Camouflage at the Wedding

As soon as we set a date, Mikey came to me and said “You know I’m wearing camouflage right?” I laughed it off, because we both knew that wouldn’t happen.

Yes, I know it’s the first day of hunting season and Mikey is an avid hunter, but it’s just not in the cards.

But, I didn’t want to rule it out completely. I wanted to do SOMETHING camo for him. We thought about surprising him with a camo vest to put on for the reception, but I had a better idea.

I got camo garters instead! I was soooo excited when I found them. They are sooo cute. And I got two so we could keep one. I am not good about keeping secrets, so I told him about the garters and he was quite pleased, to say the least.

 

 

Yes, these are the real ones I’m wearing. If you need anything wedding, check out this site: Hortense B Hewitt Co.They have ANYTHING wedding you could want.

Music

This was a major decision because I LOVE TO DANCE!

We had to have someone that could do the nice, peaceful dinner music, but also crank it up so we can party all night long.

We originally talked to a couple that did the music at my cousin’s wedding. They were very good, but they haven’t done a wedding recently, so they quit downloading music. So that means I would have had to find music from the past two years, download it on someones computer and bring the computer with me. Yes, a lot of work.

We got a number from a woman that Mikey works with. She uses the same guy for everything. Mom gave him a call and he said he was actually driving this way one Sunday and would like to meet my mom at the Moose. We both forgot. Luckily, he called when he was 20 minutes out to say he was running late. Mom ran over and our decision was made.

Gary Cooper is a saint! He has 85,000 songs… who could ask for more? Oh and he is charging the same that the other couple was. He will play until midnight for the main price, then will stay longer if needed, which I’m sure we’ll need. We couldn’t pass this up.

As long as he has Country Roads, we’re good. And he’s a WV boy, so I’m sure that’s not a problem! We will be walking into Country Roads. Love it:) For our first dance, we’ll dance to Making Memories of Us by Keith Urban. Michael said there were two songs he wanted to dance to, but won’t tell me the other one. It’s George Strait, but that’s all I know. Dad and I will dance to I Loved Her First by Heartland. As soon as he heard that song a few years ago, he told me that’s what we’d dance to!

Of course, we’ll have the Cha Cha Slide and the Electric Slide. Probably even the Chicken Dance. I’m not sure if anyone else knows the Cupid Shuffle. If so, we may play that. I love it, but don’t really want to teach people. It’ll be hard enough in my dress

Now that’s for the reception.

For the wedding, it’s a different story.

Before the ceremony, we have an entourage. One of my friends will be singing. But we will also have a piano and an organ. They will take turns playing and singing until it’s time for the ceremony to start.

I will walk into the wedding march, but that’s all the further we’ve gotten on those decisions.

Also, my maid of honor will be singing during the ceremony. She sings the song At Last by Etta James and it’s AMAZING!

When we sit down with the pianist and organist, I’ll add what other songs they’ll be playing.

The Guest List

Ahhhhh the guest list.

For starters, Mikey was very organized and started a guest list in Excel. He made a page for his mom’s friends, for family, for the bridal party and the rest of our friends. He made it so when you put how many people we’d be inviting, it would automatically add it so we would know just how many to expect.

When it comes to family, I’ve got a big one. I think our family page is over 60 – and some of them aren’t on the list because they’re part of the wedding party. Small and intimate? I think not!

The wedding party is 15 … but we also have our guest book keeper, our cake attendant, our welcome woman for the reception. It keeps growing

And when it comes to friends, well lets just say I don’t think we’re as popular as the guest list shows. When it’s totaled, the guest list comes to 370 something. Yes, you heard that right. Ay Yi Yi!

This is something we’ve all talked about many times. Michael started the list with his and his moms friends, I added mine, and my parents added theirs. There were people that we were sure about, there were people we questioned then there were the people we knew we wouldn’t invite. Then there were people that were on the brink, but there are SOOO many, we had to have a cut off.

