DIY Wedding Stuff

The time is getting closer and closer!! I cannot believe it's only four months away. It seems like we were just engaged yesterday.

Sigh.

Anywho...I'm really getting into the DIY wedding stuff. It's actually quite fun and way less expensive. Last Saturday my aunt, her BFF and my BFF spent six hours making bouquets. And they turned out better than I had imagined.

These are for the bridesmaids. I didn't get a good picture of mine before we wrapped them up, so you'll have to wait to see it, but I will tell you it looks a lot like this...

We made 7 bouquets all together and it costs me about $60.00. Not too shabby thanks to Ebay.

My next project is this...

Just take some wine bottles, or beer bottles, spray paint them white, add squares of chalk board paint,   and write on them. Pretty, huh? I think I'll put them on the cake table.

As the big day gets closer, 5 bridesmaids and myself will spend a day making our wedding favors. They are aroma beads. We'll have two scents, Strawberry and Vanilla so we can have red and white. We'll add a tag that says Thank You and place them around the tables. The best part? My grandmother has her own candle shop and is going to let us use all her supplies...for free. All I had to pay for was the custom tags, and they were like $10.

They'll look like this, except white and red.

Anyone have any other DIY ideas? 

Dresses

Oh how I wish I could show you my wedding dress! But since I can't (future hubby may be lurking..I love you darling:)), I hope we can both settle for the bridemaids dresses and the flower girl dress.

Bridesmaids

The flower girl dress has not actually been purchased yet, but I really like this style. We're going shopping this Saturday, so cross your for me fingers that they have this dress!

The white one, but with a red bow! Cute, right? :)

My Image

We are just about at the half way point to the big day. I cannot believe time has gone so fast. It seems like just yesterday we got engaged and now its been almost 6 months.

A lot has changed since then, including my idea of a fairy tale wedding. At first I wanted a huge wedding in a huge chapel with a huge guest list. Well not only did my budget prevent that, but I have come to the realization that a big wedding with people I haven't spoken to in years was never for me anyways.

Our wedding will consist of our close friends and family at a beautiful venue. The ceremony will take place outside on a deck overlooking a small waterfall.

 We'll get the whole grounds to ourselves for the entire day. While our photographer is taking pictures of us as a married couple, our guests will be able to hang out on the veranda, enjoying appetizers and drinks. Our reception will have food, drinking and dancing. By the time the reception starts, I imagine I'll be too tired to think straight let alone notice the beautiful chandeliers, our black table cloths with red rose petals spread about, our beautiful flower centerpieces or the neatly folded red napkins.

But it will be beautiful.

And I cannot wait.

Something Borrowed, Something Blue

My awesome friend who just so happens to be the wife of one of the groomsmen has gifted me with my Something Blue.

She makes these cute button rings and I was lucky enough to get one! Thank you Mrs. W :)

Also, my future M-I-L is letting me borrow her real pearl necklace that was given to her by her father. I was going to take a picture of it, but Fiancee put it in a safe place. One that I cannot find at the moment and he is at work. I hope he at least remembers where he put it.

Two down. Two to go.

By the way...I need some help on the something old. Anyone have any ideas?

The Most AWESOMEST Wedding Programs Ever!

Is awesomest a word? Spell check says no, but it totally should be.

Anyways.

Look.what.I.found.

Wedding programs that also entertain while guest are waiting. And of course, I found them on Etsy. And they personalize them to match our wedding colors. Now I just have to come up with the clues. Ooo and I can buy those little pencils and tie red ribbon around them!

Dress Shopping Nightmare

Want to hear something very frustrating?

I bought my wedding dress at this place called CLASSIC BRIDAL. (Classic bridal, classic bridal, classic bridal. I'm hoping if I say it enough, when they search for it, they'll find this page. Classic Bridal.) And actually had an excellent experience. It was fun. My consultant was nice and friendly and helped me find the perfect dress.

BUT THEN, I took my bridesmaids in and that was a task in its own. Do you know how hard it is to get 5 people who have jobs, live out of town, and/or are pregnant together at one time? Pretty difficult. Before I went in, I called and made an appointment with the same consultant that took care of me. She told me THREE days prior that she would pull all of the dresses I liked and they'd be ready for when we came in.

Well, they weren't. The girl even forgot that she had a appointment and seemed very surprised by that fact. But that was ok because we were the ONLY customers. As we started pulling dresses off the rack, a bride walked in wanting to shop for (not buy) a wedding dress. My consultant then left me and my five bridesmaids on our own. I had to go find her and ask her for a dressing room. She gave us one and then disappeared again.

We picked one of the bridesmaids to be the Barbie Doll. We dressed her up instead of having everyone try on different dresses. So there we were, trying to figure out all the crazy lacing by ourselves all the while, my consultant is busy helping the bride. We had to go searching for different dresses to pull and the store is huge. I picked up a dress that I liked another consultant that was just sitting in a chair watching the bride try on dresses said, "Um, that's discontinued." I put it back and picked another one. "That one, too." So I turned to her and said, "Can you please tell me which ones AREN'T discontinued?" She pointed to a rack and then went back to ignoring me.

When we FINALLY found a dress that we could all agree upon...I went and found "my" consultant again. She then proceeded to tell me that (and I quote) "It is too early for you to buy your bridesmaids dresses. Please come back in the fall."

WTF.

And to top it off, because I bought my dress at CLASSIC BRIDAL, my bridesmaids would have gotten a 20% discount on their dresses. Needless to say though, we won't be going back there. I actually suggested we try again next month and they all refuse to go back there. Can't say that I blame them.

Thanks for listening!

Look, I'm a cartoon!

Remember how I told you all that I was getting a caricature made of Fiance and I to put on our "welcome" table at the wedding?

No? Well we wanted a photo next to our programs and guest book, but then I got to to thinking. Why get just some ordinary photo? So I turned to Etsy, specifically, Erin at Dreamscape Portraits. We emailed each other back and forth a dozen times. She gladly accepted all of my ideas and threw in some of her own. I told her I wanted a prince and princess theme and sent her the colors I liked...

 And this is what she came up with...

Isn't it freaking fantastic!?! Erin is so creative. I couldn't believe how awesome is turned out. She sent me proofs as she was going along and kept me posted at each and every step. I couldn't be happier with the outcome and I'm so excited for all of our wedding guests to see it.

She even added our names and wedding date at the top and an 11x14 print is in the mail as we speak!