Pizza Pizza

So, we're married! Lots of day-of goodies to document later, but for now I'm busy enjoying our mini-moon... With some of the best pizza I've ever tasted!

Awesome Aunts

My incredible family is helping with a huuuuge wedding project this afternoon at Bridget's house. It's a surprise to most of our guests, so no major details here... But here's a fun picture of Barbie and Cinde doing some prep work!

Happy Feet

They're done!! (thanks mom!!)

Practice makes perfect

Guess who finally downloaded the blogger app for posting on the go?! 3 days to go!!!

Cut it up

Well friends, the wedding is NEXT WEEKEND, and I am a bundle of nervous, excited, anxious and about a million other emotions all mixed up. We've been putting the finishing touches on a lot of projects this week, as well as starting a few last minute ones - like the flowers for my shoes made out of my mom's veil!

I'm not feeling terribly up for writing a whole long post as my mind is going a mile a minute, but I figured I'd at least end the week with an action shot. So, here's Manda cutting circles out of my mom's veil to make the little flowers!

My awesome mom has kinda taken this project over for me (along with about 100 others - THANKS MOM!), and the little flowers are looking great. As soon as we figure out the best way to attach them to the shoes, I'll post a final picture.

A HUGE thanks to my mom and Manda, who have literally come over every night this week to work on projects with me, and to Bridget and Rachel who also come over every chance they get. Thanks to Bridget the tissue paper flowers are all bundled in the centerpiece vases and ready to go to the reception, and thanks to Rachel those very vases will be set up on the tables at the reception along with all of the other decor to bring my vision to life!

Isn't he charming?

I mentioned before that Dan picked out a wedding band, decided when he picked it up that he wasn't crazy about it, and then purchased a second one at the jeweler that my band is from. Well, with just 10 days to go he went to pick up his new band this morning, and thankfully - he likes it!

So, he sent me this photo from the car -

While my response was a reminder not to text and drive, I have to admit I was excited to see the picture. I can't believe we'll both be wearing our bands daily as of NEXT weekend!

Tastes like Jello

We completed a crucial project on our wedding list this weekend - Hurricane taste testing.

As anyone who has read this blog at all probably knows, I credit the beginning of our relationship to the time Dan and I spent in the New Orleans area rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina. It's been important to me since day one to incorporate New Orleans into our wedding day somehow, without going straight to the typical Mardi Gras "theme" that really doesn't make the connection at all. I've also been saying for MUCH longer than we've been engaged for that we should have hurricanes as our "signature drink" at the reception as an easy (and tasty) way to showcase that incredible important time together. 

We spent a little time recently looking up different hurricane recipes online, and quickly realized that many of the recipes are insanely complicated and would end up costing us a fortune on the bar tab. The solution? Pat O'Brien's hurricane mix - which is way more authentic New Orleans than any recipe concoction anyways!

Thankfully, Mr. Lawler had a few packets of mix at home from our trip to NOLA last winter, and he generously donated them to our tasting. He also provided a couple different kinds of rum, which was all we needed, making the taste testing totally stress free for me - thanks almost-father-in-law!!

Manda, Bridget, Aris, Allie and Jeff joined us for the testing, and Dan and Mr. Lawler made it fun with a couple different ratios of mix-to-rum so we could all decide which "recipe" tasted best.

Manda joined in the fun with a glass of the mix sans-rum. Her thoughts? "Tastes like Jello before it goes in the fridge!" -

My dad and Uncle Joe stopped by later for a quick test as well -

After a couple hurricanes and some Party Rock Shuffle tutorial watching at the house we all walked to Ribfest (YUM) where we ate a bunch of food, drank a bunch of beer, and did a bunch of dancing and singing along with the live band. We ended the night with late night pizza at the house... and more dancing (at least on my part). Based on how much fun we all had Saturday night, I'd say the taste testing was a success!

Painting Party

Well, I'm way late on posting this one, but forgive me - I've been knee deep in making tissue paper flowers til my fingers hurt. It will all be worth it in the end (or so I keep telling myself)!

Speaking of the end. It's in 2 weeks. Wow. I think I'm sort of in denial about the whole thing, and I'm already a little sad thinking about how I'm going to be done with wedding planning - forever. (Unless of course I manage to start a wildly successful wedding planning business like I've been saying I should do for ages).

So anyways, Bridget and my mom came over a couple weeks ago and we repainted ALL of the vases. Remember how I was all slaphappy excited about them being done eons ago? And then I put them out on the front porch and the sweltering summer heat caused the paint in all of them to crack and bleed? Yeah, it was awesome. Thankfully, the paint all washed right out and we were ready to give it another shot (good thing I'm using fake flowers because these painted vases are NOT water friendly).

Before we started painting, the lovely Bridget helped me lay out a fake table setting on the living room floor, so we could pair off the vases for each table based on size, shape and texture.

As we paired them, my mom wrote letters on the bottom of each, so we knew which ones went together.

