Ultimate Wedding Week - the Details

We've reached the last day of the "Ultimate Wedding Week" Link-Up series and today's topic is hosted by Amy over at Fresh & Fancy.  While some people find the details the most annoying part of planning anything (i.e. my husband), I actually love them!  It's the little things that are incorporated to highlight your personalities, and I loved coming up with the ideas and seeing them executed.  I guess when a pastor marries an event planner, he's going to care most about the ceremony and she's going to care most about the details.  So you see?  We really are a perfect match!

First up... the dress of course!  This beauty is a Justin Alexander:

I wish I had one where the train was not bustled, but as I mentioned in previous posts, there are no picture of just me in my dress.  Such a shame, but something that will be remedied in the near future!  Any excuse to put it back on is okay by me!

As for the shoes, I think I just found them at DSW.  I knew nobody would really see them, so even though they did not match my dress perfectly, I loved them because they reminded me of something you would wear to play dress-up in as a young girl.  And isn't this day somewhat of a fullfillment of that?  And at $39.99 for something that few people would see, I'd call it a win!

As for jewelry, most of it was borrowed.  I wore my sister's earrings that she wore in her wedding three years before and my best friend lent me her grandmother's ring, which was gorgeous (and my something blue!).  The only other thing I added was a bracelet, which I just bought at a department store.  There was nothing real about it, but I loved (and still wear) it.

Josh was very particular about his ring and definitely wanted something more masculine.  We ended up finding one with crosses engraved somewhere online (I can't remember where) and mine is from Jared's.  Yes, "he went to Jared's!"  Haha.

As for my beautiful bridesmaids, this presented more of a challenge as I knew that one of them would be 8 months pregnant on my wedding day.  Being her first pregnancy, we had no idea what kind of pregnant-lady she would be.  Some carry their babies like tiny basketballs and others get pregnant all over the place unfortunately.  While shopping we laughed a lot because she had to try on everything with the little "pregnant belly" pillow, which always looked ridiculous.  Finding this picture of someone else's wedding really helped:

Isn't Google amazing?  I planned before Pinterest existed, so I just searched "Pregnant Bridesmaid" and found all sorts of pictures!  We actually ended up getting this exact dress by Bill Levkoff and my matron of honor got a slightly different one to make her stand out a bit more.  And the best part?  It's hard to figure out who has the bun in the oven!

Dark brown and cream were not my original colors.  Because our wedding was outdoors in Florida in June, I envisioned something a bit brighter and more summery.  Once I found my dress, however, that all changed.  My dress was champagne and cream in color and the summery colors did not look right with it.  Nor did short dresses as my dress was too elegant in style to look right next to them.  Dark brown alone seemed almost too formal for me and so I finally decided to mix in a secondary color and mix it up a bit.  I could get away with putting my bridesmaids in cream because my dress was darker than that, but complimented it well.  Then of course I realized that black tuxes next to all of this brown and cream might not look the best, which is why we went with the tan suits for them, which I loved.  Plus, they would have been far too hot in black!

With so many neutral colors going on, I really wanted pops of something bright in the flowers.  My bouquet was a ton (literally... that thing must have weighed 20 pounds!) of cream colored roses as to not take away from my dress, and my bridesmaids had lots of magenta and light green in theirs.  Josh and both of our dads had cream roses for their boutonnieres to match my bouquet and the other guys all had some sort of green flower... but I'm not actually sure it was a flower.  I'm actually not sure what it was, but it looked awesome.  I don't know much about flowers, so I told my florist what I wanted and she did an amazing job!  She also brought extra (smaller) roses to pin into our hair if we wanted.  A few of my bridesmaids did and I had three pinned in after I ditched the veil at the reception.  If you're in South Florida and looking for a vendor, I would highly recommend Deerfield Florist.

