:P

That face just about sums up how I'm feeling right now :P No one was kidding when they said that planning a wedding/getting married takes a lot of you.

Just in the last two months I've gotten sick a couple times and have probably gotten about 6 hours of sleep each night. It's exhausting :P Mentally and physically.

And it really sucks because I can't afford to be taking time off work, which leaves me irritable, tired and going to the back room every ten minutes to blow my nose.

Don't get me wrong, I'm having a blast planning this wedding, day dreaming about it. That's what has been keeping me up at night. Thinking, "Oh my gosh, I'm getting married in X amount of days." And that gets my heart racing (not even kidding) and my mind racing, and before I know it, it's three in the morning and I have to get up 6 hours later to go to work :P

I also have trouble sleeping whenever there's a big event coming up. Christmas, Easter, Birthday, first day of school. You can bet I didn't get any sleep the night before. And I can already tell that my wedding will be no different. Especially knowing that will be my last night sleeping alone for the rest of my life. AAAHHH!!! I don't know what I'm going to do. I might just have to pop a few sleeping pills, drink some tea and fall asleep watching a movie. I don't know. All I do know is that this needs to be the last time I get sick before the wedding. It's getting too close for my body to be doing this to me!

32 DAYS!!!

Here Come the Men in Black

So I've written a post about my dress, about the girls' dresses, and the flower girl's dress, but I haven't told you about the guys yet!!!

Ever since we decided on having the wedding outside, I suddenly felt like this was going to be a pretty laid back wedding. Which is more than fine with me! I knew Mike isn't one to wear a penguin suit. I'd take him in jeans and t-shirt over a stiff suit any day :) And so, we found a happy medium.

Mike and all his merry men will be wearing the following:


black button up shirt with the sleeves rolled up


black pants and converse (black and white converse)

and then the groomsmen will be wearing purple ties (to go with the girls' dresses)



and Mike will be wearing this sunny little guy here :)



And of course Mike will be wearing his beloved beanie. He has barely taken that thing off since I met him. It's become a part of him (in a sense). It's part of his personality. And though some more conservative people think it's silly that he is going to wear the beanie, I wouldn't have it any other way :)


The adventures of Mike's hat:


Wearing his hat at the beach where he took me on my 18th birthday


While celebrating my sister's birthday at Big Al's


Being goofballs on our friend's couch


Playing guitar AMAZINGLY I might add :) (isn't he the hottest man alive?)


While leaping over buildings in a single bound


In Portland for my Christmas present


Making our epically awesome pizza


Whilst getting eaten alive by the waves


During our engagement shoot :)


While biting his fiances apparently delicious and nutritious face


While attempting to ride a wave runner BOTH OF OUR FIRST TIMES I MIGHT ADD!!!
He almost lost it there :P that would have been tragic :(

And that is why he is wearing his beanie. The end.

You Are Cordially Invited

YAY OUR INVITATIONS ARE FINALLY IN THE MAIL!! :)

So they are about three weeks late....but they're out and that's all that matters.

And you know what that means :)

I can finally reveal to you the whole AWESOME package!! If you remember the last post about the invites, I had stuff blurred out and pictures cropped. We didn't want you all to get any sneak peeks. But now, I'm here to expose all!

BEHOLD!!!



The complete package :)

With invitation, cute little rsvp card, cute little directions card and cute (even littler) registry card.

Here's a close up of our invitations :)


you can click on it to get a larger view. It's still hard to read the way small stuff...but you're just going to have to wait to get your invite, now aren't you?

I'm so excited to start getting the rsvps back :)

Flower Power

I'm sure that's never been used before.

I'm not going to lie, when I first started planning the wedding, flowers were prolly the last things on my mind. Don't get me wrong, I love flowers, I think they are beautiful, I was just more focused on other things. The dress, the decorations, THE GROOM!! :) Plus, flowers are so temporary. Most cost a lot of money, then within a couple days they are wilted, dried out or just plain dead.

My sister had us bridesmaids carry fake flowers and I liked that idea. The calla lilies looked great, didn't even look fake. So, I went to the website my sister went to (bloomedtolast.com) and emailed the woman with a picture of the bouquet I wanted. She emailed back quickly and gave me a quote. For my bouquet and my five bridesmaids bouquets it would be around 220 dollars. Hmm...okay. I also checked out another website Afloral.com. They sold wholesale silk flowers so we bought a bunch for centerpieces. They just got here the other day and I was pleasantly pleased with what I saw. I even made a few mock ups for you to see :)





I also used afloral for the flowers for the boutonnieres and corsages. I spent about four hours making them last night :P


(I don't know why it uploaded sideways)
Anyway, the mini sunflowers are for the parents and grandparents, the regular sunflowers for the groomsmen and the anemone for mike.

Even though they looked a little fake, I didn't mind. As long as my bouquets didn't look bad.

Then I got the sample kit from bloomedtolast...





hmm don't those look familiar. Bloomedtolast get their flowers from afloral......yikes.

And so I've decided that I'm not going to go with bloomedtolast, but rather have real flowers for the bouquets. I'm hoping to find a local florist that can recreate my bouquet.

In case you were wondering, here's what I want..



I'm not sure what will be in season and if we can maybe substitute some flowers for others that are in season. If not, I'll just have to think of something else.

:P

50 DAYS TO GO!!!

AAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!!! IT'S SO CLOSE I CAN ALMOST TASTE IT!!!

:)

Okay...time to calm down again.

and then GET ALL EXCITED AGAIN BECAUSE MY DRESS IS HERE AND I GOT TO PUT IT ON FOR THE FIRST TIME!!!!!!!!!!

