Take That Grad Schools!

After months of applications, recommendations, transcripts and resumes I have finally finished all of my graduate school applications and internship applications! Thank. God.

Let There Be Light!

But, it has to be soft light, thankyouverymuch.

A couple months ago I was at Pier One with some co-workers browsing for some hurricane vases for an event we were having, when low and behold I stumbled upon the most perfect candles for my reception tables. It was a rare moment indeed, and I'd long ago lost hope that I would find a candle that encompassed all that I wanted in a candle. Sounds a bit neurotic, eh? How can I be that picky about candles you ask?

Here's how. I knew I didn't want tea lights. They would burn out before the cocktail hour was even finished, and the vast majority are plain and white. Votives are only a step above, lasting maybe through dinner, and I demand more of my candles. But this is where I get all Goldilocks, because while tea lights and votives are too small, but pillar candles are too big. But these candles I found are just right.

(Please excuse the absurdly blurry picture, it was too bright with the flash though!)

Perfect, right? They look like the Andre the Giant of tea lights, ( 2.5 inches tall and 3 inches wide) same shape and all, but in a wonderfully complimentary green shade, which seem to effortlessly mesh with my color scheme.

This particular scent pictured is crisp bamboo. A third of the candles we bought are this scent while we also purchased equal amounts of Citrus Cilantro (a different shade of green) and Aspen Flower (white).


We're putting two of these candles on each table, and I plan on getting pillar candles in each of the scents to decorate the rest of the reception space. I'm thinking about having some tables with candles and rose petals spread out for "ambiance". My FI laughs when I tell him I want "ambiance tables", but I think they really soften the look of the space and make it seem more romantic. I'll probably use them up by the bar and on the cake table. Here's my original inspiration from The Knot Real Weddings.

Costume Change

For awhile, I was in a flutter trying to figure out two important elements of our E-pics. Where were they going to be, and what was I going to wear?

We ended up deciding that we wanted them at a couple different places, and would wear a couple different outfits; something a little dressed up and something more casual, but I wanted both outfits to be a little playful (at least mine anyways!).

The first location we're going to take pics at is called Benham's Grove, and is an historic farmhouse estate, 8 beautifully landscaped acres, right in the middle of our town. Its a location I considered for the wedding and rehersal dinner, but its too small for the wedding and was able to find a more affordable and (almost) equally lovely location for the rehersal dinner.

This is a shot of the Gerber House and Cottage. I wish I had some closer shots, but there's a lovely little garden, and below is a picture of the little fountain in the middle of the property.

And now for the wonderfully agonizing decision of what to wear. I knew I wanted something a bit dressed up for Benham's Grove and something a bit more casual for Grater's, and here's what I came up with, all courtesy of J.Crew (I've always loved their clothes, but its just weird how much of my wedding related stuff I'm getting from there!).

I'm going to wear a black cropped shrug over the dress, and FI is going to wear charcoal colored dress pants and a black dress shirt, so we'll be lookin' pretty swanky. I'm going back home next week, and will hopefully take some pics and eat some ice cream (all in the name of wedding research) at the quaint little ice cream parlor where we'll do the second part of our e-pics.

O, True Apothecary...

...apologies to Billy, this isn't a post on a tragic, torrid love affair, but wedding favors. My bad.

I love the idea of a candy buffet at the reception, I know its an idea that has lost its novelty in the Wedding world, but I'm willing to bet that the majority of my guests either haven't heard of it, or haven't been to a wedding with one. So my initial fears that my guests would think I am unoriginal, was really Much Ado About Nothing (last Shakespeare reference, I promise, at least for this post). I love Knottie Suzebride's candy buffet, and used it as my initial inspiration, both for the color and candy choice.


FI was a bit uncertain, until we bought four of these apothecary jars at Kohl's for about $8 each, and got the other one for 40% off at Michael's. I'm hoping these five will be enough, since we're still doing cake and (hopefully) ice cream from Graeter's.




I've been scouring the internet for bulk candy, and believe we'll end up ordering from Candywarehouse. There are soooo many options to chose from, in the end, I think we'll go with candy that's close to our colors, and try to do a mix of fruity and chocolaty, so we'll hopefully please all our guests' palettes. here are some of the candy contenders:























Living in a dream world, I would love to get these green & pink lollipops as well, but it would break the bank to get as many as we need. And I couldn't just put out 25 or so, could I? But still, they're so cute!




Inspiration for the candy buffet is everywhere, but I found the Knot Bio dedicated to the candy buffet to be incredibly helpful. Any other areas of inspiration I should check out?

Fancy Feet

The saga of the bridesmaid shoe.

As though finding a consensus among 6 girls for a dress weren't enough (actually, my girls are pretty easy to please), now I have to find some sort of appropriate shoe. I thought I had a shoe picked out for them, from Blue Tux Shoes, but I thought having them dyed would be such a hassle, especially for the price and the fact that they aren't likely to wear those particular shoes again.

