About Us

Jake and I met through Match.com in January 2007. We spent a month talking very surfacely, and I honestly never thought it would ever go anywhere. However, after a 2 week absence where I pretty much wrote him off, Jake came back and pursued me full on. We had our first face to face meeting on March 8. Jake's a law student in southwest VA, so he came to Louisville for his spring break. Since he could stay with a good friend of mine, he was there for five days, which really allowed us to get to know each other. We went to the park, bowling with my Sunday school class, to my work, and generally had a blast. It was total confirmation of the hours we had spent on the phone befor ehe got there. He asked me to be his girlfriend on March 10 and I knew I wanted to marry him on the 11th!

The Proposal
Jake asked me to be his wife back in March, but it was very casual. We started planning the wedding in July, but I didn't have a ring. With him being in law school, I knew things were tight and it wasn't that important to me. On Tuesday November 6, the 10 month anniversary of our meeting on Match, he drove in from VA to take me to a nice dinner. I thought he was going to propose, but he told me before dinner that he had to send my ring out to be sized and that it would be another couple of weeks before I got it. I was bummed, but decided to just enjoy the nice dinner. Well, desert came and he was really fidgety. He finally said, "I can't wait," got up and walked over to my chair and got down on one knee and asked me to be his wife. I finally caught on...rememember I thought it wasn't coming!...and then started crying and said "YES!" I love my ring...it's exactly what I wanted, just a bit bigger. He did such a good job and I'm so happy!


At the restaurant right after he proposed The bling! I love it....it's so perfect!

The wedding is set for June 7, 2008 at 3:45, so we'll be married at 3:45 on 6-7-8. How much fun is that?!

A few more pics of us:


One of my favorite pics ever. Pier 29 in San Francisco.


The first weekend he came to visit and in the limo on our Napa Wine Tour in June when I visited his family in San Francisco.


E-Pics

Epics were taken by John Palmer Gregg in Louisville, KY. John Palmer is a good friend of mine and I highly recommend him. He was phenomenal to work with an dvery talented as you can tell. Please page me for prices and contact info. He is also available for weddings.




These two are some of my favorites! I love my handsome fiancee!


The one of the left I think will be our Chrsitmas card picture. And I love that you can see FI's laugh lines on the right one. I love those!

About Us
Ideas
Ceremony
OOT Bags
Flowers and Centerpieces
Reception
Cake
Other Stuff
My Attire
Bridesmaids' Attire
Hair and Makeup
Honeymoon
Vendors


Planning Photos
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I love the following pics. I've tried really hard to give credit where it's due, but if something is wrong (typically because no credit was given on the sites where I found the pics), you can page me on the IN, KY or June 2008 boards. Thanks!
Ideas


My favorite color is aqua and that will be our main color. One of my BMs is an art teacher and she suggested orange as the flower color. I love the vibrancy of the colors and am very happy.



We are having an Aqua and Orange wedding and I was so happy to find this picture. I've had a really hard time finding pics of real weddings in this color combo! Photo from the Aria website.


Save the Dates and Invites
Save the Dates printed at VistaPrint. I took advantage of the free 100 postcards and ordered 300 total in 3 different shipments. I did pay $5 for each picture to upload them, but it was a one time fee and I could just pick from my already uploaded files for the 2nd and 3rd orders. They look fabulous and got here much faster than the 3 week shipping said....Ordered on Nov. 19 and arrived Nov. 27 and that was with a holiday!




Save the Dates all ready to be mailed out on December 6. Yay!





Ordered my invites through Ann's Bridal Bargains. I love them! They're called "A Spiritual Path" and were $65 for 100. Ann's had fabulous casutomer service and once they shipped, they arrived the next day even though I didn't pay for next day shipping. They have a lot of invites that are found on other websites and their prices are better. I highly recommend them.




Alternately, we have RSVP Postcards to send to my side of hte guest list (the vast majority of the list). FI didn't really like them, so his side gets the normal RSVP. The postcards were printed through VistaPrint and are modeled after our Save the Dates.


Sorry they're a bit blurry. The backside was printed in grayscale, so it's not red. I really like the wording on this one because I'll be filling in the name and the number of seats blanks and that will cut down on people thinking they can bring their kids. We're not having non-family little kids, so I needed to come uip with some way to get that across. This solves that problem! Means more work onmy end, but it's not that much. Totally worth it.




I am sealing the invites with faux wax sealing glue that I purchased from http://www.season-creations.com/. Wonderful seller, they even worked with me to send me a single sample stick so I could verify the color. These go in a cool setting glue gun. I had a clear stick in my gun before I put in the teal one, so that's why the one above looks a little mottled in color. I ordered a pound of mini glue sticks for $20. My seal came from Michael's. Seasons-Creations also sells seals though. A tip when doing this: Spray your seal with pam very lightly. It will come out of the sealing glue much easier. Just be sure that you don't have extra pam on there or you'll get it on your envelope.