Since out reception was outdoors, the hotel had cucumber and lemon water for the guests and we put a basket of fans by the entrance:

Thankfully we have a graphic designer in our family.  I have sung my sister's praises many times on this blog, and today she gets even more love.  She is crafty in many ways, but most talented on paper.  Actually, she just started her own crafting blog, so you should check it out here... but I digress.  This lovely talented lady was kind enough to design and print our program.  Weddings are expensive enough as it is, so if you have talented people in your lives, utilize them!  Besides, it adds even more of your own personal touch to the day:

The guest book was at both the wedding and reception site, but unfortunately got overlooked by a lot of people.  We bought an album with photo sleeves and asked our guests to write in the space provided next to the photo sleeves.  We then had a digital camera sitting out for them to take a photo of themselves.  We have some awesome photos of our guests who participated- some are "normal" and some are just plain funny- so the idea in theory was excellent.  If you choose to go this route, however, I would have maybe a younger family member, cousin, etc. man the table for awhile and take the pictures.  Here are a few of my favorites:

I think I hit the rest of the ceremony details in my ceremony post, so I'll move on to the reception.  We ended up having twelve tables (counting ours) and so instead of doing table numbers, we did the months of the year.  On each table was a recap of what happened in our relationship that month.  This worked particularly well for us since we met on July 31st and got married the following June 13th, so we had something happen within every month (just barely).  We listed things such as meeting, getting engaged, running a marathon together, traveling to New York, etc.  It was a fun way to share some more of our story with our guests.  And we, fittingly, sat at the "June" table.

Our delicious cake was a layer of chocolate and a layer of Amaretto vanilla, and it was to die for.  The grooms cake was made by the same crafty sister (seriously... what can't she do?) and was Josh's favorite, red velvet.  I'm guessing the crimson color has something to do with it:

See?  I told you I'm a details person.  I may have gone too into detail giving you the details, so I apologize for getting so lengthy on this!  As for my top 3 pieces of advice to future brides, I'd say:

1 - Figure out what's important to you and budget for those elements.  I wanted a fantastic photographer and videographer, as those were the things that would last forever.  Our videographer is now based in Southern California, so if you're in the area and looking for one, seriously look no further.  I wish I could show our video here... they make a "film" of your day set to music and it's seriously the most beautiful thing.  It's something I will cherish always.

2 - Pass wedding-day tasks off to others.  My sisters and mom were awesome about taking things from me and my friend Julie volunteered to deliver checks to all of the vendors who needed to be paid that day.  I literally worried about NOTHING... and a relaxed and pampered bride is a happy bride!

3 - And most importantly, remember that no matter what goes wrong, even if your wedding is a world-class disaster, at the end of the day you will be married to the person that God picked out for you... and that's really all that matters.  Besides, wedding day disasters probably make for some great stories later!

I'm glad I participated in the link-up party as it's been a nice trip down memory lane, but I have to admit that I'm looking forward to blogging about some other things I've had on the back burner over these past two weeks.  Plus, blogging 5 days a week has been challenging with work, church, and the little ones and I've stayed up much too late writing and scheduling posts.  It was worth it though.  Thanks so much for allowing me to share... I hope you enjoyed the Ultimate Wedding Party as much as I did!

Happy Friday, everyone... have a fantastic weekend!  Check back on Monday for a race recap of the Lexington Half Marathon!

The Ultimate Wedding Week: The Ceremony

There are three more topics left in the "Ultimate Wedding Week Link-Up Party" and today is all about the most important part: the ceremony.  Throughout our wedding planning process, Josh stayed very involved, but was most invested in the ceremony itself.  Seeing that he is a pastor and has been to his fair share of weddings, I loved planning this part with him as he had such a clear idea of what it should be.  And at the end of the day, we knew that if anything went wrong or a wedding detail did not happen the way we wanted it to, we would be husband and wife and that was the most important thing.  Focusing on that rather than all of the "what if's" really kept my stress levels down... knowing that I was going to be married to the most special person I have ever met was all that mattered.

So anyhoo... where was I?  Oh yes, the ceremony.  I've mentioned that we got married at the Doral Golf Resort & Spa in Miami, which has so many beautiful spots for a ceremony.  Being in Florida and having friends from all over visiting, we really wanted an outdoor ceremony, since God's church is everywhere anyway!  Why not get married in his biggest masterpiece?  I had to twist some arms to have my ceremony on the spa terrace, which was being taken over by new management that would be utilizing the area for other things and no longer available for brides.  It's such a shame, too, because this is what the gorgeous place looks like:

See what I mean?  The terrace itself is up top, the building behind it, overlooking the fountains and gardens.  And just so you know, I was the last bride to get married there.  We've come under new management yet again (Mr. Donald Trump's management in fact) and I hope this is one of the things he changes.  It would be a shame to not use this space for weddings!  This picture was taken in the early afternoon when my photographer arrived, and it rained shortly after.  All day.  It was cloudy and dreary, but the upside was that it was cool.  The event manager waited as long as he possibly could before pulling it inside, and about 2 hours before the ceremony, the rain stopped.  I wish I had a picture of the weather map that day because there was green covering all of south Florida, except for this little circle over Doral. God smiled on us that day for sure.  There was still a small part of us that was concerned it might rain down on us at any point (which happens out of nowhere all the time down there!) but we decided to go for it.  Besides, it would make a great wedding day story if all of our guests (and us) had to run inside and finish the ceremony there.  No big deal.  Because the venue was so gorgeous and green, we really did not need flowers or decoration.  We just kept it simple with a cross my mom bought for us and a garland that our florist made for the occasion.  I did not know what she had in mind (as we did not budget for it and so she said she'd make something inexpensive) but the final product was perfect.  Simple and elegant, which was pretty much my vision for everything.

For the processional, my lovely bridesmaids walked down the aisle to an acoustic guitar playing Canon in D.  Meanwhile, Josh waited at the bottom of the terrace steps and then made his way up to the top with our officiant and his groomsmen.

And then the moment was upon us... time to walk down the aisle!  I had not been nervous all day, but man did those butterflies amp up right then!  My dad asked me if I was ready and I could hardly speak, but then he said, "ok, let's go," and off we went.  I could see my guests long before I could see Josh as I had to round a corner to get to him.  I love the picture of me waving to him upon first sight.  This moment to me made it worth waiting until the ceremony to see each other.  I also love how incredibly big and cheesy my smile is in these pictures... clearly this was the happiest day of my life to that point!  I did not realize how choked up my dad got until I saw that last picture.  He really had to try hard not to lose it.

I really did not get too emotional until it my dad gave me away.  He told me he loved me and kissed me on the cheek... it was such a mixture of happy and sad, but I held it together.  Seeing Josh standing there brought that smile right back to my face.  One of my favorite pictures of the day is the one of my dad and I standing there waiting for that moment.  I love the contrast of our faces.  My dad has three daughters and I am the third, so even though it was difficult all three times, seeing his baby go was not easy.  That is why Miss Lilly is never allowed to get married.  Okay, okay, that's a tad unfair.  Maybe I'll change my mind when she's 35.

The ceremony itself was pretty much mapped out by Josh and myself.  Because we were not getting married in a church, we chose to be married by our friend, Blake, who is also in ministry and one of the godliest men that I know.  He had never performed a wedding and was so honored when we asked.  We gave him the specifics and told him that first and foremost, we did want a Gospel presentation to be a part of the ceremony, but we also wanted the ceremony to be twenty minutes tops... it would be too hot for anything longer!  When we met with him the day before, he nervously read us what he had prepared.  He talked about how God loved marriage so much that He started and ended the Bible with one... the first being between man and woman the second being between His son and the church.  It was beautifully thought out and eloquent and we were stunned at how well he took what we wanted and put it into words and Blake was stunned that we liked it so much!  Josh told him that he would be "borrowing" that opening message for the weddings he performs in the future and as promised, Josh's version of it has been put to use once or twice.  We are so thankful to have friends like Blake and his wife Julie.

As for the ceremony elements, we did not want to do a unity candle as we were outside and we did not want to do the sand because we did not want to have to keep a jar of sand in our house forever.  No offense to those of you who choose to do that, but it just wasn't "us."  Josh loved the concept of Ecclesiastes 4:12 that says "Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves.  A cord of three strands is not quickly broken."  This verse had been printed on our invitations, too.  He thought it would be awesome if we made something to braid and after a little Google research, I found that this already existed!  We purchased our rope from God's Knot, a website that I stumbled across on accident.  The braided cord now hangs over the cross from our wedding and both are displayed on our mantle.  If you choose to do this, I would suggest making sure your groom knows how to braid first!  He faked his way through it like a champ!

The other thing we really wanted was for our bridal party to come around us in prayer.  Thankfully we had a large enough area up front to make this happen and it actually resulted in another one of my favorite photos from the day.

