Married and a Grad Student

Wow it's been so long since I have posted! The last few months of wedding planning flew by so fast. I will have to update with a wedding re-cap and some pictures for those of you interested to see. The wedding was perfect. We had the best time of our lives. I would recommend a destination wedding to anyone and everyone! It was truly amazing=)

We made the move to Arizona, and now school has started. Things will be a little crazy with studying and getting through the quarter. I hope to update soon!

Her Wedding Band

We finally bought my wedding band. I had a hard time finding anything that matched my engagment ring. I decided to do a white gold prong set diamond eternity band from Rogers and Hollands, a local mall jeweler by our apartment.

My other idea was a custom band to fit right up against my engagement ring. We got an estimate of $1,500 which I even thought was ridiculous, so we said no to that.

Another other idea was to do a rose gold eternity band with either pink sapphires or diamonds. I decided against that too because I could always get that on my own. Even though I would love it, it isn't necessarily a wedding band.

All in all, I am happy with my choice and I can't wait till my future husband slips it on my finger as we become man and wife! =)

More flowers for Brides Bouquet

I went to Hobby Lobby with my friend and found some more flowers to add to my bouquet. I felt like something was missing from the original arrangement. I added a few white and peach roses and a few hot pink calla lillys. I think it looks much better!

I want to go back to get more flowers for the bridesmaids bouquets. I might add some white and peach roses to theirs too.

Groomsman Attire

The 6 groomsman will be wearing the same gray JCrew suit pants as the groom. Also, they will be wearing a white button down dress shirt. They will not be wearing the vest or jacket. We also bought all the guys brown flip flops from Old Navy to match the groom's brown boat shoes.

To tie it all together, they will wear a brown belt and a pink Calla Lilly boutonniere. This is a silk Calla Lilly from Hobby Lobby. It will be a future DIY project to make this into a boutonniere.

Invitations

My mom's old co-worker owns his own print shop. We visited his store to get some ideas. Before that, I had browsed online web sites and contacted some local stationary stores. Everything I saw was just okay.

Bill, the print shop owner, suggested we use his graphic designer to create our own one-of-a-kind invitations. We agreed and he drafted something in the matter of a day and emailed me the proof. I loved it!! My mom was also ordering the shower invites through him and they worked out a draft too. A few weeks later my mom and I went back to the store to pick out paper.

The only thing I was not sure about was how to do my RSVP cards. We are sending out 160 wedding invitations and I am only expecting about 30 of those to RSVP yes. So, in order to save postage and paper, I decided to make a small RSVP card stating to please reply on our knot.com website instead of the traditional reply cards.

I put the deposit down today, and they should be here in a week! =) I'll post pics as soon as I get them!

Flowers for the Wedding

I went shopping yesterday with my mom and sister on Mother's Day. We went looking for some decorations for the bridal shower. We ended up finding centerpieces for the tabels that included small square vases, clear pebbles, and flowers to float on top of the water. (I don't have pictures of this.)

Next, we made our way over to JoAnn Fabrics because it was next door. We wandered to the flower section and put together different flower combonations. I have been looking at flowers online for quite some time. I originally thought I wanted gerbera daisies. I think they are really pretty. BUT, then I saw this pink flower that was the same shade of my bridesmaid's dresses and I loved it.

My sister (Maid of Honor) and I decided that white looks best with the girls dresses. I was originally thinking yellow and white. White definetly looks better though. So we put together some flower combonations and I LOVE the way they turned out. Funny thing is that I have no clue what kind of flowers they are, but they look really pretty in my opinion...and thats all that matters! =). RoJo actually came home when I had them laying out on the couch and complemented them. Yay.

I will have pink + white.

Bridesmaids will have white.

See pictures below:

We are trying to focus on sticking to our budget. This is hard with the cost of everything wedding related being sooo darn expensive. I ended up spending $86 dollars on silk flowers. The real flowers at the resort would end up costing us $60 per bouquet, and $20 per boutoneeire. With 7 bridesmaids, and 4 groomsman (so far), we would have spent well over $600 dollars.

Yay!

Wedding Shoes, Check!

Bridesmaids dresses came in this week. So far 2 girls have picked them up. One had issues with the store and dress and has since resolved the problem. Such drama with wedding planning!

My first dress fitting is June 1st so I needed to find shoes by that time. I have been eyeballing pink shoes online for a while. I ended up changing my original wedding dress and opted to buy a second one due to not loving my first one.

I think these shoes go perfect with my dress, even though they are not pink. I searched the internet for the best price and I ended up saving $80 dollars. 6PM.com had these on sale for 67.00 when Nordstrom sells them for 147.00. They had one left on 6PM.com so I bought the last pair! =)

Flower Inspiration-Pink Gerbera Daisies

Trying to figure out if we are doing natural flowers from the resort, or making silk flower bouquets. Flowers are so darn expensive!! I loveee gerbera daisies and I love this bouquet, so the search is on!

Groom's Suit

 

 

We picked these our at JCrew yesterday. He looks adddorable in this suit! I am so excited to see him in it on our wedding day. Good thing we went now because the jacket is back-ordered until the end of April. =) Groom's attire, check!

