Non-Registry Gifts

I know many brides aren't fans of "non-registry" gifts. After spending hours adding and editing multiple registries and picking out exactly what you want, it can be hard to add something that may not fit your style into the mix. I've always gotten gifts from the registry, with the exception of additional gifts. Like something fun in addition to the registry item. Like a cousin registered for popcorn bowls, so I also included some movie items like a "Father of the Bride" dvd, popcorn, and movie passes for a date night.

Our house isn't huge, so I was hoping that most people would follow the registry since we spent so much time choosing everything. We don't have a lot of space, so we had to be real picky about what we added.

Well I was totally surprised when some of my favorite gifts weren't from the registry!

I looked at multiple stores to find a nice trifle bowl, and although I wasn't super in love with the one we registered for, I added it because it was the nicest one we found and Mr. Newport loves trifle, or as he calls it "goop". One guest at the N.J. shower gave us a trifle bowl filled with fun shore themed oven mitts and towels, and a little blue book with a new summer trifle recipe.

Mr. Newport's friend and her mom gave us two huge buckets filled with baking supplies. They gave us everything from the pans, spatulas, cooling racks, mixing bowls, cake carriers, mixes and everything in between. I love to bake and can't wait to use all these fun items! Newport Ant and her daughters gave us a grill and all the accessories we'll need to go with it, including fun summer plates and glasses, placemats, bbq sauces, and grill accessories. We are having them over soon for a cookout as a big thank you! BIL Newport even sent a surprise gift to the Boston Shower, I'm sure Sister Newport picked it out though! He gave us tea cup cupcake holders, which were so adorable and totally fit our theme. Plus everyone who knows me knows how much I love cupcakes and tea, so it was perfect! He also gave us a nautical plate set. I'm in love with them. They remind me of our wedding theme. It's a set of four, which is the perfect amount for dinners with Sister and BIL Newport!

Source

I always felt the need to purchase off the registry, but I realized if you know the couple and what they like, you might make their day by getting them something that is "so them" that's not on the registry. All these fun gifts have me thinking outside the box for future shower gifts!

Do you normally shop off the registry? Did you receive any fun non-registry items at your shower?

Boston Tea Party, part two

After chatting with all the guests and a few photo shoots, it was time for the main event.... Opening the gifts. A wedding is one of those times in life when your just so overwhelmed by other's generosity. Between this and our shower at the shore, we now have a fully stocked kitchen!
I was super careful to not break too many ribbons, because I was told that each ribbon you break means another child. I was also told back in the day everyone used pink or blue ribbon, so if you broke pink it meant you'd get a girl, and if you broke blue you'd get a boy. I broke about 4 at the Jersey shower and I don't think I broke any at the MA shower. Can you guess how many kids I want? :)
The Newport Girls and Newport Mom splurged and got us our entire bed set! We can't wait to re-do our bedroom to match our honeymoon suite! While we opened presents our guests were served cake. Cake was made by Sweet ResultsPracticing for October!
You may have noticed no mention of games in this post. I absolutely love games, Me, Mr. Newport, Sister Newport and BILN have game nights with our friends and I love games in general, but I don't like games that draw attention to me, so you may have noticed there weren't any games at the shore shower and the only "game" played here was the timer game, in which guests receive a gift if the timer goes off while their present is being opened.
Newport Flower Girl had fun "helping" with the timer game gifts!

There was no lack of sweets at the shower. As a sweet send off, there was a candy bar with bags for guests to take home. It looked so pretty! And the guests also got bottles of lemonade, which were pretty perfect, since they have a husky them! A fun way to include Sky in the day.

It was so amazing to have almost all of my favorite women and Mr. Newport in one room. I can't think of anything better, other than the wedding!

photo by family friend

Did your shower get you excited for the big day?

All photos unless noted by our wedding photographer, David Bibeault

First Dance: Natural or Choreographed

Mr. Newport and I are both horrible dancers. Mr. Newport doesn't like to dance, and even though I love to, I'm just no good. But we are really good swayers.

Swaying at our senior commencement ball

Awhile back we considered doing dance classes, and by we, I mean Sister Newport and I thought it would be fun to take dance lessons before her wedding last year with our grooms to be. Neither of the guys were crazy about the idea, but were more open to doing it if we all did it together. But, as always things got in the way and we never did schedule those classes.

A month before Sister Newport's wedding, we went to cousin Newport A's wedding. He and his wife did take dance lessons and it was the most adorable first dance I had ever seen. It really made me want to take lessons.

Mr. Newport was still hesitant. Although we both loved cousin Newport's dance, Mr. Newport doesn't like the idea of choreographing ours, he thinks it will be more fun to make it up as we go. He plans to do a few dips and spins, but doesn't want me to know when they are going to happen. He thinks I'll have more fun and let loose if we just let the dance unfold.

I don't like surprises, but I'm going to let our first dance be Mr. Newport's thing and let him take the lead. He's excited about this (or just really doesn't want to take lessons), so I'll have to trust him and have fun in the moment.

Will your first dance be choreographed or are you going to just see what happens on the dance floor?

Choosing the Wedding Bands

Mr. Newport just ordered our wedding bands! We went to pick them out last weekend, but had to wait for a quote on the rings. My choice was easy. I knew I wanted a band that matched my engagement ring. There were two options in the store, one was too thick, the other two thin. The associate looked up my ring, since we bought it in the same location and found out that the exact match is no longer in stock, and it just happend to be right in between the size of the other two. So I ordered the one that is hopefully just right.

