When I have the rare opportunity to be a guest at a wedding, especially a fun destination wedding, I squeal with joy when I check into my hotel room and there is a lovely welcome tote for me! With my type A personality, I scan the wedding weekend agenda and check out the deets on what fun ideas the bride and groom have suggested for me during my non-wedding activity downtime. Wedding guest welcome totes or what are also known as Out of Town (OOT) bags, are a fabulous way to connect with your guests on a personal level before the wedding festivities even begin. As a couple, you are sharing why you chose this great spot to be married in and letting them know that you care about their whole guest experience, not just during the wedding.

As a planner, when working with a bride and groom who will be expecting the majority of their guests to be coming from out of town, I usually suggest a wedding guest welcome tote. Kate Parker Weddings has pre-made ones you can order and be sent directly to guest’s hotel rooms, or ask if your wedding planner can create and deliver these for you. This is a great way for your guests, who have taken the time to travel to your wedding, to become familiar with their new surroundings.

Here are my thoughts on what should be included in a wedding guest welcome tote and below I share some fun sample ideas for specific destinations.

A good welcome tote will have:

• Thank you: a quick note of thanks for coming to your big wedding weekend away
• Water: hydration is key after a great wedding
• Advil/Tylenol: just in case the morning after is a little foggy
• Snacks: a carb-o-licious one, a fruity one, and a sweet one
• Mints: gum looks horrible in wedding photos — mints are a great way to avoid this
• Wedding Weekend Agenda: let them know where to be when
• Map of Wedding Festivities: directions are always appreciated
• Local Area Map and Info: Label your fav spots and important finds, like the only gas station in town

Some fun extras would be:

• Travel candle: Paddywax makes the best by far
• Sunscreen
• Lip balm: especially when guests are flying in to a new location
• Lotion
• Dental floss

The best piece of advice I can share is to have fun with it. My husband loves those crazy plastic dental picks (I personally think they are super silly) but if we were to put those in our welcome totes for guests, everyone would “get” it because our friends know how much he loves them. The more personal the totes are, the more fun they become.

And you don’t have to stick everything in a tote. If costs start to get to high, the best place to shop is Target, Cost Plus, Costo, and Ikea. You can find the best items in bulk at these places. You can also get paper kraft bags with handles and rubber stamp your initials and your wedding date. Or find some great baskets! The possiblities are endless.

Here are some ideas and images to include as special extras for popular destinations:

The San Fran Tote:

• A small loaf of sourdough bread
• Ghiradelli chocolate
• Tickets to the Exploratorium
• Map of bart and muni buses with a $10 fare pass
• Magnent of the golden gate as a memoir
• Pashmina for when the fog rolls in

The Wine Country Tote:

• A bottle opener
• 2 wine glasses and a bottle of wine from the area
• Picnic essentials such as a cheese knife and board
• Winery map
• Tasting note book
• Wine Tote

The Beach Tote:

• Beach ball
• Sunscreen for sure
• Visor
• Beach towels: can be personalized with the couple’s name and date — such a great idea!
• Flip flops
• Sand bucket and toys: you can use the bucket as the “tote”!

Again, these are fun ways to help your guests get acclimated to their new area and have a blast at your wedding celebration! Are you doing out of town bags for your guests? What great finds are you putting in them? Do share!

Thank you everyone for entering our contest!  We appreciate all of your comments and hopefully you will continue to leave us feedback on the site and tell us what you want to hear more of.

Congratulations Jaime!  We will be sending you an email asking for your address so we can mail your gift certificate for a one night stay and dinner for two at the El Dorado Hotel and Kitchen.

If you have any questions, or just want to say hi, please send us an email at info@bayareabrideguide.com.

Have a great week!

By Erin Frank

Most wedding arrangements need a bit of green in them, and all too often it tends to be run-of-the-mill filler flowers and leaves selected to keep down costs.  Saving money is great, but why not give each element meaning too?  Add local herbs to your bouquet for foliage that adds to both the look and the aroma of the day. Rosemary, lavender, and mint all especially lend themselves to floral arrangements well. Try pairing rosemary with white blossoms, lavender with tulips in bold shades, or mint with pink peonies or dahlias. Ornamental oregano is a stunning plant on its own (see photo at the bottom of the post) or paired with blooms. You can find all of these and more at a local store or farmers market, but don’t be afraid to experiment with what you find in your own back yard.

