This is renorx's Yellow Wedding!

Well, I'm coming up on my first anniversary! Pretty stoked!!!!

Anyways, I found this pretty rad DIY tea-favor-type of project and of course I immediately thought of this site. It is super affordable, really cute because it's from the heart, AND this site gives you everything you need (including links of sites where you cna find the items needed to complete the project).

One word: AWESOME

http://www.merrimentdesign.com/handsewn-fabric-tea-bags-for-loose-tea-favors.php

Here are the flowers that I am coming up with right now.
I am working on some ideas......

Anyone have any good ideas for flowers that I should try? Or something else in particular? Have fun wedding planning gals!!

Guh, Another palm-slapping-my-forehead moment.

One of my (for lack of a better word here) 'issues' while wedding planning was keeping everything in line with a theme. I thought everything would look better if I at least kept common ground with a color scheme because everything else was kind of 'us' which is a little bit all over the place - but in a very good way!

SO, when I just found this DIY, I figured: easy and could solve alot of gals' problems. Hope this helps someone!

XOXOXOXO

Czech out this page with a free downloadable template for wrappers:
http://www.utterlyengaged.com/diy-cupcake-wrapper-tutorial-by-snow-graham

P.S. Utterlyengaged.com is super duper!

Hey! I am back..... for a minute. I said that I would post a tutorial on how to make the DIY bracelet that I wore on my big day, well here it is!

I am working on formatting and editing (for my own fun purposes :) kind of a learning experience for me) the pictures so here's a few!

I think I am going to be putting them up on an etsy store soon as well..... I'll post the site with the tutorial - for those ladies who don't like to DIY or aren't finding the time.

xoxoxo

http://www.nonpareilmag.com/

Have you guys heard of this site? NonPareil has brand new magazine that is pretty rad. Here's the web portion of the 'zine. Guh... if I were just now beginning the process, this would be my new BFF. Great ideas, TONS of free downloads (including some pretty neat ideas on non-traditional and whimsical (right up my alley...) invitations) FOR F-R-E-E. Yup, that's the right price for me.

There's also tutorials for cute things like hair flowers. Can we say: Awesome!!!??

Gosh, where was this magazine-site combo when I was planning? Seriously, girls this site has so much potential (It is still brand spankin' new) Take, take, take.... I would.

xoxoox

I am working on getting my house set up (I moved into his house) and that involves getting all the boxes and extraneous junk out of my future sewing room. Once I've gotten that all set up, there will definately be a tutorial on how to create the bracelet that I wore.

:) I have also found some other fun things that I would have made if I had given myself more time....

I'll post those in the following posts.

xoxoxo

I made a bunch of fabric flowers to cover the tables at our reception. They truly were a labor of love. They were really easy to do, were therapeutic at just the right time in my wedding planning process, AND I was happy to see girls from the reception taking them home. I hope that they become broches, headbands, bracelets, hair clips, or something equally fun!!

The girls at 100 Layer Cake saw my tutorial on here a few posts back and thought it would be a hit with their readers so I updated some of the information and pictures with the hopes of making it much more user friendly and voila! Here we are and I hope to see tons of happy little flowers everywhere!

We'll see if it gets posted tomorrow or ends up getting pushed back :) I'll keep ya posted!

http://100layercake.com/blog/archives/4402

Our Photographer got us a slideshow... so that we can check things out!

http://jsrphotography.com/slideshows/michonneandmike/

FUN!

Also, we had a day after shoot.. here are a few fun shots from the day that she posted on her blog.

http://blog.jsrphotography.com/2010/01/22/michonne-and-mike-the-day-after-phoenix-az/

Fun times! Can't wait to order some pictures and then have them up in our house. Such a fun day :)

RAD! I don't know what to say other than I am super stoked that people like our vision and I hope that everyone loves their wedding as much as I loved ours.

http://100layercake.com/blog/archives/4246

If you live in the Southern California area, love this gal's style, or want to fly her out to you (like what we did) here's her website. Really she is fantastic and wonderful photography was the one thing that I had my heart set on.

http://www.jsrphotography.com/

Our super duper awesome photographer put up some pictures on her blog.

