Paperless Wedding NZ

Women in Business Inspiration

2012-02-05T06:49:00.001-08:00

I wanted to share with you a great website that is helping me immensely get back on track with marketing Paperless Wedding online. If you are running your own business Clare's weekly newsletter from Women in Business and blog is very much worth a read.

Today I have planned and written my blog posts for the next month. I am really pleased with them. I have decided on a couple of regular themes. You will see monthly posts of quirky and cool wedding things, with this month being some great wedding shoes. I am going to follow this with fancy cakes and then clothes accessories for the big day.

I am going to cover cool apps and websites that have inspired and helped me personally and with the business. These can also be used to help couples plan their wedding, as well as being used on the day! This month will be my use of Instagram and it will be followed with Diptik, Pintrest and Twitter.

Of course I will continue to update you on new suppliers and new themes from Paperless Wedding and we do have one that will be coming soon from Stelloberrydesigns.

I am going to continue with my regular links to http://www.news.com.au/ and http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/weddings/ on Facebook and Twitter.

Now I have a plan I think I am going to be able to give you regualr posts that you will be able to find useful!

Enjoy!

Happy New Year!!

2012-01-02T10:13:00.000-08:00

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

2011-12-01T12:12:00.000-08:00

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

2011-10-27T05:27:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-16T11:44:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-08T08:37:00.000-07:00

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"

2011-08-05T18:44:00.000-07:00

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!

2011-07-25T15:42:00.000-07:00

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!

Theme of the Day - "Floral Elegance"

2011-07-22T18:20:00.000-07:00

Our Floral Elegance design has been very popular on Save the Date invites and for evening weddings. This design was done by a friend of Ruari's (Department of Design) and she lives in the lovely town of Titarangi outside Auckland with her husband and 2 small children.

Ronja hails from an advertising and illustration back ground and did a couple of designs for us in our early days. This is the more popular of her 2 designs. She also did "Kiss the Bride' and "Cloud 9".

Black bridesmaid dresses are becoming very popular at weddings. My cousin, who married in Red, had bridesmaids in black. This design would have gone really well with her theme!

Theme of the Day - "Formal Swirls"

2011-07-20T10:00:00.000-07:00

Over the years I have received lots of paper invites and a common theme was embossed swirls. I do like the simplicity and the cleanness of this design. We met Claire Hammon in a nice little coffee shop in Auckland to talk about ideas. Claire runs her own design company and since we have known her she has married and had a baby. She is a busy lady!

Jim was able to alter the colours of the this design so couples have the option to find the right colour for their wedding.

The black is looks very classy and stands out. It could be good for an evening event too!

My cousin Donna actually used our site for her wedding last year and she used this lovely green designs.

Theme of the Day - "Vineyard"

2011-07-19T10:00:00.000-07:00

There are so many beautiful wine regions on both the north and south island. I loved the Kumeu Wine region when we lived in Auckland. There are so many lovely places for weddings around here. There was always something going on at Soljans and I also love wine from Matua. The other place that did fantastic tastings was Kerr Farm Winery and I hear they do great pizza too!

Only a short ferry ride and you are over at Waiheke Island where there are so many vineyards to choose from! The below shot was taken while we had dinner at Mudbrick which would be a stunning location for wedding. The views are spectacular.

I thought I would write about the ones near Auckland as I often feel that they are missed out when people talk about the great wines of NZ. I love the fact they were just on our doorstep!

So to the 'Theme of the Day'! We had to have a Vineyard theme with so many amazing venue options in NZ being vineyards. This design was done by an Aussie designer called Lyndsay Meager Sann who launched her own boutique studio, Its a Date Design, in January of 2008, concentrating on graphic design, illustration and paper craft for all kinds of special occasions. Paperless Wedding LOVED her style and it was really different to other designs on the site.

We actually hooked up thanks to the wonders of Twitter. We put a shout out for designers and Lydnsay got in touch. We then lined up a Skype call and away we went.

I love the way she combined the chandelier and grapes together. It is was just the kind of thing we were looking for!

Thanks Lyndsay.

Theme of the Day - "On the Beach"

2011-07-14T20:08:00.000-07:00

This is one of the very first designs that we had done for Paperless Wedding and it was produced by Ruari McDowal of Department of Design. Ruari is the designer behind the whole of Paperless Wedding and has been a fantastic to work with.

