BridalTweet.com Announces its First Contest “Red Carpet Wedding”

BridalTweet.com Announces its First Contest “Red Carpet Wedding”

One lucky bride to win a chance to wear diamond earrings for her special day

NEW YORK – September 15, 2009

BridalTweet.com today announced a contest awarding one lucky bride a complimentary rental of dazzling diamond earrings to wear on her wedding day. Each bride who joins BridalTweet.com before October 30 will be entered to win, compliments of Ador

n Brides.¹ “The Red Carpet Wedding contest is our way of thanking brides for joining our wedding community,” said Christine Dyer, creator and founder of BridalTweet.com. “We’re seeing that brides will rent anything from visual props to floral arrangements, table linens, head-pieces and sometimes even dresses; why not rent diamonds for the special day.”

Each bride that joins BridalTweet.com will also gain access to the wedding community’s ongoing benefits such as free wedding advice, exclusive offers, giveaways, information about local events, a local vendor directory, and more. All BridalTweet.com members, including brides, wedding vendors, and wedding bloggers, can also share tips and information via chats, blogs, discussions, groups, photos, and videos.

Early results indicate BridalTweet.com’s growing leadership position within the wedding industry. Since its inception in April of 2009, the wedding community at BridalTweet.com has exceeded 3,500 members, with 64 percent of the community’s visitors returning to the website in a given month – a strong signal of BridalTweet.com’s active and engaged audience.²

“We are excited to work with BridalTweet.com to bring the red carpet glamour of diamonds on loan to one lucky bride’s big event,” shared Laura Carrintgon, co-founder and chief stylist for Adorn Brides. “Every bride, regardless of her budget deserves to have access to the very best in bridal accessories. Now, brides can rent thousands of dollars of diamond jewelry for a fraction of what it would cost to purchase them thanks to Adorn Brides.”

¹Rental cost not to exceed $150 in value. The retail value of the earrings can be up to $4,100. Subject to general rental terms and conditions of Adorn Brides. See official Red Carpet Wedding rules for complete details: www.bridaltweet.com/notes/Red_Carpet_Wedding_Rules

²Google Analytics, August 2 – September 1, 2009

About BridalTweet.com: Headquartered in New York, NY, BridalTweet (www.BridalTweet.com) is a free online wedding community where brides, wedding vendors, and wedding bloggers can create meaningful relationships. At BridalTweet.com, brides can find free wedding advice, exclusive offers, giveaways, local events, and more. This is one of the first wedding communities that enables wedding vendors to have a voice - allowing for deeper marketing conversations. Since April 2009, 3,500 members have joined BridalTweet.com and membership increases daily.

About Adorn Brides: Headquartered in New York, NY, Adorn Brides (www.adorn.com) is the leading online diamond jewelry rental company designed specifically to meet the needs of today’s bride. Cited as the #1 resource for bridal jewelry accessories online, Adorn Brides’ unique service is fast becoming the latest trend among fashion conscious brides.

Wedding Invitation Trend Watch 2010/2011

By: Megan Battistella owner of Adair Custom Designs: Specializing in Wedding Invitations and Stationary.

POP QUIZ:
This one is for all engaged couples out there!

What is the most important thing that a wedding invitation set should do for
an engaged couple?
A. Set the tone for the wedding
B. Elicit a response
C. Save money!
D. Wedding invitations? Shoot! I forgot about those…

For engaged couples, the excitement of planning a wedding can overwhelm the most basic principal of what an invitation is intended to do, and that is: get a response! My experience in creating corporate identity has taught me that thoughtful design is essential to creating personality with an impact.

For the budget-conscious couples looking to balance affordability and personal style consider the following: will your invitation be considered a “keepsake”? People know the difference between art and ordinary. The highest compliment is for your guests to keep your wedding invitations. Through exciting the senses with something different, you will find that an immediate response from your guests is not uncommon. People crave a fresh approach as opposed to a tired format!

Next year springs forth a fresh decade of fantastic trends and new ideas! Familiar and entirely new, retro and modern combined; it is indeed the beginning of a new era of contemporary design. These trends are recession busters and have been recycled from decades and even centuries past as tried and true.

