The Green Kangaroo Blog - Home

Thanksgiving Promotion!

2009-11-11T17:17:00Z

The Green Kangaroo is excited for the arrival of one of our favorite holidays- Thanksgiving! To celebrate and give thanks, we have decided that this November deserves to be all about YOU- our wonderful and loyal customers! For two weeks only, we are discounting EVERYTHING!

The clock is ticking! This promotion expires on Thanksgiving! Pay careful attention because there are tight timelines, and to be fair to everyone involved, we have to play by the rules. The promotion is a straight discount – a certain percentage off your order. However, the discount DECREASES every 5 days.

Here’s the Thanksgiving 2009 Promo schedule:

November 11 – November 15: 20% off your order!
November 16 – November 20: 15% off your order!
November 21 – November 25 : 10% off your order!

Other than the date you actually confirm your order online (i.e. the date on your receipt), there are no strings attached to this offer! Simply use the coupon code below during checkout, and you’ll get a discount!

Coupon Code: TNKSGVNG09

Designer Tip: M&K Dish About Fonts on Wedding Aces

2009-11-11T12:00:00Z

Our loyal readers know Melissa and Kristen have been contributing bloggers as the Wedding Stationery Aces on the terrific Wedding Aces site. This week, they give a great designer’s point of view on how to select the best font combinations for your wedding invitations. Here’s a sneak peek:

Our invitation business was built on giving our customers the freedom to make their own design choices. That doesn’t mean they all make “good” choices! This quick guide should help pave the way for those of you who are a bit confused about the purpose of combining one font with another on your wedding stationery.

Just follow the link to read the full article on the Wedding Aces site – and be sure to leave a comment for our very own Aces while you’re there. It’ll make them feel awfully special and important!

Trend Tracking: Wedding Web Sites

2009-11-09T12:00:00Z

Drum roll please! TGK designs are now available on OneWed!

We love the trend of creating a unique, personalized website to be your “online concierge” for your guests. Face it, these online tools make it much easier for busy brides to stay connected with friends and family throughout the crazy wedding planning process. Aunt Rosie can check your site for detailed updates on the plans, to triple-check the name of the hotel, and to scan through photos of you and your honey, (and maybe check out pics of the future in-laws!).

These days, brides have tons of choices for FREE wedding websites and TGK just partnered with OneWed, which offers more than 70 unique designs. They also have piles of helpful tools to make the design process super simple for those of us who aren’t techies. The photo above shows the first set to “go live” on their site. You’ll find more TGK-exclusive designs unveiled on OneWed, in the coming weeks. Go check ‘em out, and let us know if you select a TGK-designed site motif. We’d love to feature YOUR wedding Web site in a future blog!

Planning Tip: Wedding Wine & Liquor Calculator

2009-11-06T12:00:00Z

Just in time for the weekend, we “stumbled” across this super helpful, interactive tool on the ever-fabulous Real Simple Web site. Just plug in your event’s size, type of bar set up you’re planning, the time of day, and voila! A specific breakdown of numbers of bottles of each type of spirit. The best part are the in-depth explanations with each result offering exceptions (such as planning for more white wine in summer, more red wine in winter) and how to calculate for variances (heavy drinking crowd?). There are also money-saving tips for streamlining the cost of serving alcohol at your particular event.

Bottoms up!

Invitation Wording Dilemma: Listing (or not!) the Groom's Parents

2009-11-04T12:00:00Z

We counsel brides (yes, sometimes we feel like counselors!) every day on the best strategies for wedding invitation wording that reflects unique situations. One of the questions we frequently receive surrounds the traditional practice of listing the bride’s parents on the invitation, but not the groom’s.

A wedding invitation is just like an invite to any other party, where the hosts are the ones doing the inviting. Traditionally, even though the happy couple, the groom’s parents, and a cadre of friends and well-meaning aunties may be involved in the planning, the bride’s parents are the ones who foot the bill and, therefore, are considered the “hosts” of the wedding. As hosts, they are the ones listed as “requesting the honour of your presence.” It’s not a slight to the groom’s side, but rather a logical course of action.

Of course, in today’s world, the bride’s parents aren’t always necessarily the ones covering the lion’s share of the cost. And we very often see invitations where the groom’s parents or the couple themselves are listed as the event’s hosts. The decision is most practically determined by choosing to name the event’s host and leaving it at that.

But what’s a bride (or groom) to do if one set of parents (or a single parent) is paying and the other family is griping about not receiving some sort of “shout out” on the invitation? Rest assured, we’ve seen it all! We’ll start hitting on some of these potentially stickier situations on the blog next week – stay tuned!

