Dress Fitting - and the many adventures of finding THE ONE

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I recently had my second dress fitting. It went SO WELL! I love what she has done so far with the bustle and taking it in at the sides and can't wait for it to be finished! It was so exciting putting the dress on this time because it is really starting to feel like my dress. I have always loved the dress but until now, it has felt like the sample with it not fitting right at the sides and needing various adjustments. But now it is all coming together and I adore it so much more. Because my guests and handsome fiance have access to this blog, I won't be posting pictures of the dress itself, but for fun - I will show you a few of the beauties that just didn't wind up making the final cut... you will certainly see why as you laugh your way through these photos. OH! and I should probably mention, as most of you don't know, my original plan was to have my mom make a custom dress for me, so many of the dresses in these photos only have pieces of what I wanted in a dress, luckily I found my gorgeous gown and loved her just as she was!

Haha... this is the picture I made of what I was picturing for my dress...

This, and the few below it, were taken at David's Bridal on a camera phone. I was not a fan of the store or that experience, hence the lovely facial expressions.

I literally felt like a cartoon version of Sleeping Beauty in this dress - just AWFUL

And this is when I decided mermaid cut was not for me

They finally brought me a veil, but I still wasn't feeling it

LOVED shopping at Suzanne's - this is where the smiles come out

Everyone in the store thought this was for sure the one but I really only LOVED the sparkle on the top, didn't care for the bottom.

This was my second runner up - she's a Kitty Chen, but my fabulous Maggie was the ultimate winner, she is perfect in every way!

The day after the dress fitting I went to design my veil with the same woman who is making my jewelry. Luckily she told me to bring my dress because the veil I had imagined wanting would have looked AWFUL with it and I would have been devastated once I finally had them together. After two hours of looking through different lengths, styles, cut and embellishments for veils we finally designed my dream veil for the wedding.

It will have two layers in a circle cut so all the design is at the bottom, not by my face, and both layers will have scalloped edges to give it the texture I am looking for. There will be beading along the edge that will match the beading on my dress and give it just a hint of sparkle. Here is the closest picture I could find to what it should look like when she is finished, mine will be a bit longer and there won't we any swirly threading like this one has, just straight beading for bling.

Hope you enjoyed looking through some of my photos from my dress adventure. I'll be sure to post plenty of pictures after the wedding so you can see my dress in all of her marvelous glory! As always, thanks for stopping by the blog and staying up with our latest wedding adventures. Plenty more to come so stay tuned!

xoxo,

Samantha

Hair and makeup trial today!

Today I am heading over to the Lemieux's to have miss Kimbo do my second hair and make up trial. I thought I had narrowed down my look a bit but then preparing today, I realized - not so much... What I do know is that I want bright, bold and fun pink makeup - think bridal barbie :) For hair I had originally thought I wanted it pulled back in a poof on top with a bunch of romantic curls, but it;s going to be the end of May in Phoenix... so I am having some doubts. Here are some pictures of my inspiration. Thoughts are GREATLY appreciated.

My original hair inspiration - needs more volume on the sides

I think I like the bangs down like that now...

I Like this for a pulled back look but think I'd still want the poof on top

For an up-do type look..

 

The barbie doll look...

 

Bright pink eyes

Smokey Pink Eyes

Well that's kind of what I'm thinking... off to go try them out and see which is the winner. What do you think I should do with hair and makeup for the wedding?!?

xoxo,

Samantha

The Church!

I'm not sure if many people actually know this, but both Kyle and I come from Lutheran families. I grew up going to a non-denominational church, but non-the-less, I was baptized Lutheran as a baby and Kyle's family went to a Lutheran church while he was growing up.

Ever since I have known Kyle, he has mentioned wanting to go back to church and find a church near him that he could go to, so it only made sense that once we got engaged he would want to get married in a church. I had never really thought much about that so I really didn't have any objections.

This is where I pretty much started my whole stance on trying to do whatever Kyle wants for the wedding. I figure, if he has an opinion on something or truly wants something for the wedding who am I to say no, after all I am making most of the decisions for the wedding (since he doesn't typically have a preference) so, the first thing on my wedding agenda after getting engaged was to talk to the pastor of his family church and see what had to be done to be married there.

Turns out, Lutheran churches, and this one in particular, don't really require you to jump through too many hoops to get married. We meet with the pastor twice, take a marital survey and that's really all that is required. We have taken the survey and had one meeting, so we just need to get our last meeting in and we should be good to go.

I have come across a few snags with getting married in this church, such as a 3:30 end time for the ceremony causing us to start this quite a bit earlier than I had wanted, a very WELL LIT service room with lots of windows-eliminating any chance of a candle light ceremony and the big one - no center aisle. I know, kind of odd, but we are making it work, all of it.

I by no means hate the church, and quite frankly, have really enjoyed everyone there. The stained glass on the sides is beautiful and the front is very much like most alters, it's just not grand and cathedral-like as I envisioned a church wedding to be or pictured in my head. But oh well, like I said, we are making it work and it should still be very beautiful. :) I included some pictures below so you can kind of see what it looks like.

