I always loved reading about the details of other brides' weddings, as they were planning, and after the big day, so I thought I'd share some of mine separately from my vendor reviews. For me, details are what made everything so special and my wedding, MY wedding.
Haydel's Cake & NolaB Cake Stand - details in my vendor reviews
Secondline Hankies- GEMS- quick turnaround (so I could literally wait until the week before to order them when I had a more accurate guest count), nice quality, highly recommend.
Secondline Umbrellas – Etsy seller lizmpetro - very inexpensive compared to others I saw and she custom made ours. I loved them, they were perfect. She also arranged for my planner to pick them up from her so she didn’t have to ship them.
Mini umbrellas for our kids- Etsy seller blissbyrachel - she did these for me on very short notice and customized them as well. The quality of the actual umbrellas wasn’t all that great, but who cares really.
Custom rubber stamps- Etsy seller blossomstamps- this lady is great! I first used her for a custom return address stamp to use on my wedding invitations and when I saw how fast and inexpensive she was, I had her make me several other custom stamps, including a stamp for Photobooth cards (“Strike a Pose”). I DIYed these business card size cards for all of the dinner tables, in addition to my menus and table number holders. I wanted to make sure guests knew our guest book was being created at the photobooth.
Wedding invitations- Etsy seller GoldenSilhouette- she already had a gorgeous hand stamped fleur de lis invitation and I had her customize the colors for me. Loved them! Not cheap, but definitely not super expensive either. Stationary was not a top priority for me, but she made it look like it was.
Custom Wedding Map- Etsy seller Caligrafiabella- beautiful custom wedding map with all of the key landmarks (hotel, RD, Cathedral, Wax, etc.) in the FQ. I put these in the hotel gift bags- perfect touch. Also going to use the originals to have framed as gifts for our parents.
Veil- Etsy seller Megsveils- I wanted a simple inexpensive veil and I had read a great review about her from another Knottie on my month of board. She delivered – I had a cathedral length veil and blusher with simple satin cording around the edges and I believe I paid $70. Seriously, $70. It is beautiful and simple, just like I wanted. The bridal shop wanted something like $250 for the same thing . Ridiculous.
My beautiful dress the morning after- the secondline in the wet streets really did a number on the underneath of my dress, but you couldn't see it on top and IT WAS TOTALLY WORTH IT! 
Fleur de Lis broach, hair/veil combs (didn’t use either of them, although gorgeous), earrings, and wedding platform flip flops- all from Wedding Factory Direct website. Their stuff is top quality at wholesale prices. My only regret is that I ordered most of these things piecemeal as I went along and I could have saved a ton on shipping had I known what I wanted and ordered all at once.
Cake Pulls- Bead Shop on Magazine- I was thrilled to find out they have gold cake pulls which matched perfectly with everything! Very inexpensive compared to some Etsy sellers I saw. They weren't top quality, but I didn't expect that my girls would actually keep them long term or wear them as some brides intend. It was really just for fun. None of us had even heard of a cake pull before my wedding, so these were perfect for their purpose. I also DIYed little cards with envelopes with each charm's meaning. Very cute.
Hotel Gift Bag Contents: Zapp’s chips (ordered these online), mini bottles of Crystal hot sauce (ordered online), mini packets of Tony Chachere seasoning (online), individual packets of Advil (Staples was the cheapest I could find and free shipping), bottled waters, Leah’s Pralines (bite size favors with custom labels- ordered over phone/online and picked up the week of in FQ), NO Visitor’s Guide and FQ Walking Tour brochure (pre-ordered from the NOVCB and planner picked them up- FREE), a custom Welcome Letter (see below), and the Custom Wedding Map.
Wedding Website- Wedding Wire. It was free and easy to use, even for a technologically challenged person like me. They also have a NO background already there. I also used their seating chart program to make my seating chart. Super helpful and easy. I did have to type in all of my guests’ names since I wasn’t using their RSVP function, but that only took me about 15 min to do. Totally worth it.
Welcome Letter- fellow Knottie Lauren will create a custom Welcome Letter for you that is awesome. Let me know if you want to see mine and I will email it to you. It’s in PDF so you can’t modify mine, but she will do yours for you for ridiculously cheap. So cheap I actually sent her extra money for all of her effort. This was a great, informative addition to the welcome bags. I will send you her email address as well if you want it.
Pub Crawl- I organized a pub crawl for the early arrivals on Thursday. We had about 25 in attendance to begin with and 12 to end with. I created a map and itinerary of all the stops, including their history and their famous cocktails. We stuck to places with classic New Orleans cocktails with a long history (with the exception of Bombay Club, but it fit the ambience factor). This was a huge hit and I’m glad I made the effort.
Bridesmaids Dresses- all of my BMs are scattered throughout Texas and one in DC, so I chose to go the David’s Bridal route for their dresses to enable them to take care of it at home on their own time. That did work out great, and the everyone was happy with their choices and dresses, but I will say that everyone had the same experience, including me in trying to inform them of my information- these people are bona fide idiots and not easy to deal with. That being said, there were no real problems.
My Programs - a serious labor of love. Many, many pages long with the full Catholic Mass, the words to the hymns, description of the WP (who they were and how we know them), a poem, a thank you to our parents, and info about the upcoming secondline. I wanted to tear my hair out doing this, but it was worth it n the end. If anyone wants the template, just let me know. I got the template from a bride over on the Catholic board.
And now it's all over! Thank you to all the ladies here on this board who have helped me in the last year and a half. Truly grateful and I hope my reviews (incredibly long I know, I'm a lawyer, we like to hear ourselves talk
can help the next round of brides.
