Creating a Wedding Website.

For the longest time, I didn't do this.

I didn't really see the point, and didn't want to waste my time.

Who's going to look at it anyway?

Here's what happened to change my mind.

1: Every wedding invitation I've gotten this year has had a wedding website attached. 

Clearly, I must be missing something...

2: Did you know you can customize the site to be all about you & your fiance??

Can we say, DUH?  But really, I didn't realize the extent you could do this.

3: Information!! Do I really want to have to include every last little detail with the invitations??

No.  And that's where the websites come in!

I tried for probably weeks to create a wedding website with theknot.com.  I love theknot for a lot of reasons, but their website navigability is not exactly one of those reasons.   A lot of their pages take ages to load and when I continually attempted to use their template for making my site, it would fail to load and not work at all.  Luckily, a friend of mine is getting married shortly and I took the cue from her to go to mywedding.com  Their site is much, much easier to work with, and I absolutely love the site I came up with.

Bottom line:

If you don't feel your guests will benefit from a website, don't worry about it. If you don't have time, don't sweat it.  But if you want a way to easily communicate with guests, including having someplace they can see accommodations (especially for out of town guests!), I definitely suggest doing the website!

You can view my site here.

What do you think of wedding websites?  Did you use one?

<3

dear friday...{confessions and a freebie!}

a snippet of Valentine's day...i cannot keep my eyes open when flash is involved.

dear fiance: thank you for bringing home flowers. and for taking care of me through my latest sicknesses. i love you more than you'll ever know :)  dear sister: i am so excited to meet my new{est} nephew in a few months!!  congratulations again.  dear baby brother: i hope you guys rock your basketball game tonight! go eagles!  dear mysterious migraine/sinus thing: really?  it's been several weeks now.  please just go away now.  dear snow: yeah you can leave too.

...

I confess...

i am anxious for these upcoming months...3 weddings (including my own!) and a new baby nephew on the way.  a lot of things going on!

i am worried that things are going to get harder soon as money gets tighter thanks to so much missed work due to my health problems...but i don't know what to do about it.  just hope.

i am regretting having such a large bridal party!  somehow it makes it more nerve wracking to have so many more people up there with us...and i'm still not over the nightmare in which my friend fresstyle raps to marry us...

i am so sick of being sick.  i don't remember my last "non headache" day.  it's always there, even if it's not a bad one.  i am sick of this.  sick of missing out on everything lately.

...

And just because I love you guys, I made a really cute iPhone wallpaper.  Free for you to download :)

(get the full sized version here)

that time i told a 9 year old what a drag queen was.

It was Father's Day actually.

And I had taken my {future} step daughter to the mall because:

{i wanted to let her dad sleep, after working until 3am}

{i felt like shopping, and Bath & Bodyworks had a sale}

She's the one looking right at the camera...sheesh she's a cutie.

And since it was Father's Day, we had to find a gift for my fiance.

And since it was the mall, we had to go into Hot Topic...

Which led to me finding myself a Lady Gaga Tshirt.

That proclaimed

"Don't be a drag, just be a queen"

Which led to the wee one asking what that meant, and me explaining that Lady Gaga sings about drag queens and all kinds of different people and how they don't deserve to be treated any differently than we do...and she asked what a drag queen was.  Damn.  I should have known that a nine year old wouldn't know what that meant.

So I explained it to her. 
Which pretty much led into a whole lecture on alternative lifestyles.
But why shouldn't she learn about it?  Regardless of other people's feelings on the matters of "gay marriage" and other things of that sort, my fiance and I are all about equality, and making sure that his daughter is going to grow up that way too.  {as in, concious that just because someone has a different belief/lifestyle/upbringing/etc. than you, doesn't make them any less of a person, and everyone should be treated equally.}

I know those conversations are ones that a lot of parents shy away from, much like the "where does a baby come from?" questions, but I think kids have a right to know this stuff.  Maybe not a full on breakdown of what happens in the bedroom, but generally speaking it can't be a bad thing.

What do you think of having these discussions with your children??

Make Glitter Letters in PS Elements

Since it's Valentine's Day...I thought I'd hook you guys up with a little gift.
A tutorial that I think is pretty awesome.

