Hello! I made some changes to the blog over the weekend. I had such a great response to this post outlining all the blogging brides of 2011, that I decided to make it an actual page on the blog. I've added quite a few more brides since the original post, and will continue to add to it as they come. So if you're looking for more blogs to follow, definitely check out the 2011 Blogging Brides page regularly!
My mind is a constant flutter of "what to do next" lately. I did get part of my bridesmaid's gifts in the mail on Friday and I LOOOOVE them. I can't wait to give them to my girls the night before my wedding. Our invitations should (hopefully) be complete this week and out early next week..(Ahhh!! These NEED to go out), I'm working on out of town bags, decorations and plans for our yet to be announced rehearsal dinner, table numbers, bridal party gifts, guest book, and the list goes on and on...
One thing we have to do in March is meet with our band to discuss our music selections. We have a handful of "must plays" for the night. Namely: "Shout" (I have a special dance for this song), "Single Ladies", "Don't Stop Believing", you know...the greats :)
But, I'm not sure what song our band should play when our bridal party is introduced. I've been thinking Pink's "Raise Your Glass" because it's a great get-up-and-dance song, plus it's literally saying "Raise your glass" which is, well...appropriate. When our bridal party is introduced, I don't care if they want to plan something fun and crazy for their entrance, or just excitedly walk in. But I do hope to choose a really great song for their entrance.
However...I do not, repeat: DO NOT want this to happen:
Did you do anything crazy and fun for your bridal party's entrance? What music did/will you play for their entrance?
Happy Friday! My friend Adam from college is in the Ultimate Wedding Contest hosted by Crate and Barrel. Head over to the website to read his adorable story with his fiance Pamela and please help them out. I'd really appreciate it if you could Vote for Pamela and Adam here! Thanks so much guys!
While you're at it, check out the Crate and Barrel $100,000 Ultimate Wedding Contest at www.ultimateweddingcontest.com. You, too, can enter to win a wedding designed by celebrity wedding planner Yifat Oren—or just vote on a couple's entry. Don't forget to forward to anyone you know who's getting married.
Thank you also to everyone who listened in on the Blog Talk Radio interview on Wednesday night. Your kind comments have certainly meant a lot to me and I really appreciate it. If you haven't listened to it yet, you can still listen online here or download it here.
I had such a great time last night talking with Kim and Heather on Blog Talk Radio. It was totally laid back, and we talked about some really great topics on weddings and blogging. Thanks so much to Heather for inviting me to join her and I hope we get to do it again! If you missed it, be sure to listen here: download
On to wedding updates: This past weekend we ordered our invitations and picked up our wedding bands! Unfortunately, I can't show you a picture of either. I want to wait until our invitations are mailed out and Chris asked me to please wait to show our rings until the wedding, which as much as I LOOOVEEEE them and can't WAIT to show them to you, I understand and will therefore wait to show you. (sorrrry)
But here's a really unique wedding band set! Very clever...rather odd...and quite suggestive I'd say??
It was all I could do to not keep my wedding band on all night on Monday! It felt so weird to be wearing two rings..I felt like I just got used to the one..now I have to keep track of two?? Oy...this whole "getting married" stuff is complicated! The diamonds on my band match the small diamonds that are on the band of my engagement ring. They actually look like a set together, even though they weren't bought as a set. And for Chris' ring, it's exactly what I pictured for him when we set out to look at rings, I LOVE it. We found one that was "ok" at the jeweler, but the band was a little too narrow for his finger. So "our" jeweler, Teddy, made this one special for him with a wider band. It's a yellow gold band, with 2 thin strips of ribboned white gold on either side..it looks totally great on him! But it's weird...it's going to take some getting used to seeing him wear a ring!
Again, I can't show you our invitations, so here's a picture of the royal wedding invitations which went out this weekend!
Mine do not look like this..but how cool is "The Lord Chamberlain is commanded by the Queen"??
We ordered through a very nice lady named Annette who has an invitation company out of her home called I Heard You're Getting Married. She was recommended to us by a friend's sister who got married a few years ago. She places the order for us, assembles everything, puts stamps on the return envelopes and addresses the outer envelopes for us.
Look, I'm all about D-I-Y and I like to be creative whenever possible. But, when it came to invitations...this was one place where I really, truly, didn't want to do this on my own. I went the easy route: I'm admitting it, and I'm fine with it. I also really like the invitation set that we picked: it matches our color scheme, and is very simple, yet elegant. We are cutting these down to the wire. These should have been out, well yesterday...but now they should be out by the first week of March and I will definitely breathe a huge sigh of relief when they finally drop. As on top of things I've trie to be...there was bound to be something that cut down to the wire, and that something happened to be the invitations.