I'm super excited!!! Her style is clever, and her take on things is unexpected. I just love what she finds and how she makes things look so much cooler on film than they really look in real life.

http://blog.jsrphotography.com/2010/01/18/michonne-and-michael-phoenix-az/


I am absolutely in love with this woman's style. I am a person who thinks that having pictures of family members and friends from the wedding day are incredibly important. I really do not want to be staring at pictures of the dude and me only in 40 years. We will want to see how much fun my little brother had and my cousins.... I am so grateful for her talent and ability to capture something that I wanted so badly, but could not put into words.

I feel so blessed right now.
xoxoooxoxo

I'm so excited!
Everything is falling into place and what doesn't - who gives a care!! I can't wait to have fun and spend time with my family. Everyone who means the world to me will be close and I will definately be enjoying all the grown-up conversations and time spent with people that I do not get to see all that often.

So it almost looks like a peace out ladies!!!

I forgot to mention that this is our transportation.

I'll be riding to the shin-dig with all my gals - courtesy of one of dude's car-club-buddy's wife (that's a mouthful). She's a super sweet gal and she's offered to drive us all together :)

The dude and I will drive off in this :) Pretty excited. The best man has a 1953 or 54 ford mainline - so there will be some pretty cool cars.

I originally wanted a cuff bracelet that I was going to drill holes on either side of the ends and then thread a ribbon through and have a really big and cute bow - well apparently cuff bracelets are not the "in thing" right now unless you want one that looks reminicent of Cleopatra - which is fine and I LOVED, but really was just too big for my arm and for wedding jewelry.

Moving on to Plan B ---- that doesn't sound right .... for some odd reason. haha (I'm a pharmacist, drugs are always on my brain).

I found this bracelet over here (on the left) and I loved the idea of the pleating detail. Come to find out those super cute pleats are called 'kiss pleats'. Now isn't that just adorable?! So Mom and I decided that we could build this on our own. AND it would match my dress perfectly.

I'm super duper excited with what we ended up making. We also made a band of matching kiss-pleats to be the top part of my veil (for lack of a better description for the top part of the veil that usually has some sort of decor going on up there??!). I would take pictures but it's really dark right now and everyone at my house is sleeping. THAT and I'm ridiculously busy today.

I'll have pictures next week - I'm sure you'll all love it.
xoxoxoxo

P.S. I think I'll still construct my original idea at a later date once cuffs come back into fashion :) I think it's a fabulous and super easy DIY. How come it feels like everything I like is so 8 years ago? Am I really THAT far behind the times? :( Guhh....

Really quick!

So I tucked their gifts into these cute little bags that my mom picked up. I think they turned out really cute :)

I got this idea off of Flights of Fancy:
http://www.betsywhite.com/flightsoffancy/index.php/2009/03/diy-download-paper-bag-favor-labels/

Super Cute!

I used the red ones with the pink thank-you bags for the gals. The yellow ones will go on top of the napkins at the reception, kind of as a nice little thank-you - look kind of like bookmarks. Cute and Free :)

This post really is more for my sanity than anything else.

I am totally needing a visual on how random and completely non-matching bridesmaids is going to look right now. At this point in time I am pretty much over the whole Oh-I-Can-Totally-Fix-This snafu. I have moved into 'dealing' mode. My brother was teasing me that I should just get all group shots in black-and-white: Actually I like that idea more than anything. Really, who wants a picture of the most important day in their life to reflect something that resembles a mixture of a carnival, moulin rouge, and vomit? Yeah, I thought so - I don't either.

I'm thinking black and white might be my new BFF.....

Alright, those pictures weren't too bad. I'll work on embracing my new color strategy. Aaaaannnnnnd I'm moving on!

So one of my girls can't get off of work for my wedding this weekend. Just found out. She will not be able to make the wedding. Boo.

SO, I asked my little brother's GF to replace the bailer and so now I have two separate girls with two separate dresses.

All of my gals purchased their dresses (read: not cheap) and they are each of these dresses are adorable dresses but do not go together at as a whole. I do not feel as though I am in a position to ask any one of them to switch anything so that it matches better.

At this point in time, I do not even want a photographer near this mess that I have created. I do not want to have record of this crappy mess of a rainbow. I am not kidding. I am embarrassed by this whole snafu and craphole.

Anyone have ANY ideas? The gal with the white dress is planning on wearing a marigold colored sweater with marigold colored shoes, so she's much more yellow than this picture shows.

HELP. Seriously. I am pretty unhappy about this mess I'm in right now.

This dress really is pretty :)

Here's a sneak peak :)

Ugh. Today's day #6 out of 8. It's hard working this many days in a row, having parents in town, and TONS of DIY stuffs left to do!!

