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Browsing Tag

Mexico

Real Glö-bies, Real Glö-Vites & Sites, Real Glö-Weddings

Beverly and Brandon’s Mexican boho celebation nourished with boundless adoration & salty air

Bev and Brandon
photos by Joshua Kogan, Studio JLK

The Glö-Couple (tell us a fun fact about each of you):
Beverly, a Life/Movement Coach and baklava addict &
Brandon, a Visual Effects Artist, expert precision rifle shooter, and blueberry pancake baker

Celebration Date & Location:
February 2012
Jashita Hotel
Tulum, Mexico

Tell us how you got engaged:
One Day, Brandon sketched Beverly a book called “Tale of the Princess”. The first 10 pages had the beginning of their love story with blank pages to follow which represent their future. A year later, on a rainy day in Los Angeles, they checked themselves into the Ritz Carlton for a little R&R. It was there, he got down on one knee and proposed. Stunned, it took Beverly a few moments to realize that the word yes hadn’t made it’s way from her heart and out her mouth…and after a few repeated “pleases” from Brandon, she accepted. Beverly is sketching in the book where Brandon left off and is giving it to him on their 1 year anniversary…sssshhhhhh

What’s the overall ‘feeling’ you were aiming for with your celebration:
Everything had purpose.

We’re both born and raised Californian’s. We’ve been living and working in New Zealand for the past couple years and when it came to planning our wedding, we decided to have a small destination wedding in Tulum, Mexico. This way, we got to spend quality time with our closest friends and family (30 in total). A vacation for all, if you will. We rented out an incredible beach front resort for the week, so everywhere we looked, it was people we knew. Even our photographer was a friend (fortunately for us he’s a professional to the stars…)

My husband’s niece was the flower girl and had a matching mini (age appropriate) version of my dress

International influences: The resort in Tulum Mexico is owned and run by an incredible Italian family, my day of wedding coordinator was French, my dress was custom made by Wai-Ching (Cantonese for wisdom and virtue) who’s based out of Washington, the chef was flown in from Prague and I planned the entire thing from New Zealand.

Photo montage

We wanted to spoil everybody. This wasn’t just about us. It was about love and union and friendship. The Weekend included: Fire-dancing, zip lining at night, massages, all the meals were freshly caught that day, on-site chauffeurs & boats/captain anytime/where we wanted, live music and waitstaff.

Our married guests said that it felt like they renewed their vows. Our engaged guests said it helped them break the expectations of tradition and inspired them to plan according to what THEY wanted and our single friends got to flirt with each other and bask in the comfort that they weren’t the only ones holding out for the BEST.

decoration

Did you add any fun twists on tradition:

  • Our moms married us in a circle-esque ceremony. (We did the legal paperwork at the Beverly Hills Courthouse). We just didn’t feel right about a stranger marrying us and who better to say the words.. “Do you Brandon, take my daughter Beverly” than Mom herself. There wasn’t a dry eye on the beach.
  • My friends and I made my bouquet of Something old, new, borrowed and blue. Although it broke in the airport when I helped a man who almost dropped his child and luggage. It ended up as our main dinner centerpiece instead :)
  • Our registry was a “Celebration Registry” we did right on a Glosite Page using paypal. All the money went straight into our paypal account which helped us fund the weekend. So our guests didn’t have to pay for anything specific, or get us a tangible gift, but rather they contributed to the whole experience. (snorkeling, massages, gratuities, etc…)
  • We delegated certain people to pack our favorite wines in their suitcase. One person was allowed 3 bottles into Mexico, so we bought our favorites in California, wrapped them all cute and delivered them to our friends to pack with them.
  • Our best friends two boys walked me down the isle. One was responsible for making me laugh and the other one for reminding me to breathe. You can tell by the pics who had what job :)

bride entrance

What was the inspiration for your Glövite and Glösite design? If you made them yourself, tell us how you did it.
Celebration + Vacation= Celecation

Our guests’ experience with Glovite/Site was like booking a vacation. Right down to the music and villa bookings….

