This is asalwayschristine's Pink Wedding!

A few nights ago I was looking through pictures of my cousin's wedding and I realized that when I was little I thought that fountains in wedding cakes so pretty. I didn't really like the exact style from my cousin's wedding, but here are some interesting prototypes. Below I have pictures of "daisy cakes". But who knows, this could put a whole new spin on how my wedding looks.

Also, even though I've been going pink, pink, pink, I really like this pale blue and white theme a lot. It looks very Disney/Cinderella, and very elegant.

So what do you think, is a fountain an elegant idea for a wedding cake, or do you like a simpler style?

First of all sorry I haven't been online recently. However, between finishing a particularly demanding semester at school, and doing two moves in less than a month (to home, and then to my new apartment a month later) . . . I just haven't had much time to plan or to post.

So, my update for you. My beautiful wedding dress has been having some major problems. The outer layer of tulle is ripping. So far my mom and I have been able to fix the damage using clear thread, but if there is too much more ripping then it could be a big problem. After all, I don't want to walk down the aisle in a ripped up dress. So we're bagging it up and once we get closer to the wedding we'll take it out and see how it looks.

I decided to move my wedding date back (luckily I decided to hold off signing for a few months even if it meant less choice in venue) just because with student teaching next year it is going to be difficult to have a wedding right after. I doubt it will be all the way to August, but that way my countdown will shorten the next time I change it.

So I got the sleeves taken off the dress, and now it looks just like a the Cinderella dress I've always wanted.

I don't know if I posted it on here, but I did find two rips in the outer layer of the skirt of my dress. My mother sewed them up with clear thread. You can still see a small line where the rip was. I really don't think anyone will notice unless they're looking for them though. I really have to search.

I keep going back and fourth about wearing my hair up or down. When I was trying it up or down with the dress I thought that up looked much better. But now that I look at the picture I hate it again. So hair is definitely going to be down. I hate my hair up; I look like a guy.


P.S. Completely unrelated, but since this is the closest thing I own to a journal I wanted to put it down somewhere. For a while I've wanted to adopt a zoo animal and help provide care to it. I've become especially attached to a certain bird at a local zoo who is very curious, and playful. So I went ahead and adopted her today :) Very proud of that.

So I went to walgreens today to pick up a perscription and I got the most amazing find yet. A little crystal castle cake topper. It is really cute, and I think it will be the perfect touch to my cake.

The castle is a little small, but I still like it. It measures just over four inches tall and the base is about 3 1/2 inches wide. But I could just boost it up on a pedistal on the top of the cake to make it a little taller (I also want pink flowers on top, so it has to boost over that). It's got really cute pink, blue, and white crystals on the turrets. Plus it has a little monopoly piece size horse and carriage in front. Sooo cute! I tried to take a picture of the "monopoly" horse, but it was too tiny to look good. Maybe I can try again once I figure out how to work my new digital camera.

I was a little unsure of what to do with my cake topper. I mean I knew I wanted one, but I wasn't sure what. My parents had a cake topper that looked nothing like them, and they even said it looked stupid. I had looked at some of those cake toppers with the abstract people on them, but they were too contemporary for me really. Anyway, I said I wanted to be Cinderella, right? So I guess I'm getting my wish.

One step closer to the blurry vision in my head of what my wedding's going to look like. Yippee!

Since I used to be a music major in college I knew one thing I wanted was excellent music selections throughout the ceremony and reception (or at least stuff I enjoyed). Instead of the traditional Wagner "Here Comes the Bride" entrance, I decided on something a little more romantic and sweet sounding: the theme of Elgar's "Love's Greeting." If you haven't heard it look it up on ITunes and see if you can hear the beginning of it. It is very pretty and I'm suprised it isn't used at more weddings.

Other music selections for the ceremony also include Arioso by J.S. Bach, Waltz no. 15 by Brahms, Traumerei by Schumann, The Wedding March from Midsummers Night's Dream (the classic recessional song), and Wedding Day at Troldhaugen by Grieg (So as you can see Stef, I've got a pretty good mix. Any ideas for the processional for the wedding party? Cuz I've got nothing.)

For the dinner part of the reception I found a CD that has just the perfect music! It's called a Table for Two - Music for Falling In Love. I has EVERYTHING that I like, and I didn't have to go searching in a billion different places to find all of the arrangements which was pretty cool. Also a CD I'd reccommend to other brides who want to pipe in some classical during dinner.

So yeah, that's it so far. Good night everyone!

This is a really cute thing I picked up at the bookstore. It's a cute engagement journal, but instead of blank pages it has all sorts of neat things to fill in throughout the engagement, wedding, honeymoon, and a section for your 1st year anniversary.

