Place Settings

As I write this, my hands are antsy to stamp. I know... what a weird way to start off a post... but hey, welcome to my world. I was out of the DIY-land there for a while and tonight I HAVE RETURNED!

First of all, an ode to stamps... holy moly, they are just awesome. I know I've said it before, but I can't stress enough how much they have come in handy for the wedding. In fact, with my horribly long absence from this blog I should have dedicated a post to the invitations (I'll try to post on them soon) and the crazy amount of hand stamping that went into them. On top of the fact I am gaga for hand stamping, I am also really picky about how it's done, so I don't let anyone touch them. I'm like a man about his tools... Those are my stamps, and my stamps only. No touchy touchy! So... I had some close calls with carpal tunnel syndrome during the invitation stamping fiasco since I tackled it on my own, but I think they turned out awesome and then I laid my hands to rest. That is, until tonight when I decided to see how I want my place settings to look. I then got ink happy and now have about 50 stamped forks. Is it weird that I think it is completely addicting, and maybe even fun?
So anyhow... this is what I'm looking at for place settings:

*Sidenote: Sorry for the bad photography skills... I'm getting lazy with my picture taking... also what the heck is up with the coloring on my photos lately?! Not sure why it's in weird layers...

But anyhow, I'm pretty happy with the outcome. I haven't decided if I will do all the flatware with "A & W" or if I will just leave the top fork with it since that's what is visible. I'm feeling like I may just go with the top one since I'm 3 weeks out (gasp!) and I have about a zillion other things to accomplish, but for now, THAT'S ALL FOLKS!

I like this hair style!

My sister and best friend (MOH) decided to give me a hair and make up package on the day of my wedding as my shower gift. I am so THRILLED that they did this for me because I was pretty worried about what I should do for the beauty part of our big day and now all I need to do is pick out my make-up "look" and my hair style! I just saw this on Oh So Beautiful Paper and I loved it! I need to go get a trial so I can see what looks good on me! Eeee thanks so much Andi and Sarah, you guys are the BEST!

What shall we eat with?!?!

Alright, I come back to you full of more excuses on why I have been absent in the blogging world. Siigghh... are you ready? Welp, okay. I packed up my entire life in Richmond and moved it all to NOVA. My last day at my (now old) job was March 12th and it was pretty sad... I already miss it a lot! I moved everything up to NOVA and then began a new job a few days later. My new job is quite different in all aspects from my other job and it is taking quite the adjustment. Luckily, I now have AJR by my side everyday so I feel ready for anything!

Anyhow... if that isn't a good enough excuse, well. I guess I got nothin! I figured I would come back with a post about a lovely little discovery I mad a few weeks ago. The past few months I had been on the hunt for figuring out the dinner ware for the reception. Because it is outdoors, it will be much easier to have disposable plates and silverware... but how do we do this in a wedding appropriate way? I certainly don't want anything styrafoam at the wedding! There are a lot of high quality disposable plates online, such as this one from Party at Lewis.

You can get plates that are clear and sturdy, plates that resemble fine china, and all sorts of cool stuff. One thing to remember though, is this stuff isn't all that cheap. It runs a little less than a dollar a plate, plus you have to pay shipping! Another factor, is that it isn't even close to being environment friendly, which is something that is important to me, especially with the wedding. I did go ahead and order some AWESOME eco-friendly utensils from EcoWare Products that I am so psyched about! I literally HAD to have them when I came across them online, and they are awesome.

They are made from birchwood... how cool is that?!?! You can also buy similar ones made from bamboo, which is the ultimate up and coming way to be green. I considered doing bamboo plates, which are also extremely eco-friendly, but I thought with the burlap runners and the wooden utensils, that might be a bit TOO natural and not enough pizazz for a wedding reception. Afterall, your dishes provide a lot of visual impact on the overall decor.