So that's it! The church we wil be getting married in. Hope you enjoyed the photos. I hope to post some of the reception site and the bridal shower next. AND I have my second dress fitting on Saturday - sorry not posting pictures of this, and a meeting to design my veil and preview my jewelry that I am having made. Hopefully I will get some pictures of the jewelry while I am there so I can share them here.

Nighty night wedding enthusiasts and friends.

xoxox

Samantha

Invites are out, now where are my RSVPs?!?

After many countless hours creating our save the dates and literally obsessing over them for entirely too long to simply have them need to be re-designed by the print-shop designer (my original concept but I wouldn't have needed to be so picky and precise) I decided I wasn't going to obsess nearly as much on the invites - I know, a little backward, but I just couldn't do it to myself again. For those who did not see, let's start with a picture of the Save the Date.

I even made FABULOUS save the date magnets to go with them, but that was an even bigger headache, so I gave up and decided to just go with the flier/card thingy, here's a picture, since I did spend forever making them...

Now come the fabulous invites. Turns out the company I went through for the Save the Dates wanted an arm and a leg to make my custom invites so one of my Dad's friends said he would do them for me and he didn't need to make any changes. By this time I didn't really have the time to spend scrutinizing over them like I did the Save the Dates, so I just gave them to him as is and they still turned out, in my opinion, absolutely amazing! I guess all my OCD and over obsessing isn't always necessary :) Here are some pics so you can see for yourself.

Sorry, they aren't the best quality, but I hope you get the picture (heehe no pun intended). Now, the big question is why can't everyone just send their RSVPs back already? I get a few a day, which is good, and YES the date on the RSVP says by the 17th, but I want them now :) It's fun getting new RSVPs and seeing who all this planning is ultimately going toward. Well thanks for stopping by and reading along with my crazy wedding rambling.

Until the next post!

xoxox

Samantha

Weddings are YUMMY

So TONS has happened since I last posted, I just haven't found time to sit down and write out a post for all of my lovely readers. Well as I try to catch up on blogs and updating you all on the fun stuff going on, I thought I would post some photos from the food tasting because I have those on this computer right now and, well I am really excited about the food :)

A few weeks back we met with our main contact for the resort to make our selections for the food at the wedding. First off I adore Melanie (that's her name). She is always so fun and very pleasant to work with. A few weeks before the meeting Kyle and I sat down and went through their entire menu and selected various appetizers, salads, side dishes and entrees that appealed to us and let me tell you, that was difficult in itself. Everything sounded so delicious! 

So we show up at the tasting and the room is GORGEOUS. (I forgot to take a picture) they have a table setup in a portion of a ballroom so we can get a feel for how the tables will look (without our custom linens of course). We started out by looking at the different napkin folds-oh yeas, there are quite a FEW napkin folds I learned that day. We decided on one, but it may not fold right with the satin napkins we are using so we also selected an alternative just in case. Again, no pictures, but I am crossing my fingers for the first, and Kyle is hoping for the second - we will see who gets the fold they want come the wedding I guess :)

Then we got started with the appetizers!

Hot Appetizer Options 1 - we picked Parmesan Artichoke Hearts the one on the right

Hot Appetizer Option 2 - we picked Chicken Papaya Skewers with Sweet Chili Sauce

Cold Appetizer Options - we picked the Beef on Blue Corn Cake (middle row) and Lobster Avocado Tortilla Crisp (third from the left)

Next came the salads:

Regular Salad - we picked this

Cherry Tomato with Baby Mozzerella - we picked this

Gaspacho Salad - we did not pick this

Shaved Parmesan and Wild Mushroom - we picked this

Followed by the side dishes:

Grilled Asparagus and Mushroom and Risotto Rice - we picked both

Potato and Butternut Squash Gratin and Rosemary and Sage Fingerling Potatoes - We did not pick potatoes

 Then the entrees:

Seafood Paella - we picked this

Seared Wild Salmon - we picked this

New York Strip Loin Pizzaiola Style - we picked this

Basil Crusted Leg of Lamb with Lavender Reduction - we did not pick this

Last we got to taste cake - again, I forgot the pictures but we picked 5 different cake flavors haha. We learned that instead of full-size cupcakes (we decided on cupcakes right away since I made them for Kyle when we first started dating and it's one of his favorite things to make now) they do mini cupcakes so guests can try 2 or 3 different flavors. We decided on 3 different flavors for the cupcakes, a 4th for the cutting cake and a 5th for the grooms cake (which I designed in private with the pastry chef so I can surprise Kyle with it at the wedding). I don't know about you, but I am SUPER excited for all of this cake!

The whole time we were there I was making all sorts of fun decisions for the wedding with Melanie and I started getting super excited. Things are really starting to come together and with less than 50 days to go I just can't wait for this wedding to get here already. One of the coolest parts from our tasting though was that the chef came in to talk about all the food, answer questions and just chat with us for a bit, and same with the pastry chef. Such great service to compliment some of the best food I have had in quite some time.