Honeymoon Series: Out of Town Bags Part I

A LOT of things went INTO the Out of Town Bags. Here is one element that we included:

Firstly, we had water bottles. I made different labels for the water bottles and Chris' mom helped me switch those out.

I got the labels from a pdf that someone on the weddingbee board sent me. If someone else wants the pdf of this, email me at info@lauraandchristopher.com and I'll send it to you!

We also had labels on little hershey kisses. I got these labels at Michaels and printed them out

Honeymoon Series: The Wishing Tree

This is a crappy picture, but this is our wishing tree. Our venue provided this for us free of charge:

I bought business cards with little hearts on them at staples. I printed "Advice and Wishes for the Mr. and Mrs." Using a font that I downloaded (I'll have to let you know the name of it later!) but I got it on dafonts.com

Then I punched holes in each of them, and cut green and white twine to put in the holes:

Then I arranged them in a basket:

Next to the basket, I put this sign:

The poem reads:

WISHING TREE

As we begin our new journey

a brand new Mr. and Mrs.

We could surely use

your advise and wishes.

Share with us your wisdom

about marriage, love & life,

The secret to being a good husband

or top-notch first-rate wife.

Jot down a memory

a reminder of our day.

A doodle or picture will do

if you don't know what to say.

Please don't forget, it would be such a shame

Don't hang your wish on our tree,

without signing your name.

What ever you pen, we're sure to treasure

long after this day has passed,

your words will bring us pleasure.

Honeymoon Series: The RINGS!

Chris had asked me not to show the rings until the big day, so here they are!

Mine matches the diamonds on my engagement ring band perfectly! Chris has yellow gold with a band of white gold around both sides. I absolutely LOVE Chris' ring, it's exactly what I always imagined him wearing when we got married.

What Chris didn't know about these rings, is that while he was at his Bachelor party, I took his ring to our jeweler to get engraved! I thought long and hard about what to put in his ring. Unfortunately, the way my ring is on the inside...there's no place for an engraving...so this was just for Chris.

I had "Amore Mio" engraved on the inside. This means "My love" in Italian and felt it was the perfect way to tie our honeymoon and heritage into our wedding. I can't wait to see his reaction when he sees it!

Honeymoon Series: Bridesmaid Gifts Part 1

Part of my Bridesmaid Gifts were the flip flops I included for them to wear during the reception. I saw a tutorial on Once Wed on how to make these adorable flowers HERE and tried my hand at making them over the Christmas Holiday.

However, I had to make some changes for them to work with these flip flops.
1. I used a spice bottle to measure the circles rather than a spool of thread. This gave me a bigger circle to work with and resulted in a bit of a bigger flower.
2. I had to use 10 circles per flower instead of 6 in order for it to look full.

I bought green fabric that matched their dresses and layed it out on a large cutting board (Note: We bought something called batik fabric because it's the same on both sides. The flowers I made using non-batik fabric, didn't come out as colorful, and didn't look as good. Batique is more expensive, but it's worth it for good flowers)

Then with a pencil and spice bottle, I drew 96 little circles!

Of course, this was difficult when I kept getting interrupted by a certain puppy who wanted to lick my face!

While I drew circles, my mom cut them out:

We put them in rows of ten so we could visualize how many more we needed to make.

When I was done tracing, I started to assemble them and eventually had 12 flowers done!

Next we needed to glue them to the flip flops. I found that the flowers weren't keeping the exact shape I wanted, so I first glued them to a harder fabric as backing. This made them keep their open shape. Then we hot glued the flowers to the middle of the flip flop. (I discovered later that the hot glue wasn't working, so I had to reattach these with Gorilla Glue in order to keep them on!):

And made a cute little decorated set of flip flops!

 Then we tied the pairs together with a green with white polka-dot ribbon to add to their bags:

For me, I made myself a white pair in case I can't wear my  heels all night (though I'm going to try!)

Don't have a picture, but it's the same thing in white!