One thing I’ve learned about having a wedding, when it comes to the guest list, there are people that are going to ask you if they’re invited and where their invitations are. I’m not one for controversy, so when this happens, I try to nonchalantly brush it off, or ignore it in general. There were a couple people who have said something that we completely forgot and had to add, but the cut off point has passed and we’re trying not to add anymore. I feel bad telling people no, but we just can’t.

There are 30 pews at the church. Mom said she saw 10 adults in a pew one Sunday. So that means 300 will be able to sit, it may look like sardines. After that, not really sure what we’re going to do lol. There’s a side room which I’m pretty sure we can set up seats, but they’ll be in a completely different room.

I do apologize in advance if anyone is offended by not being invited. But I hope you understand that we cannot invite everyone we are associated with. If I could, I would. I would have the whole town there to share our special day!

We’re just going to have to wait until RSVP’s come in and start preparing for standing room only What? We’re people people!

When it comes to the reception hall, there’s no problem. I think they said the Moose sits 500 in the big room, so there will be plenty of room to dance!

My Mom’s Dress

My mom is not the normal mother of the bride-to-be. She’s young and hip and most of the time, out-dresses me. So, finding a dress for her was going to be a task.

We started looking at dresses for her as soon as we set a date. Well, actually, mom started looking online for dresses as soon as I got engaged, but we buckled down when the date was set.

Everywhere we went, the dresses just weren’t for her.

That was until we found this online:

Now that wasn’t the exact one we found online, because obviously, that’s my mom in the dress.

The designer is Mon Cheri. Mom found it online, but there are only a handful of stores that carry the brand in driving distance from us.

One store that carries the brand is Lavender’s in Dover, Ohio. I have family that lives up there, so one day, mom made a trip to the store to see if they had this dress. They didn’t, but they ordered it for her as a “loner” so she didn’t have to buy it if she didn’t like it.

We went up last Friday to order invitations (coming in a later post) and the dress was supposed to be in. It’s a 2.5 hour drive and I took the day off to go. We get to the dress store, and guess what didn’t come? Yep, mom’s dress.

They told us it was in NJ and would be in Wednesday. Luckily, I was able to get the day off (again) and go. We picked up my cousin Lisa and it was time for my mom’s fashion show.

Once she put it on, we knew it was the one. First of all, it looks GREAT on her. Second, it matches the wedding colors perfectly. It was definitely worth the 2.5 hour drive, TWICE.

It has a belt across the middle, similar to the bridesmaids dresses. It also has layers on the sleeves like the bottom of my dress. Couldn’t be a more perfect fit!

Save the Dates

Once we set the date, my dad asked if we were going to send out anything with the date on it. A woman at dad’s office printed out some examples. They are business cards that you stick on a magnet. Very simple, not very expensive.

This is what they turned out to be:

When we were thinking of themes, we decided to go with the A. Both mine and Michael’s last name are A’s. We didn’t want to go with a fall theme, so we stuck with the A. We’ll use the A on the invitation and as the cake topper as well. We are also going to use it on the goodie that will be on the tables. We are going to make cookies in a heart shape with the A on it.

I had a Friday off and spent pretty much all day putting those suckers together. I put 200 together. I didn’t the hang of it until the last 100, but after that it was smooth sailing.

Now when I mailed them out, mom sent the majority of them, but I had a handful I had to send out. Word to the wise: Don’t put magnets in the metal mail box. LOL! I had to call and ask the post office to check out the inside to make sure none got stuck.

Pictures

When it came to pictures, I wasn’t sure what I wanted.

We originally had Michael’s sister lined up to do the pics, but the more I thought about it, I didn’t want her to stress on our wedding day. I know that she would worry about them being good enough, and I want her to just enjoy it.

So, mom’s boyfriend said he’s pay for the pictures.

I had it narrowed to two people… then I was stuck.

One was a girl who was a few years older than me in high school. The other, one of Franks friends.

They were completely different. The girl has really hip pictures. She does a lot of color splashes and very cool pictures. The guy is very traditional.

I had a REALLY hard time deciding what I wanted. I like the hip pictures, but I don’t know if I’d look back in 20 years, if I’d still be happy with them. I can see me saying “Why did I have those pictures taken?”

