Things are getting underway.

With a little more than 3 months left until the wedding, times just seems to be flying by. Aryana and her mother went out to look at dresses last week and I will be sending Annalee's out to her shortly. All I need to do is make sure the guys are going in to get fitted during the month of March and there will be very little to do as far as dressing the bridal party goes.

I got in touch with Valle Vista last week and talked with Rosie, our wedding coordinator there. She sent us the new buffet menu for brunches. Andrew and I are still making decisions and we have a couple of questions to ask her about changing it around some. We want to make sure there are more vegetarian options for our veggie-friendly friends and take out one of the huge dishes we don't think would be very popular (turkey in June in the morning? Hmm...).

Save-the-Dates were sent out at last! I had some trouble mailing a couple as we dropped them in the mud at the post office and had to go home and remake/resend them out. The final version looked a little like this!:


Yeah, it's a little flipped, I know.

Currently working on designing the invitation and getting those out sometime in April so we have lots of time to reply for the final head count! Will look somewhat similar to the save-the-date. I'm afraid of straying too far from a design I've already picked due to my anal-retentive "everything must coordinate" streak I've got going in me.


Working on slimming down a bit for the dress. Not really dieting so much as trying to eat healthier. Not really happening on that stretch with work, unfortunately. Also getting up earlier in the morning and getting on the treadmill. I've missed the last two days, so here's to hoping I have the motivation tomorrow. =D

Four Months and a Week.

That's all I have left to plan everything and figure out the move. This planning mayhem is scaring me silly. I feel like I've left so much for last minute and I'm trying to tie up all my loose ends. It's not really that bad, but when I look at what's left I'm sure I've forgotten something.

I've almost got the table decorations figured out. I just need to call my dad's cousin again, who is doing our floral arrangements to get some more advice and let her know what I would like to see. I feel bad that I haven't seen her since Christmas time or called at all. We both work retail, and she travels almost every week. But I'll do it soon. I have to.

Here's what I have managed to wrangle up! Working at Williams-Sonoma has really worked out for me. Our apothecary jars went on sale and I got an extra 40% off of the sale price. I had to get 16 shipped in from Louisville but it was worth it. I love the look but the typical price range is closer to a $50,000 wedding budget, over 5x ours.


Apothecary Jar, about 12" height

Also took advantage of a sale at Crate & Barrel and got my hands on a beautiful cake cutting set and some olive tealights for table decoration. We aren't using the tealights for candles because that doesn't seem right for a morning wedding. Rather, I hope to put a little bit of water in the bottom and stick in a huge white flower or an iris bud to just sorta float around the jars to add some more color to the table.





We still have many other things to work out. Andrew and I need to finalize the menu as well as check on some thing with Valle Vista about how the schedule will work since our wedding is so early. I need to check something with our bakery about the diameter of our cake; WS just got in a beautiful cake stand in exactly the same color as the BM dresses, so I'm considering adding it to the dessert table to make the cake pop more.

We need to confirm more items with our bridal party. Carolyn was wonderful enough to take care of rehearsal dinner (which I worried about anyway, silly chit that I am). My mum is taking care of getting our alterations done.


Things I need to get done myself in the next week or so:
☼ Send passport app (the office that accepts them is way out of my way)
☼ Mail finished Save-the-Dates (finally)
☼ Call Aryana to have her order her dress
☼ Mail Annalee's dress to her
☼ Call Bakery
☼ Call Tux to get information for the guys
☼ Block hotel rooms
☼ Start researching charities for favor donation

Halfway mark passed.

A week ago was the six month marker for the wedding plans, as in I only have six more months to make sure everything is settled. Well, more like four or five because Andrew and I still also have to plan the move to where ever we are going. He's finishing his grad school research and app process over his holiday break so we're not in the dark too much longer. My "holiday break" is going to be spent creating our Save-the-Dates and making sure they get mailed out to the correct people. Like I said - expect an email from me begging for addresses soon.

I did find one store here in Indy that is going to help with the stationary so much. The store is in Castleton and it's known as Archivers. One of my Williams-Sonoma co-workers introduced me after work one day. I've already been there twice, once to look around and another time to pick up some stuff for Andrew's Christmas gift. They have a wide-range of paper products for some pretty decent prices. My only concern is finding a printer for what I need, because I'm not sure a home printer would be strong enough for the paper. Some of the paper is glossy as well, and I'm not sure if that would effect how the ink. Love the store though, still looking around and I'll probably drag Mum, Leila, and/or Gail there after the Christmas sale rush is over.

Ideas by Archivers.com (Not necessarily choosing these.)

A couple of weeks ago, my mother and I returned to Valle Vista to meet with the accessories coordinator to go over the linens and decoration policies/procedures. It was early in the morning, and she'd just made time for the us the day before when my mum and I discovered we had time off on a weekday at the same time. It was kind of her to do and she didn't try to push anything onto to me as far as decorations I could rent from VV went. She pointed out that VV is very strict on their timelines and that most of my items need to be brought to her a week in advance (any non-fresh-floral decorations, cake cutting supplies, etc.). She showed us some cloth we could rent through a company they use, and I liked one sheer, fern organza that matched the fabric color from the girls' BM dresses very well. May order some of that to go under the apothecary jars on the reception tables.