Now show us your Glövites and Glösite

invites

Welcome Page

Accommodation

Events & RSVP

What to Pack

Registry

Any good planning tips and tricks for the couples who are just starting to plan?
For the communication, keep it consistent. When you’re communicating online with your guests, it’s easy to break off and have side convos in your personal email accounts. Chances are, if one person had a question, there are 3 other people that had the same one.. so don’t be afraid to update your site with the new info, and answer that way. On the same note though, anticipate any questions your guests might have so you don’t have to keep sending out “updates”…most likely your guests will tune out from you in their inbox. I suggest you have 2 of your closest friends receive the first ones to proof it (1 male and 1 female because we just think differently).
We sent 4 ‘Glovites’ in total
1. Save the Date
2. Invite (with an RSVP date)
3. Reminder to RSVP (1 week before the date listed on invite)
4. Thank You’s (this way when they clicked on the link, they got to experience the “After Math” of the wedding.. where we added a photo section, which was really just a link to pictage our photographer created, a lost and found page and our new address… You could even send a thank you to people who didn’t attend, but did send you a gift, that way they can see the site & pics too!

For the decor, don’t be afraid to mix DIY with professional help. i.e., we paid big bucks to rent out the resort, but when it came to table decor, we ordered clear votives and candles online (75 for $30), brought them in our suitcase and filled them with sand. WAY cheaper than renting candlelight from the decorators.

party

What is your favorite memory from your celebration?
My favorite memory was sitting at breakfast, watching my friends and family play in the environment we created for them. My husband looked at me and said.. “I didn’t know this is what I wanted.” Meaning, even he was surprised by the incredible outcome of following the vision only you guys could have made.

What’s the biggest “say what?”  moment or funny story that’s happened since you started planning?
There are 2!
1. A baton of bubbles.
Sooooo, our friends in New Zealand called the resort and said they wanted to treat us to a “Bottle of Bubbles”. They interpreted this as a “Baton of Bubbles” and proudly gave it to us with a note from our friends. We looked at the incredibly sweet concierge and said, “Are you sure they didn’t mean champagne?” And he said, “No..they said bubbles”. We didn’t have the heart to push it any further because he searched high and low for bubbles that came in a baton! So we just giggled said “Muchas Gracias”! To our surprise one of our guests actually blew them as I walked down the isle. Which turned out to be a MUCH better contribution to our wedding.

2. Part of the ceremony decor was beans sprinkled out in a circle that our guest’s stood around. Jashita left the decorations there for the week and they ended up sprouting! To this day, they’ve left the greenery there (where it was once just sand) because they believe it is a sign of life/fertility… pretty sweet.

ceremony beans are sprouting!

Who helped bring your celebration to life?

Photographer: Joshua Kogan, Studio JLK
Music: DJ Fermix and Camilu Nu
Wedding Coordinator: Destination Weddings
Dress: Wai-Ching
Jewelry was family heirlooms and also Lunachia


Real Glö-bies, Real Glö-Vites & Sites

Alejandra and Horacio’s Mexican-Argentinian At-Home Celebration

Over the past several weeks, I have had the joy to get to know Alejandra. Not only is Alejandra a rockin’ female engineer studying along with her fiance Horacio at my own alma mater MIT, but there is Mariachi music involved in their engagement story. Plus, their streamlined-elegant ‘vites and ‘site are a great example of how to tackle the challenge of dual-language guests!

The Glö-Couple:

Alejandra, a Mechanical Engineering PhD student &
Horacio, an Economics PhD student

Celebration Date & Location:

March 2011
Alejandra’s home,
Mexico City, Mexico

Tell us how you got engaged:

Horacio is (was, I should say) the worst with secrets. He tended to get over-excited with stuff, and managed to blow off many surprises over our first years dating. So he got a warning: if you ever propose, you’d better do it right. Then, the getting married talk started to get serious. So during our spring break vacation in Mexico (my home country), he suggested going together to a small silver-mining village called Taxco to get the rings (he’s Argentinean, and in Argentina both fiances wear an engagement ring). None of us had ever worn a ring before, so it made sense we got them together to make sure they fit. As soon as we got the rings, in his very very transparent way of saying things, he told me “ok cool. Got the rings. I don’t think I’ll be able to talk to your dad in this trip, so I’ll try to come up with a way of calling him from Boston… and then I’ll probably propose sometime in summer…”. Great, he had just forgotten to tell me the proposal date to perfectly ruin a hardly-attempted surprise.

