Random projects/details

We were definitely a DIY wedding couple and on a budget so we spent a lot of time walking the aisles of Michaels and crafting our living room. It was fun to really make the wedding our own by doing these little projects. Thankfully, we got a lot of compliments on these things and thought I'd share the ideas! :)

These are "share your photos with us" cards. Nick made them for us (love!) and we displayed them in martini glasses on the bars. I noticed people taking them, etc. but we had absolutely NO ONE share any photos on it! lol - not sure how to make sure people do this in a better way, but whatever. We had a few family and friends email us some pics, but no one used the site.

This was the signature drink menu we made up to put on the bars. However, we ended up not doing signature drinks because it seemed to be too much trouble with the event staff. No biggie - it wasn't a huge deal to us.

PROGRAMS!!
I loved, loved, LOVED our programs. Nick and I designed them based off of Miss Cupcake's accordian programs on WeddingBee. We made them all by ourselves (with a little help from a friend) and got a LOT of compliments on them. We printed them on normal typing paper at my office and then created the front and back parts with the cricut, cardstock and some ribbon.

These were some buttons I had made from Etsy to use at the rehearsal. The white ones are wedding party members and the black ones are their guests. It was a fun way for people to get to know each other. I'm glad I did them. :)

Popcorn bags and labels! So much fun. These are for our popcorn buffet - of course I needed to jazz up the bags that people would be putting their popcorn in so Nick designed the main label and we printed them on circle labels. The back polka dot seals were ordered from Etsy.

Bridal Showers

I was lucky enough to have 3 bridal showers during our engagement. The first was a casual dinner with the girls from our young adult class at church. It was super sweet of them to do for me and a lot of fun to spend QT with those girls.

Next up - Nick's side of the family threw one for me. His aunts and his sister hosted it and it was nice to have all of the family member from his side together. I was overwhelmed with gifts and we had fun playing games. It's hard to understand how much love is showered on you during this time, but it certainly is fun and humbling and SO nice.

Registering for gifts was kind of tough for us since we weren't sure where we were going to set up home. Nick's apartment lease went through the end of June and we hadn't figured out what we were doing after that. So we made a thorough registry and then did a fun game of exchanging after we ended up moving in August.

(it's not a Meyer funcion without beer!)

(cute "his" and "hers" wall decor)

(nick's grandma and me)

The third and final shower was thrown by my bff/MOH and her mother at her mother's home. This was especially fun since I practically grew up in that home and hadn't been there in so long. Her mother is so classy and a Martha-type mother so it was a lovely shower. They had a friend who is an aspiring floral designer decorate (beautiful!), some ovely Swedish desserts, coffee and fun games. I don't know why I don't have more pictures from this shower - or a group shot :(

The hostesses

(me and my mom)

Lastly, a random Friday afternoon in May, my supervisor and co-worker and I had a scheduled meeting for 3pm. This isn't any of our favorite time in the week to have a meeting, so I thought it was a little weird but showed up anyway. :) When I got to my supervisor's office she handed us both a folder with an agenda which was TOTALLY weird and unlike her. I opened it up and there was a sheet of paper that said "Surprise! Grab your purse because we're going out to celebrate your upcoming wedding!!" It was SUPER sweet and fun of them. (Note that I work in a small office of 7 and we usually leave on Fridays early anyway. So my supervisor and co-worker are the only girls in the office - we didn't invite the boys!) We went out for a little happy hour and they gifted me with some very nice items. So fun!

Being engaged is so much fun! Enjoy it while it lasts, girls! :)

Engagement Pictures!

We had a wonderful time with our photographer, Cheryl Neuharth, doing engagement pictures. She chose a couple spots in downtown Minneapolis and we had so much fun doing them! We're using them for a photobook for our guestbook, so we were pleased with the good ones we got! Between the January photos, and these engagment pictures we felt very comfortable with the photog and ready for the big wedding in May!

The Obamas

I had seen online on many blogs about sending a wedding invitation to the White House to get a little congratulatory note back. We thought we would do so to see what we get and we were SO excited when we opened up the mailbox one day to find this! So much fun!

3 Months

So yeah - it's been 3 months since the wedding and I give myself a complete FAIL on blogging here for you lovlies. But instead of making excuses I'm just going to jump in because you all deserve to see the rest of how things all panned out - and ESPECIALLY the wedding pics. :) So I've drafted a bunch of posts lately and will throw them up here on out! <3

Hair & Make Up Trial

To be honest - I was really nervous about this part of the wedding planning. I've never considered myself a super girly girl in the hair and make up realm. I have wash-n-wear curls that I hardly ever mess with and I wear the exact.same.makeup every.day. Although I'm girly in a lot of other ways and would never leave the house without my hair decent and at the very least - mascara on...I just don't do well when it comes to looking overly gorgeous - and I dont understand how people are.

