More Eye Candy...

...from my fabulous photographer! I'm telling you, I just feel so lucky she will be our photographer! See more here. Enjoy!

News Flash From My Fiance

Today, my fiance came to have lunch with me at work. While we were eating, he mentions, "I've decided that we are going to change clothes before we leave the reception."

Uhhh...excuse me?

He doesn't want to have to deal with getting his tuxedo to someone before it has to be returned the next day. But does he see what this means for me?

I now need a getaway dress.

Yessssss...another reason to shop. :)

Any ideas for a fabulous getaway dress?

Bridal Shower : The Presents!

The ladies at my shower certainly showered me with gifts! The funny facial expressions in the following pictures will let you know a little bit about how excited I was to be receiving such wonderful gifts. :)

The first gift I opened was from Littlest Sister - a recipe book with her AMAZING smoothie recipe in it! There were a lot of blank recipe notecards so it worked well that I opened it first - we passed the blank cards around and people wrote their recipes down on them! I love having those recipies!


More presents...this one was a Calphalon sauce pan! Whoohoo!!



My parents bought me a complete set of SILVER. The best part? Both my great-grandmothers had the same pattern - and now I have it too! (And my mom, and my aunts...hehe)



I was really excited about these Florida State Tervis Tumblers. :)

More presents...

(Hold your jokes please) :)

And all the while, my dear friend (we will call her Mini Bridesmaid - seriously, she is tiny!) was creating my bouquet for my rehearsal. :)

She did a great job!


And here it is...the loot! :) My parents are holding it all hostage at their house until after the wedding to make sure I don't use it before then. Hehe.

It was an absolutely wonderful shower - thank you to everyone who helped make it possible. I felt so loved! :)

Bridal Shower : The Guests!

I feel so blessed to have had so many wonderful women attend my shower, but none was more special than my Grandma. My Grandma has Alzheimers and it has made it difficult for her to be a part of our lives outside her nursing home. Unfortunately, she will not be able to make it to the wedding. But she did come to my shower! It was such an unexpected gift to have her there with me, and she had an absolutely wonderful day.

Here are some more very special women in my life - my mother and my soon-to-be mother-in-law!

Here I am with our friend who will be doing all of our flowers as she pins my corsage onto my dress. We are so blessed to have her as a part of our wedding! Behind her is my other Grandma (who graciously helped with the food for the shower!), and my Littlest Sister doing her best "Where's Waldo" impersonation. :)

These ladies are very special to me too. The one on the left is my Mom's best friend and has been like a second mother to me my whole life. Both of these ladies graciously gave me a job at their children's clothing shop when I was in high school and have both always been a part of any of my big life events. They also helped Super-Crafty Sister with all the wonderful food!

This is Beemer. Yes, that is her name. She is not my grandmother, but feels like she could be! She worked at the children's shop with me when I was in high school and became one of my close friends. It meant so much to have her there!

I could go on and on about all the wonderful ladies in my life who showered me with love on Saturday, but here are just a few more pictures of the wonderful time that was had by all. I am so lucky to have such wonderful people in my life!

Next up....the presents!!! :)

Bridal Shower : The Decor

My bridal shower was AMAZING. I have so much to tell you, so I'm going to try to do it in bits and pieces. First up...the decor!

Super-Crafty Sister hosted my shower on Saturday at her beautiful home. And being the Super-Crafty Sister she is, the place looked fabulous.

In true Super-Crafty Sister fashion, she put together these beautiful centerpieces with flowers from our local farmers' market.

The tag around the vase designates who will the centerpiece will be given to. Several family friends helped provide food and other items, so this was her way of saying thank you. How thoughtful!!!

I love this. They put out baby pictures of me and my fiance. Too cute. :)

And here is the beautiful food table!!! Isn't it lovely??

The cake was stunning. Daisies are my favorite flower, so that theme carried beautifully throughout the shower.

I loved the different types of tea she offered, along with the cute tags to tell everyone which flavor each one was.

And this...this was one of my favorite parts of the shower! My sister asked everyone to bring one of their wedding photos to be displayed at the shower. I loved seeing all the different eras represented!!

And then there was...gift bingo! I played this at a friends' bridal shower and LOVED it. So my sister decided to recreate the game! Each guest received a blank Bingo card.



Super-Crafty Sister (in true teacher fashion) instructed the guests to fill out the blank squares with the gifts they thought I might be receiving that day.



As I opened each gift, the guests would mark off the square that matched the gift. It is a great way to keep guests entertained and involved as the presents are opened!!

Stay tuned for more! :)

My Bridal Shower is Today!

Wow.

