[my wedding] bridesmaid dresses.

Just like my wedding dress, I fell in love with these bridesmaid dresses in a magazine.  Of course I shopped  around but in the end I gravitated back to this dress.

My thought process on picking thee bridesmaid dresses:

1. Need to find something they MIGHT wear again (i.e., to another “formal event”)
2. No shiny materials
3. Not long and not too short (my sister calls me a grandma cause I love the knee length/50’s look)
4. Simple and cute

So this dress fit all of my criteria and they all looked beautiful that day:

Photos: Bauman Photographers

• Designer: Lela Rose
• Style Number: LR140XX
•  Fabric: Matte side of Renaissance Satin
• Details: One shoulder cocktail length with cascade ruffle and pockets at side seams of skirt. Matching self belt at natural waist
• Color: Wisteria
• Various alterations: take in bust and waist, shorten length. tighten belt

Thank you to the ladies at The White Dress for helping me and my sister/MOH out with the fitting and order!

Thank you to my Bridesmaids for putting this dress on for me.  You all looked so beautiful!!!

I love this dress so much, I almost ordered one for myself.  However, I just found out my bridesmaid, Claire (soon to be bride), is letting her bridesmaid choose their own dresses.  So guess what?! I’m gonna order this dress in her color! Score!

[my wedding] 1937 Packard.

I love old school cars.  I want to own one someday. *sigh*

I knew this would be a must have for our wedding.  One of my husband’s tasks was to find us one.  And I fell in love with this 1937 Packard!

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Photos: Bauman Photographers

Thank you to Classic Limos and our chauffeur, Eugene!

Photo above: Daniel

[my wedding] awesome Etsy vendors.

Etsy has a wedding registry now! How cool is that?!  Anyway, before that came into play, I ordered a few things for our wedding from these awesome vendors:

Lila Frances – Customized Hangers for my wedding dress + veil!

Photo: Bauman Photographers

Mama Can’t Sing – Vintage typewriter cuff links for my husband and his groomsmen!

Photo: me!

{giggle room} – Customized calendar ring pillow!

Photo: me!

Milk Tea by Bthanari – Our customized Cake Topper (I spy our dog, Kona)!

Photos: Bauman Photographers

Photo : my husband

Details, details, details. ❤

[my wedding] thee dress.

I have to admit, I fell in love with my dress as soon as I saw it… in a magazine.

In my eyes, I knew this would be it and nothing can top this dress.  As I mentioned in my very first post, I grabbed monthly bridal magazines on the stands and subscribed to Brides and Martha Stewart Wedding.

I called every bridal store in San Diego. No luck. So I called up North and visited Mary Me Bridal in the City of Orange.  It was the first dress I tried on and I was right.. it was MY dress! I should have tried the other dresses I brought into the dressing room so that I can pretend I was on the show “Say Yes to the Dress.” haha!

Taken April 9, 2011 [BM, MOH, ME, MOM, BM]

Without further ado, my dress:

Jasmine Couture – Spring 2011 Collection

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Photos: Bauman Photographers

Details: Ivory / Satin Faced Organza & Lux Organza / Chapel train length

Alterations: Removed straps, made into a sweetheart top, shortened length. [Thanks to 2000 Dreams Bridal]

What attracted me to the dress: Feather details, the cut and drop of the back of the dress, and the giant bow.

I felt so pretty wearing this!

[my wedding] card box.

A couple of years ago I found a vintage luggage at the Kobey’s Swap Meet, our local outdoor market.  I wanted to incorporate this luggage as our card box.  But when it came down to it, I didn’t want to ruin the luggage.

So I found this decorative cardboard luggage box at Michaels.  Fitting, since we planned our honeymoon in Europe.

Since I had extra muslin bags from our favors, I used it for our card box.  I split the bags so it would be lighter and that way I did not need to sew the top.  I stenciled the letters C-A-R-D-S with the same paint I used for the key ring bags.

I punctured a hole on each side of the luggage and strung the above bags with the same twine I used for our invites.  And Voilà!, our wedding card box:

above photo by: Bauman Photographers

I used my vintage luggage for stacking purposes.  This turned out better than I imagined.

[my wedding] honeymoon dance / money dance

“The money dance, dollar dance, or apron dance is an event at some wedding receptions in various cultures. During a money dance, male guests pay to dance briefly with the bride, and sometimes female guests pay to dance with the groom. The custom originated in Poland in the early 1900s in immigrant neighborhoods.

Sometimes guests are told that the money will be used for the bride and groom’s honeymoon or to give them a little extra cash with which to set up housekeeping.“

[wikipedia]

We did this honeymoon / money dance at our reception.  It was fun!  Our DJs didn’t play typical slow songs during our honeymoon / money dance but they played fun, non-explicit, music. The kids loved it.. they danced in between Patrick and myself. It was cute!

At a couple of weddings I have been to, there would be a person (usually a bridesmaid and/or groomsmen) standing near the dance floor passing out pins to the guests to pin the cash onto the bride and groom’s clothing.  I didn’t really want anyone to be doing this at the reception so I came up with an idea of having the pins on each table.  However, I didn’t want to just place a box of pins on the tables so I came up with this:

I purchased the purple pin cushions at JoAnn’s Fabric Craft and on Ebay,  and the mini clay pots and pins from Michaels. We printed the tags on the same paper we used for all our stationary.

They sat cutely with the muslin bags on our tables like so:

above photo by: Bauman Photographers

My husband now understands why I was obsessed with the little details of the wedding.

[my wedding] favors.

One of the first details we purchased were the favors.  Honestly, I had no idea what favors we would have for the wedding.  But I came across these by accident around April of last year.  I was actually looking for mini skeleton keys for the escort cards and came across these awesome skeleton key bottle openers:

Bella Wedding Co.

They sat in our guestroom closet for a couple of months until we figured out what we wanted our tags to look like.  After figuring out what we wanted our stationary design to look like (post about that soon), here is what we came up with:

For presentation purposes, I did not want to attach the key rings to the key because I thought it made it look tacky.  So what I did was placed muslin drawstring bags on each table with the key rings in them.  I stenciled the words “P.S. Rings for your Keys” on each bag.

Thank you to my husband, Leah (sister/MOH), Melanie (bridesmaid), and Eleanor (cousin) for helping me with the favors!

[bff’s wedding] MOH

Desiree, my best friend, got engaged in Maui last December! It was the hardest secret I could keep from her. I’m very proud to say that I never spilled the beans.

Sarah (aka Sticky), Des, and I went to have sushi for dinner two weeks ago. Des surprised us with the cute little boxes shown above, asking us to be part of her wedding! But by October I’d be labeled as her “Matron” of Honor. How exciting!

[my wedding] bachelorette weekend revealed

My wonderful bridesmaids revealed the bachelorette weekend location: San Francisco! Representing the whole bridal party, Lanie & Des came to my work and delivered flowers and a cake. It was so sweet and very surprising!

I love them! I’m excited!

[my wedding] hello February

What the heck?!? Where did January go? We’ve been so busy that I didn’t get to blog anything! We have been running all over to get things knocked off our list. We have been successful!

[side note: I’m blogging via my new iPhone, my fiancé gave me for Christmas! Hopefully this will get me to blog more often. /end side note]

Anyway I’m on my lunch break at work. I better get goin!

60 more days till the big day!