Happy New Year!!

2012 already? How did that happen?!

I trust you all had a fantastic Christmas and New Year.  We had a lovely Christmas and NYE with friends.  It was funny as 3 years ago we spent NYE together, since then we have all married (or about to be) and there is a little one year old to add to the fun. A lot can happen in a short space of time!

So we had New Years day "off/recovering" but have spent Jan 2nd planning for Paperless 2012. What is there to look forward to.....

More blog posts!

Our bride from "musings of a bride to be" will be married at the end of the month, so we hope to hear from her.

More posts on traditions. Our most popular one of last year was Wedding Flowers.

Our Maori blog post is our most popular post of 2011 and so will look into more around this theme.

I also hope to look at weddings of different religions and countries. Destination weddings are where Paperless Wedding can help reduce paper and carbon emissions (posting letters abroad).

Themes

New beach themes
City themes - Auckland Skyline etc
Destination  linked weddings - AU/SA/UK/Japan

Gift List

We have had the guest list on the site since we launched in 2009.  We will be decommissioning this product in early 2012.  We will honor all those couples who have it already activated, but for new couples this will not be an option.  You will be able to create your own page with links to other websites, but we will not act as a wishing well anymore. Really sorry!

Thank you Emails

We will have a Thank you option made available later in 2012. This will allow you to follow through after your wedding, maintaining you eco theme.

Design

We will be launching in the UK and we are currently working on some major improvements on the site.  These will then be launched in NZ.

If you would like to work with us in 2012, please don't hesitate to get in touch. We are always looking for new designs (especially if you have a 'green' ethos).  Send us an email:

emma@paperlesswedding.com.au

Or leave a message below.

Have a fantastic 2012 one and all.

Em and Jim
x

More musings from a bride to be – Less than two months to go

So we’ve survived a year of engagement and couldn’t be more excited about the impending nuptials. I’ve literally never used that term before in my life.

Over the past couple of weeks, as the realisation of how close we are to becoming husband and wife dawns, we have been trying to tick a number of things off our ever-growing ‘to do’ list. I’m proud to say we’re doing a good job. If only we could actually get our eating under control. It’s such a shock that we haven’t transformed ourselves into slim and toned figures of fitness and beauty you know, because we’ve been so dedicated to the cause. Oh wait, no we haven’t.

The dress is underway. I’ve had two fittings already, the first being a bit devastating. Make no mistake, my dress maker is exceptionally talented, however when not working from a pattern and just ‘my ideas’ and photos I’ve shown her, chances are the initial result isn’t going to hit the mark exactly. It would have been perfect if I was aiming for a ‘frumpy 55 year old’ look. Alas, no. Thank goodness it was in the mock up material and the second fitting wasn’t quite as depressing. I’m thoroughly looking forward to my next one, which I’m optimistically hoping will be perfect and that way she can start to create ‘the dress’.

My shoes are also looking good. I bought white ones and have dyed them and they’ve come up really well. Haven’t quite figured out what jewellery I’m going to wear yet, but will venture out on a girly shopping trip with mum during the New Year sales.

My future husband’s suit has also arrived and he looks just swanky in it. He also used a bout of 2am insomnia to produce a brilliant Groom’s speech just last week. He’s been unbelievably helpful and supportive and I don’t know how other bride’s cope doing all this stuff by themselves.

We had a wonderful meeting with the owners at the venue, who were so reassuring and lovely. It seemed to lift a bit of the weight off our shoulders, as almost everything we asked was met with “Oh, we take care of that for you.” Amazing!

We’ve both had our rings sized, which reminds me I need to go and collect mine.

Can you believe it too, we have also actually managed to finalise a seating plan! Surely it must be some kind of record. Usually one of the most stressful things was actually not that bad, thank goodness! Surely it has to be one of the benefits of a smaller wedding.

We also met with our photographer and his lovely assistant (two of our good friends), who made us feel less uptight about ‘posing’ for photos. We’ve already mapped out where to go at the venue and have been assured there will be alcohol as we roam around the grounds with our bridesmaid and groomsman. I’ve got to say as a lightweight, I’m a little worried I might return to the reception slightly more inebriated than I’d like to be if we’re relying on bubbles to ‘relax’ ourselves.

I think I’ve managed to finalise flowers too. I had a very helpful lady come back to me with a number of suggestions and I think I’m going to be able to get freesias in my posy – in Summer! Absolutely stoked!

We’re still working through our favours for people, which we are pretty excited about, however I think we’re set on our decorations for the tables now, which is good.

We are also blessed with a lovely friend’s expertise to help us design a couple of things for the wedding, which I’m sure will add to the feel of the day for our guests.

There’s still a lot to be done though, most importantly – getting through Christmas without outgrowing my dress!

Thankfully we both love Christmas, so the next month should hopefully be fun, and it’s nice that the summer weather is starting to show itself. We’ll just keep our fingers crossed for a beautiful sunny day in seven weeks and one day!!

3rd Wedding Anniversary

I am a lucky lady!  The wedding maybe over, but you can still celebrate its anniversary and remember what a fantastic day it was.  We did that this week with a meal in the OXO Tower on London’s Southbank.  This is not too far along the river from where our special day happened. It was lovely to be back in London.  

My lovely husband kept with the traditions and gave me a pair of lovely leather gloves. Leather is traditionally what you give for 3 years.  He has also arranged a “London Day” including breakfast in Spitalfield Market, The Lord Mayors Show, followed by Afternoon Tea at the Landmark Hotel.  As I said at the start, I am a lucky lady.