Mr. Newport's choice was also pretty easy. He walked up to the counter, found a style he liked and tried a few on, then picked the two he liked best. We got a quote for the two and then made his decision. Super easy.

The one thing we were both surprised about during the process was cost. Prior to our band shopping experience I had no clue how much a metal choice can impact the cost of a ring. Sure I know platinum is pricier than silver, but I didn't really know about the metals in between. Common ones include silver, yellow gold, white gold, platinum, palladium, tungsten, tungsten carbide, and titanium.

I didn't really have a choice in my band's metal, as I knew I wanted a matching set and that includes metal. I've heard different metals wear differently, so I wanted my wedding band metal to be the same as the engagement ring. When we first put together our wedding budget, I did some online research on my matching wedding band and budgeted a little over that amount in case anything changed over the next year (remember we had a long engagement).

Mr. Newport was dead set on not spending a lot of money on his ring. BILS found a ring, I believe it is tungsten carbide, at T.J. Maxx for about $26.00 and purchased it for his wedding band. Mr. Newport thought this was great and decided he wanted to do the same. Problem- he has a larger finger, which wasn't as easy to find. I figured it would be tough to find a deal like this, so I budgeted a bit more for Mr. Newport. Also, in case he changed his mind about his metal choice. We came up with dollar amounts and put it in the budget.

Like many of our wedding plans, other than the big things, we put this off until the checklist told us we should really be doing it. We went to the closest Descenza's and looked at wedding bands. I tried on mine and asked for a quote. Mr. Newport tried on his and asked for a qoute for two rings, but asked to get quotes for different metals.

A few days later I got a call. My ring ended up being about 2/3 of the price I had budgeted! My ring is palladium and the rings I saw online must have been platinum. I had no idea a metal could vary the price this greatly. I'm super happy Mr. Newport opted for a more practical metal. This savings is definitely helping at a much needed time.

This also worked out great, because Mr. Newport opted to go with white gold as opposed to his original idea of going with tungsten carbide. He was surprised at the cost of the white gold ring, because in the store the price tag was much greater- again I'm assuming this must have been based on a platinum ring or other costlier metal. We hadn't budgeted enough for the white gold, but after the savings from my ring, we were able to get both of our top choice rings with a bit of money to spare.

Our rings should be in within 6 weeks, I'll post photos once we get them.

Did metal type have an impact on your decision? Were you surprised by the difference in metals prices?

Boston Tea Party

A few weeks ago, the Newport Girls and Newport Mom threw a beautiful shower at the Sherborn Inn in Sherborn, MA. The Newport Girls and Newport Mom filled the shower with a lot of my favorite things; friends, family, tea, chocolate, diy products, and beautiful flowers. The room was filled with yellow details. Everything from the linens, the candy bar, the cake, the paper products, the flowers, some of the guests attire and even most of the gifts. Yellow just makes me smile, and I couldn't stop smiling the entire time.

All of the flowers were arranged by Newport Mom, she also did the flowers at Sister Newport's shower. I think she should go into business. Sister Newport did all the paper products including invitations, table cards, escort cards, and menu cards. She had a friend help with the calligraphy. She found cute teapot and tea cup stamps on etsy, that I may need to borrow in the future!

personal photo

Aside from everything being gorgeous, they also included some of my favorite foods. They created a traditional tea menu of scones, finger sandwiches, and delicious desserts, including chocolate mousse cups! I was so busy, I didn't have a chance to drink a cup of tea.

After taking in all the details, I spent some time with the bridesmaids and Mr. Newport and got to take some really fun photos. One of the coolest things they did was hire our wedding photographer, David Bibeault, to take photos of the shower! It was a pretty cool surprise. I'm already in love with his work, but after seeing the shower photos, I love his work even more!

Mr. Newport is a good sport. :)
The Newport Girl's created a faux-to booth, which is quite popular with the Newport family. We had one at Sister Newport's shower, too!I love the vintage effects Dave created on some of these. It looks like a vintage-y tea party!I could show a ton more photos, since we did a bit of a photo shoot and there were a ton of fun candid shots, but I'll get back to details in the next post! But I had to end it with this adorable shot of Newport Flower Girl. She loves talking on the phone and it looks like this phone call was important.
Our photographer has been in the business for quite some time and said shooting a bridal shower was a first for him. I think he did a pretty awesome job!

Have you ever been to a shower with a photographer? Would you hire one for your own or for a friend who loves photos?

All photos by our amazing wedding photographer, David Bibeault, unless noted otherwise

Nautical Inspiration

If you can't already tell, I'm slightly obsessed with all things nautical. Especially nautical weddings. The coolest one I have ever seen was found on the Armorology blog, photographed by WeddingbeePRO, Amelia Lyon.

I'm in love with every detail of this wedding, I love the navy and white color scheme with pops of aqua.

And of course, I love the Starfish accents.

Every detail is incredible, but I especially love the postcards they had made.

Heather from Armorology worked with Courtney Scowby of Brightly Designed to create all of the paper elements for the wedding, including vintage style post cards which sat atop each plate. The back side allowed for all guests to leave the couple a message, which Kaite's mom offered to mail to them throughout their first year of marriage and on anniversaries. The front side featured various engagement pictures (also by Amelia Lyon) as well as several love and beach quotes such as, "If you want to know how much I love you, count the waves." I would love to do something similar to these instead of a guestbook at our wedding.

My second favorite element? The photo booth! I love photo booths, as you may have noticed! All of the amazing photo booth shots were taken by The Digital Orange.

See more of this wedding here and here.

Have you found a wedding that just completely inspired you?