I can't wait to see my girls wearing these the night of our reception!

Honeymoon Series: Our Signature Drink

For our signature drinks, I couldn't decide between two, so I just had both of them! The first was a Key-Lime Pie Martini, but for our purposes, this was the "Wagner-Tini"

Wagner-Tini
2 ounces vanilla vodka
1 ounce Malibu
1 ounce sweetened lime juice
1/2 lime

The second one was called the Wedding Cake Martini and was from the martini menu found at the restaurant Simply Fondue.

Wedding Cake Martini:

1 1/2 oz. Amaretto
1/2 oz. Vanilla vodka
1 oz. Pineapple Juice

I made a little sign to put out at each bar giving the names and recipes of each drink in Word.Then I printed it onto Green paper and put it in some more black picture frames I had lying around. This is a bad picture but I'll make sure we get a better one at the reception :)

Honeymoon Series: Table Numbers

Hello! Well I am a married lady now and currently in Rome with Chris for the first part of our Honeymoon!! I can't wait to share all the little details of our wedding with you, so I've put together recaps for you over the course of the next two weeks. Today: Table Numbers!

I pondered our table numbers for MONTHS. There were so many possibilities out there, what would I do?? I finally came across this post on Ruffled Blog one day:

Ruffled Blog

I really liked the look of it, and wanted to do something like it. I was a music major in college and over the years have accumulated a ton of music. Luckily, I had a vintage-looking opera music book that Mal had given me a few years ago from a book fair she went to which was perfect for this project.

I found the frames for $1 a piece at The Dollar Tree. I was able to find 15 of them around Christmas Time and then figured I'd come back another time and pick up the rest. Well, turns out The Dollar Tree changes out their inventory at the beginning of each year...so when I went back to look for more frames they were NOWHERE! My family and I looked at virtually every Dollar Tree we could find in our area, finally my dad found them but they were only in a maroon and brown color.

He bought 13 more of them in a maroon color, took them home and spray painted them black.

ANd you know what? THey look soooo much nicer than the initial black ones I bought. So much so, that we even spray painted the black ones too so that they could have that same shiny glow!

I printed large numbers on paper following the insructions from the Ruffled post. However, cutting them out exactly was tedious. I needed these done quicker and faster. The solution? Transparency Paper. I used Engravers MT size 300 Font and printed them all out on transparencies. The single digit numbers were easy. I jsut had to line it up where I wanted it, place some tape behind and cut along the edges.

Put them in the frames:

The double digits were a little more complicated. I had to print those at size 280 Font, and I couldn't decide if I should have them side by side or kind of wacky:

In the end, we decided the straight, more formal way was the look we were going for. I needed these closer together than the way they were printing side by side, so I actually printed them farther apart to look like this:

Then I cut out the second number individually and placed it on top of the transparency paper in the frame with tape.


I was so happy with how these turned out, I loved the discolored music paper behind the black numbers. It cost me $23 for the frames and about $50 for the transparency paper (which I only used half of)!

I can't wait to show you how they all looked on my tables!

I'm married!!

I write to you a married lady and by now am probably just arriving in Italy! I had the best day of my entire life on Saturday and I cannot wait to tell you about everything. It went absolutely perfectly and I wouldn't have had it any other way! Enjoy my posts for the next few days and I'll be back in June!

Signing off!

Hey guys!! Well...I am signing off now for the last time as a Miss!! Next time I write to you I'll be a married woman. The past week has been a whirlwind....there is always something to be done, and never enough hours in the day. I still have a few things to take care of this morning before our bridal party and my parents gets into town, but as far as I'm concerned at 3:00 today....when I go to my mani/pedi appointment...it is officially wedding weekend. That is the point in which I will sit back and whatever happens...well happens.

I really hope I can get a picture up on Sunday before I leave for ITALY! However, I have prepared posts for the next two weeks outlining some of the details that went into planning the wedding. They were done pretty quickly and are not the greatest, but will give you a general idea of some of the elements involved in my day that I couldn't share with you beforehand!