Ruari saw our first effort and then showed us how it should be done. Ruari lived in Titarangi, just outside Auckland and so had a great affinity with what would appeal to the NZ couple. The beach is a massive part of Kiwi culture. Ruari captured a NZ beach to perfection in one of his many fine photos. He then just needed to manipulate it to fit the templates.

The invite has the lovely swirls with the Koru curl and is a popular choice for our FREE save the date option. The challenge with all the invites is to get a design that allows couples to write as much as they want. The top section is locked in and then it moves onto a white background so the couple can add as many events as they want. I have seen as many as 8 different events!

This invite then is sent to guests via email. They click on the RSVP heart and it links them to the website to enter their RSVP response in.

The website shows the great photo of the beach on a bright spring morning. The background is a repeat pattern of sand. The repeat pattern allows couples to add additional pages and expand this page downwards.

When looking at other company sites I have noticed they always put wedding photos on the site. We had done it too, but it has struck me that of course a couples website would not look like that....seeing that they are not married yet! This screenshot is how it might look instead.

This design has been one of more popular designs and a personal favorite of mine!

Traditions - The colour of the wedding dress!

2011-07-03T17:21:00.000-07:00

"Married in white, you will have chosen all right. Married in grey , you will go far away. Married in black, you will wish yourself back. Married in red, you’ll wish yourself dead. Married in blue, you will always be true. Married in pearl, you’ll live in a whirl. Married in green, ashamed to be seen, Married in yellow, ashamed of the fellow. Married in brown, you’ll live out of town. Married in pink, your spirits will sink.”

This old poem reflects some of the early thoughts on the colour of young girls wedding dresses. You can also see wedding dresses have not always been white!

White has always symbolised virginity and purity but the impracticalities of a white dress were apparent and so dresses with colours that were acceptable as 'best' dresses for regular use afterwards were preferred.

The wedding of Queen Victoria to Prince Albert in 1840 was the main influence towards the current trend of white wedding dresses but even then many women continued for some time to wear different colours.

Queen Victoria was also the first bride to have bridesmaids carrying her train.

If a bride was in mourning it was considered appropriate for her to wear grey or lilac…black was considered bad luck.

Above is a blue dress (as worn by a bride of 1870, left, whose gown is in the London Museum), it's colour is said to have associations with the Virgin Mary. For some blue was the colour of choice as it represented faithfulness and true love but as the fashion changed a blue token was worn by the bride and retained as a symbol…something borrowed, something blue!

By the 1920s white became the universal colour and Coco Chanel introduced the knee length wedding dress worn with a long train. It was a fashion that was short lived as it was considered unsuitable wear for church and thereafter the long bridal skirt has remained no matter what length of skirt was the norm for that time!

The current fashion trends are often reflected in the royal weddings of the day.

This is the wedding photograph of the Duke and Duchess of York on their wedding day January 13 1923. The dress was designed by Madame Handley Seymour, a former London court dressmaker to the dowager Queen Mary. The dress followed the essential fashions of the day, but has never been considered memorable for its beauty. It had an unshaped bodice and a headdress worn well down over the brow.

The Queen's dress for her marriage to Philip Mountbatten took place at Westminster Abbey had lots of beading and embroidery and a long silk veil and train.

WW2 brought about a change for many women as rationing restricted what the bride could buy with her coupons and often family and friends would chip in to help out . The bride may have borrowed a dress from a friend. Sometimes if she was in the services she may have married in her uniform.

In 1956 the film star Grace Kelly married Princes Rainier of Monaco. This dress was a lot more simple in style and has been compared to the most recent dress worn by Kate Middleton.

Princess Margret's stunningly tailored Sixties gown also reflected its time in history and was also very simple. White silk organza with a satin-bound silk tulle veil and not a stitch of embroidery in sight. Surprising that it was also designed by her sisters wedding gown designer. The whole design was made to accommodate the princess's short stature!

On a decade and to Princess Anne’s Tudor styled sleeves that led the way to another era of wedding dresses.

My childhood favorite was Princess Diana’s extravagant bouffant dress with a long train. Every little girls dream. It was again a dress of its time and is summed up perfectly by this blog Order of splendor.

"Lady Diana Spencer was just 20 years old when she married Prince Charles in front of a congregation of 3,500 in St. Paul's Cathedral, gathered crowds of 600,000 in the streets of London, and a television audience of 750 million around the world. She was just 19 years old, actually, when the engagement was announced and the dress design began.