THEMES THAT WILL TREND in 2010/2011—Some of these themes draw from the past and will continue to show resiliency in the future, overlapping will be common amongst all of these categories

“Art Deco” Wedding Packages

This will be one of the most prevalent trends seen in the wedding industry for next year. It is on the verge of exploding. This trend can go in numerous different avenues for wedding invitation sets, but the following will be the most common.

Art Deco: 1920’s and 30’s inspired. Wedding invitations will present strong, contrasting geometric patterning, borrowing from classic architectural elements of the roaring twenties. Vertical paper layouts will prove to be more consistent with the “style” of art deco. Perfect for those watching their budgets, because pieces that print with only one color designs, (black) on white or colored paper are more economical. For added elegance, consider metallic or pearl papers.

Art Deco: Floral Seventies and modernized Baroque: These will still have an overwhelming sense of “pattern.” Flat color, graphic, non-dimensional floral patterns will be make a showing in tomorrow’s wedding invitation designs.

“Folksy/culturally inspired” Wedding Invitation Sets

Falling back on different cultures, the “folksy pilgrim” is borrowing from all types of traditions and cross-pollinating with today’s society. There is a a strong theme of hand-made, hand-painted and custom detailed wood work which will lead into a decorative Baroque style.

Wedding invitation trends in this category will consider specialty shapes in papers, die-cuts, decorative embellishments that are unique to the bride and groom’s heritage and/or ethnic background. Bright impressions of the Latin culture, the simplicity and softness of the Midwestern States and a vivid graphic African influence will be seen in this category.

Wedding invitations will be hand-drawn or possibly painted in watercolors and then over-laid with illustration work, generally in floral patterns. Hand-calligraphy (Examples provided by Jennifer Gillespie of “Calligraphy by Jennifer” http://www.calligraphybyjennifer.net/) and highly decorative lettering will flourish in fonts. On the opposite spectrum, large, bold, sans-serif fonts will also do incredibly well.

“Eco-Chic” Wedding Invitations

“Going Green” has become a mainstream concept, but new technology and advances in protecting the environment are continuously being supplied to the masses for more economical rates. Consciously looking for alternative papers for invites will continue to be important. Recycled papers come in 30% post-consumer waste and 100% post-consumer waste and more printers are supplying soy-based inks.

“Futuristic” & Digital Wedding Package Sets

Going against the grain and all traditions, these wedding invitation sets will offer new thoughts and design directions for the future. Fluorescent accents in paper, metallic cut-outs, reflective materials and holographic papers will portray an almost surrealist nature. Three dimensionally textured bellybands and uniquely shaped invitation enclosures will grab the spotlight. Peacock feathers used in design motifs or as embellishments will gather interest this upcoming year. Adding layers to invitation sets through the use of frosted, translucent, and transparent papers will add visual interest while maintaining budgets.

In this socially connected world, some couples may consider opting out of paper invitations and go digital. Digital invitations are posted videos on the internet and the response is electronic. (See example, work not created by Megan Battistella of Adair Design--but it's still a GREAT idea!)

This will eliminate the response cards all together and will help to save on postage cost, return address printing and envelopes. Other options are to spend an extra amount of money on a more decorative invitation and then combining a response and directions card which will direct guests to RSVP electronically.

There are plenty of budget conscious and completely out-of-the box ideas that can portray your wedding in a brand-new light. Please contact me for a free, custom wedding invitation consultation or check out my pre-designed wedding packages and I can give you some pricing. If you check out my Facebook page, leave a note or some feedback, I would love to hear your thoughts!

Contact: Megan Battistella:: Graphic Design Specialist:: Adair Design::
Adair_Design@msn or call: 704.489.1534

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Adair-Design/97382969556?ref=mf

My Sister's Wedding

My sister Rachel is engaged! Yeah! I am so excited for her, and of course, I'm doing her wedding invitations!

We looked through plenty of images from wedding planners and flower shops through my Twitter followers, Facebook and Bridal Tweet. It was great to have an excuse to read all the latest blog posts and newest ideas that are out on the market.

These wedding invitations are going to be ridiculous! I can't wait to get started on them, the wedding isn't until next year, which is the longest amount of time that I have ever had for invitation design! Her budget is tiny, which is going to make things challenging, and I'm always down for a good design challenge.