Bridget mixed up two different shades of gray paint, and my mom and I started with the turquoise. My mom bought a bunch of dollar store cooking racks for the vases to stand on upside down while they dried, so that as much extra paint as possible would drip out (hopefully avoiding further cracks). This proved to be a good idea, but also caused several panic attacks from all of us because if one vase tipped... about 20 others would follow. Trust me - the sound of that much glass clinking together is NOT a good one.

Dan helped finish up the last few when he got home -

Thankfully, it's been a couple weeks now and the vases still look pretty and perfect. There were 5 (out of more than 50 - so not bad!) that need to be repainted for one reason or another, but other than that, this project is complete! Now if I can just finish the flowers that go in them...

1 down... 5 to go

My mom, gramma and Manda came over last night to work on tissue paper flowers with me, but thanks to some great finds by my mom in the remnant bin at the fabric store - I spent the evening working on a different kind of flower. That's right, I FINALLY have a flower for in my hair, and considering I DIY-ed it - which was certainly not the original plan, I am thrilled with how it turned out.

I know the dirty background of my dining room table isn't much of a backdrop, but isn't it pretty?!?

I didn't take any pictures of my progress, mostly because I totally winged it, and also because the project involved an open flame and it was making my mom nervous every time I got my fingers too close. But for reference, I used this awesome tutorial I found thanks to some googling. Since I didn't know if my satiny fabric find was the same that was used on the blog I found, I used the same process - cut out shape, singe the edge - but just did different sized "petals" that I layered together instead of cutting out flower shapes like in the original tutorial. I'm actually really pleased with how the flower turned out considering it was my first shot at it! 

For the center of the flower, I decided I really wanted to use one of my grandma's old buttons. I originally planned to use them to make boutonnieres for the guys, but since we decided not to do bouts at all I realized I wasn't "involving" the memory of my grandmother in any way like I wanted to. So, Manda and I searched her button jar for something sparkly or silvery... and came up empty handed. What we did find was a gold button that we loved the shape of, so Manda got to work painting it gray with a little brush, and then used a toothpick to dab tiny white dots in all the little crevices! We experimented with different glitters to give it a little sparkle (which actually involved Manda having to paint a second button - sorry kiddo), but for now I'm leaving it alone while I figure out exactly what I want to do with it. My mom suggested tiny little rhinestones sporadically on the petals and while I'm not crazy about that idea I'm thinking they would work placed very carefully on the button where the white dots currently are. We'll see.

In the meantime while I figure out the center of my flower, I'll be starting on making smaller gray versions of this project for the bridesmaids to wear in their hair on the big day. Since they each have a different style dress and will have different shoes, hair and jewelry, I'm excited for a little something to tie them all together!

18

Thanks to the extra day off for Labor Day, we had another insanely productive weekend full of wedding stuff, and I'm actually feeling VERY good about everything left to do with just 18 days to go!

Here's my typical iPhone photo rundown of the latest...

We got our marriage license this morning! I found this part of our planning to be a huge stress thanks to us going in the wrong building, having a camera in my purse that was not allowed inside, and everyone there just being unfriendly in general... but it's done and we can now legally get married! -

My mom and Manda came over last night and together with Dan we made major centerpiece progress! Dan cleaned up the messy painted edges on the vases (I still need to post pictures from last week's painting party!), and my mom and I experimented with more tissue paper which ended up being a great success as we came up with 3 more easy flowers that look AMAZING when they're all bunched together! Here's my mom showing off one of our bouquets -

And here's a close up of one of the new flowers I figured out. They remind me of peonies, which are my favorite flower, so I'm thrilled with the outcome -

While we worked on flowers, Manda got busy painting the "Here comes the bride" sign for Michael to carry down the aisle at church. I did the second coat later and added a gray edge to the plaque, and tonight I'll string some ribbon through at the top for him to hold and this project will be finished! -

Earlier in the weekend Dan put together and labeled all of the cupcake boxes, and we decided we'll use a bushel basket that I picked up at Pier One on clearance to hold a bunch of them up on the dessert table. -

I'm not too happy with how the labels turned out for the boxes, but I practiced "letting go" and decided it's ok if they aren't absolutely perfect. But, at Dan's prompting I wrote a quick complaint email to the company the labels are from because a bunch of them weren't cut properly and ripped when we tried to remove them from the sheets, and their online templates are FAR from user friendly. This morning, I got an email from the company that they're sending me a care package full of their products as an apology! Here's hoping it shows up before the wedding... I'm SURE I can find something else to put labels on :).

We also did a ton of shopping this weekend, which resulted in finishing up all of my bridesmaid gifts and small thank you gifts for most of the people involved in our ceremony. I spent Sunday at the mall with Rachel and Allie doing bride things as well - including purchasing my wedding day earrings (which are PERFECT and match my ring!), a potential day-of nail polish color, aaaaaamazing heels for the rehearsal dinner, and other little bridal necessities.

With less than 3 weeks to go, I'm an odd kind of calm (have no fear, I'm sure I'll still have plenty of panicked moments). I really just can't wait to see how all of our hard work comes together on the big day!