And what do you do when you are 19 years old? You experiment with fashion. Nineteen and twenty are prime ages for trends. You’re much too young to have a defined personal style (at least, not one that you’ll hold on to past the next decade of your life), and you’re still too inexperienced to understand the meaning of elegance in its true, timeless form. Of course this dress is Eighties-orrific. Of course she looked like a girl all dressed up in a fancy party dress. That’s what she was! We judge the dress from today’s standards (even Diana did, later on in her life), but we often forget to consider what this dress was in the context of its time. This wedding was an event. The dress, accordingly, was also an event. This is one instance in which the gasp factor as she came out of the carriage was fully realized."

Today’s brides choose dresses to reflect their personalities or to fit in with a theme they have chosen and the dresses are not always white! Whatever the colour or shape every young girl imagines her fairy tale dress!

More musings from a bride to be - Who will marry us?

2011-05-22T01:06:00.001-07:00

Choosing a wedding celebrant is a strange thing to do. Having never been married before, it’s one of those new experiences that you find yourself faced with and unsure how to approach. There are so many people out there, but you have no idea who they are – how do you know if they are the ‘right’ person to marry you? Aside from judging a photograph and a brief blurb on their website – you’re given little indication whether you will ‘click’ with them and if they’ll understand who you are as a couple.

Feel slightly embarrassed, I decided to go down the track of sending out a few e-mails with a few questions to suss out who these people were. My fiancé is still hassling me that I ‘screened’ potential celebrants, but I think he now admits it was a smart way of going about it. Sure, it felt a bit weird doing it, but we don’t have time to meet loads of people – we needed some way of ruling out the ‘weirdos’. The first cut was ruling out anyone with a giant fascinator in their hair. We’ve seen some shockers over the past couple of years; the best, I swear was an oversized Christmas decoration from the 1980s. We also decided we wanted someone a bit younger than the average aged celebrant. While I’m sure there are some lovely ladies in their sixties who are very experienced at marrying couples – I’ve seen too many of them put on ‘easy listening love songs til midnight fm’ voices and slip into autopilot, spilling out clichés every 20 seconds. We wanted someone with a bit of a fresher approach, someone who had a more contemporary attitude and understanding of a relationship in 2011.

I e-mailed five younger looking celebrants, two of whom came back saying they weren’t available on our date (which was helpful to at least start cutting people out), one came back with some strange answers to the questions (which proved the questionnaire worked a treat – screening out someone who thought ‘Te Radar’ was funny), and two lovely women took the time to answer the questionnaire in a way that made us think that we’d like to meet up with them to find out more.

The first lady was nice. My fiancé thought she felt like she was being interviewed, but honestly – we just wanted to have a laid back conversation, a few laughs and get to know her. She seemed quite business-like and had a competitive edge to her that didn’t sit overly well with me. It wasn’t as if we didn’t like her – we just didn’t ‘click’ with her the way we were hoping to with someone.

So we had one more lady to meet. Goodness knows if she’d be any better than the first lady – maybe we were going to have to settle for the first celebrant, maybe we’d have to find some others to meet with.....

We arrived at the second celebrant’s house and both fell in love with her cat. Apart from him attacking my hand at one point – he was incredibly cute. Aside from the feisty feline, it didn’t take us too long to realise that the conversation was flowing freely and we were laughing heaps, sharing stories and thoroughly enjoying ourselves. My fiancé and I snuck a look to each other at one point and agreed that she was the one. She was just lovely – funny, laid back, intelligent.... I knew we’d been there for a while, but after we left, I realised we’d spent two hours there. Oops! Poor lady, but how lovely of her to spend the time with us. We were both so excited that we clicked with her and actually just wanted to continue hanging out with her because she was so nice and easy to be around.

She loves the fact that we are going to personalise the ceremony and that we are both so involved. I think we will really enjoy the process with her, and I know she’ll be a calming influence on us both on the day. She helped us get excited about our wedding planning again and has allowed us to tick another big thing off our ‘to-do’ list.

We just can’t wait to see her again!

The Perfect Wedding Photo

2011-05-21T23:41:00.000-07:00

We thought we would give you a bit of an insight into behind the scenes at Diverze and their thoughts of the perfect wedding photo.

What makes a perfect wedding photo?