Then, take the herbal theme to the next level and incorporate it into other elements of the day. Offer lavender sachets or soap as a favor.  Fill your caterer in on your plan, and serve food and drink like rosemary chicken, lavender scones, or minty mojitos.  It’s a great way to give guests a taste of the local flavor without hurting your wallet.

By Lauren and Haney

Sun Tzu said in The Art of War, “The line between disorder and order lies in logistics.”  Seems a little stark and gloomy quoting an ancient strategist when blogging about wedding planning, but trust us when we say that you cannot overstate the importance of smooth flowing logistics in planning a destination wedding.

Of course, this focus on the background makes a huge difference in how the foreground plays out in front of your guests.  Perhaps we look at it too seriously, but how the events and guests flow, whether the communication has been smooth, whether items are staged and ready to go when needed—all of these are our first opportunity as a couple to show those people who are important to us and who have helped us grow into the people we are today that we are a solid team.  We see this as an opportunity to show the world how we operate as a couple—that’s one of things that we wrote on our wedding vision together.

The most important thought to share with respect to logistics is that you have to set aside time to think through these things thoughtfully—apologies for the long alliteration there!  Invariably, details will emerge that complicate plans, or you will talk with someone in your family or one of your friends who will mention a good point, one which you had not considered.  You absolutely need time to consider—and literally imagine in your head—how things will execute on the “day of!”

You have to talk through together what you both envision—and then check it against the expert knowledge of those vendors who are supporting your wedding.  Ask for their recommendations, but make your decisions based on what you want.  If things are starting to get complicated on sequencing and staging and flow, it may be telltale sign to rethink your approach—or come up with strategies to mitigate the complications, like easy-to-use checklists for your wedding party or coordinator.  One thing we would recommend is to put yourself in the shoes of your guests, and go through the weekend from landing in San Francisco to flying out to head back home.  Logistics is not just about you; it’s really mostly about your guests.  Do your guests know what to expect and what resources they can utilize when coming out to spend time with you?  Do they know what the schedule is and where everything is located?  While it seems unfathomable to the couple for anyone not to know these details (you’re thinking that you put it on the website, you sent an email, it’s on the invitation), your guests will still need some help, and you will do yourself a favor to think it through from their perspective.

Like we said last week, it is important for us to value our guests’ time and resources, so we worked hard to make things easy for everyone.  Through regular (but not too frequent) email communication, phone calls to follow-up with our guests, and extensive use of online collaborative workspaces (like Google Docs) to document what information each of us was gathering, we were able to make sure our guests could utilize the airfare discounts we arranged, the lower hotel rates that we blocked, and avoid renting cars if they didn’t really need to by matching up some of our guests with other guests who are renting cars.  We put the information on our website, but we have also printed welcome packages that our guests will receive upon check-in that contains information they need.  We thought through contingencies: “What’s his phone number?  I forgot to charge my cell phone, and now I don’t have it!”  Oh wait, says Lauren and Haney: we printed that information for you in your welcome packet!

You’re probably wondering what we’re including, so here’s a list:

• If we know you’re using public transit, schedules of public transit.
• If you are driving, driving directions to the destinations where you will need to go.
• If you are driving someone, who you will pickup and their phone numbers; likewise, if someone is driving you, that person’s name and phone number.
• If you are a part of our Korean wedding ceremony, information on the ceremony’s sequence and who our coordinator is.
• If you are a part of the family photos, when we will take those.
• Information on our wine tasting.  Information on the bus transportation to the church and back.
• If you are a swordsman, a ceremonies reference for the Arch of Swords.

