Checking Back In....28 Days to Go!!!

I have been a delinquent blogger and I have so many updates to provide. To start, I can't believe we're just 28 days away from tying the knot. I'm not nervous but I would say that we're kind of at that point where we just want to get it over with. And I'm not complaining at all but we're ready to see all of our planning come together. So let's dive right in to the details...

RSVP Numbers
When we sent out our invites we definitely weren't expecting the response that we received. People were very excited to come and celebrate with us. But there have also been some hiccups as well but the good outweighs the bad. In the beginning we decided that we would have a kid friendly wedding, we have both friends and family with children and didn't want them to feel like they had to make a choice between their children and our wedding if they really wanted to attend. So in our final guest count I've broken it down by Adults, Kids under 5 and Kids 6-12, because I wanted to know how many kids needed some additional activities so they won't get restless and throw a tantrum vs. those who are old enough to hold their own. Without further ado, our guest count:

• Sent out 74 invitations
• Invited a total of 152 people (adults and children combined)
• Y - 116 (76%)
• 101 Adults
• 6 Kids 5 & Under
• 9 Kids 6-12
• N - 36 (24%)
• 29 Out-of-Towners
• 7 Local (mostly children being left behind or adults with health issues)

Throughout our time planning this wedding, I quoted all my vendors at 80 guests with a maximum of 90. I can't lie, I almost crapped my pants as the number continued to rise closer and closer to the 100 mark. And everytime another RSVP card came in I secretly crossed my fingers hoping it was a "No". As I updated my excel spreadsheet and refreshed my pivot tables (I sound really nerdy right now, but it works!) I just saw the catering costs increase with each new "yes" we received. I was seriously stressed out for a while because we had far exceeded what we had intended on from the beginning. But now about 3 weeks after receiving the bulk of our responses (there are still stragglers and people we have yet to hear from) I'm not worrying about it anymore. We're blessed to have so many people that want to come to our wedding to support us and celebrate with us. There will be no other time like this in our lives to openly celebrate the commitment we are making to one another, and I'm happy that people want to come and witness it.

DIY Hell
I have a confession...I'm a serial procrastinator. And this wedding is no exception. I created a list of a bunch of projects that I wanted to tackle early on in this process and bookmarked them to come back to. I purchased supplies on my many trips to Michael's but I never really got the energy to start any of them. So here I am literally 1 month away and I'm basically doing parts of projects everynight after work. And trying to carve out time on the weekends to wrap these things up, in between hair and makeup trials, marriage counseling and venue walk throughs. Of course because of the time crunch I've had to get rid of some projects, but they were mostly things that I was on the fence about in the first place. So I think I have a solid list of the things I need to get done, ASAP!

• Finish my cupcake tower which is in progress
• Create tissue paper poms to decorate the dessert bar area
• Design signs for the ceremony and reception space
• Design guestbook cards
• Create our ring bowl
• Kids activity buckets
• Cardbox
• Thank you cards
• Decorate the mason jars that will be used for the floral arrangements
• Memorial candles
• Flower girl wands
• Alot of other paper products (ceremony programs, favor tags, menus, etc)

Where has all the time gone. Thankfully alot of the things above I at least have a design for, I just need to print them out and assemble them. But I'm going to be steadily crossing things off this list and I will probably go down to the wire to get everything done.

How was your final month of planning before the wedding?

My First Wedding Project...The Bridal Party Ask

My FI had a pretty easy time figuring our who would be his bestman and groomsmen. I on the other hand, had a little difficulty. We both knew that we didn't want a huge wedding party so we kept it to four on each side. So after some more indecision (I'll get into that in a later post), I had my 4 girls and I was so excited to ask them. For some of them it would be a no brainer that they would be in my bridal party and for others it would be a surprise. But for each of them I wanted to do something simple and sweet to formally ask them to join me on my big day. So I decided to create little invitations for each girl.

Here's the final product (please excuse the picture quality, I'll do better next time), MOH got a different design and the remaining 3 bridesmaids received this design:

Front

The front of the card features a design motif I found on the Wedding Chicks blog here and here and fell in love with them so I didn't have any real design work to do that piece (I chose 2 different designs, but you could always work with just one). They even let you customize the design to your choice of colors and specific wording. I love it!

Back

The back features a simple quote from Aretha Franklin that I found while browsing my Glamour mag one month. It really sums up how I feel about each of the friendships and bonds I have with by girls.

Inside

The inside of the card featured a personal note to each bridesmaid which was tweaked a little for each person but the overall message was this (which was adapted or taken from a notecard that a woman at Papersource introduced me to one day):

"There are few moments in life when you get to pick those few favorite people to stand in line next to and face the world"

Supplies:

• Cardstock of your choice - I used an ivory cardstock purchased from Michael's
• Envelopes - I used small white one's approximately 3x5 that I had laying around the house
• Paper trimmer - to each notecard to size
• Powerpoint - this was my program of choice but you can use whatever you're comfortable with
• Stamps of course

I designed them in powerpoint so I was able to print them double-sided (on a regular inkjet printer) so I had to manually feed the paper but they turned out nicely. These were an easy project to tackle but I still ran into some roadblocks along the way, but nothing that has discouraged me from growing my list of prospective DIY projects.

I look forward to sharing more of my projects as they get underway so stay tuned.

Jello Shots Anyone?

