Single Digits

9 days!!!

Ummm CRAZINESS! In honor of the fact that this time next week, I will be getting my nails done, eyebrows waxed and finishing packing for our HONEYMOON, I wanted to share some of the photos from our AMAZING photographer (who I absolutely cannot wait to work with!!). These are serving as my inspiration for having an amazing and fabulous time all day next Saturday!

This is from my best friend K's wedding - we have the same photographer!

I adore this shot of the bride and her dad - I know our photogs will capture some good shots with me and my daddy!

(all photos by Ego Media Photography)

alright, this is really it!

So we're now down to 10 days. Tomorrow we'll be in single digits. I know I haven't blogged in FOREVER but it has been a little bit chaotic. I'm starting to feel good though. My goal is to have everything DONE by next Wednesday so I can enjoy Thursday and Friday and not stress anymore. I will be turning off my "planning mode" and getting into "bride mode". 

I have a million things I could post about because we've done SO much in the past few days, but my brain is completely fried. 

Today at lunch, I ran to Anthropologie to see if I could find a new dress for the rehearsal dinner. I had bought a dress from J.Crew final sale way back in March and I started having 2nd thoughts about it. It was slightly tight, not comfortable and it was silk (which I was worried about since it's more than likely going to be hot and I tend to sweat - gross I know!)

Well I was HIGHLY successful at Anthro and walked out with this beauty:

The picture doesn't really do the dress justice - it fits amazingly and it's a very light weight linen and it's super flattering. Plus, the striped grosgrain ribbon belt pretty much sold me! I like that it's partially white and also incorporates one of our wedding colors! Plus it was on sale for $61! So I feel much better that I don't have to deal with dress stress anymore. 

Other than that, our to-do list is dwindling down to almost nothing -- we finished all the pillows, place cards are 95% done, bathroom baskets are made, cocktail napkins and koozies are here and put into their baskets, the props for our photobooth are organized and I've picked

 up my dress from the alterations lady (it's currently in my closet with the door locked to keep Jake away from it) 

I did have my hair trial last week and it came out FABULOUSLY!! 

Please ignore the nasty roots, those will be gone next week at my last hair appointment. This shows a good view of the antique brooch I'm wearing my hair, which was my grandmothers (and it's my something old)

Another view from that side - isn't it lovely that my crazy dog is peeing in the background - love you Spencer!

From the other side...I love how she curled and twisted the hair and how it all comes back very soft and loose, but it's definitely very secure with about a million bobby pins. It looks like I have SO much hair (and I really don't!)

Not sure how much I'll be posting/commenting in the next week, but I'll try to keep up with the last minute updates!!

More Progress

Now that we are under 3 weeks, somehow I got the idea that I wanted to take on a few DIY projects. Well, maybe I should call them, DIT (because I'm having other people make stuff - do it themselves)...hehehe. I'm just not a crafty person. BUT I have friends and family who I have helping me who are AMAZING!

My Maid of Honor came up with the idea of bringing in pillows to put around our venue on the teak benches which are around the gardens where cocktail hour will be. I shopped for yellow and green pillows to just buy, but I didn't find any I liked, so that led her to offer to help me make as many pillows as I wanted. We bought fabric and pillow inserts (much easier and prettier looking than batting) and went to work last night! We were able to finish 8! I am very proud of us...ok, it was really more HER, but I did help!

The pile of pillows - they came out so cute! I was so happy with the fabric we found and I plan to mix and match the patterns on the different benches. 

A close up of the patterns. The navy polka dots are my fave. We have to make a few more this week.

My 2nd project is the place cards. I think I've mentioned before we are having wheatgrass trays with little flags stuck in them for the place cards. I had a vendor on Etsy do a custom order for

me for the little flags, and then I'm going to do the names in fun navy writing. I don't know calligraphy, so it's going to be a more casual lettering. Here's the flags:

She made me half yellow striped and half yellow polka dots. I LOVE how they came out - I'm going to put the names on the front and the table names on the back so it doesn't look crowded and take away from the flags. 

