So! APW and Glö have been working together for years, to bring all of you excellent RSVP technology, paperless invites, and so much more. The founder of Glö, Taryn, is another female small business owner, which has made it particularly awesome for me to see APWers enthusiastically make her business grow and thrive. It's been a joy to see years of APW couples embrace the technology Glö offers to make you NOT want to tear your hair out managing your guest list and RSVPs (because, oh my God is that a thing no one ever warned me about...). Plus there are the excellent wedding websites Glö provides, and paper and paperless invite options. And did I mention it's affordable? Glö offers a 21 day free trial, and after that their prices are excellent (plus, Glö now offers monthly pricing plans!). You can get the Light Package (the website, with events and RSVPs) for $75 a year, and the Complete Packages with Online Stationary start at $109 a year. Compare that to what you'd spend on Save The Dates, plus invitations, plus RSVP cards, plus a website... and you'll see why tons of readers use Glö (even if they go the paper invite route as well).

But it gets better! Earlier this year, Glö and APW introduced a partnership! We rolled out wedding websites and e-invites by designers in the APW family: Kimi of A Printable Press (See her Glö designs),  Eleanor of e.m. papers (See her Glö designs), and Julie of up up creative (See her Glö designs). And, like that's not awesome enough, when you buy one of these sites through the APW + Glö Partnership page or this post, you support APW's mission as well (yippee).

But before we dive into the real meat of this post, which is discussing why many of you use Glö products and why you like them, I wanted to remind you of all the awesome things you can do with Glö (because it's not just wedding websites). With Glö, you can:

• Send Glövites: beautiful email wedding invitations, save-the-dates and even a group thank you. (Here are some examples.)
• Create a Glösite: your multi-page wedding website. You can personalize like crazy by adding photos, a countdown, fancy slideshows, videos, interactive maps, or any other widget. You can even specify which guests can view each page. And yes, now you can have the whole thing designed by an APW designer.
• Add unlimited events to your website (e.g., rehearsal dinner and reception) and select which guests are able to view each event. The website only shows the correct events to each guest, thus preventing hurt feelings. Ta-dah!
• Add unlimited RSVP questions for each event, seamlessly collect responses, and view them online or download them to a .csv file. Guests can edit RSVP responses for their entire household, preventing duplicate RSVPs. You can also update your guests’ RSVP responses online.
• Easily communicate with all or some of your guests before and after the wedding celebration using the easy messaging tool. It’s super easy to ping and remind guests to RSVP or send last minute updates.

Right? Awesome. Glö is like having a wedding invitation list personal assistant, which I'm pretty sure we all want. I mean, I for SURE wanted it. But it's not just me. Earlier this year, Taryn did a user survey, to figure out how to improve things. And while she was at it, she decided to find out why people were using Glö instead of going a more traditional wedding invitation route. Here’s what everyone had to say about why they decided to go paperless with Glö: Continue reading Glö + APW: Paperless Invite & RSVP Technology (Plus Pretty)

One of the best parts of my job (damn it! I'm always saying that!) is watching young businesses get their start and grow, thanks in large part to the APW community. Because really, it's the best (and I know you guys love it, too). So I'm delighted to give you an update on JayLee Photography out of Seattle, shooting in Arizona (and anywhere you'll take them for the cost of a plane ticket). They joined APW as sponsors back in December, and since then y'all have embraced them and made their business better. I love that.

JayLee Photography is made up of a young married couple, Josh and Ali, who are building a business and their lives together. Since they just got hitched (almost a year ago now!) they totally get who you are and what you're going through. They want to give you no-nonsense service with serious artistry. Plus, they're affordable. Their basic, no frills (but 10 hours of shooting with two photographers!) wedding package starts at $2,500, because they want to work with you.

But mostly, I'm really excited about their simple, no-nonsense artistic philosophy. Josh told me that this is the core of what they're trying to do, "We are the little black dress of wedding photography. We try to be innovative and current while still producing photos that are long-lasting. We strive for fresh, vibrant, awesome, unique and beautiful photos above 'cool for now' ones. We personally don’t believe in overdone coloration or overused pre-sets, excessive tilt-shift, or light trails during a slow dance. We push ourselves to create contemporary photos without doing what’s popular with photographers that season. We are so nerdy that we get inspiration for how to frame a shot while watching movies, looking at fashion magazines, and going to the museum." And you know my deep love of the not-too-trendy, just seriously good wedding photograph.

But really, enough of me talking about JayLee Photography. I really want to let Josh and Ali talk about their own work, and well, really about what's happened with you guys over the last few months:

So us+apw has really equalled a lot of great stuff since our last ad. The pain of living in a place (Hello Seattle) where weddings seem so bloody seasonal is that we haven't had the joy of shooting an APW wedding yet, but we have met and shot e-sessions with lots of APW couples, and we're all swoony over them. We've found the most genuine and wonderful connections with everyone who's spotted us on APW and have been pleasantly floored to find couples wading the wedding planning waters with such joy and level heads. Continue reading JayLee Photography In Seattle, Arizona, and Beyond!

