Wedding Recap Part 4: Reception and Photobooth

Here's part the final installment of my photographic wedding recap. If you just want to see the rest of the pictures, you can click here to view the albums.

This is so picture heavy, so to save blog space, I'm going to use a jump break here.

Wedding Recap Part 3: the Ceremony

Here's part 3 of 4 of my photographic wedding recap. If you just want to see the rest of the pictures, you can click here to view the albums.

This is so picture heavy, so to save blog space, I'm going to use a jump break here.

Wedding Recap Part 2: Getting Pretty and Portraits

Here's part 2 of 4 of my photographic wedding recap. If you just want to see the rest of the pictures, you can click here to view the albums.

This is so picture heavy, so to save blog space, I'm going to use a jump break here.

Wedding Recap Part 1: Reahersal and Prep

I've tried several times to do a text only wedding recap but every time, I get half way through and decide it's way too boring. So I'm going to use the awesome photos that my dad and cousin, Ciera, took. I'm also going to break it down into four parts: 1. Rehearsal and Prep 2. Getting Pretty and Portraits 3. the Ceremony and 4. Reception and Photobooth pictures. I uploaded all my favorite photos from each of these categories onto Photobucket, so if you want to see all my favorite pictures, not just what I decided to blog about, you can click here.

So rehearsal day does get a narrative because I wrote it before the wedding.

I spent the morning of the rehearsal with Lawrence, cleaning up our car; car wash, interior detailing, replacing burn out tail light, fixing some broken things. Dropped him at home and headed to my parents'. There, I put together treat plates for helpers, copy down our vows onto notecards and did a couple more last minute prep things.

My aunt working on cupcakes

 My aunt came over and frosted my cupcakes (and OMG were they awesome).

About midafternoon, my cousin and bridesmaid came over which was so nice cause I haven't seen her since Christmas since before a week ago, she lived in MA. Thankfully she decided to come home. Also, at some point, my sister showed up and we all hung out and chatted in my parents' backyard while my mom painted my nails.

Getting the grand tour

 Eventually, we loaded up my and my mom's car with decorations, supplies and sound equipment and Mom, Dad and I headed to the venue. After unloading and saying hi to the lovely woman who's letting us use her home as a wedding venue, the rest of the wedding party showed up and we gave them the grand tour.

Me giving instructions

We had to wait a bit to get the rehearsal started because Lawrence's mom and our two mini attendants were late but once they got there, we ran through the processional a couple of times, did a quick run through of the ceremony, and practiced the recessional. One of my bridesmaids couldn't make it to the rehearsal because of work so I had one of my other cousins (who passed out programs on w-day) be her stand in.

Everyone listening

All rehearsed, we headed to back to my parents' house for dinner. We had samiches, a yummy Cobb salad brought by my mother in law and an excellent pasta salad brought by my sister. Interestingly, there seemed to be two groups eating separately, my family (which is where most of my bridal party came from) and Lawrence's friends, but eventually people mingled. Turned out that one of the groomsdudes didn't have anything to wear the next day (hurray money problems), so Lawrence and his friends took off to go shopping.

At the end of the night, my parents, my sister, my aunt Michelle and cousins Olivia, Allegra, Victor and Sarah and I rehearsed the flash mob planned for the next day. By some wonderful coincidence, that little rehearsal morphed into a dance party. This is one of the many reasons I love these people. All those people listed above love dancing and don't worry about being silly pr anything. I knew then, that dancing at the reception the next day wasn't going to be a complete disaster. Once I finally realized that I was exhausted, having been up at 5, I attempted to leave only to find my car gone. After that initial panic that my car had been stolen, I called Lawrence to confirm that he had in fact taken the car (stupid communication). Luckily, my mom offered to ferry me home, so off I went to attempt to sleep, which took a little longer than I would like to happen but, excitement, you know.

The next day, my aunt, three cousins, immediate family and nearly mother in law came to help decorate the venue.

Everyone, hard at work

Blowing up the massive amount of balloons we had

Aunt and two cousins putting up those balloons

Wedding Accomplished

A week and a half later and I'm still trying to get back in the swing of normal life.
We had an awesome wedding where nothing serious went wrong (there were some program typos and timing snafus but those just made the day better). We were surrounded by people who love us and they worked together to make a wonderful party. One day I'll write down the story of the day but then again maybe not. I've been sifting through all the photos taken to put together our photo album (which I just ordered from Blurb). And now you can see it too! I'd suggest looking at it full screen. Enjoy!