I really like that it has sections for the bride and groom's perspectives on different things (like how we met eachother, and the different parites like the bridal shower and the bachelor party). I also loved filling out the section that asked for our worst date, our funniest date, our most romantic date, etc. It stirs up a lot of great conversation. The photography in the book is also really beautiful.

I think out of all the stuff I have so far this is going to be the most memorable (along with photos of the wedding). It's reminding me to sit back and relax and enjoy what's happening in my life right now.

So far I have recieved samples from three companies. The ones I like best so far came from Exclusively Weddings. I could tell a big difference from these and the others that I have recieved. One huge difference was paper quality. These feel really sturdy, and like they cost a lot more than they actually did. One sample I got from another company was printed on paper that was as thin as tissue paper. By the time I got it it was already wrinkled. Why would they make a wedding invitation out of that?

Anyway, I really liked both of these. The pink swirl invitation looks darker in the picture than it is in real life. The text on that is brown (also in my wedding colors), and the pink is more of a shimmery ballet pink. The white daisy border invite is also really stunning. It looks A LOT different in person. Like I said, the quality and detail of the daisies far surpasses any other sample I recieved with a similar border. These ones are really crisp, and they use that same shimmery effect in a pearl. Both of the invitations match the level of formality that I want too.

I can't decide on a hairstyle for the life of me. Only thing I know is that Matt really doesn't like it up. He'd rather have it down all the time. I really don't like updos because if I'm facing head on it doesn't look like I have any hair in pictures. So that bugs me. But there are still some updos that inspire me and I could see working. Leave a comment and tell me which ones you like. I'd really appreciate the input.

(By the way, my dress is down there. It has the sleeves off now, but that should give you an idea of what it looks like).

Well, the good news is that the woman who altered my wedding dress called and told me that she was finished. The bad news is I have to wait until the next time I'm home to see it.

I wanted to go more in detail about why I chose the dress. I wrote one previous post about my dress with pictures (the same ones as here). I am really happy to announce that I purchased my wedding dress from a Goodwill store in my college town. Since I purchased the gown from Goodwill 80% of the money goes to help people with special needs find jobs and get trained for jobs. That means a lot to me.

Anyway, like just about any bride I started my search for my dress by pulling out picture after picture of things that I liked. The major thing I wanted was for it not to be a strapless dress, and to be poofy with either a bustled skirt or an a-line style. I figured ballroom would be just to big and huge on me being pretty petite.

My ideal dresses were the ones from the Kristie Kelly for Disney Fairy Tale Weddings collection. I just think they are soooo pretty. But they are also extremely expensive. I couldn't even get an appointment to look at these dresses with my wedding date being so far out. I don't know, I still have a huge problem with spending a ton of money on a dress that you're only wearing for one day. Even if it was PERFECT I don't think I could rationalize it.

Anyway, so then there was that eventful day at Goodwill when I saw the dress lying in the corner. I tried it on, and I was like, "Okay, if I don't take this thing now then I'm never going to see it again!" It really had the potential to be my absolute dream dress. So I grabbed it as quickly as I could!

Everyone I've shown really likes the dress so far. I showed it to my friend (who was really mad that I didn't go dress shopping with her), and once she saw it she even agreed that it was perfect. My aunt looked at it and said, "Wow, someone before you must have paid a lot of money to have that." It's all hand-beaded and has such beautiful lace work. I really think I lucked out.

Anyway, my one (and pretty much only) issue with the dress was that there were sleeves. I didn't want strapless, but sleeves were really not in my vision either. I tried it on again and took pictures, and there is just way too much fabric covering me when the sleeves are on. So the sleeves had to go.

It was really hard finding someone to do the job. It was really difficult because I guess if you cut through any of the flowers they would come unraveled. But I found a really experienced seamstress that said that she could do it. She detatched the sleeves from the seam, and then hand stiched a lining for the arms. She called me to come try it on, and I felt really sad saying that I'd have to have my mom pick it up because I'm in school. If anything is wrong I'm going to have to make another trip out to her to have it fixed. Still I have faith in the whole process.

So, as soon as I get a chance to see my finished product dress I will be sure to post it up here for everyone. I guess my advice to new brides is to check out shops like Goodwill or consignment shops in your area first. If you know what you want, you never know what you could find in one of these stores.

First of all, this is a completely unsolicited testimonial. I had to post this on here because I think it is amazing!

So last week was my first week actually teaching in a classroom. I rarely have bad acne, but just my luck my first day of school I had five HUGE, bright red, painful acne spots on my chin.

