Girls Work Party

When I left you all, we had gone home from the bachellorette party... drunk, tired, blistered from our beautiful but torturous high heal shoes, and pretty much ready to go to bed. I know that's how I felt at least. I'm really not sure what happened to everyone else, but apparently they all got back to the hotel or got their blow up matteress out if they were staying with me.

The next morning we slept in. Even though I had the entire weekend scheduled out,

I tried to be as honest and realistic with it as possible. I knew if we shut the bars down on Thursday night, there was no way anyone was going to be making a coffee run at 7am. So, I planned for everyone to meet over at my house around 11. I had some muffin mix and such in the cabinet and figured I'd make it a sort of bridesmaids/girlfriends brunch, but my mom ended up calling on her way from the hotel and brought a dozen Bruggers bagels and cream cheese! She's the best mother-of-the-bride/maid-of-honor ever!

Jessica even took a picture to prove to Jay that they had made me eat. I have a bad tendency to not eat when I get excited/stressed/focused and Jay had charged them all with forcing me to eat if necessary!



After we ate, I got most of the girl's working on the favors. You know I'd have done them ahead of time, but my wonderful friend Darby was making wonderful cookies as the favors and of course you can't do that months in advance. So, in order to make it as easy a possible, I had long ago designed what I wanted them to look like, printed out all the stickers and stuck them to the celophane bags, print and cut out all the photobucket instruction cards, and cut all the ribbon to the desired length and fired the edges so they wouldn't unravel. And when I got the cookies from Darby, she was awesome enough to go ahead and put two in each bag.

So all the girls had to do was fold the bag down, punch two holes (with my awesome but hard as heck) hole puncher, string the ribbon through the photobucket card and then bag, and tie a pretty bow. Here's me explaning how to put them together.

Tip: Do absolutely as much as you can ahead of time, even if you have to wait until the weekend/week of to do something, evaluate and see if there is ANY part of the project that you can do ahead of time. Believe me, every minute saved is a little stress off your shoulders. My wedding motto: It is never too early to do ANYTHING!

All the while, Jess and I were taking the multitude of flowers that had been delivered the day before from the wholesale flower company and arranging them into bouquets.



Tips: 1) Delegate as much as you can, and as much as your friends are willing to take on... BUT... only delegate those things that you feel you can adequetly explain how you want it done. Usually helpers find, "Oh I don't really know. Just do it however" frustrating! So, if you don't know how you want it done, plan to do it yourself! This is why I did the wedding party flowers with only Jess as a helper. 2) If you are arranging your own flowers, always start with the bouquets first! You might think that table arrangements are easier and therefore you should just get them out of the way, but you would be WRONG! You want to use your best blooms for the bouquets so, start with them so you have your pick of the best flowes. You don't want to have to be going back through you table arrangements exchanging prestine blooms for not so prestine blooms later!

We finished my bouquet first.

And then we made the two bridesmaid bouquets and the boutineers.

Everything that weekend, seemed to happen with amazing timing. Just about the time that Jess and I were finishing up with all the wedding party flowers, the girls finished up the favors and were ready for another project. Well, actually, they were probably ready for a drink after dealing with me the whole day, but you know...

So, I set us all up making the different flower arrangments to go on the tables, down the isle, and on the windows.

Tip: Expect that no matter how well you have planned, there will always been a snaffu. One of ours happened when I realized that I somehow didn't have all the larger mason jars I thought I did. (note: missing jar was later found in fridge with bouquets in them.) :-) I had a jar of spaghetti sauce in the pantry that was just like the jars we were using (actually that is were the jars came from in the first place). After unsuccessfully trying to soak off the label in a quick hot bath in the bathroom sink, I decided to reconfigure the arrangments. We decided to use the larger jars on the two buffet tables and smaller jars on the drink table. It ended up working out perfectly since the drink table ended up having more stuff on it than I anticipated. My original idea wouldn't have worked as well as I had planned. So, be flexible!

After all the arrangements were made, we cleaned up, and took some well earned brakes!

One Year Ago Today

One year ago today, the wedding weekend was in full swing. My Cali girls had flown in, Jessica was in town, Luke was in town, and Shifra would be in soon.

We had introduced the Cali girls to the wonderfulness that is Harpers' chicken fingers. We had picked up all the rented stuff, which involved taking two cars, because my fried bridal brain thought I could get 75 glass irish coffee mugs, 2 silver coffee urns, and about a gagillion meters of table clothes in the back of my honda civic along with 5, yes count them FIVE, girls! Thankfully, Jess was thinking straight and suggested we take her car too.

