Wedding Mail

LOTS of great wedding stuff came in the mail today.  It really is around the corner now.  A little nervous , but excited that this is all actually happening :)

Cute totes I ordered on Etsy for our ring bearer and two flower girls- how cute are these?!

10 piece pot and pan set from our registry!  YAY YAY!

THE MIXER!!! Ahhh! So pumped.

Shower!

A few photos I've stolen from friends off Facebook :)  I was so happy to see so many of my dear friends on Saturday.  My photog friends all had weddings, so they couldn't make it, but I was glad my other friends good.  SO grateful to have them in my life!  Thank you, thank you!

And a huge thank you to Kate for putting this together and making some delicious food!  Especially that lemon cake with strawberry sauce! YUM!

Joe came and brought me flowers :)

Me and Christine!  I've been on many adventures with her, 

including traveling to Thailand and Burma.

American University Alum!  Christine, Kate + Nic, me and Haley!

Everyone!  Thank you for coming!

Joe's mom, Christine, Haley, Kate, Marissa, Quinn, me, Joe

Shannon, Anne, and my momma!

TWO MONTHS

Two months from TODAY the celebration will be here- whew!

And when we can go to KONA HAWAII!  We've got our honeymoon tickets and we are ready to rock 'n' roll!

Today I'm planning on putting together the invites... hopefully getting them mailed on Wednesday!

Woo!

Sample

Our calligrapher sent a sample photo to me last night- LOVE IT!  Woo!

Things are really happening now- so crazy!

Welcome/Hotel Bags

While I wait for our wedding invitation envelopes to come back from the calligrapher (sometime next week!) I've started to think and get stuff for our Hotel/Welcome bags.

I think I've thought about them waaaaaaay too much lately, but since everyone is from out of town and staying in the hotel, we want to make sure they are comfortable and have some goodies and knowledge of Frederick.  Since most guests haven't ever been to Maryland I tried to get lots of MD stuff.

So far I have:

-bottled water
-Baltimore's famous caramel creams (so good!)
-Utz's Crab chips
-MD postcards (to tie onto the bags)
-Destination Frederick Magazine (they were so nice and gave me 50 copies for free!)
-Downtown Frederick maps + brochures
-personalized playing cards (Joe's family loves playing cards)

That's what's sitting in the guestroom right now... it's starting to get cramped in there.  I'm thinking of getting some other local goodies- like Catoctin Mountain Orchard's apple butter and Ralph's Cookies to finish off the bags... anything else I should include?

Time get get a move-on.. headshots in an hour and a wedding tomorrow- busy busy!

Plus, next week I get to make an exciting announcement :)  Probably on WEDNESDAY :)

MK

The Dress I Didn't Pick...

I can't show you the photo of the dress I picked, but here's the one I didn't... please ignore the very silly look on my face ;)

I showed this to Joe and he really liked it... I hope he likes my actual dress even more! :)

Wedding Ties

So we're not having a bridal party, but we are having the guys in our immediate families (dads,  my brother, Joe's nephew and brother-in-laws) wear the same tie.  It was Joe's idea and I think it's great.  I love that they will all have something that's the same but wear different jackets/outfits.

So I wrote a silly little poem, printed it out on peach paper and they will all be shipped out tomorrow, except one, since we still have to find a tie for Ethan.  We looked for one today when we stopped by the outlet mall in Leesburg, but Joe and I were so uncomfortable in the kid's stores!  It was kind of funny.  Guess that's another sign we're just not ready for that yet! :)  

So I think we'll go to Macy's tomorrow and go in the boy's section there to find one.

One more thing off the list.  Oh, and we had a meeting with our officiant today to go over what we wanted for the ceremony- went well.  It will be short and sweet and perfect for us :)

Wedding Crafting...

Started working on table numbers today... things are coming along...

Also, I bought a DRESS!  I love it! :)

Invatations!

Our invites came last week and they look awesome!  I have a few things that I had to order (Outer envelopes, an envelopement for each invite) after I got them so I was sure they fit and matched- those should be coming tomorrow- woo!

I still have a few things to make including getting the wedding photo card printed (we want everyone to e-mail their wedding photo to display at the wedding) and have the map printed.  I actually won a free custom wedding map on a wedding blog I read- sweet!  I just have to get it printed.

Once I have all that, it's time to assemble them.  I bought some beautiful 1930's vintage French lace to close the cards and it is gorgeous!  I can't wait to start working on that.

I also bought vintage stamps to use as postage on the envelopes.  I think the current postage is ugly, so I decided this would be better :)

So things are coming along!

Countdown

100 days till the wedding!  

Omg!  So much to do!

But it will all get done and it will all be beautiful.

Had some major dress drama this week, but it seems like it's all going to be just fine. :)

Excited for it to get here!

Cake Topper

So... we were NOT going to have one, but this woman who sells these is awesome and I really like her stuff.


Every single time I get her e-mails about having them for sale and in stock in her store, about 10 minutes later they ALL sell out.  She has 30 different variations of her bird cake toppers.  


Well, I happened to get the e-mail, get to her site in time, find my favorite one, and I got one!  It's a silly splurge, maybe, but I adore it and I think it's perfect!  The girlie bird even has a peach flower!  


This one of those things that I know I will keep forever.  I love handmade things and this will always remind me of our special day. :)

More Wedding Stuff

Just ordered 25 postcards to send out to our married (or soon-to-be-married) guests!  We want to display the wedding photos of those in attendance (and the ones who couldn't make it, too) to honor their marriage.  It's a big deal for us!

I made these in about an hour, not my best work, but I think they look pretty good!

Cake!