That night I went to Walgreens to try to find something to correct it. I was choosing between a few different products. I finally decided on Scar Zone Acne because it had a money back guarentee, plus it used green tea and was for sensitive skin. Honestly I didn't think it would do much, but I needed to try something because the zits were getting really painful.

Anyway, I've used this product for about a week now, and it works so well I just had to write about it. In 2 days the pimples were at a point that I could easily cover them up with makeup. And now they are completely gone. I used it on a pimple that was starting to form, and it kept it pretty much the same size for 2 days, and now it is slowly going away!

I'm used to using benzyol peroxide formulas for acne. The active ingredient in Scar Zone Acne. My face is a lot smoother and the product doesn't dry my face out. So yeah, I'm hooked.

Anyway, I just wanted to let people know. Definitely try Scar Zone acne. I figured it could be a lifesaver if someone started breaking out a week before their wedding. So, hope it'll help someone.

My current ideas:

Spice Girls - Time Goes By This is one of my absolute favorite love songs. For all those wondering, yes I am a huge Spice Girls fan (going to their concert too, by the way). A lot of people probably won't know this since it was on their 3rd album. But I think it is fantastic.

The Beatles - And I Love Her I think the biggest appeal of this song is just that it is a classic first dance song. I think that the Beatles ballads are so classic that I can't NOT look to them for a first dance song.

NSYNC - That's When I'll Stop Loving You Can you tell I'm really into the "not as well known" songs. Everyone does "God Must Have Spent a Little More Time on You." That one actually never appealed to me, but I used to sing this all the time!

K-Ci and JoJo - That's When I'll Stop Loving You I love this song, I know Matt really does too. I remember dancing to this together in his dorm room once. Really romantic :)

I also really like the sentiments expressed in "Save Me From Myself" by Christina Aguilera. Just not sure if it fits for a first dance. But I could see myself dedicating this to Matt later on in the reception.

The last day or two I've been looking all over the internet at different invitation designs that I might want for my wedding. I really appreciate the websites that allow you to request samples. I want something with nice little intricate details (and at the same time simple), and it's hard to see those on the pictures unless they have a zoom button.

Anyway, the idea I liked most was when I looked through The Bride and Bloom magazine and they had really pretty floral invitations with tiny little flower bouquets. I was so excited to find the company One Blossom which has almost excatly the style of invitations that I was invisioning. No prices on the site though, so I requested a quote.

The first website that I went to is also the one that I keep coming back to to look at more invitations. Ann's Bridal Bargains is so cheap, but the invitations look awesome! I found several from there that were daisy themed and would look great (no pink daisy though). I also think another option might be having a bride and groom on the front. I think it looks classy and romantic.

I haven't looked at the rest of Ann's Bridal Bargains (they sell all sorts of stuff besides wedding invites), but if their deals on other things are as good as the invitations then I'm sure I'll be back.

I guess the most important thing to me is to keep this looking like a formal event. I really want it to be something elegant, because my goal is to truly be the princess for the day. I just love the feel of a formal affair. Do you think the invites match the look and feel I'm trying to go for?

(P.S. I would order these invitations in pink ink. If the invitation is white then the text would definitely be in some type of pink.)

So maybe pink daisies would look pretty good. This centerpiece is really colorful and I like it a lot. I posted some other ideas that would look nice too. All of the bright bold colors give everything a different look than what I originally thought, but it's far away enough that I can still do stuff like this and get away with it. Now if I go on a tangent closer the wedding day that could be a bit of a problem.

Now as far as the cakes let me explain. The first cake pictures would HAVE to have bigger tiers. I hate the straight up and down look. But I do like how all the flowers are piled in between the layers. The second cake is from a previous post (which also shows more detials of the top, middle, and bottom of the cake and you can see the icing better), but I think it could be done well with the pink daisy.

Well, it looks like they made this and then realized that they wanted to reach a wider audience than just weddings. Even though the title and picture on the front says weddings, the rest of the video kind of backs away from expressing that it's for weddings.

Netflix's description says "Developed with the fitness experts at Women's Health magazine, this video features a host of easy-to-follow exercises designed to whip you into peak condition for that fast-approaching wedding (or class reunion or swimsuit season)." In the actual video, the word wedding is almost never mentioned. In the cardio section she does mention punching out the annoying photographer which made me laugh. The bonus features do get more wedding inspired. They had a nutrition section (which was really nothing you haven't heard before), a how to walk in high heels tutorial, and a basic striptease lesson for the honeymoon.

