Special delivery

Mike comes in the house this afternoon yelling, "You got something from Bed Bath and Beyond, Carla". I'm thinking it's one of the free gifts we got from registering for certain products. To my surprise, it's actually our first wedding gift! Or pre-wedding gift I should say. A couple we invited to our wedding will be unable to attend so instead they sent us a bunch of things from our registry with a beautiful note. Actually, they sent the entire bathroom set set-up we registered for. It includes all the bathroom extras, the wastebasket, toothbrush holder, etc. A very pleasant surprise and totally unexpected. We definitely appreciate it.

On to thank you cards. I didn't think I'd have to get these so soon but I think etiquette wise, we should send them out shortly after receiving a gift, right?

Invites have been received!

So far so good! Guests starting getting their invites yesterday and we've gotten some great feedback from them. Here's a few of the comments:

"Hey CH. Just received your wedding invitation. What a class act! The way you did it is so beautiful. You go diva!"

"Wow!! What beautiful and original wedding invites!!!! I love it!!! I'm more excited about the wedding than ever...God bless!!!"

And my personal fav:

"My bottle washed ashore. Too cute."

I'm only posting these because if you're thinking about the expense of sending message in the bottle invitations, do it! Your guests will love them! It's a nice keepsake for the sentimental types and they are something different. I think they're perfect for a destination wedding.

Now hopefully I'll get the RSVPs back before the date has passed. =)

I love eBay!

I have turned into a serious eBay junkie! I found these place card holders doing a google search yesterday. The price was about $1.60 per place card holder with the place cards, just like the pic. I was totally prepared to pay that because from the very beginning I knew I wanted palm tree place card holders although the original ones I wanted seemed to be discontinued and are nowhere near as cute as these. Here's a pic of the old ones: So something said to check out eBay. What do I find? The above place card holders ready for me to bid on! I put in my max bid and found out I won them tonight. I got them for $0.63 a piece! I love a deal. I'm going to place them in trays of sand (maybe, maybe not) or just put them on a sand covered table. They may also double as favors, since they can be used later to hold a pic or whatever the owner decides.

My next eBay deal was this beautiful cake server set for $11.99: I'm going to take it to Things Remembered and have our names and wedding date engraved on the knife and probably "Our Wedding Day" engraved on the server. In other news, my veil arrived today from Occansey Designs. Gorgeous! I can't wait to try it on with my dress and for $31 bucks you can't beat the price. I'll show pics later with the dress. I'm sorry but you gotta wait. =)

2 months to go!

2 more months! The time flew by; it feels like I was just in July and hadn't even ordered my dress yet. The invites went out yesterday. They cost more than I expected but what the hell, I love them. This is the finished box we sent them in, stuffed with raffia:

We wound up using the return address labels that we used on the save the dates and the clear labels that I intended to use for the save the dates but didn't. So it worked out.

Funny story: I wanted to use the burned edges parchment paper for the address labels on the boxes to match the invitations. So about 2 weeks ago, I'm sitting in the family room with a candle, a bucket of water just in case the fire gets out of control, and of course the parchment paper. So I start burning my first piece. I'm slowly working my way around the paper when one side gets out of control! I can't blow out the fire quick enough so in a panic I toss the paper in the bucket of water. My mom is laughing at me and Mike is in "I told you so" mode. Needless to say, that's why the clear labels are there, lol.

6 months apart....Who would've thought?

December 14, 2008 approximately 2:30 pm, Mike's best man Shaq lost his mother. December 14 is 6 months to the day we buried Mike's mom. How ironic. Thinking back to June 14, 2008 sitting in a warm North Carolina church, who would've imagined we'd be here 6 months later? 2008 is definitely a year to be remembered as one of the worst for us.

The funeral is set for Thursday at 1:30 pm. Afterwards, family and friends will gather for a "celebration", also known as a repast. I volunteered to cook; still deciding what I will prepare. I just can't believe we're going through this so soon with our brother. We are way beyond the friend stage with Shaq, he's our brother for sure.

We know the days, weeks, months, and years to come will be difficult, but we'll get through them together.

