WEDDING BLOG

Register for Your Dream Honeymoon with Traveler’s Joy!

February 19, 2013 | editorial team

Are you obsessed with planning your next vacation? Overtaken by wanderlust at the mere mention of a far off locale? Feeling your heart race just looking at the photos in this post? Then choosing a honeymoon registry for your wedding may be just the ticket for you! Since 2004, over 100,000 engaged couples have “skipped the blender” and registered the trip of a lifetime with Traveler’s Joy.

Traveler’s Joy is an alternative wedding registry that allows you to register for any kind of honeymoon activity or experience you’re interested in, and even for other travel accessories like guidebooks, cameras, luggage or snorkeling gear. Registry set-up takes only a few minutes, and you can organize it by travel theme, location or item, plus easily edit it at anytime. Your loved ones will enjoy knowing exactly what kind of wedding gift will make the biggest difference to you, and because you can divide large gifts up into smaller pieces, they will have lots of options to contribute something no matter what their gift giving budget.

Traveler’s Joy has been in business for over 8 years now, helping thousands and thousands of couples plan and register for their dream honeymoons. They are experts in travel of all kinds, and love to share what they know. As you plan, take a look through the Real Member Stories on the Traveler’s Joy website. More than four hundred couples have shared their honeymoon photos and stories to help you learn more. And for more in depth help with your travel plans, I love their one-on-one service called Honeymoon Tipster, where one of their travel writers who specializes in the area you’re planning to visit, will talk with you about what you’re most interested in, and then write a full report laying out ideas, options and advice for your honeymoon. Since the writers aren’t travel agents, the advice is 100% unbiased, and customized for you.

Jump on over to Traveler’s Joy to check it out, and don’t miss the special offer going on now – Traveler’s Joy is giving away $5,000 toward a honeymoon or first anniversary trip to one lucky couple that signs up with them between January 1, 2013 and April 30, 2013! (Official Rules can be seen here).

This post was sponsored by Traveler’s Joy, and chosen for What Junebug Loves because we think their honeymoon registry is a fantastic option for travel-loving couples!

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honeymoons, sponsored posts

Chicago Wedding at Loft on Lake by Becky Brown Photography – Rebecca and Mike

February 19, 2013 | editorial team

With a soft romantic color palette in shades of champagne, ivory, and peach, lots of long gowns and lace, and the shimmering city as the perfect backdrop, Rebecca and Mike’s Chicago wedding was a stunner! I love their gorgeous photos by Becky Brown that they are generously sharing with us today!

The Couple: Rebecca & Mike

The Wedding: 9.28.12 – Loft on Lake – Chicago, IL

What were the top three priorities for you in planning your wedding? We wanted our wedding to be unique, practical, and fun.

What was a wedding tradition that you incorporated into your wedding and why was it special? We danced to one of our favorite songs, the same one that my husband played in the background when he proposed.

Were there any places where you broke the rules in your wedding planning? Why and how did you do that? The biggest rule we broke was probably not getting married in a church. Weve been to several weddings where the couple’s names were mispronounced, so we asked a friend to officiate. He knew us both so well, and his stories truly captured our personalities and our relationship. It was hard for our parents to understand at first but after our ceremony they couldnt have been more pleased with the delivery and content.

What was your biggest wedding planning success? Our guests had a very different “wedding experience.” From the ceremony to the food to the venue, they hadnt been to a wedding like ours!

What was the most important thing that you learned through the wedding planning process and what would you tell other brides-to-be? Make a list and focus on your top priorities. That way you can save yourself a few headaches.

The Wedding Team:

Photographer: Becky Brown Photography
Ceremony & Reception Venue: Loft on Lake
Officiant: Brian Moore – friend of the groom
Catering: FIG Catering
Florist: Scarlet Petal
Cake: Three Tarts Bakery
Wedding Dress: Allure
Bridesmaids Apparel & Accessories: Bourdage Pearls
Groom & Groomsmen Apparel & Accessories: Men’s Wearhouse
Hair & Make-up: Taryn Shultz; Solo Salon
DJ: DJ Chicago
Lighting: Art of Imagination
Transportation: Second City Trolley

Thank you, Rebecca and Mike, for sharing the details of your lovely and unique wedding day!

Romantic Garden Wedding at Medicine Creek Winery by Jessica Hill Photography – April and Justin

February 18, 2013 | editorial team

ivory light pink sage green white

April and Justin’s gorgeous, sunny, summery garden wedding features some of my favorites…lace, horses, garden roses, a big white tent, and a woodland ceremony. That’s all you need to hear, right? But beyond all the pretty, be sure to catch the couple’s story about finding the right venue and making hard decisions. It has a great lesson in it for anyone planning a wedding! In the end, they did celebrate in a perfect, meaningful location, which Jessica Hill captured in her romantic photos. Enjoy!

The Couple: April & Justin

The Wedding: 9.08.12 – Medicine Creek Winery – Olympia, WA

What were the top three priorities for you in planning your wedding? We wanted to have an amazing photographer who could document our day in a unique and artistic way – Jessica Hill did a FANTASTIC job of this. It was important that the wedding experience was unique and tailored to us – our wedding day needed to encompass everything that is important to us, individually AND as a couple. Our last priority was to have fun!

What wedding traditions or cultural traditions did you incorporated into your wedding and what did they mean to you? Our wedding was fairly traditional in the sense that we did do a lot of classic wedding events, like the dances and whatnot. The biggest thing that we did that was non-traditional and unique to us was the ceremony location – we got married on my parents’ property, where I grew up and where Justin and I spent a lot of the early days in our relationship. Our ceremony took place in the back corner of their 44 acre property, nestled between a couple trees. It was so special and comforting to be in such a meaningful place as we shared our vows with one another.

One tradition that was also personal was our signature bourbon cocktail – the “rip city way.” It was the exact drink that Justin proposed to me with, and we both love bourbon – the drink was like a little tribute to us!

Were there any places where you broke the rules in your wedding planning? Why and how did you do that? We had a little difficulty with the venue – and ended up backing out of one venue in order to get married at my parents’ property. Early on, we had our hearts set on getting married in Portland, and we booked the first venue we toured without seeing another place. As time went one, we realized that it didn’t feel right – it just wasn’t the place we wanted to get married – so we had to back out. We lost a substantial deposit, but getting married at my parents’ winery was worth every penny lost – our wedding was incredibly unique and memorable.

What was your biggest wedding planning success? Definitely our venue. Making the decision to forgo the first venue was very difficult but getting married at the winery was the best decision we could have made. We can’t imagine what out wedding would have been like if we hadn’t taken that leap – our wedding was amazing and one-of-a-kind.

What was the most important thing that you learned through the wedding planning process and what would you tell other brides-to-be? Dont have a long engagement. It just prolongs the planning process and creates more ideas than a person has time or budget to achieve. Justin and I were engaged for 1.5 years.

Being that I am a project manager and Justin is a designer, we set our own rules for the wedding planning process. It was stressful, but overall, a really fun process for the two of us. We took on every detail and responsibility that goes along with planning a wedding completely by ourselves – in hindsight, we should have hired a wedding planner to relieve some of the stress.