That's all for now...check back tomorrow to vote for a friend who is in a very special wedding contest!
I have very exciting news to share with you! Black Bag Productions on BlogTalkRadio.com, is going to be interviewing Weddzilla.com's new Editor in Chief, Heather Walrath (of Bicoastal Bride), and ME tonight for their Wedding Wednesday feature.
"Everyone's doing it! They spend a lot of time doing it, they obsess about doing it and can't seem to function without doing it. What are we talking about? Blogging! Wonder how a blog actually gets started and blooms? Or have you wanted to write a blog about your upcoming wedding and don't know how to get started or what to say (or not say!)if you have started? Then this is the show for you! We'll talk with Heather Walrath, Blog Editor in Chief for Weddzilla who will give us a sneak peek about what's next for Weddzilla and how she started out with the blog and is now doing what she loves as her day job! We'll also talk with Laura, an actual bride who is also writing a blog about getting ready for her wedding and her experience in using Weddzilla. We talk weddings, planning, honeymoons, and more on Wedding Wednesdays. Join us for 60 minutes of laughter, fun and get your night time cocktail while listening online-or call in live! Black Bag and Wedding Wednesdays, the perfect pair."
Listeners can go to www.blogtalkradio.com/blackbagproductions to hear the show live. There will be tweets on @kimmiem and I'll be tweeting @Lwoodsny, too. Feel free to call in live to listen or ask questions at (877) 455-4944, it would be great to hear from all our blogging bride friends!If you can't listen in live tonight, be sure to check the website tomorrow to listen to the segment.
I hope you'll listen in and let us know what you think!
As of last Thursday, we have officially graduated from our Pre-Cana class, and are authorized to be married in the Catholic church! Or, we've been "Pre-Cananized" as Chris likes to say.
Our Pre-cana diploma
The Deacon was about a half-hour late to our session, so the first half-hour was a lot of awkward small talk: "Wow...what a crazy winter we had huh?" "Wow...it's so crazy we're all getting married right?" "Wow, how about that superbowl huh?" Gotta love generic small talk. After the Deacon finally arrived, he passed around the workbooks "Together for Life". This gives all the readings, verses, etc. for planning your ceremony. Chris and I got this book awhile ago from the priest who will be officiating our ceremony, so I had already looked through it and picked our readings. Together, we looked through this booklet, went over a few of the different readings, and he showed us how to fill out the packet in the back that will go to the priest conducting the ceremony.
The Deacon also gave us a book on "natural family planning". He didn't go over it with us there...only advised us to look through it and consider it as an option. After a 15 minute break, the Deacon closed the session by going around the room to each of the 5 couples for the "blessing of the engagement rings". Each couple held hands, while he said a short prayer for them over the engagement ring. Then that was it, we were graduated! As we gathered our things, the couple who had been hosting us passed around a gift for each couple. We opened it when we came home and it was a very nice bible:
Our bible
As you know from my previous posts about our pre-cana classes, (Session 1, Session 2, Session 3, Session 4) I did enjoy this experience. There were some nice moments, talks, and worthy things to be reminded of about relationships and marriage. I know that a lot of couples enter Pre-Cana with hesitation and annoyance. However, it's really harmless and can even be enjoyable as long as you both go into this experience with an open mind and positive attitude.
Happy Friday and Happy Wedding weekend to Laura @ Wine and Cheese Please! Laura seems to be officially kicking off the 2011 wedding season! With the weather as amazing as it is here in New York I definitely feel like Spring is officially here, which is just so exciting! Congratulations Laura and I can't wait to hear all about it!
There is such a great community of blogging brides who all follow each other, and I wanted/needed to have some organization to my blogroll in order to remember everyone's dates. Once I put it all together, it was too great not to share! These are just the blogs that I am currently following who have weddings coming up this year. I know there are hundreds more out there! If you aren't already following these ladies, please do...and if you're having a wedding this year and aren't listed below, please let me know! I'll re-post with an updated list next month.
Last weekend while I was home, I got a lot of things accomplished:
1) I had my dress fitting!!
2) My mom picked out her Mother-of-the-Bride Dress
(Chris's mom got her Mother-of-the-Groom dress too!)
