Totally Nerdy Wedding Inspiration.

I bring you some of the greatest wedding ideas ever.

Courtesy of Pinterest.

I am almost wishing I'd have seen that Batman thing before we chose colors and bought stuff - because how classy and amazing is that??

And I seriously laughed out loud at those action figure boutineers.

Happy Wednesday Loves!

And to those of you joining me from My So Called Chaos, Welcome!!!

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

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??

Wedding Inspiration...Rustic

You might be seeing a lot of these in the coming months...

I am gettin' hitched in May, after all :)

These are some of my top "rustic" wedding pictures I've come across on Pinterest.

Pinterest is the best and worst site ever...It makes me second guess everything!!

But I still think this stuff is lovely, so here ya go.

cake - originally {here}

gorgeous invites - {here}

how awesome is this?  better than just married.  buy it {here}

lovely photo of the newlyweds...

the perfect simple bouquet - {here}

the perfect sentiment - {here}

Wedding Thoughts

As of today, there is exactly one year until I marry my fiance.

He doesn't actually wear glasses.  I have no idea where those came from. BUT I adore this picture.

I kind of paused on my whole wedding planning thing after we nailed down the photographer and venue/caterer...but now that it seems like it's just around the corner, I'm trying to re-submerge myself in wedding ideas.  Only, there are too many awesome ideas out there.

Legit. WAY too many.

I did make a new Treasury on Etsy yesterday, featuring some things I am actually planning on using in or for my wedding.  I am particularly fond of this one.  And all of these sellers are amazingly talented.

{A Little Bit Rock and Roll}

"It would be so nice...

growing old with you..."

Sitting here on my couch, watching The Wedding Singer, and making more wedding plans.  How much better could a Sunday evening get?

Yesterday was AMAZING!  We were able to go to our wedding venue and do the walk-through, and we decided to put down our deposit!  The building is old and has the most beautiful architecture, and all of it matches our wedding colors.  Awesome.  After the walk-through, my dad took us to eat at this great little restaurant right on Lake Erie and we got to talk more and hang out more than we've gotten to for the last few months.  It was fantastic.  And we rounded off the night with some birthday celebrations with one of my oldest friends, and some bro time with my soon to be brother in law.  

ok so this picture's from like 2 years ago, but that's my future bro. I <3 him.

So now that my reception venue is booked, and I know that I'm doing the ceremony at the falls, I am SO excited to be able to start making more of the minute detail plans.  Like now, I can decide on theme, centerpieces, dresses...  YES!

minkcards

Today was a really nice and relaxed Easter.  Usually all holiday events are a huge rush and hassle, since we usually get my fiance's daughter and then have to go to his and my family events...and have her home at a certain time.  But this year we let her mom keep her all day for Easter, since her husband's family had morning plans anyway, so we didn't have to worry about rushing around for that (Plus since our wedding is going to be next Mother's Day weekend, and his daughter's my mini maid of honor, she won't be around for Mother's Day weekend, so we're conceding some holiday time now)  And my family doesn't celebrate Easter much since my grandfather passed away, so we were free to just go to my fiance's uncle's house and have delicious food and wonderful family time <3

Hope everyone had a wonderful Easter with their families/friends/whomever!

<3

Who ya gonna call? Ghostbusters!!

It’s only Tuesday, but I am seriously anxious for this weekend to come!  Firstly, it is Easter weekend, which means hanging out with my fiance’s family and getting to eat spectacular food.  Secondly, this Saturday is our appointment to scope out our (hopeful) wedding reception venue! 

We’re looking at the Rapids Theatre in Niagara Falls.  It was built as a movie theater in 1927 (or it was built earlier and converted – it just gives 1927 as the date on the website), and at some time afterwards converted into a concert hall type place.  My fiancé and I went there a couple of years ago for our first “real” Valentine’s Day.  He surprised me with tickets to see my favorite band play (Atreyu, in case you were curious!) and it was a spectacular show.  So when I found out the Rapids does weddings, I REALLY wanted to book it for our wedding! 

Balcony View

Not only is it a really gorgeous old building (with a wraparound bar and balcony!), it is also, supposedly, haunted.  It’s actually been featured on Ghost Hunters last October.  According to my friends that watched the episode (my DVR didn’t record it properly so I’ve never seen it!) they found a bunch of creepy stuff during their exploration.  This kind of creeps me out, but also makes me want to have my reception there even more.  My mother always did say I was her morbid child. 

