My obsession with these flats is taking over my life. I cannot find them in white or gold in my size and I'm going nuts over it! If anyone can find these Jeffery Campbell flats in a size 8 somewhere I'll be forever grateful.

Hotel Shuttle - Need feedback!

So I picked the hotel and am in the process of setting up the room blocks/shuttle services. The hotel will offer a shuttle service for my guests, but the shuttle only holds 14 ppl, so I'm not sure how many people are actually going to be staying at the hotel AND using the shuttle. Here are my options for shuttle usage:

Option 1:
Offering 2 runs from the reception to the hotel at the end of the night
can transport 30 people

Option 2:
Offering a run from the hotel to the reception site AND a run from the reception to the hotel at the end of the night
Can transport 15 people
-this option would involve those staying at the hotel driving independently to the ceremony, stopping back at the hotel after the ceremony and getting on the shuttle to the reception

Option 3:
Offering 2 Shuttle runs to the Ceremony, then 2 Shuttle runs to the reception, then 2 shuttle runs to the reception
Can transport 30 people
This would be the easiest for our guests


My biggest concern is how many people we'll have staying at the hotel. If it's more than 30, than we'll have to work something else out regarding the shuttles. Also, are people going to even use the shuttle?

BM dresses

I FINALLY decided on BM dresses, so here they are. They'll all be in black and the girls are choosing which style they personally want to wear, so hopefully everyone is happy.

THE DRESS

Soooo I bought my wedding dress...!!!! Last Friday I went shopping with my mom, Jake's mom, and our sisters. I didn't really expect to find anything but I ended up falling in love with a dress! The whole experience was amazing and so much fun. I kind of can't believe its over already, but everytime I look at my dress I die with excitement :) I've taken to stalking it on the web... is this creepy? Maybe.

I'm not going to post any pics of me in the dress because I want a little bit of surprise at the wedding :) But I know everyone is curious so here are some shots of other brides in the dress...

This website features a whole wedding (which is fabulous FYI) and the bride is actually wearing my dress.

And here is a pic of another real bride, which shows the back of the dress

Ok I'll be honest. I am *this* close to packing up my life and moving to wherever the Martha Stewart offices are located. These are images from their crafts department storeroom...






SO MANY CRAFT SUPPLIES!!!! why do I not work here?

In other news...

I think we've found a photographer. Me and my mom met with him last night and I liked him a lot. Turns out he lived in the same dorm as me at OSU (not at the same time lol) and his wife teaches sunday school at our church. Go check out his work...

Kevin Keefer

Unless I decide to move into the Martha Stewart store room the wedding planning seems to be coming along quite nicely now :)

Long Tables

This post is mostly for my mom... so that she may see the goodness and beauty that is long tables...

I am in love with the look of long straight tables at the reception. Something about those round tables just doesn't speak to me. Long tables look much more sleek and make the room look less cluttered in my opinion. Plus, it opens up a lot more options in terms of table decorating and centerpieces. sigh.

Venue

We have finally settled on a venue. My mom put the deposit down today so it's official! I'm very excited about this place! Its super convenient, right off Polaris parkway and Old State Road. It's really pretty and seems a perfect size for the number of guests we have. Also, they have a huge stone fireplace in the entry that pretty much sold me. Also, as a side note, the Hilton Polaris runs a free shuttle from the venue to the hotel for those interested in drinking and not having to worry about driving.

I'm considering looking into blocking off some rooms as well as seeing about getting a hospitality suite for an after party. I'm not sure how many of our friends would be interested in getting rooms though? The guy who owns our venue said that usually when you reserve a wedding block and use the shuttle thing rooms are only about $100 a night, and I'm sure people could cram in?

Anyways, back to the venue. It is Little Bear Golf Club. I'm not super enthused about the name but I promise it doesn't look like a lodge! Another plus at this place is that we can bring in our own caterer. Since I've already fallen in love with caterer this is a must.

Here's some pics I stole from their website. I actually think it looks better in person than pictures... so here it is.

Dresses

I know I already posted about bridesmaids attire, but I haven't posted pictures of any dresses I actually like, so I thought I'd do it now :) I orignially thought strapless dresses, but after finding a million cute ones I might be changing my mind...

Calvin Klein


Found at Nordstroms



Adrianna Papell Ruffle Dress



Milly One Shoulder Satin Dress



Taylor Dresses Rosette Trim Halter




Donna Rico Satin Flounce Hem


Donna Rico One Shoulder Satin

Soooo here's some more possible save the dates. I may or may not have looked outside at the gently fallen snow and said... JAKE lets go outside and have a photo shoot! I kind of love winter picture save the dates for a winter wedding. The other photos I was using came from apple picking, the beach, and this summer. They are cute but don't match the season of our wedding! Please tell me if I'm totally crazy?

Save the Dates

So I'm thinking of sending Save the Dates... mostly because I think they are cute. Plus since our wedding is around Christmas, and we've changed the date a million times I want to give people a definite heads up in advance. Here's some that I'm considering... opinions?

Guest Book

I think the traditional guest book idea is pretty boring. I mean... just signing your name? What's the point. I found this cute alternative courtesy of Martha (love her). You could put up a sign instructing people to complete the sentences. Do you think people would really do this?

