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INN ON THE HILL 365 Guelph St. (Hwy. 7) Halton Hills (Georgetown) www.bestwestern.com/ca/innonthehill 905-877-6986 1-800-563-2476 MAGGIE SOTTERO TRUNK SHOW NOVEMBER 1 3 2007 Bea Shawn Fashions will feature an EXCLUSIVE collection of MAGGIE SOTTERO Wedding Gowns direct from the showroom! Join us for this exciting event and you will receive a FREE VEIL with the purchase of your Wedding Gown. THE BRIDAL SPECIALISTS 389 Main Street North, Brampton 905-457-3363 www.beashawnbridal.com Special Bridal Event The Warmth and Ambience of a 19th Century Setting Newly renovated historic venue in Milton. Wood burning fireplaces in both rooms. Seasonally decorated. Accommodates up to 100 for dinner; 120 for cocktail receptions; meetings from 10 to 80 persons. A/V equipment and furniture included. Cozy fall and winter setting beneath the Niagara Escarpment. Free parking. Wheelchair accessible. 905-875-2200 ext. 23 1-866-4HALTON (1-866-442-5866) www.halton.ca/museum HALTON REGION MUSEUM (in Kelso Conservation Area) Need accommodations for your wedding guests? 18 Independent & Free Press, Wednesday, October 31, 2007 BRIDAL CORNER Picture it. After hours of addressing the envelopes for your wedding invitations, you finally send them out, complete with RSVP cards. Three months later, you have only received responses from three-quarters of your guests, and in order to get an accurate head count for the caterer, you must spend a few hours calling all of those who failed to respond. This is the scenario that many brides face every year. In spite of their best efforts to get an accurate head count through RSVP cards, some guests misplace or lose the cards and forget to respond. All of the time and money the bride put into those cards is simply gone. To reduce the risk of misplaced or lost RSVP cards, many brides are now giving guests the option to reply to their invitations online. Guests simply go to the website listed on the invitation, fill out the required information and submit their RSVP. The advantages of online RSVP are numerous. The bride does not have to provide RSVP card envelopes and stamps, which saves on the bud- get, nor does she have to worry about guests misplacing or losing RSVP cards. The bride also receives responses faster through the Internet. Of course, not all people are Internet savvy. For brides that have a mix of Internet savvy and not-so-savvy guests, sending out invitations with the website address listed for online RSVP, along with printed RSVP cards, may be the best option. Guests can either RSVP online or by mail. Because there is the option of online RSVP, brides can forgo putting stamps on the RSVP envelopes and let guests who use the printed cards take care of the matter themselves. While brides may set up online RSVP through e-mail or a free web- site, experts recommend they use an RSVP service provider. Depending upon whom they choose, brides may receive any number of special fea- tures, including the ability to set up RSVPs for multiple events surround- ing the wedding, 24-7 access to all reports, e-mail confirmation for guests, meal tracking and more. Of course, RSVP providers will require a fee, but for brides with hundreds of guests, it may be worth it. Who knew how simple responding to a wedding invitation could be? Online RSVP makes it so easy for guests who use the Internet often and speeds up the process significantly for brides. The bride can confirm the number of guests attending her wedding at any given time in a matter of min- utes rather than sitting around waiting for the mail to arrive. Youve been working on your wedding for months now and it is finally getting down to the wire. You cant put off selecting the cen- terpieces for the tables at the recep- tion any longer. Your budget is tight, so live floral arrangements are simply out of the question. Lucky for you, there are hundreds of ideas for inexpensive reception table cen- terpieces. A search through bridal maga- zines, shops and online will provide you with hundreds of ideas for wed- ding centerpieces, some traditional and some not so traditional. Here are some ideas: Balloons Baskets of artificial flowers Birdcages Bowls of fruit Board games and puzzles (these work especially well for chil- drens tables) Candles with artificial greenery Cards received prior to the wedding Champagne buckets Dishes of personalized choco- lates or other candies Fish bowls Glass bowls with floating can- dles Hurricane globes with sand and seashells Old books and maps Pens and journals for guests to write their good wishes Picture frames with various photos of the couple Placemats featuring artwork from the couple Potted plants Scrapbooks of the couples childhoods Straw hats Wooden hearts and love poems To save even more money, you might want to consider having cen- terpieces that will serve a double purpose. For example, the personal- ized chocolates could serve as wed- ding favors, while strawberries dipped in chocolate could work as a pre- or post-dinner treat. Another trend is to have cakes on every table as centerpieces, which the guests can then eat at their leisure. The wedding cake can be smaller, and with various fla- vored cakes at each table, youre sure to offer something that will suit every tongue. Guests will enjoy comparing and sharing cake flavors. The sky is the limit when it comes to inexpensive wedding cen- terpieces. Depending upon what you decide, you may even be able to cre- ate them yourself and save yourself even more money. TRESA ERICKSON Special to The IFP TRESA ERICKSON Special to The IFP Create unique centrepieces on a budget New trend: Receive RSVPs online