Jon and Andrea

Find more photos like this on BridalTweet: Free Wedding Directory & Wedding Community


The Wilson wedding package is, and was, one of my favorite wedding packages to do. This design was the inspiration for my logo and the "moment of clarity" that I needed to push me head first into the wedding industry.

I realized that as much as I like helping businesses with their logos and getting them up off the ground, I especially liked the fact that when you are creating wedding invitation sets, you are taking the essence of a person's dream and creating a personality for it.

Creating logos and marketing plans/design briefs are actually very similar, but there is a more professional demeanor to it, it's more serious. A logo needs to be applicable to just about anything and everything under the sun, and it needs to communicate at every size. A business needs to address specific markets, demographic, etc. There is a about a hundred different things that go into a logo, but at the same time, it has to be simple enough to just, "be" and communicate the basis of who you are as a business.

With a wedding invitation set, you are enjoying the process of making art, and for the most part, purely for art's sake. Wedding invitation design is creating and taking the essence of a person's event and making it pretty...exciting...and interesting. A wedding is considered one of the most important moments in a person's life, and how many more time's in your life will you throw-down $5,000 and upwards for what is essentially, a big party?

This email from my client, Andrea was heart-warming and for me, surprising. I was happy that she was thrilled with the invitations and that she was getting such a positive response from them, I thought I would go ahead and share it with everyone.

I mean, how could anyone not feel inspired by this?

Megan,

I met with my wedding planner today to show her the invitations. Here's a direct quote: "This is blowing my mind right now." ... yes, she loved them!!! She would like to know how much this invitation set would cost for other brides. She absolutely loves your work.

I've showed everyone the invites and they LOVE them. Thank you SO much. I am super excited. A special kudos for the map... it's everyone's favorite! lol

My planner is going to proof read the invitations and then i'll get back to you with final revisions.

Thank you again. You are truly talented. Your wedding invite line is going to really take off!


Andrea Cloninger

Ryun and Katie Wedding Design Package

When Katie called me 4 years ago to ask me if I could do her wedding invitations, I was thrown...wedding invitations!? But I don't DO wedding invitations...oh and she needed them done, "in a couple days?" My first thought was, "I'm pregnant and I'm constantly sick, when am I going to have time to do this! I have no idea what goes into a wedding invitation!" And, might I add, there are some specifics!

But it all worked out for the best...in fact, wedding invitation design was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. It was right up my alley. I'm naturally an ornate designer, I'm less of a "white space" person, chock it up to my illustrative nature, me and wedding designs were "meant to be."

Here's the outcome: A unique wedding package with a twist of classic art deco and modern boho-chic. These wedding invitations feature intricate details and a timeless color palette.


A modern, organic design, complimented with structured timeless elements. Created on a square, flat-card invitation with an iridescent raised border.



A matching monogrammed envelope helps complete the message of both uniting a wedding package and couple.




The response card and return address labels draw from the main invitation design to create a free-flowing, elegant tone.

Not without a touch of humor, bare feet casually make their way down from the church to the reception.

Sarah and Noah Wedding Package

Find more photos like this on Wedding Directory & Wedding Community by BridalTweet

Color Forecast 2010/2011

So I was assuming that my next blog post was going to be completely about my new color trend forecast, and I wasn't going to write anything else until I got that out. But, this color forecast thing is starting to grow some real legs, and I have a really dynamic and totally new way of approaching and presenting my color forecast.

I've always been an avid researcher, before committing to art in design, in 5th grade I had decided that I wanted to be a prosecuting attorney. I remember even giving myself book reports during my summer vacations based off of the books/encyclopedias that my family had around our house. I thought it was so interesting to learn about other countries. I learn best through writing things down and collecting information...and when I collect information, it goes beyond the standard, collecting information just to have "something" to back up your design work. I guess I should have been on a debate team or something. What a dork!!

I get so excited when I see social, economic, color trends and patterns. It is the key that unlocks the future, the tiny details that are so easy to overlook, the static behaviors, and psychology of who we are as people that explains the "why" and the "what we are" today. It's all there, if we have the time to slow down and delve deep.