Browsing Tag

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Rowan and Kevin’s Vermont Weekend

I’m so super-pleased to introduce Rowan and Kevin. These two met in Alaska, were engaged in Ireland and will be married in Vermont later this year. With the support of the adorable Kinsey and Roxy, this couple is sure to throw an amazing celebration for their friends and family.

The Glö-Couple:

Rowan, an environmental lawyer and
Kevin, a veterinarian

Celebration Date & Location:

September 2011
The Alerin Barn
St. Johnsbury, VT

Tell us how you got engaged:

The official engagement happened while we were on vacation in Ireland, at a misty lake with sweet words and an amazing heirloom ring that was Kevin’s great grandmother’s. The actual engagement happened a couple months before when we were talking about moving, and Kevin wanted to move me again (I already followed him once cross-country). I was pretty hesitant about it and he asked if it would be better if we were married. I said yes, it would help and he wondered aloud if he should ask at that moment or wait until Ireland. I told him to wait but considered us engaged at that point (although I waited to tell everyone until the official “will you marry me” happened).

What’s the overall ‘feeling’ you’re aiming for with your celebration:

We are focusing on what would make it a good party for us and for our guests. We are trying to downplay the “show” aspect of weddings. So no colors, not too worried about centerpieces, we’re not having a garter/bouquet toss, and we may even skip the first dance. It’s important to me for it to be pretty, but it doesn’t have to be amazing and super coordinated.

Are you adding any fun twists on tradition:

Kevin and I will be walking down the aisle together. Nothing against my dad (or mom since I would have them both walk me down the aisle if we went that route), but I feel like they “gave me away” when they dropped me off for college 13 years ago. Since Kevin and I have been living together for awhile now it feels right that we will be walking down the aisle together. I hope it will relieve some of the anxiety of first seeing each other if it’s done in private and that it will take some of the attention off me (I have never really liked being the center of attention).

What was the inspiration for your Glövite and Glösite design?

For the Glosite, I used Glö’s templates and just modified from there. I’m not tech-savvy AT ALL but it was super easy to create and embellish. I am particularly proud of the slideshow I made and love the pac-man game.

Now show us your Glövites and Glösite!

If you created your own design – how did you do it?

The Save the Dates are a photo taken by a friend of ours which I uploaded and then wrote over (easy)!

Any good planning tips and tricks for the couples who are just starting to plan?

The wedding planning is an excellent time to start asserting yourself as a unit and figuring out where you want to compromise in order to please others. So while some things may feel trivial and “just an extra 20 people to keep the peace with your mother” it also can set the tone for future dealings. You may want to let her invite her friends because it really would make her happy and it doesn’t really matter to you. Or those 20 extra people might tip it from being a small intimate celebration to a large one you don’t want or can’t afford. Figuring out where to compromise and when to assert yourselves will happen over and over (planning where to spend a Christmas, deciding whether or not to baptize your baby, etc.) and wedding planning is a great time to set yourselves up as a unit and practice saying [gentle] no’s to invested people. Also, step away from the bridal magazines. They will only make you feel bad and buy stuff. Find a few blogs that inspire you and ignore the rest.

13 Jan 2011

Cool finds, DIY, Inspiration

Invitation and Accent Designs from OneHeart Weddings

So I’m always hunting around the web for different DIY design options. The other day, I happened across a fabulous resource from One Heart Weddings, which offers downloadable DIY designs. Their designs are super compatible to upload as Glövites, and you can print the designs at home if you need some extra paper invites for the older relatives. Plus, there are matching templates for Wedding Programs, Menus and Thank You cards. (as an added bonus, the first 2 downloads are free. yippee!)

I also love that there is a “backgrounds and accents” category with icons and images that are perfect for making Glösite designs.

One Heart Spiraling Flourish Invitation and Accent

To use a OneHeart Wedding invitation design as a Glövite, take the following steps:

1) Choose any OneHeart invitation design (I recommend using a portrait sized design) and clicked “personalize online”

2) Edit the text and click “download PDF”

3) To upload into Glö, you’ll need to crop the design and save it as a ,jpg, .gif or png format.

