I was recently a guest at a wedding where I was given a wonderful hotel gift bag. The wedding was on the beach in Mexico, and the couple packed our cool Mexican inspired bag with treats such as UNO, and magazines, and a scented candle for our room. I literally used all of the items in the gift bag, but was also so touched that she would pack such useful items for us. What can I say? I am a practical girl:)

The best thing about my hotel gift bag? The actual bag! I want to carry things around in this bag all the time. I think that is the trick. Make the actual bag cool! So today I though I would pick out some of my favorites.

We loved this Melangerie bag so much that we included it in a photo shoot!Wouldn’t it also be a nice way to welcome a guest who has traveled for your big day?

I was reading the latest issue of Brides and fell in love with these Poketo bags. They are made from South Korean street banners. Way to be cool AND green!

Just remember that people are often traveling large distances to share in your joy. Give them a little something when they check in to their hotel to let them know how much that means to you!

I grew up eating Mexican food every single day at home. On special occasions we often went out to local restaurants to eat, you guessed it, Mexican food. So if I am EVER asked to choose a restaurant or if I ever decide to cook at home (which granted, is rare) I stick to what I know. Xochitl always asks me if I ever get tired of it. My answer is no.

My boyfriend, who is not Mexican, doesn’t share my love of spice and often calls me a Mexican food bully:) Since I want to also make him happy and make things that he grew up with, I started to ask people for soul food cookbook recommendations. I was told that these two books were great! As a matter of fact, I was told that “Down Home with The Neely’s” is sinful:)

A client marring a South Asian man (Gujrati) had her mother in law recommend this Madhur Jaffrey book. If her mother in law was okay with it, then I think I would trust it.

For someone trying to impress a Filipino family, you might try this.

If someone wanted to learn some basic Mexican recipes, I love these Williams Sonoma “Savoring Mexico” books. My cousin has these at her house, and every time I am there I always make a mental note to buy one for myself.

Xochitl is a self described ItaliaRican, with some Mexican for good measure. Of course, she always counts herself as a Brooklyn-nite.  The ONLY cookbook to ever set foot in her home growing up she says was The Brooklyn Cookbook.… it covered everything her family, or her friends’ families might ever possibly be eating or want to it, which covers a lot of bases.

Any others that I am missing? Let us know!

This past weekend I was in Essex CT with my Aunt Linda.  The town was quainter than quaint and we let my Uncle off the hook from our shopping excursion through adorable stores.  This was a good thing because I found and fell in love with an array of products from Juliska.  Some of these things MUST make your way to your registry.  Initially, we fell in love with this adorable ceramic piggy that is available in an array of  glazes including yellow, green, pink and blue.   At only $45 it’s the perfect thing to gift to people for a new baby.

After I noticed the piggy, we went crazy over these GORGEOUS pitchers. They are all handblown in the Czech Republic and are insanely delicate and yet dishwasher safe. They have gorgeous stemware as well. My favorite detail about this pitcher is that the mouth forms the shape of a heart… but in a totally, uncheesy way!

If you love the blown glass, you will love these domed dessert dishes. I think they are a MUST have for any registry because, honestly, when would you buy yourself a domed dessert stand?

Finally, I just loved their ceramic dinnerware. The patterns are definitely leaning towards the shabby chic and are much more for everyday than fine dining, but they are so lovely and INSANELY well made AND, again, you have a lot of options with the glazes. They are all made in Portugal.

Anyway, it’s not that often that I’m really impressed by quality and price and design of household items, but these really did impress me. I encourage you to check them out- especially some of their hostess pieces, as I think they could round out a registry of some more basic items.

I was at a wedding this past weekend that was just lovely.  During a moment of downtime, the caterer, Leslie Russell of Marcey Brownstein and I were exchanging some insights into the little things that brides can do to make their days run a little bit more smoothly.

Along with the importance of a “must take” photo shotlist and a good seating chart for sit down dinners we discusssed, and rather passionately, the importance of alphabetizing your seating cards.  The truth is, for most of our clients, we send their escort cards to the calligrapher for them and when they come back we ready them for display by alphabetizing them by last name.  However, the majority of people out there don’t have a planner or designer to help them with these last few stesp, therefore, ladies, you must help yourselves!

It seems like a no-brainer but vendor after vendor and caterer after caterer tells me tales of getting the escort cards from the client in table order, or, in no particular order and, well… I guess that’s better than nothing, but it’s only about one step from chaos.  As Ms. Russell so eloquently pointed out “I mean, the truth is the guests have no idea where they are sitting, so why would they know where to look?”  She couldn’t count how many times she was thrown a pile of escort cards and tried to make sense of them just before “showtime”.

This, and little things like not having a list of your seating assignments sorted by alpha or a chart that says how many people are at each table are the teeny weeny things that create a sense of order that translates to calm and cool at your wedding reception.  These are also the kinds of things that easily fall to the wayside when a bride and groom are stressed and rushing.  Prioritize this.  Your bridesmaids will understand if they get their present a little less than ideally wrapped or your first dance maybe a little less rehearsed, because the thing guests will notice is chaos at the escort card table and caterers scrambling to put the right number of chairs at a table because they didn’t know who many people were exactly where.

I was so flattered when the fabulous Heather Waraska called to ask if I would work on designing an “Inspiration to Reality” shoot for Style Me Pretty earlier this spring.  Always a Bridesmaid has been fortunate enough to work with Heather a lot over the last couple of years and the idea of collaborating on something together that was totally off the cuff was very exciting.  If you aren’t familiar, “Inspiration to Reality” asks for vendors to take an inspiration board created by an SMP reader and bring it to life, hopefully in the process creating even more inspiring images! The above is the board we selected and the below is just a smidgen of the shoot we created at the fabulous 632 on Hudson with the help of flowers by Saipua, cakes and sweets by Nine Cakes, the gorgeous potion bottles by Emily Thompson stationery by Regas New York, potion bottles by props, furniture and rentals from Props for Today as well as Classic Party Rentals, makeup by Styles on B and just tons and tons of amazing gowns by Alisa Benay and Anne Bowen, to name just a few of the many, many people that participated to make this happen.  And I thought weddings were a production!!! Photo shoots blew me away!

I actually thought that it would be easy to design without a “bride”, but in the end, I realized that I needed a story and so Heather and I spun together a romantic tale of a couple who had a long, storied romance and then wanted to share the day as a European style brunch with some of their dearest and nearest friends.  For more images from the shoot AND the spectacular boudoir session, click here and here.

Later, I’ll show you my favorite details from the shoot that you can very easily replicate and hopefully make your own!