3) I picked up two of my bridesmaids dresses for them, and I LOVE them! This was the first time
I saw the actual dress in the right color in person. The lighting in this picture is HORRIBLE...this
is actually a gorgeous bright clover color:
4) My dad and mom SAVED THE DAY by finding literally the last of the frames I needed for
our table numbers. Seriously, we went to about 5 different Dollar Trees around PA this weekend
to find the matching frames to the first batch I purchased around Christmas. Apparently, Dollar
Tree changed out their inventory around the new year. These frames are not in the black color
I want, but my dad is going to spray paint them black to match. More details on our table
numbers later.
5) And lastly, my mom and I learned how to make tissue paper flowers! I came across a how-to
for them on Dolly's Getting Married. The video was just pictures and I wanted to actually watch
a video of someone making them, so I found Arianna's video here, and this was also very helpful.
I really just wanted to know how to make these in general and wasn't entirely sure if, or how, I
would incorporate them into the wedding.
First, we practiced with some leftover Christmas tissue paper my mom had laying around:
So cute and super easy!
I loved them so I immediately went out to Party City to get some more tissue paper in my colors. Here's our "sample"
I loved it so much, and it looked great up against the bridesmaid dresses! Then I experimented with different sizes.
Then I tried incorporating some cream tissue paper as well. I forgot to cut the ends on this one, so it's not as nice and I would try and have the green in the middle instead of the cream. But this was a good practice!
I have a few ideas mulling around in my head of how I can incorporate these...mainly for our rehearsal night..not the actual wedding. Again, not entirely sure if I'm going to use them, but if not..I've got some great bows for presents now!
I'm a bit late on the post today! I want to let you all know that Weddzilla launched their new Weddzilla blog this week and I must say it's fabulous. Their new Editor In Chief, Heather, who also has her own blog at Bicoastal Bride, has done a fabulous job building up a great team of bloggers, so please be sure to check the new site out and let me know what you think!
My posts for Weddzilla are different than my posts on this blog, so you can catch up on my latest here. This week I wrote about planning a bridesmaid meet and greet before your wedding festitivies get underway. I think it's a great way for your bridesmaids to get to know each other and get excited about your big day. Be sure to read it and leave some comments over at Weddzilla!
Chris and I celebrated our last Valentine's Day as an engaged couple on Sunday night. (I know..milestone year right?) I worked late on the actual night of Valentine's Day so we celebrated a day early. We went out to a place near us called Crabtree Restaurant. This place has been around for awhile, but we had never been there. We've been trying to expand our restaurant horizons lately by not going to the same places all the time, and this place came highly recommended on yelp.com.
The place was really great and adorably decorated for Valentine's Day. Chris got a steak and I got a crab cake appetizer and goat cheese salad, all of which were really fantastic. Then I got a decaf coffee and Chris got a Cappuccino (this is his new favorite thing thanks for our jeweler, who always insists we have a cappucinos when we go). And, we split a tartufo for dessert! It was a really nice, relaxing, romantic night out and it was exactly what we were hoping for for this Valentine's Day.
When we came back home, I got to open my present that I had been waiting and waiting and hoping for! What was it you ask? Not jewelry...not a purse...not flowers, or a new dress. Yes, it is true...I asked for this:
That is the 2011 version of a polaroid camera. It's a lot bigger than I thought it would be, it looks more like a toddler's toy camera, but this takes instant business-card-sized pictures, and is so cool! Truthfully, my piano students showed this to me around Christmas and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. I love pictures, and I especially love the vintage look of a Polaroid.
The only drawaback with this is the cost of the pictures, which is $10 for a pack of ten...so at $1.00 a picture, I will have to use these sparingly. I was hoping we could use this somehow for the wedding...either have our guests takes pictures for our guest book, or set up a little booth...but with the cost of each picture, it's probably the least practical thing I could do. Anyway, I'm so happy with it, and plan on getting some really creative polaroids for my scrapbooks...Thanks Hunnie!
After dinner we watched last Friday's The Soup (one of our all time favorite shows), and before we knew it, it was bedtime!
Happy Valentine's Day Everyone! I hope you all have a fabulous Valentine's day with your respective significant others. Chris and I are celebrating this Valentine's Day for the last time as an engaged couple (milestone year, I know). We actually went out and celebrated last night because I work extra long today. I'll fill you in on the details tomorrow. First, I need to tell you about what I'm loving this Valentine's Day...besides Chris:
My wedding shoes!