After hours and weeks of searching online, I decided to give it a rest and come back another time when I wasn't so burnt out on it. This was one of those horridly boring wedding tasks I mentioned a while back. Then one night the week before I moved, I stepped into the Dollar Store around the corner from my apartment to ask if they had boxes I could use for packing. While in there, I opened my eyes and BEHOLD! There were really nice glass plates for... a dollar each! As in real glass, reusable, nice plates. I inspected them and thought to myself, hmm. These would work for a wedding for sure! I knew I didn't particularly want clear plates (remember the whole visual impact thing?) so I came home and got online. Who knew the Dollar Tree has a website? With a plethora of awesome wedding worthy products!

While searching I found these and I was instantly excited... this was the EXACT look that matched my whole wedding theme! And how perfect would they look with the wooden flatware? So I headed to the Dollar Tree the next day and bought everything they had! Here is what one of them looks like:

So that my friends, is what we shall be eating with. No, they are not disposable, but they look awesome and they are decently priced, and I can donate them when the wedding is over! Or, let friends and family take a few if they want them for picnics and such (as AJR's dad suggested).

Bridal Jewelry, so fun!

I receieved my earrings in the mail yesterday! Naturally I got them from Etsy and I am so impressed with how PERFECT they are for my overall look!

I love the filigree... and the nice little drop of crystal. Eeee I am getting excited as each little piece comes together!

I ordered them from RebeccaJDesigns

Another darn cake

People are going to get tired of seeing different versions of virtually the same style cake, but I keep coming across these plain white cakes with a little rustic spin and I get all mushy inside with feelings of confusion on which one to choose.

Why are they all so cute!?!?

found here

The good news is we got our cake stand in the mail! It is GORGEOUS! It looks almost identical to this one here...

Bamboo Heart Picks

It's the little details that are dragging me in (and making me spend too much money). I can't help myself because I want there to be fun little things in the reception that make people smile.

I was looking for a cute cocktail pick and came across these heart ones. I couldn't resist. First of all they are economical (can I get another what what) and they look so adorable. So I splurged and ordered, they look just as good in person.

I bought them on Amazon. Yay for drinking vodka tonics with a nice little symbol of love :)

RSVP's are the devil.

I can't tell you how long I took to create the RSVP wording. In fact the reason I can't tell you is because of the shameful face I would have to make while telling you.
First of all, I knew I wanted postcard RSVP's. (Economical, what what) But the person doing our invites keeps one side blank, free of design or wording. So then I thought we should ask people to write a message on the blank side (you know, a "Please feel free to send a message to the bride and groom" kind of thing. That way it wasn't such a lonely barren side of the RSVP (they have feelings too ya know!) But that would have cost 35 dollars to print. I passed because every time I turn around we are spending 100 dollars here or 50 dollars there (luckily the thousands of dollars here, thousands of dollars there thing stopped a while ago) and my sister said "Save that money for a nice bottle of wine on the honeymoon!" Well said.
So then I was worried about the actual wording. Do you just have a line for regrets and accepts? Do you get a little wordy for fun like this:

____is/are looking forward to dining, dancing, and celebrating

____has/have to miss the fun



or even this:

__ Yes, we look forward to dinner!

__ Sorry, we're unable, our plate is full.



oh, and there are corny themed RSVP's as well, such as if you were to be married at a golf course:

__ Yes, we'll see you on the green!

__ Sorry we can't swing it.


Anyhow... point is... a zillion options. Plus there is the whole +1 issue. Sadly, we are not able to allow our guests +1's (we have 150 chairs that fit under our tent and our guest list is currently well over that, so it's just a matter of space! Plus, have you ever had to feed tons of people? Sheesh it's expensive) and honestly I knew I didn't really want +1's to begin with because I am not comfortable having people that I don't know as guests at the most special day of my life. That might come off as rude or weird to others, but when I picture my wedding day, I want to look out at the church and see people that know and love us and are there to celebrate our union... not just come for the free beer with a date. So, we decided to only allow people who are in relationships to bring their boyfriend or girlfriend as a date, since chances are we probably know them anyway if they are dating our friend that is invited. My exception is that a few way out of town friends can bring someone if they don't know anyone else at the wedding... and of course the bridal party. I know it might not seem fair to some, but this is what we are comfortable with and so that's just the way it is!

