Holy Crap, I'm married!!!

I'm back - and married!!! OMG I am so exhausted and have SO much to do, but I wanted to check in with the blog and post a few non-professional pics from the wedding. 

It was seriously absolutely PERFECT and WONDERFUL and AMAZING. The weather couldn't have been better, everyone seemed to have a great time and WE'RE MARRIED!!! Of course, the day flew by and everything was a blur. 

Onto the pictures (which I stole from friends facebook pages): 

In my dress, waiting for the ceremony to start

With my beautiful bridesmaids - I love how the dresses came out with the flower belts!

Walking down the aisle with my dad - can you tell I was super excited??

 We're married!! What a cute husband I have!

Family Portraits - with both of our parents 

Both of our immediate families

First Dance

Another shot of the first dance. This one is a good picture of my hair and the antique brooch

 Dancing and drinking champagne! 

We should have a few prof pictures back this week, so of course, I will post those right away. I will probably have to do several recap posts over the next few weeks, including the honeymoon! Aruba was amazing - totally relaxing and wonderful. 

YAY for being married!!

This is IT!

I'm now officially off from work!!!! t-3 DAYS!! HOLY HELL!!! But I am actually really really calm and everything is together. Today is my honeymoon packing day, tomorrow is all my appointments (hair, nails, waxing) and then Friday is my bridal luncheon thrown my my aunts and the rehearsal! I'm not nervous at all - JUST EXCITED!! I just can't wait to be MARRIED to Jake and go on our fabulous honeymoon. We tried on our wedding bands last night and started laughing hysterically. Speaking of, even though this is probably bad luck, I snuck a picture of my new ring and how I will look as a "Mrs."

So this is my last post until after the honeymoon - I'll be back in mid-September with tons of recaps and PICTURES!!!! 

I thought I would leave this meme about me and the future husband...

What are your middle names? Joy and Nolen

How long have you been together? It will be 4 years in October - engaged for one of those years. 
How long did you know each other before you started dating? right away - we met on a Wednesday and went on a date that following week. 

Who asked whom out? The night we met, he asked for my phone number. He called me two days later and we made plans for drinks and dinner the next week. After that 1st date, we pretty much saw each other constantly
How old are each of you? me - 27, him - 29. He'll be the big 3-0 in October!! 
Whose siblings do/did you see the most? Considering I'm an only child, his. His brother and sister-in-law are both in our wedding
Do you have any children together? Nope.
What about pets? Our lovable and loud hound dog, Spencer that we adopted about a year and a half ago. She's basically like our child. 
Did you go to the same school? No, we met after college. 

Who is the smartest? We're both smart about different things, but J is pretty damn smart about most stuff. 

Who is more sensitive? Me
Where do you eat out most as a couple? We've really cut back on eating out since we bought our house. We tend to eat breakfast out the most, and we go to a few local places by our house. 
Where is the furthest you two have traveled together as a couple? San Diego, CA. But after next week, it will be ARUBA!! 
Who has the craziest exes? Neither of us really have "ex" issues at all. 
Who has the worst temper? Hmm probably both of us. Luckily we hardly ever fight, but it's sort of loud when we do. 
Who does the cooking? About equal - we cook alot together as well. 
Who is more social? Probably about equal. But since he's in real estate, he can talk to a brick wall and he's always gabbing to whoever will listen. 
Who is the neat-freak? Hands down, ME!
Who is more stubborn? We are both pretty stubborn, but probably me. 
Who wakes up earlier? We both wake up at the same time, when his alarm goes off at 6:30am. He has to be at work earlier, but I usually go running with the dog while he's getting ready. 
Where was your first date? We went to grab dinner and drinks at this bar/restaurant in our town. We ended up staying for like 4 hours talking. It was a restaurant called Sean Donlon's, which has since changed ownership and gotten a new name. 
Who has the bigger family? We both have pretty small immediate families, but our extended families are both fairly large - I think he does have a few more cousins than me. 
Do you get flowers often? Only a few times, but I get flowers about once a week at work, so he knows it's just a waste of his money because my floral vendors are always dropping flowers off for me. 
How do you spend the holidays? We try to split them (go to someone's family for Thanksgiving and the other for Christmas). It's really hard, obviously. Both of our families are local, so the first couple of years we thought we could visit both in 1 day - HORRIBLE! It totally ruins the holiday by having to drive all over the place. So that led us to the splitting thing and I think it works pretty well. 
Who is more jealous? Neither, really. 
How long did it take to get serious? Not very long. We were definitely inseperable pretty quickly (within a few weeks) and all of our friends could tell. We said "I love you" after about 3 months. We moved in together after 2 years and got engaged a year later
Who eats more? I eat more smaller meals throughout the day, but he eats WAY bigger portions than me. 
Who does/did the laundry?  We share that chore - he does a fair amount of laundry on Saturdays while I'm at work and then I usually finish it up on Mondays on my day off. 
Who’s better with the computer? Me - Jake is not very tech-savvy at all. I cringe when he wants to get on my computer because I'm scared he will break something. 
Who drives when you are together? We usually split that evenly actually. It also depends on where we are going. We both think the other one is a horrible driver. J is a GRANDPA driver - SO slow. He says I'm a reckless driver and we're going to die in an accident one day. lovely. 

YAY!!! I can't believe this time next week I WILL BE MARRIED!!

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!