Coming soon ... wedding recaps!

Last night we picked up our wedding DVD from the amazing Jami of J. Concepts Productions. Along with the DVD we also received a disc of still images that Jami pulled from the video! It's with these absolutely amazing still shots that I'll be doing our recap posts over the next few weeks ... so check back often!

The Life of a Newlywed

We are getting ready to leave for our honeymoon in just 3 short days! I've got lots of photos to share & recaps to write ... but that's all going to have to wait until after our honeymoon!

Until then ... here's another photo to hold you over

Our first kiss as husband & wife

The New Mr & Mrs

Our Wedding Day

Today is The Big Day!

Don't let my post fool you ... it's been scheduled in advance because I'm probably sitting in my hotel room right now getting ready to head to the salon! I'm probably still very and anxious and excited --- those are the emotions I'm feeling right now, one week before the wedding as I'm writing this post and thinking about the wedding day! It's hard to know what I'll be thinking --- but I know one thing for sure ... it will be the most amazing day of my life ... the day I become Jon's wife!

When I return --- I'll be a Mrs!

See you all on the flip side :)

xoxo
The Jesse

1: My last day as a single lady

1 day to go!

That's right ... the day before the wedding is finally upon us. This week went by sooo slowly! The only really good thing about being as organized and as much of a control freak as I am is that fact that I've been done with everything for the wedding since last weekend. This week has been all about relaxing and enjoying this time with Jon.

Today is my last day as a single lady! Today is our rehearsal and rehearsal dinner. Some of my family will be arriving at our house around noon today for lunch and then to help us get all our wedding supplies up to the hotel. We plan to check in around 3pm then get ready for the rehearsal.

I'm still anxious and I hope this day goes by faster than this week has! I bet the nerves will hit me right before our rehearsal ...

2: Check, check, and check!

2 days to go!

I worked 1/2 a day today and it's a good thing because I had a hard time concentrating!!!

With two days to go ... let's see what we've got left to do!

Toes ... check!
Nails ... check!
Picked up dress ... check!
Picked up tux ... check!
Got rings cleaned ... check!
Laundry ... 1/2 a check (it's in the washer as I type this)!
Started packing ... check (can't finish until the laundry is done)!
Started cleaning ... check (gonna finish in the AM after we finish packing)!

There's really not much left to do except ... wait. I'm so anxious! I'm not really nervous --- so I don't know if that means it just has not hit me yet that we are getting married THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW or that maybe I'm just not going to get nervous. Who knows. I bet I'll be a basket case the day of ...

There is only one thing troubling my mind tonight ... and that's the damn weather forecast!
Sure, our ceremony starts at 5pm and it currently says that its not going to be raining at 4pm (I can't look at the hour-by-hour any later than 4pm yet) BUT you'll notice that it shows RAIN from 10am to 3pm. Yikes! Our photos are planned for outside from 2 to 4:30pm. Ugh.

Rain, rain ... go away! Please come back some other day!

3: Practice does make perfect!

3 days to go!

EDITED TO ADD:
Of course the weather has changed again!
Looks like rain is the consensus --- and we'll be having our ceremony inside!

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Today is my last full day at work before I get married ... tomorrow I'm only working a 1/2 day and I'm off Friday & Monday!

Over the past few weeks Jon & I have been practicing ... dancing that is! With Jon being a foot and a half taller than me sometimes dancing can be a challenge. Our first dance song is just over 6 minutes long ... so we've been practicing dancing to it in our living room. It's been fun ... and frustrating. The song feels like it plays for 20 minutes ... but I'm sure on the wedding day it will go by much faster!

At least this has also given me the opportunity to break in my wedding day shoes ... and in case you don't remember ... here's a photo of them again!

4: It's all ready to go!

4 days to go!

EDITED TO ADD:
The weather is sooo unpredictable!
Today the chance of rain for Saturday
has once again been reduced to 10% ...
who knows what the forecast will say tomorrow!

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Last weekend I got everything organized and boxed up and ready to get delivered to our venue on Friday. We will be taking all our photos before our ceremony & a family friend will be doing our decorating and setting up --- with only one hour to get it all done! So, these boxes contain very detailed instructions of where everything goes and how everything is to be set up (I know, you're so surprised to see how organized I am).

I also wrapped up all the bridal party & parents gifts over the weekend and wrote all their thank you cards. I am very excited to give out the gifts at the rehearsal!

