A Weighty Issue

Let me start by saying that I'm sure there will be at least one or two people that will read this post and probably want to punch me in the face...but I promise you this "problem" is not nearly as fun to have as you would think.

So I've always been a petite girl, I'm all of 5 feet tall (5'1 on a good day) and it wasn't until after I graduated from college that I weighed enough to be allowed to donate blood. I eat, trust me, I can pack it away with the best of them. That was actually one of the things that first attracted Kristian to me. I've just been blessed/cursed with a fast metabolism. However, my mother assures me this will not last forever---note she weighed 90 pounds on her wedding day.

Because of my petiteness (is that a word?) including my lack of boobage it's always been a challenge to find clothes and I knew going into it that when it came time to get a wedding dress it wouldn't be any easier.

I ordered a size 2 dress which was the smallest they had. When the dress arrived in December it actually fit quite well except in the boob part which was made for someone with at least C cups and the length was a tad long.

Well here's my problem, the last few months and last few weeks especially have been very stressful. And unfortunately I'm the type of person that when I'm stressed or anxious I lose my appetite and therefore lose weight. Between my first and second dress fitting I probably lost about 5 pounds which is a lot on someone my size. My seamstress is NOT happy. She's having a hard enough time taking the dress in and fixing the boob part. She told my mother last weekend that if I continue to lose weight I won't be able to fit into my dress, it will just fall off me. She can only take it in so much.

So this week I've been on a mission to gain weight since I have my next fitting this weekend. This has been my menu:

Monday-
Breakfast- everything bagel with cream cheese
Lunch- McD's chicken sandwich and chocolate milkshake
Dinner- pork chops and mashed potatoes

Tuesday-
Breakfast- same as Monday
Lunch- Chinese food
Dinner- Fettuccine Alfredo and Baked Ziti and 3 Mozzarella sticks

Wed.-
Breakfast- same as Monday
Lunch- Leftover pasta from Tuesday
Dinner- a Smoothie (I fell asleep early and didn't really eat dinner after we met with our DJ)

Thurs-
Breakfast- egg and cheese on Croissant

So you would think I would not only gain weight but be in heaven eating all this. WRONG. Not only do I not seem to be gaining weight but I feel totally disgusting. All I want right now is a nice healthy salad and some fruit. I feel like my insides are rotting. Ugh.

All I want to is to gain about 5-7 pounds and I'll be fine and my dress should fit well but I can't seem to keep weight on right now.

So while most brides try to lose weight right before the wedding I have the opposite problem. I know I know you hate me. But I swear I can't help it!

So I'm asking does anyone have any weight gaining tips that won't also make me completely flabby? I still want to look toned on the wedding day.

Showered with Love

I'm officially a two shower bride. When I first got engaged I didn't intend to have two separate showers but seeing as most of my girl friends live in NC it didn't seem right to have them travel to VA for my shower only to have to come back up a month later for the wedding. So that's why last month we had a smaller shower/bachelorette with just my girl friends in NC and this past weekend courtesy of my fabulous mother I had another shower locally with both mine and Kristian's female relatives.

The shower was held at the home of Cathy, one of my day of coordinators, who lives in a large beautiful house in Northern VA. With the help of Cathy and my other two DOC's my mother threw a really wonderful bridal shower for me. The food was great, the TWO cakes were DELICIOUS and the favors and decorations were adorable. She based all the decorations around our wedding colors and incorporated the black and white damask pattern that we are using throughout the wedding.

This was the first time that a lot of my family and Kristian's family had the chance to meet and everyone seemed to get along really well. It was a nice opportunity for all the women to meet prior to the wedding.

My oldest brother was there as the official shower photographer. It was so nice to not have to worry about taking pictures and just having him there floating in the background catching the festivities on camera. Plus I think he got a kick out of seeing what a bridal shower is really like...minus having to watch his baby sister open up a VS box full of lingerie. HA!

