Full Circle

Hello again. It's been a very long time since I've updated here. And we're back to the beginning stages of planning the wedding again. I'm filled with a whole array of emotions again ranging from excited and hopeful to completely overwhelmed and pessimistic. Hopefully, it will be like last time and as we move forward and check things off I'll be a little less of a nervous wreck or at least for different reasons haha.

 I still love the idea of bringing the outdoors indoors kind of thing. I've thought of a million different ideas all involving different seasons but I guess the biggest thing right now is finding a place for the ceremony and reception and seeing what dates are available (though I still keep searching pinterest for ideas anyways haha). And I did buy my dress already! A friend who was being fitted for her wedding dress let me know one of the bridal shops in my area was having a huge clearance sale on discontinued dresses. I flew right over and it was the first one I tried on. I hemmed and hawed about how much I liked it (I am SUPER indecisive). I tried on the dress that I had fallen in love with the last time I was there (that was more than 4x the cost of this clearance dress). Finally I decided that I did actually like the cheaper dress more and bought it. So I sort of went backwards I guess. I've got my dress but nothing else is decided or figure out for the wedding haha. I'd show everyone a picture but I decided to keep the dress a surprise from Brandon this time. If you are really curious though let me know and I can send you a link. ;) In the meantime here are some pretty pictures of seasonal themed weddings that are unrealistic unless you are rich but its fun to dream, right?

Winter Wedding

Fall Wedding

Pretty idea for a Spring Wedding

Obviously I've got a thing for flora and lights haha.

Check, check, and check!

Well maybe we don't have as much done as my title implies but we are on our way at least. DJ is booked, guest list is close to being finalized, and we are having a bridal party yay! I've pretty much picked out my dress (just you know haven't put any money down because ahem finances). I think we went completely out of order in what should be done first but as long as it gets done who cares! Centerpiece ideas are slowly becoming more solid which is a big relief. Having money for everything for the wedding is starting to scare me a bit as we get closer to the big day but I'm sure it will all work itself out (budget budget budget). Sorry no pretty pictures in this post but just wanted to let you guys know that we are still alive and moving forward with plans!

Everything's Totally Different Now Guys

Heyyyyyyyy its been a while since I posted here because uhhh...well we made a lot of big changes. One day, my friends and I got together and hit up a bunch of craft stores to mess around with ideas for centerpieces. In the back of my mind I had been considering going with fall colors because of my love of autumn and the date of our wedding and then ta da! This centerpiece was born that I fell in love with:

I apologize if its hard to see. Basically its a large bowl with a smaller bowl inside of it. In-between the two bowls are fake orange-red flowers that bounce the candle light off nicely. The smaller bowl is filled with water, with multi colored rocks underneath and a large ivory floating candle in the middle. My only issue is that the bowls might not be large enough for our tables which stinks because I got these at the dollar store and my centerpieces would have less than $5 a table. Oh well, I'll play around with it. Fall colors feels more like us. Less formal but still attractive and more fun. More updates to come!

Been a while since I've updated...

We changed the wedding to the saturday after the original date, I guess Brandon's family had some huge car thing they go to every year that they couldn't miss. So the date is now 09/15/2012. I actually haven't done too much regarding planning. I've been meaning to hit up Hobby Lobby and the dollar stores around here to play around with centerpiece ideas but I just haven't got around to it yet. So this post is just going to be a jumble of ideas I've been kinda sorta thinking about haha.

So I'm imagining something like this as a centerpiece but with either a dark natural, multicolor natural, or completely unnatural red beads at the bottom of the bowl. Less candles too, I probably wouldn't have the four on the outside. I'm also thinking about having a black table runner or a damask one which is basically black and white in a fancy design underneath. And now moving onto my shoes.

When I first saw these I was super pumped. $20 some odd dollars at Forever 21. But then I realized that these came out about 4 years ago maybe more. Then I spotted these babies.

And that's when I decided my wedding shoes were going to be red haha. I'm sure I'll find something else I'll like then completely change my mind but so far it seems like peep toes and flowers are in. That's all for now folks.

Accomplished!