So how to convey this on the response cards? Well... I have read some horror stories where people just automatically add names on their response card without checking with the bride first, and I really wanted to avoid awkward situations like that at all costs, so I did a little research and I found two options. One was that you can put an asterick and small font below the response part that looks something like this: *__ seats have been reserved for you. And you fill in the number for each person before mailing them out, so Uncle Bob sees he only has one seat reserved and isn't going to bring his stripper girlfriend. However, that seemed a little too blunt. Plus, you have the family of 5 that might possibly only have 3 coming to the wedding. Now where to fill in how many out of their party might be attending?

SEE WHY I HAVE HAD SO MANY ISSUES?!?!?

So here is what I decided, in my own nice wording with a way for people to know how many people in their party are invited and a way for them to tell me how many they will be bringing. Whew.

__ out of __ will be attending with glee! (and yes, I fill in the second line with the number)

__ will not be attending, but shall celebrate from afar!

Crisis averted. And I kind of like knowing people can still say they will celebrate from afar. It makes their "no" seem warm and sweet, even if the no is from grumpy Uncle Bob who is mad he didn't get a plus one.

I steal office supplies.

I am a terrible blogger. Oops. Apologies for not writing in so long. All two of you have been VERY upset at me for no new posts so here I am to update and save the world!


What has really happened is that life is absolutely crazy right now. I have had job interviews, figuring out my move strategy and last day of current job, my new nephew was born last week (ahh little Jack, so exciting!), and I am figuring out really boring non-blog worthy wedding plans. (Ex. This plate shape vs. that plate shape. This shade of green vs. that shade of green for invitation ink. Do those napkins match those straws?) My poor maid of honor has been a real trooper... she lets me go on and on about the most boring of topics and then still pretends to care. Even better, she does for me in real life all the time... even when it isn't wedding related. I love you Sarah! (I so lucked out in the best friend department, and I never forget it!)

Anyhow, my life is crazy lately and so I have really been wanting to share a few pics from my work bridal shower! Okay, first of all... unbeknownst to me, my co-workers had actually read the blog (slightly embarrassing) and took a lot of my ideas for the wedding and incorporated them into the shower! It was all so thoughtful and wonderful :)
The shower was almost 2 weeks ago and they all really put thought and time into what they did for me and I appreciate it so much! They had mason jars to drink green punch from, lots of green balloons, and used burlap and fake magnolia flowers with tulle to decorate. (We have a talented person at all this stuff on our staff and she even glued fake pearls onto limes in the shape of "R"s to decorate the punch bowl area) The flowers were beautiful (they are still sitting on my kitchen table and look great!) We also had tons of great things to eat (key lime bars... yum.) but I have to say my favorite part of all were the games. In particular, one of those lovely (ahem, totally embarrassing!) games where the hosts of the shower go and interview your hubby to be and then you have to answer the questions at the shower. In front of EVERYONE! I think I was blushing the entire time... especially since my boss was sitting there with the answers. One of the questions happened to be "If you could change one thing about Whitney, what would it be?". Well first of all, the good answer should have been "nothing". And here I sit before my department trying to rack my brain on what appropriate answer AJR could have possibly written for them. But when they all read the answer on paper, they were dying laughing and looking around and cracking jokes about re-stocking our cabinets. (What in the world?!?!) Come to find out, "That she keeps stealing office supplies from work and giving them to me!" was his answer. Ohh, what a jokester I am marrying. I also discovered that his dream job is to be the babysitter for the E-trade baby (from the commercials). It's a good thing we didn't play the version where you have to chew the gum every time you get one wrong or else my jaw would still be sore! (I swear, I really do know the man.)