*fingers crossed* that we land this place.  It’s just too cool.

Wedding Cake



F is for Fat Bottomed Girls

The modern bridal shower stems from the time when a bride's family was expected to provide a trousseau bride. The trousseau was comprised of clothing, lingerie, accessories, and various housewares. So in effect, pretty much everything a bride gets at her bridal shower nowadays.  

This treasury is full of gorgeous lingerie every bride should add to her modern trousseau :)

Fat Bottomed Girls

Fat Bottomed Girls doesn't have anything to do with anything...except that there are underpants in this, and presumably an above average posterior would also need ample coverage.

<3

Strapped in Vinyl

Somewhere along this crazy thought train that keeps spewing out random wedding thoughts, I came up with the brilliant idea to make some vinyl record dessert towers from a tutorial I found on Bubby and Bean and decided to start scoping out local thrift stores.  

So I went on over to the Salvation Army that's right down the street from my place of employment...and BAM!  It was like record overload.  I generally don't look through the records because I never find anything good...and the first time I actually was looking for stuff that wasn't good (ya know, so I wouldn't feel bad about wrecking it to make dessert trays), I  came upon the motherload of records I needed to own.  

Seriously.  Commodores?  Olivia Newton John?  Captain and Tenille? HECK YES.

So now I have all these.

Plus a lot more, cuz I bought like 20 of the things...and four were Kenny Rogers (what can I say? I love his beard), and I have NO clue who Heino is (I think it's big in Germany, as the other records of his the Salvo had had German words.  Or German looking at least) (I just thought it sounded like "heinie" and he looks funny) but now I really need to get my awesome record player from my gramma's house...and figure out how to use it.

Oh, and that tutorial?  Maybe we won't do that...

So tell me:  Any ideas what to do with so many awesome vinyls that doesn't include destroying them?

F is for feathers

Today's picks for a fun Etsy wedding!

Shake your tailfeather :)

http://www.etsy.com/treasury/NjgxNTE2M3wyNTMyNjEwMTA1/shake-your-tailfeather

Enjoy <3

A fine proposal.

You know I’m newly engaged and beginning to plan the Big Day, but of course you always have to know how the proposal went.  It’s the most romantic part, isn’t it?  And really, the biggest deal, since it’s the beginning of the rest of it. 

Firstly, I was the one to propose. 

I don’t know exactly what it was that tipped the scales.  I’ve known to the deepest part of me that he is my soulmate.  My absolute other half.  We were friends for ages before we started dating, beginning in high school and then just with MySpace and social networking.  Then came the fateful night that led to the dating…we ran into each other at a rock show.  Which led to more talking, then the invite to hang out, then the rest happened. 

In April of last year, he officially moved in with me.  We redecorated my little house a bit, and I gave him a man cave so he could have his own room (because I know how badly everyone needs private space…I know I do!).  So as it’s been occurring to us that we’ve successfully lived together for nearly a year, we’ve been making more and more jokes about getting married eventually and never really thought much about it.  We never figured there was a reason to rush it.   But if there's no reason to rush it, then there's also no reason to keep waiting.  Everyone could always use more money or a better job, but that's not a real enough reason to not marry your soulmate.  All of that stuff can change at any moment anyway, no matter how rich or poor you are. The only real reason I could even think up to NOT propose to him was that “the guy should be the one to propose”.  But why?  Nothing about us is traditional to begin with.  We’ve already been through rich & poor, and sickness and health.  And survived it. 

And then I found these:

http://spiffingjewelry.etsy.com/

Since my fiancé is such a huge Star Wars fan, I HAD to do it.  So I asked him. In my car. In our driveway. At approximately four am on a Saturday night (Sunday morning?)

And he said YES.

F is for Flowers.

At the beginning of the month, I became engaged to my wonderful boyfriend of three years.  Since then, my life has been a wedding planning frenzy! And of course, the first place I turn to is Etsy.  I have found so many wonderful ideas and DIY kits (not just for weddings!) since I started searching; it's so hard to not just buy up everything!  But since my mighty slim checkbook won't allow for that, I've been curating treasuries full of some of my favorites.  And since today is Friday, I figured I'd start off with an F: Flowers.

http://www.etsy.com/treasury/NjgxNTE2M3wyNDY3ODU1ODM4/f-for-flowers

Enjoy :)