This is jennainterna's Pink Wedding!

Hi ladies! I'm a wifey now! Wedding went great, went soooo fast I can't even believe it's already come and gone. Holy crap I wish I could go back and suspend time. When people say savour every moment they are not joking! Anyways, busy getting ready for Cabo, but I promise when I'm back to give some reviews on how everything worked out and supply links & contact info for anyone interested!

Had a mini mental breakdown yesterday. Cried my face off over who knows what. I'm really stressed out, I'm doing this all on my own with barely any help, and I guess I'm disappointed that more people aren't as "into it" as is the case for so many other brides. Im sure I'll be fine come Saturday. Anyone else getting emotional leading up to the big day?

Thought I'd put all the pics I have of my wedding stuff up here.

I mentioned in a previous post that I modeled my table numbers off of a bride on WBC but couldn't figure out who! Found her so I've linked danibanani09 at the bottom of this post. Thanks so much for your inspiration!

Both the FH and myself really loved the tiff/aqua blue color scheme with black & white damask. Despite our mutual love, I went with pink because growing up I was obsessed with pink. I had pink everything form head to toe, and it really defined me as a person, so I just had to pay hommage to that!

Since we didn't get to do blue for the wedding, I decided to do it for the rehearsal. We've asked everyone to dress up in black, white, and aqua and I've already finished some projects. I used damask cello bags and filled them with cookies, got blue napkins and made them squares with ribbon around them and initials for seat markers, and the matchbook mints from etsy. I also have some damask candle holders and a vase we'll be using on the table, as well as black white and blue linens. I'm loving this color scheme so far!

If you refer to my last post, you will see a mock up of my centerpice and decor. Well, looks like things are a-changing and there's a week until my wedding! SERIOUSLY getting stressed now. This should make all of you other brides feel much better about your timelines! The following have all occured in the lat 2 days.

Pink organza overlays, 20 ordered on ebay a month ago. After calling and calling seller, her sister in law finlly called us back and told us she was in the hospital and the overlays were back ordered. No overlays.

The mother of another bride in the area got in touch with my mom to say we could use whatever we wanted from her damask wedding. We are going to use her custom damask table cloths (SWOON!) and head table cloth & swag (double swoon!).

I saw someone else's table #'s, and even though I made mine by hand with a damask stamp and dyecut number, decided to redo them all to replicate the ones I found from the other bride. I wish I could remember who it was, but at this point I'm too stressed to remember anything. Anyways, designed them on the computer and printed them. They have chandeliers on them, which up until yesterday wasn't a part of the wedding decor theme, and now it is!

Decided I didn't like our favor labels, so made a simple monogram and printed out tons of new labels for the favors and for around the candy buffet jars.

Umm, I think there's more but I can't remember!

How crazy is this that I'm a week away from getting married and it feels like my whole wedding is being changed!

I've been up to my ears in getting last minute wedding things down. Still am up to my ears, but I have accomplished loads. I made a "mock up" of my centerpiece, decorated my candy buffet scoops, wrapped ribbon around the damask tissues (THANK YOU pearaholic!) monogram sign (totally forget where I saw the FABULOUS damask with yellow letters on it, but it was beautiful so thank you whoever you are) and other things I can't think of right now as my brain is getting wonky.

I got my lace bolero in the mail last week. I ordered it from ebay, and with shipping it cost $40 which is a steal. Shipped fast. Thing is, I'm really not looking forward to wearing it. My family is conservative, and believes that modesty in the church for the ceremony is the respectful thing do. I get it, I totally get it, and I'm going to do it to make them happy, but that doesn't mean I have to be thrilled about it. It's just a disappointment because the first time my FH sees me in my dress walking down the aisle, I'll be wearing this lace bolero that doesn't really go with my style of dress. I guess I just had pictured my walk down the aisle differently. I know many other brides who've gotten married in the catholic church and wore strapless, but their uncle probably wasn't the officiating monsignor.

I haven't tried on the dress with my bolero yet, and I guess I'm putting it off because I'm worried about how it will turn out. I just don't want to absoultely hate it. I really have no other options.

I am having a very difficult time figuring out what to do for my kids favors, and my wedding is 2 weeks away! The favors for the adults are wine bottle stoppers, so obviously we're not going to give that to anyone under the legal drinking age of 19. We were then going to do personalized m&m's or some sort of candy for the kids, but that turned into my mom deciding to do an entire candy buffet for everyone. I am now reluctant to give the kids candy because it would seem like they aren't really getting anything special since the adults have access to the candy buffet as well as their own favors. I was thinking of maybe some kind of personalized cookie? Or fortune cookie? I have these great little pink chinese take out containers that I got for th ekids favors at the dollar store so it would be nice to find something to fit in it. Any other ideas for kids favors that will please all age groups?

