Gifts for our VIP

First off,

That means you MOH N!

Image via icanhascheezburger.com

We have been searching for the perfect gifts for our VIPs for a very long time. Our goal for our bridal party was to find something that could be useful after the wedding, but would always remind them of us while using it. Early on I found just the thing for Mr. castles groomsmen.

Image via Etsy/Seller Hammeronsteel

These beer bottle openers are made by a blacksmith who forges them from one piece of steel. Mr. Castle had each of his groomsman's initials stamped into the handle. Hopefully the guys will enjoy using these unique bottle openers for many years to come!

When it came to my girls I had a tough time. I considered a small clutch or jewelry to wear for the wedding, but I didn't know if they would use either of those after the wedding. I was trying to come up with something that could make an appearance on the wedding day and be a useful gift for their life as well. Finally after much searching I found these:

Image via Etsy/Seller Silkandmore

I figured we could use these robes as we are getting ready for the wedding and the girls will most likely use them again! Most of my girls travel as performers on touring shows and cruise ships. I'm sure it would be helpful to have a nice robe while traveling. The hardest part was choosing the color. I decided to get my MOH pink because it's her favorite color. For the other four ladies two of them will get green and the other two blue. I got myself an orange one of course.

For my parents I decided on embroidered handkerchiefs. My Mom's says, "May joy be in your tears today as you share with me my wedding day. Thank you for teaching me to live, laugh and love." My Dad's says, "Today a bride, tomorrow a wife, always your daughter. Thank you for giving me the wedding of my dreams." I plan on putting them in a shadow box frame with a picture after the wedding. I hope they like them!

Image via Etsy/Seller Inspired Stitches

Mr. Castle decided to get his Dad something really special. Mr Castle and his Dad are die hard Angels fans. We found this awesome Etsy shop that sells cuff links made from baseballs used in actual games!

Image via Etsy/Seller Qacreate

His Dad probably won't actually wear them, other than our wedding, but I think they are pretty cool to have as a keepsake! Especially being the huge Angels fan that he is.

Mr. Castle's Mom's gift is not ready yet. He decided to create a sort of college with a photo from each of his grandparents wedding, his parents wedding, his sisters wedding, and eventually will add our wedding photo. I think she will love the sentimental value of this gift. We haven't been able to put it together yet because we are planning to buy the frame when we get to California. We already have so much to bring out we didn't want to add a picture frame to the list. I promise to post a picture of the finished product after it has been made!

Lastly, we wanted to give our good friend who will be singing during our ceremony a gift of thanks. He's a dapper fellow and we thought he would enjoy having a nifty pocket watch to add to his accessories. We had his initials engraved on the front.  

Image via Etsy/Seller Discovercitywatch

As you can tell Etsy was our go to for gifts. We had great luck with every shop we ordered from. I would happily recommend any one of these shops to work with. They all were such nice people!

What are you gifting your VIP? Was it important for you to give them something they could use for the wedding? Or did you prefer giving a gift that has nothing to do with the wedding? 

Our Registry Picks

We ended up registering at three different places. We wanted to give people plenty of options. One of those options was going to be Macy's, but we had a terrible time trying to register there. The women who was helping us took forever signing us up, the scanner was not user friendly, the layout of the store was terrible, and we found the stuff we were looking at elsewhere for better prices. So we decided to dump Macy's. Instead we went with:

Image via www.linneyville.com

I really love this store. It was super easy to sign up online, and when we went into the store there was no hassle getting us a scanner. We went with Bed Bath & Beyond for guests who actually want to go into a store and buy us a gift. I still have relatives that are leery of online shopping. There are also plenty of store locations in both New York and California. My personal favorite registry item from BB&B is:

Image via keurig.com 

The Keurig. I only drink about one cup of coffee a day, so for me it's better than brewing a whole pot. Mr. Castle drinks a lot more than I do, but with it only taking one minute to brew, I think we'll be fine.

Our second registry is:

Image via Honeyfund.com

We decided to go with Honeyfund because we don't really need that much household stuff. We also don't really have that much space in our little apartment for a lot of new stuff. It's also a good way to prevent us from having to bring a lot of gifts back with us to NY. I know some people don't like Honeymoon registries because they feel like its asking for money, but everyone we've talked to about it thinks it's pretty cool. We're registering mostly for experiences, dinners, museums, so hopefully no one will be offended. I am most excited about some of the museums we will be going to on our honeymoon...