So I decided metallic was the way to go, and began searching for either gold or silver shoes, but many were too glitzy and sparkly, I was hoping for a muted color. While I was searching for said shoes, I stumbled upon these taupe heels from Target.

The bow is actually sage green, not taupe, which you can sort of tell from this picture. Its actually very close to the Ann Taylor Celebrations Collection shade of Honeydew, and complements the Meadow Green as well, which are the colors of my BM sashes and dresses respectively. On top of that, they're only $20, which means the cost of my BMs Wedding Day attire is less than $100!

Here's a picture of the Honeydew sash with the shoes. Pretty close, don't you think?

Going, Going, Gone!

My mind that is.

I don't know what my problem is lately! I've been so scatter-brained. I mailed out my Valentines for the Weddingbee Valentine's Swap early enough so they would get there by Thursday, except I didn't use enough postage, d'oh! Forgot that square envelopes require additional postage, so now they'll get there, um, almost a week late.

I also keep trying to download pictures from my camera, but forget to charge my battery, causing my camera to shut down in the middle of the download.

And this one's just silly... trying to get a hold of my florist to schedule a consult... the week of Valentine's Day. Yea, I bet she's a bit busy, she did, however, call and leave me a voicemail, but I'll just wait and call her tomorrow or Tuesday.

Is it bad that I'm ready for Monday? Maybe I'll be a bit less flighty.

Toilet Paper Rolls: A Must Have For Any Wedding

When I first told my FI that I wanted to some of the elements for our wedding to be DIY to add a personal touch and save some money, he agreed... and actually thought it would be a great idea. What I don't think that he realized, was that my neurosis would kick in to high gear or that I would be so very scavenger-like in my attempt to do these projects. Exhibit A: saving our TP rolls. I got this idea from Weddingbee bride Mrs. Strawberry to use TP rolls for ecofetti or lavender buds.

(The ones on the left were the actual ones the Strawberries used the day of and the ones on the right were prototypes)

She had a couple posts where she talks about using ecofetti and also had a post about how the entire thing panned out. And I must say, it turns out quite lovely. So, with nothing better to do on New Year's Eve we invited over a couple of friends and fashioned up a couple of our own prototype tp ecofetti rolls, with rather successful results.




Here we have my lovely bridesmaid JT being all crafty. We did a couple different paper and ribbon combos, and tried out a couple different lengths. I would definitely recommend wrapping paper or scrapbook paper over the tissue paper, it can be a bit pricier but the results are so much nicer. Our favorites were definitely the Martha Stewart wrapping paper that we found on clearance at Michael's for $1 a roll, which saved me some serious ca$hmoney. Here are the end results of our collective craftiness. I think we definitely prefer the longer ones, they look a bit better, but the short ones are adorable too.

Sparkly Details

Now that I have shoes for the wedding day, I want to find some equally fabulous jewelry to go with them. Initially, I planned on wearing the pearl necklace and earrings FI bought for my birthday a few years ago, from a boutique out in Las Vegas called Agatha, which is a jewelry boutique originally based in France. Needless to say, I love that set, its simple classic and understated... kind of like my dress, which has a lace applique across the bust and bodice. So I began to wonder, since my dress has more of an understated look should I amp up the jewelry?

I first had other ideas when I came across Knottie Mrs Reem Avenue's profile, and she was wearing this absolutely beautiful bracelet. All of her jewelry was gorgeous, but this bracelet in particular struck my fancy.

My initial impression was: gorgeous but a bit big for my style and personality. Then I come to find out via the most popular Wedding websites, that its a Haute Bride bracelet, and not just a Haute Bride Bracelet, but pretty much infamous and highly coveted. Oh. I had no clue! So I started searching for something similar, but not as big or pricey. I was pretty smitten with the Haute Bride line of jewerly. There weren't any local boutiques in my area (slim pickings here in the midwest sometimes) and found a couple different online sites that carry their jewelry.

The first one I stumbled across was Perfect Details. They carry several different lines of designer jewelry, Haute Bride among them. And I found these lovely earrings and bracelet. I love that the bracelet is as beautiful as the bracelet with 5 strings of pearls, but smaller and less expensive. Which definitely fits my personality AND my budget. And although both pieces are a bit more sparkly than I would typically wear, if there were one day to go all out, wouldn't my wedding day be it?

These same pieces and others are also available at the online boutique Leftbank Jewelry, as well as other Haute Bride pieces. The Perfect Details website offers returns on their pieces that aren't custom made, and Leftbank Jewelry offers a return policy on their items as well.

Such Great Heights

My FI is a (sort of) genetic miracle. His mother is maybe 5', as is everyone else on her side of the family, and I'll give his dad the benefit of the doubt and say he's 5'8 but is the tallest by several inches on that side. So I guess its pretty a-mazing that FI is 5'9 or 5'10. I'm about 5'6, and have never had a problem with the somewhat slim height difference, even when I wear heels. But then once we got engaged, I started wondering should I try to preserve those precious 3 inches?