:)

and bringin it back down...

but seriously. I'M GETTING MARRIED IN 7 WEEKS!!!!!!

:)

Anyway, back to the dress. So today, I went to our local bridal boutique to try on my dress. I'm not going to lie, I picked this dress out without looking at any other dresses. I was looking for a specific dress I saw in a dream so my eyes completely passed over every other dress I saw until I found this one. Very hasty decision. AND THEN I decide after the dress is already ordered and the first half is already paid, that I regret getting the dress and that I wish I would have gone for a more form fitting dress with lace. I felt so terrible :( There was a night when Mike and I were laying on the couch and I just started crying because I didn't like my dress but I couldn't change the order because my parents were paying for it and they wouldn't get the first half of the money back and it would be a hassle. I thought I was going to have to wear a dress I didn't like just to make things easier for everyone else.

I felt so bad.

But slowly, I began to picture the wedding day. Picture me in my dress. Walking up the aisle. Dancing with Mike. Slowly, I began to realize that the day wasn't all about the dress. So I put the feelings aside and sucked it up.

And then I got the call last week that my dress was here. I got the appointment for today and met up there with my aunt and granny (mom and sister are at work) and I tried on my dress. Just a little side note: The floor samples that I had tried on prior to ordering my dress were sizes 10 and 14. I'm a size 4. So that prolly added to the uneasiness. But today I got to try on the dress again in the right size and let me tell you, as soon as I saw myself in my dress. MY dress. All doubt, all worry, all second thoughts left me. I fell absolutely head over heels for it again :) YAAAAY!!!


and I would show pictures....but I can't risk Mike seeing them. But you will definitely see it at the wedding...which is IN 50 DAYS!!!!!!!!!!!

Let There Be Light

Almost all weddings have a theme. Country chic, Classic, Garden party. I've heard of circus themed weddings. Which brings me to this blog's topic. Our theme.

The ceremony doesn't have much of a theme. Although the ceremony is, in my opinion, the most important part of a wedding (duh, you can't have a wedding without a ceremony) it is also the shortest part of a wedding. People come, sit down, watch you get married, get up, go to the reception. There's not a lot of down time to notice the smaller details that make up a themed ceremony. So, for the ceremony we will just have simple decorations, some aisle liners and an arch and that's about it.

The reception is where it's at :) Our reception will start right after the ceremony is over, it will still be pretty light out (it'll be around 5:30 or so) but according to google, the sun will set around 8 o clock, around the time the real dancing starts. Enter theme. We will be having a light themed reception (hence the title)

The decorations (so far) include:
white christmas lights
tea light lanterns (DIY)
tiki torches
these awesome yarn ball lanters (DIY later post)
glow stick bracelets
sparklers

Mike and I are trying to come up as many different ways to light up the place as possible. This might include a 30 foot tall light heart if we can figure out how to make one. :P

Have any ideas? Let me know!

DIY 5: tea light lanterns

So Mike and I just can't seem to get enough of DIY projects. Let's make a little list, shall we?

In no real order

1. cake topper
2. sign for engagement shoot
3. little painted pictures to go on tables
4. card box
5. tea bag favors
6 . flower petals
7. hair flowers for bridesmaids
8. Designed invites
And we still have two months to go. haha. We're a little driven.

How about a list of things we still want to do.

1. Birch arch
2. centerpieces
3. Programs

I'm sure there's more. We just haven't come up with it yet.

Anyway, adding to our list of DIY projects done (or almost done, really)

My sister got about a BAZILLION little battery powered tealight candles.

You know, these things.



They're cute and little and even flicker like real candles.

And they were just sitting there in my sister's room collecting dust...okay not really...but I mean, come on, they were screaming at me to be used. And so Mike and I came up with a cute idea very similar to this...




So, we went to Joann's, the go to place for all our crafty crazy DIY needs, and bought about 15 sheets of vellum, 8 rolls of ribbon, a box of 300 zots (those things are awesome) and double stick tape and then GOT TO WORK!!!



err........entertained ourselves for a bit with the lights...
....Mike looks real creepy. Not gonna lie.
BUT THEN WE GOT TO WORK!!!



tealights: check


strips of vellum (we got three from each sheet): check

....other supplies: check.

Instead of wrapping the vellum around the tealights themselves like we originally planned to do, we decided to make bases for each little lantern. That way we could make them bigger. So Mike made little bases.



Don't they remind you faintly of a childhood fad?


(the pokemon, Koffing)

On a side note: While we cut out our little koffing shaped bases, I couldn't help but say "koffing" in the pokemon's voice every so often. I tried to get Mike to let me put in my only pokemon video, but he said no....psh.

After cutting out all the bases, we stuck the little tealights on, the big hole was for the switch and the tiny holes for the little legs to stick out of, and wrapped the vellum around the base, creating a basic looking mini lantern





We turned all the lights off to see how they looked.


I'd say they passed the test


That's supposed to be Mike's eye right above the lantern.

They still looked pretty boring though, so we decided to use the ribbon to spruce em up a bit.
Still it lacked something, so we did a little stamp action.




And VOILA!! :) Our cute little lanterns are ALMOST complete. We stopped for the night though because my poor little wild man was tired. But tomorrow, hopefully, we'll use fishing line to string them together to get the look we want.

I can't wait to see these bad boys (and girls) at our reception. It's crazy doing all these little projects and imagining what they will be like at the wedding.

AAAHHH I'M GETTING MARRIED!!!!!!!

:)