Last week, I got involved in a bit of a controversy with some Etsy vendors who didn't know my work. I'd written a post for the (awesome, awesome) Etsy blog team about hacking your wedding (an age old theme on APW). The post was about finding ways to work around high costs on items where you flat-out couldn't afford to go whole hog. The idea, as always in APW land, is that most of us decide to prioritize spending in a few key areas, try to get the best possible value that we can, and then cut spending like CRAZY everywhere else. Right. So. These random vendors were not thrilled. I was accused of a lot of things that are totally not true, including not wanting vendors and artists to charge what they're worth (artists charging what they are worth is, of course, a guiding principle of my work). So all this brought me back to thinking quite a bit about what it is I actually care about and promote with our amazing APW Sponsor and Vendor Community. I've realized that the core values I belive in are the things that I had a hard time finding in wedding vendor land: value (not cheapness, but real value for what I'm spending), sanity, and genuine customer service. (You know, people that really care about me as ME, not as a walking dollar sign.) In other words, the APW Sanity Pledge in action. So this week, I started chatting with Leah and Mark, our long term sponsor photographers out of Atlanta, who will shoot your wedding anywhere in the US... about what else? Value. And I got to thinking about what an awesome job Leah and Mark do of living up to APW values (and value).

Last year, Julie of Up Up Creative (and now Aper & Pink) wrote an excellent post called Price is Not the Same as Value, and that, I think, is the core of the conversation. When Mark and I were talking about value, we were talking about Leah and Mark's skill and experience (honed over the years on you guys... they'd shot exactly two weddings before they started advertising on APW, and now they've shot just about a billion of your weddings, all over the country). We were talking about the quality of their photographs, but also all of the things that they include when you hire them to work for you.

I mean, seriously. Let's break it down (don't bother trying to figure out how they make a living giving you such awesome rates, because I can tell you how... Mark Never. Stops. Moving.) Their APW Only package is $3,650 for anywhere in the continental United States (and they are not raising their rates for 2013! High Five!) What's included is this:

• Travel in the continental US
• Ten hours of coverage
• Hi-res .jpg files on dvd with a personal use license
• A 2-3 minute Wedding Home Movie highlight reel (free for APW couples only)
• A full Wedding Home Movie for only $950 if you want it
• Rehearsal Dinner coverage included
• A second shooter for $450 (yeah, that's less than their cost) if you want it
• An Engagement Session (where they FLY TO YOU) for $400 if you want it
• Photographers you really want at your wedding

I mean. I know, right? That is value right there, and when you add in photographers who treat you right, and you want to hang around with, that's MAGIC. Continue reading Leah & Mark: Photography All Over the US (with Video!)

It's pretty rare that we have a brand new kind of sponsor that I've been secretly hoping and praying for for years, so today is a special kind of day. Very special. Today is the day that I get to introduce a brand new, APW approved (and then some) indie print shop, Aper + Pink, catering to all your needs. Aper + Pink was started by Julie, the powerhouse behind Up Up Creative. You'll remember her from her crazy (beautiful) name your price experiment, and the results. Well, Julie realized that all of us DIY and indie types and independent designers (and um, business owners? me?) didn't have a good print shop to use.

Like, say you're ordering printable invites from Printable Press or e.m. papers. Or, perhaps you'd LIKE to be ordering your invites from those talented ladies, but you really cannot handle the idea of getting them printed. Well, that's where Aper + Pink comes in. They offer super high quality flat printing (and she can work with you to make letterpress happen). Julie says, "For most people, printing is the un-fun part. It’s the tedious, error-ridden part. It’s the part that brings swear words to their lips and tears to their eyes. It incites arguments between otherwise happily engaged couples just trying to keep invitations personal, practical, and affordable. But I love it. I love learning the tricks and figuring out how to avoid the troubles. I like discovering new methods and new substrates. I mean, I read blogs about printing. We take your designs and give them the print treatment they deserve. We aim to provide the kind of quality you’d expect of your own self if you had all the tools & time in the world." What'd I say? FINALLY.

I'm going to let Julie explain business in detail, so I can just focus on her amazing prices for a second. On her two most popular papers, here are some baseline prices: Continue reading Aper + Pink: Affordable Wedding Invitation Printing

One of the things I love the most about APW (oh, who are we kidding, I love fifty things the most) is the ability to really break all kinds of stereotypes, including stereotypes about small businesses. As we all know, wedding planners have... what's the word... a sort of... horrible reputation. And to be fair, it's a horrible, often justified reputation (there are a lot of scary wedding planners out there). So for years, for those of you who were looking for wedding planners, or the bajillions of you looking for Day of Coordinators (DOCs), I didn't have anyone to recommend. And then Elizabeth of Lowe House Events entered the picture. Turns out, Elizabeth had quietly been reading APW every single day, since the third week I was writing the blog. So when she decided to get a wedding planning business started, her biggest influences were Rebecca Mead's One Perfect Day, and, well, APW. Needless to say the Wedding Planning business she created, Lowe House Events (serving the greater Bay Area) was the raddest wedding planning business on the face of the earth.

