You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘wedding’ tag.
Since I’m WAY too lazy to upload all of these photos to Facebook (actually, I never turn my home computer on long enough to do that) I figured I’d share them through my blog.
We went to Bermuda after our wedding for a 7 day cruise with Celebrity! I’m wishing I was still on the ship!
Enjoy!
Click here to view photos
My brother and sister are very important to me. Out of everyone in my life, they’ve been my strongest supporters. For that reason, I wanted to get them something special to thank them at my wedding for everything they’ve done.
My favorites 🙂
I have to admit, it was not easy choosing something that would express to them how much they meant to me. I wanted something deeply personal, that could reflect what the three of us have shared. In my mind, I had a vision of a special frame with a quote that demonstrates how much we mean to each other. I searched for a long time online, but was severely disappointed with the options. A lot of places didn’t leave enough space for personalization, or added hokey messages that meant nothing to us.
I finally found Personalization Mall, and I’m so happy I did! The options on the site were a bit overwhelming, but I was just glad to have choices! I chose the Personalized 5 Photo Collage Canvas with Frame. This allowed 4 rows of personalization up to 20 characters each, along with another inscription that could have our names. It was really exactly what I was looking for, already packaged in a frame so I didn’t have to spend extra money to find the perfect one.
Sample of the frame I bought
I do have to admit, uploading photos to the site was difficult. I wanted to use some baby pictures, and scanning them in and altering them to be the right fit for the site took forever. I chose the black and white option, because I honestly was afraid of how the pictures would look. I had nightmares that it would be low quality. Once all the pictures were uploading, the online tool walks you through cropping them and arranging them in pre-determined spots. Also a bit of a difficult task, making the images I wanted fit. However, with Jared’s help, I finished it up and was able to submit the order.
I was truly impressed with how beautiful these were. Delivery was timely and they were packaged very securely, ensuring they wouldn’t get roughed up before I had the chance to present them. Kelly and Mark seemed to like them a lot!
I had such a positive experience with this site! If you’re looking for something truly personal and special, this is really the best place to get the job done.
Here’s a confession: I’ve never had my hair or makeup done before. Yes, it’s true. At the tender age of 26, I’d never gone to a salon to have hair or makeup done for an event. So, needless to say, choosing someone to take care of this on one of the most photographed days of my life was a big deal. However, I’m happy to say I chose the best two ladies in the business!
I found My Cinderella’s Dream where else but TheKnot.com. I got in touch with Mari who I liked right off the bat. She provided all the information I needed in a timely fashion to make the best decision possible. At the time, I wasn’t sure about makeup, and Mari never pressured me to add this as a service, which I appreciated. Her prices were fair, and she wasn’t going to charge me a fee to come to The Madison Hotel to help us out! Furthermore, her son went to Susquehanna, so it was pretty much a match made in heaven!
Getting my hair done and my makeup touched up!
I had my bridal trial with Mari in December. She was so wonderful and patient with me. I had just switched jobs, so I ended up having to reschedule my trial and had to leave early the day she came to get back to work, but Mari got the job done quickly, efficiently, and exactly how I imagined it! By this time, I had decided to go with makeup, so I scheduled a makeup trial with her partner, Rita. Rita did a great job listening to my fears that my makeup would look too heavy. We had a great trial, and even later when I emailed Mari to ask if the eyes could be a bit lighter day of, Mari and Rita understood and were very accommodating.
The day of the wedding, we had a blast getting hair and makeup done! I had booked a conference room at the hotel so we’d have lots of room. Mari and Rita went right to work at 6:30 and we were all camera ready by around 9:15! There were 8 of us that needed hair done, and I was the only one that had makeup. I couldn’t believe how quick they worked! All of my girls were very pleased with how things came out. My mom even remarked that she’d never seen someone take a picture of a hairstyle and replicate it on someone’s hair. All of my bridesmaids got compliments on how great their hair looked-even from the guys, who hardly notice that stuff! Finally, everyone kept remarking on how natural my makeup looked, which was exactly what I had wanted!
Some great handiwork!
Mari and Rita and truly a dream to work with. From the trial to the wedding day, I couldn’t have asked for a better group of ladies to help me and my girls look fantastic on my wedding day. Thanks so much, Mari and Rita!