You can either crop the PDF version and then save it as a JPG using a program like paint (PC), paintbrush (mac) or Adobe Photoshop.
OR
You can take a screenshot of the finished design and save it as the correct file type
(Note: Glövite designs work best with the dimensions w: 431 x h: 531 pixels, but the horizontal designs from OneHeart are pretty spot on.)

4) Then, log onto your glosite.com account and go to “Manage Glövite” > edit/create a Glövite and upload the design

To make a matching Glösite design, you can download one of our DIY templates and use a coordinated OneHeart Wedding Accent to make something fabulous.

One Heart ‘True Love’ Invitation and Accent designs

30 Sep 2010

Real Glö-bies, Real Glö-Vites & Sites

Tim and Mo’s Garden Wedding Vites and Site

The Glö-Bride: Melissa, Educational consultant

Her Glö-partner: Tim, Landscaper

Celebration Date & Location: August 2010 in Melissa’s sister’s backyard in Junction City, Oregon/Lane County, USA

Tell us how you got engaged:

I have been friends with Tim’s sister for over 20 years. Tim and I recently met again after many years and sparks flew. He proposed over a picturesque bridge on bended knee, and I, of course, said yes.

What’s the overall ‘feeling’ you’re aiming for with your celebration:

We’re celebrating in my sister’s beautiful garden with many, many lush blooming plants. The overall “feeling” we’re going for is casual garden party.

Are you adding any fun twists on tradition:

We have wonderful cooks in the family, so we’re doing potluck.

What was the inspiration behind your Glövite and Glösite design? How did you make it?

My sister’s garden and her cats were the inspiration for the invitation and website. We also threw in an eagle to honor Tim’s totem animal.

I have to confess, I had to do a bit of research to learn that a totem animal is a personal spirit that helps watch over and guide you. Pretty cool stuff! I took a little quiz and found out that I am either a Horse (neigh!) or Dog (woof woof!)

My friend, Merisha Lemmer, designed our invitation. (You can email Merisha here)

Now show us your vites and site!

Any good planning tips and tricks:

Get e-mail addresses early. Also, have a plan for those who have yet to join the twenty-first century and don’t do e-mail or can’t access the Glösite.

If you have guests who aren’t on email, consider sending paper invitations that match your Glövite designs. If you choose a Glö design, we can arrange for you to have matching paper invitations printed. Just contact us at Glö!

I discovered that Melissa and Tim were using some other nifty tools to help with their planning. The first is a travel booking site called Hotel Planner where you find group discount rates on hotels. A SUPER big help if you have numerous guests coming from out of town. You can even specify that the event you’re planning is a wedding. After the hotels are chosen, you have a landing page on the site that lists all of the hotel options for your guests. What a great way to make it nice and easy for them! Melissa and Tim simply included a link to the site on their ‘Travel’ page.

Melissa and Tim also registered for their honeymoon using Travelers Joy. And although the google map couldn’t seem to find Mexico (??), I’m sure the pilot will have better luck! Registering for a honeymoon is a great option for those of you who have what you need for the house already.

12 Aug 2010

Real Glö-bies, Real Glö-Vites & Sites

Jillian and Terence’s Slayeriffic Vites and Site

You all are going to LOVE these email save the dates and Glösite from Jillian and Terence. They sent over some spectacular words about their upcoming wedding celebration – so rather than me try to do them justice…..

Tell us a bit about your upcoming celebration

We did not consider ourselves the wedding type and always talked about not getting married. But on our five-year anniversary, Terence surprised me with a proposal that went along the lines of, “I know you don’t want to get married, but I though maybe you’d consider marrying me?”. It was very irresistible. In the beginning, we weren’t sure how to go about planning the wedding we never really wanted to have. We knew that we loved each other, wanted to be together and to build a future together, but kept questioning why we needed to legitimize our relationship through a legal marriage, and with the formality (not to mention, expense) of a wedding. In the end, we decided that we could decide to legalize our marriage when and if it was right for us, but in the meantime we just really wanted an excuse to bring our friends and family together and celebrate our commitment to each other, with the people who were nearest and dearest to us. We basically just wanted to throw one really amazing party with all our family and friends. How often do you get a chance to really do that?

We totally agree guys! How many times DO you get to have all your favorite people in one place at one time?

What was the inspiration for your Glövite and Glösite design? And how did you make it?