I found this post over at Austin Wedding Blog (one of the additions to my blog reading list), head over there to find more great pics and inspiration for your own jello shots.

 *All pics of yummy shots are from Austin Wedding blog.

This is definitely something that I could manage, I don't know if I could pull it off for the actual reception because of necessary refrigeration, etc. But I think for our shower or the rehearsal dinner both of which will be pretty casual affairs it could definitely be a cool element that can be both a conversation starter and a unique tasty treat. I will probably do some of the non-alcoholic variety as well to cater to the full range of preferences that we'll have going on.

Considering All Floral Alternatives

By now you know that were planning a wedding on a tight budget and what puts dents in wedding budgets...flowers! I've never been a huge flower fan. Some may think it's a nice romantic gesture but to me it's just money thrown out the window because they'll just die a few days later. I'd rather have something more tangible that will last which I can remember for years to come. But with planning a wedding that simple logic went right out the window. I now find myself searching for floral inspiration and getting lost in beautiful weddings that feature the coveted peony (cha-ching!!), every brides dream flower.

But what do you do when you have a meager flower budget? I don't want to rule out fresh flowers all together but I don't want to waste money on a bunch of botanical decor that will be wilted and dead the next day.

So I've been thinking about ways to mix it up a bit. Inexpensive yet, luxe looking fresh flowers with  paper flowers, fabric flowers, or fake flowers (thinking of that still makes me cringe a little) that can be arranged by yours truly. I've been stalking blogs and collecting inspiration pics of all these alternative flowers and I'm starting to think that if I can do it right and take my time, they could actually turn out alright and add some charm and help me save some money in the process.

Another reason that I've been thinking about going the DIY route in terms  flowers is because of the bouquet. I could save it for years to come until I get sick of looking at it and it will be a constant reminder of our wedding day. Take a look at this beauty...

Rock N Roll Bride

Cupcakes or Traditional Cake...I'll Take Both

We are lovers of all things dessert but I think cupcakes are our number one fave. And when I started thinking about what our cake was going to look like, I somehow started to gravitate towards pictures like these:

Kitchen Musings

Source

Style Me Pretty

When I first mentioned the idea to my mom, she was not that ecstatic, being the wedding traditionalist that she is. Of course, in her mind we should be having a 4 tiered wedding cake. And there's nothing wrong with that because I happen to like to the look of these as well:

Style Me Pretty

Project Wedding

The Sweetest Occasion

But after really thinking and getting back to our core preferences I think we'll be going with a hybrid of the two. A muti-tiered stand full of delicious homemade cupcakes (did I mention his mom is a great baker, she just doesn't know that I want her to help me make all these cupcakes yet, shhh) with a simple 3 layered 6 inch cake at the very top for us to cut and savor on the big day. I haven't decided whether I want to outsource the top tier or go DIY all the way.

I think this will save us a ton of money and bring a lot of fun and personality to the wedding. Now I have to start thinking about cupcake flavors and decorations...yumm!

Keeping the Girls Updated...The Goods

I promised you that I would reveal the actual newsletter that I created to keep my bridesmaids updated about all the wedding happenings. Read about the contents and how it came about here. So without further ado, here's the first installment of the newsletter that they received. There have been some details omitted to respect everyone's privacy but you get the gist.

If anyone is interested in the template to make their own, I created it using Powerpoint so it is fully editable and can be emailed by request, just let me know by leaving a comment below.

Tip: If you do choose to tackle something like this I always convert any editable document into a pdf to help maintain the formatting and document integrity across various computer platforms (i.e. mac, pc, mobile phone, etc). If you have a mac pdf converting is built in. But if your a windows person there are a number of free pdf converters for windows but here's my fave along with a link to download.

• Primopdf (windows only) 

Keeping the Girls Up to Date

Before I started blogging my heart out, I started to think of ways to communicate my wedding plans with all my bridesmaids. I knew that I didn't want to constantly call each one of them and just spill the beans about my wedding, that would get annoying for them, even though I wouldn't mind talking about weddings 24/7. So of I googled and checked out a couple of bridesmaid newsletters on the web and I figured that would be the perfect thing for me to do. It wouldn't be too long but it would definitely get all the important stuff out there. Here's the information that I included:

• Intro - something short and sweet so they knew what was up
• Bridal Party contact info -With one out of town chick and the others off doing their grown woman thing I figured cellphone and emails were sufficient to help enable any future communications
• Ceremony and Reception details - names and addresses for each, they could always google the rest if they were interested
• My First Inspiration Board & Color Palette- I was hoping that this would give them a quick glimpse into my wedding vision, it even had a pic of my reception venue
• Some Details - I decided to dive a little deeper into my vision of the day just because that's the first thing people always ask me
• Their Roles - I wanted to make sure they knew a little bit about what I was expecting from them as a bridesmaid. Relax, no bridezilla stuff over here like they must wear their hair in a ballerina bun or must diet for 8 months. I just wanted to make sure we're on the same page
• What Next (For You) - This was to help clue them into what was priority in the upcoming months and this issue focused on dress selection so that they could start getting ideas of how much they would like to spend and even start researching dresses they may like
• What's Next (For Us): I also wanted to let them know what we would be busy with so that in the next installment they would have some details to look forward to.

So the way I planned it they would receive a new issue every 3 months and an additional one the month of the wedding so that everyone has the most up-to-date info. I'll be posting the newsletter design and a simple tutorial in a couple of days so look out for that.