Racing to the Alter

Beauty....

2010-09-11T00:11:00.000-05:00

....is in the eye of the beholder...or so they say.

That's the topic of the week in my wedding world. I knew from early on I would not be one of those lucky brides who would save mucho dinero by doing her own hair and makeup. No, I am utterly hopeless at both. If my hair isn't pulled up into my favorite messy hair and clip, its totally flat with the sides pulled back in a barrette. Make up is a little more than barely there cause I have no clue what I am doing with the stuff. This chicky needs professional help!

So professional help is what I am looking for! I had envisioned having someone come to the hotel to primp us girls at our hotel however that is quickly becoming a distant dream. The problem is in order to do hair/makeup for a handful plus of people you need a) lots of time and/or b) lots of hands. I hadn't really given this much thought when we decided to get married at 10:30 in the MORNING! Which means we don't have the luxury of time. We're running a pretty tight ship. This week I've been on the mission to find a salon that will open in the wee hours of the morning and accommodate the entourage.

Enough details....you people really want to see the look don't ya? Well here's what I'm thinking. Please feel free to comment and tell me I'm off my rocker or cheer me on.

HAIR
I love my hair! Even though I don't have the slightest clue what I'm doing with it I still love it. Short, long (especially long), dark, blond or red (yes I have been all 3 colors)...I love it. Its fine and its thin but I don't care! I like my hair! I especially like it up! So that's the direction I'm going.

(source...I don't remember where I found these photos. If you know where its from please let me know)

MAKEUP
I don't wear much makeup so I a wee bit lost here. I really like the whole smokey eye look but since we're doing a morning wedding I don't want to get too heavy with eye makeup. I'm sure someone who knows what they are doing will have an easy compromise for this.

While in Denver at the end of the month I'll get to try out a couple of my favorite hair/makeup styles. I have a couple of trails lined up. Hopefully we'll find a winner! :)

Ring update!

2010-08-30T14:22:00.000-05:00

Steve gave me permission to post these. He's just a wee bit excited to have his own ring. :)

ooooo pretty!

My Ering with his band....pretty uh?!

The last time I was in Cali we went to take a look at rings and had narrowed our choices down to 2 rings. The one we didn't go with had a band of carbon fiber in the middle. It was cool but this was the one he had been picturing in his mind of months. Even more of a bonus was the store was having a rare sale so we snagged this beauty for a bargain!

We're both goofballs! After leaving the store with it we kept sneaking peaks. Steve wanted to out it with his watch collection but knew he would keep pulling it out to try it on. LOL!! Decided we'd better keep it in a safer place. I'm sure he still checks on it from time to time to try it on.

LA WOMAN!

2010-08-29T00:38:00.000-05:00

Haha...not quite! Last weekend I made my final trip to Cali before the big move. So weird that the next time I'll be out there will be as RESIDENT! WEIRD!

So the weekend was PACKED full of activities, mostly wedding fun. :)

We kicked Thursday off with a trip to South Coast Plaza to do some registering. Holy smokes talk about culture shock! That mall is INSANE! This Kansas girl doesn't think Tiffany's, Harry Winston, Cartier, Gucci, etc are mall stores. I'm pretty sure I didn't see Old Navy anywhere or a JCPenney's. I've seriously never seen anything like that in my life!

After registering we headed to Laguna Beach for another round of engagement photos. The photos are still out but here's some fun Steve and I had while waiting for the photographer to get in position:

Friday we kicked the day off by making a paying a visit to our friend Steven from Towne Jewelers (random info...Steven is the sales guy my Steve used for my engagement ring. Towne Jeweler Steven has a girlfriend named Wendy...weird uh?!) Lucky us hit a rare sale so we snagged Steve's wedding band. WOOHOO!!! It's official! I'm putting a ring on that man! :)

After our long excursion to the jewelers we took off to JoAnne's for our first DIY project....the aisle runner! We ended up changing our game plan but it worked out for the best. Once we had our supplies we headed back to the house to get started. This was a much larger project than either of us had anticipated but totally worth it in the end.

Saturday was a great day with 2 bright moments. One...we got to see our cake toppers in person. OMG I love them even more now than I did before! Jenn totally nailed the idea! She freaking rocks!

Chillin with salsa :)

That evening we had the honor of checking out Ray Manzarek and Robby Krieger, founding members of the Doors. Absolutely AMAZING show! The setting was a little odd but it was super cool regardless!

Sunday we spent trying to wrap up the aisle runner project, did some more shopping, and starting discussing honeymoon plans (reveal coming soon!). All in all it was a fantastic weekend. Not long enough but the light at the end of the tunnel is getting brighter!

Cake Topper part 2

2010-07-31T22:21:00.000-05:00

TA DA!!!!!!! How totally adorable are these?!