Aside from the verse in Ecclesiastes, we also had two of our cousins come up and read from Ephesians 5:21-28 and 5:31.

This was the only point in the ceremony when the weather gave us a scare.  A huge gust of wind swept through and for a moment, everyone thought that a downpour would come with it.  Our photographer was ready and captured the moment perfectly with both Josh and I looking at the sky.  On our video you can hear Josh whisper, "just five more minutes, God."  He not only gave us five, but the rain stayed away for the rest of the night so we could get more outdoor photos, too.

Finally we said our vows and exchanged rings.  Josh and I decided to read and write our own vows, which was more difficult than I thought it would be.  How do you tell a man how much you love him in just a couple of minutes?  I thought a lot about it, wrote many version, and admittedly did not complete them until that morning.  And for some reason, on our wedding day, I just had such clarity on what I wanted to share at that special time... the words basically wrote themselves.  Many people told us that it was their favorite part of our wedding.  I'd have to agree.

Then finally I heard those words that every girl dreams about since childhood... "Without further ado, I know pronounce you husband and wife.  You may kiss the bride!"

To me, it was perfect and I would seriously not change a thing.  I cannot believe this post got so long, but I just didn't want to leave anything out.  My advice to any couple would be to make the ceremony your own, even if you're staying within a traditional framework like we did.  We found elements that were unique to us, but showed others how much we loved each other and more importantly, how God was at the center of it all.  A lot of couples get nervous about writing their own vows, but I would also encourage couples to consider this.  I do love the traditional ones, too, and the fact that couples for thousands of years have recited those same sacred words, but there was so much more that I wanted to share with Josh on that day.  We put some of the traditional vow elements into the "repeat after me" portion of the ring exchange so that they could be incorporated, too.

Once our ceremony was over the guests all went over to the cocktail reception and we took a few photos with family, our bridal party, and a few (far too few!) of just the two of us.

I have tons of advice when it comes to this because we did it all wrong!  I had read to make a list of the picture you want taken that day and even though I meant to do it, I never did.  Because we didn't have a plan I feel like we missed out on a lot of pictures that I would've loved to have had.  For example, we do not have one of our combined families together or even our extended families with us!  And we literally have only one photo of our entire bridal party together and somehow my flower girl isn't even in it!  There were such beautiful places on the grounds that I loved, such as stone staircases and iron gates, but I never shared that with my photographer.  He wanted to take photos out on the golf course, and since he's the expert, we did that.  I felt like we spent too much of our allotted photo time riding in the cart to get there and then I looked windblown in every one of them.  He did do a great job and again, I take responsibility for not getting the ones I wanted, but my point is to speak up.  It's YOUR day.  I agree that they are experts, but all of your vendors can and should be able to work within the parameters of your vision.  I do not Pinterest (as I have plenty of other things- mainly 2 small kiddos- that take up enough of my free time) but if you're planning a wedding, find the kinds of pictures you like from other wedding, pin them, and then show them to your photographer so that he or she can see what kind of style you like.  I had a "photography" file saved on my computer, but I never shared any of the sample pictures with him because I did not want to offend him.  Now I know that he would not have been offended in the least, and if your photographer does get offended, I would reconsider using him or her!  Your pictures are the one thing that lasts forever, so to me, spending the most of your budget there to get exactly what you want is super important.  On the upside, the photos he did take are amazing and our video is probably the best I have ever seen.  They have since relocated to Southern California, so if you're in that area, they are worth every penny.  You can check out their site here.

Okay, I think I've bored you all enough today... I never meant to get so long winded!  Make sure you go over to Shue Love today and link up with all of the other brides there.  And stay tuned for the reception on Wednesday and the details on Friday.  Thanks for letting me share!

Bring on the craftiness!

For those of you who don't know, I absolutely LOVE to throw a party. Love it. My first couple of jobs involved event planning, but now that I work in sales (from home in my pajamas mind you) I get my kicks from my own personal social events. I am the type of person who finds no greater joy than to make a spreadsheets to track RSVP's and expenses even though only I will see it, using Tahoma 10 font and filling the whole page in with a white background so that it hides those ugly gridlines. Quirky? Absolutely, but I am who I am and it seems to be what I was made to do. I would much rather sit around planning parties and events for myself and for friends than just about anything else in the world.