Ceremony


I LOVE these pew decorations. Since lillies are our principal flower, we're definitely going to be doing this, but the lillies willbe orange and the ribbon will be aqua. Plus, there will be tulle draped on the pews, coming up on every other pew. At the top of the draping is where the lillies will be. From Knottie HockyWife2Be.



From Knottie aloveindy. I'll be making something similar for our unity candle. I like the unity table setup on the right.


I love these ring bearer's pillows and since I haven't found anything I like in the stores, we'll be making something similar to this. The one on the left is from Knottie dgnpc.


I really like this flower girl basket...nice and simple. I'll be looking for one at Easter time and then will be personalizing it with Aqua and Orange ribbon.



From Knottie Proud-Bride. I love this idea for the programs, but I'm going to need a lot of them to hold the 275 programs!

OOT Bags


From Knottie lafelts80. I like this idea for the OOT bags instead of a box. I want to do folders with a lot of information and they would fit in the side of the bag. I'll also be ordering postcards from Vistaprint to use as tags with important phone numbers instead of the tag on front. Update: I ended up ordering white gable boxes from Nashville Wraps and then will sell what I don't use after the wedding.



Custom labeled water bottles for the OOT boxes. I bought 96 of them (4 packs) and will use them also for the BP on the day of. They're way cute. I ended up just buying regular full sheet labels from http://www.labelsbythesheet.com/ as they were the cheapest. I printed 4 labels per sheet and then cut them down. I put my label over the one originally on the bottle. The bard part was lining up the label, but once I found a verticl lineon the bottle, I just lined that up with the line on the backing and it was simple. Took me about 1.5 hours to do all of them. I downlodaed my template from pixelvixen's bio and then tweaked it accordingly.

Flowers and Centerpieces



My grandmother passed away in April 2006 and I miss her greatly. I'll be carrying 3 white peonies in my bouquet in honor of her (she always grew them) and I'd like to have this as well. I wish she could be there, but it will be nice to have go down the aisle with me in this way.


I am very allergic to roses, so our main flower will be the orange daylily. I also love tigerlillies, so if they are blooming, we'll be cutting those from the roadsides. :)




My Bouquet will have white peonies to honor my grandma. I really like the one on the left, but instead of hte roses I would have the white peonies. Amazingly, it's made up of carnations. The bouquet on the right is very similar to the BM bouquet, but it will have orange daylilies and no asters.




I really like simple centerpieces and am a big fan of the submerged flowers. Prefer the one on the left because of the height variety. The one on the right is exactly what I'm going for. See DIY for my trial.


I'd like to have the other half of the tables have tall centerpieces but FI is not a fan of them, so I don't know what we'll do. Maybe a low floral arrangement like this:


Left to right, Amanda and Alex, Ava and Shane, Katie and Moshe. All from the Knot.


I really like the arrangement on the left (from the Bloomz Florist website) and since we're using lillies as our main flower, it would be gorgeous. The one in the middle is from Erica and Andrew on the Knot. I also like the simplicity of the tied candles.



I really like the floating gerberas in the picture on the left. Vases like that can be found pretty cheaply from Hobby Lobby, too. The centerpieces on the right are from the Bloomz Florist's website. I love the orange!!


Since we are doing a sweetheart table, I really like this look. From Jamie and Bryan on the Knot.

Reception


Instead of having cameras on the tables, we set up a ohoto sharing website through DotPhoto.com and are asking people to upload their photos there. They can log on, see the pictures that were taken by other guests and even order pictures from there if they'd like. We ordered free premium business cards from VistaPrint and will put them in small envelopes with the business cards with the info for our pro pics.


I really like the idea of having the rose petals in between so it's easier to grab the escort cards. From Knottie lafelts80. I'll also now be putting families and couples together on the same card, which will help greatly with space for my 400 guests! The one on the right is a really diferent way of doing it and I just like the modern feel of it. From Knottie Mrsbobcat.


I really like this idea for the card box, but it seems a bit complex and maybe not as formal as what I'm going for. From Knottie heatherkj (her bio includes a link to the blog with instructions). After showing FI all of the ideas for a cardbox, this was the one he liked the most, so this is what we're doing. Looks like my dad has a project for the wedding!


This was my other idea for a card box. Leaving it up for other people to see. From left is from Knottie IntoTheBlue.


Our cake serving set from Lenox. It's called Forevermore. Our toasting flutes are Waterford's Wishes Love and Romace and were a gift from FMIL.