Beyond words

Friday December 12, 2008 started out as any other day. I finished class early, done by 12 noon. Very good Homicide course that lasted 2 1/2 days. I decided to go up north to pick up Pops and bring him home. On the way, I stopped at the post office to get pricing for our invites. They're going to cost us a whopping $4.02 per invite to ship. Holy cow! I didn't expect that, but hey, it's the invites I wanted, so that's that.

Got home, started putting the stamps on the RSVP postcards and waited for Mike to get home before stuffing each box. An hour later, done. The night was going well, and I was looking forward to hitting the post office bright and early the next morning.

And then the unthinkable happens. That monkey wrench that comes out of nowhere. The devil at work and at his best. You know, good vs. evil. I now know what it means when there are people praying for blessings for you while there are others praying for the opposite. I'm not going to go into too much detail, but since this experience is a part of the overall experience of wedding planning and this roller coaster ride called life, I decided to at least include this much here. When I re-read it later it will serve as a reminder of all we have endured to get to February 20, 2009.

My clutch arrived!

And it's perfect! Matches perfectly with my shoes. I'll have to post a pic soon. eBay has been my best friend so far.

On another note, I spoke to my photographer today and she only needed one more girl to sign up for the b-pic session for February. Well, I told my knottie girls and they all emailed her so we should have enough to make it a go. I just hope we can agree on a date that works for me.

I'll be back with pics.....On to stuff these boxes of invitations to be mailed tomorrow.

Updates....

2 months and 9 days to go! Whoo hoo!

Time is flying. Well, the bridal salon called me today to schedule my first fitting. Yay! I go in Jan. 5. This means that I need to have all my stuff together (veil, shoes, jewelry, etc.) to try on everything at once. I'm worried my jewelry may not work, but I'll see soon enough.

Right now, I'm working on finding a stylist for the bridal party. Worse case scenario, I'll pay my beautician, who's a guest, to do their hair. She's doing my hair as a gift and even if I had to pay her I would; she's been doing my hair since I was 14 years old! My DOC is working on getting me prices now so I'll know something by early next week.

Lastly, I think our rehearsal dinner location is going to change. As bad as I want to have it at Bahama Breeze, they don't have seating to have us all at the same table. Basically, we would be seated in the same vicinity, but at different tables. Not cool. And to get a private area, is at least $1000 that we're not willing to spend. So, my DOC mentioned a few places: Houlihans is one. More pricier menu but totally private. The other option is Bucca di Peppa. Italian restaurant in the Florida Mall that serves food family style. Cheaper option and semi-private. I'm going to call them tomorrow to get more details and then decide something so we can reserve a place asap.

Oh, one more thing. My girl Robyn took some fab B-pics recently. I am so interested in doing this but because I'm in NJ and my photographer is in FL, I'm limited to only being able to do them the week before my wedding. I actually emailed her about doing a Feb session because there are other girls who are interested as well. I hope she has some availability before my wedding date. I'm waiting to hear from her so we can do this!

That's it for now. Stay tuned....

Menus and Invites

These are DIY as well. The 2nd set of invites and the rehearsal dinner menus. The invites were pretty easy; designed them in PowerPoint and had them printed by VistaPrint. I must say; the wording is a little difficult to read at the top. Other than that they are good to go. They came with rose colored envelopes and my RSVP card and Directions card will fit in their nicely. Like one of the knotties suggested, I am sending these to the older crowd (Mike's uncle, my grandmother, and I forgot the last one, lol) We actually have 20 of them with 10 envelopes, so we're actually debating adding a name or two if possible. Eh, we'll see. Kinda late in the game to expect someone to make travel arrangements but you never know.

The rehearsal dinner menus are for the rehearsal dinner at Bahama Breeze. I chose 3 entrees off the menu and decided that's what we're paying for. They don't cater to small parties, so we couldn't rent a room for privacy and we may be seated in the same area at different tables. Right now, that's not sitting too well with me, so I'm thinking about other options. We'll see. I love how the menus turned out but I haven't printed them yet (luckily for me) because we aren't 100% sure that's where it's going to be.

More shopping.....

