The Wedding Shoes

A lot of time and thought went into what my wedding shoes would be!!  I literally searched from TN, to MI, to San Francisco to Vegas.  I stumbled upon my PERFECT shoes literally at midnight when shopping at Caesar's Palace Forum Shops in April.  It was love at first sight.  They were my first Kate Spade purchase and actually a shorter heel than what I typically wear, but the perfect height for all day wear and perfect since I didn't need to have any length alterations to my dress!!

Here's some pictures from the night I got my shoes, I look a little rough but mind you, it was midnight!!  

 

 It's funny to look through the pictures from the wedding because it seems my shoes had a little photo shoot of their own when I wasn't looking!  Got some cute shots!

 

My favorite

I really like this picture too.  Abbie (my niece) was pretty upset that she didn't get to wear high heels in the wedding but once she discovered that her flats had sparkles all over just like mine we were golden.  This is us chatting about how much our shoes look alike (even though she pointed out that hers still don't have a heel) :)

This is a funny one -- my dress is escaping from the photo booth and then you can see my shoes kicked off to the front of the booth.  I think it was a combination of they made me too tall for the shot and by that point, 8 hours in, my feet weren't saying they'd had enough!

Last but not least, here's a picture of the bridesmaid shoes I got for my ladies .  I thought they were so pretty and classy looking.  Poor girls though, these have a 4 1/4" heel!  I didn't think that through because they are all taller than me anyway and my heels were shorter so I just looked like a munchkin in comparison haha

 What did your wedding shoes look like??  

The Making of the Invitations!

Last year, I probably spent a good solid month hunting for my "perfect" invitations.  I knew I wanted the pocket style with inserts but I couldn't find anything that was just right.  Well, then I found some that I liked but they were about $10/EACH!!! No thanks, plus, it was basically paying someone to do what I could easily do myself.  I came up with the design LAST JULY and for some crazy reason waited til the last possible minute to get these babies together and ready to send out.  I knew I wanted guests to have at least 8 weeks to make their travel arrangements which put me in a major time crunch, not to mention, I spent two weeks back to back on the west coast for work at the beginning of April.  OH and throw in a trip to West Virginia for Easter and per-marrital counseling.  I figured out how many sheets of each paper/envelopes I needed to order and ordered everything from Paperandmore.com.  LOVE that site.  That's where I also got the paper for the wedding programs from.  I checked out 3 different printers in the Cleveland/Chattanooga area and settled on Splendid Printing in Chattanooga - he was the only printer that did thermographic (raised) printing plus I felt that he BEST understood what I wanted.  He even cut each of the cards down to size for me -- I got to watch him cut the paper and I think I lost a few years off my life each time the cutter sliced through the stacks of my paper.  Everything was exact on the measurements though!       

 

I dropped off all the paper/envelopes for him to print and cut and headed to CA for a quick business trip.  When I got back, I was able to pick everything up BUT we had company for about 5 days so everything got put in the closet until I had time to deal with it!  

 Then, on the Sunday that everyone left, I got to work.  Well, I tried to anyway.  Here's my wonderful attempt to mass produce about 130 invitations.  I think I got MAYBE 5 done that day?  Then, we had 2 more out of town visitors, so back to closet everything went. 

So fast forward to Thursday, MY BIRTHDAY, and the day that my mom and grandma were coming into town (we went to Vegas for another work trip for me on Friday).  So what did any loving daughter do?  I put those ladies to WORK!  We had an assembly line going!  Earlier in the week my wonderful sweet amazing husband had cut all the ribbon and that part was ready to go!  I glued the invite card to the silver backer with my ATG gun, inserted the cards into the pocket and then attached the ribbon once Mom had the rhinestone buckle and ribbon creased.  Interesting side note -- the buckles were the first thing I purchased for the wedding!  Once I finalized my invite design last year I began the hunt for pretty rhinestone buckles in bulk. I found these on etsy (LOVE that site)!  Granny was busy putting the return stamps on my RSVP envelopes and the two on the main envelope.  The final touch was my embossed return label on the back flap of the invitation.  I wanted something that I could use after we were married so I opted out of getting our name/my name on it.  We finished up well after midnight but we finished!!  Mom and I took them to the post office down in Chattanooga where a lady had told us she would hand cancel them (my greatest fear was that the postage meter would eat them!!!).      

While we were in Vegas, just a few days after mailing our invites, my friends starting sending pictures as they received!  Such a fun thing and I was tickled pink to see that the envelopes weren't damaged in the mail. 

Something Blue, Borrowed and Old

The only thing that could have made my wedding day beyond perfect would have been to have my grandpa there with us.  While he wasn't physically present, I know he was smiling down from Heaven.  I know he approved of Adam and would wish nothing but the best (and lots of babies) for us.  I asked my Grandma if I could have one of his blue dress shirts and then she and my mom made me a heart to sew in my dress.  It was the perfect reminder of my pa paw and my something blue, old and borrowed, all in one.

