by Gretchen of mywedding.com

For an intimate and meaningful way to honor the special women in your life at your wedding, create your bouquet out of their favorite flowers. Have the bridesmaids hold a bouquet of the flower they chose for your bouquet. And have the other women, like the Moms, Grandmas, Aunts, etc, wear corsages of the bloom they selected as their favorite. This is a symbolic way to show the women in your life that you will carry the relationship you have with each of them through your married life as well.

I have a couple ideas to go about doing this.

Gather a list of favorite flowers from the women you’d like to include for this unique bouquet. Keep your mission a secret and surprise them with their choice flower corsage or bouquet on the day of the wedding. And make the explanation for this be a part of the ceremony!

Another way would be to make a “flower arrangement making” party of it. Ask each lady to bring with them a bunch of stems of their favorite flower. You need to supply the other items, like:

• Floral tape
• Glue guns
• Bouquet accessories (pearl strings, jewels, ribbon, fabric wraps, etc)
• Green floral filler (bear grass, eucalyptus, baby’s breath, etc)
• Corsage bracelets
• Pins
• And whatever else you need to create your arrangements

Take a flower from each woman and begin making your own bouquet. For your bridesmaids’, show them how you’d like their bouquets wrapped, so they are all the same (if that matters to you.) And for the corsages, bracelets or pinned, have a sample of how you’d like it to look too! This party serves as cost effective, purposeful and fun! However you choose to pull off this small, subtle dedication to the women in your life, your end result will be leave a big impression on their heart and soul!

With the way we are scattered far from family and friends these days, when a couple gets married, chances are there will be quite a few out of town guests. In some cases, even the bride and groom themselves will be out of towners at their own wedding! Where do you put the people who travel from near and far to celebrate your day with you?

If budget is an issue for your guests, you may want to contact all the local members of your family. Ask who has an extra room, a fold out sofa, a futon or a comfy couch. You may find that you have people willing to offer up their own version of hospitality and accomodate some of your guests. This will work best for single guests or couples, but unless you know your family is the hospitable type, don’t impose too much by asking them to host families with children or pets unless they can easily arrange for comfortable sleeping for everyone.

Most hotels and motels will offer a group discount if you can guarantee a certain number of rooms will be booked. When you begin planning your wedding, contact the most convenient hotel to your wedding venue. Ask them if they offer a discount for wedding guests and find out how many rooms you need to book to qualify for the discount. Many hotels will hold a block of rooms for you at the discounted rate for up to 60 days prior to your wedding. Send save the date cards to your guests so they can book their rooms early and you will know if you need to ask for additional rooms.

Another option you may consider is if you live near a campground. There are some camps that have cabins or log homes that are not in use year long. They may be able to offer you a special reduced rate for out of season use, as long as an arrangement can be made to have the cabins cleaned when you leave.

If you are holding your reception in a hotel, they will sometimes throw in a room for the bride and groom at no extra charge. If your honeymoon plans have you leaving immediately after the event, you can offer that complimentary room to an out of town guest.

If you do some leg work ahead of time, you should be able to come up with accomodations that suit all of your wedding guests. Keep in mind that some guests may not have their own transportation, so if they cannot be in a hotel close to your wedding festivities, provide them with information for hiring a local car service or contacting a taxi cab company.