The day started with a minor crisis because I lost a contact! oh, the horror. Actually - yes. I have been on my last pair of contacts for about 3 months now (I know, I know...) and they were killing me, so I'd been wearing my glasses (circa 2002 and so over them) for the last 4 weeks. Oh, and I'm totally blind without anything. So I seriously didn't want to be wearing my glasses the day of the trial so I purposely went to the eye doctor a few days before in order to get new contacts. While putting them in that Saturday morning, I had one on my finger and was excitedly telling DB about how they are blue tinted to you can easily find and see them. Then I said something that caused me to blow the contact off my finger. awesome. we couldn't find it by the time I had to rush to work - and off I went in my glasses. Luckily, I have an amazing man who continued searching for it and eventually found it hanging on for dear life to the door frame...go fig....crisis averted.

So I was a good hair trial bride and washed my hair the night before per Amy's suggestion and got my face all nice and clean after working a shift the morning of. Oh yeah - my hair. It's super naturally curly, right? And when you straighten it - it's not like normal straight hair. But Amy said it'd probably be best to work off of the straight hair - so I straightened it and hoped that it'd magically turn into beautiful cause usually it doesn't do much other than be straight when I blow it out.

Now - let me tell you about Amy of Makeup Ready, because I'm quite proud of this find. I happened to see her featured on a local vendors blog (follow your local vendors! you find good finds!) and then worked out a deal with her for a complete barter. I get hair and makeup services on location plus a trial from Amy while Nick makes Amy a website. YAY - everyone wins! Nick's worked hard on putting together a website for her and I plugged in some marketing lingo and bam! She's so much fun and I kind of want her to be my bff - so naturally, we had a lot of fun at the trial.

She set up camp on my kitchen table and got to work.

First up - make-up.
I didn't really know what I wanted here other than fake eyelashes (mmm) and dramatic eyes. She did her thing, the make-up felt good on my face and it looked great too! yay! the only thing I'm changing for the day of is that the eyeliner be a bit thicker/dramatic. Other than that - easy peezy.

Next up - hair.
I was really afraid of what my hair would or wouldn't do and all I knew that I wanted was something relaxed looking and not prom-like, stiff hair and curls. OK. So we went with a low chignon (sp?)/bun-type thing. I also knew I wanted a bit of height on top because I didn't want it to look plastered back. And I had to have the safety blanket of my grown out bangs swept across my face. So we started with this...

While this wasn't horrible - it was a bit too manufactured prom curls for me. Girls with naturally curly hair are snobs about curls - trust me. :) Anyway, so I was all "yeah, this needs to be more relaxed and stuff back here - but the front's good!" So we went back to adjust the chignon/bun and ended up with something much too "bun-ish" and I was all "no, no...more piecy not just one solid bun." And we concluded, both very happily, on this...

Now, really - this was after two adjustments. But it's the look I'm going for. She said the day of - when it's done straight from the get go - the front going back into the chignon and the chignon itself will be more piecy. I LIKE PIECY. :) So yay - I'm happy.

More pics...

And later that night....

And thus ends the hair and makeup trial. It was fun and I was pleased with how my hair did. I'm excited to see it all together on the day of!

More DIY

A few more projects done in the last few months to share...

Customized napkins.
We didn't want to pay for the ones we found online and thought we could do a cool design on our own. Sweet. So we bought a circular stencil made of dots, an "M" for our last name and some green and black napkins that match our color scheme and a stamping away we went. We used acrylic paint for the stencil sponged onto the napkin and just a normal stamp pad for the "M." We tested the paint with a condensation-filled cup to see if it would mess up the ink and all was well!

Pomanders.
I stole a few ideas from WeddingBee and created some white tissue pomanders to hang on the ends of pews at the ceremony. Pretty easy - you just need some time to do it!

Out of Town Bags.
I have yet to fill these - but we got them all ready to be filled! I bought 50 muslin bags off of http://www.muslinbags.com/ and went to work! We used the same stamp from the napkins with a creme paint sponged on to it (with cardboard in between to prevent it soaking through!) and then a regular music note stamp with a black ink pad in the center. I also stamped a "tag" stamp onto white cardstock and cut them out and punched a hole in them to attach to the strings. We'll fill these with some fun Minnesota goodies that are still to be determined!

A dress hanger.
The photographer won't even be at the location early enough to take a picture of my dress on a hanger - but I saw all those cute ones on Etsy and decided I had to have on - even if it's just me who takes the picture of it hanging on there! I finally found a black hanger at Wal-Mart and bought some white floral wire to shape the words out of. I was pretty impressed at how easy it was to twist and turn the wire around into the shape I wanted.