Mrs.

Look what the fabulous Rachel got me for my birthday!

While I was super excited, Dan had a typical guy reaction and just looked confused while he said "um, it's a hanger". But clearly, it is not JUST a hanger, it's a personalized with my almost-new-name snazzy fancy hanger that will make photos of my lovely dress that much more exciting! Seeing as I've loved these little hangers since I first saw a picture of one, I'm giddy to have one all of my own for the big day! It's a little odd to think about the fact that I'm going to be "Mrs. Lawler" since that's what I've always called Dan's mom, but I'm thinking I'll get used to it :).

Thanks for the awesome birthday present, Rachel!

Details

I cranked out a bunch of little projects this weekend with the help of Manda and Dan, and as I have expected from the beginning, these little details are the parts of our planning that I'm loving the most. To me, the tiny personal touches are what's going to make our wedding really "ours", and not just a cookie cutter day. As usual, I documented everything on my iPhone - although the photo quality isn't as great as if I were to use my fancy camera, it's just SO much easier to snap a picture on my phone and email it to myself for easy blogging.

Here's a photo recap of the weekend!

Saturday morning was my hair and makeup trial, which I did at my gramma's house while Dan played with Louie and my gramma's dog Abby in the backyard. I am in looooove with my hair when it's all in curls, and was also a huge fan of my makeup. The girl that is doing my makeup used to volunteer with us when she was in high school, so I've always known her as "one of Dan's teens", but I've been telling her for years that when I got married I wanted her to do my makeup, and here we are! The hair stylist is her best friend, and it was great to have the 2 of them already so comfortable working together for my trial. I have no doubts that all of us girls are going to look gorgeous on the big day thanks to Irish and Caitlin being there to help us get ready! Here's a shot of the back of my hair -

After my trial, we headed out with Manda to pick up our wedding bands. While choosing mine was a simple "I just want it to match the band of my engagement ring", Dan had a bit more trouble finding something he loved. He finally found one at Kay's a couple of weeks ago (despite me hating their "every kiss begins with Kay" campaign) -

When we picked up my ring a little while later at a different jeweler, Dan found a DIFFERENT band that he liked more... so we bought that one and went back to Kay's to return the other one. Thankfully, we saved $75, and the new band he picked out can NOT be returned, so he can't change his mind again ;).

Manda spent the afternoon and evening with us, and spent the night Saturday. On Sunday, Dan headed to Great America for work and Manda and I decided to stay in our pajamas all day doing little projects and visiting gramma. I typed up a quick little card to explain the significance of the wood we used for the table numbers, and Manda helped me mod podge them on to the backs of each number out on the front porch. Dan and I later added a quick layer of mod podge to the fronts as well to give them a little shine -

Even though he was exhausted from a long day of roller coasters and water rides, Dan came home and helped a TON with getting the hotel bags all finished! I made a little tag for the candy, which reads:

"Hometown Goodies - The Ferrara Pan candy factory is in

Forest Park, just blocks from Dan & Kelly's house!" 

Dan helped hole punch everything and I tied them up with teal string -

Then Dan turned the dining room table into an assembly line, and the two of us walked around in circles dropping all the different items into each bag -

We also managed to get our handy printer to run these hangtags through, so we could print an "Enjoy your stay" design on them. We hand wrote a little note on the back of each tag in teal and coral, tied them to the bag handles with more teal string, and called this project complete! -

On the schedule for this week is putting together our "must haves" song list for the DJ, painting vases Wednesday night with Bridget, confirming all of our rentals, potentially (finally) finishing up cake plates, and hopefully finding time to make more tissue paper flowers. I'm grateful that this coming weekend is an extra day long!

I Spy

Several people have heard me refer to our house as "Wedding Central" in the last couple of months, so I thought in the spirit of full disclosure I would give my 6 readers a peek into what our life currently looks like nearly every evening and most weekends :). This, my friends, should be pictured in the dictionary under "organized chaos".