The food spread... yummy. (Check out the mason jars on the side... looove it)

close up :)

Oh, and they made me wear a super cool tiara/veil

My cake :) Mmm... I could eat some of that right now...

The cutting of the cake... always a Kodak moment.

The apron is one of the gifts I receieved... so cute! They apparently thought I should be a good house wife and one of my co-workers read to me aloud the The Good Wife's Guide. I guess I need to be more gay and interesting for him. My favorite line: "A good wife always knows her place." Well then...

The Sweetest Thing

This past Saturday night, AJR and I stopped over at my aunt's house for some dinner and to see my darling little flower girls. They seriously are my favorite little girls on the entire planet.

While on the couch, we sat as they entertained us with their Valentines toys from Grandma (yes, V-day toys. I still get them from Grandma and I am 23) and while Lenna was being the star of the show for the moment, Lora came off to the side and sheepishly looked at me. "I need to tell you a secret" she says. "What do you have for me?" I asked her as I pulled her beside me on the couch. "I can't WAIT for your wedding!" she whispered into my ear and said with such sincerity, I could have died. "Well I can't wait for you to be IN my wedding! You will be the most perfect flower girl in the world!"

Do I have the cutest cousins or what? I tried to get her to whisper the same thing to AJR, but that wasn't happening. Older boys make her shy.

Can we add this to the menu?

I don't know if I've talked about our wedding day menu, but we are having a BBQ. Yep yep, going down home country on you all and having some pulled pork with my Grandad's famous sauce! I don't know why, but I have been totally obsessed with having BBQ. Maybe it's because it's awesome. Maybe it's because WHO COULD TURN DOWN BBQ?!?!? Name one person who doesn't like it. (vegetarians don't count)

Along with BBQ, we will have grilled chicken. But I need to think of a few other items to add to the menu. Besides the cake. ;)

We will have several drink options at the bar, but fresh lemonade and sweet tea will be our featured non-alchy drinks. For appetizers we will serve bacon wrapped scallops and fresh fruit trays.

I want just a few more items to spice up the menu. The caterer will also provide apple sauce, cole slaw, baked beans, and dinner rolls.

I was thinking of a fresh salad. I ran across this picture on Lucky Me! and I thought it was such a cute idea! I like that each little salad is in a berry container, so cute! A nice salad would be a good compliment to the meal.

I also need to be thinking of an alternate dessert. AJR's mom makes KILLER lemon bars. I wonder if she would be up for making oh say, 150 lemon bars for the wedding?

Adorable Download

I love the internet.
And I love the blog, Ruffled.

When I am getting ready on the wedding day, my groom will also be getting ready at the same house. I think it will be kind of fun knowing he's so close and that I have to hide from him before the ceremony! I like these door hangers... that are a free download! (all hail the internet and it's awesomeness)

I might have to make some for the day while we are getting ready and maybe one for the wedding night! How sweet :)

Download is found here!

Pretty!

Another pretty wedding day look that I would love is this one from The Bride's Cafe. I think it's time for me to go find a Sephora and get a make over to see what I like!

Beauty

I saw these photos online and I just wanted to post them because I love her "look". I have no clue what I am doing for make-up (or hair!) for the big day, but I know I want it to be very natural and clean. The girl in the pictures just looks so fresh and pretty! I might want to go a little less on the eyeliner since I have such light hair and fair skin, but I am admiring her right now :)

100 Layer Cake

We Heart Giraffes

So I promised I would show off our cake topper and here they are!

We ordered them from Etsy (of course) by Bunny With a Toolbelt. We kind of have this inside joke about giraffes and that if we were an animal couple we would be giraffes. The other day we were talking about cake toppers and AJR said we should have animal ones (he's a total animal lover, I bought him the F U Penguin book for Christmas and he about died). At first he suggested dogs because he's mildly obsessed with them, but then the conversation led to giraffes and we got so excited and I remembered seeing this seller because she made alligator ones. So BAM there you have it... we are giraffes. I think they are just precious.

