So I know you are thinking, why plan a mini-honeymoon when we can just do the real thing? Well, MG Bear and I have a flight credit with Southwest that we have to use before October of this year, so instead of wasting the money we already spent we figured why not go somewhere after the wedding! Plus, we won’t be taking our week long trip to Myrtle Beach because of all this wedding stuff. We decided to go to Fort Lauderdale, Florida (which is only a 2 hour flight for us from Maryland) and after doing some research we found the Beach Comber Resort right on the beach! They have great prices on rooms and it looks perfect for the laid back vacation we are looking for.

We figured that after the stress of the wedding that it will be nice to take a little trip to the beach and enjoy ourselves. We are only going for four days so we don’t ruin the feel of the actual honeymoon. All I know, is I can’t wait to get my toes in the sand!

The venue was pretty awesome, but he definitely wants to go see a few more just to compare before we settle down…which is understandable. The three photographers were all very good, we liked some more than others, but I enjoyed meeting with all of them.

Here is where my problem is, I’m just too nice. We have one more meeting with one more photographer, even though I’m completely ready to sign with one of the ones we already interviewed. I don’t know if I should go through with the meeting and give the other photographer a chance, or if I should just cancel the meeting and go with the photographer we like. I also am getting sick to my stomach just thinking about when I’ll have to e-mail the other two photographers and tell them we aren’t going with them. I absolutely hate the feeling of disappointing people, and although that’s just part of their business, I honestly hate the idea that I have to tell them we aren’t choosing them. With an unlimited budget, I would choose all of them, but that obviously isn’t an option.

So, for those of you who, like me, hate making people sad or disappointed…how did you write your rejection email? Did you give a reason as to why you weren’t going with them or did you just say you had chosen someone else? Put me out of my misery, please!

Where are you, or did you, have your e-session photos? Was it themed around a hobby you both enjoy? Share them with us!

Photographer:  Vanessa Joy Photography

Like Vanessa Joy Photography? View more of her work!

Too bad this is only $575 (eek!!!!!)

Only $35 on etsy! Love it.

Ahhhh I'm obsessed. Only wish it came in silver. Maybe by June it will. Must. have. this.

Wedding present from Apricot Dude? If any of my friends are reading this—please hint to him hehe.

We are beginning to talk about what in the world Apricot Dude and his men will wear on our big day! My thoughts are that black is just a bit too dark for the wedding we are thinking. My thought was tan like this:

or maybe grey like this:

Apricot Dude thought he was being funny and emailed me this idea:

Uh…..no. What are your thoughts? Have you been to summer weddings where they have worn black? Keep in mind, our bridesmaid colors are a bright grapefruit/peachy color. Going for lots of peaches, yellows, light greens. We’re going to look at them soon so I’ll keep you posted. Promise!

Our original plan was to travel somewhere lavish (think Bora Bora or the Maldives) but…. the prices to fly out there were enough to scare us off! Next we thought of going somewhere no one would ever think of going, Brazil. The way we saw it was “who knows when we will have the money to go somewhere unique again, so why not for our honeymoon” well…. flights were STILL expensive and most resorts were about the same price as Bora Bora. We know we are on our own since our parents are paying for the wedding, so we had to start over, again. The Caribbean is closer and more affordable, so that was a starting point. I don’t like doing things that everyone else does and that meant that anywhere in Mexico, Bahamas, Jamaica and St. Lucia are out of the question. I don’t want to go to a mass resort (think Sandals) so I looked into cruises. Then it hit me… Hurricane Season.

We are getting married September 15th which is right smack in the middle of hurricane season for the Caribbean and even if we waited, it doesn’t end until December. While I know alot of people that went on their honeymoon during these months, most of them said it just rained at night. I don’t want one drop of rain, or a scary storm so we talked about waiting it out. The Pros and Cons were weighed and the one that pushed us into the direction of booking our honeymoon for January 2013, was the fact that we would have much more time to save up and pay off the trip before we got there, instead of after. Especially since the holidays would soon be approaching after our wedding, leaving us even more broke.

