Consumed

Based on my last posting I'm sure it's no surprise that I have been utterly consumed by my invitations for the last couple of weeks. Thankfully, due to amazing people in my life helping me with projects, other things have continued to still move along - my gramma glued 200+ cupcake toppers to little toothpicks and wrapped custom labels around 2 cases of water bottles for me, and Rachel has continued to be a huge help with table numbers AND a total motivation with workouts. Manda has been helping me whenever possible, most recently with getting the infamous invitations ready to go out the door, and my mom is likely coming over tonight to help finish up the bulk of them!

One of my work BFF's, Bethanie, stayed at the office insanely late with me last night to figure out a solve for the part of the invitations that was causing all the drama, and I'm THRILLED to say that it worked! I'm officially back to being excited about our guests getting their invitations in the mail over the next week or so, and I can't wait to hear what people think about them.

Unfortunately, since I haven't done a whole lot besides stress about the invitations, I don't have a whole lot to actually blog about. Regardless, there's plenty to be excited about over the next few weeks - like my shower that's already next weekend, and my bachelorette party the weekend after! I'm giddy with anticipation and excitement about both events. My mom, gramma and aunts are throwing my shower, and I know with their creative minds behind it I will be surrounded by love and craftiness. I'm a little nervous about being the guest of honor, but I suppose I should get used to a bit of attention being focused on me before the wedding, huh?

For my bachelorette party, I vowed to myself that I would not be one of those brides with ridiculous requirements for the night. I trust my bridesmaids and love the element of surprise behind not knowing exactly what we're doing the entire night. I DID have a couple of requirements though, and thankfully, the girls were happy to oblige and work around them.

1. I want to go to dinner somewhere that Manda can join us for - although I'm not picky about where. She'll go home afterwards while we continue the evening with 21+ events, but it was important to me that she at least be able to be part of the celebration!
2. I want to go to Market Days to see Darren Criss. Originally this wasn't a bachelorette party event - just something I really wanted to do with friends, but it worked out to have the party on that date, and what better place to start a party than a Chicago street festival with a hot guy from Glee?!?

So, with my big wedding events creeping up quickly I leave you with this - a photo of Darren in his signature pink wayfarer sunglasses. Um, yes please.

Funk

Well friends, I think this is the longest I've ever let this blog sit idle, and in the spirit of honesty I have to admit that it was simply because I just wasn't feeling it last week. "It" being wedding stuff in general, which as everyone close to me knows is really out of the ordinary. Part of this was because my cousin who I am extremely close to had open heart surgery on Thursday, and while he got through it with "surgery straight-A's" it definitely took a bit of an emotional toll on me, and I had a difficult time focusing on anything else. The bigger part of it though, was (is) some major drama with the invitations, which bummed me out seeing as I was originally insanely excited about them, and from that my mood and attitude towards the wedding just spiraled downhill for several days. By Friday night I was in tears, and Saturday morning left me with a flooded basement and the house to myself for the week (it's the last of Dan's summer trips, and I couldn't be more excited for him to get back home)... all of which I can assure you did not help my mindset at all.

SO, I took a little mini break from wedding things and spent Saturday afternoon shopping with Manda and Becca, and spent the evening babysitting for one of the most adorable little girls I've ever seen. Although I'm not ready for my own, spending time with kids always seems to cheer me up, and reading stories while she babbled and later chatting with her father who has an incredible eye for design was exactly what I needed. By Sunday I was getting back into my groove, and with some help from Rachel last night I cranked out a big chunk of the table numbers, which will be a huge thing to check off the list and get off the dining room table to make space for other projects.

In short, I suppose with the sheer number of wedding projects I decided to take on myself I was bound to have a few setbacks, but I simply wasn't prepared for how emotional it would make me. But, I'm back to focusing on staying positive and enjoying these last TWO short months before we say I do! I fell asleep last night with a million things running through my head that need to get done in the next 8 weeks, but smiling because I cannot believe I'm going to be married to Dan so soon.

I of course can't write an entire post without any photos, so here's a shot of step 1 of yet another project -

I know I know, that's not a very exciting picture... but really, it is!! Because if you look closely you can see what's soaking there in the sink full of oxy-clean and laundry detergent - it's my mom's wedding veil, which I will not be wearing on my head, but that I can promise you I have big plans for!

Numbered

Remember the incredible boxes of salvaged wood Rachel got me straight from New Orleans?

Wellllll... last night in one of my excited "let's check something off the list!" moments I managed to get Dan to lug my dad's big saw outside and cut the pieces in half for me. So, now I have this -

Action shot!! :)

After I sat on the garage floor sanding down the edges a bit to avoid splinters, we brought everything inside to the dining room table, which I have recently begun referring to as "Wedding Central". Thanks to a free quart of Glidden paint in "Tropical Coral" the pieces will soon all look like this first one I tried out -

I need to get a finer-detail brush to clean up the edges, and after trying to freehand a "4" I think I'll be better off creating stencils for myself, but I'm excited to see how these all turn out, and I think they'll be a great little addition to the tables!

I think that after the wedding we'll keep the numbers from tables 9, 24, and 11 - they'd be cute up on a shelf displaying our wedding date for years to come. :)

Almost Perfect

Well friends, I have (finally) found my wedding day heels! I honestly don't even know how I found them, but it was in the middle of yet another one of my frenzied google searches, and I nearly squealed at my desk when I saw them.