A combination of factors such as, capturing a candid moment between the bride and groom, great light, and a great background.

What top tips can you give a bride on her wedding day on how to take a good photo?

Obviously choosing the right dress, great make-up and hair is a plus. Also to relax and enjoy the day. Smile and enjoy it. We will gently guide you with positioning, backgrounds and light to get the right photos.

What has been your strangest wedding photo request?

Taking photos of the bride’s rabbit “Honey” who was wearing her own floral corsage to feel part of the wedding day. Honey was very cute with her big floppy ears hopping around the house and being part of all the excitement!

What is the most common list of photos that are taken on the day?

Bride getting ready, photos with her bridesmaids and family, groom with his grooms men and family, arriving at the ceremony, walking down the aisle, vows, kiss and leaving the church together, congratulations, shots together, bridal party, details shots, reception. Really capturing & documenting everything on the day.

What is your most popular wedding package?

Anything from 5 to 8 hours. A 5 Hour package starts from $1220 & includes the high resolution DVD.

Do you do trash the dress photos?

No requests as yet but certainly can do!

Engagement photos? Yes we do pre wedding photos and we can make up a guest book with the photos to use at the reception or an enlargement for guests to sign.

Post wedding photos?

Lots of our past couples have come back to us with their pregnancy, baby and new family photos.

How do Diverze strive to be Eco Friendly?

We re-use manilla folders, just turn them inside out. Email invoices instead of print and send when possible, reuse other side of paper not needed any more for any notes etc. and email packages oppose to print and send to enquiries.

Is there anything that Brides and Grooms should be aware of when booking a photographer? Absolutely, unfortunately you do not need qualifications to say that you are a professional photographer. This means that you could actually say that you are a professional photographer! There are lots of so called photographers out there that do photography on the weekend for a little extra cash. We are not saying that they are all bad, but sadly many are and there are many disappointed couples after their wedding. Think about this ...would you want to go to an accountant that had no qualifications ? or a plumber to fix your pipes with no license? A professional photographer understands the principles of light, what to do if it rains, positioning and many other factors that goes into being an excellent professional photographer.In most cases you do pay for what you get. Is your wedding photography something you really want to risk?

Big thanks from Paperless Wedding for your support!

Earth Day - Earth Hour Awards

2011-04-22T20:47:00.001-07:00

We applied for the Earth Hour Awards and although we did not win this year I thought we would share our answers as it is a good insight into what Paperless Wedding is trying to achieve.

Can you describe what actions you have taken to reduce your environmental footprint and how you have inspired others to take action? (250 words)

Think of all the paper which goes into a wedding invitation. Not only is there the invitation itself, there's also all the info to include: maps, accommodation details, gift registry - all in a paper envelope. Multiply this by the number of guests and a couple could be using more paper than they might do all year! Plus there's the emissions from delivery, especially if they have mates to invite from those fun years in London, or pals who have moved abroad.

Paperless Wedding was formed with the aim of cutting the paper out of wedding invitations. We deliver smart invitations digitally, which cuts down on the mountain of paper used and the emissions used for delivery. We also have tips on our site, plus we blog and tweet links to inspire couples have totally eco-friendly nuptials.

We at Paperless also use this philosophy to back our business:

- Our servers are wind-powered

- We offset our emissions using a tree-planting scheme

- Paperless Towers has no air-con

- We don't drive to work

- We recycle as much as possible

- Apart from those pesky legal documents, we're paper free.

2. Tell us what impact this has had. Please be as specific as possible, for example, tell us the number of people reached or the total waste avoided. (250 words)

Paperless Wedding has only been operating for a short time (since September 2009 in NZ and April 2010 in Australia), but we have already delivered over 10,000 digital invitations to all parts of the globe. Including all the extra paper needed and RSVP cards, we estimate that this is the equivalent of 100,000 sheets of paper, the equivalent of 12 precious trees saved. When emissions from delivery and dealing with waste are factored in, it is estimated that 20 grams of C02 are generated from every letter delivered, so that's around 400,000 grams saved already.

3. Tell us how might grow this action to inspire more people and have an even bigger impact. (100 words)

Every time a digital invitation is sent by Paperless Wedding it will inspire other couples to do the same for their weddings and show that, while you wouldn't use Facebook, you can use a well designed smart wedding invitation site. We have already seen many couples who are signing up because they were invited by Paperless Wedding and want to do the same.