The champagne bottle needs some changing and we need to figure out a base but other than that....here's our topper! Love them!!!! Jenn rocks!

Say Yes to the Dress!

2010-07-30T23:11:00.002-05:00

The bad thing about having cable again is getting sucked into watch back to back episodes of Say Yes to the Dress (not to mention the Housewives, Bethenny Getting Married? and the Kardashians). Anyway after watching way too many episodes of SYTTD I decided I wanted an experience like Kleinfelds. Dangerous territory for my wee budget. Mom offered to take care of my dress so I wanted to keep costs in the reasonable range, not the insane "I-could-have-made-a-down-payment-on-a-house" range.

After looking at dresses online and doing my research I made an appointment with the Gown Gallery in KC hoping to get a deal during the Maggie Sottero trunk show. Knowing more than likely I'd never be able to afford the dresses in KC I made an appointment at David's Bridal in Topeka to make sure I knew what my cheaper more realistic options were before getting overwhelmed in KC.

Armed with my mom and my niece Adela we took off for David's and had a blast!

Mom and Adela in front of my dressing room

I tried on a BUNCH of dresses. Some cute some not so cute.

Forgive the quality of these photos. They were taken with my iPhone so their not the best. Also forgive the goofy faces I'm making. Adela was my photographer for most of these. She didn't give me any warning she was taking a photo so there was no chance of putting on a more "bridal" smile :D

Adela and I in a dress I really liked

At the time I didn't care much for this one but looking back at the pictures I really kind of like it

Hahaha! This one you need to be a toothpick and 6' tall in order to pull off. Makes me look like a giant cupcake!

And then just in time for the winner my beautiful sisters Mary and Liz arrived to see what we thought was the winner.

With Liz (Matron of Honor) and Adela (bridesmaid)

I found the perfect dress at David's Bridal (or so we thought). I didn't want to be rude and cancel my appointment at the Gown Gallery last minute and I still really wanted that SYTTD experience. So the plan was to go on to KC the next day, play the part then go back to David's afterwards and order the perfect dress.

On to KC we went. This time armed with Mom, Adela and both sisters, Mary and Liz. Upon arriving I was a bit flustered. Everyone needed to hit the loo thanks to the large sodas we got in Topeka for the drive. The space itself was basically a loft stuffed with dresses. The ladies working there seemed a bit stuffy to me. Not at all like the consultant we had the night before at David's. My consultant, Gwen came over, introduced herself and started filling out my paperwork. My heart dropped a bit when meeting her. She definitely seemed a wee bit snooty causing me to be a bit uncomfortable with her. I tried to suck it up and push thru. I was determined to make this fun!

With Gwen

After showing Gwen what I had in mind she took me to the dressing room where I waited while she pulled dresses. Now ladies here's where I need to share some advice. My experience at David's (along with watching too many episodes of SYTTD) had prepared me for the crazy corset style bra thing and slip thing. So I was prepared to put one of those on...however dear Gwen didn't bring those. WHAT?! I was a bit shocked when she came back from pulling dresses, asked me to take off my dress leaving me in my undies and bra. WHAT?! So here I am standing in front a stranger half naked. This modest gal was freaking out! Not exactly the experience was looking for.

Anyway she has me put on the first dress and as soon as I got it on I was in love. Like OMG...THIS is the dress! We head out to show the posse and they loved it as much as I did! :)

So here's the funny part. My sister Mary is a photographer and brought her camera to help document the day. She busted it out at the Gallery and after snapping 5 photos was told photos were not allowed. RATS! We put the camera away and proceeded to try on another dozen or so dresses. None of them even coming close to the first dress (that we managed to snap photos of).

The first dress was THE dress! Hands down. It put the one at David's to shame. Now the best part....the perfect dress was half price making it cheaper than anything I would have gotten at the trunk show. YAY!!!! I managed to get the PERFECT dress and veil and only went over budget by $21. Seriously....$21!

Since Steve can't see the dress until our first look I'm not posting the picture of me in the dress. You'll have to enjoy these instead. :)

With my beautiful mom! :)

With Liz and Adela

With my beautiful sisters, Mary and Liz. I <3 these girls!

Love is...

2010-07-30T16:30:00.000-05:00

stinkin' cute cake toppers!!! :)

If you haven't discovered Etsy.com yet you're missing out! They've got so much cute hand crafted goodies and vintage treasures you can search for days on end and never see everything.

Having done many searches I fell in love with custom cake toppers like these

(source)

(source)

See what I mean?! They are so freaking adorable! After many days of searching it became obvious that this wasn't a dream I was meant to have. The price tags are way too steep. The cheapest I could find started at $125. YIKES! Not exactly budget friendly.

After more searching I found this

(source)

How perfect would this cake topper be for Steve and I?! Love it!!!