Yep, I've found my wedding shoes. Well...I actually found these over a month ago, but refused to post about them until I was able to try them on with my wedding dress to make absolutely sure they looked right together. So, I've been holding out on you about these!
Around the beginning of January, I knew I had my dress fitting coming up and I really wanted to make sure I had my shoes in time so that the seamstress could measure my dress to the correct length for me. I was looking on a bunch of shoe websites, but basically getting overwhelmed with options, or finding shoes I liked that were way more than I was willing to spend. Luckily, bridesmaid Molly saw my desperation on twitter and came to my rescue! She recommended I check out endless.com, and this site was totally a game changer for me! I liked many of their shoes, but that day I placed an order for a pair I loved and waited unpatiently for them to arrive. Finally...I came home to this box:
I opened the box up and prayed that they would fit me. My foot is often somewhere between being wide and normal size so any narrow shoe ends up being way too tight on me. Luckily, these fit like a glove! The front of these shoes are very plain which I was afraid I wouldn't like since that will be the only part visible under my dress.
But turn them to the side...BAM
Pretty cool huh?
I thought these were so different and unique and I couldn't resist them. I will make SURE to get pictures taken where I'm lifting my dress enough so the back of these are shown off a little.
I wore these shoes for a few hours around the house the first night I got them. I wanted to break them in and also make sure I was truly comfortable walking and standing in them for any length of time. My feet didn't hurt at all after 2 hours. I realize a wedding day is MUCH longer than 2 hours, but I really think as far as heels go, these are much more comfortable than some other shoes I own.
All this was great, but how would they look with my dress?? I wouldn't know until I actually saw them together, and luckily I was finally able to put them together this Saturday. Well, the ivory color matched perfectly and I loved how they looked together! I can't show you how it looked entirely...but here's a sneak peak:
I have since recommended endless.com to everyone I know, so check it out. I think they have a fabulous shoe and wedding shoe selection! Thanks for the recommendation Molly!
Coming up this week: Valentine's Day, both our mom's found their dresses!!!, Invitations, Rings, a fun D-I-Y project, and Pre-Cana Session 5! I don't know how I'll fit it all in!
There, I said it. I don't hate them. I "like" them...they're ok...there's a small handful of good ones that I feel I can use, but as a whole...if I could redo the whole entire thing, I would in a second. I had gotten to a point where I just wanted them done and over with, and didn't really mentally prepare for the whole thing.
1. I hate what I'm wearing: I was determined to find a new shirt to wear. So I bought one the day before that I had never worn and it was "eh". I wanted to have a real "casual, we look great without even trying" look, and instead I feel like we were trying too hard to be "casual"...if that makes any sense at all. Sounds crazy..but it makes sense in my head. I really wish I had dressed up more and worn a skirt or a dress. I would have felt much more comfortable and "pretty" in them. I also should have done a few outfit changes throughout the day.
2. We took our pictures on literally...and I'm not even exaggerating here...the hottest day of summer 2010. I was sweaty, gross, my hair frizzed out, and I was so uncomfortable the whole time. Add that to the fact that I had gained some summer weight. Whether anyone notices or not, as long as you know you're not at your ideal weight, it's going to bother you...we all know that. I didn't "feel" pretty and that completely manifested into "most" of our photos.
3. I was under the false impression that the photographer comes up with the ideas to "set the stage" for pictures. That may be true for some photographers, but it's also up to you to come with specific ideas and props you may want to use. They're not going to read your mind. It had never even occurred to me to prepare props to incorporate into our pictures and bring them along. I could have gotten really creative with some Wagner ideas....sigh.
I want to stress that I'm not saying this so anyone comments saying "OMG BUT THEY WERE SO GOOD!" That's not my purpose in stating this at all. I got one or two great photos from our shoot...and really, that's all I needed for save-the-dates and other things.
As you can tell from my banner, this was my favorite picture from the day:
So yay, that's fine. I've moved on. So the reason for me confessing this leads to our guest book. I really don't want to make a guest book with our engagement pictures on shutterfly.com or blurb.com. That was my original intent, and I love the guest books that I've seen so far from these sites, but I just can't bring myself to make a whole book of pictures I don't really love.
So I took to Wedzu.com and Etsy.com to help me figure out what exactly I wanted. The first one I liked was on Etsy in ModernShabby's shop. She does custom guest books, and has a lot of options to chose from. This one immediately caught my eye because it's already in our wedding colors:
This one caught my eye, I liked the color combination and even though I LOVE the one above, I kind of wanted to get away from the black/green/white theme for everything:
I've emailed the shop owner and she will include our customized calligraphy on the cover tag, which would be a great way to incorporate that artwork! The only drawback with this one is it comes with 30 pages and I'll have to purchase about 50 additional pages. Though I'm not sure at what cost, I think this will end up being a bit pricier than my option below.