The many boxes of wedding decorations & supplies

The wrapped bridal party gifts

I wish I could tell you all about whats in those giant Aaron Brothers bags ... those are our parents gifts which we spent weeks deciding about before we found the perfect gifts! I'll have to blog about those after the wedding!

5: Rehearsal dinner

5 days to go!

EDITED TO ADD:

This is NOT good

---------------------------------------------------------------

Our rehearsal is Friday evening at our venue and dinner will immediately follow the rehearsal at a local brewpub restaurant across the river from our venue. Our rehearsal will be pretty short and sweet ... we'll just need to go over where our family will be seated and the order of the processionals and then the recessional. My amazing cousin Judy is performing our ceremony and she has informed me that she has been practicing (with her equally amazing husband, Bob, saying mine & Jon's parts) and Jon & I have been practicing and reading through the ceremony too! We have not shared our ceremony with anyone except Judy & Bob --- and we wrote the whole thing ourselves ... about 9 months ago ... so we are very excited to see if anyone notices the little personal touches we added!!!

I'm sure Jon will be wearing shorts & birkenstocks to the rehearsal & dinner ... but I decided to get a little more dressed up than that ...

Here is the dress I'll be wearing
(I bought this dress way back in January when
I went shopping with my mom for a dress for my bridal shower)

And the shoes (got to LOVE Target)

6: Our simple but perfect programs

6 days to go!

On Friday night we went to our local Kinko's and picked up our programs that we had dropped off earlier in the week. We wanted our program to be simple and one double sided folded page booklet. I got pretty lucky and downloaded someone's template and was able to create our program in Microsoft Word and then Kinko's was able to convert it to a pdf file and print them out and fold them for us!

The cover includes our flourish (that can be found on everything and comes from one of our monograms), our married monogram and the quote from our invitation (that is actually found in our ceremony/vows also). The inside left page lists our family members and bridal party members and the inside right page has the order of our ceremony and a verse from "One Love" by Bob Marley - our recessional song! The back has our thank you for our family, friends, and parents/step-parents and has a verse from "The Wedding Song" by Bob Dylan.

They turned out pretty good, and I even got a discount (thanks FedEx)!

Here is the program


And the simple white basket they will be displayed in at the ceremony


EDITED TO ADD:
And, of course the first thing I did this morning was check the weather
and OF COURSE it's changed again
We've still got a 10% chance of rain but the temperature has gone up from 67 to 71 degrees!

7: No rain, no rain, no rain!!!

7 days to go! ONE WEEK!!!

It was pretty unbelievable when we hit single digits ... but even more unbelievable this morning when I woke up and my first thought was "wow, I'm getting married in one week!"

ONE WEEK! It doesn't even seem like it's that close ...

The first thing I did when I logged on to our computer this morning was check the weather --- it has quickly become my new obsession!

I know it's March. I know we are getting married in the spring - the first full day of spring to be exact. I'm not expecting perfect 80 degree sunny weather. I'm not even expecting clear skies. I just don't want it to rain! I don't want to move our ceremony inside --- and I don't want to miss out on photos down by the river! So, everybody chant along with me ... no rain, no rain, no rain (gosh, I sure hope I'm not jinxing us just by posting this because Thursday it said 10% chance of precipitation, then yesterday it said 0% and no clouds and now its back to 10% and mostly cloudy).

C'mon weather gods ... be on my side!!!

8: Shake your groove thing!

8 days to go!

Last night we had our final meeting with our DJ. Logan is a friend of a friend ... and was the DJ at my matron of honor's wedding last May. He is very easy to work with and very open to the fact that we picked out every single song to be played at our ceremony AND reception. We also created a play list for him and made him CD's that contained all the music (some of the stuff he never would have been able to find on iTunes ... or anywhere but in Jon's massive music collection).

We have a good mix of fun and upbeat songs & slow dancing songs & songs that express Jon's musical preferences. I also slipped in there some of my favorite songs ... which are way more mainstream than anything Jon listens to.

Our DJ was pretty amazed and said "you do realized that you just did my job for me, right?" Well ... that's okay. At least we know we won't be hearing any music that we don't like! Our DJ is the best of putting up with us and being okay with the control freak that I am!

9: Single Digits!!!

9 days to go!

