3 To-Dos After the Wedding is Over

You feel the warm sand once more, drink the last of your frozen drink, and say farewell-for-now to the bright Caribbean sun. The honeymoon was pure bliss, and now it's back to "real" life! Real, MARRIED life - so exciting! It's officially time to catch up on responsibilities and after-wedding details!

You probably spent the last couple weeks or months wrapped up in final wedding planning, so now it's time to pay attention to the stuff and people you may have overlooked or under-appreciated during that crazy time!

Here are 3 post-celebration reminders to help you wrap things up after the wedding:

1. Thank your parents,

... Or whomever helped you plan, pay, or stay sane during the wedding planning process. A lot of time and money (understatement!) and effort went into helping you plan your beautiful day. Taking the time to write a nice note and even surprise them with a photo book of your favorite wedding pictures is a sincere, thoughtful way to show your thanks!

Wedding Paper Divas

2. Keep in touch with your wedding party.

It's easy to take advantage of all the support and love thrown your way during the wedding, especially from your bridesmaids and groomsmen. It's important to make them feel like they were more than just compliments to your wedding pictures, and that your friendship extends past the wedding commitments. Remember to call them up and let them know how much you appreciate them, and then continue to stay in touch as your start your married life with your new spouse.

Photo: My Life Photo, Flowers: Bloomin' Bouquets

3. Write thank you notes as soon as you can!

Create an organized list of all the presents you've received, and then plan to tackle them with your spouse after work, a couple notes a day. Don't forget to include anyone who did special things for you, like let you borrow your "something old", or your vendors who went the extra mile to make your wedding magnificent. Letting your spouse help will alleviate a lot of stress of checking off the thank you note list. He's got bad handwriting? No problem - let him help seal envelopes, put stamps on, and read addresses aloud to help you out.

United With Love

Stay tuned for our next blog including a to-do list of technical things you'll need to do after the wedding, with plenty of tips and advice, like changing your name and ordering photos!

Love Gives Way

Weddings are an amazing time. They are a time to celebrate the freedom of love, happiness, and a hopeful future - a freedom that millions of women, men, and children are denied due to sex trafficking each and every day. Bloomin' Bouquets is hoping to make a difference by teaming up with Love Gives Way to help stop sex trafficking through the beauty of wedding celebrations.

What Are We Doing About It?

Love Gives Way is a local undertaking started by photographer Andy Brophy in 2011 with the mission of ending sex trafficking with the help of the wedding community. Wedding vendors team up with local non-profit anti-sex trafficking organizations to raise both money and awareness for the cause. In 2013, Love Gives Way expanded its reach outside of its home of Atlanta to over 10 cities.

How Does Bloomin' Bouquets Play A Part?

We are proud to announce that Bloomin' Bouquets is now an active vendor in the Love Gives Way community!

We have pledged to donate 7% of all of our proceeds to fight sex trafficking. 

You can see our commitment page here.

What Can You Do?

When you choose any Love Gives Way vendor for your wedding day, you are joining in the fight to end sex trafficking. With every LGW vendor, a portion of your money goes to a local organization to help them raise support. See a list of vendors here. 

Want To Do Even More?

Engaged couples can leverage their entire wedding celebration to raise awareness for LGW and anti-sex trafficking efforts. Leveraging your wedding day with Love Gives Way means having the opportunity to use your celebration as a platform to spread knowledge about the injustice of sex trafficking. Find out more here.

Bloomin' Bouquets is proud to be a part of the cause, and we hope you join us in support of Love Gives Way by exploring all of the vendors within the LGW community for your wedding. "Let your one day affect her everyday."

Photos courtesy of www.lovegivesway.com.

Someone Else's Shoes

Over this past Thanksgiving week, I’ve personally had a lot of time to reflect on all that I am thankful for. Being just recently engaged, I am thankful for my fiancé and the love we share. I am thankful for his family and their excitement in having me join the family. And above all else, I am grateful for my own family and their generosity, support, and patience as we all try to tackle wedding planning.

            It’s been a some-what overwhelming adventure so far with my family as we have jumped right into booking our venue, church, and most of our vendors in the past 5 weeks alone. The most overwhelming aspect of all? The cost! No one can say that weddings are easy on the wallet!  And working within a specific budget is a necessary option – but one that can seem impossible at times!

            Like many new brides, I found myself wondering why things are so expensive! For instance, the flowers – why does hiring a quality florist eat up a chunk of the budget?

I was lucky enough to take a break from behind the computer to get out on the road and travel around with Bloomin’ Bouquets to help them set up for a wedding two weeks ago –--- and it didn’t take long for me to find out the answer.  Being a wedding florist is so much more than the hours spent ordering, designing, and preparing the arrangements.

            Within two minutes of arriving at “headquarters,” I was loading up masses of exquisite bouquets, table arrangements, boutonnieres, candles, and decorations into the back of my SUV. Within three minutes, I was sweating! Man, oh, manual labor!

Our day went a little like this: we went down to Buckhead, set up the church flowers, went downtown to the venue, unloaded and set up there, went back up to the church after the ceremony, loaded up the flowers to bring to the venue, and continued again to the venue to complete set-up there. After the reception, we went back to the venue to load-out, or “strike”, all of our things. Our 13-hour day was over. 

            Now, I’m not complaining about all the carrying and lifting! In fact, it was a nice little bride-to-be bootcamp for my biceps! But the point I’m trying to make is that I had no idea about all the physical effort that went into being a wedding florist. I always knew it took hours and hours to design and create the arrangements, but I never thought of the day-of execution. As a future bride, I’m glad I had this experience. I never would have known what it takes to make weddings and receptions look so extraordinarily beautiful.

            So this holiday season, I am thankful for the quality and passion of the vendors I have selected for my wedding. I am thankful for the understanding I now have for their specific costs, and I will definitely appreciate the hard work each will bring on my Big Day. 

....... I guess I just had to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes to realize that it is the climb, not the shiny shoelaces, that makes the mile so valuable.