We haven’t officially booked the honeymoon yet, but we are working with a travel agent now to get the best deal. Are any of you taking a late honeymoon because of the weather, or money? It seems more common nowadays for couples to wait. If you are already married, did a late honeymoon take away from the “just married” or “newlywed” feeling? I think it would be a nice getaway to look forward to and you have time to wind down, open presents and enjoy being husband and wife right away while at home, but that’s just me!

Are you celebrating Valentine’s Day this year? What are your plans? Do you have any unique ideas for telling your fiance or husband, “I Love You?”

From julieannart.com via Pinterest

My parents both work at the same place, a car dealership, and they have worked there for the last 30 years. This means that I essentially grew up roaming the halls and thus I know most of the people that work there, some of them have literally known me all my life. We ran into a problem with this as we were making the list for the engagement party (and we subsequently decided to make the wedding list as well.) If you invite one of my parents coworkers, you have to invite them all. This leads to a bit of a problem, because the dealership is by no means small, and it would mean adding about 30-40 people to our guest list to invite them. When our guest list is already at 166 on just HIS side, that means inviting at least 250 total…way more than our original estimation of 150.

It seemed like it was a snowball effect. Even if we just chose to invite a few of them, we knew that other people would be hurt by not getting an invite. So, if you invite one, you have to invite someone else, and then someone else, and then someone else…until you’ve got way too many people you’re inviting.

I feel like the person at the end...run over by a GIANT snowball.

In the end, we decided that these were all people who had known me most of my life and that they deserved to be a part of our day. The unfortunate thing is that we will have to cut people out of our list who I may not have known as long, but who I would rather invite. It’s a fine line that you have to walk when it comes to your parents and family and the guest list. At some point we had to realize that although it is our wedding, it is our parents who are (mostly) paying for it, and therefore they deserve a say in who we invite.

Did you encounter a giant snowball when you were making your guest list? How did you deal with it?

Fast forward to today…when I’m trying to plan my wedding and I only have two female friends that I consider close enough to be bridesmaids. All of my other friends are either boys or I’m just not close enough to them to feel comfortable asking them to be in my wedding. Now, I would be completely fine having only two bridesmaids, except for the fact that Violet dude has about 5 guys in mind for groomsmen. This creates a bit of a number problem.

I am beginning grad school on Tuesday, and the way that my program is scheduled, I will be with the same 40 people every day for the next 3 years. I’m sure that I’ll make some close female friends in that time, and because our wedding is still 19 months away, I still have time to become close enough to some of them to make them bridesmaids.

But, here is where my problem lies. I will only have known these girls for about a year before I have to decide if I want them to be in my wedding. I’m terrified that I will look back in 30 years and regret my decision to ask someone who I had only known a short amount of time to be in my wedding. On the other hand, I have some other friends who I have known for a little while longer but who I’m not as close with who I could also ask. It’s a tough decision, and I’m coming to the garden for help.

Were you in a similar situation when you chose your bridesmaids? How did you deal with this? For those of you who are already married, have you looked back and regretted your decisions? Is it better to have a friend you haven’t known that long in your wedding, or is it better to have friends who you have known longer but aren’t as close with? Or, should I just swallow my pride and have 2 bridesmaids while Violet dude has 5 groomsmen?

Help!

In one of my previous posts, I had mentioned doing offsite pictures at a park/beach up the street because of the lack of landscape for creativity at our actual venue. Well, in talking to Mr. Photographer he actually recently did a wedding at our venue and did the same thing. He said it took away from time at the reception and that there was actually not that much more to work with at the park. He really gave us faith in his work and told us there was so much more to work with then what we think! I’m really glad we decided not to go offsite for the pictures mostly because I don’t want to drag my wedding party away for too long, especially since it will be hard to keep the attention of 6 groomsmen to take pictures!

