cake toppers

Since I seem to be on a roll with wedding accessories/decor inspiration, let's move on to cake toppers.

Le Petit Oiseau
Charming and cute, but pricey

Lollipop Workshop

Super sweet, but also pricey

Bent Branch
Adorable!

Lilly BonBon

Another cute option

Kiki La Ru
I just think these look fun and very rustic/vintage

The toppers above are all very lovely, but my favorite is most definitely this one:

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When I was an itty, bitty girl (about 4) I saw a picture of the most beautiful Barbie in a magazine (probably the Sears Christmas catalog).

Happy Holidays Barbie 1989

I was in love and it went straight to the top of my Christmas list. I was already a huge Barbie fan, but that Christmas started almost 20 years of collecting. I have every single holiday Barbie from 1989 until 2008, in addition to a few others. So, of course, the 1960s (reproduced in 1997) Barbie and Ken wedding ornament is my top pick. I'm not exactly sure how the future mister feels about my preferred pick, which is probably why I haven't made any decisions yet.

What do you think? Should I go with Barbie and Ken or keep looking to find something we both like?

Sanford Stadium

Last week I was checking our event planner's blog, as usual, when their newest post caught my eye. Sanford Stadium, home of the Georgia Bulldogs, can be rented out for parties. More specifically, rehearsal dinner parties!

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Now, I'm not a big sports fan and really could care less about hosting a party at the stadium, BUT the future mister loves sports, so this excites me simply because I know that he would get a huge kick out of it. Although our plan was to nail down our rehearsal dinner location this summer, it ended up falling by the wayside. So despite my lack of interest in anything sports related, we've decided to at least add the stadium to our list of remaining places to check out. On a side note: I think I may have found a good compromise since I shot down the future mister's request to have the mascot, Uga, at our wedding.

(kind of cute, but no thanks)

Where did you hold your rehearsal dinner? Would you consider a more unique location like a stadium rather than the usual restaurant or hotel?

garters

Here are the garter inspiration photos I sent to my sew talented mom recently:

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As you can see, I'm keeping with a more vintage look. I love that the last one is tied on with a velvet ribbon, which matches my favorite ring bearer pillow. For the garter toss, I think I'll have my mom whip up something a bit more plain and simple, or perhaps something to commemorate the future mister's love of sports.

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What did you do for your garter(s)?

bearing the rings

Here's some of the inspiration I'm sending to my mom for our ring pillow:

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I love the oversized flower and pop of color on this one, although I think it looks a bit too contemporary for our rustic/vintage/garden wedding.

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Since this one uses a vintage handkerchief, I thought it was a great tie-in with our save-the-dates. The color is a bit bland, though.

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I feel the same way about the color of this pillow as well, but the delicate vintage lace is just lovely.

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I think this one is my favorite. It looks rustic with the burlap, vintage with the velvet ribbon, and garden with the flower. And the pop of color is perfect.

I'm sure my mom will have some ideas as well. Which one is your favorite?

sew talented

My mama can sew. I've mentioned it once before - here - but I'll elaborate. When I was two or three, my mom made me a Cinderella costume for Halloween. This wasn't your ordinary Cinderella costume, though. Half was rags and the other half was a pretty dress. I really wish I could show you a picture, but the only one I have is in my room at my parents' house. UPDATE: I found the photo! My mom had already scanned it in for me and I just now realized that it was saved to a USB drive I had in my possession.


Then, in 6th grade I got the grand idea to be Little Bo Peep for Halloween so that I could trick-or-treat with my "lamb." Well Little Bo Peep isn't the easiest costume to find in stores, so mom made it.


For my freshman year in college, my mom made me a duvet cover and pillow covers because I couldn't find anything that I liked for my twin sized bed. It was blue plaid on one side and white with blue, green and pink dragonflies on the other. And when I moved into an off-campus house junior year, she made me another duvet, bed skirt and pillows for my full sized bed. I loved this fabric so much, that after college she tore the duvet apart and made me more pillows for my couch and window coverings. These pillows and curtains currently reside in our guest bedroom/craft room/my office since they're on the girly side and not gender neutral enough for the living room.