Well, THEN I got to thinking about the cake. And I know I wanted the textured white cake. But now I am leaning toward a striped looking cake like this one here. I don't know why, but I just feel like it would look better with the giraffes and I think the stripes are equally as cool as the textured look.

Anyone have any suggestions? I think I am just so excited about the giraffes that I don't cake WHAT the care looks like!

One of those Days...

I feel that this should be a short post because really all I want to do is talk about how much I miss AJR and how I can't wait until we are married and that waiting another 3 and a half months just sounds too darn long! I don't want to subject anyone to that kind of mushy talk, so instead I will just ramble about some recent happenings. First of all this morning I got caught up for way too many hours of my life sitting in court (I'm innocent I swear!) for a traffic ticket involving me running a red light. Sigghhh. I had to pay a large fine. It was a bummer. I also didn't go to work because I didn't want to make the hour haul half way through the day so I was left in a bad mood with a list of errands that needed to be completed. So I took my car in for some maintenance work and walked around the adorable little shopping area of Libbie Grove. I had to get more lace for my dress (man, this dress is so NEEDY!) and I stopped in an adorable little paper store to look at their invitation stuff. The shop is in a ritzy part of town, so of course everything was out of my price range, but I was there for like an hour looking through ideas and admiring designs and letterpress. I really love stationary. Like a lot. I have reeaallyy been putting off doing the invites because I am so undecisive and everything I want is just for someone else's budget, not mine. I keep coming back to the thought that I should buy cardstock in bulk online and hand stamp them myself. I am really liking this idea, but I am concerned about the time it will take to do them all. After going to the paper store though, I really think I need to just commit already! This is seriously at the top of my list... I am getting to it I promise!
After my little stroll through Libbie Grove (and a very expensive car bill) I went to pay Oksana a visit because I was getting pretty anxious about the fact that my dress is too tight. Basically she keeps telling me how I will shed all this weight before the wedding from stress, but I have decided a really skinny Whitney is a really ugly Whitney. No one wants to see a stick figure bride and I am not happy with the way I look when I am under weight. I informed her that I will actually be working on keeping weight on, not losing it. Thankfully she understood and has agreed that before the wedding she will let the dress out if needed. Those Russians. They just want everyone to be stick skinny and model like. Oh well.
So anyhow, that was my day in a nutshell. I feel about a zillion times better about the dress... especially after the latest addition to it and the fact that it will definitely fit right. Whhheewww.
We sent out our wedding website this week to our family and friends, I'm really glad that it's done. We will still need to update it and whatnot, but everyone seems to really like it which makes me happy. We originally made one with The Knot, but I came across Project Wedding and theirs is WAY nicer. The layouts are really classy and I am pleased with the result :)

Oh! And we ordered our cake topper... I'll post on that tomorrow. It pretty much rocks!

Okay, so much for a short post. Also, thinking on it, 3 and a half months is not that long. 100 days from today! Remember in elementary school when it was 100 days before summer they would make paper chains and get all excited? I think we may have even made hats too. I want my "100 Days" hat.

Ahh! Flower second thoughts!

Why is this bouquet on Ruffled teasing me and making me want to change my flowers that I already told the florist I wanted!?!?

Gosh darn you wedding blogs. You make everything difficult with all your amazing and creative ideas. I want them all!

Pretty Hair!

I saw this picture and was admiring the girl all the way on the left's hair style. Sooo pretty! Definitely saving it!

Green Wedding Shoes

Then I saw this on Grey Likes Weddings. J'adore!

Make Way, Fatties Coming Through!

