Reception video goodness

The other night while stalking perusing Facebook my good friend and fiance of BM Claire posted a YouTube video on my wall. "Hmm, what's this?" I thought to myself.

So I clicked the link. And this is what showed up.



EEEEEE!!! That's my reception! And that's Tyrone and I doing our dance! And Josh and I singing GLEE! And I just died...again. Elliot, you are amazing.

Honestly, my friends are the best. So many have posted hundreds of pictures on Facebook. It's incredible to see the day from their eyes. I honestly appreciate it more than they'll ever know. Some brides (for whatever reason) don't like people posting pictures of their wedding for the Facebook world to see. I, clearly, am not one of those brides. Please feed my narcissism!

Anyway, enjoy the small glimpse into our dance-filled reception!

Please find your seat

One of the first "I am doing this and no one will convince me otherwise" wedding decisions I made was that I was going to have a seating chart instead of place cards/escort cards. I'm not sure where I first saw the idea, but it's been in my plans for a long time. Did I have any idea how I was going to accomplish this? Nah, of course not. But then, fate intervened.

I came across the blog Happily After All written by the beautiful and talented Kristin. We're basically wedding twins. Same colors, same wedding day, and our fiances have the same name. Freaky, right? Well, I came to find that Kristin is super crafty and has an Etsy shop! And what is one of the products in her Etsy shop? Seating charts!! I made note of this and told her that when the time came SHE would be doing my chart.

Fast forward a few months: it's a little over a month before the wedding, we're getting more and more RSVPs with each passing day, and are able to start doing table assignments. I check out Kristin's Etsy shop and it's CLOSED! Nooooooooooooo!!!! She needed to close it due to her OWN wedding coming up. THE NERVE. (Lol, totally joking, Kristin.)

After a bit of a panic attack I sent Kristin an email basically begging her to accept one more project. Well, she took pity on me and told me she could do it! YAY! She set up a Google Doc so I (ok, actually Josh did all of this) could put in the names and table numbers of people as they replied. Um, fantastic idea. She was also able to include our invitation graphic! 

Wanna see the result?

My mom had this iron easel thing so we're using that to display it.

I love it!!! I'm so so so pleased! Kristin sent me the file as a jpeg, I put it on a USB thing, took it to my local Staples to have it printed up. It was done in no time (they even custom cut it and framed it for me). I think our guests will really like it. And if they don't, screw 'em, I like it.

Definitely check out Kristin's blog as well as her Etsy shop. She has tonnnssss of awesome stuff, is super fast, super nice, and super talented. But she's also super busy right now, so maybe wait til the beginning of June to place your order :)

 What's your method of showing people to their seats? Place cards, escort cards, chart, or maybe something way cooler?

*I am not getting paid or compensated in any way for writing this post. I just love her and love her work!

Keep 'em fresh

Oooooook so it's definitely Wedding Week! Yeah...just putting that out there.

Anyway, like so many who have come before me (and many who will come after) I put together bathroom baskets for our guests. While they're certainly popular in wedding blog world, I've never been to a wedding that had them so I'm assuming that many of our guests have never seen them either. Hopefully they are enjoyed by everyone!

Here they are in all of their glory. 

Please ignore me in the mirror. It's for your own good, I promise.

Wanna see what's inside? Let's start with the ladies:

In the basket for the women-folk we have the following:

Kleenex

Lint roller

Mini pads

Tampons

Tide To Go pen

Face wipes

Hand sanitizer

Aleve 

Tic-Tacs

First Aid kit

Q-Tips

Tums

Lotion

Deodorant

Bobby pins

Hair ponies 

Nail file

Body spray

Hair spray

And for the gentlemen:

Lint roller

Kleenex

Lotion

Hand sanitizer

First Aid kit

Q-tips

Deodorant

Tide To Go pen

Aleve

Axe body spray

Tic Tacs

Tums

To go along with the baskets I printed up some signs. 

I found the wording for this...somewhere. I know, I'm so bad. If you recognize it and can I.D. the source I'll be happy to add that in. Here is the wording:

Whether your skin feels dry

or your hair our of place.

You're not feeling so fresh,

or whatever the case.

We've put together a basket

to help you along.

Now hurry back out

before you miss the next song!

I added part of our invitation graphic, printed these babies up on some 5x7 cardstock, stuck them in a frame and VOILA! 

As for the baskets themselves, I found them at Michaels around Christmastime. They originally had cloth inserts but I decided I hated them so I took them out. I put shredded paper (found at the Dollar Store) in the bottom so the contents would have something to rest on. My mom added some fake hydrangeas to the front to spruce it up a bit. I think they turned out really nice! Here's hoping people actually *use* the stuff!

Anyone else doing bathroom basketr? If you had them at your wedding, were they a success? 

Dance, Dance

My love of dance is well-documented on this lil blog o' mine. I bought a 2nd dress specifically so I could dance at my reception. My bachelorette party was centered around dancing at a club. I try to dance on a daily basis, if only in front of my bathroom mirror for a few blissful minutes. And honestly, for a white girl, I'm not half bad.

I wish I could say the dance I'm most looking forward to at my wedding is my first dance with Josh or even my dance with my dad (but we all know how I feel about that). But no, the dance I'm most looking forward to is the one I'll do with one of my best friends (and a Groomsman), Tyrone.

 Fierce

Ladies and ladies, may I present to you, Get Me Bodied:

(Source)

 Yes, that is Queen B, Miss Beyonce. I love her, Tyrone thinks he *is* her on occasion, and at my wedding we will pay tribute to her fabulosity. The song came out a few years ago and has stayed in my "Dance Mix" rotation ever since. If I need a pick me up? I play that song. Getting ready? I play that song. Itchin' to dance? Well, you get the picture.

I've had most of the moves down for awhile now, but I've been brushing up on it the past few days and will continue this week. To get an idea of how serious this is, let me show you the text I sent to Tyrone last night:

"I'm watching "Get Me Bodied" from The Beyonce Experience on YouTube right now. Better practice that, bitch. We got a performance a week from tonight."

And then another this afternoon:

"Just practiced our dance in my pumps. We got this. So fucking excited!!"

I'm not messing around. Tyrone get into town on Thursday afternoon and TRUST, we will be doing a run-through. Now, I'm not planning on really announcing this "performance" of sorts. Tyrone and I will probably just start dancing and if people notice, great. If not, their loss!

What dance, if any, are you most looking forward to at your reception?

Flower Power: The Mock-Ups

My wedding flowers are going to be SO EFFING AMAZING!

Whew, felt good to get that out.

If you can't tell, I'm pretty excited about the flowers for this wedding. Yesterday I had the final meeting with our florist, Blooms by Plantscaping, and ladies they are some damn miracle workers.

Granted, I gave them a lot of direction when it came to the flowers. I pretty much knew exactly what I wanted. If you need a refresher, please review these three posts. But even so, I had no IDEA the creations would look this awesome.

Behold...

Our three centerpiece options.

The tall centerpieces. They will have floating candles which are not pictured.

The first low centerpiece option.

The 2nd low centerpiece option.

For the low centerpieces we decided to go with the first option. The second one is equally beautiful, but we felt the first was the better choice for us. Also, please note we will have black linens, not ivory as pictured here.

While they didn't provide mock-ups, we made final decisions for my bouquet, the BM bouquets and the rest of the flowers. I may be a bit biased, but I think we scored the best florist in the greater Cleveland area. Our guests are in for such a treat!

It feels so good to actually be making final decisions. With just about a month to go it's getting more and more real!