Unfortunately there is not a size 7 to be found ANYWHERE... so I currently possess a slightly large pair of 7 1/2 and ordered the 6 1/2 last night just to see if those work better. Heel wearing pros at work have tipped me off to a couple of different available "paddings" to get a little bit big pair of shoes to fit more snug, so I'm confident that one way or the other... these perfect-height pumps will be keeping my toes pretty as I walk down the aisle (in just 73 days)!!!

While cute, it's safe to assume the little black foofy thing on the toe is not going to match an all-white dress, so I'll be removing that and DIY-ing something as a replacement.

In other news...

We went and saw the sweeeeeeeet limo last night and I'm planning to email the equally as sweet rep today to confirm the booking for that, I'll have a proof for my invitations on Friday to check off on before final printing, my incredible Gramma is hard at work gluing cupcake toppers and water bottle labels for me, and Dan is working on writing some of the prayers for our ceremony. Three cheers for progress!

Ooooh, pretty

I know I've talked a lot about our reception space, and done a fair amount of joking with friends and family about how it's the local senior center (no, really, it is) and we're going to have to hope there's no old people sleeping in the lobby the night of our wedding... BUT, I've never posted pictures of the space here before (mostly because a few of the times we've been there I HAVE seen old people sleeping in the lobby). So, since Dan and I were already going out there on Friday to meet with the staff and it just so happened to be absolutely gorgeous outside... Dan snapped a ton of pictures and now I'm here to share them with everyone!

I had heard rumors from Mr. Lawler about how pretty this place looked when it wasn't the dead of winter, but had yet to see it for myself since we got engaged. As usual, he was right!

I'll admit that I've been a little nervous about fitting our 175-200 in the room... so you can imagine my excitement when I learned they were setting up for a wedding of 226 and everything fit just fine with room for a dance floor to spare!

Since we'll have less people than the 226 the room was set for, and I won't be using chair covers, I'm hoping the space will look even more open than it did when we saw it.

Every space comes with some imperfections. In our case, it's stuff on the walls that I've been told I'm not allowed to remove. Thankfully, I AM allowed to cover the things I don't like... so I'll be getting creative with some paper to take care of what Manda and I affectionately refer to as "The tree wall" -

 And these plaques...

And this giant wall of pictures of people who I'm sure are very nice and important, but just don't really fit into my "vision" for my wedding reception...

I've begun to obsessively check the weather every day to see if September guesses are up yet, because I am really really praying for weather that allows our guests to enjoy the incredible outdoor landscaping.

I am currently brainstorming like mad trying to figure out SOMETHING to use this awesome gazebo for. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!

This here is the fountain I plan to jump in at the end of the night... wedding dress and all. We'll see how that goes.

We also found this guy hiding in the bushes. Haha. Definitely need to get a photo with him on the big day.

I've already got all of the perfect decor for this amazing little patio... so really people, cross your fingers for good weather!!

Lately

I hope everyone enjoyed the long holiday weekend as much as I did! I got lucky that my company was also closed on Friday, so I had 4 glorious days off... which I planned to spend cranking out wedding projects...

As is often the case, my plans completely changed. Just a couple of days before the long weekend, we found out my brother and his girlfriend were coming in to town for Saturday afternoon, just until Sunday, so I jumped at the chance to have them stay with us to be sure we'd spend some good quality time with them. Saturday night turned into an impromptu pizza and sangria party at our house, Sunday was somehow spent working out for nearly 2 hours with Erica, Rachel and Manda despite a minor hangover on my part, Sunday night was filled with more company as Kevin and Erica decided to stay til Monday, and Monday was spent running a few errands, going to visit my gramma (and jogging all the way home from her house - go team me!), hosting our now-annual 4th of July BBQ before walking down the block to watch the fireworks... and more company again as Kevin and Erica decided to stay until Tuesday!

BUT, have no fear friends, I still managed to sneak some good wedding progress in there somewhere! First up was working on the cake plates with Manda, which was met with lots of "ooooh these are going to be SO GREAT!!!!" shrieks from me when we found the PERFECT shade of turquoise spray paint in a last minute trip to Home Depot.

I still have a couple last minute touch-ups to do, but Dan and I will be gluing these bad boys together in the next few days and I absolutely can't wait to see the final products all lined up next to each other. 

Manda and I also managed to crank out 100+ little cards for my version of a guest book, which included cutting, rubber stamping and embossing every single one. Thanks to some help from Rachel, we got the other 100 done Sunday, so that is a full project completed, done, and checked off the list!

Tuesday evening was insanely productive for both Dan and I as we met with our priest to discuss our ceremony in more detail, and also met with the music director at church to start planning that part of our day. I don't know what this part of the process is like for people that don't have personal relationships with their mass "staff", but I am absolutely loving it. Since Dan works at Ascension and my family has been going there for generations, it's exciting for me to now be getting married there. Father Larry seemed thrilled that Dan and I put real thought and effort into choosing readings that are meaningful to the two of us, and David, the music director, gave us some ideas we're planning to implement into our ceremony to make it totally personal and a little bit different than the norm.

Following our appointments we went home aaaaaaand......... finished our invitations!! I love love LOVE how they turned out, and thanks to a generous vendor that I work with regularly, we're getting them printed free of charge. I'll definitely put photos up once everyone receives them in the mail, but in the meantime they'll have to remain a surprise :).

Napkins and cupcake boxes have also been ordered, and we have a few more appointments yet this week. The days are ticking away, but we're making progress and checking things off the list nearly daily!