Peoria, IL

Engagement Story

Coming up to our 4 year anniversary we were getting so much crap about getting married. Well my FI told me that he couldn't afford a ring so I didn't expect anything. On the night we celebrated our anniversary we were going to exchange Christmas presents and also anniversary presents. I dressed up, which I hardly ever do and it took much longer than my FI anticipated. I gave him my gift and then he opened one. I opened another, then after I thought we were done he went to his jacket and said I have something else for you. I was like ok...girls we know jewelry... it was a necklace box. So I didn't think too much of it. I opened it and there inside was a kinda ugly necklace. Well definitely not my style. I was like it is great. Then after a couple minutes he was like well if you don't like this you can have this instead. He pulled out the necklace form from the box and taped to the back of it was the ring. I was so shocked! He told me he couldn't afford, I wasn't expecting it at all. Of course he took it and got down on one knee in front of me, and the rest is history.

Attire

I finally got the chance to try on my dress. I had it on at my FMIL’s house and as you can see there is construction going on in the background. Every time I look at it I fall in love with it all over again. I bought a 3-hoop crinoline off of Ebay for $30 that makes it so full and puffy.

I am so not the typical bride when it comes to my bridal party. I told them that I don’t care what color they wear or even what dress. I want them to all feel and look fabulous on this day. They liked apple red from davids bridal the best so far. Each will be wearing a different dress and guess what… don’t care what jewelry or shoes they wear. gasp

Hair Styles

Shoes

I finally found shoes! I seriously was getting very upset because I just didn’t think that it would be so hard. I went up to Schaumburg (IL) yesterday to visit my dad and go to a Crate and Barrel. BTW: I was introduced to DSW too… OMG, I could drop a pretty penny there, but had the FI with so no fun shoe shopping. We left Woodfield and by chance stopped by the Famous Footwear by Old Navy. Tried on some lifestrides- uncomfortable and not that pretty. So I went back and looked at the clearance section – size 7.5 Nine West shoes, fit perfectly, white satin… pics below. Only $30!

Flowers

I love flowers. I think that I have finally narrowed down my ideas for flowers. At first I was going to do mixed bouquets of freesia, roses, mini gerberas, stock, and spray roses. Then I thought it would be too expensive so I was going to use the same colors and do all roses. Well I priced it up again and it is only $2 different to do the mix bouquets. So they are back on. But I need a little help with the centerpieces. We have 17 20" eiffel tower vases (bought at www.bridaldiscountstore.com for $5.25 each). We want to use Stargazer lilies. Not sure what the filler green should be- the pictures below have orchids in them. They are just not practical so do you know of another filler flower that is similar to orchids? The flowers in our bouquets will be hot pink roses (Ravel), mini orange gerbera daisies, yellow freesia, red roses (charlotte), and instead of stock I am going to substitute in blooms off of our butterfly bushes (smells SO good!). Also I want to have 5 blooms in my bouqet (white or yellow) to signify the 5 years that my FI and I have been together. Should I use roses or mini gerbera daisies?

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Ceremony

We are hoping that our ceremony will be very unique and us . We are writing the entire thing ourselves with the help of suggested materials from our officiant. Our ceremony will be held at the local botanical gardens so we won’t need many decorations at all. Of course to go along with everything else that I am doing, there will be quite a few DIY details including the bubbles and program fans.
Favorite Ceremony Ideas Site

Ceremony Site

Readings

Blessing for a Marriage
by James Dillet Freeman
May your marriage bring you all the exquisite excitement marriage should bring, and may life grant you also patience, tolerance, and understanding.
May you always need one another - not so much to fill your emptiness as to help you to know your fullness. A mountain needs a valley to be complete; the valley does not make the mountain less, but more; and the valley is more a valley because it has a mountain towering over it.
May you need one another, but not out of weakness. May you want one another, but not out of lack. May you entice one another, but not compel one another. May you embrace one another, but not out encircle one another. May you succeed in all important ways with one another, and not fail in the little graces. May you look for things to praise, often say, "I love you!" and take no notice of small faults.
If you have quarrels that push you apart, may both of you hope to have good sense enough to take the first step back.
May you enter into the mystery which is the awareness of one another's presence - no more physical than spiritual, warm and near when you are side by side, and warm and near when you are in separate rooms or even distant cities.
May you have happiness, and may you find it making one another happy. May you have love, and may you find it loving one another.

Ceremony Decorations

Here are some DIY pictures of ceremony items. I might be pulling my hair out in a month trying to hand cut out the program fans, but I think that they are awesome and totally worth it. Of course I thought that with my DIY invites too! LOL

Reception Site

Cakes

My FMIL will be doing a dessert table for us. We will not be forcing wedding cake on everyone. Instead after our sit-down dinner we will cut our small cake, being made by friend of FMIL, and let people come up and choose their own dessert. We will have of cheesecakes, layer cakes, and maybe some other deserts. I want our cake to be pretty simple because it is just for the cake cutting ceremony.

Favors

We will be making CD favors for our guests. We both love music so it is very appropriate. I am also thinking about getting water bottles and putting a name/date lable on them for the ceremony. It might be pretty hot. We will also have a rose at each place setting for our guests.