Tonight we have the rehearsal followed by the rehearsal dinner. Then tomorrow...hair and makeup begins at 9am!! Phew! Then 3:00 ceremony, 6:00 cocktail hour and 7:30 reception!!

My "day of" basket is all ready to go: This includes flip flops, my "very sexy bride" hoodie, my emergency kit, my underlings and garter(s), my new lipstick, all my jewlery and my perfume!

I will be back to recap sometime the week of June 7th, to all of you that have weddings between now and then...good luck! I can't wait to catch up on everything once I return!

BYE!

Wednesday Wedding Poll: Crying

Today is my last day of work until June 7th!! I haven't taken a vacation from work (other than some days around the holidays) since Chris and I got engaged in July 2009!! I am so freaking excited to have some time off!! I'm feeling pretty caught up on my work after a really long week and a half of being swamped. My boss has been extremely understanding and excited for me, for which I am so grateful. My whole office gave Chris and me a very generous wedding gift on Monday. It was completely unexpected and so very appreciated, it reminded me how much happier I am at this new job that I've been at since August.

Source

I've been sort of up and down with emotions this week. First of all...all these new google commercials make me cry at the drop of a hat. Did you see the one where the Dad writes emails to his daughter from the day she was born and will one day share all the things he's been writing and keeping track of with her? It's the most beautiful commercial ever. I saw it last night and cried for about 5 minutes after it was over. Yea...it's that kind of week. Many of my friends have told me that even though they are emotional people, when it came down to their day, they were too excited and caught up in the moment to cry. Personally, I feel like this will be me. I cry at everything else, but put me in the actual scenario that I'm supposed to be crying at and I've got nothing. But then again, I've never been a Bride before..so who really knows??

So I'm curious: Did/Will you cry at your wedding?


3 daysss!!! My tracker on the upper right is def. off a little right? It's freaking me out!

Rehearsal dinner

This might sound crazy, but I finally booked our rehearsal dinner two days ago!! Before you think I'm completely crazy and dropped the ball, we had originally planned on having the party at either our house or Chris' parent's new house. But with the move happening later than planned, and both parties still trying to settle in and get situated, it really was just too much to think about or organize at this point in time. Luckily, the place that I had originally planned on having it way back at the end of last year, was still available for Friday night and took our deposit on Sunday!

The rehearsal dinner will be at Rollin Greens Pub, which is right down the street from us. It's a small bar, with a very homey feel to it and the owner is one of the most accommodating people in the world.

He has a smallish area in the back that is reserved for us and perfect for the size group that we have. We will have a buffet dinner with penne a la vodka, chicken franchaise, sausage and peppers and eggplant rollatini. Because of our formal wedding on Saturday, Chris and I both wanted Friday night to be a casual hang out with friends night, and this is certainly the atmosphere for that. On top of that...apparently the Yankee/Mets game is on Friday night so I'm expecting most of the groomsmen to be drinking it up in front of the television screen fighting over Yankees or Mets (yankees...duh!) and quite frankly, I really wouldn't have it any other way. Now that a place is officially decided, I finally have a clear vision in my head of how Friday night will be and I am getting really excited to kick off our wedding weekend at Rollin Greens with our family and friends!

Ok...back to finishing up seating arrangements (worst.process.ever!!)

It's Wedding Week!

Oh my goodness...it's wedding week! I had one of the longest weekends of my LIFE, but it was good.
Chris somehow managed to make it back from his bachelor party in Montreal alive and well...phew! The boys had a 6-8 hour drive to and from Montreal, so I sent them off with some goodies on Friday:

As many of you may know, Chris and I currently live in an apartment in the basement of his parent's house. However, as of last week, his parents officially moved out to a gorgeous new place two blocks away and we are now in the process of moving upstairs to live in the house! But let me tell you, moving and setting up your life in a "new" place within the same two weeks of your wedding is beyond stressful. Since there was still a lot to do, both for the wedding and the house, my parents came up from Pennsylvania for the weekend and I seriously don't know what I would have done if they didn't come. Chris' parents also helped us out a ton and we got the whole kitchen set up with all of our shower and wedding gifts unpacked and ready to go (won't use any of them till after the wedding though!), the out of town bags completed, and about 98% of my wedding projects done. My goal was to have nothing to think about or do this coming week...but let's be honest...would that really ever happen?

