Our invitations were a labor of love for me, even if I didn’t do most of the work!

I knew I didn’t want to try and design them, or even print them, myself, so I spent a long time online researching my options. I ordered samples from a few places, which I highly recommend for online invitation shopping. You really don’t know exactly how they are going to look until you see them in person. Case in point, a lovely lady who got married two weeks after me that I know from my old job ordered invitations online, and while they were done to her specifications, she was unhappy. The invite was supposed to have a background of different ‘marriage and love’ words in all kinds of sizes and fonts. The problem was that on her computer screen, the background was a very visible gray. In person, it was so light you couldn’t read them, which wasn’t what she wanted.

In the end, there was a clear winner that matched the rest of our theme: the Butterfly Love invitation from Wedding Paper Divas.  They were perfect:

(picture by Tammy Martines Photography. Details blurred by me)

I don’t have a picture of the whole invitation suite, but we went with a mix of formal and informal elements, as the vibe we wanted to give off was classic but casual and fun. We chose the main invitation, reception information card and RSVP card. We paid a little extra to have Wedding Paper Divas print return addresses on the envelopes, which saved some headaches.

I also got really obsessed with envelope liners. WPD doesn’t do them for all of their invitations, such as ours. I was able to find an almost perfect match for them though. Mountaincow stationary offers liners in tons of colors for both rounded and square envelope flaps. We got a light purple shimmer that was a nice complement to the deep plum.

I also really liked this set because you could get a matching wed site at Nearlyweds.com. I paid the fee to have this matching site, and used it to put a lot of additional helpful information up for our guests. It was really simple to use, though I am a bit jealous because it seems like they have a lot of new features that weren’t available when we were engaged!

All in all, I am very happy with how everything about our invitations came together. I started early and it gave us a lot of time to think things over, make mistakes, and change our minds. We got tons of compliments on them, and they’re still one of my favorite projects from our wedding day.

If you’re still here at this point, you get a cookie.

It’s just over a year since I last updated this blog, when I was about 6 months away from our wedding. Now we’ve been married for 6 months and I am back. Or attempting to be back.

So what happened?

Planning our wedding got unexpectedly stressful. Multiple well meaning people tried to offer help that we didn’t need. Help that, perhaps unconsciously, was trying to change the wedding we wanted into the wedding they thought it should be. Between backhanded comments or the silent treatment over decisions as silly as how many entree options we offered, and people buying wedding supplies for us after we had already purchased the same supplies on our own, got downright insulting at points. As if we didn’t know what we were doing.

So, I had to step away. If you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say anything at all, right? It got worse, a lot worse, up until the week before the wedding. It seemed as if no one just trusted us to throw a simple party. And that weddings are only done one way and we will remind you of this every single day in the hopes we will wear you down and get what we want. It was exhausting.

But then, things got better. Family arrived, and it was too late for any more decisions. Supplies were dropped off, and out of my hands. And the day was wonderful.

My hope now is to go back and recapture some of that for those of you who have stuck around. I’ll try to wrap up the posts I had half written before I left, and I’ll try to cover all the fun things before the wedding, like picking out invitations and all of that. I want to review all the vendors I used too after I share some of our wedding with you. But I think my posting will be slower. Maybe once a week. To rest my arms (I work on the computer all day and they do get sore) and to give us time to savor the experience.

Then after that… well, this year I get to be a bridesmaid not once, but TWICE! That’s twice the joy and twice the wedding planning for 2011. Let’s rock the shit out of this.

I’m trying to decide how I feel about this veil that I picked up recently. I’ve had a hankering for a bird cage veil for a long time and I was super excited the first time I tried one on in David’s. The second time, I wasn’t as thrilled. When I saw this one, I figured the price was so good that I should just do it and try it with my dress when it gets here.