Cake


I really want flowers in between the layers on the cake like these. FI prefers round, I like square, but it's one of the few things he's asked for so we're going with round. Photo on right from Knottie Thrasher2Be.


We LOVE this cake and gave our baker this picture to recreate. We'll have all 5 tiers, then an additional 2 round cakes, one on each side. In total, they'll serve 391 people which will hopefully be enough cake! Instead of the roses, there will be orange daylilies, our main flower, in between the tiers and on top of the side rounds. From Knottie LeslieReames.



I love this cake setup table. I love the runner and then we could use that later in our house, too.

Other Stuff


I really love these. I'll be doing these as gifts for both moms and maybe something similar for the grandmas who will be there.


I like the idea of a teddy bear toss, but I don't know if we'll do it or not. From Knottie artsychemgirl.


We'll definitely be doing this! I've heard you can also send an invite to Mickey and Minnie, but I don't have the address. Also from Knottie artsychemgirl.


DIY


I really wanted to do the sunken flowers on part of the tables at the reception. So, I tried to DIY. Got the flowers and vase from Hobby Lobby for 50%. They flowers are a baby's breath type. I just wanted something small and orange. I snipped as much stem off as possible, added the water in slowly so they didn't get all squished together, used a straw to break them up a tad, plopped in the candle and lit it. I burned the candle for 4 hours and the pic on the far right sows what it looked like at that point. I'd say it would probably last for 4.5 hours. The fabric underneath is turquoise poly satin that I got at Hobby Lobby for $2.99/yard before the 40% off coupon. My mom is sewing 2 ft. squares of it to go on each table to give more color in the midst of the white linens. Total cost of table squares, including thread, after 40% off coupons for 50 tables: $35.

Programs






Program covers. Aqua Medium cardstock from www.ThePaperMillStore.com, $29.97 for 500 sheets, will get orange cardstock from somewhere in town. Font for the L is The King and Queen Font downloaded from www.fontfreak.com. Ribbon from Michael's, $3.99 for 20 yards before the 40% off sale. This is using 2 ft. of ribbon, but I want to either get a binder punch so I can punch the holes closer together and have more for the bow or use more ribbon in the bow.



Table Number Holders: Not so sure how I like this so far. It was really hard to get the tall part straight. And it still isn't. I purchased 14 gauge wire from Home Depot for less than $7 for 100 ft. Bent it with my hands and just kept bending until I was relatively happy. It does stand and hold the cardstock on it's own, but it's not super steady. I'm wondering if it would be better with 4 loops on the bottom instead of just 2. And then again, I might just buy cheap picture frames from the Dollar Tree website. :) UPDATE: Scrapped this project. I can rent the table card holders that Ilove for $1 each from the same place I'm renting my table numbers. MUCH easier!

Bubbles


Bubbles for our departure! I have 300 done so far. 150 are aqua with an orange ribbon and 150 are orange with an aqua ribbon. Once our final numbers come in, I'll do the rest that are needed.


Transportation



I'm so excited about this! Jake and I are getting away in a 1938 Cadillac. It's beautiful and I am super excited. It will come back at the end of the night and take us to our hotel.


For the BP, we got a 10 person stretch limo to transport them from the church to the reception hall. We'll be stopping at a local park to take some pictures as well. I hope that they are comfortable.

Jacob, stop reading right now.

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My Attire




Here's my dress! It's from David's Bridal and I am so excited about it! I didn't even want to try it on, but my saleslady asked me to, so I did. Imagine my shock and surprise when I stepped out and looked in the mirror and fell in love with the dress. I love that it makes my boobs look small and makes me look longer in the abdomen. I will be ordering it all in white, instead of red and white. Perhaps the best part is that I won't have to pay for any alterations because it's a corset back and because the hem is the perfect length! I'll just need to have the bustle put in. Woo hoo! I'm sooo happy with this. And with the fact that I have lost a full dress size plus some since the first time I tried on dresses.


My veil. I ordered it from www.veilsbyolena.com. It was $29 plus $6.75 in shipping. I like it, but I almost wish I would have gone with a less full width.



I want to do a University of Arizona garter for FI because he's an alum and Tucson native. Found these on ebay, and might end up with them or something similar.


I love this purse! I got it at Kohl's for only $15! Yahoo!!
My beautiful shoes....they are also acting as my "Something Blue". And, they almost perfectly match my BM dresses. They look really blue in these pics, but are a turquoise color. Plus, they were $10 on clearance at Sears.


Bridesmaids' Attire



My girls are wearing various dresses in the Pool color from David's Bridal. 2 of my BMs tried on every dress available in Pool and both liked this one the most. It's my "preferred" BM dress. I'm still fine with they choose another one, but if they all end up with this one, I will not be unhappy. It was also one of the cheapest dresses....only $120! And since I'm getting my dress at David's, it'll only be $100. Yay for a cheap dress for them!