All of this we captured in two simple documents: a welcome letter and a special information card, each personalized for their visit—only the details they need individually.  You’re probably thinking: what a nightmare!  Not so!  If you think ahead about your trackers and documents, it’s really easy to use them together with the mail merge features of any document processor like Microsoft Word to create the personalized documents for your guests.  In fact, once we had the main template, it took us about one hour to generate the electronic file and then to print them.  No kidding!

And even with easy-to-use references and documents, you still want to make sure the event flows smoothly for your guests—something will go wrong!  Ask your wedding party and friends for help: we asked our swordsmen to help usher people in the church, as well as onto the busses.  Talk through the sequencing with your coordinator, if you have one, and make sure that everyone not only understands the same thing, but envisions the same final product!

Bottom line: it takes time to work through all the details, but if you take the time to think through what your guests will need, you will create an event that is a much better experience for them, while also showing them how well you work as a couple.

Happy Tuesday! This week I have some fun finds on ways to dress up your venue. I posted some pretty lanterns yesterday here with bold bright colors and today I found more details to share!

Paper lanterns are an inexpensive way to add ambiance and create a soft glow at any evening wedding.

The DIY movement for weddings is in full effect and as a planner, I want to make sure that when my bride and groom spend countless hours crafting fun details that our team allots enough time to set everything up and have it just perfect. I have been seeing a lot of these dainty fabric flag banners. These are very easy to make (the fabulous Once Wed has a great tutorial here) and can dress up any ceremony or reception.

Wedding signs, which can be directional for guests, leading them from one area to another, or simply for decor, are a great detail that can turn into a special keepsake. Etsy is a great place to search for a sign for your wedding with a home made look or you can whip out the tools and build your own! Another great tutorial here from Hitched Weddings + Events.

Combining your monograms with floral decor make for a pretty detail on entrance doors or gates. Talk with your florist about how they can best make one of these for you or DIY with this nifty tutorial on Design Sponge.

What ways will you dress up your wedding venue? Any special hanging details that you want to share?

By Erin Frank

What happens when a couple of young, good-looking childhood friends join forces to serve up drinks on the SF party and wedding circuit?  A whole lotta drinking and some smashing soirees. Matt and David started On The Rocks in 2003 to help get the Bay Area party the started, and it hasn’t stopped.  We got an introduction to On The Rocks when they tended bar at my then-fiance’s work function.  When it came time to pick a bartender for a guest list of Wisconsinites who drink like there’s no tomorrow, we wanted someone with the energy to handle whatever was thrown at them—which naturally led us to On The Rocks.

Here’s a word from our OTR bartender Matt:

Weddings are a special event, and almost always an expression of the happy couple.  And as always, the devil is in the details.  The details I refer to today are those of the help you employ for the event.  I’ve seen many weddings where the bride and groom want to get down and boogie, and the DJ is slack or the bartender doesn’t have the chops to light up a crowd.  The DJ and the bartender(s) are your two main catalysts for making sure people are letting their hair down, celebrating the event in the right way, and cutting a rug.  When planning your special event, if you want people to relax and enjoy themselves, make sure to pick the right help to ensure the proper vibe.

OTR handled a swamped bar area with ease, and Matt was a hit with the guests.  As you can see, Matt was so committed to helping set the energy for our party, he even broke it down in the dance floor with me in between slinging drinks.  For quotes and more information, email the boys from On The Rocks at ontherockssf@yahoo.com.

By Megan Peters

This past July 3^rd was a very fun La Vita Bella Events wedding at Tra Vigne. What a wonderful venue to work with. It was a joy to be apart of the bride and grooms special day. I wanted to share with you the rustic/countryside theme that mixed beautifully with the courtyard at the Napa restaurant.

This wedding was done mainly in pink and gray, a great color combination option. The flowers were a burst of different colors designed in vintage blue and clear jars that were tied with raffia. The table décor was full of candles for warm lighting at night, orchids, and hand made burlap table runners. Each seat had a delicate paper decorative hummingbird, butterfly or bird that doubled as a place card. One of my favorite parts of the wedding was the sweet table. Which had the most delicious cookies to munch on and the cutest “love is sweet” sign.