So today I left at lunchtime from work and my Mom came to meet me. We hung out and caught up on some happenings and then went to Joanne Fabrics to get some burlap. (eek. that stuff will make you ITCH) So, yes! I am doing the burlap runners, woot! I just need to talk AJR's mom into helping me with her sewing machine...

Anyhow, after our fabric store trip we decided we had to eat at Olive Garden. You know this restaurant has a deal where you can pay 10 bucks and have all you can eat breadsticks, soup, and salad? Well naturally that is the best deal ever and we had to do it! Breadsticks are every womans weakness I swear. And well, we may have indulged. Just a little. Several breadstick baskets, salad refills and four bowls of soup later, we were feeling pretty fat. My Mom looks at her watch and oh! It was time to get to Oksana (Russian seamstress) and check out the new addition to my dress/get my bustle made, and Mom had to check on her Mother of the Bride dress that she had Oksana hem. We waddled to the car where we busted out laughing knowing that Oksana would definitely have a problem with our full bellies in our dresses! We got to her store and sure enough, we could barely zip our dresses. I mean, neither of us! It was hilariously awful. It was so funny that I snorted several times. (as if I didn't feel piggy enough) Before we left she looked at me and said "tsk. tsk. tsk. I do no more to dress til you lose weight. No more Olive Garden! No eat next time you come in."

So I am hanging my head in shame as I write this and pulling on my tennis shoes. It's time to hit the gym!

A Cute Story :)

Last week I was at my Aunt Kimmy's house before my Aunt Jenny and Sarah came over to have some wedding talk. My cousin Connor who is in the 6th grade and just a total sweetheart came home from his trombone lessons and was excited to see me. He started asking questions about the wedding (yes an 11 year old boy... this kid is like a mini adult. At Christmas he inquired about where Andrew and I would be going on our honeymoon) and he announced "Well, I can do the music for your wedding!". I assumed he meant help choose songs for the DJ (at a party my aunt and uncle hosted about a year and a half ago, he became the DJ's sidekick and the party turned into a Beastie Boys tribute) so I said "Oh yeah! Maybe you could get them to play some Beastie Boys for the wedding guests!" (for the record, I don't really like the idea of my future in-laws out of town friends dancing to "Brass Monkey" at the wedding, but a funny thought at the least). Connor gave me a confused look and then chuckled and said "oh, no I mean.. I could play the trombone!" (well, it appears he is over his Beastie Boys phase...) Cutest thing ever. My heart kind of melted.

Recent Happenings :)

Here is a recap on some things we are up to. Last weekend I went to my hometown and had a meeting with the florist. It was kind of fun going in with my mom and bringing in pictures that I had printed to choose from. I didn't realize just how many people are going to be needing corsages and whatnot. Man, flowers are apparently a very big part of the day! I decided on my bouquet and I am VERY excited! And this arrangement of hydrangeas and roses are what I picked out!

We also went to talk to the man who is making our wedding cake and that was fun as well. I explained to him about the textured white frosting and he is also going to make 3 layers. The top and bottom will be vanilla and the middle will be chocolate and all three layers will have a raspberry filling, yum! Now I am on the hunt for a vintage cake stand (a silver ornate one like this) and some sort of topper. Any ideas?

Tuesday night a few of my aunts, my mom, and maid of honor got together to talk about the wedding. That mainly led to a lot of red wine drinking and gossiping, but we did get some ideas for invitations and for reception set-up. I spent a little too much time on Wednesday looking at invitation ideas online (which I have decided kraft invites are a MUST) and am trying to commit to clicking the "add to cart" and "purchase" buttons. Hoopefully I get brave before the weekend is over :)

Wednesday night I paid a little visit to the flower girls. Their dresses came in from J. Crew so they tried them on and it was sooo adorable! They looked perfect, oh they are the cutest flower girls in the WORLD! I gave them a book called Ten Neat Things About Being a Flower Girl so hopefully that spiked some excitement! Lora (the 5 year old) actually asked if she could be the ring bearer, but I told her that dropping flowers might be more fun than carrying a pillow.