Image via traveling-piont.blogspot.com

I personally think its a great gift to give someone something that they will enjoy on their honeymoon. You could even take a picture of you and your groom enjoying that experience and include it in the thank you card. :)

Lastly we decided to add:

Image via amazon.com 

Did you know you can add an item from any website onto your amazon registry? It's pretty awesome. You download a bookmark for your browser toolbar that has the amazon "a" on it. Let's say you're on Antropologie's website and you see some cute dishes you wish you could register for. Well, all you do is click the amazon "a" button and select add to registry. It's awesome! I feel like there are now sooo many possibilities!

I'm curious to see which registry will get the most attention. I'm glad we gave people a lot of options. I personally like looking at people's different registries and seeing the different kinds of things they registered for. I think the more diverse your registry the more it tells people about you as a couple.

Where did you register? Did you give a lot of options or keep it simple?

Registry Woes...

Before I talk about where we registered and what we registered for, I would like to discuss a looming cloud hovering over our registering experience. As most of you are aware we live in New York City but we are getting married in Califonia. So when we talk about registering it always comes back to this question: How are we going to get gifts back to New York?

Image via onewed.com

The easy answer would be, we'll ship them back, or just have people send them to New York to begin with. I wish it were that simple. We live in a pretty large apartment building, and we live on the 4th floor. We have a hard time getting packages delivered to us period. Either we're not home, because we both work pretty full time, so UPS or FedEX can't deliver them without a signature. Or we are home but the post office doesn't want to walk up four flights of stairs so instead of even attempting to deliver something they put a slip in our mailbox to come pick it up at the post office. And an even worse scenario that has happened, we buzz them in and they just leave our package on the first floor by the mailboxes. I wish I could say I trusted my neighbors, but unfortunately I don't.

(source)

None of these options seem to work well for us...

So what can we do? We could have our gifts sent to my Mom's house in California where they have a better chance of getting delivered and they won't get stolen. But then how will we get them back to NY? We can't ship them because then we run into the same problem...We could just not register and tell people to give us gift cards or do a honeymoon registry which (spoiler alert!) we are. But I really want the experience of registering and receiving actual gifts that we can look back on and say, "Oh those were a wedding gift."

So I am at a loss. I really don't know what our best option is. Someone suggested we get a PO Box and have things delivered there, but I found out UPS and FedEx will not deliver to PO boxes. My thought as of now is to just have things sent to my Mom's address. We are not registering for that many large items, so we can try and carry as much possible back with us to NY, and then ship anything we can't bring back via the post office. At least we know the post office won't even try and deliver anything. We'll end up having to go pick it up, which is a hassle, but it's better than them not getting delivered, or worse getting stolen while left downstairs...

Any other suggestions would be awesome. Anyone else run into this problem?

Birthdays and Countdowns

This has been a really busy week! On Monday I celebrated the birth of one of the most amazing people I know! You guessed it, my fiance! We had a pretty low key celebration. I  make a yummy cake, ordered in food, and used his birthday as a reason to finally purchase...

A new computer!

Image via Apple.com

If you remember my post about his computer dying, if not you can find it here, this was a much needed present. I'm still figuring out how to use it... I've always had a PC. Jeff, being a designer, is a Mac pro. He's promised to give me some lessons as well as get started on our save the dates and invitation designs! Now that we have the computer I feel like we can finally kick the wedding planning into high gear, especially because...

How did this happen!? Well as they say, time flies... I got my "7 months to go!" email from project wedding this morning. It stated that I should be working on booking a florist, picking out bridesmaid dresses, and starting to research and plan our honeymoon. Well, our florist is booked, bridesmaid dresses are close to being picked and our honeymoon research has begun. So that makes me feel a little better. :-)

I'm looking forward to the next 7 months of planning. I'm sure it will be a thrilling adventure!

Just for fun, and since my last post was about our engagement photo outfit, here's a sneak peak of our engagement photos!

Always making me laugh

Photo by the amazing Aaron Lenhart

Did you freak out at 7 months or get excited?