Weeks later Steve sends me a message saying his dear friend Jenn wanted to know what she ccould do to help with the wedding. Knowing Jenn is incredibly talented and crafty, he asked if she's up for the challenge of making our cake topper. And guess what?! She agreed! Bust my buttons I was BESIDE myself with excitement!!!! Like stupid giddy with excitement! Just the idea that my dream of one of these super cute toppers might actually be sitting on our wedding cake was enough to make me well up with tears!!! I was sooooooooooooo freaking excited!

Jumping before she could change her mind, we sent her photos of what we were thinking. Version 1 she was on to something. With more input and more photos I knew we were on the right track.

Late Monday afternoon I got an email with this in it and I almost started crying!

(personal photo)

She did it!!!!! OH MY GOODNESS!!!! She did it!!!! I've been gawking at these little guys for almost a week now and every time I see them I get all sorts of giddy! They have a few final touches yet but even without them they are sooooooooooo stikin' cute! I can't wait to see them in person next month!

Engagement Photos at Downtown Disney

2010-07-30T12:28:00.000-05:00

Paul with South County Photography is a friend of Steve's and was gracious enough to do our engagement session at Downtown Disney. We had a lot of fun with Paul and his assistant Mike. Both guys were amazing! They helped put us at ease. Why is it when you're taking pictures with your point and shoot you can clown around and not think anything of it but when you get 2 people with big lens taking pictures of you it suddenly becomes awkward and weird?! We had fun with it and once we finally relaxed we had a great time and got some great pictures in the process. I am going back to Cali in August and Paul has asked us to do more photos with him at Laguna Beach this time. I'm actually REALLY looking foward to doing more photos. I love what I've seen of Laguna (I'm in love with the the tower across from BJ's!) and can't wait to get some beach-y photos. Now the big question is what to wear. Any suggestions?

Here's some of my favorite photos from our day with Paul.

Self Inflicted Bridal Bootcamp...feel the burn!

2010-07-30T09:41:00.000-05:00

In the words of the great Jillian Michaels "pain is weakness leaving the body" (something to that effect anyway).

The week after we purchased my dream dress I decided it was time to do something about my weight and overall out of shape-ness. I did some research, emailed a trainer at the local YMCA and was hooked! Beth (my trainer) was so kind in her emails I quickly made an appointment with her to see what she could do with my flabbiness. During the first session I knew i hit the jackpot. In person Beth is A-M-A-Z-I-N-G! She is so nice, friendly and so helpful! My previous experience with trainers have not been so nice. They usually were kind of aloof, looking around the gym not paying much attention to what I'm doing, offered very little encouragement nor did they inspire me to push myself. Beth did all this in ONE session. As soon as I finished with her that day I knew 2 things....1) I was going to hurt like hell the the next day (and that was her "easy" session) and 2) I had to do more.

3 weeks later what I now call my self inflicted bootcamp (SIBB) has turned into 1 day with Beth, 2 days of core/spin workouts, 1 day lifting on my own and walking 6 days a week. While trying to get into the groove of things and into a routine I've discovered somethings about myself:

I'm stronger than I think I am
I actually like the feeling of working my body till there is nothing left to give
I'm gonna look hot on my wedding day! hahahaha

The last component of SIBB is the food part. I've been an off and on again Weight Watchers member for 5 years or so. The last couple of years I've been more off than on. The last year in particular I've gotten more away from it and tried to go the counting calorie method the last 3 months or so. Unfortunately for me I find counting calories way too complicated. There is something about the simplicity of WW that I enjoy. Counting to 22 is WAY easier than 1200 and then trying to figure out how many calories I add back in for my workouts, etc. So back to WW I went. In my first week I was down 2 lbs. We'll find out this Sunday how I've done in my second week. This week I've been all sorts of out of whack due to vacation Bible school. The scales at home are showing me down but I don't want to get my hopes up just yet.

What are you doing in order to be the best version of you for your wedding day?

Momma didn't teach me to share!

2010-07-29T12:47:00.000-05:00

Just kidding! Kind of...

This blogging stuff is hard work! So hard I obviously don't do it much. I just do my own thing and then think afterwards dang I wish I would have shared that.

So much has happened...let me get you caught up. I left off with our trip to Denver. That was a huge success! Got all the important stuff taken care of. We have a church, reception venue, caterer and drum roll please....I now have a dress!!! WOOHOO!!!! I'm sooooooo in love with my dress! :) More about dress shopping later.

The save the dates have been ordered and have arrived. I heart Vistaprint! I took full advantage of one of their sales and scored 100 save the date postcards for $14, 2 lawn signs to help folks find the Cussler for $17, 250 free business cards that we are using as photo share cards/escort cards, a free pen for the guestbook and 10 free thank you cards w/ matching envelopes.