I'm back!

I haven't blogged in quite some time, but now i'm back! Things have been crazy the past month or so and wedding planning/blogging has definitely suffered.

Martha Stewart definitely has my heart when it comes to weddings. I found this cake on her website and i'm in LOVE. I hope I can find someone to recreate this beauty for me. The bulbs at the bottom are actually blown sugar...i mean. seriously. I just love how simple yet visually interesting the whole thing is.

inspiration board

Sparkler Love

These photos make me want sprinklers at our wedding sooo bad. What a super cute sendoff!

Best Tool Ever!

I recently made the best purchase ever. As you all know, I'm making paper flower garlands. My plan for said garlands is to create an entire wall of tissue paper flower goodness that will hang behind the head table. While I love how this project will turn out, it's a bit of a pain in the ass to do. Britney helped me fold about 80 of these the other night during SVU... I love her. In order to make the flowers I have to cut down each sheet into 12 smaller squares. You then put four squares together to make a flower. Considering I need to cover a 15x8ft section of wall, this equals a lot of tissue paper cutting. I've been working with scissors and its tedious and slow BUT enter the best purchase EVER:
THE ROTARY CUTTER AND SELF HEALING MAT!!!!!
















This tool has seriously made my life a million times easier. I cut all this in one hour while watching SVU!



For $14.99 this is a lifesaver.

I think I've found a direction to go with the bridemaids outfits. I definitely want all of the girls to wear black dresses, all different but similar in length/material. I'm seriously considering going to dresses with straps/sleeves since it will be winter and a little chilly. I know I want them all to wear cute heels, but I don't know if I want them to match. I am definitely leaning towards black dresses with gold accents/shoes. If I go with gold heels I think that they would almost have to be the same in order to get all the same color.




I'm also kind of in love with this dress and this dress. I don't know if they would really work for the wedding but maybe i'll just get one for myself?

Wedding Date Update

Alright. Here's the official not ever changing unless the world implodes, set in stone, enforced by Jake wedding date - December 11, 2010.

We did decide on March at first, as mostly a compromise. It made sense in my head, but the more I thought about a March wedding the more it didn't make sense in my heart. In case you all are wondering, here's how we ended up at this date.

We originally planned on getting married in August 2011 before we were even engaged. The plan was to get married when Jake was done with school and his licensing exam. As we moved closer to engagement and marriage, I realized that waiting another two years to get married just wasn't going to make me happy. Luckily Jake loves me and wants to marry me whenever so we moved to date to May 2011 so at least he was done with school.

May didn't exactly work because of the multitude of graduations and proms within the family that would almost definitely conflict with our chosen date and make life stressful.

We still felt that it was important to at least put off the wedding until Jake was comfortable fitting it in with his school obligations, so we knew we didn't want to get married in the summer or 2010. We tossed around the idea of a Christmas wedding as well as a random month wedding sometime between Dec and May. At the time Dec seemed like it would present way too many complications and settled on March because if I did decide to go back to school I would at least be on break. March 19 was just the compromised, sensible day so we went with it.

I've been thinking about it a lot, trying to decide what I really wanted for the wedding. My first choice would be a nice summer wedding, semi-outdoors, and smallish. That went out the window very quickly - summer of 2011 was too far out and summer 2010 seemed to too soon. To be honest, the only other wedding vision I kept coming back to was this white, winter wedding with a candle lit ceremony and lots of soft pretty touches. This, unfortunately didn't seem to fit with March.

After lots of thought, stress and deliberation I have decided to go with December. Jake told me the other day to just decide what I wanted and to do it, and just make it work no matter what. So here we are. I will be having white winter wedding with candle light and soft touches.

Also, this wedding date is now unmovable. Jake has assured me that he will not let me change it, and so it is now set in stone. I will begin working on our Save the Dates now and once they are done... no changing my mind!

So we've now started re-thinking about the wedding date. We are still toying with December 2010. We're thinking it would most likely need to be either December 11th or 18th (both saturdays) in order to have time to do a honeymoon, Christmas, and family Christmas stuff. Not sure if we could fit it all in though? If its not in December it is going to still be March 19th. I'm just afraid that if we move it to December we would run out of time to do both family's Christmas stuff as well as the wedding and honeymoon.
Any thoughts from the loyal readers?

Falling in love... again

So I was at the thrift store today and totally fell in love with milk glass!!!
I bought three vases for .50cents each!! At that price falling in love is even easier.

Here's some inspiration wedding pics with milk glass...

Tissue Paper Garlands

I found this idea online for tissue paper flowers, and thought it would be really pretty to make garlands from.
I have this vision of having an entire hanging wall of these flowers to make a really pretty, soft, and cheap! backdrop for the head table. I mocked one up in the apartment and I'm really happy with how it came out. I don't know if the photo does it justice, but here it is...



I'm also excited because I figure I can do this project way early and just store the flowers. i figured out that if I cut them and bundle them flat I can finish the majority of the work it takes to make these way in advance and just store them and finish fluffing them up closer to the wedding.