After 10 months of refusing any projects and just buying stuff, or paying vendors to make everything for me, I think I am happy about the small personal projects that we're doing. Nothing too stressful, just fun and semi-easy projects. Yay for progress!!

Tomato Pie!

A non-wedding related post!! ha!

I made this for dinner last night and it was delish! Very light and summery - the perfect thing for all the excess tomatoes this time of year. My parents gave us about 30 tomatoes from their garden last week and we have been pretty much eating them for every meal. I know Paula Deen has a recipe for Tomato Pie as well, but I found this one on southernfood.com and it's ALOT healthier than Paula's! 

Tomato Pie

Ingredients:
1 (9" size) frozen deep dish pie shell, prepared
5 large tomatoes, peeled and thickly sliced (I didn't peel my tomatoes cause I'm lazy and it came out fine)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1 tablespoon dried basil (I used fresh chopped basil) 
1 Clove fresh minced garlic 
1/3 cup mayonnaise (I used light mayo and it worked great)
1/3 cup grated Parmesan Cheese 

Layer tomatoes in pie crust, sprinkling each layer with salt, pepper and basil. Combine mayonnaise, garlic and cheese and spread over tomatoes.  Bake at 350F for 35 minutes or until browned, let stand 5 minutes.

Super Easy and Super Yummy!

PS - one small wedding update - I got our marriage license today! We are officially ready to get married! YAY!

whoa

21 days = 3 weeks exactly! 

Our to-do list keeps growing, but I know it will all get done (somehow) I keep the list next to our bed cause I have a habit of thinking of new things to add as I'm falling asleep or in the middle of the night. AWESOME...ha! 

Tired Friday

First, I had another (my 8th!) personal training session this morning at 7am. It was so tempting to take a shower and crawl back into bed afterwards. Good lord he kicked my butt today. He even said "geez, I really do think I'm tiring you out, you look awful" - lovely! He really does see me at my worst (covered in sweat, no make up, gross outfits). I told him that I was going to bring in pictures from the wedding once we're back from Aruba and that he probably wouldn't recognize me with make up and dressed up!

I am definitely starting to feel and look stronger. My MOH K came over last night and I was trying on dresses for upcoming wedding events and she commented on my abs! WOO HOO! I've also been tanning a bunch and that always helps make me feel and look skinnier (totally a mood booster, even if it is horrible for your skin!)

I'm working ALL weekend (3 weddings here, Saturday AND Sunday) so that's sort of a bummer. I'll be off next Monday and Tuesday to make up for it though, and I plan on taking Tuesday as my "no wedding" day - I'm not doing or thinking about the wedding all day. Just relaxing and enjoying the day with no stress. We're at 22 days and I refuse to freak out!!

Happy Friday!

OMG Tons of Updates!

Wedding Central (i.e. our guest room/office) is in full swing! There is ribbon, paper, lists, presents, etc. all over the place. Poor Spencer (that's where her crate is) - we've taken over her space! We've been busy busy busy trying to cross everything off the list. Here's all the new fun updates...

** I FINALLY FINALLY decided on a dress to change into after the reception for our "grand exit". Literally I think I tried 50 dresses and none of them were "the one". It was harder for me to find the exit dress than my actual wedding dress! I had been wanting something all white, but the dress I ended up with is actually print, with a white background. I decided I can probably get more use out of it than a plain white dress. I found it at Nordstrom and it was on sale!