As far as the video itself I thought they did a really good job. There was only one move that I couldn't really do (jumping into a turned out squat and jumping out again). Everything else was pretty easy to follow, but I think over time would really get anyone into shape. My only complaint is that the cardio section was only 10 minutes long. I think adding another 10 minutes would have really increased the effectiveness of this video. But you can always do the cardio workout twice :)

Besides cardio they also have 10 minute sections for upper, lower, and abs strength training. I thought the abs were really great, and they concentrated on a lot of standing abs exercises which I do not get in any of my other videos. I thought they were great! There is also a 4 minute warm up and a 3 minute cool down.

So I think that this video is worth buying or at least checking out. I haven't decided for sure if I'll buy it or not, but I do think it has a lot to offer as a regular part of my workout program.

Yuck Yuck Yuck . . .

Okay, last post I wrote that I was afraid of yellow. So here's why.

Whenever I fall asleep and have a wedding dream one of two things happens. Either I have this perfect fairytale dream wedding in which everything goes perfectly and I get to see Matt and we're both smiling and hugging each other at the aisle. OR I fall asleep, and I'm running late for my wedding, because I just found out it was happening. For some reason the wedding needed to happen quickly, so someone else set things up for me. Everything goes haywire. It's usually a bare bones wedding in some small chapel that looks more like a funeral home (maybe it is, I don't know). Either no one shows up, or all these family memebers that I never dreamed show up do, but it's because my wedding is on the other side of the country where none of the people I see every day can come.

Anyway, in every dream where things are going wrong the colors of the wedding are always YELLOW! I mean, I'm not a huge fan of yellow anyway. I would never dream of having a yellow wedding. But it's never been such an awful color until I associated it with all of these terrible dreams. It's terrible, but now I am just like I really don't want to have anything to do with yellow. It makes me cringe. I'm not superstitious, but yellow really gives me the heeby-geebies, if you know what I mean.

So that's why I'm so against yellow (for my wedding, not for everyones of course). I don't know if any of you have dreams like this where everything goes wrong. But it's seriously yucky to have that image of a wedding where everything is in opposite land and everything goes wrong.

So yeah, gross.

So I went off on a random tangent and decided to explore daisy weddings. Well I found a much prettier cake. The one I posted in the last entry was nice . . . but not really elegant. This one is a much more elegant take on the daisy theme. I like it :)

I also added another cake I found that uses tiny white flowers made of frosting. I could have white daisies made in that same style.

The one problem with daisies is it adds a lot of yellow to everything. I HATE YELLOW! Grrr. Stupid yellow! The cake in the picture has all whites and even pink bouquets next to it. So maybe it could still work for me. Hmmmm . . .

Any visitors, what do you think? Could daisies go with a more pink themed wedding? Or does the presence of the yellow really alter the pink and white theme?

So I'm up early, and since I'm too awake to go back to bed I'm messing around on here and looking at different posts and checking out flowers. This place really is addicting.

Here are some ideas for my flowers. My dress has daisies worked into the lace, so I thought it might be a "signature flower" for my wedding (possibly a theme emerging here . . . morning is such a good time for ideas). I thought of it after I saw the picture of the daisy bouquet centerpiece that I am going to post. Maybe I could spread some pink rose petals around the centerpiece just to accent it with some pink.

Dogwood might be another good choice for my overall vision.

Oh cool, here's a cool link for a daisy themed wedding.
http://www.askginka.com/themes/daisytheme.htm

That's awesome!

Okay, I'm finished with this post. Good brainstorming sesson :)

P.S. I'm awake now and I hate that cake. So note to self: search for a new cake.

So I know my wedding color on here is "pink". But a better and more accurate statement would be pink brown and white (lots of white, after all it's a wedding!). Part of my choosing brown is because I found the best bridesmaids dresses at David's Bridal that my bridesmaids absolutely adore. I think they'll go well with pinks and whites, so why not. That way they'll wear it again, right?

Anyway, another detail I wanted to note on here is that my groom gets to wear purple because it is his favorite color. I thought it was the least I could do to give him something special! I think it looks really good with the rest of the stuff now that I can actually see it on everyone.

I also tried out the look next to a background with more greens and whites since that's probably what my reception is going to look like. Luckily it looks really nice there too. So I think I've got this figured out.

Please Please Please David's Bridal . . . Don't discontinue my bridesmaids dress before we order them next fall!

So I went to goodwill expecting to buy something completely different, and I ended up finding my dress instead. The label says it's a Lady Eleanor Size 6 . . . it fits me perfectly! There is a lot of hand beading, and little daisy patterns in the lace. It's so gorgeous. What sold me was the train which is absolutely beautiful. I'm going to have the sleeves removed but maintain the straps (because I do NOT want a strapless dress).

So my dress officially cost me $75. 80% of that money went to help people with special needs find employment and get job training. It makes me feel so good and so proud to wear it. I don't know how I'm going to wait till May '09 to wear it!