Wedding's Over

That's right, Eric and I are now happily married!!! We had an awesome wedding. The entire week before I checked the weather about every hour and it was supposed to be 80 and sunny on our day. But when August 1st rolled around out came the clouds. It sprinkled during our pictures but we got lucky and it cleared up just in time for our ceremony and the family pictures, then proceeded to pour the rest of the night. Other than the weather everything turned out perfect, the food was great, the cake was amazing, and it was just so fun to have all of our family and friends together to celebrate. But best of all we got MARRIED!!!!!

So here's a thank you to everyone who made our day perfect:

The Pinnacle Center (ceremony & reception site/DJ)-they were amazing and made our whole day run smoothly, the whole experience working with them up to the wedding was great and they made everything so easy.

Sweet Cakes Design-we LOVED all of our cakes, they turned out soooo great and we got endless compliments, thank you Barb and staff!!!!

Horrock's Market-they did a great job on our flowers and thier prices were hard to beat.

Jennie Andrews Photography-I can't thank Jennie enough for coming all the way from Tennessee to Michigan to do our wedding photos! Not only is she an awesome cousin but she's extremely talented and made me smile all day. I can't even imagine our day without her, thank you Jennie, we love you!!!

Becker's Bridal-first and only place I went dress shopping :) I LOVE my dress and had the best experience there. I got exactly what I wanted and they did a great job on my alterations.

Uncle Jim-thank you so much for marrying us, it was a wonderful ceremony!

Jenna Grooms-I cannot say enough, you are an awesome friend, a million thanks for playing piano for our ceremony.

Design 1 Salon & Spa-Leah did an awesome job on my hair (as usual) and Irene did the BEST job on my make up. I could not have been more pleased!

My Island Getaways-Aimee Moore was our travel agent for our honeymoon:) She is sooo nice and hooked us up with a sweet deal, we loved her and will book with her for our next vaca for sure.

Secrets Capri, Riviera Maya, Mexico-we had the best honeymoon. It was so relaxing and exactly what we needed after the wedding. The staff was extremely friendly! The only complaint I have about our honeymoon was that it was too short, I could have stayed for another week for sure!!!

Mom-I could not have done all of this without you! Thank you for making the invites with me, you were a trooper even when we both thought we were going to loose our minds! Thank you for everything you did the day of the wedding. I love you :)

Stephanie & Nancy-I could not have made it through the day without you guys! You both went above and beyond the day of the wedding, I love you both!

Kate & Sherry-you are both such great friends, thanks for traveling out here and for being here to help with all the last minute wedding stuff.

Leslie-thank you so much for just being you:) You were a great MOH, my bachelorette party was awesome! Thanks for all the little stuff you helped me with from filling out place cards to bringing my nail polish and mascara to the salon when I forgot them. Thanks for always listening to me and opening your home to people the day of the wedding. I could go on and on, you are the best! Love you!!!

Project Cardbox

Hold on tight.....this is going to be a long one! Here is the step-by-step of the making of the cardbox. I actually really really enjoyed this project and when I was done I wished I had another one to make. This could be because I love wrapping gifts and this was just like a very complicated gift to wrap. So if anyone needs a cardbox, but doesn't want to make it give me a shout out!!!

Carbox supplies: Wrapping paper (I got mine from Ikea), scissors, ribbon, various cardstock, PERMANANT double sided tape(I cannot stress permanant enough, I used 3M), and of course a cardboard box.

Step One: I used a paper box from work that has a seperate lid, but you can use any box as long as it's deep enough so that the cards won't get stuck when people drop them in. The first thing I did was cut a hole in the top of the box for the cards to drop in. It would probably be much easier to use an exacto knife but I used scissors and it came out fine.

Step Two: Cut the wrapping paper to the right size. Since my box had a lid I only needed to size it for the bottom and then I wrapped the lid seperately. Then put PERMANANT double sided tape on the areas of the box you need the paper to stick to (I put it on the edges) and fold the paper up and stick. I tried really hard to keep the paper as tight as possible to make sure the box had had clean edges and corners.
Step Three: Use the same method as step two to start wrapping the top of the box. After the paper is stuck on cut down the middle of the paper that is covering the hole for the cards to drop through. Then fold the excess onto the inside of the lid and tape down (this is why it's much easier to have a box with a lid).
Step Four: Make the sign for the front of the box. I used 3 different cardstocks for mine (metallic black, metallic pink, and regular white). I printed "cards" on the white and used the other two colors as backing. FYI, when printing on metallic cardstock make sure you are using a laser printer, because the ink from an inkjet will never dry and it will smudge as soon as you touch it. Use the permanant double sided tape to attach the "cards" sign to the pink backing.
Step Five: Put the lid on the box and attach a ribbon with perm. tape around the edge of the lid. I left half of the ribbon to hang over the edge to cover the seem between the box and lid. Before attaching the ribbon the front of the box attach the black cardstock. Then attach the ribbon over the cardstock.
Step Six: Just attach the front part of the cards sign to the black cardstock that's on the box and it's done! Here is the finished product :)

Bridesmaid Dresses!

