License to wed

As I sit here waiting for the 400 pages for my wedding programs to print out, I am still beaming for this afternoons adventure. For those of you who do not actively facebook stalk me, we finally went down to the court house to get our marriage license. I MADE Mac take a picture at the courthouse because I am a big sentimental goofball and enjoy things like that.

I am beyond excited about this. It is really starting to feel like I am almost married and I am about to be HIS WIFE. It's funny because people keep asking me if I am nervous and 100% and truthfully, not in the slightest. I have known I wanted to marry this boy for years now, we were just waiting to be a little bit older, a little bit wiser and a LOT more financially sound than two broke college students. Once we were in that place he asked and I of course said yes without a doubt in my mind. We have been together for over 5 years now and he really is a part of me. We are completely independent of course, nothing can change that, but we make each other the people we want to be (as corny and cliche as that sounds).

Okay, okay enough of the sappy stuff. I do have to admit that last week I did have some serious nervousness, not about getting married but the wedding itself. My checklist seemed to be never ending and I was fearful that I would never gt it all done. But with the help of our parents, and some assistance from the handsome husband-to-be, I looked at the list last night and almost everything is done and over with. There are a few things left to do (hence me typing a blog at 12:45 in the morning while my program pages print) but with the marriage license was the one thing that I didn't have done that absolutely NEEDED to be done sooner rather than later.

REALLY, now that we have the license, if not one more thing gets done for this wedding, it's ok. The absolute necessities are taken care of and the rest is just for "fun". I am so beyond excited for Saturday and the really good thing is that the temperature dropped from when I first looked and it is only going to be 92 degrees! It was 90 yesterday, so let's keep our fingers crossed that we can push it down to the mid 80's? heehee, wishful thinking, I KNOW, but hey, why not? Right?!?!

Well, as always, thanks for reading and keeping up with my poor blog who gets neglected every so often when I feel too overwhelmed to write or just don't have that second to spare.

xoxo,

Samantha

We are on the 10 Day Forecast!!

It's my next big countdown milestone! Our wedding date is finally on the 10-day forecast. I am so excited. The wedding day is getting beyond close now and I can't wait. Can't lie, I definitely gasped a bit when I saw how hot it's going to be, but we knew that was a likelihood when we set the date for the 22^nd. I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that this will change and cool down just a bit – send positive thoughts to the weather gods people – my dress is too big and layered to be that hot J

Sat		99°	0% Percip. Chance
May 22	Sunny	71°	9 MPH winds from South/Southeast

9 days until wedding day, 4 days left at work (I'm taking the 3 days before the wedding off) and the to-do list is getting smaller and smaller! Can't be a happier girl than I am right now – well that's not true, I'm sure I may be a bit happier come wedding day, but I am pretty dang happy right now!!!


xoxo,


Samantha

12 days?!?

Wow! We have been beyond busy this past week. I feel like the jump from 30 days to less than 2 weeks happened overnight. How are we only 12 days out from the wedding? Don't get me wrong I am head over heels excited and ready to do this, but geez there is still a lot to do. Just to give you a taste of what has happened in just the past few weeks here is what we have been up to:


At the end of April I flew out to Vegas to celebrate one of my last weekends as a single girl with a few of my close friends. It was literally one blur of events after another and let's just say we all happened to come back alive J A few pictures are included below.

Me and Elena, she planned the entire weekend for us!

All the girls on the first night

Second night in the Hugh Heffner Suite

The cute old man we found at McDonalds at 4am

The next weekend Kyle and his boys went to Vegas for the Bachelor party and a bunch of us girl's had a local girl's night/bachelorette party. I don't have pictures of this yet though, sorry.


Finally after all the partying was finished we had to get to work with the planning so we booked the rest of our dance lessons, we are going 3 times a week, had a group dance lesson with our parents, met with our DJ to finalize everything with him, talked with our videographer to finalize items with him, met with our day of coordinator to discuss the timeline and drop off finished items that need to be at the ceremony and reception, met with our pastor for a final meeting, met with the church coordinator to finalize the ceremony timeline, I had my final dress fitting and we finished our seating assignments.


You would think that with all of that we would be done, but no! We still have a handful of stuff to do, top priorities being, finish dance lessons, get our marriage license, write our vows, finalize the ceremony program, get candy for the candy bar, create and print our seating assignment chart and finalize our ceremony music choices. There are few things here and there that still need to be done, but those are really the only big ticket items remaining. As each day passes I truly get so excited and I know that as long as those last few items get done, there is nothing else that absolutely NEEDS to be done, so if there isn't time, there isn't time and I am not going to stress. I have loved every minute of planning and if I could do it all again I'd definitely would, especially now that I have a few tips and tricks up my sleeve.


Thanks for reading!


 
xoxo,

Samantha

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