I love being a bride. :)

My sisters, close friends, and even my fiance have been busy planning this party for me. They are trying to keep me as out of the planning as possible and they have done a pretty good job. I am sure it will be fabulous. I can't wait to fill you in on all the details. :)

Look What Showed Up On My Doorstep!

When I came home from the gym after work yesterday, there was a lovely box on my doorstep.

And inside was...

Our first wedding present!!!!

How exciting is that????

Some relatives from out of town (who won't be able to make it to the wedding) got together and purchased this beautiful place setting of our china for us. I love love love holding it in my hands! I have a strict "no use until after the wedding" policy, but it was so fun to get our first gift!!!

What was the first wedding gift you received?

New Layout?

Like it?

Love it?

Hate it?

Feedback please! :)

Love

Love is a temporary madness; it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of eternal passion. That is just being in love, which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Those that truly love have roots that grow towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossom have fallen from their branches, they find that they are one tree and not two.

-Louis de Bernieres

I love him.

And I get to be his wife in 50 days.

:)

Shopping For My Shower

As a woman, I hardly need an excuse to go shopping.

But my excuse of late has been, "I need to find something to wear to my bridal shower!"

While my fiance is correct in his assertion that I have plenty of perfectly nice dresses in my closet, my shower is a perfect reason to buy a new dress! And in an effort to enjoy this "bride" thing as much as possible, it became my mission to find a beautiful white sun dress to wear to my shower.

After scouring stores such as White House Black Market, Macy's, Dillards, Ann Taylor, etc, I had all but given up on my search.

And then...enter Target.

Check out that cute little number third from the left! (By the way, I love that first black one too.)

Sorry it's not the most fabulous of pictures - but you'll have plenty to see after this weekend! That's right - this is my shower dress! I tried it on and it fit beautifully - and so did the price tag!

Now the question is...what shoes should I wear with this adorable dress?

(What's that I hear? An excuse to go shoe shopping? :))

Blog Awards :)

I am constantly amazed by this world of blogging. (Especially amazing is the fact that I have 97 followers!!!!!) I had no idea when I started this blog how much I would enjoy being a part of the blogging community. Thanks for caring about what is going on in my life, and for letting me see a glimpse of what is going on in yours!

One fun thing about blogging are the "blog awards" that bloggers give eachother. I have received two in the past week!

The first one is from Marian at Escaping the Single Life. I love reading her blog, and will forgive her for being a Red Sox fan. :)

Here are the details. The Splash Award is given to alluring, amusing, bewitching, impressive and inspiring blogs. When you receive this award, you must:

1. Put the logo on your blog or post.
2. Nominate up to 9 blogs which allure, amuse, bewitch, impress or inspire you.
3. Be sure to link to your nominees within your post.
4. Let your nominees know that they have been splashed by commenting on their blog.

Since I am nominating blogs for another award below, I won't be able to quite make it to nine, but hopefully six is good enough! And the award goes to...

1. Cheap Wife

2. Honey My Heart

3. J. Bride Adventures

4. Attacked by Tulle

5. Project: 10k Wedding

6. Poor Wedding Dad - of course I had to give a shout out to my dad. :)


The second one is from from Candice at Lovely Tonight. She is getting married just one week after me and it is fun to travel through the wedding planning process together! Thanks Candice!



So now my job is to tag 6 people who have lovely blogs! Here they are!

1. Pirate Bride

2. Life of a Savannah Bride (now Life of a Savannah Wife! Congrats!)

3. Two Kids and a Wedding

4. Wedding Peephole

5. Tammy & Kareem's Day

6. Burning River Bride

Whew!!! I hope I have given you some fun new blogs to add to your Readers! Thanks to all of these lovely bloggers for giving me so much fun reading material! :)

My "Favor"ite Idea. :)

People seem to have strong feelings these days about wedding favors.

Some see them as an important gesture to show their appreciate to their guests.

Others see them as a huge waste of money.

An idea that has been growing in popularity is the idea of a charitable donation in lieu of favors. Friends of mine simply put up a sign on their gift table explaining that there would be no favors at your table because a charitable donation had been made to their favorite charity.

Or then there is this idea.

You have probably seen this by now, but in the off chance that some of you may not stalk Weddingbee like I do, I thought I would share.

This is a great way to make a charitable donation but still keep your guests involved!

Here is the idea. Each guest gets a certain number of these "tokens" at their seat. Each token has a designated dollar value. The guests then choose which charity they would like to receive their "token"! Mrs. Taffy used the paper below to explain the process to her guests...and they filled up the jars above!


Mrs. Lovebug gave each guest four tokens, worth $1 each. Her tokens looked like this and you can see how it is done here:

I think this is a great twist on the "charitable donation" favor idea.

What do you think of this idea?

*Note: We have still not decided on what we will be doing about favors. Stay tuned. :)