Really? Seriously! I can't believe we have entered single digits!!! I feel like I should be more stressed or something ... but for the most part I'm just very anxious. I'm not very nervous - which is good (since I'm sure I will be getting to the nervous stage soon). Instead I'm just enjoying this time and counting down the days!!! There are just a few things left on the to-do list ... (1) programs - these were dropped off at the printers yesterday and I can pick them up tonight, (2) wrapping of bridal party & parents gifts, (3) the programs basket - just need to wrap it with some ribbon and attach a little sign, (4) organize everything and finish packing it up for transportation to the venue, (5) CHECK THE WEATHER EVERY SINGLE DAY UNTIL THE BIG DAY - that's what I did first thing when I got up!

AND I was very happy to see:

Yep, that says a lovely 69 degress on our wedding day!!! Woo-hoo! Let's see how many times that changes over the next 9 days!!!

10: We want YOUR digital photos!!!

10 days to go!

I love photos. I may have mentioned this before. Our wedding photos are very important to me and we are very lucky to have booked an amazing photographer for our wedding day. BUT we also want our guests to be able to share any photos they get on our special day. So, in addition to the disposable cameras we will have on the tables, we set up an online Flickr account so our guests can get online and upload their photos --- or even just visit the website and view everyone's photos! I'm very excited about this.

I recently had some business cards made by Vista Print that have the uploading instructions printed on them and we will have a card at each place setting AND we plan to include one with our thank you cards after the wedding (just in case someone forgot to grab one). Not only do we want our guests to upload their photos, we also want our guests to be able to visit the website and see what everyone else uploaded too!

The cards turned out pretty good --- and for the awesome price of FREE (plus shipping)!!!

The front of the card

I'm very excited to see how many guests will actually upload and share their photos!!!

11: Final dress fitting!

11 days to go!

This past Saturday (it was a busy day for me) I went to my final dress fitting. You may remember that I bought my dress almost a year ago ... then I lost 20lbs and my dress ended up being 4 sizes too big! In January I took my dress into a local dress shop for my first fitting and the seamstress seemed very confident that she would be able to fix my dress and make it fit again. Fast forward to 6 weeks later and my final dress fitting. I walked into the shop, stepped into the dressing room, slipped on my dress and had the seamstress tie me up AND low and behold my dress fit again! You can't even tell it was ever altered! And its just the perfect length - you can see my totally awesome red shoes!!! I absolutely love my dress and it was a pretty awesome feeling to have it fit perfectly! I can't wait to wear it on our wedding day! 11 days to go!!! In two more days I'll be able to start watching the weather report to see what our wedding day weather will be!!!

12: Make-up trial

12 days to go!

On Saturday I went to my stylists new salon to meet with a makeup artist who will be doing my makeup for the wedding. I was originally booked with a different girl to do my makeup on the wedding day but since my stylist switched salon's recently, I switched too! The girl I met with is a lot of fun and totally was able to doll me up just like I asked for! Luckily for me my makeup trial was on the same day as my bachelorette party so I was able to get some pretty good photos! Here is a good close up ... there will be no purple on the wedding day - just a black smokey eye! I was very happy with the results!!!

13: Bachelorette Party Recap!

13 days to go!

Last night was my bachelorette party that my bridesmaid Linsey & maid of honor Farina hosted for me over at Linsey's house! We had a very fun girls night in with yummy food, very yummy drinks, fun games & lots of laughs and good times! It's not a night I'll soon forget! I had an amazing time hanging out with my bridesmaids and closest girlfriends! The majority of the photos are very explicit so I'm not going to be posting those ... but here are a few I was able to find that are not too bad!!!

Me and Linsey - the hostess with the mostest!!!

Me and Farina - my cousin/BFF/maid of honor

All dressed up in my headband, sash & boa!!!

Double fisted drinks ... must of been why I was so sick the next day!!!

So much fun ... and funny! Pin the Junk on the Hunk!!!

14: Two weeks!!!

14 days to go!

It seems very surreal that in two short weeks (that I'm sure are going to fly by) we will be getting married! The wedding planning road has had its ups and downs and has been a long journey --- but looking back it really does seem like only yesterday when we got engaged. A lot has happened in the past 14 months and we are very much looking forward to what our future together as husband and wife have to bring us as well :)

15: Time got away from me ... again

15 days to go!

Let's play a little game of catch up once again. I have not had ti me lately and most of the wedding project's are finished and ready to be transported to our venue the day before the wedding so even if I had the time ... I didn't have the topics! Let's see if I can come up with enough to get us caught up to today (which is a good one)!

16: Rehearsal invitations

16 days to go!

A couple of day ago we sent out our rehearsal dinner invitations to our parents and bridal party. We are having our rehearsal at our venue the night before our wedding and then heading to a local brewpub in that area for dinner & drinks! We had these invitations made because our rehearsal dinner is a pre-order so we wanted to make sure everyone got the info for the meal choices!