Elizabeth's business has taken off in the past year, in large part thanks to you guys. So much so that she's hired her first staff member, which she's going to tell you all about. But what's awesome to see is the variety of your weddings that she's done. She's done super budget picnic weddings, big Hindu-Jewish formal affairs, beautiful urban weddings, weddings at historic lighthouses, weddings at cartoon museums, and way more. This is a lady who will DOC your wedding without judging your budget for a second.

During all that, she's become the unofficial APW events person. She threw Yay New York with me (and by with me, I mean, I had some ideas and I did not do the work). She organized my book launch in San Francisco. And those How Tos we do every Thursday?  She's the brainchild behind much of the crafting, because yup, she can totally whip up a bouquet for you out of Trader Joe's flowers. So, I'm going to let Elizabeth give you an (awesome) update on her business, but for those of you pondering hiring a Day of Coordinator in The Bay Area, Lowe House Events is your team. (And email them TODAY, since they are already crazy, crazy booked—justifiably so.) And here is Elizabeth:

I was recently talking with someone I hadn't seen since I was a teenager, and they remarked that being a Wedding Planner was such a perfect job for me, and they were so happy that I'd found this career. I agreed, but also pointed out that if you had told me at seventeen that I was going to grow up to be a wedding planner, I would have laughed in your face. Because at seventeen I was busy applying to art school and getting national attention for leading a campaign against my school district to make them provide birth control to high school students. Wedding Planning would have seemed awfully suburban and trite to me, and I was in the middle of trying to escape from a very suburban world. But more than that, I would have had no idea that being a wedding planer could look like the career I have now—helping rad couples plan sane, joyful, events to kick off their marriages, all while staying inside of a budget (often a budget that the WIC would tell you is impossible) and making some of the smartest, most driven, most fun friends of my life (in the form of both clients and fellow wedding industry folks).

I have adored working with APW couples over the last year—you all are seriously the best, most fun, most down-to-earth couples ever. You continually make me love my job, and I love you for that. I'm so looking forward to all of the APW-reader weddings I still have coming up in 2012, and I cannot wait to meet my 2013 APW clients—because I already know that we are going to have so much fun working on your weddings together. Lowe House Events has grown by leaps and bounds in the last year, in large part due to the huge amount of support from this community.

And, speaking of growing, I'd like to take this opportunity to introduce Alyssa to the APW community! Alyssa started as an event assistant with me this winter (she worked for another wedding planner before me), and then came on as an intern, and is now joining Lowe House Events as my first actual-employee/Associate Event Coordinator. Alyssa is rad. She's the closest thing I have found to cloning myself. She's highly competent; she's that magical combination of high energy and calm; she's incredibly friendly; and she's experienced. Alyssa is starting to coordinate weddings on her own for LHE this summer, which means that there are more dates available for prospective clients, and you'll get the same level of service from her that you would from me. I would not put anyone's wedding in the hands of someone I didn't think could handle it just as well as I could, and Alyssa most definitely can. I'm so excited for her to start working with my clients on the front-of-the-house end (she's being doing an amazing back-of-the-house job with them for a while) you guys are going to love her. Continue reading Lowe House Events: Sane Wedding Planning In The Bay Area

{Ceremony by Joanna August Dresses, hott}

If there is one thing that we don't spend enough time talking about on APW, it's dresses. Because let's be honest: finding bridesmaids' dresses that are adorable is way harder than it should be. And that is why I'm such a fan of APW Sponsors Shop Joielle (and I'm not using that phrase lightly... I've used them, and I adore them). They provide a range of super stylish bridesmaid dresses, a website that's super easy to navigate, and excellent customer service. Oh, and, APW ladies have been using Shop Joielle to buy their wedding dresses too (hello stylish bridesmaid dresses in white) with stellar results.

{Wtoo Dresses, Someone please where the white one as a wedding dress?}

But (and I didn't think this was possible) Shop Joielle just got better. They have just expanded to three more bridesmaid dress lines: Watters,Wtoo, and Joanna August. All of these lines are gorgeous, but let me draw your eye to the Ceremony by Joanna August line in particular, which Maddie rightly described as BANGIN'. I mean, these dresses are so good, and so hip, that I want to buy them just to wear to parties, or around the house (um... true...). And how often does that happen with bridesmaid dresses? I mean, check them out:

{Ceremony by Joanna August, in lace, mmmm...}

Tammy at Shop Joielle (because, yup, this is totally a store run by female entrepreneurs) told me that the fab Ceremony by Joanna August line, "...is an exciting new line of chiffon and lace dresses that are trendy, comfortable, and most importantly, re-wearable. We love the many different styles within the same cohesive look. The dresses are just like the summer dresses you would find at high-end boutiques. The design construction includes true wrap styles and elastic waistbands which make the dresses easy to fit without needing alterations (big selling point for bridesmaids that are sick of spending so much money on alterations!). Certain styles can also be worn on or off the shoulder for multiple looks." Short answer: the dresses are hot. Someone please buy me 8th Avenue Long or DC Long, stat. Continue reading Shop Joielle: Stylish Bridesmaid Dresses