Especially because I did it all myself.

Score one for me.

 

I know what you're thinking.

"OMG she's actually posting a tutorial she promised us!"

Yupp.  I am finally posting a tutorial I've promised to you!!  I have a thing for glitter, and I've seen blogs and sites with glittered text...and I wanted it!  So I googled a bit, read some different tutorials...and discovered that doing it in Photoshop Elements is a bit different than Photoshop.

Actually, a bunch different.

Luckily, I spend enough time messing around with PSE to figure this stuff out.

I use Photoshop Elements 10 for all my photo editing (except for what I mess with on Instagram...oh, and since losing my camera charger cord most of my pics are thanks to my iPhone now.) because it's affordable, easy to use, and definitely worth investing in!  I have used it to create all of my blog designs (oh yeah, I make all my own stuff. FYI) and it rocks.  But enough about me and what I do when bored...on to the tutorial!

1: You first need to set the glitter background as a pattern.  I found free glitter downloads here and here.  You use the select tool to make a square/rectangular selection of glitter (you don't want any of the background or it doesn't work properly...trust me).

2: Then you'll go to Edit > Define Pattern From Selection.  This will save the glitter background to your Patterns for use later on.

3: To start making glitter letters, open a new blank file and add a layer of text.  Thick fonts work the best for this.  You can find a ton of free fonts on dafont. The font I'm using here is Channel.

4: Making sure the text layer is selected (it has the dark box on the right hand side like shown above), go to Layer > New Fill Layer > Pattern.  Check the box "Use previous layer to create clipping mask".  Click ok, and the box will pop up letting you select which pattern to use.  Choose one of the glitter patterns we made above.

5: See the glitter now? We're almost done!  The glitter makes the edges of the text a bit less clear, so to make it really pop, we're going to add a bit of shadow to the text.  Make sure your text layer is selected again (not the pattern layer), and go to Layer > Layer Style > Style Settings.  Check the Drop Shadow box.  You can adjust the shadow to your liking, for this example I set the size to 2 pixels,  distance to 1 pixel, and opacity to zero.

6:  The only thing left to do is merge all your layers together to save your image as a picture!  You can do as many different layers of text as you want, just make sure you follow all the steps properly to apply your patterns to the right layers!  Woohoo - glitter text in five minutes!

Please be sure to let me know how this tutorial worked for you!  And don't forget to Pin this :)

{please note - I did not create the glitter background patterns used here.  I have included the links to the glitter patterns above.  This tutorial is based on a tutorial by SweetC'sDesigns, but as her tutorial was for Photoshop, I changed everything to be applicable to Photoshop Elements users.}

Monday Musings

{you can find these all here}

Friday Confessional...

I've never participated in this link up before...but hey why not?

I'm stuck to my couch anyway...thank you random stomach bug that won't go away...

I confess...
I have watched like three seasons of Friends in the past week.  I have zero regrets about this.

I confess...
That lately, as I watch so many people in my life start their families {as in, having babies or trying to have babies}, I am moving further and further away from wanting that.  I am so ready to be married to my fiance and start our life together, but more and more I am moving away from wanting children of my own.  I can't picture being unselfish enough to want to go through that... and that makes me feel like a horrible person.

I confess...
I am sick of seeing other people plan their weddings on Pintrest.  Mostly because I keep seeing ideas I love and need to reign myself in, because pretty much all of mine is planned already...and all of those ideas won't mesh with what's already in place.

I confess...
I am super nervous about the impending snow storm/blizzard.  I am not a fan of snow.  At least, not when it can potentially mean a loss of power or people crashing in it while driving...like my fiance.  Who I now panic about being in the car and driving in the snow every single time.  I'm a freak.

I confess...
I still have my Christmas decorations up.  Including my tree.  I can't help it...I love Christmas.

 

Ta-ta-ta-talkin' bout...

Linking up with miss Nat.

Seriously, these are the funniest random questions...

1. What's for dinner tonight?
I've been sick all week...well, two days of migraines and now some sort of stomach bug...so basically, something that won't cause my stomach to start a revolution.  Like soup.  Or sleep.



