prep in motion.

Just 8 days left until the wedding!!!

My mom arrived in town on Saturday. Sunday we spent downtown celebrating the 4th. We took Rufus along with us, and he did not appreciate the fireworks. Poor little guy. But he survived.

Since then we’ve been doing some final shopping for wedding supplies, finalizing details with the vendors, and of course playing with Rufus.

This morning Andy and I went to the Register of Deeds and got our marriage license. So now all the paperwork is ready for the wedding – just need those final signatures on the day. We also walked around Bellamy for a little bit so my mom could see the venue and we could get the layout of tables, buffet, cake, etc. worked out for the big day.

Afterward we got to work assembling the centerpieces so we would be ready to go for next Thursday and just need to be placed on the table.

Rufus helped us out a bit by chewing on cardboard pieces that came in the lantern’s box:

While my mom and I had a small assembly line of assembling the hanging lanterns & getting the flowers tied on.

We also were able to finish printing out the labels for the candy buffet on what were supposed to be place cards that match my invitation set. So all in all it was a pretty productive day!

Now if the weather forecast would just go from 60% of rain to 0%, I’d be happy. I might even settle for 30%.

The end stretch…

Wow, we’re getting close now. Only about 17 days until the wedding. My mom arrives on Saturday to begin the final prep. I can’t believe how quickly it’s all come up. But things are really starting to fall into place now. I made the final payment for the ceremony/reception site, cake payment went out last week, flower payment is due on Thursday, and the catering headcount is due the Monday after that!

RSVPs have been rolling in & I’m pretty sure we’ve gotten almost everyone’s. Looks like the final guest count will be around 52. Thanks to everyone who RSVP’d. It’s been a lot of fun opening them up to see who sent theirs back and what music selections they included.

We’ve also been receiving a lot of gifts lately. Thank you to everyone who has already sent something. We are having a lot of fun putting things to use already: new plates, pans, serving bowls, coffee machine, toaster, etc. etc. I’m already running out of room in the kitchen for all these goodies! Formal thank you notes will go out after the wedding.

I also finalized the ceremony wording last week. It’ll be short, but sweet, I think. It feels good to have something that important out of the way, I must admit.

I’ve also made a few last minute purchases for the wedding. I finally got Andy’s ring ordered:

It should be arriving soon. There’s a small delay because it’s handmade.

I also bought Alex and I a few hair accessories for the wedding:

I know how quickly the next few weeks are going to go by, but hopefully I’ll get a chance to update as things progress & we get closer and closer. I can’t wait to see everyone soon!

you are formally invited…

A big package of wedding goodies arrived on my doorstop today from my mom. And included inside was my first “in-person” glimpse of the wedding invites! I had seen pictures & planned them through email, but I had never seen them for myself until today. And I love them!

These were a very lucky Michael’s clearance find that we just happened to stumble across back at the beginning of the year. I knew I didn’t want something really fancy or formal because that wasn’t going to be the tone of our wedding, so why should it be the tone of the invite?

I think these invites set just the right mood for the wedding – fun, playful, summery, and not over the top. I gotta give a big thanks to my mom for all the work she did on these including getting them mailed out for me. THANK YOU, MOM!!!

Now comes the stalking of the mailbox for RSVP cards. Thankfully, my mom included an RSVP card organizer in the package with the invites. (So return your RSVPs!!!!)

P.S. Holy cow! The wedding is less than two months away.

Enjoying Wilmington

Andy & I haven’t been doing too many wedding related things lately. I think we’ve kind of hit that middle area where most of the stuff is taken care of & planned but it isn’t time to rush about getting it all put together yet. I’ve even bought most of the greenery that will flank the stairs where the ceremony will be performed (and my porch looks like a tropical jungle!).

And now it’s spring time in Wilmington – which brings with it blooming azaelas, lazy days at the beach (not in the water yet, brrr!), and my blue car turning yellow from all the pollen covering it.

Here are some pictures of Andy & I enjoying the lovely weather we’ve been having lately.

Fern curls unraveling at the wildflower preserve on campus.

Venus flytraps – out in the wild! Apparently this part of the country is the only place where they grow naturally.

Our pollen covered shoes after taking our little hike. Imagine your whole car looking like this!

Andy trying to find a shark tooth at the beach. No success yet.

Me enjoying the beach. I put my feet in the water & they turned into icicles. It’s still 50 something degrees.

Gorgeous blooming tree at Andy’s lab. No idea what it is, but I want one. It even smells fantastic.

Some lovely marsh birds enjoying the weather also.

keeping it sweet.

One of the coolest, latest, gotta-have-it trends for weddings seems to be the candy buffet. And I can see why: yummy candy, fun displays, and a wedding favor almost everyone will love.

When we first began wedding brainstorming, a candy buffet was one of the first things to be put on the “Must Have” list. My mom and I began looking at candy buffet ideas online to get some ideas of displays, candies, etc. Here’s a couple of my favorites:

I love the colors and the display on this one – the different sizes & heights + the retro flair makes this buffet so pretty. Makes me feel like a kid in a candy shop. I especially love the labels on the jars.

