Crunch Time

With less than two weeks (umm Holy Sh@t!) to the wedding we've hit crunch time on getting all the last minute detail items completed. Fortunately I had a very productive weekend and now actually feel a lot less stressed about what I still have left to do.

After struggling all last week to print out our damn programs, only to discover there was an issue with the supplied online template, we finally figured out a way around the problem and finished printing everything Friday night. On Saturday my bridesmaid Colleen and her bf came over and after having a fabulous lunch together, JD and Kristian left to go look at guns and Colleen and I assembled the programs. It was SOOO much quicker having her there to help especially since I despise tying bows and she is the official bow master. I love the way they turned out.

I used the programs from Michael's that correspond to my invitations. I really didn't want to use a product from the same company that made the shoddy invites I ended up with but I wanted everything to flow and I figured since they weren't going in the mail we shouldn't (hopefully) have any offsetting issues. There are 4 stacked sheets, including a sheet listing the wedding party, one listing the ceremony order and the last page where we put some thank you shouts to friends and family.

My mom found these super cute baskets at the dollar store! Have I mentioned my love of the dollar store yet? I think the programs look great in these baskets.

I'm not sure if I've mentioned it yet but I ordered a bunch of sparklers (which will hopefully arrive in time) for our send off at the end of the night. I'm hoping for some pictures like the one below. Well I found another matching basket at the Dollar Store to put the sparklers in. I also made a sign referencing the sparkler send-off and what time it will be using the same damask paper I used for our table names. Now I just hope it doesn't rain so we can actually use them!

I just LOVE these types of pictures!

I also made a matching sign to put by our guest book.

I also finished printing off all the escort cards last night, but forgot to take a picture. That was actually the easiest of all my printing/DIY projects and I finished doing that in about 2 hours. What took the most time was actually typing up everyone's name and table name into the template to print off.

In even more exciting news I had my FINAL dress fitting yesterday. My dress looks and fits amazing. In fact because of all the padding she had to add to the bust I look like I have HUGE boobs now. It's awesome. The only thing left for her to do is sew on the hooks for my bustle and make my veil but I don't need to come back for that. My mom will just pick everything up for me when it's done and keep it at her house until the wedding.

**Funny/disgusting side note- On Saturday around 5pm I pointed out to Kristian that in exactly two weeks from that moment we be almost ready to walk down the aisle and his response "in exactly two weeks I'm going to have massive diarrhea" Yes girls, he's ALL mine. Be Jealous!

The Most Amazing Woman I Know

My Mother.

Without her I wouldn't be who I am today. I'm a mama's girl through and through. She is my best friend, my rock of support and I can't imagine my life without her. People tell me all the time that I look just like her and that I act just like her and to me there is no better compliment than that.

So today I want to wish a very Happy Mother's Day to the best mother a girl could ask for!

(My mom on her wedding day- June 2, 1968)

Cheers

One big item we still need to take care of before the wedding is the booze...after all you can't have a reception without booze...at least not a very fun reception. Kristian and I both have friends that are fans of the adult beverage and his family can pack it away. At Christmas his grandma was about 4 deep in straight Whiskey by the time we showed up.

In order to save a bit of cash we decided to buy the alcohol ourselves which would give us a bit more flexibility. We also knew that (depending on where we bought it) we would have the option to return any unopened bottles/cases...or we could just keep them for a rainy day :)

We got a breakdown from our caterer of how much we would need for a beer/wine/signature drink type of bar based on our guest count which is now at 96. We adjusted a bit up because we would rather have too much than too little and these are the figures we came up with:

Beer- Three varieties
Case = 24 bottles

4 cases- Miller Lite
4 cases- Yuengling
3 cases- Corona

Wine- Red and White
Case = 12 bottles

1 case Riesling (my favorite kind of wine)
3 cases Chardonnay
2 cases Cabernet

Champagne
Case = 12 bottles

1 case for toasts only

Sweet Tea Vodka- 10 Liter Bottles. Our one signature drink will be Sweet Tea Vodka and Lemonade.

Thoughts from the peanut gallery? Does this seem like a good amount? Too much? Too little?

From my lips to my boss's ears

This is hands down the most expensive month of my life ever! All of our big wedding balances are due within the next week including the cake, flowers, caterer (that bill scares me to my very core). The photographer balance was paid last week and fortunately the venue balance was taken care of in February. Not to mention we still need to purchase all the alcohol and million other little things. Oh and we can't forget our regular monthly bills that need to still be paid. Vomit.

I knew this all was coming but it still sucks to see the amount on the credit card bill increase and the amount in our wedding fund decrease. We are putting all the final payments on the credit card so that A. we can get the reward points and B. if there ends up being an issue with one of the vendors we have a better chance of getting our money back (fingers crossed this doesn't happen). I also have our wedding fund which I've been putting money into since we got engaged and will be able to pay off a large chunk of the credit card but ultimately there will still be a balance leftover. Not a HUGE one but a balance none the less. Just the way it worked out since Kristian unexpectedly became unemployed right before the wedding which we didn't count on.