Last week we wanted to eat dinner in our new dining room. But until we get in new carpets, we aren't moving up any furniture, so picnic on the floor it was!

 

So there is still quite a bit to do...but I'm feeling ready and excited for this week. The only ominous thing? The 5 day forecast!!!! What a beautiful Spring week huh?....not.

Please tell me this is common and will change by the weekend!

5 days!!!!!

Mickey and Minnie RSVP

If you thought the Obama's response was cool yesterday, just wait till you see what Mickey and Minnie sent us from Disneyland!! We came home to this envelope on Tuesday night and I have to say we were VERY excited to open it!

Inside was an autographed photo of Mickey and Minnie with a little message from each of them!

 Best Wishes Laura and Christopher
Your Pal, Mickey Mouse and Love and Kisses, Minnie Mouse

They also included this adorable "Just Married" pin!

I will definitely be sporting this pin on our honeymoon...or at least on my suitcase ;)
To recap, if you want to send an invitation to Mickey and Minnie, here are the addresses:

I sent an invitation to both Disneyland and Disney World - so far we have only received a response from Disneyland
Disneyland:

Micky & Minnie
The Walt Disney Company
500 South Buena Vista Street
Burbank, California 91521

Disney World:

The Magic Kingdom
C/O Mickey & Minnie Mouse
1675 N Buena Vista Drive
Lake Buena Vista, FL 32830

If you want to send an invitation to The White House, here is the address:

The Honorable Barack Obama and Mrs. Obama
The White House
Greetings Office Rm. 39
1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Washington, DC 20500

Both of these responses came within a month after sending out the invitation.

P.S. did I mention we are in SINGLE DIGITS!?! 8 DAYS till the wedding!!

Regrets

No Wednesday Wedding poll today...very crazzzy week that I will explain more about tomorrow. However, I do have something to share with you! We got something very exciting in the mail last week from the white house! Chris waited for me to come home that night and we opened it together:

"Congratulations to your on your wedding day. We hope this special time is blessed with love, laughter and happiness. As you embark on your journey together, may your bond grow stronger with each passing year.
Sincerely,
Barack Obama and Michelle Obama"

Unfortunately, the Obama's are not able to make it to our wedding, :( they must be busy or something...oh well, at least we got this official regrets letter!

Bridal Shower Thank You's

Now that all my Bridal Shower thank you's are out, I thought I'd share with you the thank you cards I ordered from Snapfish.com. I ordered 4 packs of 12 cards each about 3 weeks before my actual shower, so I'd have them on hand to start writing as soon as possible. I am so glad I did that, because I was able to get all my thank you's out within 2 weeks of my shower!

I played around with customized thank you cards on a bunch of different websites, namely: Shutterfly, Snapfish, and Wedding Paper Divas. This one on Snapfish fit with my picture the best, and was a great price, too! I got 4 sets of 12 thank you cards (48) for $57 with shipping and handling. They came quickly and were very easy to order! They were also a great size, I felt like it was just enough room to write a proper thank you without having a ton of extra space leftover at the end.

Where have you ordered thank you cards from?

Guest Book

I got my Guest Book in the mail last week! After a Wednesday Wedding Poll where I asked you all which guest book you liked more, I ordered my customized guest book from Amy at Modern Shabby on Etsy.com. She made this with the fabric of our choosing, and also printed out our customized calligraphy from Debi Sementelli as the tag. 

Here's a little set up of the guest book with the Guest Book Sign I made.

I'm very excited to put this out at the entrance to our reception!