Lawrence & Amy's Wedding Saturday, August 25th, 2012 by Amy Halom | Make Your Own Book

18 days

So, as of my last post, I had a long list of things to do. Let's look at that list now.

Things We Have Left to Do:

• Make my shrug
• Print and assemble programs
• Make jewelry
• Add dots to cups
• Edit down playlist
• Write vows
• Write ceremony
• Pick first dance song
• Buy rings
• Create day of timeline
• Make cake stand(s)
• Ask for more help from family and friends
• Create a list of jobs and instructions for those jobs
• Get hair cut and colored
• Get Lawrence clothes!
• Get gifts for groomsdudes, parents, helpers and host
• Create "must-take" photo list
• Prepare toast
• Make thank you cards
• Record and distribute flash mob choreography
• Order balloons
• Order glow necklaces for send off
• Create the photo I Spy cards
• Get marriage license

Over half the things crossed off. I've added a  couple things to the list but nothing major. I'm pretty sure we can get everything done in the 18 days we have left.

On Sunday, I tried on my entire wedding ensemble and learned two things. 1. my skirt is HUGE. We will be taking steps to make it less fluffy. 2. the shrug makes the outfit much more fancy, which is a very good thing. Without the shrug, I'm just a crazy girl in a tutu. Pictures were taken but I don't want to spoil the surprise by sharing it here (unless you guys really, really want to see it).

Oh so close!

Almost One Month!

The wedding is close, it's not even funny. Still not stressed about it. I actually think Lawrence is more stressed about it than I am. I guess I know that things will get done and things will be awesome.

Spent my break between spring and summer quarters getting crafty things done. Started my break off by having a baking day with the mommies to make all the desserts. We made 3 batched of mini strawberry lemonade cupcakes, three batches of mini brownies and three batches of mini cheesecakes. My mom is working on batches of spritz cookies every week or so.

Me on speakerphone with Lawrence on baking day

My work station where I made a bunch of fondant hearts

The mess that was mom's kitchen table at the end of the day

All our hard work ready for the freezer

My epic freezer tetris skills

The rest of the week I spent making felt dahlias (which took up most of my time) for corsages for the mommies and our stisters who aren't in the wedding party. I was also going to make them for the grandmas but they were too much work for me to make more than the four I finished. I also made 11 coffee filter puffs, though they still "need" to be sprayed with glitter. I had this brilliant idea to make lanterns out of tissue paper by covering balloons with the tissue paper, papermache style, then popping the balloons to have just the paper. Yeah... that was a failed craft experiment. Lastly, I finished our bookmark favors (not pictured) and photobooth props. 

Cutting out pieces for dahlias

The glued dahlia petals drying

Finished dahlia

Coffee filter puffs hanging between tutus in the craft room closet

Another puff

The cute but labor intensive paper lanterns

The photobooth props

Recently, I started work on the dancing playlist. I currently have 5 1/2 hours but probably only need 3 hours of music. It's time to start pruning. We've also got to edit some of the songs and attempt to normalize all the volumes, though these are things my daddy will help me with. Also, today, mom and I went out to the venue just to go over layout yet again. I'm so lucky to have the family who has offered their home. It is such a beautiful place and the mother of the family is an absolutely wonderful and helpful woman.

Things We Have Left to Do:

• Make my shrug
• Print and assemble programs
• Make jewelry
• Add dots to cups
• Edit down playlist
• Write vows
• Write ceremony
• Pick first dance song
• Buy rings
• Create day of timeline
• Make cake stand(s)
• Ask for more help from family and friends
• Create a list of jobs and instructions for those jobs
• Get hair cut and colored
• Get Lawrence clothes!
• Get gifts for groomsdudes, parents, helpers and host
• Create "must-take" photo list
• Prepare toast
• Make thank you cards
• Record and distribute flash mob choreography
• Order cardstock for thank you notes, programs and photo I Spy cards
• Order balloons
• Order glow necklaces for send off
• Create the photo I Spy cards
• Get marriage license

It seems like a lot but I think we can handle it!

Engagement Pictures

Monday, Lawrence and I went to my parents' house and had my dad take a couple photos of us together. Have I mentioned how my awesome dad teaches photography and takes awesome pictures?
So here they are. We only got 9 good ones but I was only hoping for one so we're good!

These last two are my favorite. <3

An Update In Pictures

These are in the order in which they were taken

The bouts finally with buttons on them.