  

Wedding Welcome Bags

Since we had so many guests joining us from out of town for our big day, I wanted to do something special for those folks.  The months leading up to the wedding I was thinking about ideas for welcome bags and also searching the Internet for good ideas.  I was thinking along the lines of something like this -- where I could utilize my scrapbook materials in making the tags, but it just wasn't quite feeling like what I was looking for.  

  

Then, last October, we made a trip to Rock City.  In the gift shop, they had the most adorable black reusable totes with white print talking about the formations at Rock City (right across from our wedding venue on Lookout Mountain).  We knew a lot of out of towners would hit up this popular attraction so it became the PERFECT bag for our wedding welcome bags.  

I knew I wanted to feature the items that are made in and around Chattanooga so I spent several weeks rounding up those items.  Mom called the Chattanooga Visitor Center and they were beyond helpful!!!  They told us that they would give us FREE mini moonpies, Chattanooga pens and literature including coupons and maps!  Score!  I included fun size packs of M&Ms and Twix bars since they are made in Cleveland (just down the road), Little Debbie oatmeal cakes that are made here in Ooltewah!, 3 different travel size samples of items made at Chattem (lotion, hand sanitizer and shower gel); a letter I wrote about the companies located here and the tie ins with the products in their bags, a Scentsy scent circle (not made here obviously but since I sell Scensty I figured it was a good tie in); bottled water and Altoids (also made here!).  I'm sure there's more but that's all I can think of right now.  Here's a pic from the wedding of it all laid out -- I made little tags for the room numbers for those guests that were staying at the B&B -- for guests at the hotels we couldn't do labels - just had to leave a list with the front desks.  OH!  Since 2 of my bridesmaids were bringing their new babies, I also included "Rock City" baby bibs in their bags - totally cute.  

I'm not sure why the photographer didn't put the bag upright... that's another one of life's mysteries I suppose.

My little niece put together the little bags with Altoids!  She LOVED helping and was such a good little helper.  My mom tied the Altoids bags to the handle of the tote to prevent everything in the bag from smelling and tasting like a mint and then my grandma and I had an assembly line to put everything in the bags!  I think we made up 55 bags.  

Adam and his mom delivered them to the hotels Friday morning and then I dropped off the 19 to Chanticleer Friday afternoon.  They were a big hit with the guests!  I'm glad everyone enjoyed.   

Our Wedding Programs

After making a lot of the paper items for our wedding myself, I knew I was going to end up making my programs to match.  Here's a little look:

I was unsure how many to make and after looking online at other people's comments/suggestions I ended up making around 85.  We had around 130 at the wedding and I still had about 25 that we didn't use.  I LOVE how they turned out and they matched the invitations perfectly (will post those later).  I ordered the paper from paperandmore.com and highly recommend them.  They have varying shades/sides/thicknesses of paper and shipping is very fast.  You can also order samples before ordering in bulk.  I'm thinking about switching to them to order all my scrapbook paper in the future as well.  The pink baker of the program is a thicker cardstock and then the white stacking sheets are just a normal weight - they actually have a shimmer to them.  I found the silver ribbon at Wal-Mart around midnight one night... I actually had bought a silver glittery ribbon for the bows but it was narrower and only one-sided so once I tried it on the program it just didn't look right.  So, I headed to the only store open at that hour and of course it was Wal-Mart.  I ended up getting lucky and actually this ribbon matched the invitation ribbon perfectly, just a little narrower.  I displayed the programs in a cute white wicker basket.    

I'm Baaaaack!

Hello!  After a very long hiatus, I am BACK!  It feels good to be back blogging!  With wedding planning, working full time, keeping up the house and everything else in life, something had to be put on the back burner and unfortunately, it was my blog.  The months and weeks leading up the wedding were absolute craziness - I was traveling a lot for work, tons of decisions had to be made and life was quickly passing us by.  The week of the wedding, the wedding and honeymoon were PERFECTION -- but more on that in a different post still to come!  I have just been floating in the clouds it seems, I am so happy with my life and everything that's going on and marrying my love has really just been amazing!  

Now that the wedding/honeymoon are behind us, it's time to jump right back into everything else and tackle some things that have been lurking in my mind!!!

I've got some wedding crafts, organizing projects, house things and other stuff I want to post, but I have to slowly get back into this or I could make it a 234923 page blog post :)

So, in the meantime, here's a little glimpse of what's been up!

My mom took most of the flowers home after the reception to put on my grandpa's grave

 

Honeymoon!  Top is Tahiti, Middle is Moorea, Bottom is Bora Bora!

More to come!