Our Bottle Water :)

We are going to give these out to our guests while they leave the ceremony site for their drive back to Richmond for the reception. I used Microsoft Publisher to design them and had them printed at OfficeMax.


..and the price breakdown...

$.90/sheet - 2x8.5 labels ~ purchased from labelsbythesheet 5 labels per sheet

$4.88/32 pack 16.9 oz Aquafina Water ~ purchased from Sam's Club

$.39/sheet for printng ~ OfficeMax

I spent about $.41 per bottled water! How cheap is that?!!! This is so much better than spending almost $40 per case that's already made for you.

19 days ~ dun dun dun

The florist's deposit is sent and I'm dropping the contract in the mail tomorrow! One huge check. I think I work better under pressure.

The guest list is now 48. I guess we forgot some people. Oops. I did find out what our discount is for the reception though. It's very generous is all I have to say.

We went to S&K today to look for J's suit/tux. We found a nice brown one but we need to make sure that it matches my sash. He's going back there tomorrow with the swatch of my sash to check.

I hope to get the musician and officiant off our list this week. D and I have started on our wedding timeline and it's coming together. This weekend will be devoted on labeling a bazillion water bottles.

A Not-So-Wedding-Ish Post...

Tech and UNC played yesterday. J has been nervous about this game since last Saturday. I don't know college football like that nor do I know NFL better. I just like NFL more and know more players due to the pool I play at work.

To show J some support I finally bought a Tech shirt. Yes...almost 4 years later I'm finally fully supporting his obsession with the Hokies.

Tech won. It was a wonderful night in our household.

My Something Blue

Ever since I started stalking wedding blogs, I've always loved the idea of crystallizing the sole of your shoes with the groom-to-be's initials. I did this project this morning and it was very t

tedious. The rhinestones were so tiny and I had to make sure that my lines were lined up nicely.

Materials needed:

1. Rhinestones - I purchased mine from rhinestoneshop.com for $5.99 with free shipping

2. Instant Krazy Glue or any glue of your choice - $2.99

3. Reverse Tweezers - $1.95

To make things a little easier, I lined up the letters on a flat surface and taped it right-side up. I then flipped it over so I can put the glue on the rhinestones and then attached them to the shoes. I might add the wedding date on the other shoe if I feel like it later.

3 Weeks From Tomorrow

I can't believe we are three weeks away from the wedding. Who knew planning a wedding in less than 3 months is possible! There are still more things to check off our list but I think that we should be okay.

Dress ~ The first fitting this past Wednesday went well. I brought my shoes and sash with me. It fit perfectly but Oxsana convinced me to do more alterations to attach my sash. I think it will be better since the sash was making me look wider when I would tie it around for some reason. The dress will not be ready 'til the 3rd...8 freaking days before the wedding! I'm a little nervous but she's good so I trust her.

Officiant ~ We are meeting with him on Wednesday and I think this is a check on our list. He is a pastor at J's dad's church. Another check in the flowers. I think.

Flowers ~ I found Leann on Charlottesville's Craigslist just to ask about her wholesale pricing for the hydrangeas. She asked about our wedding details and next thing you know we're exchanging ideas and quotes. She offered me an awesome pricing and I don't have to deal with the set-up on the day of at the farm. She'll be doing my bouquet, 3 boutonnieres, and 2 corsages. The bouquet will be roses and freesias and the boutonnieres and corsages will be a mixture of the same flowers. She could have mailed the hydranges and arrangements but instead she's driving to the farm for an extra $50 to deliver the flowers and arrange the hydrangeas! That's a freaking steal! I of course googled freesias and roses and found this lovely thing. I love it!

Monogram ~ I painted our monogram tonight. Non-toxic paint of course. I hope it turns out nice or I'll be back to square one not unless we scratch the whole topper thing which should be fine since our cake will have the height without it.

Menu ~ is done and we love it! Our executive chef and food and beverage director went all out. I'm excited to feed our guests. It's 4 courses and that's obviously not counting appetizers during the cocktail hour nor the cake for dessert.