DIY Stuff

Our Save the Date magnets went out around Christmas. I think that they were a huge hit. A dose of reality (even though knotties see them all the time doesn’t mean your guests have ever seen them). I also had a friend working on some things for me, but she has flaked out. Originally she was going to design a monogram. Never happened. Then she was going to help me design my invitations, which never happened. Finally I told her I definitely wanted her to design my CD labels. She hasn’t returned my phone calls, emails, text messages and so I am taking it into my own hands *unfortunately. I really wanted to get her involved in the planning of my wedding; we used to be much better friends

DIY Stationary

I fell in love with pocketfold invitations, but not the price so I figured out a way to make them myself (from scratch). I bought large sheets of kimono red Strathmore artist paper from Michaels (25.5” X 19”). I took it to Kinkos to have cut into 5 ¾” X 19” strips. I scored the folds using my Fiskers rotary cutter (scoring blade). I used some of the scrap paper to make little folded “tents” to use as a go-between for the base and folder of the pocketfold. Sorry if this makes no sense, but I have included pictures below. I bought white cardstock from Walmart for $10. I bought the metallic backing at a half off scrapbooking sale at Michaels. I still have to buy my envelopes, which I will get from Envelopemall.com. All in all, the project will cost $180. The cheapest I have found only the pocketfold for is $1.53. So I am saving a bunch.

I have been trying to work on the invites for a while now and boy am I glad that I started so early. I have the reception card and RSVP done. I am working on the direction cards now. I also have to attach the invites to the pocketfolds. My FSIL borrowed our camera cord so I can’t put pictures up until I get it back… but we are making progress slowly but surely.(br>
We have the camera cord back now and I have made a lot of progress on the invites. The backing layer and the invite card are attached. I used a method similar to PatricksAngel. Also I have the inserts done. There is an RSVP card, Directions (2 sides), a Reception card, with Accommodations info on the back. Since there is so much construction going on around town I printed out a full size map and then photocopied it. I will fold it and put it in the pocket as well.

What I have left to do is to work on the pocketfold closers. I am going to make the ‘name tag’ portion look very similar to the invite card. There will be a silver backing piece and then the names will be surrounded by a colorful border just like on the invites. Just an FYI: I used CopperplGoth BT and Young Love as my fonts.
I am finally finished with my invitations sort of. All I have left to do is address the envelopes and put the stamp on it. I have 3 weeks to do this. Lessons learned from this so far is that I love my invites, but I am very thankful that I had an 18 month engagement in order to work on them when I felt like it instead of having to do them all at once. I would have gone insane and skipped some things if I didn’t have the time. There are pictures of most of the finished product below (except for the envelope). My next big project will be making the program fans!

Here is a picture of the inspiration for my pocketfolds; sorry I'm not sure who it is from.


Here is a picture of the finished pocketfold


I had the large sheets of paper cut into 5.75


I used my Fiskers scoring blade to make the folds.


I folded up the first flap in order to measure for the second score.


Then I measured the end (folder flap) and cut off the excess and here is the result.


Next I took some scraps and cut them to 1/2


I used the scoring blade to fold them in half.


Here is a picture of the invited ready to be put together.


Then I used rubber cement on the invite and on the little folded pieces.


By the time I had put the glue on all 8 places it was tacky enough to attach the folded paper and close (seal) the folder part.


Here is a side view of the pocket. There is the base the folded rectangle and then the top of the folder.


This is a practice piece of paper with the stamp embossed. I ended up embossing the vellum that wil be used to close the invites and the flap where the folder is. Here is my new inspiration for my invites. I bought this wheel stamp at a Stampin Up home party. I have a 1" vellum band that I will close the invites with that I put this stamp on. I also will use it as a theme within my invites. More pics to come as soon as i find my damn digital camera cord ;-)


Here is a picture of the insert cards. I put a silver border around the front-side edges to spruce them up a bit.


Here is our RSVP post card. I struggled with this a little bit because we want to have place cards that will indicate to the caterer what type of meal people chose. If there was just a check mark next to a choice how were we supposed to know who chose what? It gets even more complicated when it is for a family… not just a couple. Uggh. I think we came up with an ok solution though. We will see!.


Here is a our reception card. I wanted to do this because if I would have put the info on the invite it looked too crowded.


Here is the back of the reception card. It has Accommodation info.


Here is a picture of the inserts in the folder. For some reason Shutterfly is cutting off the top portion of my picture. After 4 attempts to resize it in Photoshop, resave, and re-upload, I give up. Sorry :-)


Here is the invite without any inserts.


Here is a close up of the insert card. Once again, shutterly has cut off the top of the picture.


Here is a picture of the invite opened and the belly band sitting next to it.


This is what the invitation will look like when a person pulls it out of the envelope. The name tag is taking place of the inner envelope. The tag itself matches the invite card with the silver backing and colorful band around the edge.


Here is a close up of the belly band and name tag.

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Monograms

I am not sure exactly where I will use these yet, but I think that they are beautiful. Thanks to fellow knottie, mandy3505! I am thinking of using one behind the invite wording and the other as possibly the seal to close the pocketfold.

Monogram1 from AME3505, Thanks!


Monogram2 from AME3505, Thanks!

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Reception Decorations

I haven’t gotten too far into planning this part of my wedding yet. My FMIL promised us the centerpieces from a friend of hers. I am going to have candles and rose petals on the tables to add color to the decorations. I also like the color coordinated place cards borrowed from a knottie (thanks!).

This is how I envision my place cards looking (coordinated by meal).

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Mayan Riviera, Mexico

Grand Palladium Resorts

Apple Vacations

Mayan Riviera Tourist Site

We have finally decided on our honeymoon spot! We were originally looking to go to Aruba because it is outside of the hurricane belt, but we found that we just couldn’t afford what we wanted to do. So we decided instead on going to the Mayan Riviera in Mexico where almost every single resort has gotten a wonderful rating. We will be in a junior suite in the Grand Palladium resort for 10 days.

This is an aerial shot of the resort.

This what the lobby looks like.


This is a possible room view, we will be in junior suite.

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Dakota

Dakota was my birthday present a year and a half ago. She is so sweet with us, but she also lets us know if a stranger is close by. She has such a great personality, and facial expressions.

I finally put a better picture of her in my bio!

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