Now, the next issue is engagement pictures. Booking Mr. Photographer came with a free 2 hour engagement session. Well, the problem with that is we already did one engagement session with a friend that does some photography and we are planning to do another with another friend in the spring. So, my question is, how can we utilize another set of pictures? I know it seems like a little much but our two friends offered to do these pictures for free and we figured we would help them build up their business.

Mr. Photographer suggested a “day after” shoot, since MG Bear would still have his tuxedo, but that entails sunrise shots and…. the reason why my fiance is called Morning Glory Bear and not Dude is because… he is just that! Waking him up period is like trying to get a bear out of hibernation, especially after our wedding and lots of adult beverages! So, a “day after” shoot is out of the question. I am also not feeling it because I would have to do my hair and make-up again and I know I will probably not be looking my prettiest as I would on the big day.

Mr. Photographer also suggested a “trash the dress” session and just thinking about that makes me CRINGE, so that’s out of the question as well.

The only other option I can come up with is getting some pictures with our dogs and not necessarily calling them “engagement pictures”. MG Bear and I talked about using these pictures as our Christmas cards later this year.

We are totally open to any ideas! Do any of you buds or blossoms have any suggestions for utilizing our free session?

My bridesmaids were originally to be: my sister, my sister-in-law, my good friend from high school and my good friend/roommate from college.

That didn’t happen…. more accurately most of it happened.

If you noticed, there are only three ladies dressed in green instead of the four I had planned on. To make an extremely long and somewhat painful story short: my sister removed herself from my bridal party.

I didn’t want anyone else as a bridesmaid, nor did I have time to ask someone new so I had three bridesmaids and Lilac Dude had four groomsmen. As much as we wanted even numbers with us at the alter, we weren’t going to ask one of the men to step down or scramble to find another bridesmaid who might fit into my sister’s dress. So we were” hip and trendy” with an odd number of attendants.

It didn’t look strange at all. But there was one minor issue… When the party recessed down the aisle we had an extra man. But my college roommate jumped right in with a solution:

And so that worked out well and got a lot of laughs.

Overall, I’m happy with how things worked out with our wedding party. My now brother-in-law gladly accepted the honor of being the best man and my bridesmaids were such a force leading up to and on our wedding day that not having my sister in the wedding didn’t become a disaster.

We had some fantastic people behind the scenes before, during and after our wedding.

And for some encore silly pictures:

What about your wedding party? How did you pick them?

(All photos by Chatman Photography)

Once I got home and I had sorted the business cards and pamphlets into piles, I decided that I wanted to start looking at photographers. Some of them were in our price range, and some of them were very far out of our price range. But, I ran into something very disappointing as I was going through websites. The photographers’ websites had expired and they hadn’t renewed their domain. I suppose this advice is for the vendors who read this blog, but if you don’t renew your domain then potential customers can’t view your website. In my own opinion that is very poor business practice, especially considering most domains aren’t all that expensive to maintain. Communication with potential clients is so important, and what is sad is that those vendors will never even have a chance with many brides because their websites weren’t up and running.

I also have a bit of an issue with websites that do not proofread their text before publishing. I guess this is more of a pet peeve of mine, but general online etiquette dictates that you should at least use the proper form of “to, too, and two” or “there, their, and they’re” if you’re going to be perceived as a professional company. It made me shudder because of the number of grammar and spelling mistakes I saw on websites that were otherwise beautifully maintained. I actually received an automated e-mail correspondence from a vendor with multiple spelling mistakes on it. That means that is automatically going out to brides and grooms with all those errors!

I guess poor grammar has always been a pet peeve of mine, but when I’m going to be paying these vendors a lot of money to come to my wedding…I want to be sure they’re professional. Professionalism should start with the first click of my mouse on their webpage.

What are your vendor website pet-peeves?

The whole set up....so pretty!

Gold chargers have my heart

Gorgeous table!!!

