Monograms!

First of all, HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my super-lovely Maid of Honor and sister, Melissa! WAHOO!! 30 never looked so good!! Just kidding..she's 22. Ah, to be young...

Last week, I came upon a blog and was very inspired by her D-I-Y details, specifically her monogram, which she highlights here. I soon decided to get to work on creating my own! I started out trying to do this in Powerpoint, but after finding this "how-to" website, I was able to do it much more easily in Word. After a few hours of playing around, and downloading a free "Chopin Script" font, I finally came up with these results!:

Here it is with color:
Darker Green-

Lighter Green-

The website above helped me with its step-by-step guide, but was slightly confusing. Here's my guide, using Word 2007.

1. Open Microsoft Word
2. Choose Insert - Textbox
3. Type and format the letter the way you like. I downloaded the font "Chopin Script" from 1001fonts.com.
4.  Do that again two more times for the other wording, or letters, you prefer to use.
5. While holding down the CTRL key, click on all three textboxes to highlight them.
6. Go to Format - Text Box Style - Shape Fill - No Fill
7. Go to Format - Text Box Style - Shape Outlines -  No Outline
8. Select all letters again, while holding down the SHIFT key. Still holding SHIFT, right click anywhere on the letters.  Select "Grouping" then "Group". Now, the image is all locked together.
9. Highlight the image, and hit COPY.
10. Paste it into PAINT, where you can crop it down to the size you want. "Save As" a JPG and there is your image!

This took me several attempts to get right, and was a bit confusing. However, once I got it down, it was really simple! Now, I need your help with one thing:

I want to add this to some things for the wedding (i.e. program, or menu card or something), does anyone have any ideas how to get rid of the white background here so that I can insert JUST the text into a document? Would I need photoshop to do that?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Monogram and Bridal Showcase

How cool is this monogram? I found this on the Knotty Bride, who found it here at the Wedding chicks. [I believe the promotion to get it free has ended]. I have the complete file of this image to use as I please for invitations, or any D-I-Y wedding things I may decide to do. I love it! I'm thinking of seeing if I can get a stamp made of it, but haven't thought about what I'd do with it beyond that!

Speaking of stamping, I really want to get back to embossing. A fellow blogger at "She Said Yes" did an Embossing 101 post a few weeks ago and I loved it. My mom, sister, and I used to emboss soooo much when we were little, but honestly I had forgotten all about it. I emailed my mom right away and told her to get out the embossing tools because we're going to use it somehow for the wedding. How? I just haven't really thought about that yet....

This month is quickly filling up with wedding showcases and events to attend! Aside from my plans to attend the Long Island Bridal Extravaganza on September 20th with fellow bride and friend, Kerry; Chris and I got an invitation in the mail yesterday for something that I'm very excited about:

I came home to a very pretty invitation in our mail that really looked like a wedding invitation. Both our names were written in calligraphy on the envelope. I was completely confused, my first thought was "Oh goodness another wedding?? Who's wedding is this?? We've already received the invitations to all our friend's upcoming weddings! Who am I forgetting?" After I opened it, I soon realized it was an invitation to a showcase at our venue!  

Sand Castle
cordially invites you to attend their Bridal Showcase
on September 29, 2010, 7:00pm
proudly presenting
our most prestigious event professionals of:
Music Entertainment, Photography & Videography, Floral Design,
Hair & Make-up, Invitation Design,
Limousine Services, Hotels and Cigar Rollers

Also featuring: 

Raffle Prizes, Vendor Discounted offers,
Menu enhancements and many more surprises.

Please join us for an evening filled
with entertainment and unique ideas.

I'm very excited to go to this! I love any excuse to visit my venue. Every time I'm there, I fall more in love with the place, and get completely recharged on my planning. Plus, it might get my butt into gear on invitations, hair & makeup and flowers, which are haunting me! Unfortunately, I really don't remember enough about last night's dream to go into detail, but I do know it involved my wedding, and my hair not being done in time. Clearly, I have some things on my mind and it will be nice to have someone else steer me in some direction for the next steps of my planning.

Brett Matthews

I had a great time in my web design class today! This post will also be my forum to show off some of the things I made in fireworks.

So, yesterday we had our first meeting with a wedding photographer,Brett Matthews. There actually is no "Brett Matthews." Brett and Matthew are the owner's sons' names. Chris and I were really impressed with the place. We met with Rich, and were with him for an hour and a half! I didn't think it would take that long, but it also went really fast. We looked through all the album options they offer, with tons of pictures, and techniques they can do with the pictures: sepia, high-def glossy, oil painitng, etc. etc.

Honestly, I could have sat there all day looking through the photo albums and videos they had. I actually got choked up when he showed us the video montages they can make. It all got me very excited for my big day...well only 1 year and 7 months! This was the first photographer appointment we had so far, so we don't really have any point of reference for comparison, but I will say that we were really impressed with this place. We'll probably look at 3 more to do some comparison shopping with both what is offered and price. But "Operation find a Photographer" is going so far, so good!


In other news, my mom is getting me really excited for the prospect of an engagement party in Schnecksville! I should give props to her co-worker Rae, who I've met once at my mom and dad's birthday party last year and immediately liked her. She apparently just threw an engagement party and wedding for her daughter, so she's gone through all of this and is eager to offer up her services with getting things off the ground! I realize that Schnecksville might be a little bit hard to get to for people in New York, but it will be nice to have something wedding related in PA, since the actual wedding won't be there. This will be a great way for my older family members to be involved and meet my friends and Chris's family, since it might be difficult for them to get to New York.

I also got to work on some monograms today. I like the second one better, but I think the C looks a bit more like a G. Oh well, this was just playing around:

The Hunt Continues!!

This past weekend we looked at our first two venues! It was very interesting actually going to the places and getting a real actual sense of what we want we like and what we don't like. We went to The Inn at Fox Hollow first. This place was really nice. I did not like the guy that took us around. He was the manager, or owner or something like that. I know he's a salesman and so he has to do his whole "salesmanly" thing, but I just didn't like how cocky he was. However, that aside the grounds there were really beautiful and even neater was the hotel attached to the facility. The hotels are all suites and it would be really convenient for any out of town guests.

We then went right down the street to Crest Hollow Country Club which we also really liked. There was a crazy wedding going on upstairs in one of the rooms so it was really busy in the lobby and we couldn't see 2 of the rooms that would be available. I liked the grounds, I liked what was offered as far as food. Crest Hollow would def. win for the day...but I didn't get that "this is the place" feeling at either one. That could be because I know in my head I have like 10 other places I want to see, so I just want to get out and see them all before getting set on anything too soon.

We cancelled our appt. at the Riviera at Massapequa for 2 reasons. 1) we heard from multiple sources that 200 would be really tight in their space. Seeing as how our guest list will be more than 200, we didn't want to risk it. I still want to go and see the place at some point but it's not priority right now. 2) We were kind of pooped on Monday from the long weekend and really all just needed a day of not running around.

I also have taken up making my own monograms!! Unfortunately, this blog doesn't seem to support the monograms I've made in word so I cant show them to you. but it's a lot of fun...I just worry about being able to pick "THE" one after I've experimented. I'm also trying to download special fonts online, but I can't figure out how it works and I'm getting frustrated.

This weekend we are going home for Mandy and Billy's engagement party. But, we'll be back to the venue search next Wednesday when we go to Jericho Terrace! More then.