For the past four years my sister’s family has been hosting a holiday tree lighting to raise money for JDRF (Juvenile Diabetes Research Fund).   My sister and her husband have always decorated their yard for the holidays and when their son, Michael, was diagnosed with Type I Diabates they decided to turn their decorating efforts into a fundraiser.

Each year I look forward to attending the event as a meaningful way to start the holiday season, plus I truly enjoy all the lights in their yard.  This year was no disappointment, as they have added even more lights to their display. 

The highlight of the event was Michael lighting the 15′ tall christmas tree followed by my niece singing the christmas carol - A White Christmas.  (She has a beautiful voice!) 

Here are a few photos from the event…

This year guests received a miniature felt mitten with custom lip balm as a thank you for their contributions.

The Mitten Favors are from TheWeddingOutlet.com and the lip balm was from the helpful folks at LipBalmExpress.

Throughout the ages doves have come to symbolize love and as a result have become very popular with weddings.  Some couples go as far as releasing doves at their wedding reception.  Although this can be a meaningful part of the ceremony it can also be cost-prohibitive or even messy!  A popular and much easier way to incorporate doves is by having a bird cage card holder.

A bird cage card holder adds a nice decorative touch to the reception - especially to the gift or card table. 

Lillian Rose has just introduced a new rounded bird cage holder for 2007.  Which will become available for sale in Mid-January:

The most popular bird cage for weddings is manufactured by Cathy’s Concepts:

Deciding on a Wordpress theme to use is harder than I thought.  There are so many to choose from!   After trying a few different themes, we’ve decided to go with the Pool theme.  This theme seems easy to navigate, plus its blue which means it matches the color of our wedding sites.

Our wedding web sites include:
TheWeddingOutlet.com - this is our ecommerce store where we sell all types of wedding accessories.
MAWeddingGuide.com - this was our very, first site and is used to help plan a MA wedding.
RIWeddingGuide.com - this site is for planning a Rhode Island wedding