** We finalized the bus transportation for guests - and decided on school buses! The transportation is more for the young people (our friends) so they don't have to drive at the end of the night. We priced everything out and the school bus was SO much cheaper than a charter bus. Plus apparently school buses now have air conditioning! I think it's such a cute and different idea and I told our photographer to make sure she got fun shots of guests getting off of the bus for the wedding! (am I a dork for getting excited that the yellow school bus would match our wedding colors??? hehe)

** My wonderful and amazing photographer will also be doing a photobooth for us during the reception! Not like a traditional photobooth that you get in, it's just a black backdrop and then a stationary camera to take pictures of people (just like I had at my shower). Then she will upload all the pictures to a website and people can download them and we can print them out and put them into an album for our guestbook. Also, one of my past brides from July had done a photobooth and brought a huge box of props (hats, boas, funny other stuff) for people to wear in the photobooth - well she offered to let me borrow it! YAY! She dropped it off today and it has some HILARIOUS stuff in it -- zombie hands and coconut bras with grass skirts! Can't wait to see all of our funny pictures!

** Since we are doing a "grand exit" and our venue doesn't allow sparklers (boo!), we ended up ordering light up glow sticks for guests to wave as we leave...and those things are hard to find! I found some that were $4.99 each (umm no thanks!) or ones where they require 3 double AA batteries that aren't included -- like I want to load batteries into all those wands. We ended up ordering them for a dollar a piece and they come with batteries already in them. We got 4 dozen blue and 4 dozen green...perfect for our colors! These are the ones we got:

I think they will make for some fun and colorful pictures!

** Jake and I have a dance lesson tomorrow evening - we need HELP in the dancing department! I refuse to just stand there and sway, but I also don't want some grand choreographed thing...we just need to learn some basics so we don't look dumb. Wish us luck - we both have 2 left feet!

** I have my make up trial TONIGHT! So excited!! I cut a bunch of pictures out of magazines of what I want. I'm definitely doing fake eyelashes and I want something semi smokey eye. I'm sure I'll have pictures to post tomorrow!

** I've also ordered all the bridesmaids gifts. In addition to buying the girls dresses (which we found on SUPER clearance from J.Crew) and paying for their hair and make up that day, I also bought them each 1 small thing cause it's always fun to have something to open! I got them all something different and I'll do a post this week about the gifts...so excited for the girls to see them!

** I finished writing all the names on our place card flags. I have to do a post about the flags, cause I'm totally obsessed with them. They will get stuck into trays of wheat grass for the cocktail hour. I ended up doing the names myself cause I'm anal about stuff like that and they came out really cute. Once we finalize the table assignments, I will add the table names to the back of each flag.

I'm sure there's more stuff...my brain is running a mile a minute! Happy Almost weekend!

music HELP!

Ok ladies, I need HELP! We are compiling our list of reception songs for our DJ. I'd like to have this done already, but we've hit a wall in thinking about and finding good songs for the reception. I need song ideas - we don't want to play any "new" music....mainly oldies (motown) and then 70's and 80's for dancing later in the night. So please leave your favorite wedding songs (or stuff that is good for dancing) so I can add them all to the list! Or if you have websites with good lists of wedding reception music, leave that as well!! THANKS!

Blooms

We had our final meeting with the florist last week - it was fantastic! We changed a few things and added a few new elements which I LOVE...I'm so excited to see my flowers! 

My bouquet will be white hydrangea, white and yellow dahlias, yellow garden roses, queen annes lace, green berries, and a few other flowers that I can't remember. It will be tied with a yellow grosgrain ribbon and then over that, our florist is wrapping it with a piece of lace from my mom's wedding dress! This is my basic inspiration:

(taking out the green orchids and changing a few things, but that's the main colors and flowers)

For the bridesmaids, we are doing all green and white bouquets, with a navy ribbon, which I

think will look really good against their bright yellow dresses. Here's my inspiration pic for the girls:

The thing I'm most excited about is that we added a huge fluffy beautiful floral wreath, which will be hung on this gigantic tree which is like the centerpiece of the entire garden where we are getting married. Here's a picture of the tree from our venue:

The tree is right behind where the ceremony is and there will be a bar set up underneath it for cocktail hour. The florist is making a white and yellow wreath (hydrangea and dahlias) with a big navy ribbon and putting it on the tree, like this...