Guest Count ~ we are somehow at 47. Hmmm is all I can say.

Linens ~ I picked out pretty ones but I don't know if I want to spend the money on them.

The groom-to-be is still without a suite, we still don't have a musician for the ceremony, and I somehow haven't heard from my make up artist. These better be done this coming week or I will really start to freak out!

Slowly but surely

I am getting more stuff purchased/done. Since Saturday I've purchased crystals for my shoes, labels for the water bottles, and our cake topper. The crystals came in today and I'll work on my shoes this weekend since J will be working. I also finished two designs for the labels and they are done.





The cake topper is only $13 and hopefully it gets here by Friday so I can paint it. J didn't like my crystal idea on the topper so we're trying to go with this look. I need to figure out how this paint looks so shiny.


I also stalked our registry just to see what's going on with them and it looks like someone bought us something. How exciting! We now have 8 glasses :) It's strange 'cause hardly anyone knows that we are registered.

28 More Days To Go...

but who is really counting?? I can't believe that we are less than 30 days aways and there's still a bajillion things to do! We have somehow added more to the wedding than we originally planned and yet I try to find DIY crap to do. I hate having to find stuff. I don't like calling people and I try to do everything on email as much as I can.

J and I really need to come up with a game plan on our wedding day. We don't have a timeline whatsoever but we do know that we're trying to show up at the ceremony a little late. Not together or at the same time of course. But how sad is that?? We don't want our guests to not have anything to do between after the ceremony and the reception time. I'm just really glad that my office mate, we can call her D, did weddings before and she knows how things are done. I have made her my un-official wedding planner. Haha. I did find bottled water labels though. I convinced J that we need custom printed labels for the bottled water that we are providing our guests during the ceremony just in case it's hot. I need to order them but I need to buy a bottle first so I can measure the label.

I've done a great deal this past couple of weeks though...

Dress ~ is currently being altered. I went to this alterations place that I found through theknot. I have my first fitting this coming Wednesday and I'm supposed to bring my sash and shoes this time. I didn't bring my shoes with me since my dress is not full length but she wants to see the whole thing. She also wants to see what the sash will look like since the part where the sash is supposed go is pretty thick and she's suggesting that I might need to get a sash specially made. We'll see how that goes.

Cake ~ I dropped off the payment on Thursday. This is done now. We just need to figure out if we want to rent Alicia's stand or if we are going to buy our own.

Flowers ~ my mom's co-worker has offered to do my flowers and to let me use her hook-up at the wholesale place to get the hydrangeas but my mom hasn't seen her at work nor has she called me back.

DJ, Ceremony Musician, and Officiant ~ we're waiting for J's dad to let us know what's going on with these.

We still have a long list of things to do:
- J's outfit (suit, shoes, tie, the whole thing!)
- accommodations the night of the wedding
- his accommodations the night before
- how we're getting to the farm
- menu
- song list if we ever find a freaking dj and musician!
...and the list can go on and on...

Our engagement pictures gallery are up though. We looove the pictures soo much and we can't wait for the wedding!

Fun Engagement Session!!!

I love-love-love our photographer. Jason and Tammy are so easy to work with and we had so much fun during our engagement session yesterday despite the heat. We spent almost 2 hours of non-stop pictures and we ended our session with dinner at Bottom's Up.

Of course we were late, again!...just like when we had our initial meeting. Me getting lost on my way home from the makeup trial didn't help one bit. I swear I just reversed my directions from how I go there but I apparently did not do it right.

So the makeup session went well. It was pretty and all but makeup is just not me. Renata is nice enough to okay another trial which I think we really need. I don't usually wear make-up so a little bit of it goes a long way. I just want to look natural and fresh. I was literally just wiping layers of foundation off my face on my way home. The little bit of makeup that was left melted off during the session since it was so hot and J had this bright idea to go to another location which was pretty far.

I can't wait for our online gallery to be up! I've been stalking their website all morning to see if it's up yet. The session was great. We went to 2 different parks in Church Hill that had great views of the city. Cobblestones, brick walls, grass areas, church doors...name it and we probably took pictures there. Even the Hokie shirt made an appearance.

