea of adding more items to their storage shelves.
First, keep in mind that a registry doesn’t have to cover traditional items at all. Maybe you’ve got your eye on the latest video game console, or landscaping items for your new backyard. I’ll cover more on gift registries, including “shop-anywhere” and nontraditional registries, in Wednesday’s follow-up post. But beyond that, here are some great alternative wedding gift options:
Sponsor a Charity
If you’d prefer not to receive wedding gifts, one way to let friends and loved ones contribute to your happiness is to ask that donations be made in the name of your favorite charity, or to a cause that is important to you. Post the information on how to donate at your wedding website’s registry page, or add a link to one or more online charity registries. With a charity registry service, you can select a charity or nonprofit organization of your choice to which your guests’ donations will go. Websites like JustGive (justgive.org), I Do Foundation (idofoundation.org) and GlobalGiving (globalgiving.com) are great places to start.
Create a charity wedding registry with JustGive.org
Create a charity wedding registry with GlobalGiving.com
Cash Registries
Honeymoon expenses. Home improvement costs. School tuition. Downpayment on a new home. New vehicle expenses. Do I need to go on? Look, the love of it may be the root of all evil, and it may not be the key to happiness, but cold hard cash sure can help a newly married couple fulfill needs and solve problems. The cool thing about cash registries is that you get to create your own gifts. A honeymoon registry might have gifts like a day’s car rental, for example, or a champagne luncheon. Your guests “purchase” your gifts for you, their purchases are tallied, and the proceeds go right to your bank account. Because your guests are actually choosing specific items for you, it makes writing those thank-you notes far more personalized (come back for Friday’s post to read more on this): instead of thanking someone for fifty bucks, you thank them for that great guided tour they sponsored for you on your honeymoon to the Greek island of Santorini. An example of a cash registry is available at GoGift (gogift.com). Like all other gift registries, you can add the link for your cash registry to your wedding website’s Gift Registries page for your guests to find easily.
Let guests contribute cash as their wedding gift to you
Honeymoon registries are a specialized cash registry focused on your honeymoon expenses. Examples include HoneyLuna (honeyluna.com), The Big Day Travel (thebigdaytravel.com), and The Honeymoon (thehoneymoon.com); all will let you create a dream honeymoon itinerary, and allow guests to purchase individual items on your itinerary.
Part of a HoneyLuna.com honeymoon registry
The one catch you need to be aware of when working with cash registry services, including honeymoon registries, is that these services will generally charge you a fee in the way of a percentage of your guests’ contributions. The fees range from service to service, but they can be as high as 10% or more.
If you have a website with WedShare, you have a cash registry service built right into your wedding website, with no fees at all, and which will allow you to set up honeymoon registries or any other cash-based gift list just like these third-party services. Just set up your lists, add imagery to spice it up, and enter in your PayPal details for easy online handling of guest contributions. It’s already built into your Gift Registries page, so everything is conveniently located in one spot, and all the PayPal integration is set up for you.
An example WedShare cash registry set up as a honeymoon registry
With the flexibility of online charity and cash gift registry services, there are a lot of options for your wedding gifts, including for those couples that don’t want to go the traditional route. Come back to read my Wednesday post for even more on online registries and how to link them to your wedding website.
These stylish monogrammed melamine plates can be the perfect bridesmaids’ gifts or a great table setting for a personalized bridal shower. Order them in bulk and keep them afterwards for the many future entertainment parties you’ll have after you tie the knot! Add them to your wish list on your wedding website’s registry page and have your guests buy you a set of your choice for everyday personalized kitchenware. These plates can be classy, bold, whimsical, or just plain fun! Customize your plate pattern color in many variations, along with your choice of text and typestyle. You can add your monogram, an initial, or a full name of your choice; up to three lines of copy. The plates are 10 inches round, made from high quality melamine, and are food-safe and dishwasher safe (not microwave-safe).
If you are having a wedding with a small guest list, these beautiful monogrammed plates are a creative way to incorporate your initials on your wedding day. Each monogrammed melamine plate range in price from $22 to $26 each, depending on the website. At www.LaPlates.com each plate is $22, and at www.MyCleanPlateClub.com, plates are $22 each as well, but if you buy them in bulk quantities of 4, 6, or 8, you get them at the discounted price of $16.50 each…one of the lowest deals I’ve seen for these personalized party plates. Also check out the personalized and popular plate designs at Boatman Geller’s site.
These bold plates can also make a green statement, as melamine–an organic compound–is used to create melamine resin, a very lightweight but durable plastic that’s BPA-Free (Bisphenol-A Free), so they’re better for the environment than disposable plates. Now you can replace paper or Styrofoam at your next social event with your very own personalized monogrammed plates! I’m sure you’ll be able to find a style that will match your personal tastes.
Your wedding is one of the most important moments in your life and every girl dreams of her perfect fairytale day; but let’s face it… most of us don’t have the bucks to hire a wedding planner, so it’s up to us to make it a magical, dazzling day. Here are some great books to help make your day spectacular!
Wishpot is thrilled to be a new monthly blogger for WedShare * Daily! For our first post we thought we’d introduce ourselves and our wedding registry service.
What is Wishpot?
Wishpot is the perfect tool for your shop anywhere wedding registry. You can add items from ANY site (Etsy, Bed Bath and Beyond, Sur La Table, Nordstrom etc…) to your Wishpot wedding registry.
How does it work?
1. Sign up & add a little button to your internet toolbar (Add to Wishpot Button) and then start browsing the web.
The Add to Wishpot Button
Browse the web and when you see something you like, click the ‘Add to Wishpot‘ button in your toolbar. Wishpot, in a pop-out window, grabs a picture of the item and price as well as the page URL where the item can be bought.
Adding an item to your Wishpot registry
Click ADD and the item now appears in your Wishpot list. Repeat the process each time you find something else you want. We warn you: it’s addictive.
2. Get what you want
We’ve all been there…the outdated sweater, an ugly tie, another vase! Well, no more with Wishpot; it’s easy to let others know and get you what you want. On the top left of your list copy & paste the ‘Share by URL’ into emails, invitations, on your wedding website, and so forth.
Your Wishpot Registry
Friends and Family arrive from your link (they can also search for you on the site) and reserve items they’d like to buy you.
3. No duplicate purchases
Reserved items ensure no duplicate purchases
Once a guest reserves an item, it appears grayed out and is no longer available for purchase by anyone else.
To reserve an item we ask your guests to leave their name and email address so you always know who reserved what and who to thank. We also redirect your guest to the site where the item is from for the transaction.
And, we send out emails to guests who’ve reserved items to confirm the purchase.
With Wishpot, not only can you add items from any site, but you can add cash requests, charity donations, even your honeymoon to your registry. And with larger purchases you can set it up so that multiple people share the cost of a single item. So go on… add that 52-inch television to your registry.
And if you are looking to save money, we have price comparison features and price alerts. A Wishpot registry makes registering for your wedding fun. And we think that is the best part.
Thank you WedShare * Daily, and be sure to check out the Wishpot Wedding Blog for wedding inspiration.
@gift_girl
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