There are a lot of things people tell you about weddings. Anyone who has been a bride or groom can back me up on that. In fact, that was probably the most annoying part about planning a wedding-everyone who had already been there, done that always thought they knew the best way to do things. When you’re dealing with someone like me who doesn’t ever leave the house without her trusty planners and binders, the advice thing got a bit annoying after awhile. After all, every wedding is different. For that reason, I’m not really too keen on dishing out advice unless someone specifically asks for it.
So, this is not my post-wedding advice write-up. This is a summary of the things I liked most about our day. Yes, they do have to do with details we had planned and it’s possible other people could use this as advice, but everyone is different!
1.) Just Say No to Bridal Isolation: I don’t really believe in the old fashioned way of running the wedding day. Well, I shouldn’t say that. I knew I didn’t want Jared to see me until I walked down the aisle. But, that didn’t mean I didn’t want anyone else but the bridal party and the moms to see me either. We booked a room at the hotel downstairs for hair and makeup, and I wanted as many of my close friends and family in and out as possible. Not only did it keep me calm, but it also allowed me to spend some wonderful time with the people I love most before the day got too crazy. I truly cherish everyone who stopped by to see me that morning and made the day peaceful through their presence.
2.) Non-Bridal Party Helpers: Where would we be without Sharon and Owen?? I’m a control freak. For that reason, I needed to know that someone other than my girls and Jared’s guys could be out there helping us in the event I needed something and couldn’t leave the room. Sharon and Owen were invaluable in that regard. They had a strong pulse on what was going on for the wedding, but were far enough removed that they could see things we might be missing. Without them behind the scenes organizing things that I couldn’t do that day, I don’t think I would have gotten compliments like “you were the calmest bride I’ve ever seen.” Appointing people to help you out on the day of the wedding that are outside the direct bridal party was probably the best decision I made!
3.) Bride and Groom Quiet Time: As everyone knows the wedding day is a whirlwind. Jared and I were so crazy busy the night before that we didn’t even get to say goodbye to each other after the rehearsal dinner! Since I wasn’t seeing him until we stood together at the front of the ceremony room, we obviously had a lot to catch up on. I don’t know who orchestrated this, but someone put us in a meeting room in the hotel alone while the bridal party and parents attended the end of the cocktail hour and just let us catch up. It was very refreshing to have that time alone to catch our breaths and share our thoughts on how beautiful everything was.
I have a lot of catching up to do with reviewing vendors and our honeymoon experience, so you haven’t seen the end of the wedding posts from me quite yet!
Last week I got lazy and forgot to post. Sorry. No excuse! So, this week we’ll continue with our best of series. This week, we’re talking about my favorite topic-staying organized! As I’ve written before, there are so many details to keep track of when it comes to planning a wedding, that if you’re not on top of your game, even the biggest pieces can fall through the cracks.
Google Docs: I don’t think I need to go on and on again about my love for Google Docs. This is literally the best planning tool out there for people that prefer not to keep 10 million printouts of un-finalized things! Jared and I are still using this, even up to 2 weeks before, for final changes to guest lists, seating arrangements, itineraries, and even e-mails we’re drafting to send to friends. Life saver!
Accordion File Folder: Even though I’m more of an Internet doc girl myself, there are many reasons to keep paper files, such as contracts, receipts, etc. I bought this accordion folder from The Container Store awhile back, and it’s seriously been my life line. Love it! I organized mine into a few different categories: “The Madison, Reception, Bride, Registry, Misc.” etc. Really helps when we can’t figure out what we actually included in our photo package, for instance, to not have to sort through emails.
TheKnot.com Checklist: Fellow brides, I know you’ve all been there with me-that moment of panic when you’re absolutely sure you’re forgetting to do something major? The planning checklist on The Knot has been my saving grace in that sense, with it’s simple yet comprehensive task list that I can add to as we go. Reminds me that maybe I do have my act together after all!
Brides Magazine Checklist: Brides Magazine was one of my favorites when I still felt the need to read bridal magazines. In each issue, they have a tear out checklist that has been super helpful. Even though I have The Knot, I think it’s always good to have 2, just to make sure you’re covering all your bases.