Jill would describe her technological abilities as being “slow to develop”. Terence has dabbled in flash and web stuff, but not really enough for us to make a functionally fabulous site of our own. That’s when we discovered Glö (yay for Jill’s obsession with wedding blogs!).

Terence loves music and has been dj-ing for years so we loved the idea of a red, white and black themed event- inspired by vinyl records! We found a Glö template that matched our colour scheme and looked pretty rad and used it.

We’re mostly excited about the option to design and upload our own invitations and save-the-dates. We wanted to do something really un-traditional that emphasized what we want our wedding to be- a unique and memorable night that is above all else- LOADS OF FUN! Our save-the-date was inspired by our joint-love of movies, and by Jill’s obsessive love of Buffy the Vampire Slayer! Terence has a background in fine arts and he drew the original design, scanned it, worked some photoshop magic and voila!

Check out this bad-boy of a save the date – crazy coolness!

What nifty things are you doing on your Glösite?

Jill (the technologically challenged part of this pair) did most of the webiste since she is on vacation and Terence is a slave to his office. But using the very helpful tips and suggestions on the Glö page, she successfully added a weather widget so that her out-of-town guests can see the forecast for Toronto and a countdown to the wedding! We are also adding a photo slideshow.

What fun twists on tradition are you adding to your wedding celebration?

We liked the basic template of most weddings, with the ceremony and some food and dancing, but we wanted ours to be a little more unexpected. So we kept some things traditional and added some of our own twists to the evening.

We set our date in December so we could take advantage of the holidays, without waiting for another summer and fighting for a venue during the “wedding season”. Off-season is definitely the way to go! We booked a restaurant where we will host the whole event- from the ceremony to the singing and dancing at the end.

We’re both super big vegan foodies (well Terence is vegan 90% of the time, except in the presence of really good-looking dessert) so we arranged to have an all vegan wedding menu! The chef at the restaurant where we are celebrating was happy to accommodate, which is freaking fantastic. We’ve taste-tested his creations and they are spectacular enough to knock the socks off of even our most carnivorous guests! We are having some of our close friends and family bake red, black and white vegan sweets to adorn our dessert buffet table, which will also include a tower of vegan cupcakes. I’m drooling as I write this. We are also really into sustainable living and will be serving mostly local and organic wine and beer. We love our city!

Other fun twists:

We are walking down the “aisle” together and we have decided not to have a wedding party

Our centerpieces, decorations and favours (cd’s of love songs) are all diy- homemade!

Terence’s band Cobra and/or two of our friends are going to sing a few songs live at the event

Jill’s little sister is a film graduate and is making a surprise wedding video (which includes interviews with Terences and Jill’s family and closest friends) to be shown for the first time at the wedding!

We are hoping to rent a karaoke machine for the later part of the evening

What more can I really say? We can’t wait to see the wedding photos!

29 Jul 2010

Real Glö-Vites & Sites

Hayley and Ryan’s ‘Make a Move’ Themed Celebration

I’m in love with Hayley and Ryan’s chess themed designs! Hayley made the design in Photoshop with a google-searched image and a free font downloaded from Dafont.

Hayely and Ryan's Chess Themed email Save the Dates on glosite

Hayley and Ryan’s Chess Themed Email Save the Dates

I asked Hayley to tell me a bit about her inspiration, and here’s what she wrote:

I came up with the tagline ‘He made his move, please save the date!‘ while i was riding the bus. This tagline actually helped to decide my overall theme for the wedding. The inspiration was a couple things; 1) My man is chess obsessed! 2) I think STD’s can be cute and flirty and this idea that he ‘made his move’ on me is so sexy!

Hayley says she felt the tagline set a masculine tone for what is normally an overtly female event. She made a couple of versions and sent it to her sister, mum and sister-in-law for review and feedback. (Kuddos to Hayley for that ‘move’ — honest feedback from some trusted sources is always a great help in the design process!)

Hayley & Ryan’s Glösite

Hayley and Ryan are hosting a nighttime cocktail wedding, which will feature a homemade, over-the-top mad tea party dessert table – including a chess board cake with sculpted chocolate pieces and lots of wine! Hayley send through a few mouth-watering photos to give us an idea of what she’s planning.

Planned treats! Including chess cake, sugar cookies, cheesecake pops, guinness pudding, rice krispie cones, and white chocolate brownies.

22 Jun 2010