4. If you were the CEO of WWF, what would you do to inspire people to Go Beyond The Hour? (100 words)

Create an eco-friendly standard for products (including websites like Paperless) and appliances, which would then receive a globally recognisable WWF badge. A trusted brand being used in this way would enable people to be sure that they are not being green washed.

Many congratulations to the winners of the Earth Hour Awards !!

Musings from a bride to be

2011-02-22T19:16:00.000-08:00

We have a new blogger joining us at Paperless Wedding. She would like to remain anonymous so she can truly say what is on her mind! She is a Kiwi bride getting married in 2012 and will offer an insight into the thoughts of a bride planning her big day. We hope you enjoy!

"I’m probably not your normal bride. I was so excited when my (now) fiancé proposed in November last year, however at the back of my mind was all the countless things to organise and the number of awkward conversations to have with family members. Over the past few months, my fiancé and I have learnt that people can go a bit crazy once the word 'wedding' has been flung out there. To give you an idea – we got asked if we’d set a date for the wedding only an hour and a half after he proposed.

It sounds like I’m complaining. I’m not, I just think it’s good to be honest and to tell you up front that you probably won’t get all the intricate details about our wedding from these blog entries – more a few musings around what it’s like trying to plan the big day when you commit your love to your best friend in front of close friends and family. Now that idea makes me smile.

I am completely in love with my fiancé and feel truly blessed to have found someone so perfect for me to spend the rest of my life with. We are both looking forward to taking the next step and becoming husband and wife and eventually starting a family together.

We’ve had a few conversations with family members that we wish we hadn’t needed to. We are both very close to our family, so it makes it hard when they have been picturing our wedding day one way, and we (the ones paying for it) have different ideas.

We’re still 11 months out from our day, so have a lot of time to plan. We have managed to get a few of the bigger things out of the way, such as the date, venue, rings, photographer and obviously our invitations through Paperless Weddings. We both have a deep love of music, so of course we’ve almost settled on the songs for both the ceremony and reception.

I’ve also managed to organise my dressmaker and designed my dress. I was never one of those girls who had planned their wedding from childhood, but randomly once I got engaged and started to think about getting married – I knew almost immediately the type of dress I wanted to wear. It’s nothing like a big meringue or traditional bridal gown, and I knew I’d have a hard time finding exactly what I wanted, so thankfully my sister’s friend is super talented and lovely and has drawn up exactly what I had dreamed up. Now I just need to make sure I fit it! How on earth do I stop daydreaming about cupcakes long enough to do this?

I’m about to start studying (whilst working full time), so this year is going to be pretty full on. I’m going to allow myself a couple of month of not thinking too much about the wedding. I’ll try and treasure this, as I see so many people whose lives get taken over by it, and I just don’t want to become one of those people.

Will definitely update you in a couple of months. Will be interesting to see where we are at then."

Traditions - Why do brides and Grooms exchange wedding rings ?

2011-02-21T02:51:00.000-08:00

I have not done a traditions post in a while, so we thought it was time for another look at the traditions that surround a wedding. We having covered cakes, photography, flowers and weddings of the past. Now time for the RING!

The purpose of engagement rings and wedding bands is to convey deep emotions of eternal love, eternal happiness, eternal commitment, and eternal togetherness. In fact, these rings signify eternity - between the giver and the recipient. A ring, of course, is a complete circle with no break and no end or beginning, which means that it just goes on and on - it is eternal.

These days, many people take wedding bands and engagement rings for granted, and although they give these beautiful items of jewellery with integrity and love, they are often given with no real knowledge of the meaning behind them . They haven’t always been the shiny jewel encrusted bands that we see in the shops today.

Paperless Wedding supports the eco wedding rings which are becoming more common. They got a good bit of promotion recently when Natalie Portman got engaged.

Created by jewelry designer Jamie Wolf, Portman’s custom-designed ring is made of recycled platinum and its diamonds are certified as conflict-free

The first wedding band is thought to have originated in Ancient Egypt, where it is said that plant sections were fashioned in to circles to signify never-ending and immortal love. It was thought that the fourth finger (which we now know as the ring finger) contained a special vein that was connected directly to the heart, and therefore this became the official finger for the wedding band.

The Romans saw the ring as a symbol of ownership where Roman men would "claim" their woman with the giving of a ring. Some women today find this symbol distasteful as in the era of equality they do not wish to be ‘owned’.