Last summer, after we moved in together, mom came to stay for a week and whipped up some pillows and drapes in this pretty blue, green and tan paisley print. Love.



How is any of this wedding related? Well, mom is offering her sewing talents for the wedding! So far, she'll be making my garter and the ring bearer pillow - I'll post some inspiration soon.

time flies

...when you're having fun planning a wedding and under the 1 year mark. Only 8 months to go! According to the email I received from theknot.com today, this month I should be registering for gifts, choosing a cake, and planning our table decor - done, done and done.

Here's what we've got going on:

save-the-dates - work in progress
hotel blocks - almost complete; waiting to sign one last contract
transportation - we've picked a company, but can't sign a contract until the new year
day-of-coordinator - the contract is signed and the deposit was mailed in yesterday!
bridesmaids dresses - heading to Atlanta with my girls on October 9th

Right now I feel like I still have a good grasp on things since we have most of the big ticket items out of the way. I have a feeling, though, that all of the small details will start to sneak up on me as the months progress. Did anyone else feel this way during their planning?

me vs. the yudu (part 3) - success is mine!

Sorry, I totally skipped over part 2. Trust me, it would have been boring anyway as it was the exact same thing as part 1 - yell at my printer for an entire day because it won't print a transparency, finally get the transparency to print, burn the screen, test print. Our names still weren't clear enough, which is why we are now at part 3.

It's true what they say: third time's a charm. After another slight tweak to the design, a perfectly printed transparency on the first try(!!), and a beautiful screen I was ready to go. I held my breath and mentally crossed all of my fingers and toes and a few minutes later I had this:


I completed 12 hankies before I needed to wash out the screen. Once it was dry, I did about 11 more, with two mistakes. So, 21 down many, many more to go. Now that I have a good screen, the process is pretty quick and I hope to have them all printed in the next few weekends. Then they'll all need to be heat set with the iron, folded and packaged up. I'll share the final outcome once they are all out in the mail, sometime between now and November.

peachy keen

As you all probably know, the future mister and I had some of our engagement photos taken in a peach orchard.

photos by Heidi from Our Labor of Love

Well, FSIL/Bridesmaid Katie sent these peach favor inspiration photos earlier this week. What cute ideas! And a great way to incorporate the future mister's *insane love for peaches.

mini peach pies (source)

peach preserves (source)

My only concern with something like these is that they could be pretty pricey. And to be honest, I was considering cutting favors all together since a majority of our guests will be from out of town and I plan on delivering OOT bags to the hotels. Having one favor per couple or family is always an option.

What did you do/are you doing for favors? Do you think guests expect them?


*I'm not kidding. He could probably eat an entire bushel in one sitting.

showers and dress shopping

Look what I received in my (digital) mailbox last week:


My very first bridal shower invitation! It might seem a bit early to have a shower considering our wedding is in May, but there's a good explanation. MOH Sam and bridesmaid Becca are going to be in town visiting (we were all roommates in college). Well, Sam is from Colorado and wasn't sure if she would be able to make it back east again prior to the wedding and asked if it would be okay to plan a little shower/brunch for me. It won't be very big - four out of my five bridesmaids (we'll miss you Ash!), a sorority sister who lives a few hours away and two local friends.

The 'maids will get in Friday night/Saturday morning, so I decided to take advantage of most of us being in the same place at the same time. We're going dress shopping!! I'm really looking forward to spending time with my girlfriends and getting ideas for their attire. Online images of perfect-looking models just aren't cutting it for me anymore. I'm also glad that we were able to set this up because I thought I would have to pick out bm dresses alone since we are all so spread out. And, honestly, that doesn't seem like much fun.

pretty dresses for my mama

Last weekend while my parents were in town, my mom and I were flipping through some of my bridal magazines when she spotted a potential MOB dress.

