Vacation Mode

Alright, I have to admit...I am officially in vacation mode.

The good news is, I leave for vacation in less than 24 hours!!!

Ant, his mom and I will be leaving for Ft Lauderdale tomorrow AM, where we will meet up with his dad, aunt and uncle.  This is the third time Ant and I have gone down, and the second time his parents have joined us! This year we will also be driving down to the Keys, which I am SO excited about!

This is the view from the condo we stay at...sigh.

And this will be us! White and glowing but oh so happy in the sun.

When I get back I will recap for you how I did with my January list, and get started on my February list....August is coming fast!  Plus - I will have a recap of the Bachelor Wedding.  Sorry in advance if you are not a Bachelor fan, but this girl is! and I LOVE a good wedding......and as a bride-to-be especially, I have taken an interest in any and all weddings around me.  I took good notes of this one - so we'll chat about that a bit!

Do you have any mid-winter trips coming up?  If not, I'll send warm thoughts your way!!

The Veil Epiphany*

The Veil.

For someone who has spent so much time looking at wedding related things - the veil is a tricky one that totally caught me by surprise.  When I was pretty sure I had found my wedding dress, she added a veil - and in a fashion eerily similar to one of those classy "Say Yes to the Dress" shows, it made me cry.  Not that I wasn't super emotional already, from an amazing day of trying to absolutely stunning WEDDING dresses meaning that I was a bride-to-be (!!!), but something about the veil put me over the edge.  I was not ready to make any decisions other than my dress at the time, so we put the whole veil thing on hold.

Until this week!

Wednesday my mother, MOH and I went back to The White Dress by the shore for an accessory appointment.  I won't get into all the sparkly details of the day, but I will tell you that I found my perfect veil!  But let me tell you, I had NO idea what that meant going into it.  Or even once she put 3 or 4 on my head.  You see, there are lots of types of veils.  Long, short, longer, lacey, edged with ribbon, no edge, with a blusher & without........etc.  While I KNEW I wanted a veil, I wasn't sure what type of veil was "me".  I had NEVER thought about what kind of veil I would wear, or what kind of veil had caught my attention in pictures, or anything.  I had just simply not ever thought about the veil at all.  It took a lot of thinking out loud with the stylist, Melissa & my mom to start to make sense of it all.  We talked about the dress, the feel of the wedding we were going for, the venue...and any other detail that might impact such a decision.

I think my own opinion on this one surprised me.  BUT, the beauty of it all is that you won't know until August why :)  I promise I will walk you through my whole thought process then, since I know you will be on the edge of your seat...

In the meantime - here is some veil inspiration.  When I came home from the appointment I was legitimately so confused by the whole experience I went online and looked at a million weddings, paying attention ONLY to the veils for a change.  Like anything else, the beauty of weddings is everyone is different, and different things look perfect in different situations.  I am confident and excited that mine will be perfect for me!  But here are a few of my favorites, for any other reason from my new found appreciation for veils....

Four photos above from AliciaAnnPhotographers

Three photos above from Justin & Mary Photography

Carla Ten Eyck Photography

Two photos above from Kelly Dillon Photography

Three photos above from SouthernWeddings.com

What type of veil did you wear at your wedding?  OR, if you haven't gotten married yet, which of these styles jumps out at you?  My MOH says she's always imaged being more of a sparkle in your hair kinda girl...and I can't say I blame her for that either!!


*Yes, epiphany might be a strong word for this particular topic...but in the scheme of wedding talk, that's what you get!

Flower girl dresses - the hunt!

Ahhhh, flower girls.  The cutest part of the bridal party.  Generally speaking, our wedding will be adults only....with the exception of our flower girls.  We will not have a ring bearer - there are far too many cute little boys on Ant's side of the family to be able to choose one!  We will have two flower girls though...very LITTLE, adorable flower girls.  One will be 18 months old, and one will be almost 3.  They are both daughters of my cousins - my dad's oldest sister's grandchildren.  You follow?  Good!

In any case, one of the things NOT on my January list, but something that I made special time for was to start thinking about flower girl dresses.  Since our wedding is in August it is going to be hot, and my flower girls are very young...I want to make sure they are comfortable!  There is no reason for full length gowns or anything with lots of crazy layers.  I am pretty confident I want them in either white, navy, or some combination - that will match the groomsmen's suits nicely, and will be easier than trying to match the blush of the bridesmaids.

I want the flower girl's mothers to ultimately decide on their dresses, that way I know they are comfortable with the choice and cost, etc.  There is no reason to spend a ton of money on a dress that they are only going to wear once!  and probably grow out of in a matter of weeks anyway.  I recently started collecting ideas, and just sent a few of them out to get the ball rolling, and see what we could come up with!  I tried for a range of fanciness - our August wedding on the water will certainly be classy, but casual enough that the right summer dress could just perfectly do the trick as well.

Here is the mix I came up with:

These two white dresses from Monsoon are absolutely adorable!  They are more along the lines of what I would consider a traditional flower girl dress, but a little more simple and sweet than a lot of the puffiness and satin I'm used to seeing.  I love the lace cap sleeves of the top one, and the adorable big bow on the second one.

Monsoon Baby Estella Dress

Monsoon Baby Veroniquea Big Bow Dress

This ETSY shop I found, OsEstorninhos has a couple of great options as well - the first one being a much more simple, summery version of the pure white and lace concept - with fun ruffles and flowers to dress it up a bit! The second one incorporates navy which I love, and think would look sharp next to the boys suits.  Again, a simple sash adds the perfect final touch.

Etsy - OsEstorninhos Ivory Lace Dress

Etsy - OsEstorninhos White and Navy Lace Dress

This next ETSY shop, The Rogue Baby has the cutest ruffle dresses!  This all navy blue option is much more casual, but the matching white sash and headband would tie it in nicely with the rest of the wedding party.

Etsy - TheRogueBaby Navy Ruffle Dress

This last one is the most casual - from the Gap...but the navy and white stripes are perfect for our seaside wedding!  My vision of this one includes adding our own sash or headband, similar to the one above it, to dress it up just a smidge!

Gap - Navy Striped Dress

The beauty of it all, is that the girls will look adorable in absolutely anything...which makes it the easiest decision in a lot of ways.  I fully intend on them stealing the show in that way, and I am SO okay with that!

So what do you think??  Which one would you pick?  Is there somewhere else I should be looking for potential flower girl dresses?  If you see the perfect one - send it my way!

Save the Dates - Minted

As I am making a true effort to work through my January list - I am spending a lot of QT on Minted!  Minted and I are becoming quite good friends...and I thought it might be a good time to go back and walk you through the process of us choosing our Save the Dates!

I knew we were likely to want to use Minted, or one of the similar sites for our save the dates and invitations, so when we first started talking about them I went online and ordered a bunch of samples!  At the time, Ant wasn't super interested in talking about them...so I figured having a few hard copies to look at would help. and I was RIGHT!!  Being able to put them in front of him, he quickly gave me opinions, which got the ball rolling right along.  Below are a few of the ones from our first batch:

Minted's Metro Green Line

Minted's Timeless

Minted's Roll of the Dice

These samples taught us a few things:

1.  We did not want pictures on our invitation, like the Metro Green Line invitation

2.  We did not want multiple pictures on anything - like the Metro Green Line

3.  We LOVED the save the date magnet with one photo - but not the font and design of Timelesss

4.  We wanted our invitation to be more exciting - Lucky in Love is way too simple

So, that round of samples was kind of a flop - but allowed me to refocus with a new sense of what I was looking for!  We decided that the invitations and save the dates were not going to be matching - so we put invitations to the side and focused on save the date magnets with one photo.  We've had a couple of friends use the magnets over the last couple years - and we loved them!  You're never going to lose it!! I had my heart set on black and white when I saw these two samples:

Minted's Meet in the Middle

Minted's Belle Memoire

They were perfect - I loved the way the black and white looked - and each one had an interesting font without being too much.  I liked the way the date was written on Belle Memoire, as the focus of the wording....and absolutely ADORED the "Save Our Date" wording in meet in the middle.  The script is pretty and interesting without being over the top.  We made samples of both - below is our Belle Memoire.  While I still really love the way the date looks, we decided it was too much with the picture we had chosen to use.

After deciding we were definitely going to use Meet in the Middle - I started playing with the words.  On the sample, the words fall right in the middle, but that puts it right over my face!  We were able to move it down to the bottom of the photo - what you see below is my rough editing.  Minted took it and straightened everything and made it perfect!  They were also able to add our wedding website at the very bottom, in much smaller font.  As you can see below - the final and biggest change we made was that we ended up using color!  I decided the coloring of the photo we picked was simple enough that it wasn't distracting.  The pretty water backdrop looks way nicer in color also!

We are thrilled with the way the final product came out!  I love the unique and simple wording of "save our date" as opposed to "save the date"...because at the end of the day, that's what it's going to be - our date!  We sent out about 100 of these at the end of November - which was quite the chore!  If there is one thing I can't recommend highly enough, it's the skinny wrap!  These stickers come with the save the dates - and have your return address on the front and the beautiful "save our date" on the back.  They were super easy to use and saved us the hassle of writing our return address 100 times! I also think they do a really nice easy job of dressing up the envelope.  Ant and I decided to handwrite the addresses - and spent a week or so writing them a dozen at a time.

 If I can give you ONE piece of advice - start organizing and collecting addresses as SOON as you start putting together an invite list.  That was half our battle - in order to write out a save the date, we had to research and collect the address first!  It made it all take way longer.  But it was such a good feeling when we finally dropped them in the mail! and I loved getting texts and pictures back as people received them!  This one if one of my favorites - we have three friends that live in the same apartment in Boston - each one got their own save the date - that's a lot of us on one fridge!!

How did you decide on a Save the Date?  Minted could not have been easier to use - but there are so many choices out there!  Where did you order yours from?

The January List: 7 months to go!

Okay, it's time for things to get real. I spent the day with my MOH last Wednesday running a couple of wedding errands - and she pointed out to me that it was exactly 7 months until our wedding!  After a minor freak out, we decided the best course of action was to whip up a quick and rough list of every little thing I could think of that I knew I needed to do still.  At least it put it all out there for me, and it's something I can add to and edit as I go along.  At some pt, probably after our vacation at the end of the month, I will compare it to an "official" list, from the Knot, etc. and see what else I'm forgetting, but for now the one we came up with is enough for me!

MOH & I after a long day of errands & brainstorming!

I'm not going to include the entire list here, but I am going to post the things I am hoping to do over the next couple of weeks, before we head to FL and it becomes February and 6 months until our wedding! I'll put my monthly checklists up here - and update at the end of the month so we can see how I did!  Hopefully putting it into bite sized chunks like this will make it seem manageable, and make me feel productive.

The January List:
-Bridal Shower/Bachelorette dates
-Invitations - make real progress on picking one.
-Wedding undergarments
-Accessories!!! Veil, jewelry, shoes
-Groom/groomsmen suits
-Email Noreen about centerpieces
-Call for cake tasting appt
-Email Videographer***
-Officiant***

I know it's already January 14th, so I'm sort of cheating in that I've already made some progress on this list...but that's okay!  Going forward you will get these the first week of the month.  The *** indicates to me that I've already been putting it off WAY too long, and need to get my butt in gear...oops! :)

Our third wheel for date night - the fiancé! 

What's on your plate for January?

2013 Reflective Gift Giving Guide

Now that the holidays are WAY over, and we're getting back into our normal routines...whatever normal is for you!  I thought I'd reflect on Christmas 2013 and create a gift giving guide.  This is based on both gifts I gave AND received, so it will sort of cover all bases.  I've broken it into three categories: Stuff, Stuff to do, and Sentimental Stuff....other than that, there is no rhyme or reason.  Bear with me.

Stuff:

JCrew Ties:  Okay, this has become a staple in Ant's stocking...and I am TOTALLY okay with that.  We live right near the outlets, and JCrew has the BEST ties.  Ant wears one to work every day - so he can never have too many!  This year he got a fun festive one with gingerbread men on it, but they have so many classic styles as well.

100 Reasons to Panic about Getting Married:  This book was actually a double gift: one I got AND one I gave!  I saw it at work and thought it was hilarious - so I gave it to Ant, with a handwritten note adding some personal thoughts about a few of the topics.  A few days later, my roommate from college gave me the same book!  What can I say, great minds think alike.  The "reasons" themselves are funny, and then at the bottom of each page is a reassuring pt to counter each reason to panic.  

Knock Knock, the company that makes the book, also has some other pretty funny gift ideas!  One of my favorites is the Mental Note sticky notes - I personally think they would be great for my desk at work! They are just the right size for stocking stuffers also.

Candles:  Candles have become my new addiction....whenever I am home I like to have at LEAST one burning, if not two...or three....there are a few scents in particular I would consider house favorites, that I have both given and received as gifts!

Bath and Body Works: Vanilla Firewood and Black Tie.  Black Tie is my FAVORITE.  It smells like boy.  For those of you who don't understand that description, think cologne and yumminess.  I bought one as a gift, and one for myself :)  Vanilla Firewood was a gift, and it's a perfect winter cozy candle!

Short Beach Candle Co:  Ant brought home the gingerbread candle from Short Beach Candle Co....and I love it!  I wasn't very excited at first, I'm not a huge gingerbread fan...but it is soft and subtle and yummy.  Plus, these candles are 100% soy and poured locally in Branford, CT. Win!

Passport case:  I got a passport case as a gift right before I studied abroad in Spain.  It is from Vickie's and bright pink (see the pic below), and I love it.  Not only does it help me hold onto ticket stubs, etc with the compartments inside, but it makes my slim, boring blue, easy to lose passport bigger and brighter!! I thought it was more of a "fun" gift, but I have used it every time I have traveled out of the country since, and I consider it WAY more of a practical gift also.  Seriously, I will never lose that sucker in my purse...and if you're anything like me, you panic every couple of minutes and want to make sure that you do, in fact, have your passport in your purse.  Where you put it 5 seconds ago.  And if you're nothing like me....than at least your passport is prettier!  Anyway, my baby sister is spending 3 weeks in London this month, and so a passport case was a necessity for her!  I chose the mint green one below from JCrew because I thought it was beautifullllllll.  In the search, I also found this gem from Kate Spade. GAH! 

Sephora Fragrance Sampler:  My roomie tipped me off to this awesome gift idea - which worked out perfectly for my sister Alison!  This sampler includes testers of a number of Sephora's more popular fragrances, and then a voucher so you can go back and get a full sized bottle of your favorite one!  This is a great gift for someone trying to find a new fragrance they love!!  In this case, I knew Ally needed a new perfume, but I didn't want to pick one out and have her not love it.  This was the perfect solution!

Stuff to do:

Restaurant gift certificate:  Over the last few years, I have given restaurant gift certificates to certain friends and family.  I often use it, to be honest, with slightly selfish motives.  For example: when we moved into our apartment together, for the first two Christmases I gave gift certificates to our favorite new restaurants to people I love!  It gives them a great meal - AND gets them down our way for a visit! Win, win ;)  This year, Ant and I received a gift certificate to one of the vineyards nearby that recently opened up a bistro.  There is nothing bad about a gift that = a date night!

Concert Tickets: Insert lots of high pitched shrieking here.  For Christmas, Ant got tickets for him and I to go see JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE at Madison Square Garden in February!!!!!!!  Concert tickets as a category could also be substituted for any other kind of show or event.  It's the perfect way to make the holidays last longer - in this case all the way to February 20th!!!  Plus, it's something Ant and I get to do together, which is always a win in my book.  In this case, we are going to make a day (or two!) out of it, and spend some time in the city!

Spa gift certificate:  Again, another A+ gift from the fiancé this year - I was definitely on the good list!  I think spa treatments fall into the perfect category of things people enjoy, but they are definitely a luxury.  So in my case, they are the LAST thing I am going to spend money on, especially when we are dealing with both a house and a wedding and trying to be as budget savvy as possible.  Ant knows this, and gave me a gift certificate for a 60 min massage at a spa in town!  Now I can relax guilt free - YAY! 

Sentimental stuff:

Bride's Tree Ornaments:  According to a German tradition, the tree of a newlywed couple should include 12 ornaments to ensure happiness in their life together.  My BFFL, and MOH Melissa figured that since we were engaged, and it was the first Christmas in our new house...that was close enough!  (BTW, she was right!)  They sell them as sets, in case you're interested in gifting them to your favorite newlyweds...but she went out and found an ornament for each category on her own!!!!  She has been on the hunt since LAST Christmas.  It was absolutely the sweetest gift!  I love that our set is special and unique to us. Since we got them Christmas Eve while we were in Rhode Island, they haven't actually made it to  our tree yet, so next year when we are newlyweds, they will grace our tree for the first time!

MyPublisher photo books:  I have made a lot of photo books in my day, but MyPublisher is by far the best company I've ever used.  I discovered them last year, and will never go back.  MyPublisher has software that you download to your computer.  From there, you upload your pictures and can create books in a number of different sizes.  They have page layouts for photos only, pictures with captions, pictures with words, text only, you name it....and it is SO EASY.  Let me repeat, SO EASY.  Other sites have made me want to pull my hair out putting together books.  This is quick, and the quality is amazing.  I made "year in review" books for both sets of parents last year, and they were a hit...so I made them again this year! It's a fun way to look back at everything that's happened this year, in a tangible way that you can hold onto.  They tend to be a little pricier than other options - but it is COMPLETELY worth it.  Plus, the site is always having deals - if you give them your email address you can get a head's up whenever there is a new one!  These sales make the price of the book more than reasonable for the quality you get in return.

What are some of your favorite gifts to give?  Do you have any "staples" like my ties and candles?  There is obviously something fun about gifts that are special to circumstances, like the passport case or our new ornament set, but I never knock a solid staple gift!!!

Asking the moms

In my last post, I wrote about how I formally asked my bridal party to be part of my big day!  What I kept out of that post (because I am sneaky that way) was one of my favorite parts of the whole thing....I asked the moms too!!

Will you be my mom? / Will you be my mother-in-law?

To me, it came so naturally, and seemed so obvious.  I was preparing to ask the ladies in my life to be a part of my wedding day - how could that NOT include my mom and my mother-in-law to be?  My mom has had the pleasure of knowing me for 25+ years, for better or worse...and Bettie, bless her heart raised the man of my dreams! I dare you to name a more important couple of women.

Obviously, neither of them had a lot of say in the matter.  Their DNA dictates their involvement in our wedding.  BUT, I have learned from past experience that everyone's situation when they start planning a wedding is a little different.  Every mom has an opinion, or doesn't have an opinion, about certain topics.  My mom has two daughters after me to help plan weddings for, but Ant is an only child, so this is the only wedding his mother will be deeply involved in planning!  Everyone's situation is unique, and I was not going to pretend that the world revolves around me.  By asking each of them to be a part of the wedding, it allowed me to formally tell them exactly how I felt.  I wanted them to know that I wanted them as involved as they wanted to be!  If that meant every fitting and appointment and napkin color, great.  If that meant they kindly said "thanks but no thanks" to certain parts of the planning process, that was fine too!  I love them both dearly and want them as involved as they choose to be.

So...long story short, both my mom and Ant's mom each got boxes of their own!  Theirs were slightly different as far as the contents were concerned, but had the same overall message.  It included all of the details about the day of wedding dress shopping, and invited them to join me on this journey of a wedding planning experience!

Great news: they both said yes!! :)  I am so lucky that both of them have been so supportive, and have chosen to take active roles as both my sounding board and company on errands and appointments! 

What do you think about this idea?  Good?  Bad?  Brilliant?  I'd love to know!  Did you do something similar?  How did you ask?