Exhibit 1 - The "clean" half of the dining room table. I spy... the ever-handy macbook with a sneak peek at the menu belly bands, my new cutting mat, a ruler and exacto blade ready to score the now printed menus, a packing box full of tissue paper, paint and brushes for the centerpieces, and a cupcake box awaiting labeling...

Exhibit 2 - The not so clean side of the dining room table. (This changes almost daily - and earlier this week nearly the entire table was clean for a whole hour while we ate dinner!) I spy... a vase full of pipe cleaner "flower stems", a plastic bag full of MORE tissue paper (in new fun colors!), striped cupcake wrappers, new ink cartridges for our printer that's working overtime getting everything done, a mini glue gun, the perfect teal ribbon that will wrap around each layer of the cake, random tissue paper flowers, a cup that houses all of my current daily "tools" - pens, glue sticks, exacto knives, paint brushes... 

Exhibit 3 - The fiance, hard at work cutting out menus! I spy... teamwork at it's finest.

So, um, yesterday marked just ONE measly month until the wedding, and I couldn't be more excited. I had a few moments at work when I would think I was going to hyperventilate thinking about it, but in all honesty, I feel fairly good about where we're at with everything for the time being! Whenever it hits me how close it all is, I often think about my friend Lauren's vows, which stated "Today, I marry my best friend..." So simple, and so true. I can't wait.

The little things

It's weird to be constantly busy with wedding projects, yet feel like I have nothing substantial to write about. I realize this is partially due to me wanting to keep some of the details secret, but also recognize that a big part of why I started this blog in the first place was so I could go through it later on down the road and see all the fun little projects I did along the way. So, in a feeble attempt to catch myself up on some things we've been doing, here's a bit of a picture documentation, all courtesy of my handy iPhone.

First up are the thank you notes that I hand stamped and embossed to send out to all the lovely ladies that attended my shower. God forbid I just BUY some ready-to-go cards, right? At least they're super cute! -

Our constantly changing seating chart. Every time we get a "yes" RSVP, the name immediately goes on a little post-it flag and up on the board. The post-its make for easy rearranging as more names come in, and it's a quick visual representation of how many seats we're currently filling. Eventually, the other side of this poster board will turn into a space layout, when we'll decide which group of people goes where. Want to be as close to the bar/bathroom/dance floor/nearest exit as possible? Speak now or forever hold your peace. ;) -

Toiletries baskets for the bathrooms at the reception. This probably could have been more on the "nice to have" than the "have to have" list, but I figure since we're serving ribs the least I could do was offer our guests dental floss and Shout wipes for potential spills. Don't worry friends, there will be plenty of extra napkins on the tables! -

The bed in "Manda's room" (that is, our extra bedroom) after the shower. There are no words to describe how happy the words "Crate & Barrel" and "Bed, Bath & Beyond" make me these days, so despite the overwhelming mess this is a pretty awesome image to me. Since my BFF stayed with us the night of my bachelorette party the gifts have since been relocated to the office, making the room even more impossible to walk in, but if I just have one ridiculously messy room in my house that's not so bad right? -

I also realized today that I never did a post about the infamous invitations, so I'll be sure to get that up soon! 32 days and counting!!

Happy Day!

It's my birthday! I've already been stuffed full of all kinds of breakfast treats from my production friends here at work, and my phone is buzzing off the hook with text messages and people writing on my Facebook wall. I'm continuously being reminded this summer of how lucky I am to have so many great people in my life - I am truly blessed!

Apparently Dan has birthday plans for us all afternoon and evening... AND tomorrow morning! So, I'm forcing myself to take ALL day today off from the wedding. (I ran into a friend last night who said planning a wedding is like having another job, and I quickly realized how right he was - hence me "taking the day off")

Perhaps even more exciting is that Sunday is Manda's birthday! I love getting to share birthday time with her every year, even though her turning a year older always makes ME feel old. She told me that she talked to our brother the other day and he mentioned that when he was looking through the pictures from my bachelorette party he had to do a double take on a few because he couldn't tell Manda and I apart. While she obviously still looks significantly younger than me, we are definitely looking more and more alike as she gets older. The picture below made me think of my brother's comment, and it's one of my favorites from my bachelorette party. Happy Birthday weekend Banana, I love you!!