Whatchoo all think? (photos behind the cut, for those so inclined to remain in the dark *ahem*)

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Since we’re getting married in a Catholic church, NEPA Groom and I had to complete a pre-Cana class in order to move forward with our preparations. And since the King’s College Chapel isn’t like a regular, full parish, they don’t offer one of their own. NEPA Groom and I looked at all of our options and decided to do the one day seminar style class. Thankfully, the Diocese of Scranton offers a lot of options and is pretty thorough with the information they provide on their website. We registered and attended our pre-Cana class in February, well in advance of the big day.

Now, neither of us really knew what to expect, and I was particularly nervous because I’m not Catholic. All the research I did online really didn’t help because in situations like this, it seems like it can vary from Parish to Parish. So, if you’re doing pre-Cana in the Northeast PA area, my review will probably be more accurate. Either way, I hope you find it useful!

The class was scheduled from 8 am to 4 pm at a church about 20 minutes away from us, so it was an early and long day. We got there and got signed in, and they had some breakfast waiting for everyone. The room was set up with round tables, with two couples per table. There were a lot of good things that we got from the day, and some *interesting* things.

The Good

The class was run by a married couple, and was fairly relaxed. Having gone through this themselves, they tried to keep things light hearted where they could to break the ice. This particular couple was also time conscious, and covered everything thoroughly and still got us out 2 hours early. Sweet!

I think the whole day opened up a lot of good conversations for us – we really heard more about the magnitude of the commitment we were making, and it really started to hit home for us both. We also took the FOCCUS test, and have been having a good time going over those answers with our priest and talking about our expectations of marriage and what we want to see happen.

Finally, the class was very accepting of non Catholics. In fact, the couple made a point to thank any of us who weren’t Catholic for coming and for being open to at least listening to what they had to say. They made a point of not trying to force anything on any of us. They asked that we’d have an open mind and said it was up to us to decide

The *Interesting*

And then… then, well, I guess there’s no nice way to say this. But then there were the other couples in the room. I’m sure some of them were nice. I’m sure some of them were genuine and in love and headed towards healthy marriages. I just didn’t get to sit next to any of them.

We took the FOCCUS test first, and to keep things truthful, the boys from one side took their tests across the room and the girls from over there joined the ladies on the other side. I kid you not, during the test, the 3 other women at my table cheated on the test with each other. They asked each other for answers like it was a middle school math exam, not an inventory designed to identify points for conversation with the person you plan on marrying. They literally took the whole test together, identifying the answers that would cause the least waves, rather than what might be the truth.

After that, the couple that was at our table with us spent most of the six hours we were there texting other people on their cell phones, and showing each other the texts they were getting. At each break opportunity, they jumped up to go talk to someone else. It was a little discouraging to see, but I did my best to focus back on NEPA Groom and why WE were there. I hope maybe something managed to stick with them and will help them down the road!

Has anyone else taken their pre-cana class in the Northeast PA region? How did your experience compare? Did you get anything good out of it?

I got some long awaited and very exciting news from Florida last weekend. It looked something like this:

That’s MOH M and her fiancee moments after getting engaged in front of the Cinderella Castle at Walt Disney World!!

I’m so excited for her – we went out to dinner last night to celebrate and it’s fun to see one of my very best friends start on the crazy journey that I’m now in the home stretch of. Have any of you ever become a bridesmaid in addition to being the bride?  I’m trying to think of all the most useful advice I can give her without overwhelming her, haha. She’s already been gifted a pile of bridal magazines.

Congratulations dearie!

I was working on a tissue paper pomander (pictures to come) – just kind of messing around with the first one. It was pretty ok, but I had some problems cutting the paper the right size the first go around, so I had to trim some spots. Either way, I was checking it over in a back room of the house when my dad walked by. He stopped and took a look and I told him what it was and that we might use it for the ceremony or even reception decor. Now, if I had showed it to the females in the family I’m sure it would have been “oh that’s nice BUT change the ribbon/make it bigger/make it smaller/it should be real flowers/WHATEVER isn’t quite right.”

My dad’s response?