Ok, maybe not 20 diy projects left, but I do have a lot. More like 10. But that's still a lot.

Card box: Got the damask boxes at Dollar Max thanks to mamajea's blog. I really didn't do anything to exciting, just ribbon around the boxes and plopped one on top of the other and made the neccessary cuts. I could do more, but at this point it's probably the last thing on my list because there are more pressing issues at hand.

Table numbers: Got the frames at Jysk....on sale for 2.97 each woo hoo! I've always LOVED mirrored stuff...mirrored furniture is just my fav..so I'm happy to have that incorporated. I then bought pink card stock, had it dyecut at the scrapbook store to all my numbers. I used one of my damask stamps on a piece of white cardstock, and ta da, I've got table numbers! The frames are a bit larger than I imagined, but I really like them ad think they'll make a statement on the tables.

I have pretty much been making thank you cards every night for the last month or so. Ok, maybe not every night, but every other night. I try and set aside a few hours and I usually get 2 or 3 done. So far I've made 30, and I have more than 30 left to do! Ahh! But I have been happy with how they've turned out. As I do more, the better I get, and the more I like the cards. I don't like my first batch at all anymore! Haha. Oh well, I'm not redoing them! I'm getting married in 19 days and have waay too many things to do!

After meeting with the wedding coordinator at our reception venue, we found out that someone I know through somone was having a wedding August 2nd using the same theme (black & white damask with hot pink). I sort of know the bride, and I'm an aquaintance of the mother of the bride. We asked if we could come a few hours before the dinner started to check it out and I was truly blown away! The MOB is in the interior decor business, and took over planning this whole wedding and truly made an absolutely stunning reception. Black candelabras, mirrored table cards, alternating coloured favour boxes, luxurious flocked table cloths...ohh I could go on. It makes me want to rethink everything...centerpieces & decor, for my whole wedding!

I am absolutely IN LOVE with the cover of this months Brides magazine, and I want to get a photo just like it. Me wearing hot pink bow shoes. The pair on the cover are Christian Laboutins....drool worthy for sure, but not very budget friendly. I really don't have much left at all in my budget, so I've been trying to find something similar for a lot less. I found a pair by Martinexz Valero at www.endless.com and they're $132 plus shipping. I also found a pair at payless.com for $22. I'm so torn whether or not to shell out that last little bit of cash, or if I should just save the money and go for the cheap ones. I know 132 bucks isn't nearly as expensive as the Laboutins, but it's still a lot, especially considering Ive already bought and paid for 3 wedding dresses.

Also, there are NOT the shoes I'll be wearing all day or for the ceremony, as my FH isn't super tall, he doesn't want to be the same height as me so I'll mostly be wearing flats. The pink shoes will be for maybe 5 pictures, me on my own and me with BM's.

I honestly can't believe how hard it is to find these things!!! I really want a lace jacket to wear for my Catholic ceremony as my conservative uncle is a monsignor and is officiating. I figure if I'm going to have to wear sleeves, I want to do it in style. I love the Monique lhuillier-style on gowns with jackets, and would prefer one like that, however, I think I may have to settle for a lace bolero from ebay. Any other ideas?

P.S..not a sewer!!

I've had 2 bridal showers so far and have received an assortment of exciting and useful things, most notably kitchen stuff, but others as well. I just wanted to know who holds off on using their shower gifts until after the wedding, or if you dig right in and bring them out into circulation?

I couldn't help it, I just had to throw away my old things and put to use the new and shiny things!

I bought a damask stamp all excited to make my own thank you cards. I haven't got it in the mail yet, but I've gone all stamp crazy and spent way too much money. The clear stamps need an acrylic block to be mounted on, then you need the ink pads, and then I needed "thank you" stamps. I haven't even bought cardstock, envelopes, and the other pretty things I want on the cards. I'm thinking of the damask stamp, with our monogram "O" in a hot pink cardstock and then a little tag with the thank you stamp on it. Despite the cost, I'll definitely get a lot of use out of the damask stamp in other areas of the wedding.

So that my trial and errors may help some of you brides out there.

I had an idea of a dress I wanted. It all started with Summer on the OC. She tried on her friend Holly's dress, and I fell in love. I wasn't even engaged, but I knew it was the dress I HAD to wear on my wedding day. I searched for MONTHS trying to find something online that would lead me to this dress. Lo and behold, nothing. Months later, I found something. One thing. A screenshot of her in the dress, and the caption that it was a Monique Lhuillier. Swoooon. I then hunted down every Monique Lhuillier gown I could find online, and none of them were it. I have concluded that it must have been custom designed for the show, which breaks my little heart.

I found a dress by Melissa Sweet designed in a similar tone. I was unsure of how it would flatter my curvy frame, but it became my next victim. I could not find the dress anywhere in Canada, and even if I had found it, it was way out of my price range. I started thinking that maybe I should get my dress custom made. Bernardi's in white rock is a great place and they quoted me around $1200 which would have been great value for their workmanship and for a custom designed dress. At this point I was being stupid, and decided to try my luck online. I found a website out of China that custom made wedding gowns for $239, including free shipping! I figured, what the heck, it if works, AWESOME, if it doesn't work, then I'll try and sell it for what I paid and at the end of the day what will I have lost?

Well, I sent them pictures of about 5 different dresses and expected them to mush them all together to create something fabulous. SIlly me. For some reason I thought they'd be able to read my mind and know exactly what I had pictured in my head. My mistake was that I didn't even know what I had picture in my head.

At the end of the day, I can't fault them at all. They had my dress to me within a month, the quality of fabric and workmanship was surprising for the price, and in all honestly the dresses were pretty damn nice ( I ordered a second dress after the first dress wasn't exactly what I had in mind...I didn't like the sequin and beading on the top, so I gave them another chance).

My main problem was, I didn't know what I wanted, I didn't know what looked good on my body, and I hadn't tried on a single dress before trying to explain to someone who lives across the world what I wanted. In all honesty, if you know exactly what you want, you've tried something similar on, and are willing to describe what you want to a tee, then I would actually recommend giving it a go. It's under $250!!! Needless to say, I didn't do this, and now I have 3 dresses to my name right now, 2 from China, and one gorgeous dress I bought at a bridal boutique for full price right off the rack. It isn't my Monique Lhuillier, or my Melissa Sweet, but it's mine, and it's pretty.

Another bump I hit along the way...I found the most gorgeous dress one day at the bridal salon, and instead of trying it on and buying it, I just left it there, assuming that when I went back 2 months later it would still be there. IT WASN'T!!! The dress I ended up getting is very similar and I'm very happy with it, but I still can't get over how stupid I was!!!!

www.sheshopping.com

I literally just got the knock at my door and the BM gifts that I ordered less than a week ago are here! Like many other aspects of the wedding, I wanted something sort of practical, something that won't be chilling in the back of a drawer come a year from now, and something that will always make them think of me!

After toiling over ideas, and almost going for the tried and true jewellry set, I decided to forgo tradition and ended up buying leather luggage tags. I know, you're probably thinking, big whoop, luggage tags! How exciting can they be? Well, not that exciting I guess, but I think it's a great gift for the avid traveller, which all of my BM's are. It IS something they will always have, and every time they grab their luggage to pack, it'll be there. I also thought it was something they would never buy for themselves. And what girl doesn't love opening up a gorgeous blue box from tiffany? They are really cute, and tiffany.com also lets you get personalized notes to go with each gift. In a small white envelope is a little printed note card on an embossed tiffany & co notecard. So cute! Best of all, they only cost $60 before taxes and shipping, so that left me some money to get them each damask pendants to wear on the wedding day!

I thought I had hit the motherload when I found black and white floraly-damasky gift bags to put my favors in ....for 19 cents each!!! Yes, that's right. Under 30 bucks for 144 bags. Come on, seriously?

My mom ordered them, but was informed they were on backorder and that they would have them in stock in May. Well, it's noa month away from my wedding, we haven't heard from them, and my mom keeps calling to no avail. We weren't charged for the order yet, it just sucks that I wans't able to get this awesome packaging at such a great price. Maybe others will have better luck. The website was www.newade.com.

After many more hours of searching, I decided to put my wine stoppers into a black ballotin bow, wrapped in a pink ribbon and sealed with a monogram sticker. They cost more than twice as much, with shipping and handling, but I think they wil look really nice on the place settings.

I got the monogram stickers from etsy.com, 120 stickers for 7.50! Not too bad.

There are so many creative wedding favors out there. Ever since I was a little girl I dreamed of having a wedding with big elaborate gift bags filled with Tiffany and other loot for my guest to take home ( I think I read about a few too many hollywood weddings in magazines). That dream is long gone, but I still wanted to give my guests soemthing to take home that they would likely keep for a long time and think of us everytime they used it.

SCORE! I found the BEST deal on the perfect favor for my wedding. I love wine and I thought the idea of a bottle stopper to be great. Although not everyone drinks wine regularly, it's quite likely that at some point in the year you'll be entertaining, serving wine, and in need of a wine stopper. I looked aroud and the cheapest I could find was $3 per stopper. I really like the crystal ball shapes or crystal hearts, but I also liked the chrome hearts. After many hours of perusing the internet, I found a deal that I am still in awe of. www.discountweddingfavors.com had the bottle stoppers that I wanted, on clearance, for 59 cents!! FIFTY NINE CENTS EACH! Woohoo!!! I was so excited and ordered them right away! They look awesome by the way! The pic I have on here is just one I found online, but the actual one I have is much nicer looking...very high quality. I've seen these same ones downtown at wedding things for 6 bucks a pop.

For the centerpieces, I bought a role of damask wallpaper which we'll cut into 20 by 20 squares, then trim in pink ribbon. SItting atop the square overlay will be 3 different black vases( from walmart, $10 for 3) and there will be a hot pink mini calla lilly in each one. The total price for each centerpiece will be around $20 which is awesome. I originally was going to use the black and white damask fabric I bought to make large table overlays, but decided that sewing isn't my fortay. The wallpaper is waaaaay easier, and I'm now using the damask organza for the sashes on my chair covers!

We're getting a damask cake, which I'm uber excited about! I haven't quite decided the final design, but I guess I should figure out what I want soon. My cake designer is awesome and I can;t wait to see what she has in mind.

We're getting a mostly fake cake with a real tier, because there's a dessert buffet and we didn't think serving cake was necessary. I don;t think anyone will really care. What does everyone else think?

When looking for BM's dresses, I really really wanted to find something that didn't look overly "bridesmaidy". Obviously they make some gorgeous BM dresser, but I find that so many of them just scream BRIDESMAID that they can really never ever be worn again. I thought, why not choose something classy and elegant that they could easily wear again?

I originally wanted hot pink, as that's my fav colour ever, but quickly realized that a) likely, they will never wear pink again, and b) trying to match the hot pink dresses with all the other accessories and decorations could be tedious. So I scrapped that idea and decided on black. When I told my mom she stopped breathing and almost collapsed. She has since recvoered and seems to agree that it was a good choice.

The dress(es): I found an AMAZING clearance sale at Target Online, and ended up ordering the dresses AND shoes from there. The first set of dresses didn't fit the girls as well as I hoped, so I tried again and got it perfect. The best part. They were originally 50 bucks, already a steal, marked down to 14.99. Really. 14.99. Gorgeous black lace dresses. Perfect. The shoes? Hot pink bow slides....$7.50. Really. Needless to say, this was all so cheap we didn't even bother having the girls pay for them, so we paid for their stuff ourselves. I'm sure they appriciated it over a $300 dress considering 2 of the 3 are travelling from out of town.

All I have left to do it to buy some wide hot pink gross grain ribbon to make new belts for the dresses.

I searched and searched to find the perfect invitations. I wanted something classy, modern, inexensive, and most important of all, consistent with my wedding theme. I searched under google images for hours trying to find it. I sued "Damask Invitation" as my keyword and really never found anything I liked. I finally decided to try someother keywords, and used "Toile Invitation". Right away I found an AWESOME website with perfect invitations.

$1.65 each with envelope!!!!!

Since we aren't doing reply cards ( the bottom of the invite reads: "RSVP and Directions at www.weddingwebsite.com") we just needed the invite and envelope.

It also came with the black backing, however you can choose any colour. Our names are in a hot pink font, the rest in black, and then I used some pink ribbon to tie around it for the complete look. They've been mailed out and I have about half my RSVP's so far. I couldn't be happier with how they turned out, and I can;t tell you how awesome of an idea it is to have no reply cards. People are so much faster to do it online and I think people appreciate the ease of it.

Oh ya, got them at www.styleonabudget.com

Ok, so I'm a little late at starting a wedding blog, but I'm at that point where all of the little details are starting to be sorted out, yet I still can't seem to get my mind off of all things wedding, so I figured might as well blog about it all. I chose a black and white damask theme with hot pink accents, although the FH was hoping for a teal theme! When I got engaged in May of 07 and started to look for things, it was much more difficult. Now it seems there's an abundance of damask themed weddings, and thus more available to brides. I still can't believe how fast the last year and a bit has gone by, and now I'm almost at the big day!