Yesterday we put a deposit on our wedding venue and cake! Date is 09/08/2012. Even though its the first and only place we looked at, it has everything we wanted in one place for a price that you can't really beat. I've been browsing for venues online several months before we got engaged and again nothing came close to this as far as what we wanted and pricing. So thank you to Dan and Adelle for getting married at an awesome place haha. Our colors are going to be black, white, and red. Black shorter tablecloths with a full length white one underneath, white chair coverings with black accents, and then red rose petals on the table with various other red items. I decided to ditch the cherry blossom idea because although it was cute, our colors would have to incorporate pink which, though Brandon said I could do whatever I wanted, didn't really seem to fit either one of us. The site coordinator of the venue suggested a cake guy who could give us a good deal so we had also booked a consultation and cake tasting after our meeting with her. We had two hours to kill after our meeting with her so we checked out the local mall. I don't know what is featured at the Hot Topic around here but the at this mall they had super adorable Mario and Domo hoodies for 50% off! Naturally, I bought myself one of each. After our adventure at the mall we met the cake guy, Kerwin. We both liked him a lot. Super laid back, friendly and more importantly his cakes were delicious (and pretty). We are getting a round 3 tiered cake, one layer is vanilla, another marble, and another devil's food cake with raspberry filling! So if you are reading this, tell me what cake flavor you prefer because I'm not 100% what order they should go in (originally thinking vanilla being the largest, marble in the middle, and the fancy pants one on top but maybe we have more chocoholics going to the wedding than I anticipated?). I'm not a fan of the taste of fondant so all the decorations are going to be made with buttercream frosting. We're doing red and white roses. Here's a basic idea:

But placed differently on the cake and you know with frosting and stuff since these look like real flowers. All in all, I feel super accomplished and I'm starting to actually be excited for my wedding rather than feeling overwhelmed and stressed out. Hooray!

What Do I Really Want?

Despite the crappy weather, my future in laws, fiance, parents and I ventured to one of the places we are considering having both our ceremony and reception at. Everyone agreed it was a great place and pretty much the best bang for your buck that we've found around here. We're still going to check out some other places but I feel like we have a winner. However, the lady we met with did make me realize that I have to make some decisions relatively soon about a lot of things that I'm currently indecisive about (i.e. wedding colors, bridal party, date, etc.). So I'm going to break some things down here that will hopefully make me realize what I really want.

What kind of theme am I going for?

Brandon had suggested black, red, and white as wedding colors. I do really like this combination (and they look really classy in the picture here) but these are bold colors. I want my reception to feel like you are outdoors (I REALLY want to find some fake white blossom trees and have one on each side of the head table. That's one thing I know I want haha). I might end up going with all white or white and cream colors for the linens but then what color do I do for bridesmaid dresses if we have a bridal party? And what about my bouquet? Do people have everything match their wedding colors? I can't do EVERYTHING white that would be incredibly bland I think. Not everything should be matching but I want so many different things, it's going to look funny if I don't pay attention to how everything goes together. Ughhhh! My brain!

Do I want a bridal party?

Originally, Brandon and I were not going to have a bridal party but now that we're actually trying to plan out the wedding I personally feel like it would be helpful. I don't want to feel like I'm burdening anyone with my wedding plans and a lot of people I'm considering asking have pretty jam packed lives as it is. So I feel guilty asking them. Some have offered though so I don't feel as guilty...I just hope you guys are ready to deal with my super indecisiveness because that's probably going to be the biggest issue (I mean it already is an issue ha!). If yes to a bridal party, how many are going to be in it? Brandon needs groomsmen that he's comfortable with and I'd prefer there to be even parties.


DJs, Dresses, Photographers, Oh my!

I hadn't factored in these prices to our total wedding cost. Sure, we have friends that could provide some of these services at a discounted rate but are they really going to want to be working instead of enjoying themselves at our wedding? How do I know what's fair vs. what we can realistically afford? I'm apprehensive about dress shopping right now because I know how stressed out I can get with just regular shopping. I feel like I have to make an appointment for everything which is difficult because I have a lot of things going on as it is, plus trying to coordinate times for other people to come isn't easy either.


Brandon says I shouldn't worry or stress too much and just choose what I want but its hard especially since I'm not really 100% on what it is I do want. Phew, at least that's off my chest.

Wedding Theme

I thought that because we got engaged at a Cherry Blossom festival it would be kind of neat to do a cherry blossom wedding. The thing is I'm not madly in love with the color pink and when I first googled 'cherry blossom wedding', I got a lot of cheesy looking decoration and designs but I did stumble across a few badass (and probably insanely expensive) ways for it to be done.

This one I absolutely fell in love with. It's ridiculously elegant in a church and with the gigantic fireplace. I wouldn't do the hanging butterflies (not sure if you can see them or not in the picture) but I love how it looks like something straight from a fantasy book or fairy tale. <3 class="separator" data-blogger-escaped-div="div" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">


This next one is pretty neat too. Again its indoors (I want an outdoor wedding if weather permits), but the way they set it up makes it feel like you are outdoors.

They also have these amazing golden origami cranes hanging from the trees which I adore! But ehhh I don't know anyone who can make these and I don't really know where I would go to ask to get them done? Same goes for the trees. I found a place online that has fake cherry blossom trees but who knows what shipping would be? I'm guessing the trees themselves have to go for at least a couple hundred a piece. I read somewhere that some decorating companies will rent things like this out so maybe I can try and look into that? We are hopefully checking out a cute place where our friends Dan and Adelle got married next week to see if we like the food and the location. I'll have to ask about decorating and perhaps the people would be able to recommend some decoration companies I can get in contact with?