With all that said there was a bit of good news today. Approximately two minutes after getting off the phone with K and lamenting about all the bills that are coming due my boss walked into my office and handed me a sizable bonus check for the quarter! I swear it's like she had been listening to our conversation and decided to ease some of my money woes with this bonus. Granted it won't pay off the rest of our wedding balances but it's a definite help! It's amazing how timing works sometimes.

License to Wed

We went to the courthouse today to apply for our marriage license. Gotta make this shiz legal after all. It was a pretty easy process once we figured out exactly where we had to go. Just showed them our ID, filled out a form, swore that we were telling them the truth about our information and away we went. I must admit we did consider just tying the knot while we were there and calling it a day but I've put too much planning into this wedding to just elope at the courthouse now.

Find your Table

Last night I checked another project off my list. I finished making our table markers for the reception dinner tables. We decided to go with assigned tables (though not assigned seats). I just feel that when you have more than 50 guests it makes things much easier on everyone. I've been to weddings where you were not assigned to a specific table and it actually made things a bit tricky. It reminded me of being back in a high school cafeteria. If you know a lot of people there than everyone wants to jam into one table together meanwhile if you don't really know anybody other than the couple getting married it can be awkward trying to find people to sit with.

Rather than going with the standard table numbers we decided to give the tables names instead. To go along with our CD favors that will be placed at each place setting we chose songs from the CD to use as our table names. I then took 4x6 silver frames I purchased from the dollar store (btw I LOVE the dollar store), used some damask wrapping paper my mother found at Party City as the backer and then printed off the title of the song, the artist and a few lines from the lyrics. I just thought it added a little something extra for the guests to look at on the tables and tied it in with the favors nicely. The table names don't match exactly which at first bothered my inner control freak but now I think they look even better not being completely matchy matchy. Plus who will really notice other than me?

Now we just have to finalize the seating chart which is turning out to be a bit harder than I thought because the tables only seat 8, if we could fit 10 that would make things much easier because we have a few "floaters" right now that we are having trouble placing. Hopefully we can finalize that this weekend and start printing off the escort cards.

Best Month of the Year

It's officially May!! Which means it's now officially my Wedding AND Birthday Month. Yep in 9 days I will be turning the big 3-0H! This shit has kinda snuck up on me which isn't surprising since I will be getting married in 19 days!! Holy God we're in the teens now!! Still so much to do and seemingly so little time!

This weekend I had two very important appointments. First up was my third dress fitting which I had been stressing over thanks to my little weight issue (no pun intended). Turns out I have nothing to stress about because Paulette, my seamstress, was able to fix the dress to fit me. She moved the zipper in the back so that it's now tighter through the body. The only issue we still had was on the boob part which was far too big (even with padded cups sewn in) but as I told her, no matter how much weight I gained unless I had surgery I couldn't fix the fact that the dress was made for someone with a C cup and let's just say I fall into another letter of the alphabet.

She did some more pinning and told me to come back after lunch. So I left and had an early birthday lunch celebration with K and my family then went back to Paulette's. She was able to pull in the bust in and now it looks like the dress will fit perfectly. The best part is that now that the top is tighter and actually stays up where it's suppose to I shouldn't need any hemming. I just have to go back for the last time (hopefully) next weekend to make sure everything fits after all the sewing is done.

Yesterday was my second hair trial and first makeup trial. I had to come back for a second hair trial since it turned out I didn't have enough hair for the style I wanted so my stylist told me I should buy a hairpiece to give me the extra body I needed. I purchased one of these ready to wear hair clips which turned out to be perfect. It gave me just the extra bit I needed and she was able to pin the rest of my hair over it to blend it in perfectly. The second hair trial went much better than the first and after she was done we discussed a few tweaks to make and different ways to get the curl to stay in my hair. So I think it will look great.

As for the makeup, that took a bit longer. I'm very particular when it comes to my makeup and typically I don't like the results from having it professionally done. That's not to say that I think I do a better job than the professionals but I guess when you get use to seeing yourself more or less the same way everyday it's hard to see yourself after someone else has had their hands on your face. I brought in this picture as inspiration:

I told her I like more of the grey-ish/purple colors for the smoky eyes. Well she used some straight up purple shade that was very bright and looked more blue on me. I did not like it. So I told her to go with more of the grey tone, the second attempt the coloring was better but still not the style I liked. So I referenced the picture again and told her I wanted it just like that. So the third attempt she was able to get it much closer to what I wanted. However, by that point after having my eye makeup removed twice my lids were extra pink so I wasn't able to get the exact look that I will have (hopefully) on the wedding day. As for the rest of the makeup- face, cheeks, lips, eyebrows...I loved it! It was perfect. I think now that we've walked through it the eyes will turn out okay on the wedding day. I took some pictures of my makeup but I look weird in all of them so I'm not posting them. Sorry.

If there was one thing I would recommend for anyone getting married and having their hair and/or makeup done by someone else is to DO A TRIAL! It would have been so stressful showing up on the wedding day having to start from scratch and then come to discover the hairstyle I had my heart set on wouldn't work on me or the colors I wanted for my makeup didn't look right on my skin tone. It saves time and brings peace of mind.

I'm so excited it's May! This will truly be the best month of the year!