Puzzle rings were a complex type of jewellery that were once popular in Asia, and these jewels had the charming knack of being able to fall apart and put back together again - if you knew how to do this! (They were a contemporary fashion item in the 1970s…my mum had one!). Wealthy Middle Eastern men then began to use these rings as wedding bands for their wives, who were often forced to wear a puzzle ring when their husband was away. When the husband returned and found that the ring hadfallen apart then he knew that she had been unfaithful!

During Colonial times when puritanical views were held, all items of jewellery in America were prohibited due to their apparent moral worthlessness. Instead, a more practical thimble was given as a token of love and as a pledge of eternal togetherness. However, after they were married, the women tended to remove the bottom of their "engagement thimble" to form a type of ring.

In some European countries the wedding ring is worn on the right hand and in Scandinavia women often wear 3 rings, engagement, wedding and motherhood.

Men started to wear wedding rings around the time of World War 2 when they wore them to remind themselves of the wives they had left at home.

The ancient Greeks are thought to have given a form of engagement ring, a betrothal ring, but these were more like friendship rings and did not necessarily mean an intended marriage.

Sparkling engagement rings as we know them today became popular in around the fourteenth or fifteenth century, when the rich and the royal could afford and wear these jewels although the bands may not necessarily be made of gold. It was many centuries before these engagement rings would become more popular or traditional. When Prince Albert gave Queen Victoria a diamond ring as a memento the current fashion for diamond engagement rings could have been initiated!

Rings can also be handed down through a family as Prince William has given his future wife Catherine his mothers sapphire and diamond engagement ring. My own engagement ring was originally my grandmothers!!

Whatever the ring, plaited hair, metal or gold, bejewelled or plain, are given and received with love.

Check out more details on this site inhabitat.com about eco wedding rings.

Cutting the paper out of wedding invitations!

2011-02-15T01:25:00.000-08:00

Getting married and not living in the country? Getting married and half your guests live in another country?

Well this a specialism of Paperless Wedding. We can help by saving you time and postage of invites. Also by using Paperless Wedding you are not limited by the information that you put in the envelope and you can update it whenever you want thanks to the website.

The themes are plentiful and on several of them you can change the colours to help match it into the theme of your day.

Paperless Wedding Teal Wax Eye theme:

Wings and Flowers (teal)

Paperless Wedding Autumn theme:

Autumn Passion

There is a great company based in the UK called ididjeridoo that help antipodeans plan their wedding back 'home'. They also love our site as we are Cutting the paper out of wedding invitations!

Shadan runs the company and she found there was a genuine need for a UK-based wedding and event planner specifically designed to dedicated to working on weddings downunder... and who better to offer that service than an Antipodean woman who’s been there done that and has the hubby to prove it!! I hope we can help Shadan out over the coming months as a supplier for Aussie and Kiwi themed designs and make antipodeans wedding planning a lot easier!

Koru Heart

What are you waiting for, check out the FREE two week trial and FREE save the date!

Green Weddings and Eco links!

2011-01-19T21:32:00.000-08:00

I did do a post early last year about all things green. Since then we have had lots of great feedback about how we have helped people do their bit for the environment, for example:

"Fantastic website, totally recommend - not only keeps things green, but great way of keeping wedding costs down, brilliant concept!" www.brideadviser.com

Green Weddings are a lot more common year on year and Blogs pop up all over the place offering their best tips and advise. I love this one and they recently did a post citing that Paperless Wedding (OK they said email invites) were the way to go! Green Wedding Blog

I also really like this blog written by Kate Wall, Live and Lovely . She had an Eco Wedding herself which has led her on to writing an artical about it. This Australian based couple have some great eco products that are available for purchase or hire. I love the candles and the recycled paper decorations. So much thought and time went into creating the perfect day, its looks fantastic. I hope they have a long, healthy and happy life together!

Ethical Weddings have some great articles too. I enjoy reading about real life stories and tips on how to have that perfect Green Wedding. I wish I had done more research when we got married!

So what do Paperless Wedding do?

Think of all the paper which goes into a wedding invitation. Not only is there the invitation itself, there's also all the info you need to include: maps, accommodation details, gift registry - all in a paper envelope. Multiply this by the number of your guests and you're using more paper than you might do all year! Plus there's the emissions from delivery, especially if you have mates to invite from those fun years in London, or pals who have moved abroad.