So around comes my sister's baby shower this past Sunday. Normally I would go to a cute website and order pretty pre-printed invitations, but that just didn't seem good enough this time. You see, for my bridal shower my sister created the most gorgeous hand-made invitations I have ever seen! Seriously... she should sell them. We're talking so pretty that I still plan to frame mine and hang it on the wall at our house. Unfortunately I don't have a picture or else I would definitely post it, so if you really want to see it I'll dig one up and put it up here eventually. So between that and my new goal to become more "crafty" as I mentioned on Monday (because everyone- and I mean everyone- is crafty in the Midwest... it's as if they were born with a gene that the rest of us didn't get whether it be knitting, quilting, scrapbooking, cake decorating... you name it!), I decided to return the favor and create my own invitations for her party.

Since craftiness is a fairly new thing for me, I spent a fair amount of time on Google looking at pictures of other people's creations. What in the world did we do before the Internet? I finally decided to try to make something that looked like a diaper and would act as a sleeve for the actual printed invitation. Based on my Internet findings, my first brilliant idea was to wrap the inner invitation in white felt, which I can assure you will not end up looking like a diaper at all. While a good idea in theory, it looked more like an old-fashioned nurses hat than a diaper. With this in mind, I knew it would have to be paper all the way. So without further to do, here are the steps on how to make some super-cute (and fairly easy... hey, even I could do this one!) baby shower invitations:

First, here is what you will need:

• Printable cardstock for the inner invitation (1 per 6 invitations)... I used light green since she doesn't know what she's having yet. I also used white and glued the two pieces together to make it fancier, but this is just an option
• A glue stick (if you decide to go with my method above)
• Cute printed paper (8x11) for the diaper (1 page per invitation). I found that white was just too plain so I went to a scrapbooking store and found paper with butterflies, flowers, and swirlies on it. If you know the gender of the baby, there is A LOT of cute pink and blue patterned options
• Scissors - regular and craft scissors for the details. If you have a slicer, that will save you some time, too
• A hole puncher
• A felt tipped pen
• Large safety pins- I searched for actual diaper pins but did not come across any
• Invitation envelopes
• A cute baby-themed stamp and an ink pad (optional)

To start, take a diaper pattern (which can be found here) and use it to cut out all of the "diapers" on your patterned paper. If the pattern goes one direction or the other, make sure that the flap that faces front shows the pattern right-side up. Below is the pattern I found online (left) next to one that I ended up cutting out (right)... I opted not to cut all of the frills out and used craft scissors in a later step instead to make it a little faster. Either method works.

Next, fold up the "diaper" and secure the front with a safety pin. To fold up the diaper, fold it in half vertically and then pull the side flaps in. The one shown below has been folded, and then as I mentioned earlier, I took craft scissors and cut the frillies on the leg holes.


I set that part aside and started on the inner-invitation. Using Microsoft Word or Publisher or any program really, type the information using only 1/6 of the page. The space will be limited, but the diaper sleeve ends up being about the size of your hand. You can either use one side or both sides of the paper depending on how much information you have. In our case, we put a cute little phrase on one side and then all of the information on the other. I also printed one on the green cardstock and one on the white cardstock, frilled up the edges of the white one with craft scissors, and glued them together for a bit of a fancier look. Lastly, punch a hole in the top and tie a ribbon in a bow through it to make it easier to pull out of the diaper sleeve. Below is the components of my finished product as well as one put together:

There are so many ways you can go with this. If you have cute hand-writing you could probably just hand-write them all, but I'm not there yet in my craftiness. Or you could glue the insert into the diaper sleeve since almost everyone I talked to said that they undid the safety pin and opened my invitation up, not knowing that they did not have to go through that extra step. But regardless of what you choose, I think they turn out to be super cute.

Lastly, if you're still wanting to personalize it a little more, take your stamp and the ink pad and use it somewhere on the invitation envelope. I think it adds a nice touch.

So that's about the extent of what I can share in terms of being crafty today... I'm still a work in progress, but they were a big hit! And this posting only assures me that I should never start a cooking or a how-to blog unless I plan to have REALLY LONG posts. Because honestly, I could have added WAY more details than I did, but hopefully this is more than enough to get my point enough. Happy crafting!

And PS - a post about her actual shower will soon follow, too!