So now we’re at 103 days to go and time is flying by. Luckily, the last few weeks I’ve been able to really sit back and enjoy being engaged and falling more deeply in love with my soon-to-be-husband (he’s the best!!!). I think that the first wave of crazy planning is over and we are about to dive into the second wave by the end of April. My favorite part of the past few weeks has been hearing from two other girls who recently got engaged. One is my very best friend and she is planning a destination wedding, and the other a coworker. I have to chuckle to myself a little bit that I’m much happier right now being in my shoes (3 months into planning) than in their shoes (beginning of planning). Of course I’m happy to pass on what I’ve learned and if I can save someone else just a little bit of stress, then I’m all about it!
So since my last post, we’ve created and mailed Save the Dates, our guest list looks about frozen at 330+ people (!), the wedding website is functional, I picked up my veil, looked at flowers, picked out dates for showers and registered gifts.
Save the Dates
The Save the Date cards turned out super cute and I’m grateful that I had some help with this from my awesome bridesmaid, and cousin, Christine. She did all of the artwork in Photoshop and then I uploaded to Heritage Makers and ordered them using some credits I already had purchased. The photo on the card was taken in Klosters, Switzerland about 1 hour after we got engaged. Click the photo below, or this link http://heritagemakers.com/index.cfm?event=projectBrowse&projectID=82307455-af6e-4e7e-8c25-41d50c9f2406&productId=68, to see both sides of the Save the Date card.
My favorite story from the Save the Dates involves my niece, Hannah. When Lindsay, her mom, and Hannah were looking at the card Hannah commented “I want to go to Mary and Nick’s wedding” Lindsay responded with “Well of course you are going sweetie.” Hannah’s reply was “and I’m going to wear my Snow White dress!” So if you see a flower girl looking like Snow White it means that buying and dressing my 3 ½ year old niece in a traditional white flower girl dress didn’t go as planned. Honestly, if August 1 comes around and she still insists on being Snow White, it definitely won’t be the end of the world and it will serve as a great memory for years to come!
Wedding Website
A few weeks ago I bought the URL www.Mary-Nick.com, actually I was amazed it was available! Then I set the URL to redirect to the free website we created on The Knot. I always like looking at a couple’s website before their wedding. This is especially true if I don’t know the significant other (or couple). The website gives a quick background on each person, how they met and got engaged and basic wedding details. Of course, I’m a product of the 21st century so for weddings I’m attending, if there’s a website with a link to their registry and I can buy a gift online then I’m very grateful.
My favorite part of the wedding website was the bio Nick posted for himself. He eventually changed it to the standard fare, but for a few days he had the Austin Powers Dr. Evil monologue as his bio. http://www.whysanity.net/monos/evil.html
Veil
This is how I knew I was into the whole I’m-a-typical-crazy-bride-who’s-excited-to-be-a-princess-for-a-day! I picked up my veil about 2 weeks ago from Wendy’s and I was pretty excited to try it on and see if it was what I remembered. As soon as I got home, I took it out of the package and figured out how to put it on (it took about 15 minutes, who knew hair combs were that difficult to figure out!!!). Once I had the veil on, I had the overwhelming urge to hear Pachelbel’s Cannon in D, luckily my wonderful piano teacher once had me learn that piece so I sat down at my keyboard and played through it a few times (I’m rusty). As I used to say “I got a little crazy!” It was fun though and the whole wedding thing started to feel even more real…
A little blurry, but here's a photo of my veil
Flowers
I’ve changed my mind on my original flower choices. Originally, I was all about purple flowers to go with the navy dresses. Since my original decision, I’ve started to get a little worried about ALL of the different colors of purple and decided to scale back to mainly white. It helped that I saw some awesome wedding photos where the bridesmaids were in green dresses and had white flowers – the photos looked so good with the contrast! Now I just need to find some photos of the bouquets that I’m imagining in my head.
Showers
With a 300+ guest list I guess it’s inevitable that I need 3 showers (oh boy). It took me a little while, but I am okay with the idea of 3 afternoons spent being very girly! There will be a shower with Nick’s family in early May, a shower with my family in early June and a friend’s shower in mid-July. I am happy that they are all pretty evenly space apart.
Registering
The best thing we did when registering was to do it in the evenings! Neither of us is a huge shopper so we only last about 1 ½ hours while registering but at least the stores were empty and we could be a little goofy. First we registered at Macy’s and then at Bed, Bath and Beyond. I’ve been adding little stuff to the registry as we go along (who knew it would be so fun?), but we still have a few more things to decide (kitchen towels and pot holders, pots and pans, luggage, etc.).
Next time I’ll have updates on my makeup trial run, wedding invitations, and other fun details!!! Don’t worry, in 103 days I’ll be done with the wedding craziness and back to normal, Heritage Makers postings :)