I found the cutest hot pink and brown clutch (can you say in our wedding colors, perfect!) for the day of the wedding on eBay. The best part, it was only $4.48 with shipping! Hopefully it's really cute in person, but for the price I paid, who cares if I have to chuck it and start from scratch. You have to really look through all the listings because I was going to jump on the first one I saw and it was $10. I kept looking to see what else they had and found the same clutch a little cheaper. Works for me. Just added a picture of my shoes just to see how they look next to each other; I think they'll work!

Also, I got my wedding garters: toss and keepsake Philadelphia Eagles. Mike loves the Eagles so I think he'll love these. Oh, I bought them from eBay, for $12! I used a coupon they were offering to get the deal. Love deals! The seller is Kristi's Charmed Life. Her prices are amazing and she periodically runs specials such as free shipping. Check her out if you're looking for garters. And I got a free gift which is a keepsake silver toned garter; it can be worn on a key chain or just scrap booked as a reminder of your day. Nice touch from Kristi.

More on invites....

I just took a look at the bottles and the VistaPrint invites came in. Everything looks great. The only problem I see with the VistaPrint invites is that the wording isn't that clear; it's legible, but I think because of the coloring it makes it a little harder to read. Oh well. As a bonus for us, VP made a mistake and sent 20 instead of 10, although they did only send 10 envelopes. Either way, I won't be needing that many. I think we have a total of 70 that we need to send out, and we have 65 bottles and 20 invites from VP. I'm happy with them and just happy that it worked out in time.

I'll post pics of everything as soon as I can. My desktop computer is out of commission right now so I'm using my laptop for now.

Off to watch The First 48 and then to bed. Later ;-)

Catch up!

Whew, it's been a busy few days! I haven't posted since Thanksgiving, I think. We had family up from North Carolina and we had one heck of a weekend. So much has happened since my last post, I don't know where to begin. On top of everything else, I'm back to work and playing catch up from being off since last Tuesday.

Let me see, I'll start by saying that I am now bridal party drama free! Haha. It feels good to have the negativity away from me. I'm not going to go in to detail but it was definitely for the best. When you realize people are not for you, they must be against you and I don't need that mess around me. Peace to the haters!

On another note, Mai ordered her dress! Can you believe it? Everything that girl has been through over the past 5 months and regardless to my protests, she still made it her business to order her dress and be a part of the wedding. I'm amazed, happy, ecstatic, all in one. She really wanted to be a part of our day, no matter what. I love her =) Awww, let me not get emotional here.

Next, I went shopping with Mike's niece and his nephew's girlfriend over the weekend. I was able to get their tank tops from Old Navy for $5 a piece! I plan to use the rhinestone iron-ons to individualize each tank. For instance, his sister is married, so hers will say Mrs. XXX. His niece calls herself "Ms. Boss", so that's what her tank will say. I'm so excited! Hopefully, the rhinestones will come in soon so I can get started. I also purchased them the mini reed diffusers. They smell great; I'm just going to give them a goodie bag, basically with a bunch of stuff in it and then get them each something else. I don't know. I'll keep looking and see what I come up with.

I also received a coupon from eBay for 40% off on December 1 only. I used the coupon to get my garters. Total price wound up being $12! They are Philadelphia Eagles garters, one keepsake and one toss. Mike should really like them =0)

My invites came in, both sets! The VistaPrint invites as well as the 13 bottles that the lady replaced for me. They all made it in one piece, thank goodness! So this weekends' project is to put the boxes together, address and stamp them, and get them ready to be sent out on the 13th. Everything is right on schedule.

I designed my rehearsal dinner invites but I haven't ordered them yet. Well, actually not invites but menus. Next project is the brochures to go in the out of town boxes, which I'm purchasing from another knottie for an excellent price.

Whoo! That was a mouthful! I'm done for now and I'll return on Friday with pics of everything new. Goodnight. ^-^

Oh, I almost forgot, I received my My Publisher photobook. Love it! I used our engagement pictures and I got 2 for the price of 1! I'm thinking about gifting one to my parents. The quality is amazing and so many knotties recommend them. I see why. Definitely making a parent's wedding album with them. I'll post pics of it in the near future. Goodnight, seriously this time.