The card box.

Dyed coffee filters for poufs.

Possible menu item. Taco Cups!

Wedding shoes that my sister bought me.

The invitation assembly line.

A better picture of the shoes.

Really cool polka dotted paper straws.

The tutu, nearly finished.

And here's where it's not finished (two days later it got finished though).

Being a Busy Bee

The past couple weeks I've been motivated to get things done. With 95 days left, I still have so much to do but I think I've been doing well.

 A week or two ago I went into Motherhood Maternity where two of the shirts I had picked out were. Both of them (top 1 and 3) turned out to be more cream than white. The nice sales lady picked out this top. Though I had seen it online, I didn't think I could wear a bra with it. Turns out I can. So, now I have a top.

With the top thing sorted out, I got started on my tutu as well as the tutus for my "flower" girls.

The three tutus, only the small one finished.

My tutu. It's about 1/3 of the way done. This is what 100 yards of tulle gets you.

The "flower" teen's tutu. Hers has 200 yards of tulle.

The "flower" girl's tutu. Hers has only 100 yards

 I also put together all the center pieces, print cool business cards to go into invites, and cut the colored cardstock down to size for the invites and programs as well as printing and cutting all the bookmark favors.

A mock up of the center pieces, they aren't all put together yet for easy storage.

All the hearts on their sticks and my parents' dog who always keeps me company as I craft

Super cool RSVP cards with QR codes

Paper all cut. L-R programs, bookmarks, and two layers of invites.

The Dress Part Five: The Return of the Dress

I spent yesterday with my future mother in law, Maria, and her SCA friends. I had tons of fun and got to talk about the wedding with Maria. She agrees with me that we can easily self cater and is very willing to help. Now I just have to convince her son that it's a good idea. Maria's SCA friends turned out to be helpful. One of them is going to help me make earrings for me and my bridesmaids. Maria also bought me felt to make dahlias in lieu of corsages. While doing all this, I had this epiphany about my dress. It's going to be super hard to sew the dress I picked out ahead of time and it would be super stressful to do it close enough to the wedding that we'd have accurate measurements. So out the window with that dress idea. New idea is this: purchase a white maternity top and leggings and make a long, white tulle skirt (aka tutu) with a tie waist and wear it right under my bust (you know, empire waist). It has room for the baby, I still get my tulle skirt and I can make it any time between now and the wedding and it'll still fit.

So here's the question. I went in search of cool, white maternity tops (you know, not plain tanks or tees) and found some. I narrowed it down to three choice. Which one would you choose? (If you click on the picture, it'll go full screen)

112 Days to Go - With Pictures

Holy crap, we're almost down to double digits.

As you probably know, Lawrence and I are expecting our first baby! This does mean that I'll be about six months pregnant at the wedding. So I've had to change (yet again) what I'll be wearing at the wedding but that's about all we're changing because of the pregnancy.

The new choice in dress is a high-waisted mix-n-match McCall's pattern.

The plan is to use bodice 2, probably midriff 6 (but I don't really care which), and skirt 9 cause I still watch my tulle skirt. I'm just super worried about when we should start work on it. I'm sure mom and I could get it done in a weekend so maybe the weekend before the wedding will be dress making weekend. I'm also wondering how hard it would be to make the midriff out of something stretchy.

In other wedding news, bouquets are done, bouts are half finished, and I've gotten work on the flower girl wands and center pieces. 

Over a month ago, on my spring break, my mom, sister and I had a craft day. My dad even tried to help till he got too wrapped up in trying to make things perfect (which mom and I kept telling him wasn't important) and got frustrated. Pretty much all we got done was putting Christmas ornaments and tulle on wire then mom assembles it all into bouquets.

I often spend my Friday afternoons at my parents house so I usually manage to get some wedding thing done while I'm there (since most of the supplies live there). One Friday I got the ribbon  boutonnieres mostly done, I just need to sew on a button in the middle of each and maybe get pin backs to glue them to.

Lastly, my aunt lent me her Cricut. OMG has it made making the center pieces super easy. Mom and I had to play around with it to get the right sizes for letters and things but we figured it out. Now I just have to glue all the letters onto hearts and glue the hearts onto dowels.

Here are the materials for the bouquets

Bridesmaids bouquets assembled

Bouts waiting for buttons in the center

My bouquet

The signs for the flower girl wands

As, Ls and &s cut out for centerpieces