I would highly encourage any brides who are reading this in Cincinnati to check out the Glendale Lyceum on facebook. It’s an amazing venue!!

I know how difficult deciding colors can be, so I wanted to offer some advice to those of you who are still trying to decide what you want your colors to be.

1. Start out with some inspiration- I started my adventure into color by looking at real wedding pictures on websites like the Knot and Pinterest. I saved the color schemes that I really liked and kept them to ask my family, friends, and fiance about their opinions.
2. Go to a home improvement store- I know this sounds crazy, but it really helped me. I went and took about 50 paint samples from the paint department at my local home improvement store. They’re free and it’s nice to be able to lay them out on your carpet and match up the colors. Take different shades from all the colors you like and match them up to each other. Once you’ve found a combination you love, you can move on to the next step.
3 Go buy some ribbon- Once you have your colors chosen, go to a craft store and buy ribbon in those colors. Sometimes seeing the colors on a flat paint swatch doesn’t do you as much good as seeing it on a satin ribbon. Satin ribbon has a way of catching the light and making things look brighter. And don’t forget that your bridesmaids dresses will be in fabric, not paper, so seeing how the color moves in the light will help you feel more confident in your decision. Then, go home and make a pretty bow out of your ribbon and keep it around…if you see it every day and still like it then you know you’ve made the right decision. It’s also great to have a piece of the ribbon in your purse for impromptu shopping trips to the craft store or to look at bridesmaids dresses or tuxes!
4. Wear something in your colors- Even if you go and find a pair of earrings in the colors that you love, or find a shirt with your colors, wearing them helped me feel like I really did enjoy the colors that I chose. I actually went out and bought yarn in the colors and crocheted myself a scarf. It’s great because if anyone asks me what my wedding colors are going to be, I can pull it out and show them right away!

My wedding colors scarf!

5. Commit to your colors- There should really be a (when you’re ready) after that statement. Obviously you don’t have to decide overnight what your colors are going to be, but once you have decided that you truly love them, it’s time to commit. I have read so many blogs about how a bride has dress buyer’s remorse after she buys her dress and then sees more in magazines that she likes. This could happen with your colors too, but not if you stop looking! There’s always a chance that your colors will change, but if you know that you love them and you know that you’ll be happy looking at wedding photos 30 years from now with those colors in them…then it’s time to commit. Go start buying ribbon and flowers and pick your bridesmaids dresses. It’s hard to start looking at other color schemes when you’ve spent $100 on ribbon.

Most of all, just have fun. Picking colors isn’t supposed to be stressful, it’s supposed to be an enjoyable experience. In the end, the colors are only accents for one of the most important days of your life, they don’t define it.

What techniques did you use to decide on your colors?

I wrote this post to put out a sigh of relief! When MG Bear and I got engaged there was a little static from my parents and how we should be going about paying for things and making decisions. To break it down for you, our parents are being very traditional. My parents are paying for the big stuff (catering and all that comes with it) and his parents are paying for the major things outside of that (photographer, DJ, flowers, rehearsal, etc). It was hard at first because my parents had the attitude that whoever is paying for what, should get to make the decisions. That was a nightmare to deal with and MGB’s parents thought the exact opposite, that WE should be making the decisions as long as they aren’t unreasonable! The problem was that my dad never sat down and gave us a hard budget for the portion of the wedding they are paying for. He literally said to us, tell me what you want and I will make it work. So this lead to a lot of confusion and things being misinterpreted. We finally sat down and after a few tears we were finally able to agree on how things would work.

My friends know that my mom and I definitely butt heads on a lot of things, so dealing with her has been the biggest challenge. She walked into this wedding planning trying to be Mom-zilla, but after the talk with her and my dad I think she sees things a little differently. I definitely have to walk on egg shells sometimes just to keep us from disagreeing on trivial things, but we’ve been doing great so far. I love my mom and she is my best friend at the end of the day, so I just want this experience to be a happy one.