Response Card Box: Nothing fancy here, just a shoe-box type item that Jared and I used to store all of the responses we got to our wedding invitation. Once we had received most of them, I organized them according to the way our list was laid out. This allowed us to do a quick cross-check to make sure we had included everyone we had response cards for. Simple, but still super effective for ensuring no one is left out.
And finally, last but not least: anyone who has ever worked with me before knows that I am the queen of the written out “to-do” list. Whether it’s a daily or weekly list, having your tasks right in front of you at all times cuts down on the amount of time it takes us to figure out what needs to be done. So, grab that pen, and start that list! The sooner you start, the sooner you’ll be able to check that box and move on 🙂
So Many Products...So Little Time
Time to switch it up for Features Friday. I have to admit, as we get closer to the wedding, the less time I spend looking at Web sites about weddings. (Between you, my readers, and me, I’m kind of sick of thinking about the wedding!) So, it’s time to pay homage to my secret weapons: the beauty products, workout plans, planning tools, foods, etc. that have kept me sane during this past year. But, there’s too many for one post. So let’s start with beauty. Without further ado…
Clearasil Stay Clear Daily Face Wash: I tested this product back in October and haven’t looked back! I’m not saying I don’t still get breakouts during the usual times, but it definitely helps keep my face clear in between!
Neutrogena 2-in-1 Fight and Fade Gel: I can’t say enough good things about this product. I’ve never used something that seems to work so quickly! Although I do think my skin is starting to get a bit immune to it (if that’s even possible) it still helps me stay worry free about major breakout issues on wedding day.
Mary Kay Medium Coverage Foundation: Best foundation I’ve ever used. More expensive than I’d like to pay, but as far as offering the best coverage without making my face too cakey, this foundation wins! I always feel like a little goes a long way, providing smooth coverage and taking care of redness and acne scarring. Good stuff.
Hypnotic Poison: I’m sure I’ve written about this before, but I have a major love affair with this perfume. It reminds me of summers in DC when Jasmine High got me hooked on it….love it. I can assure you I’ll be wearing it on my wedding day!
Crest Whitening Expressions: Another product that costs more than it should, but I can’t get enough of the Cinnamon and Vanilla flavors of this toothpaste. They seriously leave my teeth feeling free and minty for hours. And I’m pretty obsessed with my teeth…
Neutrogena Oil-Free Acne Wash Pink Grapefruit Foaming Scrub: I don’t really think this is meant to be used the way I use it, but I exfoliate every Wednesday and Sunday, and this provides a gentle exfoliation and leaves my skin unbelievably smooth.
That about wraps it up for my opinion of the best of the best. Fellow brides and former brides, what are your thoughts? What helped you stay beautiful for the big day and beyond?
I’ll be the first to admit that there are a lot of things related to wedding planning that I think are a waste of money. Rehearsal dinner invitations were kind of in that boat for me. After all, the bridal party knows they are attending, as do our parents, so what’s the point? However, being the eternal planner that I am, I wanted some of our other ceremony VIPs to have an invitation so they had everything in writing. Also, we wanted to invite our officiant, so I set a small $75 budget for the invites.
My first plan of attack was Target to see if they had any invitations that might work for a rehearsal dinner. They let me down. So, the online search began. I checked out a few sites, but once I added in shipping and the like, the cost was way over what we set aside. I was getting pretty frustrated, and almost bagged the whole idea, but then I came across Wedding Paper Divas.
I know some of you designers might be cringing right now. “Eek, she used an online site and now these invites won’t match her exact theme and colors!” Valid point-if I cared about that stuff. 😉 Wedding Paper Divas is the ultimate site for self-service invites. They had a whole section for rehearsal dinner invitations-it was kind of hard to choose! Each invite had color options and font options on top of that, as well as a number of options for quantity. That was the other issue I had with some of the other sites-we only needed 20 invites, and some of the other sites only offered fixed packages. These were fixed as well, but I thought the numbers counted up in reasonable increments.
When you create an invite with Wedding Paper Divas, it’s basically plug and play: they ask you to fill out a form with the information needed on the invite. Then, you get an online preview with your own information put in. You can adjust font, size, anything you want, really. Your order comes with envelopes, however, you also have the option to have the envelopes pre-printed with a return address (for a few extra dollars). After you order (using an online coupon code, no less) they send you a proof via email to ensure everything is accurate before they are printed!