Lat night my Mom came into town and she purchased her Mother of The Bride Dress! I will have to post on this later and show pics, but she looks gorgeous! She then met me over at the store with my seamstress and I got to try on my dress since the last few additions to the dress, ohhh I am getting excited! Although I did get yelled at by the Russian lady "You gain weight! You put two pounds on skinny body, you not fit dress!" because apparently I ate too much over the holidays... oops. No worries though, I told her it's just happy weight! I'm sure once the wedding stress kicks in, I will have no problems in my dress! (In reality, the dress fits totally fine haha). The most exciting part about last night though was THE VEIL! AJR's sister Lauren let me borrow her veil to try on and I fell in love! Her veil is a cathedral or chapel length veil, which at first I wasn't sure about. Well, in the world of veils I wasn't sure about any of them. But as soon as we clipped it into place I was all smiles. Perfect for my dress, it is gorgeous! Here are a few examples of chapel length: in the wind!, elegant, and just plain pretty. I just felt like such a BRIDE in it!  So I now officially have my something borrowed! Woo-hoo!

My infinite love of Etsy

I have been putting off posting this hanger that I ordered a few months ago, but I finally decided I had to share! I saw this seller on Etsy a while back and I HAD to have one of her custom made hangers for my wedding dress. I think this will look so neat in the pictures of my dress, I just love that the hanger holding my dress has the name that I will recieve while wearing the dress... so exciting! I ordered it from: LilaFrances

These are the buttons I bought from a couture store in Richmond so that the seamstress could add them to the back of my dress. Unfortunately I did not search Etsy before buying them and afterward discovered the same buttons for an unthinkable amount less than what I paid! The buttons I purchased were $3 a piece, which adds up pretty darn quick when you have 24 buttons to get! I then found a seller on Etsy who could make them for about .45 cents a piece. The couture store did not let me return the buttons :( I am still pretty mad about this situation... but oh well... ya live ya learn! Now hopefully future brides might see this post and learn from my mistake: Research a little before you commit to buying! The Etsy shop that I found was LiDDesignSupplies.

Flower Girl Dress

This morning I saw that J. Crew is having a 20% off and free shipping deal for all items that are already on sale. J. Crew is constantly teasing me with these type of e-mails, but I've had my eye on a dress for Lora and Lenna (my cutie pie flower girls) and so I thought it was now or never to order it for them! I got in touch with my Aunt Shanna and she agreed that we should get them because of how simple and lovely they are... so yay, we now officially have flower girl dress picked out and ordered! I am having dinner with them next Wednesday to finally let the girls know that they are in the wedding and that they will be the princesses of the day :)

J. Crew

FONTS!

I have decided for invites I really would like to have a unique and eye catching font with just a simple hand stamped design. I picture linen cardstock in a khaki color with black font and green stamp. I am obsessed with the idea of having the invites in kraft envelopes, but I realize the envelopes should probably match the invitations. I'll save my obsession for kraft paper for hand made cards and wrapping presents :)

The other night my friend Bridget and I sat on the couch at a friend's house pouring over free font sites and giggling at what they looked like when we typed inappropriate phrases to sample them. Never mind that it was 11pm and we isolated ourselves into a typography storm while all of our friends were socializing and heading out to DC bars. We are geeky like that. I am amazed at the amount of fonts there are! Oh, how I have come to love and appreciate the graphic design world. Bridget says I am a vicarious designer... it's so true. Can I have a career change? After my photography career change that is.

Anyhow, I decided to share some of the free font sites that are out there... I'll have to post on when I attempt to actually download and use them. Should be quite an adventure for this technologically handicapped woman (yes, this blog is a product of a miracle I tell you).

So here are a few sites:
Font Forge   Fonts 101   J Murphy Free Fonts   Vintage Fonts  DaFont   Abstract Fonts

 
See... look at all these fun things you can do that MS Word does not come with! Who knew?