I wear my sunglasses at night

So, my bachelorette party has come and gone, and I could not be happier with how the entire thing went. I had an absolute BLAST with my best girlfriends, and was once again spoiled with gifts galore... the people in my life sure do know how to make a girl feel special!

We kicked off the afternoon with a little pre-party at Bridget's, which was great because it meant my mom was willing to join us for a little while :). My friends did a great job of getting me bachelorette gifts that I would actually wear - top favorites include the zip up "bride" hoodie from Mary Rose to wear the day-of, and a "sexy little bride" tank from Bridget that I'm already planning to wear to bed the night before the wedding when I stay at my gramma's with a couple of the girls. Manda also got me a great little "sisters" book, AND filled the entire thing out with memories and inside jokes - I loved reading through it last night while recovering from the party :).

Speaking of Manda, she bought pink wayfarers for all the girls, which we definitely had a good time with -

After Bridget's we headed down to Market Days to see Darren Criss. When we first got there the crowds, rain and security guards had us pretty convinced we weren't even going to be able to see. Thankfully, Bridget made friends with one of the guards who got us a good view, and Darren got everyone in the crowd to put their umbrellas away, which was a huge help for those of us in the back that couldn't see over them!

From Market Days we walked to Mi Tierra (YUM), where the girls treated me to dinner and pitchers of margaritas. I loved that my friends all took on a bit of a "parental" role with helping keep track of Manda in the huge crowds, and even ordered an entire pitcher of virgin frozen strawberry margaritas so Manda could take part in the fun drinks. At the end of dinner I was surprised with ice cream, a sombrero and everyone singing Happy Birthday to me!

Somehow, we all ended up drawing mustaches on our fingers, which made for more laughs and fun pictures -

After my dad and uncle picked Manda up from the restaurant us 21 and up girls headed out to Mad River for an evening of dancing, drinking and hilarious bar games ;).

We got home good and late just before 3am, where I washed my feet (hehehe) and made grilled cheese sandwiches for myself and Mary Rose. I woke up Sunday with a raging hangover, which I treated with gatorade and a late greasy lunch with Rachel. I literally could not have wished for a better weekend, and I am forever grateful to my friends for making me feel so loved! Thank you to Bridget for planning nearly the entire day and hosting us all at your house beforehand, to Manda for buying us all matching sunglasses, to Mary Rose for coming in from Green Bay just for my party and Rachel offering to DD so we didn't have to worry about rides, to Allie for being a total riot on the dance floor (Saturday was quite possibly the most fun I have EVER had with my cousin, and we've had some good times so that's saying a lot!), and Bev and Bridget R. for coming out despite other plans and being jet lagged... I had an amazing day and night and love each of you dearly!

This has gotta be the good life

I've made a little pact with myself to do everything I can to enjoy these last few whirlwind weeks of being engaged, and try to keep the stress and panic to a minimum. I know I'll still have plenty of moments where I think there's no way it's all going to come together in time, but my hope is that I will be able to stop, take a deep breath, and remember how blessed I am to be going through this time with the guy I love more than anything. It's sort of started to hit me over the last couple of weeks that all of this planning is actually going to result in something - that is, us being married! For a long time it just felt like we were planning a party, and now I'm starting to get excited (and oddly, content), thinking about the fact that it's not just a party, it's our wedding, and it's going to be incredible.

I'm already regretting the fact that I didn't take a single picture at my shower last weekend, but here's a few that have popped up on Facebook!

First up is the adorable cake. My mom used the little lovebirds and "just us" phrase throughout the shower decor, starting with the invitations. In other words - everything matched. She knows how to make her daughter happy, that's for sure. :)

 Dan also made me extremely happy by showing up in the collared shirt, khaki shorts and boat shoes that I requested he wear ;).
 