MGB’s parents have been awesome! I just love my future in-laws. For example we have been telling MGB’s dad about the photographer we want, told him the price and gave him the website to look at his work and he says “I don’t even need to see the contract, here is the money. As long as your bride is happy!”

I’m happy to say that we are smooth sailing so far! Having two great set of parents makes wedding planning SO much easier.

I am Violet Bud! I am currently a student, just about to start my first year of graduate school next week! My goal is to be a Doctor of Physical Therapy in three years, although between studying, clinicals, and wedding planning I’m not sure if I’m going to make it. I am super excited not only to be starting a new chapter of my career and education, but also to be starting a new chapter of my life with my fiance, we’ll call him Violet Dude. He is also a student at the same university that I attend, and he is currently trying to complete his undergraduate degree in chemical engineering. Between the two of us, I think we’ll be spending more hours studying than wedding planning, which I think will make for a stressful few years. Fortunately our wedding is planned for August 17, 2013 so I have a little over 19 months to get everything done.

Our wedding is going to take place somewhere near my hometown of Canton, OH. We haven’t made any final decisions about a venue yet because the guest list just keeps on growing. Both of us being college students means our budget is pretty small, but I like the challenge of being a DIY bride. I already have a lot of plans in my head for all the DIY aspects of our wedding, and I can’t wait to share them with you! I expect that it will be a formal, classic wedding with a bit of a modern twist on some things.

A little bit more about me: I am an internet junkie. If I could spend most of my day on the internet reading through wedding blogs, pinning on Pinterest, reading vendor reviews, and writing my own blog (and now this one, too!), I totally would. Unfortunately, I actually have to be a functional member of society, so I can’t do that every day…but rest assured that I will be sure to blog about anything great that I find! I also love to crochet, do paper crafts, quilt, and make other crafts in my spare time. I’m sure that spare time will now be filled with wedding-related crafting, but that makes me just as excited. My boys are my life…and when I say “boys” I mean my fiance and our two cats, Ace and CC. They brighten my day and I’m not sure what I would ever do without them.

I can’t wait to start blogging, I already have so many things in mind that I’m looking forward to sharing with you. Look for them soon!

I use Wedding Wire’s check list, but for some reason I am feeling very old school when it comes to this. I am all about everything being digital or available online these days, but something makes me nervous about it. A friend of mine always pounds in my head how great google’s calendar is and how it syncs to your phone, but little old me still likes to carry around an old school calendar in my purse. I would like to start a wedding binder, but where to start? How to organize? All these things keep popping into my head and give me waves of anxiety. Do I treat the binder like a calendar and mark off things that need to be done by certain months? Or do I organize it by category (ie: flowers, linens, food, RSVPs, etc)? Should I use it as an “idea book”?

But then I think to myself, should I just (wo)man up and use the online checklists? I am definitely open to suggestions, but part of me still wants to go old school and stick with a binder. I have a huge wedding board on Pinterest, but it is all over the place! Part of me wants to print some of the serious ideas out and put them into a binder, but another part of me feels like I am getting way ahead of myself!

Are you all using/did you use a wedding binder? Was it helpful or did it just make things messier? 

Color: Tangerine

Color: Coral

So I’m leaning more towards tangerine. Still need to decide….

My MOH's parents' house all set up for my shower for a tea!

My bridal shower and bachelorette party were last weekend and while I had virtually nothing to do with the planning (awesome!) I wanted to share how amazing my family and friends are for putting this all together! My bridal shower was a tea theme, because I love love love tea! It was a great time with lots of family and friends around to wish me well on our upcoming wedding.

We played the ever popular toilet paper gown game. I loved seeing everyone dressed up!

For my bachelorette party we went to the DC Improv, dinner and then hopped around some bars. The whole night was amazing and so much fun. I feel so so lucky to have such great friends!