So, we went with the guy. He did my cousins pictures and he told me he’d put 75ish on a cd for me so I can get a book made on Shutterfly.

Centerpieces

This was a decision I needed to make before our Dayton trip so we could look for supplies.

Mom and Amy have been working on these since we decided colors and flowers. Dad had bought hurricane globes the day after I got engaged.

I personally didn’t want to do flowers… then that changed and I wanted to do 3-4 fake calla lilies… then that changed once I saw this:

Now I didn’t like it when Mom and Amy sent me the picture of it because I didn’t think the one lily would be enough. But when I got to Amy’s on Saturday and she turned off the lights and lit all the candles, I knew it was the one.

Here’s a view from the front:

 

Now we still have to figure out what to do with the flower stem. We obviously don’t want tape to be seen, but I have no idea what I would do without Mom and Amy. I could NEVER have thought of this on my own!

PS: I know I raved about it with the candles lit… but they were already blown out and we were trying to get out of town before 8, so I just snapped some shots on the way out the door.

A Day in Dayton

So Saturday, me, my mom and our “wedding planner” went to Dayton. The plan was to go to the Flower Factory and get everything we needed for centerpieces, throw away bouquet, candles etc.

Our first stop was at Hobby Lobby because that’s the first place we came to. We made a killing. We got all of the candles for the centerpieces, ribbon and beads to put down in the globes. We also got taper candles to throw around somewhere. Oh and check this out:

How cool are those? The caterer is providing champagne glasses for the toast at the wedding party table, but we are going to use these for the cake.

And, the best part of the day (other than me getting some really cute stuff to decorate the apartment with at fall) was everything was on sale at the Hobby Lobby. You can’t beat that!

After lunch, we made our way to the Flower Factory (the whole point of the day).  Everyone kept telling us how amazing it was and how it would change out lives. Personally, we weren’t impressed. The only things we got from there were a card basket (which we’re going to spray paint), gold twisty-ties and some hair pins for if I decide not to wear my veil. They didn’t have ANYTHING that we got at Hobby Lobby, we didn’t find a single flower we liked and the prices weren’t great.

I’m not saying it’s horrible, don’t go. But I am saying, it’s called Flower Factory for a reason. It is primarily silk flowers. Keep that in mind… we didn’t.

We also stopped at JoAnn Fabrics (since ours was stolen from us). There we did find the flowers for the throw-away bouquet. And we also stopped at Pier One.

All in all, it was a good day. We got quite a bit accomplished, just not at the store we though we would.

Oh, and you better believe, closer to Christmas I’ll definitely be hitting up the Hobby Lobby in Chillicothe to snag some ornaments. Balls with reindeer are uber cool:)

Flower Girl Dress

So this dress was as easy to pick out as my wedding dress was. Found it on the first day! Yay!

 

Absolutely love it because the flower petals are between the layers and you can move them around.  You can also change them if you’d like to re-use it for another wedding with different colors. We are going to keep the off-white flowers though since they go with the colors.

I also love that up the back, it has buttons that are like the buttons up the back of my dress.

The 4th of July Anniversary

So, you already know Mikey and I had out first “date” on the 4th of July. I honestly couldn’t tell you when we officially became a couple.  I remember though he pulled me to the side while I was waitressing and told me I could change my Myspace relationship status to “in a relationship.” So, since that date isn’t known, we always celebrate our anniversary on the 4th.

And of course, we always watch the fireworks.

This year for our anniversary, we spent it with friends. We went out on the river, we tubed, then when it started raining, we ordered some pizzas and relaxed.

Mikey and I went and watched the fireworks alone, not because we didn’t want others to go with us, but it was a tradition. Not everyone could fit in one car, so we just split from the group for a while.

This anniversary was kind of bittersweet. I was a little sad because the fireworks are very important to us. They remind us of the first night we hung out. And, this is the last year our “official” anniversary will be on July 4th. But then again, I’m pumped. It’s the last anniversary as a dating couple. Come next year, it’ll be the first 4th we are married and our anniversary will be in October.  I guess I can live with that. But don’t think we will quit watching the fireworks. I love them anytime!