This one I love because of the fun display. It has a completely different look/feel than the one before which was so bright & playful. This one manages to take candy and make it look sophisticated, but still fun. My absolute favorites are the rock candies and the swirly pops.

My candy bar will be all it’s own, though. Unlike the clear glass containers & apothacary jars that most people seem to use, we’re using beautiful white vintage milk glass. I think in the setting of the Bellamy, the brilliant white + vintage look of milk glass will really shine. We’ve spent the  past months searching eBay and local antique shops for the perfect pieces.

We’ve also been shopping for purple & green candies to stock our candy buffet with. We’ve found some pretty good deals so far in surprising places including:

• Hershey’s chocolate hearts wrapped in purple wrappers
• Green peanut M&Ms
• Grape Mike & Ikes
• Green & white swirl pops (I was so excited about these! I really wanted swirl pops.)
• Purple M&M premiums (on super clearance at Walgreens!)
• Caramel chocolates in purple wrappers
• Purple & green licorice sticks
• Licorice pastels
• Flower & butterfly small lollipops.

Let’s just say my freezer is stocked with some yummy candies. We’re also going to be making homemade fudge and purple swirl covered pretzels. Now we’ve just got to figure out where we’ll be putting everything. I’m really excited about doing the mock-up of this when the time comes.

bridesmaid.

After lots of searching on Ebay, at the mall, and anywhere that might possibly carry purple dresses, we finally have a dress for Alex to wear as my one and only bridesmaid! The search for this dress seemed never ending! There was lots of emailing back and forth between my mom, Alex, and I with messages full of links and disagreement on color, style, price, etc. I’m happy to have this under our belt & I’m really happy with the outcome.

Here is the dress we finally all agreed on:

After we found the dress, I came across some Steve Madden flats on sale, so I picked those up as part of Alex’s bridesmaid gift(s). Don’t worry, she knows about them already, so I’m not ruining any surprises.

I also bought these lovely and simple pair of amethyst stud earrings from one of my favorite Etsy sellers: Lost and Fawned. They arrived this week & I love them.

I’m also looking to pick up one of these burned silk flower hair clips for her hair. I’ve been loving these since they first started becoming popular on Etsy. I don’t really have enough hair to wear them myself, so the wedding is becoming my excuse to shop for them. Here’s one of my favorites so far from FlowerThyme on Etsy.

The last thing for Alex will be a necklace. I haven’t decided if I’m buying one or making one myself (or having my mom make one), but I’m glad we’ve got this part of the wedding under control.

Still got some work to do on the groomsman. We’ve been tossing around some ideas to help make things as affordable as possible for Kevin. Once I have more news on that front, you’ll know. (P.S. If you find some nice looking khaki or gray sports coats for a good price, give me a heads up, please.)

from the mail bag, pt. 2

We got a lot of fun goodies in the mail these past couple of weeks.

The lanterns we’ll be using for centerpieces arrived. They are even better in person than the picture. I am so excited about them. I think they will be so romantic after it starts getting dark. We’ll be adding some silk flower accents once my mom gets into town.

We also got the lanterns that will be hanging in the trees on the mansion grounds.

They have a great leafy vine accent on the glass panels. I think they will be great up in the big magnolias.

We also got in the pants for Andy’s suit (which were apparently back ordered). So he now has his full suit – just need to get him a French cuff shirt and some shoes (if he can ever find some he likes).

Those are all the fun things – we got a couple not so fun things in the mail. Like my cake plate smashed into teensy little pieces. That was a little sad. I had ordered a beautiful Fenton Spanish Lace cake plate, but it didn’t make it in one piece. Luckily I got (most) of my money refunded, so I’m on the hunt for another one. Hopefully we’ll have better luck with that one.

We also got the table linens I bought. Except I received in the mail ones that look nothing like the ones I thought I ordered. The seller used a picture that looked nothing like what she was selling & didn’t bother to tell anyone that in the item’s description. So when I thought I was buying scalloped edged, seamless tablecloths, I actually got non-scalloped & seamed cloths. I was pretty angry about that. I have tried working with the seller, but she seems to be completely ignoring me so I’ve filed a complaint with Ebay asking for a full refund. We’ll see what happens. I’m also still on the look for those, too.

Fortunately these small wedding misfortunes happened with plenty of time to get them fixed. Thank goodness for little favors.

wish us a wish.

One of my ideas for the wedding was to have a wish tree instead of a guest book. Guests would write their wishes & advice for us as newly weds on little tags which they would then hang from the “tree.” After the wedding I can take all the paper slips and create an album out of them as a keepsake.

I was lucky enough to find some beautifully branchy sticks outside my apartment after they cut down a large tree nearby. Some of them need a little cleaning up, but you can’t beat free!