Design Inspiration: Pocket Invitations

2009-11-02T12:00:00Z

Pocket invitations have become one of the top trends in wedding stationery. And with good reason! The tidy pocket design neatly and stylishly holds all of the elements of your wedding invitation package, keeping those maps, reception cards, reply cards, and envelopes organized and orderly so that guests don’t misplace key information.

Our Claudia Pocket is perhaps our most popular pocket style. Brides love the no fuss, streamlined look of this piece, which features the invitation on one side and the pocket for accessory items on the reverse. Simple, and beautiful!

Shown above in tropical pink and black ink on white paper with a black matte pocket, the Claudia – just like all of our designs – can be customized with any combination of motifs, papers, inks, fonts, or embellishments you can dream up! Here’s the same invitation, customized in a whole new way: The Claudia Pocket in chocolate and marigold on a chocolate matte pocket with our sunflower motif.

Happy Halloween from TGK!!

2009-10-30T18:53:00Z

Here are some of the TGK staff showing off their Halloween spirit! First person to comment and correctly name all of our “characters” will get a prize!

I think she wanted me to “leaf” her alone!

The usual suspects . . .

Uh-oh! Things are getting out of control!

Be safe and have a bootiful weekend!!

Design Inspiration: Map Accessory Cards

2009-10-27T11:00:00Z

These days, it’s not at all uncommon for a good portion of the wedding guest list to include out-of-towners who will be traveling some distance to attend your big day. And every good hostess wants to do her best to streamline event logistics for her guests. But we meet lots of brides who fret that including maps, hotel information, and other pertinent details along with the wedding invitation will diminish the beauty and formality of their carefully selected stationery design. Not so! Just take a look at some of these maps we’ve created in the past that perfectly fit into the overall style and special tone of the wedding invitation suite. We think you’ll agree that you don’t have to trade practicality for loveliness!

"Off line" designs

2009-10-23T19:58:00Z

So at least once or twice a year, everyone has the need for some type of stationery – whether it’s a birthday party invite, birth announcement, “we’re moving” card, etc. And the crew here at TGK is no exception! Check out some of our favorite “off line” designs that we’ve created for ourselves as well as our friends and family.

Want to see more stuff like this on TGK’s website – let us know and we’ll work on getting them up for sale!

Inside Scoop: Martha Stewart Weddings’ 15th Anniversary Bash!

2009-10-23T11:00:00Z

Melissa and Kristen, creating a one-of-a-kind MSW magazine cover at the event’s photo stand.

If you follow The Green Kangaroo on Facebook or Twitter, you already know that our Head Kangaroos, Kristen and Melissa, traveled to New York City earlier this week to attend the 15th anniversary celebration of the venerable Martha Stewart Weddings. K somehow convinced M that they should tear themselves away from the rigors of the TGK studio, all in the name of “industry research and networking” (wink wink!) at New York’s inestimable Plaza Hotel.

It was an exciting chance to rub elbows with some of the most well known names in the wedding biz and there were many celebrity sightings to be sure. But the best part of the evening was surely soaking in the ambiance that only a Martha Stewart event can provide!

Guests were greeted with an impressive display of banners featuring some of the magazine’s most popular covers from over the years. As they ventured through the party, they were serenaded by three different bands ranging from jazz and electric violins to good old rock and roll.

The dessert buffet was like something out of a candy-coated dream! Carrying out the pale pink-and-gold color scheme was a delectable selection of bite-sized snacks including ice cream sandwiches, pink-and-gold candy bars, and even itty-bitty pumpkin donuts! The savory buffet featured miniature grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato bisque cups with pizza dipping straws. K&M loved the inventiveness of the food displays.

Guests had plenty of seating options as the event designers brought in these cushy white sofas and ottomans with matching low tables, supplied by the lovely ladies at Taylor Creative Inc. Bringing in seating beyond standard-issue venue tables and chairs is a fun solution for brides looking to create a hip, modern feel at their reception venue! K&M lounged like VIPs!

If you want to see even more photos of some of the event’s amazing scenes, check out the MSW Bride’s Guide blog and photo gallery.

Pinking Out!

2009-10-21T15:35:00Z

Last week, the in-studio crew took a field trip to Jay Andrews Salon to participate in the Pink Hair for Hope project. Everyone got some rock-star worthy pink hair extensions to show our support for the 25th anniversary of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. We had a ball and have been generating lots of interest on the streets of Cary, NC! We guess folks don’t normally see a lot of pink hair around here.

Want to join in the fun? Nearly 400 salons around the country are participating in the Pink Hair for Hope campaign. Click here to find one near you. Send us a picture of your pink hair extensions and we just may have a surprise for you!

And even if pink hair isn’t your bag, you can still help The Green Kangaroo mark National Breast Cancer Awareness Month by participating in our Think Pink promotion. Just incorporate ANY pink element into your next order in October and not only will you receive 10% off, we will also donate 10% of the cost of your order to a local breast cancer charity.

