Sunday, March 13, 2005

Not a problem in either case!

Although we prefer to try and meet with you when we are open, we can schedule evening appointments starting anywhere from 5:00pm to 6:00pm on most Mondays - Thursdays (most Friday evenings are servicing or preparing for weddings).  If you do need an evening appointment, we do ask that you come prepared with a good idea of what flowers you like, what your colors are, some idea of a budget, and what you'll need flowers for (church, centerpieces, etc).  We can usually only schedule Saturday appointments between New Year's and Easter.  After Easter, we're usually finishing and delivering weddings on Saturdays, and we can't give you our full attention.  There are a few exceptions, so it never hurts to check.  You are always welcome to stop by and look through our portfolio and design books, as well as any of the invitation books, but if we're busy, we may not be able to spend much time with you.

If you live out of town and are coming home for your wedding, we can do a lot of planning via e-mail.  Our shop is equipped with color scanners, color faxes, a good digital camera, and all our wedding designers have their own e-mail.  We have actually planned an entire wedding wihout ever meeting anyone involved.  Our driver met the Mother of the Bride on the day of the wedding when he delivered and helped set up the flowers, and that was the only face-to-face contact between any of us and anyone in the wedding.  How did it go?  She wrote us a very nice thank-you after her honeymoon.  On our main site's homepage, you'll see a quote from Crystal--this was her wedding.

To schedule an appointment, you can call us (724-285-1711 or 800-729-1711) or e-mail us at info@bloomeryweddings.com.

Sunday, March 13, 2005 4:05:34 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  | 
 Thursday, March 10, 2005

You've planned a beautiful wedding, right down to every last detail...even the stamps you use on your invitations and response cards?  Ugly stamps have no place in your beautiful wedding.  The US Postal Service will unveil four new floral stamps at the Chicago Flower Show on March 15, and the stamps will be available nationwide on March 16.

You can see the new stamps, and place a preorder at http://shop.usps.com/cgi-bin/vsbv/postal_store_non_ssl/display_products/preOrder.jsp?OID=4849352&QTY=1&orderType=PRE.  On March 16, the stamps will be available from your local post office, or from the USPS store at http://shop.usps.com.

The USPS also offers another floral stamp in both $0.37 and $0.60 denominations, and sells this design in a "wedding pack" of 20 of each.  You can see and order this stamp at http://shop.usps.com/cgi-bin/vsbv/postal_store_non_ssl/display_products/productDetail.jsp?OID=4848953.

Remember to weigh one or two of your invitations before buying a lot of postage--you want to make sure you apply enough to send your invitations!

Friday, March 11, 2005 4:59:43 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  | 
 Wednesday, March 09, 2005

The beach trip where you first talked about it.  The night he proposed.  "The Dinner", with all your families celebrating together.  Your bridal shower.

By now, you've accumulated a lot of pictures, probably digital, and keeping them organized can be a real hassle.  You'd love to share your photos with family and friends, or maybe even make a photo album on CD as a favor to your guests.  Fortunately, there are a lot of programs available that will organize your photos, help you easily touch up your photos, and even create photo albums to share.  There's a good chance your wedding photographer will be using a digital camera, too, and could provide you with even more files to fill up your hard drive.

Macintosh computers ship with a suite of software known as iLife.  Not being Mac people, we can't comment too much on the software, only that we've seen it in action, and it's nice.

For the Windows crowd, Google provides a free tool named Picasa, which you can download for free from www.picasa.com.  A comparable commercial application is Photoshop Album, available almost everywhere.  A comparison of the two is at http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3460061.  Each program has its good features and "I wish it had" features, but in the end, it's tough to beat the price of Picasa, especially since it will do pretty much everything the average user needs it to.  Both of these programs offer the ability to create photo albums you can burn to a CD as a favor for your guests.

If you want to share traditional prints via a digital means, there are lots of flatbed scanners available that will do a decent job of converting prints to digital files, which can be used with either of these programs just as if they were digital photos.  We typically avoind buying the cheapest thing on the shelf, but any mid-priced model from HP or Canon will do an excelleet job.  You want to look for a scanner that supports 1200 dpi or better, ideally 2400 dpi or better.  Since your monitor displays at (probably) 96 dpi, a scanned photo will look enormous.  Most scanners will come with software to help you resize your photos, and both Picasa and Photoshop album will resize as well.

Thursday, March 10, 2005 2:14:47 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  | 
 Tuesday, March 08, 2005

For the month of March, all Beverly Clark wedding accessories are 20% off!

You can browse by collection from http://www.bloomeryweddings.com/beverly_clark.asp, or view individual accesory categories at http://www.bloomeryweddings.com/wedding_accessories.asp.

All closeout items are 40% off.  New items have been added recently, but quantities are extremely limited.

Wednesday, March 09, 2005 3:15:12 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  | 
 Monday, February 28, 2005

Did you catch the premire of Survivor?  Each season, the teams receive "buffs" of different colors.  The colors are not picked at random.  This season, the two teams wear brown and blue buffs.  We first saw this combination in January, when we dined at Prime Steakhouse in Las Vegas's Bellagio.  The color scheme was striking, with deep chocolate and creme accents on a blue motif.  Recently, Pantone (the leading manufacturer of standardized inks and dyes) released its short list of Fall 2005 colors.  Want to guess what pair was most notable?  That's right--Glazed Ginger (brown) and Moroccan Blue.

If your bridesmaids are wearing brown dresses, you could use bouquets made with hydrangea or delphinium--two flowers that are naturally blue.  Agapanthus is available in a blue-ish hue that sometimes approaches lavender.  Depending on your bouquet style, your florist could also work brown and blue ribbons into the bouquets, as well as the other ceremony and reception decor.

Pantone's Fall 2005 Fashion Color Report is available at http://www.pantone.com/articles/pdfs/FashionColorReportFall2005.pdf.

Tuesday, March 01, 2005 4:26:21 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  |