“Hey! That’s pretty good! I like it!”

And that’s it. Yep, dad’s my go-to guy for feedback now.

I took today off to run errands and we got a lot accomplished. Our menu is chosen, and we met our florist and pretty much decided on all of the flowers! I don’t necessarily think I need an inspiration board now, my vision for our wedding is getting pretty clear as NEPA Groom and I visit a lot of vendors, but I was cleaning out my wedding folder today and found some old copies of my inspiration photos. What’s nice is that now we have a bridesmiad dress, and a wedding dress, so I tweaked my board over at Polyvore with these updates. Check it out:

(Once again my dear, this has dress photos. No clicky)

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This arrived at my house the other day:

An unassuming little box that carried something I’d been waiting for… my veil! I found it on Etsy – the talented Tessa Kim makes them and sells them for extremely reasonable prices – mine was $35 after shipping! Compare that to what, $100 for something the same size at David’s Bridal. It’s a no-brainer!

I ordered the veil and a few days after it shipped, I decided to check in on it. She works out of L.A. so I knew it would take a while, but imagine my surprise when the tracking data indicated it had arrived safe and sound in HAWAII that day. EEK!

I emailed her in a small panic, and let me tell you, she is totally the sweetest thing ever. She called the post office for me while I fumbled around on their website and they assured her it was headed in the right direction. It arrived a few days later and she kept checking in to make sure I got it. She even went so far as to offer to send a replacement.

So you wanna see it? (NEPA GROOM – you know the drill. If you don’t wanna know, do not click!)

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One thing that I’ve learned recently, the hard way, is the need to take care of yourself. It may be that you’re stressing really hard about your wedding, trying to please everyone. Or maybe work is dragging you down, and the stress from your office follows you home. Or maybe you have some bad habits, like poor posture or unhealthy eating, that are starting to take their toll. Whatever it is, take some time to STOP and re-evaluate.

I haven’t felt good since January. I started to have pain in my back and arms – burning and tingling nerve pain that got worse with each passing day. I know I’m very, very stressed, but I don’t think I realized how bad it was. While I’m lucky to be able to take steps now to eliminate the stress in my life, I had to hit the bottom before I started to change. I was falling behind on work, I couldn’t blog very well (hence a lot of half done posts that were scheduled for March are just appearing now at the end of the month), and I couldn’t get anything done. My doctor sent me to see a chiropractor and prescribed muscle relaxers as a temporary solution. They help, but they also make me pretty useless.

I was lucky enough to have my doctor refer me to Dr. Malcolm Conway at the Conway Clinic, who found that I had severely under used muscles in my upper arms. As a result, they were contracting and the tightening was pinching my nerves and causing pain up and down my arms. It’s been a long road, but I’m starting to feel better through a lot of physical therapy.

As brides, I think we really get overwhelmed with stuff and it can be easy to let things like your health reach the breaking point without even realizing it. This is my small effort at telling everyone to always remember to take time for yourself. If something is stressing you out to the breaking point, take a step back and re-evaluate the situation. Can you fix it, or should you look for alternatives? You don’t have to get stressed until you POP, trust me, I learned it the hard way!

This is the one totally completed wedding project I have done so far. I picked it because it was fairly easy to do, plus I had a $100 target gift card that I was lucky enough to receive so it helped defray the costs a lot. I think the idea is cute and simple, and is one of those small extra touches we can do for our guests. Plus, it didn’t require crazy artistic talents to pull off.

These are all my ribbons and some tiny little flowers I picked up at various sales at Michael’s. I’ve realized that any concerns I have about matching purples have gone out the window. Just as long as it’s not lavender we’re good!

I got these baskets for $1 each at Michael’s, which I’m totally proud of. Also, please enjoy the view of the all the boxes of junk I’m saving up to move once we get an apartment. My first step was to cut some ribbon and glue it to the baskets. I put a few dabs of hot glue as I went along so it wouldn’t slide.

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