Erin had already left, but here's me with my wonderful bridesmaids! Manda was a big help with the gifts and planning, Bev was the most organized gift-tracker I've ever seen, and Bridget made me the fabulous bow bouquet I'm holding here! 

Tomorrow is the big bachelorette party!!! I'm insanely excited and definitely looking forward to seeing what the girls have planned!

Dangly

My wonderful superstar bridesmaid, Bridget, got me the Kate Spade "i do" necklace I've been lusting over for months as my bridal shower gift, and after only wearing it a couple of times I've already gotten a ton of compliments on it. During a recent online browsing of other Kate Spade jewelry I realized there are a couple pairs of earrings on the site that just may be perfect to hang from my ears day-of.

Clearly, the 2 pairs are very similar, so it's just a matter of seeing them in person to figure out which ones (if either) are the best match to the bridesmaid's dresses and my shoes!

In other attire news, my first dress fitting is tomorrow and I am freaking out (to put it lightly). It's been tough being worried about my dress fitting and having people constantly reminding me/whining to me/scolding me about how "skinny" and "tiny" and "petite" I am. Truth be told, I know very well I'm a small girl, but I'm not as small as I used to be, and my dress just might be a little smaller, which could pose a problem. I get that I'm not overweight or anywhere near it, but that doesn't mean I'm not body-conscious like the rest of the female population. And, I just so happen to be a MAJOR stress eater, meaning that in the midst of all the wedding planning craziness I have done a terrible job of keeping the ice cream, potato chips and bacon cheeseburgers to a minimum. (I swear if I just stopped eating bacon cheeseburgers I would drop 10 pounds without even trying.) So, cross your fingers for me around 3pm tomorrow... here's hoping the dress (still) fits!

Full Bloom

I got really excited this morning when I realized I had photos of a weekend wedding project that I hadn't posted yet... which meant I actually had something substantial to blog about! We've been in kind of a blurry crunch mode, but the things we're doing aren't much to write about... ordering labels and cupcake liners, counting numbers as RSVP's come in, finalizing the details of our ceremony, Dan attempting to keep my panic attacks to a minimum ;)...

But, there has been progress! One project I was particularly worried about is now something I am officially excited about - my DIY bouquets!

Dan woke me early Saturday morning with the news that he "mayyyyyyybe" left the freezer door open all night, which meant a morning of tossing no longer frozen food. When we realized this left us with next to nothing for breakfast, I suggested the Farmer's Market for donuts and some wedding flower shopping, and thankfully, Dan was up for it.

After our donuts we took a quick lap to see what was available. Manda and I chatted with one lady a couple months ago about her flowers and I was pretty set on working with her once she mentioned she could just make the bouquets for me thus leaving a whole lot less to do on the big day... but on Saturday I quickly realized that one of the other stands had a MUCH larger selection, cost less, and had a little more of that rough and tough hard working family look behind it. After talking with the farmer it was clear I would be getting my wedding day flowers from him - he was friendly, knowledgeable, willing to work with me, and had gorgeous lilies in a light pink that were exactly what I was looking for. After a bit more chatting, Dan and I left with 5 big bunches of flowers, all for $20. I set them in a bucket of water at home while we ran some errands, and that evening we set to work on my DIY bouquet practice run!

Bucket o' flowers

It took the two of us less than 20 minutes to strip all of the flowers of leaves and split the buds into single stems back in the bucket.

Sink full of leaves and stem trimmings

I decided to use the 3 stems of lilies as the center base of the bouquet, and simply arranged them so they were nice and close together and wrapped a bit of floral tape around the top half of the stems to secure them together. From there, I grabbed what I referred to as the "filler flowers" one stem at a time and added them in around the lilies in whatever fashion I thought looked good. Using a tip that I read online, I continuously twisted and turned the flowers in my hand making sure the overall shape was maintained and it would look good from all angles.