During the first part of our engagement, I became convinced that I wanted to be shorter, and did some low to mid-heel sleuthing. But I began to realize that I prefer a taller heel, all of the shoes I remotely liked (with a few exceptions), were clocking in at 3 inches or so. The first pair that I really adored, were the Kenneth Cole Rich n' Post shoes, I rather fancy the champagne and silver satin ones.
















I really liked these shoes, and was rather partial to the bow on the side, but I wanted something a little more sparkly, but not glittery everywhere. So I thought I might buy some sort of brooch or earring set and affix them to the shoes, something like these earrings from White Aisle

Then, I fell in love, as I am prone to do, which solidified my decision to wear higher heels. And these babies will kick me up about 3 inches, and I'm totally fine with that, because they are gawrgeous!





Please excuse the inordinately large picture of the shoes. Its just because I love them. They're from J.Crew, which isn't much of a surprise, as I tend to be pretty smitten with most of their things, but these I really love. When looking at other shoes, I was somewhat non-committal, they looked nice but if I'm going to have a dress that is "the one" then I want to have the same for my fab footwear. I simply adore the bow and open toe, and like that they have a little extra sparkle without looking as though I went on a Bedazzler frenzy. The added bonus is that I would definitely wear these shoes loooong after the wedding. The one caveat? They're a bit pricier than I anticipated for wedding shoes, but I'm sure I'll talk myself into buying them within the next week.

BEE my LOVEBUG

Valentine's Day is just around the corner, and although the FI and I aren't prone to massive celebrations on this day, I just recently discovered this adorable gourmet & artisan chocolates called John & Kira's. They have the most precious chocolates in the shape of bees and ladybugs.

Pretty cute, no? The bee chocolates are filled with caramel and the lady/love bugs are filled with a dark chocolate ganache, um drool. I've decided for Valentine's Day to get FI a box of chocolates (but let's face it its as much for me as it is for him!). I bought the "Bee Hive Tower", which includes the yummy caramel-filled bees, as well as a 15 piece set of their every flavor box. What's additionally lovely about snacking on these delectable treats, is that the only thing you have to feel guilty about is the calories! Most of their flavor chocolates come from some sort of socially responsible background. The mint for the mint chocolate is grown by elementary and highschool age kids in Philadelphia as part of a nutrition program, the Strawberries & Raspberries are from a small family-owned farm, and their chocolate with coffee beans is bought through a fair trade program.

Not only do they have adorable, tasty and socially responsible chocolates, but they also sell them as favors! You can order favors in 2 or 4 piece sets, that are individually wrapped and tied with a bow (how cute!). I think they're adorable, but a bit out of our price range for favors, but still, it never hurts to look.

You Wish You Were My Bridesmaid!

I have a profound admiration for bridesmaids, all of them really. It takes a true blue friend to be a bridesmaid. Its easy to be happy for someone when they tell you they're getting married, but its an entirely different thing to get sucked into the bride's world of planning. Its also an expensive thing to boot. You figure with attire, a shower gift, a bachelorette party gift a wedding gift, and all the travel expenses for any or all of these things can equal some serious ca$hmoney.

I not only have a profound admiration for MY bridesmaids, but a whole lotta love. That's why I'm going to try them as much as I can, and here are some of the things that I'd like to do for my lovely ladies.


I've always liked the idea of giving gifts in a tote bag, and was going to get the uber-popular L.L. Bean tote bags, when I spotted these trendy little bags at Old Navy.


But now that I've gotten them these lovely bags, I have to fill them with something. I decided that I would fill them with a few different things, but try to stay reasonable with the amount that I spent. I previously posted about the brooches the girls will be wearing the day of, but here are a couple of them again, they're all from the fabulous online store White Aisle which has lots of amazing wedding things from invites to jewelry to socially conscious sashes. I love that all of the brooches are similarly made of pearls and crystals, but each have their own distinctive look. This way all of my girls have a slightly different detail to this accessory.














The next gift for my girls is probably my favorite. I was feeding my daily Weddingbee addiction last week, when I came across Miss Hydrangea's post on these lovely bouquet crosses from Room Service Home. I thought these were both beautiful and incredibly meaningful gifts.



This first set, is from 2007 and represents Faith, Hope, and Love. The set below represent Purity, Strength, and Beauty. There is one of each that perfectly represents each bridesmaid, and I was thinking of getting these and attaching a little note that says what their own cross represents, and why I chose it for them.



When I first thought about gifts for the girls, I decided that flip flops were a must. They're not much, but will be much appreciated after a day of 3 inch heels. So I bought 6 pairs of shimmery white flip flops from Old Navy. I'll probably tie a green bow on them (of course, they have to match!) and a little note. Something little that I'd also like to include are these button soaps and sachets from White Aisle that are, well cute as a button!