Wedding planning ... hiatus!

I'm pretty much on a planning hiatus until after my best friend Kylie's wedding on May 3rd. This weekend is her bachlorette party, next weekend she has her second dress fitting and I'm going with her, then the following weekend is her wedding. Theres a lot to do the days leading up to her wedding, I am even taking two days off work right before her wedding to make sure I'm available for any and all help she needs! I'm so excited for her!

I did, however, finally finish collecting all but one address/contact info for our guest list AND we have half of the stuff for the Save the Dates. I just need to order the magnets now (we have the attachment cards, envelopes, and envelope seals made with one of our favorite monograms). I plan to send these out sometime near the end of May or maybe early June. Jon's dad, Craig, is throwing us an Engagement Party at the end of May - we have already sent out the invites (it will be close family and friends only - otherwise the guest list would of ended up looking like the wedding guest list). We are really excited to celebrate our engagement with those we love :) and for those that can't be there, we look forward to celebrating with next year!

Check back for more updates ... after Kylie's wedding my main focus will be finding an officant and a photographer AND getting ready for the Engagement Party!

Dress shopping!!!

I went dress shopping yesterday at David's Bridal in Roseville with my mom, my maid of honor/cousin Farina and one of my bridesmaids, Linsey. David's Bridal was a crazy mad house. It was like the running of the bulls when they opened their doors at 12 noon. There were sooo many people there. After we checked in for our appointment, we started browsing through the dresses and after a while we started collecting dresses for me to try on. By the time we were assigned a consultant we had like 10 dresses collected for trying in. We carried all the dresses to the smallest dressing room ever. My consultant was not very attentive ... but, I knew not to expect excellent customer service from this particular bridal chain warehouse. I must have tried on a dozen dresses ... well, I don't know if it was really that many but it sure seemed like a lot. And, OMG, those dresses way a ton! The dress that I had fallen in love with online was not available in my size, or even a size I could of attempted to try on (it was only available in a size 0) ... so that was a little disappointing. I was able to try on a few other dresses that I had looked at online - including "THE" dress! It was the last dress I tried on AND even though it's nothing like what I thought I would want to try on or even like ... I absolutely L-O-V-E it!!! I'm not going to post any pictures because I haven't decided if I am going to show Jon a picture of the dress (the online photo from David's Bridal) yet or not ... but, if you want to see it you can email me and I'll send you a picture (one where I am wearing the dress)!!! I'm so excited! And, it was a great price - right in the range I was looking to spend! Woohoo!!! Now, I just need that tax rebate check to hurry up and arrive so I can pay the dress off :)

Updates galore!

Yesterday we placed the order for our save the date attachment cards AND our engagement party invitations! We used "FREE" products from Vista Print ... and we saved a bunch of money. I'm excited to see how they turn out. I was finally able to figure out how to use my PhotoShop program so I was able to design our save the date attachment cards and the engagement party invitations using downloaded templates from Vista Prints website (Vista Print Website). I think they turned out pretty good, if I do say so myself. I love DIY projects, my only wish is that I was a little bit more creative. Maybe all this wedding planning and DIY projects will help getting the creative juices flowing :)

Other updates ...
Our monograms from Jenn Johnston are below. We decided we are definetly going to use the chalkboard/math monogram, we just haven't decided for what yet. At the same time that I had contacted Jenn about monograms, I also contaced BriannaNichole. She made some great designs for us too. Here they are:








We just love them! We are going to use this design/flourish (that she used in one the monograms) as our unifying theme/design for all our wedding related paper items. Its simple, unique, and elegant ... just what I was looking for!


BriannaNichole has a blog (BriannaNichole Wedding Monogram Tutorials) and a Knottie Bio with some examples of her work (BriannaNichole Monogram Bio). Check them out! Her Blog has a lot of great info and her Bio has examples of her monograms ... they are great!

I think that is it for updates for now. I'm going dress shopping this Sunday with my mom and my maid of honor (my cousin, Farina). We are going to David's Bridal. There are only a few dresses I want to try on ... but, I'm excited for the expereince. I hope I love the dress I found on their website just as much when I try it on!