Friday Favorites-- Wedding Edition!

This week, I had an old high school friend and coworker (Heyyy, Tempestt!) reach out to me. She is recently engaged and said since my wedding looked "awesome", she wanted to know what to focus on, what's important, what's not, etc. Reflecting back on that day has been SO fun.. it was KINDA my FAVORITE! I can't stop thinking about what an awesome day we had. Jake, we put on one HELLUVA party, didn't we?! :-) I decided to blog about it.. it's been 2 years and 2 months.. but the majority of the details are still SO fresh in my mind. Not to toot my own horn, but I'm PRETTY sure I was the best, most chill bride EVER.. and every single vendor we ran into said the same. 
Let's start with my bachelorette party.. which I had no say in.. and it was awesome! Anyone planning a wedding knows, the last thing you need to worry about planning two months before a wedding.. is a girl's weekend. Thank goodness I had awesome friends who took care of all the details.
This girl, was a LIFESAVER! She was my maid of honor, and is my best friend in the entire world. We've been friends for.. 14 years? Something crazy. She knows that I literally could go anywhere and have a good time, am not detail-oriented AT ALL, and that I did NOT need the extra stress of planning a bachelorette party. She told me where to be and when.. and it was perfect. The girl deserves a whole post just to her. She is the best.

 

These girls made the weekend SO. MUCH. FUN! We went to Nashville for the weekend. I had never been. I'm in LOVE! The only thing that would've been better is if my sisters were old enough at the time to join us. That would've made it THAT MUCH more amazing. We ate delicious food, bar hopped, listened to awesome music and enjoyed "girl time". So fun. SO MUCH FUN.

Jake and I got engaged at the end of February 2012 and married November 24, 2012. From February to June, I was still in nursing school, so I didn't do much wedding planning. We booked the venue but left the rest for when I was done with school. Basically, I planned a bomb-diggity wedding in 6 months. It helps that it was Thanksgiving weekend because not many vendors have weddings that weekend so the short-notice didn't matter. 
Our venue was the Dayton Marriott. My dad worked at the hotel for years and years.. so he had some strings he could pull.. and totally did. I wanted a "winter wonderland" wedding.. so even though it was Thanksgiving weekend.. the hotel had decorated for Christmas early so it matched my vision. Ah! Heaven. 
Because we were doing a wedding in the area, and the majority of our family is IN the area.. we decided against Save-The-Dates. In fact, if I wouldn't have found a crazy awesome Groupon.. I wouldn't have done an engagement session at all. We just don't care about that kinda stuff. But I saw a coupon for $50 for an engagement session that was an hour.. and couldn't turn it down. 

I turned one of the pictures into a canvas and used it as the guest book at our wedding. Everyone signed it with a white sharpie. It's hanging in our house next to our framed invitation. Definitely one of my FAVORITE things in our house.

 The night before the wedding, some of the bridal party spent the night at the hotel we were getting married at in a suite. The next morning, all the bridemaids, flowergirls, my sister-in-law, mother-in-law and my mom all came to get ready in the suite. My maid of honor is a BADASS hairstylist so she did my hair, the flower girls, and my mom's hair. One of her friends did the rest of the girls hair. Seriously, the suite was a GREAT idea. That was my dad's doing. It was nice to be in our own space getting ready. Such a great idea. The boys stayed in the suite that Jake and I would be staying in that night. It wasn't even destroyed.. good job, boys! ;-) 

When it comes to wedding details, I tried to cover my bases, but I didn't necessarily care about them. I had to get a cake because.. that's what you do in weddings.

Jake and I did a lot of it ourselves. He enjoyed being apart of the process and it was fun for me to have him there. We went to 3 cake places.. we had one goal-- who had the cheapest price including delivery (that was a big part of it.. no one wants to be in charge of getting the cake to the venue.. that's a big responsibility.. I would rather pay someone to get it there). We just would say "Our colors are royal blue, silver and white.. it's a winter wonderland theme.. we don't have any vision of how we want it decorated". We ended up with Ele cake. It tasted good, they made a fresh small version of it for our one year, and it was cheap. It was small (we opted for two tiers + full sheet cake). No one knows the difference. I think it was obvious since our cake was small.. but.. did I care? NOPE! We were deemed the easiest couple to work with. 

 Our centerpieces were homemade. I loved them!!! Looking back though, I think I would've just rented a bunch of centerpieces. I don't think it saved me THAT MUCH money to do them myself. It wasn't super stressful.. just something that I had to setup myself and figure out what to do with it all after. I did a lot of spray painting and glitterizing (yup, it's a word) the months prior to our wedding. I don't have any good pictures of the centerpieces. I bet my mom has some good ones! But, besically we had wine bottles that were spray paint and glittery, with some glittery sticks and lights on half the tables. The other half were mirrors with bowls on top and royal blue, silver and sparkly ornaments.. with lights within them. Simple, but matched the theme perfect!

Our party favors and seating doubled as one. We had a Christmas tree with ornaments and the name of each guest and what table they were at (they were put on shrinky dinks). I'm not sure how difficult it was for everyone to find their ornament and where they were to sit.. hopefully not TOO terrible.. but it definitely saved us money to have the ornaments act as both.