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I love it! The dress is actually a bridesmaid dress by Monique Lhuillier, but my mom could totally pull this look off. It's a very modern, yet classic silhouette unlike many of the other dresses deemed Mother-of-the-Bride appropriate.

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She also liked this one from the Monique Lhuillier website. The back is lovely, although the front is, unfortunately, too low cut.

I made the suggestion to my mom that we find a store that carries these dresses so she can try them on. Sadly, there are only two stores - Minneapolis or Los Angeles - and we don't live anywhere close to either one. There is the option of ordering online, but dresses are not returnable. Bummer.

On the bright side, at least we have some inspiration to move forward in the MOB dress hunt. What are your suggestions on where to find modern/stylish MOB dresses?

shabby chic chalkboards

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I love the idea of using a shabby chic/vintage chalkboard as signage at the wedding. It could be used on the guest book table, the gift table, or at the bar to list drink options. Perhaps if there's enough time, I can tack a few of these onto my DIY list.

wedding anxiety

These past few days/weeks I haven't really felt all that compelled to write. I'm not sure whether it's just a case of writer's block, or maybe the fact that we're in a bit of a planning lull at the moment. But I think that it's most likely attributed to the fact that I'm starting to feel some wedding anxiety. It's not anxiety over not having enough of the planning complete (although, being type A, I might start to feel that in the coming months). Instead it's anxiety over whether my wedding will be "good enough." And by "good enough" I don't mean according to our guests' points of view, but rather according to my expectations. I am slightly obsessed with wedding blogs, and have been for at least six months before the future mister and I were even engaged. It started off with Style Me Pretty and quickly grew to include Once Wed, Southern Weddings Magazine, Weddingbee, Snippet & Ink, and dozens more. I pour over these on a daily basis and star or bookmark the ones that inspire me the most. This has never been a problem. Until now.

Now I'm reaching the part in our planning where all of my ideas and inspirations are about to turn into concrete, tangible things. And to be honest, this kind of scares me. Save the date handkerchiefs, blue mason jars filled with flowers, burlap table cloths, mis-matched bridesmaid dresses, the list goes on. What if the real things don't live up to the beautiful images in my head? I feel crazy admitting this, but my heart starts pounding just thinking about it. I'm sure everything will turn out as it should, but I still can't shake this recurring anxiety.

Did/have you experience(d) any wedding anxiety during your planning? How did you handle it?

me vs. the yudu (part 1)

First, I'm going to preface this post by apologizing for the poor quality iPhone photos. My camera battery died this morning and I didn't want to wait for it to recharge.

So with my transparency finally printed I was able to run through all of the steps to screen print with my Yudu. I am happy to report that it was a mini success!

First, I read through all of the instructions, watched some tutorials and printed out some tips and tricks that I gathered from various blogs and forums. Then I set up my work space.


I was most nervous about applying the emulsion to the screen and exposing the image. But the entire process went pretty smoothly! There is a lot of down time, though, in between steps when you have to wait for the screen to dry. For my test print, I picked out a hankie that had some Native Americans embroidered in the corner. Although cute, it doesn't really go with our rustic, vintage, garden style wedding.


In case you can't tell from the photos above - our fuzzy names aren't the result of me trying to Photoshop out our personal information. Unfortunately, the script I chose (which I LOVE and am not getting rid of) is a bit delicate for the screen. At the very bottom of my design I had "formal invitation to follow" in size 12 and that didn't even come through at all. I think the other font I chose, Artisan 12 for anyone who's interested, turned out beautifully. These photos don't really do it justice, because in person they look incredibly crisp.

All in all, I am very pleased with the process and the outcome. I plan on reworking my design, and am hoping that it will be a simple fix of making our names slightly larger. The one part I'm not looking forward to is printing another transparency. I told a good friend about my experience and this is what she posted on my facebook page a few days later:

Let's hope it doesn't come to that. Were your STDs or invites DIY? Did you experience any mishaps or frustrations during the process?