My Vistaprint Loot

Invites are in progress. I found an awesome invite online but unfortunately they were WAY out of our budget. Thankfully I have an amazing coworker who recreated them for me. YAY!!! The plan is to create a cute pocketfold (minus the pocket) for the invite goodies. That's been challenging but I think we finally have an idea that might work. More about that later as well.

Stay tuned! In our next episode we'll discuss engagement photos!

Why Denver?

2010-06-03T20:10:00.000-05:00

Source

This was the question we were asked more times than we could count over the weekend. I wonder if others get asked about their location as much?

Heading out Wednesday was a chore! We had rain, tornadoes and hail but we finally made it to Denver around 2am Thursday morning. Our first appointment of the day was at 9am Thursday but we didn't let the lack of sleep getting us down. Maybe that was the adrenaline kicking in. :)

First meeting was with our reception folks. We'll be having our reception at the Cussler Museum which is author Clive Cussler's private collection of cars. His daughter, granddaughter and grandson now open it to the public two days a week and host private events. Amie is our coordinator and is absolutely FABULOUS!!! She's very accommodating and easy to work with. Initially I was a bit nervous going in because they've never hosted a wedding reception before but after meeting Amie I couldn't be more excited! Oh the plans we have for this space!

Next we checked out a couple of hotels our many out of town guests. We got a kick out of one of the hotels trying to charge us more for a block of rooms than the rate I'd found online for the exact same dates. I'm no genius but something tells me if your hotel normally rents for $60/night and your guaranteed at least 30 rooms you probably shouldn't be trying to charge $70/night. Seems like bad business to me. Obviously they did not get our business. This particular hotel was also right next to the interstate (very LOUD rooms!) and one of the rooms we toured was obviously a former smoking room and smelled to high heaven! Thank you but no thank you...on to the next property.

The second property (La Quinta Inn) was actually very nice and the sales lady Michelle was AWESOME! However all of their rooms opened to the outside. If we were doing a summer wedding this wouldn't be so bad but we could have snow or ran during our wedding weekend so I'd rather stick to an all indoor hotel.

After lunch and a much needed nap we checked out our church. Pastor Jim Walters was the officiant for Steve's cousin's wedding last year and I just loved the man. So fun and kind. The day after that same wedding we went to Bear Valley Church for their Sunday services where I was shocked to see the Pastor from the previous day's wedding. He had a great message about one of the deadly sins. So great that I went and downloaded the podcast so I could hear the other 6 sins. When we decided to get married in Denver it was a no-brainer to see if Pastor Jim would marry us. YAY!!! So excited!!!

The front of Bear Valley Church

Minus the band equipment this is where we'll say "I DO!"

This is how we'll have the stage set up. Love the drapping!

Next up was our first of two photographers. I found Jeremy Martinez through either weddingbee.com or one of the countless blogs I follow. I fell in love with his work IMMEDIATELY! O.M.G. is this man talented!

All photos by Jeremy Martinez

Meeting with Jeremy and his wife Melinda pretty much sealed the deal. They both made us feel so comfortable and at ease. I'm so excited about working with them and I'm already beside myself to see the pictures (uh yeah...for the wedding we haven't even had yet)!!!

Last meeting of the day was with the fabulous coordinator Danielle Odil with Something Classic Events. Danielle is AWESOME!!! She brought us a little goody back with several tasty treats made in Colorado, put us at ease and made us feel very good about the ideas we already had about our day. If you're looking for a coordinator in the Denver area (or beyond..she will travel) I HIGHLY recommend her. You'll love her to pieces! Unfortunately for us, unless we hit the lottery our measly 10k budget isn't going to allow us to hire her right now.

After a few beers (one of which Steve decided he needed to wear...he's a klutz but he's mine!) and a yummy burger, we headed back to the hotel to regroup and rest up for day two.

In the beginning....

2010-05-26T18:23:00.000-05:00

the adventure officially begins at 9am tomorrow. Steve and I are meeting in Denver to visit with the church, reception location, photographers and hotels. While we may have some of these details in place we have a long way to go.

Here are the details that we're certain of:
*Wedding will be in Denver, Co
*Budget is a mere $10,000 for 150 guests

Hopefully we can make it. I've done a ton of research online and have lots of ideas but turing those ideas into reality when you're not entirely sure of what it is you want may be another challenge all together!

Stay tuned for the adventures of....RACING TO THE ALTER!

we're engaged!

2010-03-05T12:35:00.000-06:00

our engagement wasn't totally unexpected. i knew he would ask some day but had no idea when. i definitelty didn't expect it during his visit to celebrate the anniversary of our first date. i had just finished getting ready for my neice's school program, when he blurts out "i brought snacks" thinking he was talking about the film festival we were heading to that evening. he asked me if i was going to open the m&m box sitting on the coffee table which i assumed were the snacks. inside the box were pink and white m&ms that said, "will you marry me" with the ring. i freaked, shed some tears and of course said yes!