It just has to be this.

Every time I see a cake with this design I stop and I smile and I think to myself "This just has to be the cake that I have on my wedding day!"

I think it may also be that I HAVE to have a vintage cake stand to go with it as well... I wonder if AJR will let me buy one off ebay?

Classic Bride

Saturday we have a meeting with the man who will be making our cake... I am excited to discuss options and see what kind of fun flavors and things we can come up with!

Listing it up

I really feel like I have a lot accomplished at this point, but I am also getting a little discouraged because of how much there is left to do. Sigh.

Some things still left to do that I want to cross off the list soon:

~INVITATIONS - this is really important because they need to be sent out in 7 weeks! That's 7 weeks to pick out a style, have them printed, stuff them, and address them. I'm a little worried.

~Groomsmen and my Groom's suits! For this I blame my beloved AJR... he needs to get off his butt and pick something out!

~My flower girls dresses. Actually, I need to officially ask them to be in the wedding as well, which I plan on doing next week. I had decided to wait so that I wouldn't get them hyped up about it too far in advance. I bought them a little book about being a flower girl and everything!

~A ceremony time. The simplest of matters, yet hard to decide. I must figure out how long the ceremony will be, how long it will take for pictures, will we have enough time for a cocktail hour and for people to eat before sunset? So much to consider!

~A song for the ceremony. My friend Natalie who has a beautiful voice has agreed to sing at the wedding. I'm really thrilled about it because I enjoy having people that I care about involved in as many aspects of the day as possible. Now we just need to pick a song that suits her voice and that matches mine and Andrew's taste, and that the pastor agrees is appropriate to play in the church....

~Flowers. I've been doing a lot of posting on that lately, and I am comfortable with my taste in how the bouquets will look... but I need to decide on a florist, how many flowers we want there, and what exact flowers we will need.


So those are just some items that are on my mind that I want to get out of the way so I can focus on some detail things. I am currently in a mad job hunt because my lease in Richmond is up in 2 months! So on top of wedding planning, I need a job and a new apartment for me and my future husband to move into. Whew. I do however, have two bartenders! Yay! My uncle's sister and brother-in-law will be handling the job for us that evening, so I am thankful for that! We have also booked a caterer which is exciting as well! Our guests shall have food! Woot! (I will post on our menu choice and caterer this week! :) The dress is coming along nicely and I hopefully only have 2 or 3 more visits before everything is all finalized! (Wish I could share more details on this matter) My Maid of Honor and I have also chosen dates for my bridal shower and bachelorette party... so I know she is going to be busy planning that! So excited because I know she will do an AMAZING job putting those together!

So I think the key is to focus on all the progress that I HAVE made and not get too caught up in all the things left. I know it will fly by and before I know it, these things will be crossing themselves off the list! I can't believe how much we have accomplished thus far and I am pretty psyched about it all!

This is the moment I am most looking forward to... first kiss as husband and wife :) The moment that is kind of what all this stress and planning and life changing steps are for. The thought of that makes me feel pretty content about all the wedding nonsense. Who cares if my table runners aren't the right size or if the D.J. plays the song I put on the "do not play" list.... I GET TO MARRY MY BEST FRIEND! Life couldn't possibly get better than that!

From our very own wedding photographer, Kelsey Thompson's, blog

Videographer

Well... Videographers are rather expensive. And to be honest, the budget at the moment for this wedding is pprreettyyy slim. Luckily I am going to have fantastic photos and in fact don't really think I'll be sitting around watching our wedding video too often if we had one. However, I ran across this cute idea on Ruffled and I definitely wouldn't be opposed to looking into trying it out at the reception.

More flowers!

Oh, now I am starting to get excited about flowers... perhaps I can make an appointment with a florist next weekend while I am in my home town! I browsed my faves on Once Wed's flower idea section.

The following are a few I found on Style Me Pretty