Hair and Makeup


I really like Knottie ATRNY2BE's hair. I want mine down, but pulled off my face a bit.



I really like all of these, but think that the far right is what I'll end up with because of length. From Left to Right: Knottie CoCo81's bio, Knottie mmgood06, and no clue.



I really like this makeup...nice and natural. From Mrs.Julia.Goolia on the left and some famous model on the right.



The only alterations I need is to have my bustle installed. Here are some ideas from other brides with a pickup skirt. L to R: Bride071706, jaqattack, nannersp.




Honeymoon



We're going to the Atrium Beach Resort in Simpson Bay, St. Maarten for our HM. The resort looks beautiful and I'm sure we'll have a great time exploring the island and maybe taking a day trip to another neighboring one.


VENDORS

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Ceremony Location - Indian Creek Christian Church, Indianapolis, IN
Officiant - Dr. Gary Johnson
Reception Location - The Atrium
Great location, good seating, and while the outside is a bit blah, the inside of the room is gorgeous. We're definitely renting chair covers so it doesn't have the "bowling banquet" feel. And, I got my caterer and cake person by choosing the Royal Wedding Package. Made it very easy. At $450 for 5 hours, you really can't go wrong!
Caterers - The Atrium
We're using the caterer at The Atrium. Made it easy to decide!
Cake Creator - A Piece of Cake
They are the cake creator that The Atrium uses for the wedding package which includes the cake. We're meeting with them on November 21 to go over the flavors and design.
Florist - Nanz and Kraft, Louisville and Wanamaker Flower Shoppe, Indianapolis
One of the guys in my Sunday school class is the manager at Nanz and Kraft Florists in Louisville. He was a no-brainer for my flowers. We'll be using orange flowers, mostly daylilies, for everything. My bouquet will have 3 peonies to honor my grandmother who passed away in April 2005. Debbie at Wanamaker Flower Shoppe will be doing my ceremony and reception flowers.
Photographer - Troy Hill, www.troyphoto.com
I love Troy's photography style! I get all of my negatives, which was super important to me. I'm a scrapbooker and need to be able to print hundreds of pics for the album I'll be making. He promises to have our onine proofs up within 3 weeks, which is awesome. He's a former photojournalist and has tons of experience. Plus, he sent me a thank you card with a $10 Starbucks gift card. What a wonderful man! He's been wonderful to work with and I trust him completely.
Videographer - Joey Davis
Joey is one of my best friends from college. He's got his own video company and has had work featured on Entertainment Tonight. I was the DOC for his wedding in November 2007.
Disc Jockey - Steve from Patrick's DJ
He was recommended to me by our reception venue. All of the other recommendations I had received were already booked for our date. I was impressed by the fact that when we talked on the phone, he never said "Um", "Uh", or "Like", very important things as I used to do radio. His info booklet was full of typos, and that drives me nuts, but as my DF reminds me, all that matters is his ability to play music. I like the fact that the venue recommended him. He's gotta be good if they're doing that!
Musicians - Brass Quintet, my brother and his friends
Typing that, it looks so ghetto, but it's true! My brother is a Music Business grad from Indiana State and plays tuba. He and four of his friends will be playing the prelude and ceremony music. I found arrangements from Canadian Brass of wedding music, including Canon in D, the Bridal Chorus, and the Wedding March. I'm super excited about this!
Transportation - Antique Limo of Indianapolis
Great customer service. http://www.antiquelimoofindy.com/. The owner's wife is an IN Knottie!
Invitations - A Spiritual Path from Ann's Bridal Bargains
I love this invite. I thought about doing my own, but I fell in love with this invite. The verse made my mom cry when I read it to her.
Rental Company - Men's Warehouse
Going with them so they'll match the BM dresses from David's
My Dress - David's Bridal
Veil - Veils by Olena, http://www.veilsbyolena.com/
Bridesmaid Dresses - David's Bridal, various
My BMs are able to pick their own dresses because I am the most awesome bride ever! As long as they are the Pool color and long, I really don't care. I want them to find something that looks good on them and is within their budget.
Hair and Makeup- Amy Sloan
I've literally known Amy since I was in 1st grade and she was in kindergarten. She's an incredibly talented hairstylist and I'm really looking forward to having her do my hair. She has a salon out of her home and is located less than a mile from the church. Yay!
Honeymoon Destination - Atrium Beach Resort at Simpson Bay, St. Maarten
We're using FILs RCI timeshare and are going to St. Maarten. The resort looks very nice. We also found a great time for tickets and I'm happy about that.








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