All my girls and I at DC Improv

We started the search at my all-time favorite store: J. Crew. Seriously, that store is the death of my wallet. I’ve always loved their bridal line and thought from the very beginning that they would be the makers of my bridesmaid’s dresses. I started the search by, of course, picking my color (grey). I had J. Crew send me a swatch of their Aged Driftwood color in Silk Taffeta, and I fell in love. It was the perfect shade of grey, not too light, not too dark. So, in my head, this is what my 7 girls were going to wear:

We made an appointment at the J. Crew bridal store near where we live, and 4 of us went to go try on dresses. FAIL. This dress was super light in person, like almost a silvery white type color. That, and the silk taffeta was seeming like it could get very wrinkled. My girls weren’t happy and, despite my deep love for all things J. Crew, neither was I. So, the search continued.

My future MIL asked me if I had ever heard of LulaKate. I checked out their website and definitely liked some of the dresses, but thought the prices on the site were way out of my price range. Then, a few weeks later, I made an appointment at a dress shop in my town and we found that LulaKate also makes a less expensive fabric – therefore making the dress a little bit more affordable.

The great thing about LulaKate is you essentially build your own dress. She has like 26 different top options and 4 different skirt options. The possibilities are literally endless. This also made it easy for my 7 girls to each pick their own dress (which I love!).

So all of the dresses will be grey, and they will also all have the same skirt (the one currently shown in the pink dress). They will also all have the 3” inset waistband like the green dress. I love them all!

I’m happy that my girls all got to go in and try on dresses and ultimately feel comfortable in what they chose. They all have different styles and body types, so getting them all to love one dress would have been next to impossible.

So – another thing checked off the list! Olive Dude and I are less than six months out and most of our planning is done. Now I’m just getting super EXCITED and can’t wait for the day to get here!

The funny part is, in my recent post, I talked about how I knew which one was “the dress” and guess what? That actually wasn’t the dress I ended up picking out! When I first decided to go dress shopping, it was literally the week after MGB and I got engaged. I went just for “fun” to kind of see what was out there, while still keeping in mind I had a little bit of time before I needed to order a dress. At that time we also had not nailed down the venue, even though we had an idea of where we wanted to have it.

The dress I picked was actually on my top 3 list, but it was kind of hanging in the background and I kept looking at the pictures from the first time around and it was growing on me more and more. I tried all the dresses on in order from last to first based on the last time I was there and when I got to my number one, the feeling just wasn’t there anymore. I saw the dress differently and it didn’t bring out the emotions it did last time. The consultant made a point that it was probably the emotions of that day that made me cry when I tried the dress on, especially since the one that made me cry was the very last one I tried on. I have to say that I loved the place I got my dress at because they laid everything out on the table, including the designer and the price of the dress without the haggling. Other than David’s Bridal, it was the only place that let me take pictures (let’s not get started on my opinion of places that don’t!) and it was just an overall great experience.

So my advice to newly engaged ladies is this, take your time! Make sure you go to a few different places first, take lots of pictures (if they allow you!) and don’t be afraid to try on the same dresses a few times. There is nothing wrong with getting emotional about a dress, but my advice is to sit on it and then come back later to make sure it’s the dress that you are actually emotional about and not the overall “OMG I am getting MARRIED!” feeling. At the end of the day, this is a BIG purchase because this is what your FH, photographer and all of your guests will be focusing on!

I am sorry it has been so long since I have written. I have been very very busy with wedding preparations. I wanted to share my latest DIY project with you. I DIY-ed my shoes!! I was looking everywhere for some shoes that I wanted.. I ordered these:

Steve Madden

But the were just too high!

Then I was very upset! I really wanted glitter shoes. I looked at these:

I thought I would Dye these ones pink..

And these

And these

One of my wonderful bridesmaids helped me out and linked me to this wonderful article

I was sold! Glitter my own shoes??!? YES!

Now after some research I found this video-

DIY glitter shoes

which was the best technique for me. I used the Mod Podge instead of the Tacky glue though.

After all this… here are my shoes!

What do you all think??