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?