We ordered the invites from the same Etsy seller that I got my bridal shower & bachelorette party invitations from! They turned out great ... just like I knew they would! By now everyone should have received them so I wanted to post a photo because they are so darn cute!!!

17: With this ring ...

17 days to go!

We recently purchased Jon's wedding band and we finally got to pick it up last weekend. We also recently had one of my two bands sautered to my engagement ring. And since I've never shared any photos of our rings ... I thought now would be a good time to share them all!

Jon purchased my first band the day he purchased my engagment ring. Then a few months later we went back and purchased my second band. We had one of the bands sautered already so that I would be able to wear all three of my rings on our wedding day and because we have a special "engagement ring" reading during our ceremony so we wanted the complete set ready. Jon's band is tungsten. All of my rings are white gold. The engagement ring has princess cut diamonds and the bands have round cut diamonds. I love my rings. I have grown quite acustom to my engagement ring and then after I got it back with one of my bands sautered to it --- it was like having a brand new ring all over again!

Jon's band

A better shot of Jon's band

My engagment ring sautered to one of my bands


My wedding band --- this is the one we will use when we "exchange" rings and after the wedding we are going to have it engraved with our wedding date and then sautered to the rest

All three rings together!!!

*These are pretty crappy photos - but you get the idea*

18: The Guest Book

18 days to go!

I am a huge picture person. I take photos of everything. I always carry my camera with me. We have photo frames all over our house. So, when it came to make a decision about what kind of guest book we would have --- the answer was simple A CUSTOM PHOTO BOOK that our guests can write in "yearbook" style.

We used some of our engagement photos that my cousin/maid of honor took of us shortly after we were engaged. We used our monograms. We included our vows and the readings from our ceremony. And we filled in with photos from our relationship.

The book turned out sooooo great! I want to share a few photos with you!

The front of the book with a line from our invitations, our married monogram, our names and our wedding date

The spine of the book

The back of the book with our math monogram and a math quote that I discovered on a fellow bloggers Stefanie's blog .

Front inside flap with the date again, our wedding date, one of our engagement photos, and a excerpt from our vows

Black flap with more vows, another engagement photo, and the location of our wedding

AND HERE ARE SOME OF MY FAVORITE PAGES

A monogram and our favorite engagement photo

Playing in the snow on our first anniversary and our first photo together at my college graduation party

Just some favorite photos ... I miss my short hair!!!

Engagement photos (again) and our math monogram (again)

New Years Eve 2009 and a photo in our new home the day we closed escrow!!!

Here is the last page ... with another one of our monograms!
And on that blank white page we are going to tape a photo of our kitty cats :)

I'm looking forward to cherishing the loving words our family and friend will write in our guest book for many many years to come!

19: The completed memory poem & candle

19 days to go!

A couple of weeks ago I wrapped our hurricane vase with black & white ribbon and just last week we purchased the frame to put the memory poem in with the names of our loved ones who will be celebrating our wedding day in spirit.

This project is very dear to my heart. Between the two of us, Jon & I have only one living grandparent. My grandma, Gladys, will be traveling from Wyoming to celebrate our wedding day with us (I'm her first grandchild to get married) but the rest of our grandparents will be celebrating with us in spirit. There are also some very dearly loved & missed aunts and uncles listed on our poem. We miss them all dearly and decided this was a perfect way to keep their memories alive on our wedding day.

The vase will have black sand, just like the centerpieces, and a white pillar candle

The memory poem and our loved ones listed below it

20: How sweet it is

20 days to go!

We've got quite a little theme growing using "how sweet it is ..." beginning with our cake cutting song, "How Sweet It Is To Be Loved By You" by the Jerry Garcia Band and ending with our favors and the giant martini glass filled with candy on the bar top!

We kinda have a little obsession with Hershey Kisses. They may very well be our absolute favorite go-to candy. So, when we were deciding what to "give" our guests as favors ... it was pretty easy to decide what type of candy to go with!

Putting the favors together was definitley labor intensive. We had to remove the favor tags from their cardboard backing then punch holes in them. The ribbon had to be cut. Then it was a two person job to tie the ribbon around the tulle. We started these on a Saturday night and ended up only finishing 25 ... but then we sat down on a Wednesday and finished them up while we watched American Idol!

They look good enough to eat :)

All 150 completed!
(We have a few extras)!!!