By Lauren and Haney

One of the most important—if not the most important—item on our minds during the entire planning process was to ensure that we value our guests, their time, and the resources they are using to come celebrate our union.  Some would classify our wedding as a “destination” wedding, because neither of our immediate families is home based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Because it is such a ways for most, we thought we would ask our guests what other things they would like to do while visiting the San Francisco Bay Area and what we could do to help.  Many had already visited before, but many also had not.  Many of our guests shared that they were going to make a vacation of the trip and were interested in an excursion to Napa, but weren’t sure where to start.

So we asked one of our groomsmen, who also happens to be a younger brother of the bride, to combine his extensive interest in wine with my—Haney’s—limited knowledge of Napa Valley to put together an easy-going and relaxed wine tasting trip for our guests.  And thanks to Ryan’s hard work, we have put together a trip that will take nearly half of our guests to California’s most famous wine country!

We start from our hotel in Palo Alto, and through California Wine Tours and Transportation, we get to spend time with almost fifty of our guests, doing something our guests wanted to do.  We asked Ryan to plan the day’s events with these big picture focus items in mind: we want our guests to experience a “celebration,” which of course means something sparkling; we want them to tour a larger vineyard where they could learn about the winemaking process; and finally, we want them to have an opportunity to visit a smaller—and perhaps more boutique-ish—winery where they could try something they may never have seen.

The itinerary is:
-    A customized sparkling tasting at Mumm Napa.  Ryan selected different bottles that are not on their typical tasting flights, so our guests get to celebrate something a little unique!
-    Lunch at the Oakville Grocery, known for its high-quality and fresh offerings.
-    A visit to a larger vineyard, Robert Mondavi, with a tour of the grounds and a guide who can teach us all a little about wine.  It ends with a private tasting.
-    And finally, a visit to Silver Oak, a smaller vineyard known for its Cabernet Sauvignon—the varietal that Napa Valley does so exquisitely!

And since we were able to build economies of scale by organizing this for everyone, it also came at a much lower price tag.  Transportation to/from the hotel + lunch + sparkling tastings + tour + two full wine tastings came out to $125 per person.  Some visitors pay that much alone just for transportation to Napa Valley from the Peninsula!

The best part is that we are saving our guests the time and hassle of trying to arrange a trip like this when they are already spending so much time and money to be with us.  We get the added benefit of spending more time with our guests so that we can chat and laugh in an informal setting doing something that our guests want to do!

By Trisha Dean

Hi all! I am so excited to be a part of Bay Area Bride Guide! It is such an honor to be blogging for you. I am a wedding planner and designer who grew up in the Bay Area and I have always had a fascination with all things related to The City. Yes, I know, some of you claim “The City” for the Big Apple, but in my world, “The City” is The City by the Bay. So, for my first post, I wanted to share with Bay Area brides and grooms some fabulous wedding inspiration that truly represents San Francisco. We are lucky to live, work and play in this little section of the Bay and any couple choosing to get married here can have so much fun planning with all that SF has to offer in its gorgeous cityscape, hidden details and amazing architecture.

I think it’s fair to start off with the beautiful bridges – The Golden Gate and The Bay Bridge…

Then we head down to the Embarcadero and jump on a classic street car…

Or hit the streets of SF and ride a charming cable car…

One of the most beautifully breathtaking churches ever, Grace Cathedral…

The stunning and ornate San Fran City Hall…

A trip down the crooked-est street in SF and find one of its sweet little side alleys…

Wonderfully rich in detail, a chapel full of SF history tucked away in the Presidio

Sweeping Ocean Views at the Cliff House

Or even your very own apartment can be a fab backdrop…

Here’s a helpful planning tip – work with your photographer and wedding planner to create a shot list and work it into the timeline. This way they can work together to make sure all of the important moments and special people are remembered – especially if you want to try and do some fun SF landmark shots!

Below are the links to the amazing photographers featured in this post who were able to capture love leaving its heart in San Francisco.

Hope you enjoyed my first post! See you next week!

Tinywater Photography
Cliff Brunk
Anna Kuperberg
Raw Photo Design
A Bryan Photo
Shaughn Photography