Mariachi Seranade

A couple of days later, at 7am we woke up to Mariachi music. At first I thought I had forgotten somebody’s birthday (at home we usually play a mariachi CD to wake up the b’day person)… to later conclude it must have been the neighbor serenading his wife (and, by passing, not letting us sleep). Horacio, of course, pretended like he had no clue what was going on (of course! what does an Argentinean know about mariachis anyway?!). It was only until I got out of bed and looked out the window that I realized that the mariachis were pointing at my room!! He then he knelt down and proposed. To make things more exciting, half way though “the question”, my dad rushed into my room with a poncho and sombrero in hand, and shouted “Horacio, this is a Mexican serenade, you should be singing downstairs!!”. And so he did, and it was fantastic. I later learned that he had secretly talked to my parents the night before, and that they were the ones picking the mariachi playlist! It was the best surprise I’ve ever had.

 

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

We’re excited!!! We are getting married in my house (right where the serenade happened), which means it will be a small outdoors celebration. The religious ceremony will take place at a chapel a few blocks from my house, in the middle of the woods. Both Horacio and I are really simple, so we’re aiming for good food, good music, and minimal monetary and material waste. No bridesmaids, no groomsmen. We’re avoiding things like fancy furniture or silverware. We’re sticking to functional instead of elegant. (Actually, the wedding color is blue because the cheapest chairs we found were blue… and we realized that to turn them into the cutest chairs, we only had to make everything else match their blue — from invitations to decoration.) My family has always been pretty much DIY, so my sister will be helping out with decorations and dad will be in charge of building a platform to fit all of our guests. We’re hiring friends to take care of the music, photographs and baking…

Are you adding any fun twists on tradition:

We are trying to combine Mexican and Argentinean traditions to the ceremony and the party. For instance, we’re both going to be wearing traditional Mexican garments, and we will introduce the fabulous Argentinean concept of dessert table to the party. Our philosophy is: the more sugar we give the guests, the longer they will dance. Within our simplified life and minimal waste philosophy, we decided to send Glövites instead of paper invitations. People in Latin America are not used to the concept of wedding websites, so our Glösite has definitely been a twist for most of our guests!

What was the inspiration for your Glövite and Glösite design?

We really wanted something simple and pretty… and blue (matching the chairs, remember?). The website really came from the invitation itself, all blue and white. As for the pictures, we tried to keep them as informal as possible, to give people the impression that they’re really coming to a human celebration, more than a place with fancy tables and high heels. That, and the fact that we really don’t have any formal pictures of us!

Now show us your Glövites and Glösite!

envelope

Glovite English

Glovite Spanish

Glösite Welcome page


Glosite Events Page


sitedirections

 

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

Our inspiration came from a design we found at minted.com and a tablet pc. We liked the handwriting of the design, because it couldn’t be more simple. So we downloaded the font from the web, and I did some scribbles on my tablet until we liked one. We made it all on word and then took screenshots of it. Fairly primitive.

What’s the craziest/funniest/biggest ‘SAY WHAT?” moment you’ve had while planning?

Ohhhh, that one will have to wait til after the wedding, because Horacio is not allowed to hear dress-related stories just yet!

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

1. Read A Practical Wedding on a weekly basis. That’s where I found out about Glösite (the best tip we could give!), and about so many other things. It’s a fantastic blog that brings you down to earth, and reminds you that the wedding isn’t about a 5K dress, but about the bride and the groom starting a new life together.

2. Friends are dying to help out with something. Our friends in Mexico have been extremely helpful at finding stuff for us that can’t be found online.

3. Having a good DIY magazine is crucial to having an idea of what is realistic to do yourself, and what not.

4. Get both involved in the wedding planning process. Making the groom understand (and feel) that it’s as much of a celebration for him as it is for the bride. Let him help out with the website, give his opinion about colors and music, decide what hairstyle fits the bride best.

5. Most importanly, promise yourselves from the moment you get engaged, that no matter what family craziness surrounds you during the planning, it should help you to build a stronger marriage, and not one full of family drama.