Here is a truly awful picture of me trying on the bridesmaid dress that we chose. The dresses will be black, not the cranberry color of the sample dress. The girls will also be shortening them from t-length to knee length which we all agree is much more flattering. Please try to ignore that I am pale as a ghost, my hair is flat and in desperate need of a trim, and also that the dress is 3 sizes too big....oh yes and that I am wearing black socks.

Table Numbers: Finished Product

The table numbers are done!!! They've actually been done for quite awhile but I've been a busy girl lately so it took me forever to get them up here. I would like to thank my wonderful Mom and Aunt Dianne who helped me put them together. Thanks to them it went really quick and I think we were done in less than an hour. Unfortunately, I was a little under the weather (just getting over the flu) and I didn't take any pics of us actually assembling them. My second excuse is that I had an extremely long day of registering during the day. WARNING to anyone who is planning on registering at Bed, Bath & Beyond, start your registry online and then go to the store to add things. The people in the registry department are crazy and try to talk you into registering for 100 of everything. It was by far the most exhausting wedding related experience I've had to endure!! Okay...back on topic, here are the pics of the finished product!


To assemble them we used 3M paper glue (you can get it at Micheals) to glue the black paper together. Then we used a hot glue gun to glue in the wooden pic between the two sides. I also set them out for a day so that the paper glue could dry all the way.

Table Numbers: Part One

So lately, I've really been getting the DIY bug! From the beginning, I had planned to make the table numbers myself. Then I had a dilemma (imagine that) because I had already printed and started assembling my original table numbers when I had an idea of how to make even better table numbers. I had been inspired to make table number cake toppers once we made the decision to have cake centerpieces so I had to decide to stick to the original plan or make my new vision a reality......as you can probably guess I trashed the originals!

Here is somewhat of a step-by-step of me making the table number cake toppers:

Step One: Print and then punch out the front and back panels with my GIANT hole punch.

Step Two: Make a stencil and trace on to the paper for the middle panel. I fit 6 circles per sheet.

Step 3: Cut out middle panels.

Step 4: Glue front panel to the first middle panel.

Step 5: Glue the back panel to the second middle panel.

Step Six: Let dry. This is the end of the first part of the table numbers. Check back later for the finished product.

Cake....YUM!

Okay so first of all I know that I have completely neglected this blog since my first and only post. But in my defense, the last couple of months have been crazy busy! Finishing up school and dealing with the usual holiday madness had basically consumed all of my free time. But now that everything is over and done with I plan on spending much more time on the blog. Now that our wedding is about 7 months away I am really starting to do much more planning which will give me lots of fun stuff to post!

So a few days before Thanksgiving we had our cake tasting! When I say "we" I mean Leslie and I...Eric sat this one out due to the fact that he doesn't really like cake (I know...he's not human!). Leslie and I had a great time with Barb from Sweet Cakes Design, she is the nicest person and so talented. She just did the cakes for Rob and Leslie's wedding a few weeks before and they were amazing! We tried 3 different kinds of cake, Pistachio cake with Orange Curd filling, White Chocolate cake with Raspberry Buttercream filling, and Chocolate Fudge cake with Chocolate Chip Whip filling. They were all delicious and I cannot wait to see what designs Barb comes up with.

Here are the cakes after they had been almost devoured by us and my parents.

http://www.sweetcakesdesignllc.com/

Since I mentioned Rob and Leslie's wedding before I just wanted to say how beautiful it was and how happy I am for them. Eric and I were so lucky to be a part of thier special day and they both mean so much to us. Here's a picture of us at thier wedding :)

My First Blog!!!

So after quite a few people telling me I should start a blog for our wedding I have finally decided to go for it. Now that school is winding down, I am finally begining to have much more time on my hands so I will hopefully have lots of time to keep up with the blog. To start it off here's a picture of Eric and I from when we got engaged, over a year ago! I'm sure most people have seen it already, but I really really love this picture (thanks to Nancy for taking it). Now that our wedding is less than a year away I am finally getting to have fun planning and I'm starting to get really excited. I can't wait to marry my best friend:) Oh yeah, and for those of you who don't know our wedding is going to be August 1, 2009 in Hudsonville, MI.