My mom and I did the flowers. I even asked her multiple times "Are flowers even necessary?? Like, I don't care if I have flowers.. at all!". Apparently, the answer was yes. I went to one place-- The Flowerman in Centerville. They give you the option of putting together the bouquet yourself which is half the cost. We didn't take that option only because of how the week fell.. it was Thanksgiving week and typically you would have to do it the Thursday before the Saturday wedding.. which was Thanksgiving. So, no time. Although, I do think it would be fun for the bridal party and moms to get together and make a day of it.. coffee.. flower making.. mani/pedi.. but it just wasn't in the cards for us! 
When we went to look at the flower options, they gave us a book to look through until the consultant could talk to us. My mom and I looked through it and said.. "Okay, yup, that one".. "Oh, and I like that one for the bridal party". By the time the consultant came in, 5 minutes later, we pointed to what we wanted and said "We want the cheapest version of THAT one". Done. In and out within 20 minutes. 

   Simple. Perfect. 
The girl's dresses we found at Elder Beerman. We went right after prom season and found them on SUPER sale.. We are talking $35 a piece, people. I'm nothing if not a bargain shopper. I told the girls they could wear whatever shoes they wanted.. I think I did specify silver though. Didn't matter if they were heels or flats.. whatever they felt comfortable in. They were long dresses so you wouldn't see anyway! I wore flats the whole day. I don't think I even have a picture of them but they were silver, sparkly and comfortable. ;-)

I went dress shopping 3 times.. for a total of about 3 hours cumulatively. I went a couple weeks after I got engaged with my roommate, Missy. We went just for fun because even though I was engaged, I was so caught up in finished school.. that it didn't FEEL like I was planning a wedding (because, I wasn't haha).. so we went down the street to a place called Lillians. They have a ton of options. There were the typical options where you could try them on and then order them in the size you need. They were expensive. There were also the "as are" dresses that you couldn't order, what you see is what you get. Those dressed were all 1/2 off the original price. Yup, sounds like my area. The dresses were beautiful. I tried a few on, they wrote down the 3 I liked.. and Missy and I went on our way. 

During the summer, Laura and I went to the Reading Bridal District and went to a couple of places. We didn't find anything that we thought was perfect, but we had a blast! 

About a week later, my mom, grandmother (Mo) and I went back to Lillians. We had a couple of places booked to go look after (but we never made it to the other places). I tried on a few dresses. We fell in love with two of them. We couldn't decide. The women that worked there decided to go grab my previous list to see if they had anymore that would break the tie for me. Turns out, the two dresses I was choosing between.. were both on my list. How funny! This was MONTHS later! So I just KNEW which ever dress I chose, I would love. I think I ended up going with the one that I had to alter the least. 

 Ps. My jewelry looks expensive, right?! Charming Charlies.. $25 for the necklace, earrings and headband. I did have a family diamond bracelet.. but.. I don't typically wear diamonds.. and had no desire to buy something expensive for that day.. but they sure look pretty in the pictures, right?! :-) 

Our biggest expense, besides the venue (which included, food, open bar, etc.) was our DJ. Jake and I just KNEW this was the most important thing to us. We didn't need awesome linens, seat covers, super cool centerpieces or anything along those lines.. but we KNEW we wanted to put on a good party! And, our DJ made that happen. My FAVORITE thing about our day (besides getting to marry Jake).. was the flow of the evening. Our DJ (All The Right Tunes) was a fraternity brother of Jake's and had DJ'd other weddings we had been to.. they definitely were awesome. We did our speeches during dinner and then the father daughter and mother/son. 

 Jake and I danced to 100 Years by Christina Perry. Jake is about the least shy person you could ever meet at a wedding. He is the EPITOME of a fun wedding date. Now add it being OUR wedding, and allllll of OUR people.. and he was just a blast. We had the best time. And we danced.. allll night! 

 The "swag" on the ceiling and the blue uplighting was a surprise from my dad. I had NO idea until the morning of when I went to check out the room. It really made a huge difference in the room. That guy knows what he is doing. Speaking of my dad..
My dad and I danced to My Little Girl by Time McGraw. Tim is our favorite. Love my papa!!!! 

Jake's mom is KINDA awesome, too and really wanted their dance to be the Gangham Style dance. We told her NO, NO, NO... all while knowing.. that is PERFECT! So she and Jake danced to A Song for Mama which then turned into Gangham Style.. she was surprised, but honestly.. she jumped right into it without missing a beat.. people probably didn't even realize she had no idea it was going to happen.. hilarious.

  After they did their thing for a few minutes, it opened up to everyone dancing. Talk about a good FLOW!! ;-) Our families are SO MUCH FUN!!!! Everyone danced the night away. 

 Towards the end of the evening.. Jake went "strictly vest".. uhhh, babe, where did the rest of your clothes go?!?!

The majority of these pictures were done by our photographer. She was WONDERFUL. She is a friend of a good friend. She had just been starting out so she didn't charge NEARLY what other photographers charged and she was amazing. There are a few pictures I wish I would've gotten.. ie. pictures of just my sisters, just my maid of honor, centerpieces, etc. BUT.. I definitely got more than what I paid for. 


Our wedding was a BLAST! It didn't take stressing about the details to make it great, and I never lost sight of what the end goal was, to marry Jake. It was definitely one of the very best days of my life.. and all my favorite days stem from that day, the day I married my best friend. 

PS... this DARK hair happened.. back to my roots! Now I'm twins with my littlest

 And this little one is 4 weeks! Time is FLYING!!!