I quickly realized that it barely took any filler flowers at all to get to a good size bouquet, and within just about 15 minutes of tweaking I was happy with the bunch in my hands! I had Dan hold the stems together while I wrapped more flower tape around in a spiral down about 6 inches and then back up to nearly the underneath of the flowers. I read online that 2" ribbon works best, but didn't want to use up the teal I had that's intended for the cake, so I used a sheer 3/4" pink ribbon that I had laying around. Because of the material and width I had to use WAY more ribbon than I'm assuming is necessary, but either way I was done in minutes and used a couple of pearlhead pins to secure it at the top. Dan trimmed all of the stems uniform and close to the ribbon for me, and we were done!

Finished bouquet!

I had a TON of leftover filler flowers that I brought over to my gramma's for my shower, and they looked great spread around her house in various vases and mason jars (the jars were Manda's idea - she is so my sister).

All the leftovers

After examining the bouquet over and over I decided that for the final product I think I'll stick to the lilies and just one or two types of filler flowers. The white and pinkish-purple carnation looking flowers were pretty, but their petals were delicate and smashed easily, which would be tough to avoid on a busy day of photos, limos and cocktails. 

With the farmer's market being on Saturday, us girls will be getting our flowers just hours before the wedding and will have to work quickly to make up all the bouquets before we leave for church. While I'm confident after my trial that this won't be an issue, I'm leaning towards getting the flowers on Thursday (from the same farmer who will be at a different local market that day) and making the bouquets on Friday to sit undisrupted in water until we leave for church Saturday afternoon. Why do them ahead of time you ask? Besides in an effort to keep myself sane, the practice bouquet is currently sitting at my house 4 days later, still looking fresh, and actually almost looking better than when I first made it since the closed lily buds you can spot in the photos above have now opened up! The number of lilies in the bouquet has doubled since Sunday, and they're brand new and gorgeous. I think I'll see if someone can stop by the market Thursday for me, grab a couple lily bunches, trim them down and see how long exactly it takes for the new blooms... regardless, I'm thrilled at the outcome of this project and can't wait to see all of our DIY bouquets side by side in just SEVEN short weeks!

Here comes the bride

I'm not going to talk anymore about the drama that surrounded my invitations, because in the end they turned out better than I could have ever expected, and I've gotten countless compliments on them already which are continuing to make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside every time I hear one! Thanks to Kim for calling me talented, Amanda for referring to the invites as "spectacular", Lauren for texting me the second she got hers to tell me she loved it, Allie for doing the same, Mr. Lawler for passing along praise from his side of the family, the guys I babysit for for absolutely raving about the design, and everyone else that has said anything positive about this project that was exciting, stressful and all around crazy for me! The last few invitations are still trickling through the mail as we confirm addresses from those who have moved recently, so I don't want to post pictures JUST yet... but rest assured that they will be up soon.

In the meantime, since I haven't done much else besides address invitations, paint table numbers and attempt to workout on a regular basis, I thought I'd post pictures of yet another project, which I'm excited about because it should take a grand total of about 20 minutes tops, and it will be super cute and ridiculously budget friendly! The pictures below are my inspiration for a little "Hear comes the bride" sign, in lieu of having  a toddler actually carry our rings (I also think it's weird to have a little boy drag around a mini pillow all day, and I've seen price tags around $20 for them which I think is ridiculous).

 

So, I bought a little wooden plaque sign at Michael's for $1, I already have the paint and ribbon, and thanks to Dan's nephew being our ring bearer I already have the adorable kid lined up too! Including the ribbon and paint this entire project will cost about $5, which is my kind of price tag.

In other news, my bridal shower is just DAYS away, and I'm getting extremely excited about it as the week crawls by. I'm really looking forward to some quality time with the women in my family, as well as some girlfriends that I don't get to see nearly enough these days! I truly think that finding something to wear for my shower has been more difficult than finding my wedding dress (although I do realize I had a very rare and easy time with that), so hopefully I'll have a good hair day on Sunday to complete a nice "bride to be" look. :)