I came home from a nice 12 hour shift, I came home to this super cute fun little thing. I wanted these little guys to hang on the back of the dude's chair and mine and maybe near a poster so that people can find us in the park for the ceremony.

Isn't it cute? My mom made it out of the same fabric that I had in mind for the flowers. Everything is going to match. AWESOME!

I was talking with her last night regarding the last few things that I wanted to accomplish and I told her how I loved this idea - basically pomandering a japanese lantern. She couldn't find any lanters, but she did find these grape-vine-like balls from Ikea and they were super affordable.

Yay for Moms. :) Sorry for the terrible lighting, but this as good as my living room gets at 9:45pm :)

oxoxoxoxo

This does not look all that complicated to me, and it's fun because everyone gets a surprise!!!

The website that I found this favor idea on states that inside the boxes is a variety of candies. Awesome! Candies are readily available everywhere! YES!

Also, I think that this will decrease my stress because I want everything to remain color coordinated so that I do not get carried away with colors and end up over-stimulating everyone who comes to the reception.

I also really like the idea of sticking with plain white. Now for figuring out how to build that little tree thing..... good thing mom and dad are in town - I might be putting them to work!

For anyone who has 4-6 weeks lead time, here's the link
oxooxxo
http://www.navyandlavender.com/product/favor-cake-love-is-sweet/

P.S. Still sick :(

And the only thing that will make me happy is a baby giraffe. :)

No, not really, but it makes me smile.

I had my hair trial today. Oh what a mess. Mess.

My hairstylist was so flustered and in a panic that 2 hours after we started, neither of us was pleased with the end result. I felt so bad for her because I have so much hair that I'm sure it's a bit stressful.

Poor thing, she kept freaking out.... I kept telling her that it was looking nice, but that 'let's just try doing this'... She seemed to respond pretty well and I think I calmed her down a bit because I just kept on telling her to relax and have fun - no big woop.

We're going to try again next week... it's really hard to sit still for 2.5 hours though. Especially when you're sick.

P.S. I am in the midst of trying to figure out where my brother's greyhound who has been living with me and my greyhound for the past 3 years will live when I move in with the dude. It is really breaking my heart because no one loves that dog like I do. (Love and hate are so close that it's kind of hard for me to distinguish the difference at times) The problem is that I am down-sizing from my oh-so-spacious 3Bd-2Bath house with 2 dogs and one human to a 2Bd-1Bath house with 2 humans and possibly 3 doggies. It just doesn't make sense to keep my bro's dog with us. We're not going to fit and the first year of marriage is supposed to be stressful anyways - right?

STRESS and sad... my parents keep asking me to list him on Craigslist and sell him because the brother cannot have pets at the house that he currently lives in (and he doesn't want to move out b/c it's rent-free - good deal for him, right?). Or to give him back to the greyhound agency. WTF?!?!? Seriously? Really? That's like giving up your first-born to a person who's never had kids. I'm talking feelings of attachment here. I just don't know what to do about the situ... this is making me very sad and I'm pretty sure that most of the last part of this post doesn't make sense.

Aside from the movie Anchorman, I really feel as though I've been through an entire roller coaster of emotion this past 24 hours. I have come from hyper-ventilating and oh-so-angry to understanding, acceptance, and feeling honored.

What? Huh? You may ask?

It all started with an innocent telephone call to my mom wishing her a wonderful Christmas, catching up on everyone's Christmas bootie, and making sure that my recipients loved what I gave them. (Our large family has a sort of round-robin method of drawing names for Christmas. I really miss not being at the family gathering when everyone opens the presents because the best part is seeing the looks on everyone's faces when they open a package of something that they really wanted.)

Eventually our talk came to wedding talk with her asking how I was doing, if I needed to have anything taken care of last minute...Gee, my Mom knows me well. There's plenty left to do! :)

She then brings up the interesting new news that my brother's new girlfriend will be attending the wedding (this was BRAND NEW news to me.... I had asked him 3 separate times and the answer was always that she would not be attending) and that one of my mom's friends will be coming as well. RAD, I'm thinking! I would love to meet this new girlfriend and also to see Mom's friend!!

Then.....