Our first anniversary was in a Bach in the Coromandel and the 2^nd with our good friends in Sydney.  Once again we have packed so much into our 3^rd year of marriage.  More than most! We have explored Australia with highlights being Byron Bay, Ayres Rock and Cairns. 

We have grown Paperless Wedding in Australia and we are now providing wedding websites and invites for couples across the country.  This last weekend we had 3 big weddings and all of them used our wedding gift list too!

We have moved countries again, this time back to the UK.  That has been a country a year since we have married, so I think we might stay put for a while!!  We are going to continue to offer bespoke services to both Australia and New Zealand from here, as well as launch a UK business.  Our aim is to ensure that we keep the themes, stories, tweets and Facebook updates relevant to each country.  We understand that each country has different cultures, styles and trends so we hope to keep up to date with them.

What will this year bring?  We hope this year will be the year of partnerships.  We are going to offer more themes and work closely with local vendors who offer ‘eco friendly’ wedding accessories including; place names, sitting plans and orders of service.  It means you can keep the theme throughout the wedding.  We also hope to add some new features to the site and improved functionality.

So let the 4^th year begin!

Inspiration for the year to come

What a fantastic night last night! I bet you are all exhausted with the excitement of the World Cup. I am not really a big sport fan, but you can't help getting swept up in it all.

We recently just celebrated our 2nd Year of business in NZ, well I say celebrated, we kinda missed it!! Things have been so hectic that the date actually just passed us by. A good sign that things are busy and that Eco/digital couples are using Paperless Wedding.

As we enter another year we want to get more designs that are synonymous with New Zealand.  We are going to be working with some great local designers such as Cocoa Berry and Claire Hammon to ensure we give you some more fab NZ influenced templates.

Cocoa Berry will be our first new design off the rank. They will get a blog post all of their own very shortly, but a quick summary is they offer some great designs with some perfectly matching order of services; menus; place names; table numbers; seating charts; and thank you cards.  Our website will help complement this selection of essential wedding requirements.

We will be also looking to add some themes that have a distinct Maori touch.  Our highest hitting blog post of last year was the one about Maori traditions. That tells us it is something you are interested in and so we hope we can give you a little more choice in that area.

All these photos were taken by Jim and I are we traveled around NZ.  So much scenery, flora and forna that we can't fail to run out of inspiration!  If you have something that you want to share with us get in touch and leave us a comment.  Let us know what you think of when you think of NZ.....don't say the Rugby World Cup!!

Theme of the Day – Topical Beach

Our tropical themes are popular for the destination weddings.  We have couples getting married in Rarotonga, Hawaii, Sumoa and Bali using this theme. We wanted something that captured the idyllic beaches that personifies the beach wedding.

This one was designed by Ruari of The Department of Design

We also did our own theme using a photo we took when we were on a beach in Thailand.  This was actually our first ever design that we did and was used by our first couple Dave and Rose for their wedding Ko Samui, Thailand. 

Theme of the Day - "Orchid"

On our blog the traditions behind wedding flowers post is one of our more popular reads. We know that flowers are a big part in most couples wedding. When we commissioned this design we knew it would be a hit and it was!

I found a great blog called Wedding Flowers Guide that gave a bit more detail about the orchid and its meanings. 

Orchids used to be a sign of wealth and social standing, at least here in the UK. That's because it was so expensive to cultivate the flowers in this country. Now it is possible to import orchids from overseas so you don't need to be a millionaire to look a million dollars.

There are a number of orchids that are used at weddings. One of the most popular is the cymbidium orchid. These gorgeous flowers have large heads and there are white, yellow, pink and pale green varieties.

 

They have robust waxy petals, which are more resistant to drying out than other flowers. This can be important if you have a wired bridal bouquet and you are concerned that it may dry out on a hot summer's day. Cymbidium orchids are the most wilt-resistant flowers that I know. You could even cut some flower heads and lay them on the tables at a reception, to make a quick, natural and colourful table decoration.

As the blog mentions there are many colours of Orchid, so we added an option to be able to have a yellow theme or white themed wedding wesbite.

This design was done by Ruari at The Department of Design and again his attention to detail and composition make this a really great choice for a Paperless Wedding!

Paperless in Print!

We are a small company with big ideas.  Over the last 6 months I have been seeking out people who will help spread the word of our company.  In the last few weeks that has happened and we have had support from two great magazines.

White Magazine were the first to support us and featured us in there section on "What is Hot." We were thrilled with the piece that was written and the how the logo looked. We also offered a prize to a lucky reader who sent in there thoughts on what marriage meant.

This is how it looked on the "Whats hot eco speical page," and below is what it says. 

We also then appeared in there next edition when they published all the answers to the competition. It was really nice to read what everyone wrote.

 A huge thank you to Carla and the White Magazine and we hope we can work together again in the future.

Our next bit of Magazine coverage was in Cosmopolitan Bride. We were in the Winter AND the Spring editions.  In both magazines they mention Paperless Wedding as being an option for alternative wedding invitations or wedding website.

This article covered the budget wedding and how to save money doing things a little bit differently.  Cosmo recommendation column recommends using us!  Email wedding invites save a couple a lot of money (and a tree!). The average invite costs around $5 and the average price for a wedding is around $500 and then add to that the cost of posting.  For $115 you get the whole lot. Bargain indeed! Check it out here for more details.

As you can see this article in the spring edition covered the etiquette and the Royal Wedding.  We were mentioned as an option for Wedding Websites.

We do find a lot of people sign up to us via our Facebook fan page. The bride that is often on Facebook, Youtube and twitter, we believe will be more open to the idea of a digital wedding!

Do let us know what you think!