Here are some pictures of the shower. He took a ton of photos unfortunately I'm not able to post a lot of them because they include my two young nieces/flower girls and my brother and sister in law are very anti having pics of their kids on the internet.

The spread of food

Some of the decorations and shower game prizes

Hugging my mama...the tiara was eventually passed on to my 3 year old niece...it looked much better on her.

Playing a shower game...cheesy but kind of fun

The Loot

My mom gave us engraved cake knife and server for the wedding

My silk "Bride" robe...I feel so Hugh Hefner in this

My FMIL made this frame holding our invitation

These cakes from Whole Foods were AMAZING!

The favors...damask candles and purse shaped cookies with my new last initial

With Kristian's mom

Me and my beautiful mother

The shower photographer aka my brother

We got some great gifts, everyone was so generous. Kristian and I are very lucky to have such amazing families.

With This Ring

We have our wedding rings!!!! Kristian's ring (which was his grandfathers) and which he had sent to his aunt (whose a goldsmith) to get re-sized arrived back to us today. Kristian spent the day wearing it around the house. I think he may be more excited about his ring than I am mine! :)

I knew that my ring, which we ordered about a month ago had come in however Kristian said we probably couldn't go pick it up until later this week. When I got home from work I opened the ring box to check out his ring and wouldn't you know, the sneaky little bastard lied to me and had already picked up my ring and put it in the box next to his ring.

I was so excited to see my wedding ring and try it on, it fits perfectly by the way. My engagement ring will now have a pretty little friend to hang out with.

Here are pics of what we'll be sporting, officially, as of May 22!

Do Me a Favor

We finally finished creating our favors this weekend. Like our invitations this was another project that we've been slowly working on since about February. I know that a lot of people think favors are a pointless waste of money. And while I agree that most people could care less about receiving a favor at a wedding, me being the greedy bitch I am, I always like getting a little something. It makes me feel like a kid again going home with a goody bag at the end of a party and who didn't like goody bags? So despite the fact that it would mean shelling out even more money on our already limited budget I knew that I wanted to give our guests some kind of favor to thank them for coming to the wedding...you know...in addition to the free food and booze.

After going to a good number of weddings in my lifetime one of my favorites of all the favors I've gotten is the personalized mixed CD. It's always fun to see what kind of music a couple will pick and sometimes you even end up introduced to a song you weren't familiar with before.

Kristian and I both agreed right away that we wanted to give personalized CD's to our guests with songs that have been meaningful to us and our relationship. It was a lot of fun picking out the songs together and deciding on the order of the playlist. Though admittedly we both had to make a few compromises since we our taste in music is not exactly identical. Ultimately we are both really excited about the song choices and I think a good majority of our guests will really like it.

While looking for some ideas online I came across this picture via google images to use for inspiration.

It seemed easy enough to re-create on our own. So I found the CD cases via Bliss Wedding Market. Then I purchased some fuchsia ribbon online and finally I was able to buy some personalized damask labels via a seller on Ebay. With some help from the boy we came up with these CD holders.


As for the inside we decided to include a thank you note in the right side pocket and then the actual labeled CD inside the left pocket.

*click on the photo to make larger and see the song list*

It's been a fairly easy, yet tedious project but I have to give Kristian props on this one because he's done a lot of work on these including burning all 100 CD's and creating and affixing the CD labels which I just did not have the patience for. It was also a relatively inexpensive project, overall it broke down to around $2 per favor which isn't bad. I think it's a fun, little gift to give our guests as thanks for celebrating with us and I hope that everyone enjoys our song selection.

30 Days

If you check out my little countdown over -----------------> it now reads 30 days! 30 days! Only ONE MONTH until my wedding! Holy Mutha F@*&er! Where the hell did the past 14 months go???

