A labor of love

These are cell phone pics, so sorry in advance for the poor quality. Our favor boxes are complete after my aunt slaved away over her Cricut for a couple excrutiating hours. I couldn't really find any large brown favor boxes so we instead bought jumbo sheets of cardstock and made our own with a scrapbooking Cricut machine then my wonderful aunt took on the time-consuming task of folding said boxes and gluing the corners so that they're sturdy. Add a little quote to the front and some ribbon on the top and voila! So what's going in the boxes? Well I knew I wanted to do edible favors for guests but didn't really have an idea as to what kind of favor to provide, then FI and I got to talking about the moment we knew we were head over heels in love with one another. My FI and I grew up together as friends so when he decided to ask me out I was initially surprised and put off since I didn't want to ruin a perfectly good friendship. Well he was persistent and kept up for 3 months until I agreed to be his girlfriend. To be honest even when I told him I'd go out with him I really wasn't sure about us working out. I didn't ever imagine it would be serious and things got awkward for a bit when we were making the friends-to-relationship transition. So what changed and set in motion the events that led us to where we are today? He kissed me; and he kissed me good. It was pretty much the greatest first kiss in all of first kiss history and that's when I found out I was falling and he knew his hard work and patience had paid off. So together we decided on Hershey's kisses for favors to symbolize that very special moment in our relationship. Yes I'm aware that may seem cheesy, but really who doesn't love the straight-up chocolate goodness that is a Hershey's kiss? And they will fit perfect in our custom-made boxes :)

Makeup trial FAIL

I've always been a firm believer that practice makes perfect and so of course I scheduled a hair and makeup trial before the big day...or at least I thought I did. Come to find out the receptionist failed to tell the stylist who is taking care of my wedding day beauty that I was wanting a practice run of my makeup done on the same day I drove all the way to NC to get my hair done. Unfortunately for me my chick was booked solid after my appointment until close and so now I will be finding out what my day-of makeup looks like on well, the day-of. Total makeup trial FAIL. The perfectionist in me is freaking out and I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that I won't end up looking horrible on my wedding day *sigh* Oh, the stress!

Deja vu?

I know I have posted pictures of cufflinks on here before and if you frequent my blog you are probably experiencing deja vu. These are actually cufflinks we just ordered off of the awesomeness that is ebay (God bless you Pierre Omidyar) for our dads and FI. We thought we'd keep with the cufflink theme and order cool cufflinks for all the important men of the wedding. After all we wouldn't want the fathers-and most importantly FI-to have subpar flair on their wrists on such a momentous day would we? ;) The motorcycles are for my dad who has been an enthusiast since he was young and whose passion for riding just grew stronger after his midlife crisis. The acoustic guitars are for FI's dad who was a self-proclaimed hippie during college and apparently won over all the ladies by strumming a tune or two and still loves playing today. I ordered the baseball cufflinks for FI since he's a die-hard baseball fan and has been playing the game since he learned how to walk. I'm definitely glad we went the cufflink route even though initially I thought it was sort of overdone. This is something they can all use later and something that shows how well we know each of them individually!

Easiest DIY project to date

What do you get when you add vellum, some pretty font, ribbon, and some wax? You get a gorgeous personalized unity candle for half the price of what those bridal stores are charging! This is such an easy DIY project that I found online one day but the results look so professional in my opinion. I'm super excited about our unity candle because we wanted pretty much everything at the wedding to be very personal and handmade where possible. The picture at the top is the inspiration I found from Google and the bottom pic is our actual candle set. I think they look beautiful!

Bustle and flow

Before you read this you should know that I HATE bustles. I know they are meant to serve a purpose, but to me they just don't look pretty. It looks like someone took a safety pin and pinned a bunch of tulle up on the ass of the person wearing the wedding dress! I can't tell you how many bustle styles I looked at or how many alteration ladies I annoyed before deciding on the type of bustle I would get. I originally tried to find a dress with only a little sweep train just so I wouldn't have to bustle it, but the dress I fell in love with has a longer train so it would have been a pain to try to navigate through our reception hall with all that fabric not being out of the way. David's Bridal was originally doing the alterations for my dress but they didn't do such a good job of impressing me with their bustle options and were rude when I made any sort of suggestions. So I took my business elsewhere and found a little mom and pop shop to sew my bustle for a lower price still thinking that I wouldn't really dig what they were going to do to it. Well surprisingly, I LOVE it. I actually think it improves the look of the dress. That sounds crazy coming from the girl who earlier said she despises bustles altogether, but it really looks pretty. Here are just some of the many bustle designs we toyed with before deciding on the final one in the picture at the bottom. The first one just hung funny, the second one was too fancy and didn't fit the style of the dress, and the last two pictures are of the bustle I ultimately decided on. It is an under bustle or "french" bustle and I find it funny that DB originally told me the fabric on my dress wouldn't work for that type and yet the seamstress who did it had no problem altering it to look that way.

Get with the program

With my wedding being in August and it being so hot and humid that time of year, I decided if I was going to do programs they would double as fans. The cardstock was printed out, ribbon was purchased, and they were all ready to assemble...until I realized my mother, love her heart, had not only misspelled one of the groomsmen's last names, but assigned him an entirely new last name. This posed a problem as we didn't want to offend anyone by actually distributing them and letting people see the error so that labor of love went into the recycling bin and we nixed the idea of programs altogether (or so I thought). I figured it was one less DIY project we would have on our plate but for some odd reason my mom thinks that programs are completely necessary, so here is a picture of the very basic programs we decided on to appease her needs for having some information on a piece of paper. They're tri-fold so they fit a lot of print and they match the invitations quite well and will get the job done of telling the who's and what's of the wedding day.

Little accomplishments

I've felt a little bit of wedding burnout here lately and have been slacking on getting stuff done that needs to get done here in the next 26 days. Just thinking that I only have that much time to get all the stuff on my to-do list done makes me want to throw up. Seriously. But I got a few little things accomplished over the holiday weekend so I would have something to post here to make me feel a little better about my procrastinating self. Got our little hanging monogram finished that's going to be put on the front door of the venue, spruced up my pitiful looking table numbers, got the bubbles all finished and put into their basket which my mother and I made all pretty with some strategically placed ribbon, ordered part of our parent's gifts, and made an appointment to get my bustle done. Still have a whole sheet of college-ruled paper filled up with things that need to be addressed but at least I've made some progress. Here are some pics of the DIY stuff: