This is ellano0125's Red Wedding!

Anyone who wants to see our photo slideshow can at

www.hoyle.peterpawinski.com


Enjoy and let me know your thoughts :)

-B

Hello everyone. I had been hoping to write more earlier, but I haven't gotten a chance. I wanted to share about our reception as well.

Overall, I was extremely happy with our reception. There were a few "bumps in the road," but overall it was beautiful. Our reception hall was Wicker Park and we had a few problems with them. Again, anyone in the NW Indiana area who is looking for recommendations about vendors I have a lot of information. WIcker Park was overall pretty good, but they were short staffed and therefore there were a few small problems--this included no coffee on the tables, the hors d'ouvres (sp?) were not passed around in a timely manner, the tables were not cleared quickly. My husband is relatively upset about these things. They did keep the bar open an extra half hour, but we're still in negotiations with them to get some of our money back.

The thing that really upset me about them was that while my husband was talking to them the woman said, "We got lots of compliments on how beautiful it was" and that really upset me, because I was there for over 8 hours one day (with my sister, my mother-in-law, my mother and two family friends) setting up the hall. This meant taking down a lot of their decorations and putting up our own. Therefore, anyone that was complimenting how it looked--was complimenting ME, not them.

Anyways, that's my one complaint...everything else went off without a hitch. The hall absolutely did look beautiful. We got a great deal on chair covers made of white linen with red silk bows. They even tied the red silk bows on the 3 high chairs we had for the evening. It was stunning. They even put a silk red ribbon down the center of each table. This drew attention to the centerpieces, which were roses, pine needles and red berries. I placed four votive candles on the centerpiece mirror around the flower centerpiece and I was really happy with how they turned out.

For table numbers we used some of the photographs my friend (and business partner) Jennie had taken of us. I mounted them on some paper and used sparkly lettering to put the table numbers on them. They really looked great and they were very personalized. i.e. we put funnier/fun ones on tables with friends and serious ones on the tables with family.

Other details that I thought turned out really well were
1. Pinecones--I ordered pinecones through a website and I made my own place cards. I placed these in the pinecones and those were our place cards. They turned out gorgeous and were a great addition to the Christmas theme.
2. Christmas tree--there was a Christmas tree in the lobby of the reception hall. I stripped the tree of it's lights (colored lights) and it's ornaments (colors like bright pink, purple). I then put white lights on the tree and dry-mounted photographs to card stock and made ornaments out of these. I used photographs from his childhood, my childhood and from our past eight years together. People really enjoyed looking at them and it was a great way to get people involved in our lives--we included pictures of all the people who were really important to us--family, friends, etc. It looked absolutely fantastic.
3. Cookie table. We didn't want to do a sweets table, but we did want people to have other options for dessert. So, because of the season we did a Christmas cookie table. We had probably 22 different kinds of Christmas cookies and we put them out with name cards (showing what each cookie was) and people absolutely loved it. It was my grandpa's favorite part of the event!
4. Favors--we got personalized mugs (Saying "Becky & Randy 12.27.08 Forever and Even Longer" on them with a red snowflake) with hot cocoa and chocolate covered almonds in them. People loved these as well. I have gotten 3 comments about how "These are the only favors I have ever used again" which is great to hear because that's what I was going for.

Our entrance was also fabulous (our deejay was AMAZING and SO SO HELPFUL THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE NIGHT--The Music Boyz and Eric Jaeger are amazing--if you're in the NW Indiana area please check them out).
Parents entered to: "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year"
BM and GM entered to: "Rocking around the Christmas Tree"
We entered (after a few fights) to: "All I want for Christmas is You" by Mariah Carey. It was fabulous.

We cut the cake immediately to "When I'm 64" by the Beatles

The food was good, even though we didn't get to eat too much of it--but that's okay, we enjoyed it anyways.

My sister and Randy's best friend/best man gave wonderful toasts--both funny and serious, but not too serious.

Our first dances were wonderful ("Have and Always Will" Dave Barnes for Randy and I, "In my Arms" by Mark Wills for my dad and I, "Simple Man" by Shinedown for Randy and his mom)...

Then, we just danced the night away. I didn't leave the dance floor the entire night. Everyone told me that at YOUR wedding you don't have any fun and this was absolutely not true--I had THE MOST FUN EVER! I danced and laughed with all of my friends and family all night.

My photographer was absolutely amazing and worth every penny. He did exactly what I wanted him to do--he took boring posed pictures for 2 hours, and then ONLY took candids for the rest of the evening. I don't even remember seeing him a lot during the reception. It was perfect to not have to worry about smiling/posing during the reception.

Anyways...it was beautiful and wonderful. I couldn't have asked for a more beautiful and magical wedding and I am so happy with how it turned out. Thank you all for all the ideas throughout the last several months and if anyone has questions for me please let me know. Happy planning! :)

Hello all! My wedding was about two and a half weeks ago and it was absolutely the best night of my life. I know that I didn't post a lot, but I definitely did browse on a lot of other people's blogs, so I thought I'd post some ideas from my wedding and some things that I thought went wonderfully and others that didn't go so great.

First of all, the weather was insane. We planned a Christmas wedding because we love the snow...we got 65 degrees and thunderstorms. However, we stayed absolutely positive because that meant that all of our family could drive and/or fly in for the wedding, which is honestly the most important thing.

Without a doubt, the best part of the event is being with family and friends. It reminded me of how lucky I am to have such an amazing family and without a doubt the three most amazing people I know are my two sisters and my brother. As a child, I don't think I understood what a blessing it was to be part of a big (by today's standards) family. My family is definitely what made this event for me.

My ceremony was absolutely beautiful. My pastor had asked Randy and I to write love letters to each other during our time of pre-marital counseling. We never heard about the letters again and wondered what he would do with them. He pulled them out and read them during the ceremony. It was amazing. Several people told me that it was the most touching ceremony they had ever seen. I don't think that Randy and I will be the couple that will forget what the minister said during our ceremony.

Another part that I really loved was that we had a harpist play all of our music. She was great. However, we had my entrance with my father timed to the song "Nothing Fancy" by Dave Barnes. It has been a song that has really defined our relationship together. We aren't fancy people, but our love is spectacular.

The ceremony went wonderfully (except it was TOO hot!). I have absolutely no complaints. We chose to do a receiving line as people walked out of the church. This was a great way to see people who were at the church, as well as getting to say a quick hello to people. It was not as painful as we imagined and we got through it unscathed!

The one, and only thing that I was truly disappointed about was our flowers. The flowers themselves were beautiful. However, the bows that were on the flowers were (1) the wrong color and (2) put together half-assed and ridiculously. I was angry about it. My sister, Renee, called the florist and told them how unhappy I was with the service, but they basically didn't care. Luckily, two of my super-awesome bridesmaids (thanks Jenn and Bett) fixed the ribbons for me, so they looked beautiful. However, if anyone is getting flowers in the Northwest Indiana market--ask me about them and I will gladly tell you one place you SHOULD NOT go.

Other than that, the ceremony and the photographs went off without a hitch. I wished that some more of my family had stayed at the church so that I could have gotten some professional pictures with them. My cousins and Aunt were in town from Phoenix and I wish that they would have stayed. I would definitely recommend to make some itineraries for family and special friends that you want to be a part of the photographs. I was so happy that everyone could be there, but I'm one of those people that likes "proof." LoL.

We had a lot of time between our ceremony and reception, which I think is actually a good thing. We had time to focus on pictures and even go to my parents house and take a photograph with our dog, which was completely worth it to us! :)

The reception was also fabulous...

MORE TO COME!!!

Hello everyone ;) I am meeting with our DJ next week--any ideas for "must play" and "must NOT play" songs.

I would love to hear what others are doing when it comes to this.


Also, what song are you walking into the reception to? Some people do separate songs for each couple of BM and GM that walk in, but I don't necessarily want to do that. I want to pick one song for the parents, one song for the bridal party and one song for me & the groom.

What are your thoughts? What are you doing?

-B

Hello everyone. I am BRAND NEW to this site and I had a quick "detail" oriented question for you.

I am trying to decide what we should do about our exit from the church. The wedding will be in the "dead" of winter and if it's really cold I'm not sure what people usually do?

Bubbles really won't work...

Birdseed?
Petals?
Sparklers?--we were thinking about doing this as a photo with the bridal party later as we leave the church (from doing pictures)

Or...do we just lose this particular thing and not "throw" anything?

What do you think?

-B