21: Table for two, please

21 days to go!

Jon & I opted to have a sweetheart table at our reception instead of a standard head table. We did this for several reasons. We wanted our bridal party to be able to sit with their husbands/wives/significant others AND we wanted to be able to have a few moments alone to bask in the newness of being husband and wife while being surrounded by our family & friends.

So, we ended up with 17 tables ... and 19 centerpieces! We have 18 of the centerpieces that I blogged about previously and a special centerpiece for our sweetheart table. I think we will end up putting the extra centerpiece on the guest book table.

And for our sweetheart table we purchases this cylinder vase for my bouquet! I wrapped it ribbons matching our wedding colors and attached our married monogram!

I think my red rose bouquet (our third wedding color) will look beautiful in this vase sitting on our sweetheart table during our reception!

22: Don't let my title fool you

22 days to go!

We actually have 16 days to go but time has been flying by and I'm quickly learning that there are not enough hours in the day for me to get everything I want accomplished.

With that being said ... I decided to sit down and catch you up on everything I've been working on. With just over two weeks left to The Big Day a lot of the little details are coming together!!! Let's see how many I can show you before the clock runs out and The Big Day is upon us!

23: Shaken, not stirred

23 days to go!


Do you remember seeing this giant martini glass before?

We used it at my bridal shower as a decorating detail. Here is the photo after I decorated it for the shower, wrapped in white and Tiffany blue (bridal shower theme colors) crete paper:

Doesn't it look so much more sophisticated wrapped in black and white???

You may recall that I mentioned I planned on using it again - at our wedding. So, I removed the crete paper and re-wrapped it with white and black ribbon. It will be placed on the bar top and filled with Hershey Kisses (the same candy we are using in our favors). It will also have a cute little sign next to it (that I have not made yet) that will say "how sweet it is to celebrate with you ... enjoy some kisses from the new Mr. & Mrs.) - the very same saying that is on our favor tags!

A little history behind the martini glass --- I love martini's. Dry, extra dirty, Vodka martini's - shaken, not stirred. That's why we decided to put this giant martini glass on display at our wedding reception - and we decided to fill it with Hershey Kisses because even though we are putting a small handful (5) of kisses in each favor ... we know, first hand, that sometimes a small handful just isn't enough AND everybody (except for both of our fathers - who are both diabetic) loves candy (heck, they both love it to - even if they BOTH know they are not suppose to eat it).

24: Candle light is romantic!

24 days to go!

Before I boxed up all the supplies for the centerpieces I did a trial run and took some photos so that Rhiannon (our go-to girl for decorating the day of our wedding) has an idea of what we want them to look like.

We are using 5" round bubble vases, filled with black sand and a white candle. These will be placed on a 12" x 12" square mirrored tile (supplied by our venue) and then silk red rose petals will be scattered around the vase.

All's that's missing from the photo below is the square mirrored tile ... but overall this is the look we are going for.

You can't really see the black sand because of the black coffee table. We decided to use sand to "catch" the wax as the candles melted for an easier clean up! We used the black sand, white candles, and red silk rose petals to tie in all our wedding colors!

25: Being an organized bride!

25 days to go!

On our wedding day I will be spending my morning at a local salon getting my hair and make-up done, along with my bridesmaid Linsey and my mom, and by the time I get back to the venue/hotel I will have just enough time to grab some lunch before its time to start getting ready because we are doing all our photos before our ceremony! With that being said - I had to find someone who would be willing to set up our venue with our DIY details (our favors, our ceremony reserved signs, our "in memory" candle & poem, our guest book, our centerpieces, our programs, our photo sharing instruction cards, our reserved tables signs). Luckily my maid of honor's best friend said she could fill this spot for us and take care of these little decorating details. We only have one hour to get all these details in place - and during that one hour I will be busy taking photos with our bridal party and our families and then getting ready for our ceremony - so I'm very relieved to have Rhiannon stepping in to take care of this for me. With that being said, I'm working very hard to get everything ready for her and organized so that it's easier for her to get all this accomplished in only one hour! This past weekend I spent some time removing stickers from our centerpiece vases, then washing & drying them. Then I portioned the out the black sand for each vase and the silk red rose petals that will be scattered around the vases.

Portioning out the sand

I then placed all the vases back in their boxes, and put the portioned sand and rose petals in each vase along with a candle - that way on the wedding day everything is ready to go!

All boxed up and ready for The Big Day!

A close up of all the centerpiece items inside the vases ready for assembly!