I can't decide if we will add in our monogram to the wreath (I'm leaning towards YES) and it will have ribbon at the bottom, but I love the idea of wreaths! To keep it uniform, she's also going to make a few more smaller wreaths and hanging them around off the deck where the other bar will be during the reception. 

We're also adding lemons and limes into the decor, which I think is very fresh and summery

(and goes perfectly with our colors). I'm having several large glass cylinder vases filled with lemons and limes and placed around the venue:

(only no flowers on top or ribbon - very clean and modern looking)

We are also using cut lemons and limes in the vase for our table centerpieces - pretty much exactly like this, only obviously this is the wrong color flowers:

We are at 26 days and counting -- WHAT!! Starting to feel a little bit stressed, but I know everything will get done! I'm sure I will be posting a bunch this week with our last minute details and progress!!

Burned Out

So today was my halfway point in my personal training sessions. Let's just say they have gotten much more intense than at the beginning. At my training session today, J.D. (my trainer) announced that he was going to be kicking my butt. Ummm yeah. He pushed me to the point where I was "burned out" as he called it - basically the breaking point for my body. My entire body was shaking when I left. I can't even begin to explain what we did for 60 minutes. I had to do 75 real sit ups (not crunches) with a 20 pound weight on my chest. Followed by about 50 push ups where I had to walk across the floor on my hands and feet in the push up position - like moving plank. He ended with throwing a 20 pound medicine ball at me, having me run to catch it, do a squat to pick it up and then throw the ball back to him. For 15 minutes straight. Holy HELL. 

I will not be blogging tomorrow due to the fact that my arms will more than likely not work. 

Present for the Groom

J and I plan on exchanging small gifts the morning of the wedding. We agreed on nothing super expensive, just a small meaningful present. Right away, I knew I wanted to get Jake cufflinks as his present. Not super original, but he's very excited about his wedding shirt having french cuffs, so I thought cufflinks would be perfect. I've been searching for the right ones and I think I've finally found them!

Barracuda fish cufflinks! Jake is OBSESSED with fishing - he would go every day if he could. He and his friends go down to North Carolina and Florida for fishing trips several times a year. A few years ago, he was in Barbados and went out on a charter boat and they caught a ton of barracudas. He said it's his favorite fish to catch because it puts up a good fight. So I thought these would be great and remind him of that trip. I had our wedding date engraved on the back (on the cuff part that goes through the shirt) so he will always remember them as his wedding cufflinks.

We have several "fish" themed items in our wedding - our table numbers are names of fish that J has caught and a few other fishy details are getting added in (some of which are a surprise to Jake). So I think the fish cufflinks will be fun and be a good finishing touch on his wedding day outfit!

Did anyone else exchange gifts with their grooms? I want to hear what everyone else gave and received!

P.S. - I'm still holding out for a new monogrammed ring!!

and it fits!

I had my first dress fitting yesterday. My dress pretty much fits perfectly, it just needs a tiny bit taken in at the top (since I have no boobs) and then a hem. Our seamstress is amazing (she also did my BFF K's dress in April, which is how we found her) and she also is going to attach my beaded sash exactly the way I want. I tried on my whole ensemble yesterday and of course we took about a million pictures!!

Trying out bustles. We're going with a traditional bustle with 3 hooks - it helps to keep all the buttons down the back showing and really goes well with the shape of the dress. (you can see the bustle in the mirror reflection)

Trying out a french bustle, which we decided was too much for my sleek dress. 

With the veil - my veil is my "something borrowed" and it's English net, not tulle. It's the softest thing I have ever touched. 

I seriously could not be any more in love with my dress!!

A full shot while I was practicing walking. 

So we're at 33 days now - so excited!! Off to order our programs, table numbers and menu cards today and then another personal training session. Those pictures of my dress are totally my motivation!!