Next I found this one in Red Otter's shop at Wedzu.com.
I love the tie, I love how simple it is, I love the colors, and it comes with 80 pages instead of 30, and she'll add 20 more for free if I feel I'll need more.
Not customizable, and won't have our calligraphy on the cover...but it is perfectly lovely the way it is.
You can probably tell which one I'm leaning toward for ease's sake, but I'm still really debating. Tell me, what do you think? Should I go with the fully customized one on Etsy, which will also include our calligraphy design? Or just go with the wedzu.com one that I won't have to design or make any changes to? Is there one you love more than the other? Thanks for your input!
Have you purchased anything off of etsy.com for your wedding?
Yes: 40%
No: 26.67%
No, but I plan to: 33%
So the majority either have purchased off of etsy.com, or plan to in the near future. I'm telling you, it's a bride's best friend!
Attention February through June Brides:
TLC's "Four Weddings" Casting for Feb-June 2011 Weddings!
We're looking for unique weddings and traditional/conservative weddings. Whether you're the first of your friends to exchange vows, or your grandchildren are serving as your ring-bearers, we want to hear from you! We feature four lucky brides per episode who get to show America how to put on a truly fabulous wedding, attend each other's weddings and (drum-roll please) one of the four WINS AN ALL-EXPENSE PAID FIVE STAR HONEYMOON!
Romance Monday night was our 4th Pre-Cana session. Last week's meeting was canceled due to crazy weather, so we still have one more session next week when we will receive our "Pre-Cana Diploma". This week the Church's Deacon led the session, and he touched upon a variety of things. First he started off by talking about romance, a fitting lesson as Valentine's day approaches us. He told us a story about a friend who came to him for help after his marriage of 17 years failed. When he asked this friend "What happened?" The man replied "The romance was just...gone". The Deacon responded with: "Then shame on you."
Romance isn't something that just happens. In the beginning, sure...romance is there. It's new and exciting and wonderful. But after awhile romance is something YOU BOTH have to completely work at to make sure it's present in your relationship. It doesn't matter what it is: an elaborate dinner date at a nice restaurant, or Friday night take-out while you watch a movie. He suggested we go out, or have dinner just the two of us at least once a week, (easy to do now, but he means especially when we have children) in order to keep the romance alive. Romance can be rekindled simply by calling your significant other in the middle of the day to let them know you're thinking about them. It can rekindle by sending a cute text, buying a card, sending an email, holding hands, getting flowers and a whole host of other things.
True adorable story: My dad brings home flowers for my mom at least once every other week, sometimes once a week. On more than one occasion, the clerk at the store has asked him "What did you do now?!" Haha! While that's pretty funny, it's a little sad that the clerk assumes something must be wrong for this married man to be buying flowers. Why can't he just be buying them because he loves her!?
A Sacrament is a religious symbol, or as wikipedia defines it: "A visible sign of an invisible reality." The water in baptism, the holy oil in anointing of the sick....or the rings in matrimony. He explained that matrimony is one of the two service sacraments (the other being Holy orders), because we are agreeing to serve each other in love, and committing to a new and different life together in marriage. The Deacon then talked a lot about each sacrament. This was definitely the most "religious" session we've had so far, but being that this is all new to me, I didn't mind it.
Tonight we are going to a Bride & Groom event at our venue: The Sandcastle!!
I posted last week on Weddzilla about Wedzu.com, which is basically "The Etsy for Brides", and want to make sure that you have all heard about it! By now, everyone pretty much knows about Etsy.com, which has definitely become any bride's best friend. But now, Wedzu has come onto the scene and it may just eventually give Etsy a run for its money!
When you go to wedzu.com, everything is clearly organized by wedding category across the top, and broken down into sub-categories beyond that. Here are some gems I found browsing the site:
I love this chalkboard "menu" seating chart idea:
Or how about these clutches for your bridesmaids? They are completely customizable!
Wedzu is still very new, and some of the categories do not even have items in them to sell. As more and more brides start using this for help in their planning, I think wedzu will catch on quickly. If you're not ready to betray Etsy just yet, at least check the site out and gather some neat ideas and inspiration!
Seeing that Etsy.com is the reigning superior site of its kind right now. I'm curious:
