A New Beginning

Hey everyone! I wanted to stop in and let you know that I'm officially moving over to my new blog! If you're visiting here and need to contact me for any reason (questions about absolutely ANYTHING wedding related) you can always e-mail me here. Thanks for checking out my blog and making me feel loved! 

One Last Thing...

I wanted to drop by and share one last thing with you before I move on over to my new blog for good.


I knew all along that I wanted to purchase photobooks for our parents as a wedding gift since before the wedding even took place. My husbands brother got married in December of 2009 and they made his mother a photobook with pictures from their wedding, so I knew it would be perfect to thave one made of our wedding for her as well.


I looked for weeks and weeks trying to find the perfect place to make the books and I couldn't decide on anywhere. I created a book on Mixbook and LOVED it but then ran into some bad reviews of the company and was too scared to order form them. I was more than happy with how the book turned out, but this was very important and I HAD to have high quality books. Here's the book I created with them
(it cuts off some pages and because some of the layouts are 2 page spreads it looks funky, but you can get a good idea):






Then I seen a post over the The Nest about a site called Groupon and for this particular day they were offereing $100 worth of prodcuts from Picaboo for $25. I had heard great things about Picaboo, so I bought the certificate and started making another book. My goal was to replicate the book I made with Mixbook but after I got started, I just kind of went with it. I ordered them on a Tuesday evening and they arrived the same week on Friday. I was pleased with the quick shipping and even more pleased with the quality of the book itself. I think they turned out great; still not exactly what I wanted, but everyone was happy with them. The biggest drawback, in my opinion, of Picaboo's site, was that the Classic Custom (the particular style of book that I ordered) didn't come in any size other than 11.5" x 8" (the book is in Landscape format, not Portrait, which caught me by surpise). I'm a scrapbooker, so I'm more partial to the 12" x 12" size, but that wouldn't be enough to make me stop purchasing from Picaboo.

You can visit here to see the book we created with Picaboo!
EDITED TO ADD THE LINK TO SHARE MY PICABOO BOOK.



I've ordered a book or so from Shutterfly before and was going to get our parents' books there but they just don't have the freedom to do what I wanted to do with layouts. I'm still a HUGE fan of Shutterfly and will still order books from them, I'm sure, but they couldn't do what I wanted them to for these photobooks.


I haven't taken any pictures of the actual book to show you, but I'll will soon and I'll post them here.
EDITED TO ADD PICTURES OF THE PICABOO BOOK

Wedding Overview

I was just looking through my blog and realized that I never did a detailed wedding day overview! Even if you're not interested in reading this long, drawn out post, it'll be nice to just have on record so I can remember all the special parts of my wedding day!

Thursday, May 20, 2010
I decided to go ahead and take off work Thursday so I would have plenty of time to get all my clothes washed and start packing for the honeymoon, as well as run any other errands for the wedding. My morning started out wonderfully and continued to get a little busier as the day went by. FI's (fiancée) mamaw's would be preparing the potato saled & baked beans for our reception so I had to take care of buying everything that they would need to prepare this. I made several trip to local grocery stores around town that had specific things on sale for the week. I was surprised at how little I spent buying all the food! After I took all of the food to mammy's, I went and had a mani & pedi and then headed home. I stopped by Wal-Mart before heading home to grab some fresh strawberries and to pick up the picture of FI and myself to go on the grooms cake. Once I got home, I started some laundry & began making the groom's cake for the rehearsal dinner. The rest of Thursday was filled with folding laundry, packing for the honeymoon, making the icing and putting it on the cake, and sorting through all the wedding things and packing them in the Jeep for Friday. 

Friday, May 21, 2010
Today was the beginning of actual wedding festivities. Our morning started out around 8:30-ish as we headed over to the church to begin decorating. The key that we had wasn't the right key to get us in the Sanctuary, so we started unloading & decorating the fellowship hall. We re-arranged tables, made sure each table was clean, put 8 chairs per table, carried chairs up from the basement, put more chairs out, then started placing the tablecloths on the tables. Once we had all the tablecloths on, we started getting out all the centerpieces, assembled them (put the stickers on) and placed them on the tables. By this time it was about 1:30 p.m. and I didn't have long before I had to head home to get ready for the rehearsal. We started working with the tulle poofs, hanging them, fluffing them and making sure there were 7 per window. Once we had these up we had to move the centerpieces off the front 9 tables so they could be used for the rehearsal dinner (FI's mom had centerpieces to use for the rehearsal dinner). After we moved the centerpieces I headed home to get ready so I could be back before the photographers got there. I rushed around at home to get ready, burn a CD of the ceremony music and get back to the church so much so that I forgot the grooms cake & had to turn around to go back and get it. I arrived back at the church somewhere in the 5 o'clock hour. When I arrived back at the church, the men were there grilling and the women were in the fellowship hall decorating for the rehearsal dinner. Everyone began arriving around 5:45/6 p.m. and we began the rehearsal. I was pretty pleased with how the rehearsal went. I didn't think we'd have to go through it the 3/4 times that we did, but everyone was very cooperative and I felt very comfortable with how the ceremony flowed. We headed over to the fellowship hall for the rehearsal dinner around 7:30 p.m. (I think). I was surprised at how many compliments on the strawberry cake I got, it kinda made my head a little big! :P Once our wedding party began to leave, I headed over with my mom, sister, MIL, and some women from our church to start decorating the sanctuary. We assembled the tulle to the pomanders and tied the pomanders around the pews pretty quickly and decided to call it a night. We did have an issue that was handled just perfectly by my wonderful sister (we didn't have long enough strands of lights to line the aisle of the church, so she headed down to Hobby Lobby Friday morning and got two more strands of those, some white duct tape, and short extension cords so we could plug the lights up). I got home around 11:30-ish and went straight to bed because we still had a few more decorating details to handle in the morning. 

Saturday, May 22, 2010
My morning started around 9-ish the day of the wedding. I began with a shower and just a calm-ish morning to start with. Once I left the house I was headed to get my nails touched up (I had been a little hard on them baking the strawberry grooms cake Thursday after I had them done), buy some snacks for my girls to munch on while we were getting ready, and then over to the church for the final touches on decorating. I got to the church around 10:30 and my sister and I began placing the lights down the aisle; we fell in love with how much the lights changed to look & the mood of the Sanctuary. After we finished there, we headed over to the fellowship hall for some small decorating details over there (I put out the mad lib & photo-share cards on the tables, filled the centerpieces with water, Kristy [a dear friend that was doing mine & some of my girls' hair] helped put the candles in the centerpieces, and my sister worked on perfecting our card-box). After we finished with all that, a couple of girls headed on over to the church to start getting ready and I made my bouquet. Once I finished the bouquet, I headed over to the church to hang out/relax with the girls and get ready for our pictures that started @ 4. While I was sitting in the basement of the church, I realized I hadn't made a boutonnière for FI so I ran back over to the fellowship hall and made him one very quickly, and delivered it to the old sanctuary were the men would be getting ready, along with the gift I got for FI. It was close to 2 p.m. at this point and all of our men were supposed to be arriving around 3/3:30 p.m. to get ready for their pictures @ 4 p.m. I don't think any of the men made it on time :P (FI, his dad, brother, and uncle went to get haircuts, to Hickory to get shoes, had lunch at Texas Roadhouse while they were down there, and then headed back to Lenoir) but I know that the girls' pictures did start on time at 4:30 p.m. I started getting my hair done @ 3 p.m. and around 4 p.m. the photographer came down ready to take pics of my getting into my dress. My mom and sister helped me get into my dress and then all my girls got into their dresses. Once everyone got into their dress it was time for us to go up and start with our pictures. Our pictures were finished around 5-ish, which was exactly how I hoped it would be, so we headed back downstairs to hang out before the wedding started. I had my attendants head upstairs at 5:30 p.m. to start greeting anyone that came early and somewhere between when they left and 5:45 p.m., FI sent over 2 dozen roses and the sweetest card I've ever read. I did good at the beginning, but then as I continued to read I began to cry (and have the pictures to prove it). I'm not sure what time the cake lady brought the cake by, but I do remember one of my BM's coming in to ask me which table the cake should go on and I told her and she told the cake lady. Well, at some point the BM that asked about the cake went over to the fellowship hall because the cake lady had put the cake on the wrong table. It was no biggie, they just left it on the table it was on and put the topper in it (the topper didn't go all the way down into the cake, which I was disappointed with, but it wasn't the end of the world). Once the ordeal with the cake was settled, it was time to start the ceremony. I remember someone coming down to tell me how full the church was! I didn't really care about how full the church was although I was happy to have a church full of close family & friends to share with us the special moment in our lives. All the girls lined up the stairs waiting to walk out and once my sister (MOH) was gone, I stood alone in the stairwell. I remember praying, thanking God for bringing me to this point in my life, saving my soon-to-be husband, and allowing me to marry this man who I adore. I honestly lost it standing there alone; I seen the director signal for me to come on up when they ushers shut the back doors, so I quickly tried to pull myself together for the walk down the aisle. I stood there with my arm in my daddy's. waiting for the bridal march to begin playing; once it did, the two doors were swung open, and everyone was standing there STARING at me...I just needed to see my FI and everything would be fine...so as I walked down the aisle I just kept looking for him through the crowd and once I fixed my eyes on him, I kept them there so all the guests looking at me wouldn't make me nervous/start crying again! Once my daddy gave me away, FI and I walked up the stairs and I honestly don't know once thing that went on outside of what FI, myself and the Preacher were doing/talking about. The song we had sung during our Unity Candle ceremony was "Only God Could Love You More" and FI's cousin Melanie couldn't have performed it any more perfect than she did! It was just beautiful and perfect for our ceremony. We exchanged rings & vows, and then THE KISS! We had talked about how we would kiss each other on our wedding day, not knowing how we would feel in the moment, but our kiss was perfect and our photographers captured it perfectly. Once we were being pronounced man & wife we had a guest yell something at us (a little embarrassing) but kinda funny too and we headed out of the church for the receiving line! Once the receiving line was completed, we had some pictures then headed over to the reception ourselves. We didn't have anyone announce that we were coming in (we're low key and didn't really want to make a big deal of it) but once people seen us entering the fellowship hall they began cheering for us and that was special to me! We got some food and sit down to enjoy it, but guests were coming up to talk to us as we were eating, but we did get to eat! :) We cut the cake, enjoyed feeding it to one another, shared our toasts, then finished our meal. We were very excited to leave and start our journey to TN for our honeymoon. Once we decided to leave, we climbed up on the firetruck for a few pictures and then crawled in to head off! I absolutely LOVED the fact that we decided to leave in the firetruck, it was just something special for us! Once we got to the house, changed clothes, headed back by the church to get a few things we forgot (my pillows, phone charger, and a few other things) we headed off to Pigeon Forge. We made it to our hotel about 1:30 Sunday a.m., grabbed a quick snack, and hit the sack! 

I've been wanting to document everything so that I wouldn't forget all the little details of our wedding adventure! 

Hello bloggy friends! I've dropped by real quick to let you know that we are officialy finished painting our house! :) For this I am overwhelmed with joy! Now, we're moving on to (I assume) base boards, cabinets, toilets, tubs, and all things of this nature. I've said all this to say....God's been good!

Vendor Review


Alright everyone, here's my final vendor review. Our cake....it was DELICIOUS and we had MANY compliments about it! 


My vendor review for:

Linda Bolick



A

The only reason she doesn't get an A+ was because the cake went on the wrong table. We had one HUGE table that we wanted the gifts, card box, and cake on and I'm not sure if it was her or someone in the wedding party, but it was placed on the wrong table. One of my bridesmaids came in the room we were getting ready in and asked which table the cake was to go on and I specifically told them it went on the only table that didn't have a tablecloth. No big deal, no one even knew that it was wrong but me, so it really didn't matter. The only other complaint I had was that our cake topper wasn't pushed all the way into the cake and it looked pretty goofy! It wasn't a show stopper, but it did kind of take me by surprise.