Our cake tasting was yummy.  I've pretty much hated all the wedding planning so far, so this was a nice treat :)


The bottom layer: white chiffon with buttercream + fresh strawberries
The top layer: chocolate with chocolate mousse filling.

One more thing off our list.  Whew.

Wedding Website

What we decided...

So I scratch the other designs and when with something very simple and to our theme... I like these a lot!

One Year From Today.

One year from TODAY: I'll be in a white dress, wearing makeup, dancing with a lot of my closest friends and family...

yup.  :)

Wedding Updates

Lots of stuff is finally happening here on the wedding front.  This is what we have done:

+ Venue & Date- The Thorpewood, June 19, 2010

+ Photographer- Azul Photography

+ Deposit down on my dress (yaaaay!)- HK Designs

+ Almost have all the addresses for the Save the Dates (only two are missing)

+ Save the dates are done, just need to be addressed and sent out

+ We booked an officiant who is wonderful- Father Tom

+ We finally have a guest list- about 160 invited, but we're hoping that about 110 come

+ I secured a calligrapher- Swoonoverit

+ We have a day of coordinator- Wish Special Events

+ Wedding website is started, but not finished (I'm making my own, not from a template)-

+ A bridal party- just kidding!  No bridal party- not doing this to our friends! :)  But we will have Joe's nieces and nephews do the ring bearer/flower girl thing... but they can wear whatever they want, so they don't have to buy something new.

I'm actually not a big fan of all this stuff... I mean, it's fine, I don't hate it, but I'd much rather be doing something else, you know?  

I am positive we will have a wonderful and budget-friendly wedding, but man, it takes awhile to plan!  :)

And here is a sneak peek of our calligrapher's stuff... I think we're going to use the "London" style, but that's not for sure yet.

Best Rainy Weekend Ever

I can easily say that this weekend was one of my favorite of 2009.  I got to spend a lot of time with Joe, sleep in, do wedding stuff, eat great food and hang out with one of my besties.  It was awesome.  :)

Kate and I went downtown Frederick and enjoyed the great weather, tons of live music in the streets, dinner in a dive bar, and lots of cute shops.  Our best find of the night- a couture wedding dress maker from NYC who also has a little shop here in Frederick!  Kate and I loooooved her and every single dress she had in there- they are beautifully made, everything is hand-stitched and one of a kind, finished in 2-4 weeks (that is INSANE) and, the very best part- she is AFFORDABLE!!!  

Then we came home and starting going through wedding magazines and we ended up just making fun of 99.9% of everything in all four magazines.  The wedding industry is warped and insane, people.  Our favorite thing to make fun of are those HIDEOUS pointy-but-round-or-square white shoes.  OMG.  Barf.  Oh, and how the models stand in those stupid poofy dresses.  :)

Today it rained and rained and rained.  We were all feeling lazy and tired from the weather, but we headed out to brunch at Firestone for brunch- YUM!  So tasty.  Then we were on a mission to begin our first wedding project...

Kate and I are going to be our own florists.  The average bride in DC spends between $2,500 and $3,000 on FLOWERS.  Uhmmmm, no thanks.  I am pretty sure Kate and I will be spending about $250 on our flowers, including the containers.  

Since we both want the same type of centerpieces, and our weddings are a month apart, we decided to split the cost of the antique jars we wanted to get.  So today we hit up all the antique stores in town and bought every cute antique jar that was under $4- that was our limit.  I thought it would take a couple months of scanning the antique stores in town (we have 20+) but we got all 46 vases today!  Final cost was $127- that's $63.50 a person for all the jars for our centerpieces... which calculates to approx. $1.40 a jar!  They are beautiful.  Some of them we need to clean up, and that will be our next project!  Hooray for fun, eco-friendly, inexpensive and totally awesome centerpieces!

We'll both be buying some flowers wholesale from local vendors and hopefully using some wildflowers, too.  I found a guy in Frederick who would let me pick his wildflowers if I made a donation to his non-profit that promotes earth-friendly products- heck yeah!  Now that's being thrifty! :)

So anyway, a short story made entirely too long- we had a blast today searching through all these stores and finding great jars as vases under $4.  Joe got into it too, even if he doesn't want to admit it  :)  He was such a big help today- love that guy!  :)

Kate- we did good today!  xoxo!

Here are some photos!!!

Check out this antique store!  Joe bought a beautiful chest to hold blankets here

loved these Turkish locks... Kate was figuring out how she could use them

loved these mini terra cotta pots in the holders... 

thinking of how I could use these for the wedding...

colorful pails that could totally show up on June 19th of next year! :)

Lilly on the chest we bought :)

She's so cute!  And I love the detail of the chest.

Some of the jars we bought... had to try 'em out! :)

Loove these jars that are just a little bit blue

You can't really see the very pretty jar, but I like this photo :)

Oh Hai!  Lilly modeling with our awesome finds :)

All 46 jars/vases!

soooooo pretty!

Wedding Favors... maybe?

While doing non-wedding related web surfing, I came across these ADORABLE favors, and I think these might be what we get!

They are faux wood stumps that have your initials and wedding date carved in them! The inside is empty so that you can fill them with your favorite goodies, which, of course, for Joe and I would be sour gummy worms! :)

They would go perfect with our decor and I just love 'em :)

On another note, WE ARE MOVING SO VERY SOON! We might even get the keys to the place a day or two early, which would be great, so we could move some stuff in that the movers won't take (cleaning supplies, food, etc). But I won't get my hopes up just yet, this is the Army we're talking about :)

Saves the Dates!

Here are the saves the dates!  I've had them done for awhile but we've been so busy!  I finally took photos of them today while I was taking photos of a few of my new albums.  We'll be sending them out in May, right before the postage hike!

The front & back

The goods :)