Cake..done!

We finally have a contract for our cake! Alicia from Batter Up is such a sweetheart :) She made it work within our budget which really isn't our budget. Actually, come to think of it, there's no budget-ish since J's dad's girlfriend offered to pay for it as our wedding present :) We of course didn't want to be unreasonable so we found the best tasting cake at a great price.

It's now going to be round with all tiers being real. The original plan was to have to the top tier a dummy but since J and I decided that the free anniversary cake within a year is not the important to us, our baker has included this in our cake count for the wedding and she's not charging us. The flavors stay the same and the only change is the shape. We might not rent her cake stand as well. I'm now looking for cute ones online that we can possibly buy instead since the prices aren't that bad. We already have our eye on one but it might be too small.

I mean how cute is this stand? Without the ribbon tied that way though. I can possibly see it with our own green or brown ribbon but not tied in a bow. I like this stand better than those shiny silver platform things. For $20, this is a great deal aaannddd it's not white! I have to check with Alicia first if this will possibly work for our cake.

I'm relieved that this part is done. We have some more things to get done like flowers, officiant, and ceremony musician. The menu should be easy and painless.

Well it's time for bed so I can be well rested for our fun engagement pictures tomorrow! I have my make-up trial tomorrow too.

My dress is here!

Thanks, Mr. UPS Man :)

The planters are here

The planters I ordered from Crate&Barrel are finally here. I will probably do my test run on Saturday when I can actually get to Ukrop's early enough to get some fresh hydrangeas. For some reason, these things look blue-ish in the pictures or maybe it's just me.



Our cake tasting yesterday went well. I don't think I've ever eaten that much cake. There were 5 different cakes and tons and tons of different icings and fillings. I'm not really a big fan of icing and J is the total opposite. He would eat sugar by itself if he could. We haven't gone into contract yet with this baker since we have another tasting scheduled for Saturday. We do have all the details for this one though if we do decide to go with her...it will be a 3-tiered square cake with the top one being a dummy layer. With the amount of guests we are expecting, there's really no need for a lot of cake but at the same time we don't want our cake to look like a big birthday cake. We are incorporating our wedding colors and the grass graphics on our invite. I was very surprised that J had a lot of ideas on the cake. I thought he just wanted to come for the tasting part. The lady was so sweet. She even had us take all the leftovers from the tasting.

On our way home from the tasting, my crackberry received a new message and it was the shipping confirmation for my freaking dress! I was so ecstatic when I read the email. I had just contacted them that morning to ask about my dress and hours later it was being shipped! It didn't even take 5 weeks for this. It should be here tomorrow.


This week is going by so quick with it being so short and me actually doing work at work. The weekend should be full of more wedding related items and of course, Monday is our engagement session. I finally figured our the name of the park where J took me this past Monday. I have to email Jason for the details of where we're meeting them and the name of the places where we want our session done.

Wedding stuff this past weekend...

We spent yesterday doing more wedding stuff. Our registries are finally done. We weren't going to register at all 'cause we didn't think it was necessary until the invitations were mailed and people started asking where we registered. We did Crate&Barrel and Bed Bath & Beyond. Both registries are very short since we only picked items that we know we really need. Thanks to my mom, we have a lot of house stuff already.

In between the two stores, we drove around downtown to scope out some areas so we know where to take our photographers for the engagement session next week. I'm soooo excited for this! I love engagement/wedding pictures and I can't wait for our session with Jason and Tammy (I stalk their website daily to make sure I don't miss out on new proofs)! The two main places we're aiming for are the Main Street Station and this park I can't remember the name of in Church Hill. The MSS is just awesome and the park's view is the city. I mean who wouldn't want pictures taken here??

I went ahead and changed my make-up trial to Monday so it's done for the engagement session. Tonight is our first cake tasting and I have us scheduled for another one for this coming Saturday.

We are slowly getting everything done. The only part we're missing is the officiant, flowers, and maybe a ceremony musician.