2. Top 3 tv shows you never miss.

The Walking Dead

Modern Family

The Big Bang Theory

3. What type of body wash are you currently using?

my fave

4. Take a photo of what's in front of you. 

my laptop, couch, blankets i'm covered in because i'm freezing {pretty sure I have a fever} shelves and knickknacks, rocking chair and pillows, fish tank. my fishies are named Edwin, Blue Fin, and Zazz Blammatazz.

5. What's your favorite fruit?
Grapefruit & Pineapple.  I can't choose, it's really both.

6. Spring is almost here (well, it's already here for us Floridians haha), show me your go-to outfit!

spring dress by traci-horschel featuring gold jewelry

What I'm Loving Wednesday

Since I've been spending so much time planning my wedding lately, which is causing me a ton of stress, I have found that browsing around on Pintrest is one of my favorite new ways to destress and find cool new ideas for everything from home decor to how to make little kids eat veggies.

So I decided that Wednesdays should be a day for me to share What I'm Loving with all of you!

{tutorial here}

Gel Mani at home?  Awesome.

Love this use of a vintage scarf! {here}

whoever came up with this was a genius.

LOVE this outfit. gorgeous.

I really want one of these iPhone cases.

I am obsessed with monograms lately. Like this. And this one. And here's another...

Sugar skulls are always awesome.

These dresses are gorgeous...I should buy one.

I need new glasses.  These are super cute.

So what are you loving this Wednesday?

 

How not to enjoy wedding planning.

Well.  In case you don't know me in person {which means, almost all of you}, you might not know that I'm a wee bit particular.  Okay okay...I'm totally nit picky and OCD about everything.  Everything.  It all has to be just so, and if it's not, I kind of get a bit...let's say "overwrought".  But really, I don't think expecting the absolute best for {one of} the most important day{s} of my life is too much to ask.  Or is it?

Wedding planning has sucked.
Big time.

Some stuff has been awesome and simple.  For instance, my photographer is one of the most amazing people I've ever even met.  The catering manager?  Totally cool.

Dealing with some of the other vendors/prospective vendors has been a nightmare.  To even attempt to book our venue, it took ten phone calls and I never even got a response from the venue itself, only the caterer that works with the venue.  And on top of that, we weren't told for several months after booking that we needed to sign a contract with the venue.  We were under the impression that the contract signed with the caterer covered everything.  The first florist we saw?  Four months to get a quote.  {obviously we decided on a different florist}

Against my better judgement, I ended up buying my dress from David's Bridal.  I was dead set against using them at all, based on poor customer service in the past {learned from partaking in several other weddings for family and friends}, but I found a Vera Wang dress I fell in love with, and my consultant was an absolute dream to work with.  Unfortunately, when picking our bridesmaid dresses she was nowhere to be found.  When my sister picked up her dress, she discovered a huge snag all down the front, and was told that it wasn't DB's problem {though luckily, the manager did finally take care of it!}

The latest straw that has me in a funk?  The cake tasting.
I can't entirely explain how, but it let me down big time.  To start with, the weather was awful, so I was already stressed out and halfway to miserable by the end of the drive there.  Upon arrival, things were disappointing right off the bat.  The bakery seemed as though they weren't prepared for us at all, though I scheduled the meeting back in December.  The baker barely explained what we were trying {and there was very little assortment of things to try}, and left the room for extended periods of time.  And she only had poor quality printouts of cakes they'd done in the past, as apparently all of their booklets were off at a bridal show.  Now, I knew what kind of cake I had in mind, but what if I hadn't?  To top it off, at the end of the "consult", she started to discuss pricing before I reminded her that this cake was already a part of our catering package.  But what if it wasn't?  Was she really expecting us to order our cake through a bakery that didn't seem to put in that much effort to win our business?  Especially as this bakery is a very well known and highly regarded bakery locally, I was most definitely expecting more.  But maybe my expectations were too high.


Have any of you run into these problems planning your own wedding?  How did you keep wedding stress at bay??

Monday's Lessons.

{I found all of these on Pintrest.  You can find them here}