The Venue

I know this has been a long hiatus, but pictures are FINALLY in my hands! For your first taste I will post pictures of our awesome venue. Let me just say the day, and the wedding couldn't have turned out more perfect. Our ceremony and reception was all held at the same place. My Uncle Don, and his wife Liz's house.

The space worked out really well. The caterers moved the table and chairs while we had a cocktail hour up on the deck and around the pool. My mom and Aunt Biggie decorated the arbor and we got the potted plants at McDonald's Garden Center.

Decorating the Arch

Yesterday my mom and I put together the Arch we ordered! It was pretty easy but it will need some staples and screwholes covered with wood filler as well as another coat or two of white paint. We decided to look for inspiration on how to decorate the arch. Here is what we found.

I love the balls hanging randomly on the last picture.  An added bonus is that we have already gotten foam balls to try and make our own pomanders. I think we have decided to try and use those for the arbor instead of the chairs along the aisle. We will hang them randomly on the arch as well as some bunches of other flowers and fresh cut greenery. I would like to see if we can find some grapevine somewhere as well. Also LOVE the idea of just having some potted plants along the aisle. I think doing that instead of the pomanders will be better especially since we found a better place to use them. I just guess I like things a little more creative and not so much the norm. Plus I think it will go right along with the feel of my wedding since most of the flowers there will be in tighter bunches.

We also saw these which I think are pretty cool, especially if a few hydrangea buds were added.

We also got all the wedding favors put together, but I will do a post devoted to that tomorrow.

Wedding Flowers

My flowers have been the task I have most dreaded. I don't know a whole lot about arranging flowers and really have no concept of amounts I would need. Every time I tried to figure it out I ended up way too overwhelmed. Picking out the flowers I wanted wasn't too hard of a task, but it definitely took a lot more research than I expected. Sadly, I did not find a miraculous website that was basically a flower encyclopedia with photos of every flower imaginable, and organized by color and size or something. Now this may exist, but I did not come across it. The one site that I ordered some of my flowers from did have a pretty good organization of their flowers and you could search based on color. Fifty Flowers could be a good place to start if you are unsure of what flowers you want to use.

Now to the hard part of figuring out how many flowers we needed. First off I had to figure out where there would be flowers, and then break it down to how many stems of each flower I would need for that particular thing. First up was the tables. My estimate on guests attending is around 175 (though so far we only have 80 or so confirmed via RSVP yes's) so with 8 people per table and adding in a few extra I came up with an estimate of 25 tables. I added a few extra tables since I am not doing assigned seating and I don't want anyone to feel like they are "stuck" with some people because there are no other seats. Now my arrangements planned per table are 3 glass cylinders ( one small single bud size, one medium, and one large) we figured we would need around 3 hydrangeas per table and somewhere around half a dozen of other flowers.

To give you an idea of the look I am aiming for here are some pictures I got my inspiration from:

Next on the list was my hydrangea pomanders that I want to hang on the side of some of the chairs along the aisle. I guessed we would have around 15 and each could be made with around 2 hydrangeas. Not sure if I was correct in this assessment or not..and in actuality we ended up with 18 foam balls not that we have to use them all.

My cake is going to have hydrangeas as well, yes it is a very hydrangea-y wedding. I assumed 5 on this tops. I want them more cascading down the cake so the individual flowers will be removed from the stems.

Then there is the Arbor, which we did buy some fake vines with blue hydrangeas on them from Michael's but I still want to incorporate real flowers in with it. This will be done with leftovers I suppose.

There will also be some flowers on the gift table and other various places as well which will be made with the leftover flowers. I have some big tall glass cylinders. Maybe 20" tall? Which we will probably fill with limes and have flowers on top.

The boutonnieres I figured we would only need 3 hydrangeas total probably.

The Bouquets... Mine will be slightly larger than the bridesmaids. I want it to be light blue hydrangeas ( probably 4 stems) then have both the white and green roses mixed in. While the bridesmaids will have the brighter blue/ periwinkle hydrangeas ( probably 3 stems) and I am not sure if I will add green roses to theirs or not.

Now that I am writing this out I still feel unprepared even after ordering flowers! Which is probably silly, and I will have a lot of people helping out. If we need to we will go buy more flowers from the store. HA!

In actuality this is what I ordered from wedding hydrangea. I did the order of 150 stems and I broke down the colors to be this:

15 Purple & Lavender

50 Dark & Medium Blue
15 Light Blue

15 Fresh Green

50 Periwinkle


The breakdown of the flowers ordered on Fifty Flowers are:

Purple Anemones: 75 (mine will have a black center)
Jade Green Roses: 50

Purple Lisianthus: 100

Amelia creamy white roses: 50

Now anytime I order something online I google "coupon codes for ". With Fifty Flowers I lucked out and found a coupon for 5% off and it saved us $29.00! Always a bonus. All the flowers will be arriving Thursday May 20th so we have time to make arrangements before the Saturday wedding. Hopefully they all get here on time and are pretty and we have enough!

I'm getting married next month!

Last night I feel like I accomplished a TON!

After work I went to the mall with Bekah, Ashley and Jessica. I found myself some boobies as I like to call them. Really I just ended up purchasing a "NuBra Ultalite" Bra. Which is basically a thin fabric adhesive bra. I didn't want something too paded, and all of the inserts I tried were not good. I was planning on just sewing some into my wedding dress but sadly that didn't work. Why can't anything be simple?! Then we thougth to forgo them alltogether but not having any type bra/support/coverage wasn't working either. Hopefully this solution will workout perfect, but I have yet to try it. Fingers crossed because this option at $32 seems like heaven compared to he higher priced options from $56 to $68. Too much for a bra I will rarely wear if you ask me.