I was extremely impressed with the quality and quick turnaround time of Wedding Paper Divas. Even though we didn’t work with them for all of our invitations, I still felt like it stayed close to our theme without costing us an arm and a leg.
Yay for checking this off the list!
Like any husband and wife to be, Jared and I simply could not wait to start receiving RSVPs for our wedding. There seriously is nothing more fun about the whole invite process than starting to receive responses back from your guests. However, with these RSVPs comes a responsibility to make sure our final numbers are accurate and that our list doesn’t leave anyone out!
I know that it’s the usual to have the response cards go back to the family that is hosting the reception. However, me being me, I wanted them to come to us. After all, we’ll be doing the seating chart, ordering items based on the number of guests, doing the escort cards, etc., and I didn’t really like the idea of having someone else keeping tabs on the RSVPs besides me. That way, if I make a mistake, it’s mine to claim and there is no blame to go around.
This is once again where Google Docs has come in handy for us. Unfortunately, Jared was sent to Prague for work the week we started receiving responses. Since the document was shared on Google Docs, he was able to access it from halfway across the country and share in my excitement over the responses. Here’s the process I use when we receive a response card:
1.) I created a separate tab in our Google Doc called “RSVPs”. In this spreadsheet, I have a numbered list of “yes” and “no” responses. While our guest list tabs were separated out by whose side the people were from and batched as families/couples, I wanted our RSVP list to have each individuals name next to a number so we could quickly determine how many people we needed to plan for.
2.) As the response cards came in, I wrote each individual’s name in the RSVP tab under Yes or No. For instance, if the “Smith Family” responded, each family member would get their own line to keep the numbers accurate.
3.) Etiquette states that if you do not hear from guests a few weeks before the wedding, you need to call them. Instead of scrambling around trying to compare our RSVP list with the 6 or 7 other tabs in our guest list document, I decided to code people on our individual tabs as well. So, after a person went on the RSVP list, I cross checked it with our Full Guest list tab. Yes responses were highlighted in green, while No’s were highlighted in Red. Since our guest list is divided out by Groom’s Mom’s Side, Groom’s Dad Side, Bride’s Mom’s Side, Bride’s Friends, etc., this gives us an easy reference to hand off to the people that need to make phone calls without having to cross check lists and miss anyone.
4.) After I’ve entered the RSVP into the computer, I put them in a box. Once April 22 (our cutoff date) comes around, we will go through the box and make sure each RSVP has been entered correctly.
Just call me the Google Bride…. 🙂
How about some good old fashioned Friday fun? One of my friends had this posted on her Facebook this week, and I think as brides we sometimes need to take a step back to laugh as the countdown gets closer.
Enjoy these Tacky Weddings!
Disclaimer: What some consider tacky, others might consider wonderful. View at your own risk of insult to your taste.
I’ve gone and done it again. Broken the cardinal rule of blogging, and ignored my little web diary here, blaming it all on the fact that I’ve been busy! Not that it’s any excuse. I will admit, the past few months have been a little hard with all of the changes I’ve been going through work wise, etc. But, we’re back…
Instead of featuring a site this Friday, I thought I’d take the time to update ya’all on where we are with our wedding. In case it escaped anyone’s attention, we’re only 2 months away!! So, here’s the high level run-down.
1.) Ceremony: Written with help from our officiant.
2.) Invitations: Sent! A cool story about the invitations: Jared, my mom, my sister, Owen and I addressed and put these together at the same table my mom and aunt did their wedding invitations! How cool is that??
3.) Honeymoon: Booked! Now on to figuring out which excursions are worth it…
4.) Dress and Accessories: Dress is starting to really fit well! Unfortunately for me, they had to take it in again, which means I have to be uber careful. Going to hopefully pick it up for good the end of this month! Thanks so much to the ladies at Alfred Angelo for all of your love and support. It’s been so great working with you!
5.) Hair and Makeup: Had both trials. Still determining if the makeup is too much. Might have to dial it back down a bit…
6.) Rehearsal Dinner: Menu chosen!
All in all, we’re in great shape for not having to rush anything at the last minute. Thanks to everyone who has helped us get here! We’ll keep you posted!
Adventure Ales and Trails 
What do people think of my posts?