If wedding planning is a production worthy of Hollywood--and it is--then consider invitations to be your guests' sneak preview of coming attractions.  It is their initial, tantalizing glimpse of what you have in store for them, conveying both the tone of the event and your personal vision.

In the not too distant past, invitations selections were limited to one "correct" choice, ecru card stock or paper with black ink.  Not so anymore.  Just as wedding styles have become more varied and unique, so too have the invitations that couples can now choose from.  Even when it comes to having a formal wedding, there's quite a variety available for classic, yet personal, invitations.  Consider an embossed design or edge, which gives dimension and texture to the paper, but no color to distract the eye.  Or if color is what you are looking for, add it in a clean, architectural, beveled edge with a touch of unexpected color.  Whatever you choose, couples can now select invitations as unique as they are.

Invitation Timeline

6-9 Months
Begin researching invitations anywhere from six to nine months in advance.

6 Months
By the sixth month, you should decide on your choice and firm up your guest list.  Begin compiling any information you'll need for the enclosures, such as maps, parking information, reception details, etc.  Get a firm, itemized quote and cost breakdown, then place your invitation order.

4-5 Months
Anywhere from four to five months before the wedding, is good for addressing the invitations and assembling them.

6-8 Weeks
Mail all the invitations at once, about six to eight weeks before the weddings.  This will give you time to mail additional invitations to guests on your stand-by list should any of the first batch of guests decline.

At The Bloomery, we offer wedding invitations at 30% off everyday!  You can even browse and order Birchcraft wedding invitations on-line.  Click this link to peruse our Birchcraft wedding invitations offerings (note: this will take you to another website).  Or, stop by our shop at any time and browse our 15 volumes of wedding invitations from Carlson Craft, Regency, Chase and Birchcraft Studios, all at 30% off every day!

This part of our series of planning advice and excerpts from Beverly Clark's "Planning a Wedding to Remember".  Visit frequently, subscribe to our RSS feed, or sign up for our e-mail alerts to make sure you don't miss a single one!

Reprinted by permission from Beverly Clark, "Planning a Wedding to Remember, 6th Edition", Wilshire Publications.  "Planning a Wedding to Remember" can be purchased by clicking this link.

As you begin planning your wedding, you'll need to start with the basics: who, what (style), where, when and how (much).  While these issues are somewhat related to style, they also factor heavily into the planning process.

Who - You'll need to come up with a preliminary guest list.  You can pretty well count on it being far to long and needing lots of pruning.

What (Style) - Your wedding style will largely influence the planning process and degree of formality.  A Zen wedding will most likely be less costly than a full-out Glamour Queen celebration, just as informal weddings tend to be less expensive (this is not set in stone, mind you) and have simpler location requirements than formal weddings.

Where - How many people you'll be inviting, how you envision your ceremony and reception will directly affect your location, which in turn affects every other aspect of the planning process, from setting the date to planning the budget.

When - Your date will somewhat be determined by where you want to get married, as some locations are booked eighteen to twenty-four months in advance.  Also, some highly in demand wedding vendors can be booked up solid for months.  Make sure to do a little preliminary research so you'll have some idea of the lead times involved.

How (Much) - That's very sweet of your parents to offer to take out a second mortgage on their house, but really, do you want them to have to work until they're seventy-five?  Chances are you can plan the wedding you want at a fairly reasonable cost if you are just willing to do some research and compromise a little.

This part of our series of planning advice and excerpts from Beverly Clark's "Planning a Wedding to Remember".  Visit frequently, subscribe to our RSS feed, or sign up for our e-mail alerts to make sure you don't miss a single one!

Reprinted by permission from Beverly Clark, "Planning a Wedding to Remember, 6th Edition", Wilshire Publications.  "Planning a Wedding to Remember" can be purchased by clicking this link.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.