Our friend Christobal – who just so happens to be an amazing photographer – tagged along to photograph the pinking out. We will be sure to post those photos next week and give you a blow-by-blow of the hair extension transformation!

Design Inspiration: Winter Wedding Programs

2009-10-19T15:36:00Z

If your wedding is coming up in November, December, or January, now is the time to get cracking on your wedding day stationery! In honor of the blustery weather we’ve been having, we’re featuring our Classic Snowflake Wedding Program design today to get you in the mood for those upcoming wintery weddings.

Shown above in black and cranberry ink on classic white matte paper, this sophisticated snowflake motif is an elegant way to update one of the most beloved hallmarks of the season.

One of the things we love most is creating widely different looks with unique design elements. Take a look at the completely fresh feel of the snowflake motif used on our booklet program below. Shown in cherry red and lime ink on champagne shimmer paper and accented with a flame red satin ribbon, the motif that made the above program chic and sophisticated peeps up here to add playfulness and whimsy to this bride’s program. One motif, two completely different looks!

See why we find this so much fun?

Fore! For Our Furry Friends

2009-10-16T13:10:00Z

Our Sally

This weekend, The Green Kangaroo is participating as a “Diamond in the Ruff” sponsor (isn’t that adorable!) for our favorite local charity, Best Friends Pet Adoption’s, 2nd Annual Whiskers & Wedges Golf Tournament and Raffle!

We aren’t exactly scratch golfers, but we know a good time when we see it! And we love any chance to support this organization’s mission of rescuing homeless animals. Hopefully all of this rain will have breezed through and will leave us with some crisp fall weather to show off our new pink hair extensions (more on THAT next week!)

We also just found out that we’ve become the lucky parents/sponsors of a sweet little BFPA gal named Sally! Ain’t she a cutie? We are so proud.

Invitation Etiquette: Reply Cards & RSVP Cards

2009-10-14T13:06:00Z

Reply Card for the Amanda Couture Wedding Invitation

Believe it or not, back in the good old days, wedding invitations did not come accompanied with multiple accessory cards, such as the reply card. In fact, traditional etiquette still dictates that the proper manner in which to respond to a formal invitation is by handwriting your acceptance or regrets on your own formal stationery.

While we do appreciate the mannerliness of this traditional etiquette standard, the advent of the modern reply card has certainly made it easier for brides to ascertain an accurate head count. And if providing a reply card provides a helpful service to your guests, we think that’s the most mannerly thing to do!

But the typical format of this accessory piece often poses questions, especially for couples who haven’t seen a formal reply card until they get married themselves. The gold standard for reply cards is a version of:

M ………………………………………………….

……… Accepts with Pleasure

……… Declines with Regret

The “M” provides a prompt for the guest to write either “Mr,” “Mrs,” or “Miss” and then their name and the names of any guests.

Now, at The Green Kangaroo, our customers tend to enjoy making their invitations their own! And we’ve created dozens of variations on the reply card; some falling in line with the “traditional” standard, and many offering entirely new takes on this accessory piece. To give you some inspiration, here are just a few examples of the creative ways some of our customers have approached the reply card:

1. A New Approach to Classic Etiquette

“Please respond by June 7, 2009” … followed by a blank space for guests to fill in with their own personal note.

A nod to the truly traditional handwritten-note approach, but with the modern twist of providing the note card and envelope for the guests!

2. Adapting Modern Manners

Guest Names: ....................................................................

........... Will Attend

........... Will Not Attend

Eliminating the “M” and getting a bit more to the point is another popular style.

3. Getting Creative!

Replacing the staid “Will / Will Not Attend” with more creative language is a new trend that allows the couple to express their individuality.

............ Will be the first one out on the dance floor!

............ Will be missing all the fun

Next week, we’ll be providing you with a few insider-savvy tips and ideas to consider when designing your reply cards!

Think Pink & Save Green!

2009-10-13T14:41:00Z

October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. This October is extra special- NBCAM is celebrating 25 years of awareness, education, and empowerment!

To support and promote breast cancer awareness, TGK wants you to THINK PINK!

For the next 3 weeks (until the end of the month) all pink orders will receive a 10% discount with a charitable match! That means that TGK will donate 10% to Breast Cancer Awareness/Research, and you get 10% off your pink order!

A pink order is one that contains one or more of the following:

pink ink
pink paper
pink ribbon
pink embellishments

Use coupon code thinkpink10 during checkout to apply your discount!

Offer is not retroactive and is not applicable on orders placed before October 13, 2009 or after October 31, 2009 – no exceptions.

Offer is only valid on orders containing a pink item as defined above.