Here's a picture from our photographer:

More Painting Down

Last night, my darling husband and I went to the house to paint away the evening and we did just that!
We finished the master bathroom and the kitchen! I can't tell you how in love I am with the color we picked for the kitchen. I can't descirbe it (other than it's the same color as a Hershey bar) and the pictures sure don't do it justice, but here she is.

litchen - valspar humboldt earth
It looked wonderful in the dark last night, but I'm sure it'll look totally different in the daylight. Our cabinets are a light wood (if I can find a picture, I'll post them) and are going to look beautiful in our brown kitchen!

Moving through the dining room & the master bedroom, you find your way to our newly painted master bathroom! It's a little more bright than we expected, but nonetheless, it's finished and hopefully my brown accents will help tone it down a little!

master bathroom - valspar surf spray


I included several different shots trying to get a good picture of the true color; I didn't achieve that! It's more bright in person but I'm ok with it and DH says, "It'll have to grown on me!"

That's all I have for you today...our painting is over for the week until Friday when I'm off from work. I'm hoping to get the 1/2 bath, dining room, & wash room painted Friday. After that, we'll be finished, unless we have to put a second coat in the living, guest, & master bedrooms...

House Work...

OK blog followers...here's what happening with our house!

We had all the lighting put up the week of the wedding:
above: the living room
below: guest bedroom

above: the dining room
below: the master bedroom

above: our beautiful track lighting in the kitchen...and our track lighting at work below
below: the wash room

The heat pump hooked up & running while we were away on the honeymoon, so we got to come home to a cool (yet empty) house. After we got back from the honeymoon, we started painting! the kitchen & two bathrooms had to be primed so I did that Friday. Saturday I painted from 10 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. and I (with a little help at the end of the day from my darling husband) finished painting the living room, guest bedroom & the master bedroom (which are all the same color)! I went back tonight to finish up with the primer around the kitchen, master bath, & .5 bath. Once I finished that, I started the trim work in the master bath and I think I'm really going to love the blue we picked for the bathrooms! :)
above: the master bedroom - valspar lyndhurst gallery beige
below: the living room - valspar lyndhurst gallery beige

above: the guest bedroom - valspar lyndhurst gallery beige
below: the master bathroom - valspar surf spray

On the agenda for tomorrow....finish up trimming the bathrooms and start trimming the kitchen. I used to love painting...but since I've had to paint this entire house from scratch, I'm not such a huge fan of painting anymore so I can't wait to get past this stage of the house work. 

Pro Pictures & Vendor Review

I'm going to share the link from my photographer to our pictures! I'll be getting a cd with the images on it sometime, but until then you can enjoy the pictures on his website. http://potterwedding.joshcraven.net/


My vendor review for:
Josh Craven

A+

I couldn't be more pleased with how our pictures (engagement & wedding) turned out! Josh is new to the field and is in the midst of starting his own photography business. If you're looking for a photographer I have complete confidence that Josh can meet your needs!

Bridal Portraits




I was dying to post these before the wedding but couldn't since FI knew about the blog.

My vendor review for:
D. Kirby Photography
A+

I am more than happy with the service I received from this photographer. I contacted him on the late side (3 weeks before the wedding) and he worked me! I would have loved to have my bridal portraits taken outside, but in the end I was completely happy with the studio portraits he did. He had my pictures posted four days (I had them taken on Friday, they were posted the following Monday) after he took them for me to order by. I e-mailed Wednesday before our Saturday wedding and we were able to pick up the print Friday afternoon! He was very budget friendly and a great photographer to work with!




Honeymoon Over

Today marks the first day in eleven that I haven't been with my husband the entire day! I have to be honest and saying that I certainly had husband withdrawals today. 

We each returned to work today, after returning from our honeymoon yesterday afternoon. Our honeymoon was very relaxing and enjoyable. We had the most beautiful wedding day I could have ever imagined and our honeymoon was just as wonderful! I got a message from the photographer asking when I could get the CD of photos from him! I can't wait to start sharing all the pictures from the wedding with you all! I have honeymoon pictures that I'll start sharing with you sometime this week! :)

We're Married

Hey bloggy friends! I'm sorry I haven't been here to share what's going on in our life! It was a very hectic couple of days (Friday & Saturday) but I'm thrilled to tell you that the wedding went off without a hitch! Everything was beautiful....better than I could have ever imagined! I don't have many pictures, other than the ones that were taken with my camera throughout the day (no ceremony pics). My HUSBAND and I are getting ready to head off to bed for the night, so I'll have to share some of the pictures tomorrow! Keep your eyes peeled....

Final Countdown...

2 more days; one of which I count as half a wedding day since we'll be decorating & rehearsing. 

Last night FI took took me over to our house and pleasantly surprised me with ELECTRICITY! I house has power now and that means we can continue to work there (not until after the honeymoon) when it gets dark! 

My list of errands/chores for today (Thursday - 2 days till wedding bliss):
1) get ring cleaned
2) bake & decorate grooms cake
3) get mani/pedi
4) wash all my clothes
5) pack for the honeymoon
6) make FI's truck payment
7) take pans to mammy for reception food
8) load everything for the wedding into the Jeep (separated by Sanctuary & Fellowship Hall)
9) make reserved signs for bridal party tables
10) print pictures for card box
11) make card box (this one is all on FI....if he doesn't get it done, we won't be having it! he's had more than 3 months to get this project completed!)
I'm pleased to say that I'm done with this list with the exception of packing, baking the cake, & loading everything for the wedding into the Jeep, which I'm working on all three as I type this (I'm a great multitasker :P). 

My list of errands/chores for tomorrow (Friday - 1 days till wedding bliss):
1) get a tarp to put the chicken on in the cooler
2) wilkesboro to pick up the chicken for reception
3) leave chicken @ Carla's in the cooler
4) check with Carla about the rolls
5) pick-up bridal portrait from D. Kirby Photography
6) decorate the sanctuary first
7) decorate the fellowship hall
8) REHEARSE THE CEREMONY
9) eat & enjoy friends & family
10) REST & SLEEP!!!!

I'm pretty pleased with how everything has went down...smoothly and without issue! I'm sure there will be some problems arise tomorrow and even Saturday, but I know that all will be OK because regardless of what happens, I'm still going to be FI's wife @ the end of the day Saturday and that's all that matters! 

5 days

5 days to go :)

Here go my updates:
1) had a successful trial bouquet run for my bridal portraits Friday & my flowers are still gorgeous today!


2) finished up our programs Friday afternoon/evening



3) finally finished the ring bearer pillow Saturday morning


4) finished up the escort card display last night

5) started separating everything into ceremony/reception totes/boxes for delivery on Friday morning

6) Bought all the plates, cups, and silverware at Sam's this weekend. 
7) printed the vellum for memory candles and attached them to glass vases (forgot to take a picture before I packed them up).
8) I finished up the pomanders today as well...but I didn't take a picture of them either!
9) Printed the labels for our centerpieces
10) I also made the guestbook sign

PICTURES....Finally

I decided since I can't ever stop at home long enough to show you some pictures that I'd just bring my camera to work and add them to the blog before everything gets so busy!

We'll start with the ring bearer pillow flower. I bought it at Hobby Lobby (50% $1.47) and decided to try and tea dye it. It worked perfectly! Here is the flower that will be added to the ring bearers pillow in the next couple of days:

Here's the garter that I bought from a fellow knottie that didn't use it. It was white & boring when it arrived so I decided to srpuce it up a little! This will stand in as my something blue (along with my flowers). This isn't a very good picture showing the true color but you get the point. I used Dylon Bahama Mama dye to make this beauty!

I have pictures from my 'final fitting' but I can't share them...FI would see. I'll share them after the wedding :)

And lastly, I have pictures from my bachelorette party!
Meet my sister & MOH, S!
Meet my childhood friend & bridesmaid, A.
Meet me...the bride :)
Meet my childhood friend and bridesmaid, Lail, trying to show me how to work that lingerie!
And here's Lail in her normal state :)
Meet my childhood friend and bridesmaid, Lis.
And this is my high school friend and attendant, aMa.
My other attendant (Mia) wasn't able to make the party because she was sick...SHE'S PREGNANT and we're so excited for her & her husband!

Now that I've finally showed you all the pictures from my camera I can stop feeling guilty for not having good updates with pictures :) FI is going to be painting the house today, I'm pretty sure...so hopefully I'll have pictures of our newly built (the inside at least) house with some color/personality to it! :)