Friday, April 30, 2010

Happy Friday!!

You're question for the day:


via The Bride's Cafe

Have a wonderful weekend!

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Our DIY Invitations

A more detailed look at our wedding invitations.

I knew that I wanted to make them right away and I was confident that I would be able to do it. The biggest problem was making sure that they didn't come across as super homemade (aka: I just printed this off of microsoft word and shoved it in an envelope). After we decided on colors, I made thirty-two a few trips to our local Hobby Lobby to look at paper options. There weren't a whole bunch of patterend papers in our colors so I decided solids were the best way to go.

Inspiration:

When I ran across this diy escort card display, I decided I wanted to incorporate this idea into our invitations to make them special.




Martha Stewart Weddings

I had a much easier time finding fabrics in our colors than I did with patterend paper. So I bought 1/2 yard of 3 different fabrics ($6.80) and a 1.75 inch circle whole punch ($9.99) from HL. I also purchased a corner rounder to mimi the shape of the escort cards in the photo ($6.99).

Fonts:

I looked for font solutions right away because everyone has seen the "fancy" fonts offered by Microsoft Word. No thanks. I found dafont.com and it was awesome. You can search by the type of font your looking for and they are free to download. I ended up using Jellyka, Saint-Andrew's Queen for our names and envelope labels and Hanshand for the other wording on the invitations.

Extras:

I found the love bird stamp (so cute!) at HL on sale for $2.75 and picked up the inkpad for $2.99. I knew immediately that it would be used for the outside of the envelopes. Speaking of, we picked up plain, white greeting card envelopes (50) for $4.95 at Wal-Mart.

The Finished Product:

Total Spent on Invitations:
Stamp: $2.75
Ink Pad: $2.99
Pack of White Card Stock: $4.99
Yellow Paper: $7.93
Blue Paper: $12.39
Fabric: $6.80
Evelopes: $4.95
Hole Punch: $9.99
Corner Rounder: $6.99
Total: $59.78

**Note: The whole punch and corner rounder did push the invitation total over what I had expected to pay but I consider these two items investments for my future crafting!**

Saturday, April 24, 2010

Wedding Nightmares

I guess when something occupies your mind as much as a wedding can, some thoughts can carry over to your subconcious. I have had some of the most weird wedding dreams where I freak out about something so bizarre that I can only shake my head upon waking up.

Most recently, my dreams included forgetting my veil and having to settle for something made out of leaves, my bouquet constantly falling apart, and everyone doing some sort of choreographed dance while I was walking down the aisle (don't even ask).

Once you wake up and realize it was not real, you can laugh about it, but I can't help feel a twinge of dread everytime I have one of those nightmares.

Have you ever had a nightmare about a big event? About your wedding? I'd love to hear it.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Annoucing the new model for GQ


Back off, ladies! He's mine!


Suit Jacket: $64.00 down from $180.00
Pants: $34.00 down from $80.00
Shoes: $24.89
Shirt and Tie are previously owned

Now you just can't beat that!

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Boys v. Girls

Yesterday, I was sitting in the office of which I work in and all of the girls in the office were working diligently chatting about the differences between guys and girls in relationships and what they want out of it. Some very interesting points came up.

For the guys, this had solved it all: "Dude, all chicks want is commitment. Babies, marriage, and the death of our masculinity" *high five (or rather, fist bump now)

Ladies, it was more like this: "Gee, I just can't get him to say I love you. He never shares his feeeelings." *sigh*

But from the discussion I had yesterday, I found that girls and guys take part of both stereotypes. My best friend Sarah and I are engaged and my boss, Chelsea, is newly married. From our side, we agreed that we liked/had guys who showed emotion and we didn't have any second thoughts about our choice in when we're getting married.

From the other side, Elia, Kelsey, & Cheney (Chelsea's sister who was not a direct participant) are not interested in dating or being in a relationship at all. In fact, the guys they had dated recently were the clingy ones and it made them uncomfortable.

I just thought this was interesting because these gender stereotypes do not work. Every person is different and it just depends on what point they are at in their life for when they are ready for a relationship. Just food for thought.

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Flowers on a Budget

So, you probably got, from my centerpiece tutorial that real flowers will not be making an appearance at our wedding in 4 months. So I set out on yet another to Hobby Lobby to figure out how to make my own bouquets and boutonnieres. Here are the results:

A "W" charm for my future last name.
The boutonnieres:

These pictures really don't do the boutonnieres justice. They are so cute in person! The blue is for Josh (to match my bouquet), and his best man and the Dad's will wear the yellow. My Maid of Honor and our two adorable little flower girls will have yellow flowers as well.

So all of these flowers were put together with absolutely no prior experience, just some research on YouTube. Pretty good, eh? And the best part? They are done already and we still have four months to go! Just one more thing I won't have to worry about in August!

I bought all of the flowers and supplies for my bouquet for just under $40.00 and used the left overs to whip up the boutonnieres. Definitely under budget!

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Setting the Foundation - Money and Marriage

Josh and I spent Easter weekend doing a whole bunch of 'not Easter-y' things. There weren't any eggs or bunnies, but we did something so much better. Starting Friday, this past weekend became "super-productive weekend" and the biggest thing we tackled (and dominated) was our finances.

I will never claimed to have been a big saver. I like to spend money... way more than I should. But on the other hand the idea of bad credit scares the hell out of me. I don't want to not be able to get a car or a house because I messed up as a teenager. So not worth it.

Josh on the other hand is frugal. Really. Frugal. So it's up to us to establish a balance and continue to work towards that equilibrium before we tie the knot. One of the top things couples fight about is money and up until this point we never had to fight about that because we kept most things separate. Recently, we opened our joint savings and checking accounts and it is vital that we establish parameters. How much needs to be contributed every month to cover our living expenses? What percentage of our income can go into savings? What do we consider legitimate reasons to spend from the savings account?

This past weekend, we answered all of those questions and came up with a system that will help us to track who puts what in and where that money goes.

This system may end up being just the first of many until we find one that completely works for us, but the important part is we are recognizing an important area of potential conflict and addressing it together. It feels good!