Last night I got to work making the hanging tags that everyone will write their messages on. I simply used some cardstock left over from making the save the date cards and cut them into 4″x4″ squares leaving plenty of room to fit a nice sized message. I then personalized the back of the tags by stamping them with a flower & butterfly stamp in lilac purple ink and hand writing our names & wedding date. Here’s some pictures of a little “mock-up” of how the tree will look once all the tags are hanging from it. Please ignore the craziness that is my dining room table right now – it’s become my wedding planning desk.

The tags hang using dark purple and green ribbons. Here’s a close up of the back detailing of the tags:

The ink came out a little more pink that I had thought it would, but purple ink seems to be a hard thing to find at my local craft shops. This light purple was the  closest I could get.

I’m really liking how it is looking so far. We’ll be adding a little more decoration to the tree with lamp crystals and maybe some butterflies. The vase will also be filled with silver glass pebbles to hold the branches into place and make it look a little neater. Should be a lovely addition to the decor on the wedding day & a lot more fun than a plan ol’ guest book.

yummy in my tummy.

It is very possible that the guests will actually have food to eat now. That’s right – I’ve finally picked a caterer. Well, mostly.

We started out planning to just have drop off catering & a bartender. Since we are planning on a relatively small party, we thought, “Why pay for wait staff when that money can go to food?” Well, apparently things are more complicated than that – especially at the Bellamy. All the caterers I spoke to suggested we go with wait staff because of the amount of work the Bellamy requires in set up going up and down stairs to set up the buffet and keep it well stocked with yummy food. And I personally would like to be able to enjoy my reception instead of worrying about whether the crab cakes were running out. With the amount of work family member’s will already be doing to get this party pulled off, once it starts I think it will be nice to just relax and enjoy it.

So, after getting over the sticker shock of how much it will actually cost to have waitstaff (4 total including a bartender) we gave in. Plus, with wait staff we’ll get free glassware, plates, utensils, buffet decorations & serving dishes, and someone to set the whole thing up for us.

That was the first hurdle to jump over with catering. Then came figuring out exactly what I wanted to eat and fitting it into the remaining budget we had. I knew Andy wanted  a beef dish and I wanted seafood, so we started from there and worked in a few more meat choices, some veggies, and made sure they all sounded like something both of us would want to eat.

Here’s our somewhat final menu as of today:

-Gingered chicken cakes with mayo, pineapple, and mango

- Beef tenderloin with sundried tomato aioli on a custinini

- Grilled pork & apple skewers

-Prosciutto wrapped asparagus

- Fried green tomatoes (because you kind of have to, I think)

- Three cheese stuffed potatoes

- Seafood display including scallops wrapped with bacon and crab cakes

- Fresh fruit display including chocolate covered strawberries

It all works out to about $20.00 per person.

We have the tasting scheduled for next Saturday at 12:30. I hope it all goes well and we can finalize the catering contract and be done with that. Catering – probably the hardest thing I’ve had to do for this wedding so far. But the tasting part will be fun!

this will cost me WHAT?!

It’s time to talk money, folks.

We are getting far enough into this planning to see if we’re actually even close to staying on budget.

Apparently, the national average for a wedding in 2008 was $22,000. HAHAHAH! Our budget for this wedding, $6000 (thanks to a generous $1000 food donation by the Long family). Here’s how our apparently tiny wedding budget is breaking down so far:

Ceremony & Reception site: Bellamy Mansion for $1750. (We saved $750 by planning our wedding for a Thursday instead of Friday, Saturday, or Sunday.)

Dress: $220 or so on eBay.

Flowers: $388 for bride’s bouquet, bride’s maid’s bouquet, 4 boutonnieres, 2 corsages, and the cake topper & decorations. (This wasn’t the cheapest I could get my flowers, but for an extra $10 I choose to go with a florist whose design I was most excited about. I saved us a little extra $$ by opting to go pick up the flowers ourselves instead of having them delivered.)

Cake: $175 for a three tier cake decorated with buttercream frosting & fondant ribbon. (This price includes delivery and decoration of the cake. I choose a baker who was having a sale.)

Catering: $2000 for wait staff, bar tender, set up, decorations, food, glassware & plates, clean up, and gratuity. (This isn’t set in stone yet, but I am close to choosing. The caterer is having a special for July weddings that includes a free appetizer, free decoration package, and free glassware. She is also waiving the $200 uncorking fee for providing our own alcohol.)

Officiant: hopefully free.

Invitations & stationary nonsense: $50 or so. (Found invitations at Michael’s on super sale as well as matching Thank You cards. Did my own save the dates.)

Ceremony & reception decorations: $250. (Hopefully.)

Rentals & linens: $450 (Again, hopefully. Really, really hopefully.)

That puts us at $5283 with $717 left for the bride’s maid dress, groom’s man’s … whatever, candy bar, misc. decorations, music, drinks, and whatever else I’m forgetting. Andy’s suit & our wedding rings are not included in this budget (thankfully). Hopefully when we break this budget it won’t be by too much.