Around this time we were finishing up our pedicures and getting ready to head to introduce the girls to another staple of the south... Cracker Barrell.

I've realized lately that I failed to finish my wedding weekend recap blogs, and have decided that the first anniversary is a great time to finish those up. That way, I can enjoy the events again along with those who were involved and those who were not able to make it. Plus, I want this stuff documented for my children and grandchildren, and for myself.

But before I get into hardcore wedding re-caps, I want to revisit the true beginning of our wonderful wedding celebration and that was our amazing engagement shot session with the utterly fantastic Jessica Brogden Showalter! We had a truly wonderful time exploring all the nooks and cranies of the city, as well as revisiting the place where our love affair first began. I figured I'd post my favorites here, and offer a few tips that we found to be helpful.

Tip Number One: Wear something comfortable! Don't look at all the things other people are wearing in their engagement photos and feel like you have to wear something in particular. Along with running around from one location to the next, you don't want to also be fighting with a strap that won't stay put, or a posessed button doesn't want to stay closed. You don't have to wear the nicest thing you own or the newest thing you own. You just have to wear something that is going to make you feel good about how you look! For some people that's a dress and heals, for others it's jeans and flip flops. On the flip side though, do feel free to look around the internet at other people's engagements shots. You might realize that what you thought you were going to wear doesn't actually turn out that nicely. For instance, matchy-matchy doesn't usually look as good as you might think. Coordinating is good, but two sets of jeans and black turtle necks makes you look more like twins than beloveds.

Then we moved around the corner to this beautiful church.

Tip Number Two: If you are working with a photographer who is not familiar with your area, make sure you scout sites before hand. You'd be surprised how many awesome nooks and crannies are right around your house or work if you start looking at them that way. Have a good idea of where you want to go, how long it is between each location, and where the sun is going to be at what part of the day. We decided to go downtown around noon. That wouldn't have been an ideal time to take pictures out in an open area because the sun would have been too harsh. But with the tall buildings blocking a lot of sun, we knew we needed to take advantage of the high sun in order to get lots of light. Otherwise we'd be in shadows almost everywhere we went. On the flip side though, don't be so focused on the sites you've already picked out that you miss a great new one that pops up on the day of your shoot. Not to mention your photographer may be seeing things you missed before. Be flexible and ready to try anything. Now that most photographers and even your friends, are shooting with digital cameras there is an unlimited amount of pictures that can be taken, so be ready to experiment.

Then we moved across the street from my office and worked with these awesome stairs that lead up to another church. (Yes. Charlotte is absolutely in the Bible belt. We have churches EVERYWHERE!), and the street.

Then we decided we needed a well deserved break and some awesome soul food at Merts.

Once we were full to bursting, and before hopping the light rail back to our car, we stopped to take advantage of these awesome bricks on the side of Dixie's Bar and Tavern.





Then we jumped the new light rail back to our car to head to the next site.




Then we headed to Calvary Church where our whole love affair started 12 years earlier!




We had a wonderful day! I highly recommend an engagement session. First of all it gives you awesome pictures to show off at the wedding, on save the dates, and on your wedding website, but it also helps you get use to being in front of the camera which you're going to be a lot of the day on your wedding. It helps you learn how to work with each other in front of the camera and how to work with your photographer as well.

If you would like to contact Jess about a session, you can reach her on her blog, Wife of the Party.

Friends don't let friends go on Dancing With the Stars

Anyone who knows me very well, knows that I'm a die hard Apple Computer fan! My dad is a freelance graphic designer and we've had macs since the very beginning. Like a lot of apple fans, I'm not just a sorta fan, I'm a true blue, apple rocks!, want to be burried with my macbook kind of fan. And yes, I do contribute to the funk of elitism that one can feel when even walking by the apple store at the mall.

Anyway, one of the co-founders of Apple (but is no longer with the company. It's a long story!), Steve Wazniak is on this season's Dancing with the Stars. OMG! Just the thought of it made me laugh. Then I watched the clip from last nights show and... it was even worse than I imagined!

I guess money can buy you a lot of things, but it apparently can't buy you close friend who will say, "look dude. Love ya and all. And you're totally smart and cool in a dorky kind of way, but really, Dancing with the Stars! REALLY?!?!?!"



p.s. Ok, I will give him this, he can certainly laugh at himself! He's adorable, but still my first pick to get voted off.