..... she tells me that two these people will also be staying at my house. ...HOLD THE BUS....Along with my BFF, BFF's sister and mother and two sons, plus my mom and dad, my brother... my two greyhounds... and .... me (hopefully). That's 11 people in my house which is a 1926 bungalow. People did not live in ginormous houses with multiple bathrooms in the 20's....AND my house is in a renovating dissarray that has been going for the past year!?!?!? It is at this point in time that I really am actually starting to hyperventilate. I hastily tell my mom that I have GOT to hang up and go to bed. Just had to get off the phone before I started crying with her on the line.

The second I hang up my telephone, I start crying because I really do want to have all these people stay at my house (cheaper option for everyone) but that I only have two full beds, one air bed, and a couch. The math for fitting bodies on beds is not adding up in my hyperventilating hot mess. Really, I need about 4 more beds to accomodate all these bodies.

Quickly my hyperventilation and panic recedes into anger: How come housing all of these people has become my problem and why am I freaking out about other peoples' issues? It's MY wedding (oh yeah.... Bridezilla rears her ugly head) and I don't want to deal with this mess. In hindsight, I'm glad I hung up and I was home alone with the dude - to just listen to me blubber and hyperventilate (I'm pretty sure I was absolutely incoherent between the sobs and wheezing).

I really do not know how I fell asleep in the midst of this panic and hyperventilation. I can tell you that I did not sleep well.

Well, the next day was just way too busy running errands with the dude to reflect on how I felt about this whole situation so I didn't get to re-visit anything until this evening when I was sewing napkins.

I tell you one thing ladies: sewing is therapeutic. Promise. It keeps me sane and makes me a better person. :)

After sewing for a good hour with no interruption by any human being (awesome!) I had come to the simple conclusion that I am going to get 2-3 hotel rooms nearby, put up my mom and dad, brother and his GF as well as one of my bridesmaids with her dude-friend, call it a day and it will all be rad. Everything will be just fine.

You know it really is embarrassing when confronted by an akward situation and then to react like I did. I am really lucky that my dude tolerates me and my tendancies to over-react and flip out about things that really do not require such attention. I am fortunate that I was able to step back, take a breath, and look at the situation from the outside: these people want to participate in something special to me.

Really, it is quite honorable that all of these people would like to be with us on this incredibly special day. The day that I get to tell my best friend that I am going to spend forever with him and that I want him to be my partner against the world.

I really am so incredibly blessed to have the people in my life that I do.
<3 And I really love hotels. Like Alot. alot...

Well, I went through with it and got eyelash extensions!!!

AND I'm not even blind! :) Woot woot!

I really was concerned - I know. I know. I know. People get them every day and no big deal, but I really was.

The experience was pretty good. When I got there, the gal had me take off my eye makeup and then lie down on this super soft bench. It was really comfy. Then she had to tape down my lower lashes which was kind of a problem for me. I have ridiculously sensitive eyes and they water at the drop of a hat, so that was an interesting experience. The tape should go around the lower part of eye on top of your eyelashes so that the glue of the extensions onto the top lashes does not stick to your lower lashes essentially gluing your eyelids shut. That would be bad.

This step was alright, except that a piece of tape kept cutting into my eye the entire time that she was working on my right eye.... I got used to the pain and almost fell asleep a few times. The left eye was a bit more irritating, the fumes made my eyes water but like I said, I did not go blind. All worked out in the end. :)

I'll be getting a few pictures up here soon, just not right now because my right eye is still kind of red from the tape scratch :( They're surprisingly fun. It's nice to be able to wake up and not have to put on mascara. It is odd when you're washing your face to have all that extra water sticking to your lashes because I'm just not really used to it with my meager supply of fine blond lashes :)

Yes, I would do this again. :)

So I just found this website and it has some really cute stuff for receptions! (http://www.estiloweddings.com/FAVOR-IDEAS/cart.php?m=product_list&c=32)

I have been throwing around the idea of having an extra cake - just to cut and to have a year later (which I hear tastes terrible).

Well this site has a good sale on some super cute favors. I really hadn't thought about matches. WHAT a super cute idea. The color scheme doesn't really match with mine, which is a bummer but someone else might like the colors for their day? They also have clay flowers for cake toppers!!!!

I also love the flower table runner..... swoon! Why is it only 18 days until my wedding? I need so much more time!!

So I've been MIA here... my best friends from pharmacy school went and got himself hitched this last weekend. The wedding was awesome. The reception was super fun and beautiful. I had an absolutely wonderful time catching up with everyone and experiencing their special day. :) Can't wait for mine!