I also purchased some very light fake eyelashes to possibly wear at my wedding. Since it seems to be that either I am doing my own makeup, or I will let Bekah do it. (Probably the latter). I am thinking of a more natural appearance. I do not want to look over done. I don't want a super dark night look, but something between a "day" and a "night look. Maybe have a light pink, neutrals and purples color palate? Purple always seems to look good with my skin tone and greenish grey eyes. I need to have some test runs...

After our shopping Bekah and I went to my mom's where she tried on her dress and sadly it still needs another (small) alteration! Bekah's ribcage and shoulders are just so miniscule! She's near impossible to fit! ha. Fingers crossed it will be perfect after this.

My mom and I then ordered some necessities at Save on crafts:

• the barkwire I showed in my previous blog... you can look at it here



• floral wire



• floral tape







• white tulle



• floral foam spheres (to attempt to make my pomanders)







• An arbor/ Arch

This Arbor is different from the Arbor I wanted before. you can see it here. Originally we were going to get one made to look like the one I found before, but figured that may be too much work. Then we opted to either buy the exact one I saw online (which was somewhere around $500), or look for something else. While we were shopping on save on crafts I decided to see if they have Arbors (which of course they did, they have EVERYTHING). Thats when we found this one, which is real wood and involves some assembly but comes with everything you need. Not to mention it was only $150. So we saved a good chunk of money.

In addition to my great finds at save on crafts we also ordered my wedding favors (personalized M&M's). I posted about them a while ago. You can read more about it here. I did not order exactly what I had picked out then, but it is still pretty similar. ie: the words are the same. (Brittany & Zach, May 22, 2010, and Tie the knot). I decided to just stick with words, no pictures. I also opted to go with paler colors. I picked a light blue, a lavendar, and a pearlized white. Hopefully we get them relatively soon so we can start putting the little favors together. We ordered the 10lb. bulk. I am hoping that it's enough, otherwise we will be buying some plain M&M's to mix in with the personalized ones.

Then last but not least we ordered my flowers!( to be expanded upon in another post).

On a complete side note: I think I am going to start tanning today, as well as I have been trying to work on my posture and not slouch so much. It is soooo hard though and almost painful to sit up straight. Sitting at a computer all day doesn't help much either. Hopefully by the wedding my posture will look a little better and I won't be the slouchy bride.

Progress...

I know I have been majorly slacking on the wedding updates! For the few of you that read this anyway I apologize. Tomorrow I can officially say " I'm getting married next month!" how crazy is that. It blows my mind how fast the wedding is approaching and although I don't have a ton to do right now I feel like I am sure there are a million things I should be getting done.

I am sure I am not the only bride to be that has wedding nightmares. Mine have started. Usually its a problem with my appearance. Maybe I am self centered who knows. But All the wedding nightmares I have had so far involve : problems with my dress (it's not done, it looks awful, etc.), I've forgotten to do my makeup, I've forgotten to get my hair done. Now I know in real life all of these things are impossible. SOMEONE would be telling me to go to my hair appointment, as if I could forget. So who knows why my dreams have been illogical but they have. My matron of honor has also had dreams about my wedding where we got into a fight, and my grandma was dreaming about problems with my wedding dress, though that is probably because she is the one making it! Does anyone else have some good pre-wedding dream stories?

One new thing is that my friend Alli has agreed to sing a song during the ceremony. I am still in the process of coming up with a list of songs for her to choose from. I wanted her to just go ahead and pick one out but she wanted suggestions.

Also Alyssa's dress is ready for her first fitting this weekend when she gets home, we have measured cousin Ashley so we can get her dress ready, and fingers crossed that Bekah's dress is FINALLY done, after at least 5 fittings. We shall find out tonight when she tries it on again!

If I get the chance tonight I hope to order the flowers, the bridesmaid gifts, the wedding favors, and do some more research on arbors. We are now considering just buying one rather than making it. Also I need to do some research on brown paper colored floral wire. I have no idea if anyone knows what I am talking about, or if it has a specific name, or where to find it... but I need it for my cake as well as the twin's little floral head wreaths I was going to make. BTW I looked at michael's and had no luck, I only saw some on pre-made wreath things. We did however find some vines with blue hydrangeas that we can put on the Arbor.




AHHA! UPDATE: Save on crafts ( a very handy website) has almost anything you may need especially when it comes to DIY weddings, and they even have tutorials. And look what I found!


They called my wire " bark covered natural wire" , which this is even better than what I was thinking of.

My dress is also ready for a third fitting. Pretty exciting!

I am going to do an entirely separate post on my wedding flowers shortly.

Silver Palate

I am very happy to say that we are 100% going with Silver Palate for the catering! Here is what the menu looks like so far....



There will also be coffee, iced tea, and sodas etc. The food will be buffett style, go up and get what you want, probably do it by table discretely so there isnt a mad rush to the food. Though I think the salad will be plated and served.

Pretty excited!

So now my biggest things are getting invites out and the flowers, plus my dress. I also still have some more cyllinders to find.

Here is what the Arbor we are having built is going to look like...


This image is vinyl but the one we are building will be wood. It will be pretty! I am happy that things are starting to come together and I do not have AS much to worry about. Though there is still ALOT to do.