We were at Giant Eagle earlier and the people in front of us in self-checkout left their receipt. I grabbed it when ours printed out to tear it off and this is what I saw:
How do people do this?!? I wish I had the patience to figure out the sale/coupon/Foodperks savings apex each week. Our 12 month savings is a pathetic $67 and some change. This is like magic to me.
Okay, you (well, one of you — hi Megan G!) asked for it, so…here is my attempt at “wedding blogging”, whatever that is. We’re in for a wild ride.
And I want to preface this all by saying that there’s going to be a lot of “I” and “me” in these posts about decor. This is not because I’m a selfish harpy who is obsessed with “my” wedding (it’s “our” wedding, thankyouverymuch); rather it’s because Jason has given me full reign over the decor/style/feel of the day…he is helping with vendor choices, music choices, and logistics and such, and he gets to tell the guys in the wedding party what to wear, but other than that he says he trusts my style and told me to run with it. Awesome!
Since making an initial inspiration board, I have narrowed down a “vision” for the wedding. Picture a big, white, New England-style house, with black shutters, and window boxes full of red geraniums. Like this, except without the lime green door and purple-looking roof, and with red geraniums…
So, elegant and charming and somewhat old-world but not stuffy or froofy, right?
I’ve been pretty dead-set on having potted plant centerpieces for a lot of reasons. We are not hiring a florist, so cut flower centerpieces are a no-go, and no one wants to see fake flower bouquets up close and personal (though, horror of horrors, my bouquet *will* be fake flowers, for reasons I’ll get into in another post). I want to be able to do the centerpieces myself, and I want to be able to make them ahead of time, which means I couldn’t just swing by Whole Foods the night before/morning of and buy some bouquets for each table.
But after all that, I still wanted flowers on my tables. And yeah, red geraniums are sort of going to be a running theme here with the decor — I’ve always loved geraniums, and anywhere we go that has red ones planted I literally stare open-mouthed at them. They are just so charming to me. So I thought — why not plant red geraniums in pots for my centerpieces? I could have a white, antique-y looking pot, a little clump of geraniums in it, cover the soil with moss so it looks more finished, and plop a few white tea lights around each one — voila! The problem became finding 13-14 (one for each table) antique-y white flower pots that were a) the right size, b) all looked fairly uniform, and c) not $20+ apiece.
Enter Ikea, always saving the day.
Hel-loooo dream come true! These are just completely perfect. Except for one thing. Our local Ikea doesn’t carry them!
Cue headdesking. But then I thought…we are going to be in Philadelphia for my cousin’s college graduation in a couple months…what if…
Lo and behold, the South Philly Ikea has them plentifully in stock! Let’s just hope it stays that way until September…you know I’ll be stalking that stock checker every day until then. Oh and the other awesome thing? They have matching hanging planters…you know how I said I wanted to hang flower baskets from the ceremony pavillion? Perfect!
I know it’s so early to be deciding on things like centerpieces yet, but anyone who knows me in real life will know how “me” these pots are, and they fit with the overall “theme” of the wedding so perfectly that even if my centerpiece idea changes 1012082702722342 times between now and then, I’ll use these pots somewhere, somehow.
Have you found any dream items at Ikea lately?
This past Saturday, we visited our venue. The ceremony will take place by the outdoor pavillion (weather permitting!), and the reception will take place in the indoor banquet room. We have free reign to decorate the pavillion, and there are hooks all around the inner rim of the roof, so I am thinking I’ll hang flower baskets, or poms, or some kind of fabric swag…the possibilities are endless! For centerpieces at the reception I am thinking potted red geraniums surrounded by white votives.
We’ve been penciled in for June 30th, 2012.
The next day the photographer got back to me, and he also has us penciled in for June 30th, 2012.
This week and next we will be signing contracts and paying deposits with both of those, and then moving on to securing catering. So I guess our wedding date is all but official: June 30th, 2012. I like it! 6-30-12. Six-thirty-twelve. It has a nice ring to it. And I guess that means that this Thursday is our negative-one year anniversary? We will probably “celebrate” by paying a hefty deposit to the venue, ha.
On Saturday I’m going Dress Shopping Part II with Emily, and I’m sure I’ll be back with more ridiculous-looking pictures of me in ill-fitting white dresses! Aren’t you just so excited? :P
P.S. — Would anyone actually care to read this if it turned into a wedding blog? I have kind of always wanted to blog about wedding-y stuff…and now I have the chance! I just don’t want people to think that I’ve gone totally bride-brained and do nothing else with my life except plan our wedding. I do a lot of things in my spare time (and I have a lot of it right now) but 98% of them are not blog-worthy. Trust me.
So — Wedding blog? Yes? No?
On Saturday, 11 of my favorite ladies from all my different branches of “people” came together to take me dress shopping. We started at Emily’s house, where I gave the girls handmade cards to ask them to be my bridesmaids. They all said yes, so the line-up is Emily as Maid of Honor, and my cousins Tricia and Charlotte as bridesmaids!
We had cake, cookies, crackers and dip, fresh garden strawberries, and authentic champagne from Champagne, France. It was one of the most fun, most emotional days I can ever remember having, and I know I will never forget it. Jason and I want this wedding to be personal, meaningful, and about bringing all our “people” together into one big happy family…and this was a perfect start. I had my relatives, Jason’s mom, and some of Emily’s family, and everyone chatted amongst each other and made new friends and it was just so wonderful.
Everyone else, click through to see pictures of all the dress tryings-on! I must warn you though, that this post is entirely gratuitous, and was specifically requested by a few friends of mine (Oh hai, Meghan!).
After three of the best years I could possibly imagine, I finally get to make this man my husband. And I couldn’t be more excited.
There is no grand proposal story, at least not “grand” in the typical sense. But it was grand enough for me because it was real — 90-degree-heat sweaty, cheek zit-y, headachey, totally unglamorous and real. We picked out the ring together. I brought it home from the jewelers myself. He had a bad headache but wanted to see the completed ring anyway. I gave it to him. He took it out of the box, slipped it on my finger, and asked me to marry him.
I said yes.