All this can be replaced using Paperless Wedding, we cover everything that would normally go in that paper envelope and more, you can include way more info on your site, plus your guests can interact using the message board and photo album. And all this for the price of 80 Australian large letter stamps. It's an easy and up to date way to reduce the carbon footprint of your wedding.

On top of this, we at Paperless try make sure we're as green as possible:

Our servers are energy efficient
We offset emissions using a tree planting scheme
Paperless Towers has no air con
We don't drive to work
We recycle everything we can
We operate without paper as much as possible

Our ECO tips for green weddings:

Encourage your guests to give each other lifts to your wedding, or provide a bus
If people are travelling from overseas, ask them to carbon offset their flights
Choose locally supplied food, flowers and jewellery
Go for a sustainable venue
Hire rather than buy, or go pre-loved, this could also save you cash
Instead of asking for gifts, request a donation to an environmental charity
Have your honeymoon in Australia – it is beautiful after all!

Want a green wedding? - sign up now!

Happy New Year!

2011-01-08T22:54:00.000-08:00

Hello Paperless Wedding Fans!

We hope you had an amazing Christmas and New Year. We enjoy Christmas in Auckland and NYE in Sydney. The fireworks were spectacular.

We had a great year last year in Paperless Wedding in NZ. Our first full year and lots of happy 'Green' couples. It is great to know we are helping people keep to budget and help the environment too. We are seeing steady growth and with the launch of the Australian site we are hoping that 2011 will be even better!

New designs, new partnerships, new countries and a new page or two. Not sure where we will find the time, but we will do our best.

Our most popular design for 2010 was actually one of our very first designs. I wonder what it will be in 2011?!

Create your Own Theme

2010-11-20T20:53:00.000-08:00

We have had a lot of requests over the last year for the ability to add photos and change the colour of the website. So over the last few months Jim has been building and testing out the 'Create your Own Theme' application.

This can be found when you go to our Themes menu that displays all the templates. Once you select Create your Own theme, it will navigate you to a new screen to allow you to start building you site.

From this page you can work from top to bottom of the website and choose your colour scheme. Then you can upload a photo that will appear in the top right hand corner of the website and also appear on your email invite and Save the Date.

The above is a screengrab to show you a work in progress. It gets very addictive as you keep going in and changing colours to get it just right. The colours options and combination are endless!

We hope you like the new addition to our site and that it give you the option to do something really personal to you.

Happy creating!

Traditions - 2nd Wedding Anniversary!

2010-10-26T02:35:00.001-07:00

This weekend was our second anniversary. It only feels like yesterday since we tied the knot!

We have had another amazing year. We have moved to another country and now Australia is home. We also launch Paperless Wedding which is now seeing regular visits and frequent sign ups.

There is still a lot to do on Paperless Wedding and things will progress over the next year with more designs and new features. By the time we reach our 3rd Anniversary who knows where we will be!

I found this great summary about Wedding Anniversary Traditional gifts on i-do.com.au. I decided to go traditional and include a section of a white cotton sheet on my card that I gave my husband. He also got a book about beer! He gave me an trip on a hot air balloon that we are going to take this weekend. I can't wait!!

Anniversary

1st

2nd

3rd

4th

5th

6th

7th

8th

9th

10th

11th

12th

13th

14th

15th

20th

25th

30th

35th

40th

45th

50th

55th

60th

75th

Traditional

Paper

Cotton

Leather

Fruit/Flowers

Wood

Iron

Wool/Copper

Bronze/Pottery

Pottery/Willow

Tin/Aluminium

Steel

Silk/Linen

Lace

Ivory

Crystal

China

Silver

Pearls

Coral

Rubies

Sapphires

Gold

Emeralds

Diamonds

Modern

Clocks

China

Crystal/Glass

Appliances

Silverware

Wood

Desk sets

Linens/Laces

Leather

Diamond Jewellery

Fashion Jewellery

Pearls

Textiles

Gold Jewellery

Watches

Platinum

Silver

Diamond

Jade

Ruby

Sapphire

Gold

Emerald

Diamond

Paperless Wedding supporters

2010-09-30T04:51:00.000-07:00

We have been getting a lot of coverage through various means and we want to thank all our supports.

