Posted Sunday, November 22, 2009 4:00 PM
So, as promised...I am going to start adding a lot more pictures as I go along. Since I'm pretty crafty/creative, I've decided to make a lot of the decor for the wedding. So far, I have made quite a bit of stuff...but I have a LOT more to go! I'll have to post more pics on that stuff a bit later...but here are some others:
THE VENUE: Dunes West Golf Club
This is a gorgeous southern, plantation style "home" located on the Dunes West Golf Course.
This is the view of the clubhouse as you are driving up to it through the trees. It's really beautiful in person!
Another front view of the building:
This is the back side of the club
In between the house and that "green wall" is a very large courtyard where our ceremony will take place. I will actually be coming out of my bridal suite on the second floor (left side of the building)...and walk down the spiral staircase on the right side of the building--you can kind of see the staircase next to the tree--and the down the aisle. I really like the idea of this kind of "grand entrance". Let's just hope it doesn't rain that day! :-)
THE CAKE:
We definitely didn't want a simple, traditional wedding cake. It was a little difficult, but we found this picture online and a bakery that can recreate this beautiful "winter" cake for us.
THE PHOTOGRAPHER:
I didn't want our wedding photos to look like your typical cheap "posed" pictures taken with a disposable camera, so this was a bit of a challenge for me. After looking through tons of Charleston photographers, I not only found one who is very reasonably priced, but she also does AMAZING work! She does a lot of editing to the photos: soft focus, color changes, etc., so she was definitely the right choice for us. She will also be creating a wedding album for us, as well as an online photo viewing website for our guests. There are way to many gorgeous photos of her work to post...so check out her website:
http://www.childcreations.com/#a=0&at=0&mi=1&pt=0&pi=1&s=0&p=-1
OTHERS:
I'm still in the process of booking a DJ, florist and wedding officiant. And the whole lighting company is up in the air right now! The only flowers we are going to have are my bouquet and Kenney's boutonniere. So I basically just need to find a bouquet I like.
We are slowly getting there! 
. When I finish more of the decor I'll post some pictures of them. Let me know what you guys think so far!!
Posted Sunday, November 22, 2009 3:17 PM
So, a lot has gone on since my last post.
The first thing I want to mention is the president of the lighting company was supposed to be emailing me a quote (with our discount) by this past Tuesday. Well, it is now Sunday...and we still haven't heard anything! At this point, I'm convinced that it is either free or they can take their lights and shove um up their you know what! I just can't believe after all the stuff we've been through so far, that the PRESIDENT would "forget" to email us the quote as promised. How in the world am I supposed to trust that they will be there for our wedding day after all this?
On a brighter note, we got our wedding loan...so we are hard at work with booking everyone and buying decorations. Also, we bought Kenney a new truck (which we haven't picked up yet since he is still on a mission at the moment). It is a 2010 Toyota Tacoma..and he loves it. So I'm glad that my fabulous credit and GREAT negotiation skills got us a killer deal! 
Yesterday, me and Katherine went to Atlanta to look at a certain wedding dress designer...and I fell in love with a dress that I didn't even go there to look at! haha. Typical me. Now, I went back on the designer's website...and I saw ANOTHER one that I like too. I think I'm still gonna go with the one I tried on yesterday tho. Here it is....
It looks waaayy more gorgeous in person, and very wintery! The back will be lace-up instead of a zipper. Oh, and you can't see it in the picture...but the tulle material has a shimmer throughout it (on the pic it looks straight white). I think this is the one I'm gonna go with. What do you think?
I'll post more pics of some other stuff in a little bit.
Posted Saturday, November 14, 2009 10:28 PM
So, we are trying to deal with as little vendors as possible..less money to spend...and less things to worry about on our wedding day. Well, as soon as we got engaged, we started thinking of the type of wedding we wanted...and we both decided on a winter wonderland type theme. After looking around on the internet, we ran across this picture...(this is our "inspiration by the way)
Pretty right? Only we want a softer blue...like an ice blue. Well, we contacted a local production lighting company to see if we could get a quote for something similar to this. I won't get into too many details because we would be here all day, but long story short...it took about 3 weeks to schedule an appointment with the guy that contacted me back because we basically had to "work around his schedule". Crappy, right? I still went ahead and scheduled an appointment with the guy. Now, we had to meet the guy at our venue (which is 45 min away), so he could asses where power outlets were and whatnot. Kenney and I got there on time...and the guy wasn't there yet. We waited for almost 2 hrs, and I called and left a voicemail on his cell. Nothing. He didn't show..and he didn't even freaking call us. I was so angry.
That same night AT 10:30...I get a TEXT MESSAGE from the guy apologizing about missing the appointment. He told me he came down with a bad cold that day. He said he was in bed most of the day sleeping and slept right through our appointment. WTF? Was he serious? Oh yea, he also told me that he never told anyone at the company about our appointment. Nice.
The next day I emailed the company saying I wanted to talk to someone about an employee we had trouble with. A lady from HR contacted me back...and I told her the entire story. She apologized, told me she forwarded my email to the president of the company..and he was going to call me the following day.
When I finally talked to the president, I told him how pissed off we were about everything that took place. I also let him know that we were upset with the lack of professionalism and POOR customer service we had received so far. He said he was really embarrassed and that wanted to personally take care of our lighting and offer us a "HUGE" discount. So, I figured we would try one last time to meet at the venue.
The president met me at our venue...and he was very attentive and professional. Everything went pretty well, and he took a lot of notes about what we wanted and told me he would email me the quote.
Let's see what kind of numbers he comes back with after our "HUGE discount" he promised. :-)
I think the moral of this story is...don't let people take advantage of you...especially when it's dealing with your wedding!
Posted Tuesday, November 10, 2009 7:20 PM
Yep, I caved. Looks like I'm going to start a blog and keep everyone up to date on what's going on with the wedding planning. Since Kenney and I have family all over the US, as well as 4 bridesmaids--all of which live in different states--it would be a good way to share with everyone what is going on.
So, happy blogging...stay tuned for more!