Wednesday, September 20, 2006

New feature: text message when a gift is bought


We've just rolled out a new feature at TheBigDay: you now have the option of receiving a text message on your cell phone when one of your wedding guests buys a gift from your registry!

The text message will tell you who the gift is from, and what they've bought for you. You'll still get the email announcements as well, of course.

There's no cost for this feature from TheBigDay, but keep in mind that if your cell phone company charges you for receiving a text message, you should think about the number of messages you might receive.

To start receiving text message announcements, just log in to your registry, and click the link that says "Update our contact info". You'll find boxes in the middle of that page for text messaging.

-- Michael

Thursday, September 14, 2006

Beer Spa opens in the Czech Republic


All right, for all those guys who think spas are too girly for them…this just in from the Czech Republic: a Beer Spa! I kid you not. It’s the world’s first, and is located in the town of Chodova Plana.

Created by the Chodovar family brewery, the oldest in the region, the spa has seven Victorian style baths, where guests can swim in beer while enjoying a pint served at the bath side bar. Spa treatments include: a hot-tub soak in lager, beer body massages and beer body wraps. Cheers!

Australia giveaways from Qantas


Want to talk to a koala? Qantas, my favorite airline to Australia, has launched “Vic’s Daily Giveaway”, and there’s a koala on their site who is giving away fabulous prizes every day (like 5 nights at the Four Seasons Sydney Hotel) from Sep 4 to 29. Click here to check it out.

New honeymoon packages for Nevis and St. Kitts, Grenadines, Turks and Caicos


The Caribbean has always been a popular destination for honeymooners–especially for the American midwest and the eastern seaboard of the U.S. Relatively short flights get you to a huge choice of islands, with a wide range of food, music and cultures, some spectacular settings, and some of the best diving and snorkeling in the world.


We’re continuing to expand what we have to offer for honeymoons in the Caribbean. This week, we’ve added travel specials for St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Nevis and St. Kitts, and Turks and Caicos…and more will be coming in the next few weeks.


If you’re thinking about exploring multiple islands, consider chartering a private yacht–prices are in the range of an all-inclusive resort, and typically all food and drinks are included as well, along with your captain and your private chef to cook for just the two of you!

New specials for Bahamas, Barbados, and Bermuda


We’re expanding our online content for the Caribbean, and over the past two weeks, we’ve added honeymoon specials for the Bahamas, Barbados, and Bermuda. We’ve also added some resorts in Jamaica (like Half Moon, Round Hill, and GoldenEye), but “Jamaica” starts with a J and would have messed up the title of this post. :-)

This photo is of The Crane Resort in Barbados.

Jesse and Jackie got married!


The winners of our 21st Century Wedding Contest got married on Oahu about a week ago–we have an 8-minute video of highlights of their wedding at the Royal Hawaiian, courtesy Live Internet Weddings.

Great website for frequent flier mileage info


I found this website on frequent flier programs from an article by Chris Sherman over at SearchEngineWatch.com. It’s a great site for info on all the airlines’ frequent flier programs, plus comparison tools, etc.

Inviting children to your wedding?


Kids or no kids at the wedding? It’s a tough decision that I faced with my own wedding, and I’m sure many of you do too. Lisa Light, destination wedding planner extraordinaire/author of the recent book Destination Bride (and great friend of us here at TheBigDay!) has a great article about this at her Destination Weddings website.

Happy newlyweds just back from their honeymoon in Bora Bora


TheBigDay’s customers Stephanie and Scott just returned from their honeymoon in Bora Bora...read their thoughts on our testimonials page.

Editing your own digital videos


Home video has really come a long ways since the choppy, silent Super-8 equipment that recorded MY early years With a baby on the way, we did a little research at Consumer Reports and picked up a Sony HandyCam for just over $300. Whether you’re planning on a baby soon after your wedding (or it happens WITHOUT planning!), or you just want to record some of the spectacular scenery on your honeymoon, you might want to look into a video camera for yourself.

As you might expect, the video editing software that comes with the camera is indecipherable, unusable, unintelligible, baffling, cryptic, and a waste of perfectly good disk space. *sigh*. But I have found a really great program that’s pretty inexpensive that was VERY easy to learn, and works really well: Video Edit Magic. It’s really easy to cut out the mistakes, boring bits, etc., put in fancy transitions from one scene to another, make titles, and it even has a really good wizard in it for converting the output to AVI, WMV, MPG, or whatever flavor you want.