I'm not gonna lie I woke up in a little panic this morning realizing all the stuff that still needs to get done in the next 30 days such as:

-Meet with our DJ to finalize playlist
-Have my final fittings for my dress
-Finish the favors
-Finalize the ceremony wording
-Print and Assemble the Programs
-Print the Escort cards
-Print the Table Numbers/Names
-Pick up our Marriage license (kind of a biggie)
-Have my second hair trial and first makeup trial
-Buy gifts for the groomsmen, readers and coordinators
-Renew my Drivers License...not wedding related but still needs to be done by May 12th
-Pack for the honeymoon

And probably about a million other things I'm forgetting. AHHHH! Thankfully the next few weekends are pretty much being devoted entirely to wedding stuff and my goal is to have basically everything done by the weekend of the 15th. Wish me Luck!

Sharp Dressed Man

While I was out of town this past weekend Kristian and one of his groomsmen went to get fitted for their tuxes. Kristian and I had gone to Men's Warehouse back in February to pick out what all the boys would wear and then we told everyone would have to come in by April 20th to get fitted and pay their deposits.

We decided to rent the tuxes from Men's Warehouse for a few reasons-

1. There is one right up the street from where we live
2. There are locations all over the country and you can go into any of them to get fitted and place your order. You don't have to go to the store the groom signed up at.
3. Because of the number of rentals K's tux is free (finally something free in this wedding!)
4. They had a pretty decent selection

The only thing that I was disappointed about when we went to pick out the tuxes was that they didn't have any for K to actually try on. I was hoping for a tuxedo fashion show but all we could do is look through their catalog to pick what we wanted and see swatches of the material for the vests/ties.

Ultimately this wasn't a huge deal since both K and I pretty much knew and agreed on what the boys should wear. We decided on black tuxes with a 3 button jacket. Kristian will have a light silver vest and tie and the rest of the guys will have black vests and ties. Initially Kristian wanted a bow tie but personally I hate bow ties. I think they only look good on older men or if you are going to a really fancy schmancy black tie event at the White House. So that idea got vetoed pretty quick.

Here are pictures of more or less what the boys will be wearing at the wedding.

Kristian's ensemble

The groomsmen/ushers outfits

I can't wait to see Kristian in his tux, I know he will look super hot. Yesterday he texted me a picture of himself wearing a suit before his job interview and it just made me even more excited to see him all dressed up on the wedding day. My baby cleans up well!

Babies, Ninjas, Guacamole...ingredients for a great weekend

My weekend trip to Charlotte for K.Law's baby shower was a blast! My abs got an amazing workout from laughing all weekend. Who needs Jillian Michaels when you have friends like mine! I can honestly say that Kristen is even more beautiful in person than in her pregnancy pictures, she's truly glowing.

In addition to seeing some of my favorite AOII girls I got to meet Tiffany who has two of the cutest kids I've ever seen. Everyone was fighting over the chance to hold her little man who is 9 months old and never fussed once during lunch.

I also finally got to meet the fabulous Summer who is even more beautiful and sweet in person than on her blog. It was amazing how seamlessly she was able to fit in with a group of girls that have been friends for a decade. You would think she had known us all for years.

The shower itself was awesome, it was held at a beautiful country club, the food was amazing and Baby Lawlor got some great goodies. That night we went out to dinner to a kickass Mexican restaurant that has the best guacamole I've ever tasted. We finished the night with a Snuggie Danceoff and multiple viewings of this video:



And now onto some pictures of the Baby L celebration-

The diaper cake and picture frame "guest book"

Check out his hat, seriously can you get any cuter than that?!

The glowing mom-to-be

Me and Summer B.

You can't have a baby shower with mustaches

Isn't she a natural?

Pirate Booties

More Pirate Gear...Arrrrgh!

The weekend wouldn't be complete without a boob shot

We're a good looking group!

You can't keep a pregnant lady from guacamole

You can't keep Summer away from Margarita's

Krummer!

Posing with Spanky's husband....I decided to take the mustache craze up a notch

The Snuggie Dance-off...it was a tie.

It was a fantastic weekend and I can't wait to see my girls again!