Sand Ceremony

I bought this sand ceremony vase yesterday from Michael's craft store. Some lady gave me a 50% coupon so it was perfect! It came with the heart shaped sealable vase and stand. Now we need to find some colored sand and 2 pouring vases. 

Airfare, Check!

Booked and payed for our airfare. July 19th-July 28th we will be soaking up the Jamaican sun and enjoying our wedding and honeymoon with our favorite people! =)

Groomsman Gifts

We found these online and bought them a few months ago. Jamaica coin cufflinks. 

They are handmade and a portion of the profit goes to charity. I think they are pretty unique! 

Now what to find for my girls?? 

His Wedding Band

I bought it yesterday when we were out shopping. It's so shiny! 6mm 14k white gold  plain wedding band. It looks something like this...

I'll probably take a picture of it at some point but this will give you an idea. =) Oh, I submitted my tax return so we will most likely buy our plane tickets to Jamaica when I get my refund in a week or so.

So FAT!

I weight 148. WTF! It's my fault. However I ran on the treadmill for 35 minutes and it was hard! But my knees were holding up and no sharp shooting pain. So I will be at the gym again tonight. Possibly strength training after at least 30 minutes of cardio.

Need to lose 18 lbs for my life and the wedding! If we even make it to Jamaica that is...

More Wedding Shoe Inspiration

 

So I went to Yorktown Mall yesterday. Not a hugeee selection but got some ideas. Paris Hilton. Love these! Didn't buy anything yet...just getting ideas. =)

Wedding Shoe Inspiration

Sooooo cute! I don't know where to find these though............Help!

Parasols for the Girls

I bought these yesterday from TheKnot for my girls (7 bridesmaids and 1 flower girl). Oh, and one for me too ;o). I think they are great to keep them cool under the Jamaican sun and can also double as a cute prop. Since the girls' dresses are pink, I ordered the parasols in white.

I am thinking that the official wedding colors are going to be pink, white, and yellow. So far I have pink bridesmaids dresses and white parosols. What will be next? Hmmm...

Inspiration-Flowers

Save the Date's

I got this idea from Martha Stewart. We took this picture using a 10 second self-timer on my digital camera. We pinned an old sheet on the wall to get a blank background. Set two chairs together and threw a blanet over them to look somewhat professional. I had a really hard time finding rubber stamps to stamp over our L-O-V-E shaped fingers so I improvised Martha's idea. Since "true" has four letters and "true love" is engagement-y we used this phrase instead to incorporate our fingers.

For the back of the cards I went to Office Depot and found silver shiny paper that matched our black and white photo. The girl found a palm tree and added that to upper left hand corner. I stamped on our wedding date with red acrylic ink. I used a paper cutter to trim the edges of the paper so it would fit in the corresponding red envelopes.

*rubber stamps and paper cutter borrowed from Jess's lovely sister. Thanks! =)

P.S. I am not DIY'ing our invitations...it took me FOREVER to do these darned save the dates!

Plus I found invitations I absolutely love online and will probably just order those.

Venue

Iberostar Rose Hall Beach-Montego Bay, Jamaica

We are getting married on the beach! This resort got the best beach and food reviews out of the places we were looking at in our budget. It is an all-inclusive resort located just 20 minutes away from the airport that we will be flying into. Not bad!

They have 3 specialty restaurants...2 of which we will be utilizing for our rehersal dinner and reception dinner. They include a steak house, cajun restaurant, and japaneze restaurant. The resort also offers several other buffet style retaurants and many many bars!

More details to come...

Bridesmaid Dresses

The Dessy Group: Alfred Sung Style D437

I am having 7 of my closest friends stand up in our wedding. I am so happy that they all are excited and willing to make the trip to Jamaica to witness our marraige. I couldn't ask for a better set of best friends!

Bethany, maid of honor
Lyndsey, matron of honor
Caroline, bridesmaid
Dana, bridesmaid
Hailee, bridesmaid
Lauren, bridesmaid
Lisa, bridesmaid

I was originally going to have everyone chose their own style dress, in the same color and fabric. But when we went to the store, everyone seemed to like this one the best so we chose this dress for all the girls.

I love it. I am deciding between shades of pink. It's going to be either strawberry or papaya.

Our Wedding Photographer

I am going to start blogging about my wedding plans just in case I want to look back and remember the lovely details one day. =)

I guess the thing I am most excited about is our photographer. We are hiring Michael Saab, of SAAB Weddings based in Montego Bay, Jamaica. We love his photojournalistic sytle of photography. I am not a huge fan of a ton of posed photos...they get redundant. I like the moment to be captured on camera...and Michael Saab does just that. Check out the link for tons of amazing photos!

http://www.saabweddings.com/

He will bring an assistant to help him on our wedding day. So we will have two photographers to document everything. We are getting 5 hours of coverage. They charge by the hour and they are quite expensive! But 5 hours should be enough for getting dressed, ceremony, post-ceremony pictures, and good portion of dinner/reception.