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While scouring our wonderful Wishpot Wedding Expert’s profiles, I noticed that many of the experts had fabulous vintage or vintage inspired pieces on their wish lists. To make your wedding attire unique, use vintage items such as veils, earrings, or even shoes. One-of-a-kind pieces are sure to make you look and feel like royalty on your special day. To keep track of all of the great vintage items you find, create a vintage inspired wish list. If you get distracted while assembling your guest list and find yourself shopping online, throw your new vintage finds into your list. It will help to inspire you as you continue in your wedding preparations.
A great way to infuse your wedding dress with style is with a vintage inspired veil. Amorology Weddings, one of our wedding experts, spotted an adorable vintage veil, like this Wedding White Faschinator Veil found on Etsy. If a veil is not your style, try a headband, like this fabulous Feather Headband. Visit their site frequently for unique items for your wedding.
Throw on a distinctive necklace and add an element of vintage glamour to your wedding dress. Pair fabulous necklace, like this White Seed Bead Necklace, with a simple strapless dress and prepare to dazzle your husband-to-be.
Take a note from our experts and incorporate a few vintage inspired pieces into your wedding wardrobe. Visit our Wishpot Wedding Blog for more great ideas for your big day!
Wishpotis a shop anywhere online wish list service. Find us on Twitter@wishpotand fan us on Facebook.
Last week I covered a do-it-yourself way to create your own honeymoon registry as an alternative wedding gift option, and in today’s post I’m introducing yet another great alternative: charity wedding gift registries. You might prefer not to receive gifts from your guests…a couple combining households, for example, may not want a third waffler or yet another dish collection. Perhaps you want to give your guests a break in today’s economy, or think the idea of obligatory gifts tacky.
A great idea if you’d prefer to opt out of the traditional gifts while still providing your guests a means to contribute to your happiness by giving is to sponsor a charity registry, in which donations are made in the name of your favorite charity or to a cause that is important to you both.
JustGive and the I Do Foundation are two fantastic resources that can provide you with a means to build and manage just such a charity registry, at no cost to you. You can set up your registry and link to it right from your wedding website, so all your guests can easily locate and access it.
Just this week, JustGive and I Do have joined forces to provide even more features for your charity registry, including:
A wealth of eco-chic wedding Tips & Ideas for going green without sacrificing style
A powerful, easy-to-search database of more than 1.5 million charities
A new, memorable way to thank members of their wedding party, family, special friends or officiant with a GiveNow charity gift card
Meaningful and nontraditional charitable favors that make a lasting impact
Check them out and let them help you make a big difference with your big day!
Photo Credits: Screenshots from justgive.org and idofoundation.org
Monetary gift registries, also called cash registries, are a growing trend as a wedding gift alternative. They’re convenient for both you and your guests, combining the ease of a cash contribution with the thoughtfulness of a selected gift. The basic idea is an online list of items (i.e. contribution towards a home downpayment, school tuitition, and so forth) that your guests can choose from, and “buy” for you. Their cash gift is typically handled online via a credit card payment, and the proceeds are credited towards the specific item or items they select. You simply cash out the lump sum.
A honeymoon registry is just a monetary gift registry specific to your honeymoon. Thus, items might include contribution towards airfare, a hiking excursion, spa treatment, champagne brunch, or so forth. It lets guests choose specific components of your honeymoon they’d like to sponsor, and it gives you cash to help foot the bill. And when writing your thank-you cards, you can let them know how much you enjoyed their sponsored brunch or hike rather than just thanking them for the green.
There are a number of honeymoon registry services you can find on the web, but they do charge a fee, normally calculated as a percentage of your overall gift amount. A 5% - 8% fee is pretty common. Another option is to create your registry yourself, with features already available on your WedShare wedding website. Your website’s Gift Registry page is integrated with the online credit card merchant PayPal, and having everything available right on your wedding website makes it easier for your guests to find.
Want to set up yours fast and easy? Here are the steps…
Get a Free PayPal Account
PayPal is a popular, trusted service that will allow your guests to use any major credit card to purchase your item(s) in a safe online environment. You have access to the funds right away, and PayPal’s account interface allows you to transfer the gift directly to your bank account.
To work for your honeymoon registry, your PayPal account needs to be a Premier Accountor a Business Account. Both will work, and both are free to create. You select the account type when you set up the account for the first time. Go to PayPal.com to create your account, if you have not already. You can choose “Premier” when selecting the account type, as shown below.
Create a free PayPal account for your registry
Fill out the account creation form, and specify an email address for the new account. You’ll use this email address to identify your PayPal account when linking it to your honeymoon registry. Let’s move onto that next.
Create a WedShare Monetary Gift List
Log into your website’s control panel and edit your Online Gift Registry page by clicking its edit icon. Scroll down to the Monetary Gift Lists section and enter in a name for your registry to create it:
Create a monetary gift list on your website's Online Gift Registry page
Next, edit your new registry’s preferences so you can link it with your PayPal account. Click the Preferences tab, locate the “Allow PayPal” checkbox, and check it. In the field for “Your PayPal Email Address”, enter in the email address you used to create your PayPal account:
Add your PayPal email address in the preferences of your new honeymoon registry
Click the “Save” button to save your changes. You’re almost finished…now it’s just a matter of adding the items.
Create Your Registry Items
In order for your guests to be able to sponsor your honeymoon, you’ll need to create items they can purchase. These can be anything you like: a spa treatment, candlelight dinner for two, you name it. Perhaps you’d like to split a honeymoon item so more than one guest can contribute to it–or provide an open amount contribution option. It’s your honeymoon registry, and your call.
To add an item, click the Items tab and enter in details for a new honeymoon item. When deciding what to add, you can click the “Examples” link to see some example items if you like.
Create items for your registry
You can always edit an item by selecting its Edit link from your item list. Click “Add Image” to upload any image as a graphical icon. To move an item up or down in your list, use the green arrows on the left. You can also place your items in categories if you like, such as “Travel”, “Exploration”, “Dining”, “Entertainment”, and so forth.
Edit registry items to add icon photos and other properties
Repeat for all the items you’d like to set up. Now, when guests browse to your wedding website, they’ll be able to view and use your new honeymoon registry! Gifts will go to your PayPal account for withdrawal (see below). Here’s our sample registry, which you can see live at the WedShare online demo:
Our honeymoon registry, published and ready for use on our wedding website
Managing Purchases
To see who has purchased your items at any time, click the Purchase History tab. You can also log into your PayPal account to view your balance, withdraw money to your bank, and view your purchase history there as well.
Using PayPal, you can check your balance and withdraw at any time
Now you have a fully functional honeymoon registry, right on your wedding website, live and accepting gifts from your guests!
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!
A great way to infuse your wedding dress with style is with a vintage inspired veil. Amorology Weddings, one of our wedding experts, spotted an adorable vintage veil, like this Wedding White Faschinator Veil found on Etsy. If a veil is not your style, try a headband, like this fabulous Feather Headband. Visit their site frequently for unique items for your wedding.
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