Poll Update: Ferns won the last poll by 50% of the votes. Still not sure what I'm using, but I'll figure it out by the time I need to. Please check out our new question!

Tis the Season

Christmas retail and Thanksgiving sales is certainly filling my life with busyness these last couple of days and certainly the next couple of weeks up til the holidays are over. I haven't gotten much wedding stuff done. I'm almost entirely decided against having orchids at the wedding. Though I love them, they are flashier than most of the other wedding details and extremely expensive. And I'm not sure I'd be able to find them in the colors and size I want. I'm really going for a fern look, I think.

I like the idea of apothecary jars filled with fern branches. Apothecary jars are hard to find in the right shape and size you want. I looked into buying some for a craft at one point, and they're pretty expensive. Not exactly something you can really use at a later point at well.



At this point I'm thinking of getting different sized, shaped glass bottles and filling them with either fern stems or different types of dried florals or herbs. I found a site that had dried hydrangea, dried jasmine, dried maidenhair fern, etc. I bookmarked it to show to my mum later. No decisions as of yet.



I also shopped from glasses for the apartment from Crate & Barrel. I would have registered for them, but they went on sale and I was afraid that perhaps they would go out of stock so I bought them myself.


Gus Glasses
Andrew likes them too, he picked them out of some other glasses I showed him. Easy to grip, easy to stack, and the staff already wrapped them up in newspaper and packed them tight in a nice packing bag that has a handle. So they're just going to stay put with my other stuff until we move.

Gown at Home!

My wonderful mummy brought home my gorgeous wedding gown today! It's sitting happily in my closet until such time as I feel like trying it on again. We're not going to alter it until about April so I have time to lose my tummy, or try to.

It's beautiful. We also managed to get a torn Russian tulle veil made from silk that mum is going to alter into a cage veil for my hair. Mum and I have come to this agreement: I will wear the cage veil for the ceremony and part of the pictures, and a long veil for part of the pictures as well.

I'm really excited, though I was too tired to jump up and down happily like my mum expected me to when she got home. I think she was disappointed. But the gown is absolutely gorgeous and we got a great deal on it so I can wear it without guilt!

Making Checks

Me and my Guest List

Tonight I finally finished designing and printing off my own guest list chart. I had the initial design for a wedding tools blogs I had planned to run from earlier. But I took away the blog title and instead added a color-coded index on the right hand corner to thumb through. It's all bound now and put into my bridal binder. I need to start collecting addresses, so expect an email from me soon asking for your contact information, and other tid-bits I need to know!


Also checks some things off my list in addition to writing checks for those said things. I finalized the dessert with our vendor and made sure I had a sugar-reduced options for those of my guests who are diabetic. Before that, I met with a photographer Andrew and I had approved of.

I met the man, Randall Todd, in Panera Bread and went over some of his work with him. It was beautiful quality and he has some really amazing shots of his subjects. I pointed out what I liked and appreciated and we worked out some of the things I was interested in: detail shots, working around the height difference between me and Drew, and how he works in formal shots to our time schedule based on what Valle Vista gives us. He was great about it, gave me a lot of good advice. I recommend checking out his blog or website if you want to see his work. We closed a deal and I'll be glad to get that off my chest for the next couple of months.

Time to start looking for stationary... Save-the-Dates have to go out in two months.

Poll Results

Cake and Tarts won the Favourite Dessert poll wih 5 votes each! Unfortunately, we're no longer DOING tarts, but pie, but luckily for those who prefer one over the other, both will be available after brunch. A shiny new poll is up, vote if you have time or the interest.


Haven't done much in the way of the wedding since Andrew was here two weeks ago. I picked up Annalee's BM dress as it finally came. Since I had it in hand and the tux shop was right next to David's Bridal, I swung by to ask them a question. My cousin Marjan had recommended the possibility of doing a black vest with a color tie to make the color pop more, but I needed to find out whether that was plausible with MW Tux. They said it is, so that will take some consideration. I like the idea of a color vest and black tie, but I'm not sure how that would look.

The gentleman who is the manager asked if we were using fern, since he could see that was the color of Annalee's dress. I informed him it was, but that Andrew would be wearing royal blue and the groomsmen would most likely be wearing Fern (the boys voted, only Tom wanted blue, and Ian didn't care). Well, he gave a start and said in a very concerned voice if I was very sure Andrew wanted to wear blue when everyone else is wearing fern. I told him we were sure, thanked him for the information and left.

However, on repeating the story to Andrew because I thought the seriousness of the manager in response to the colors was hilarious, Andrew has decided (much to his frustration) that he's going to wear fern, damn it all. I told him we'd picked out a nice blue that he had liked, but he's uncomfortable with being the only one wearing blue. So... we'll see what is decided when we actually put in the order.