Earlier this year we had a lovely piece written about us on Joy and Me a website that 'wants to spread beautiful ideas and images far and wide. We have a bit of a unique outlook on events in that we believe every day is cause for celebration, life is precious and time with loved ones is an event in itself so why not make the most of it?'

Polka Dot Bride helped us launch in Australia with great coverage on our very first day! They posted a competition and we had one happy bride who had her account upgrade. I do love the whole feel of this website and the different topics they cover from dresses to cakes, from cufflinks to flowers.

Bride Magazine has also run a competition on their facebook page and we have had another happy bride. We have since taken up advertising on their new designed website.

I-do.com also has an ad of ours on there.....OK so the last two places we are paying to be on there, but we hope they will support us over the coming year with other little specials!!

We also hope to be in an eco friendly magazine later this year. It is 100% online but you turn the pages like a magazine. This is an American publication, but it often features articles of Australian suppliers and mentioned Polka Dot in its last edition.

Our Paperless Wedding Twitter page has over 700 followers now and is often getting retweeted. Check out our feed on the right handside. Plus we have the Facebook page which gives a great summary of what we are doing week to week.

If you want to feature us or help promote a new start up company that supports Green Weddings, then please do get in touch!

Traditions - A Post War Wedding

2010-09-23T20:33:00.001-07:00

My Nanna, Joy Wight, has been writing her memoirs and I as I have been covering traditions in my blog, I thought this piece about her wedding was perfect and I thought I would share it with you. It is a great insight into a post war wedding and the honeymoon!

July 3rd. 1948 - The Wedding at Last.

My parents had been disappointed when we said that we wanted the wedding to be held in Birmingham. It was not the custom to wed away from your home town, and I know Mother would have liked her Church friends to have been at the celebrations. We wanted my University friends to be present before they all dispersed to jobs, and John wanted his Youth Association and Moseley Church friends to be present, and of course it was halfway between Edinburgh and Reading.

I bought some white satin-backed material for my wedding dress and some material for the bridesmaids dresses. Because I was not near home and the bridesmaids were in Birmingham, it seemed only sensible to get a local dressmaker to make the gowns. In retrospect this must have been terribly hurtful to my Mother, after all the wonderful clothes she had made for me in the past. How thoughtless one is when young and fancy free!

We booked rooms at a Moseley hotel for the two sets of parents, the Osbornes (friends of Mum and Dad) and myself for the evening before the wedding, and some theatre tickets for them after we had gone away. This was another faux pas. I booked for a very modern play - next to no scenery and a psychological plot - which upset the mentally frail Harold Osborne! I did not learn about that until much later.

Jim, who was to be best man, cycled down to Birmingham from Edinburgh and stayed at the caravan for the night. John had borrowed a jacket to wear with his scout kilt, as clothes were still on coupons and when a man was demobbed from the services he could have either a suit or a casual jacket and grey trousers. John wore his Harris Tweed jacket and flannels for years.

So the great day arrived, and all went according to plan, a lovely service conducted by our friend Rev. Mulholland and reception afterwards in the church hall for about 60 people and with outside caterers. The wine was provided by Grandpa Hall who had been laying it up for years for such an occasion. (As I was 25 when I married he must have begun to give up hope.) He heard the caterers say what excellent port it was and was highly annoyed when they took all the remaining bottles away after the wedding.

Compared with modern weddings the whole affair was over quite early. There was no evening entertainment. Many guests had to make long journeys home and we were due to get to the Grand Hotel in York for our first stop on the way to Scotland. When we arrived it was a large almost empty hotel and they had finished serving meals and could only provide a few sandwiches . By this time we were very hungry- one rarely eats much at ones own reception! Our only recourse was to go out into the empty litter ridden town and get fish and chips.-Never mind the room was good and the bed big and comfy! -£1-12s-0d B&B for two.

Honeymoon

Next day we left early, using some of our petrol coupons to go up to North Berwick where we were booked in for a week at a little boarding house run by a couple known to Mum and Dad Scotland. lt cost us £9-19s.0d for the week full-board -iron bedstead and capock mattress! We toured around and visited some distant relatives of Johns one day for 'high tea'. Another day we dropped in on an N.A.B.C. youth conference in Edinburgh . We were really obliged to do this as we had obtained the petrol coupons on the grounds of attending the conference. As you can imagine we were not in there long!

Thank you Nanna for this piece and letting me share it with everyone. x