Will you be my Maids?

I decided a long time ago that when it came time to ask my Ladies to be in the wedding party I wanted to make it special. I am a big cheese ball like that. :) So I decided that one day I would have them over for dinner and dessert and formally ask them all at once.

Right after Christmas (about two weeks after the proposal) I ordered ornamnets that 'Will you be my Maid of Honor?' for the two girls who would have that role, and three ornaments that said 'Bridesmaid'. I feel like it was fitting seeing as how we got engaged so close to Christmas. I also bought Bridesmaid/Maid of Honor etiquette books for them, which I thought was a nice touch.

I finally got my stuff together for this past Friday, July 10th, almost 7 months after we got engaged, and invited the ladies over. We ate dinner, drank sangrias and danced to The Proclaimers since they were playing on the TV. It was a wonderful night and it reaffirmed the reason why these Ladies are the ones I want standing by me on the day that I marry my Best Friend. <3



These would be the little baggies that held the ornaments, books and a card asking the girls to be my Maid or MOH.



They were pretty excited about the books and promptly started dancing in line formation.



This is me and one of my lovely MOHs, Kate. She is getting married just 4 months before I am, so she will have the role of Matron of Honor come time for my wedding. (I am also her MOH, so this should be fun!)



Another lovely MOH, Melly. She is my crafting buddy, so I'm sure she'll be the first to volunteer when it comes time to start my DIY projects.



Myself and my good friend, Kelly. This is the lady responsible for the wonderful pictures of our engagement!



My sister in-law to be. I met her when she was in 8th grade and now she's all adult like! It's irksome! <3



I guess instead of setting up the timer to take a picture of all five of us, we decided to take a picture of our feet. Haha! So much fun!

A good time was had by all. They actually had no idea that I was planning this, so it was kind of fun the look of surprise on their faces when they were opening their cards. :)

Wedding Nightmare No. 1

From what I understand this is a normal thing for all brides-to-be. I expected it to happen eventually, but I'm not going to lie and say that I was pleased when it finally happened.

~insert dramatic music~

There was a gorgeous beach a block away from the house that we were staying at. I could literally walk out the door and walk right to it, but I had more important things to take care of. For example, I was getting married in about 20mins and still hadn't put on my dress or had any of the decorations set up!

It seems that we had rented this large beach house in North Carolina, I'm thinking it was supposed to be somewhere in the Outer Banks. (My family has gone down there for Thanksgiving a couple times and rented a couple huge houses, so I feel like that's what was happening here.) My whole family was staying in this house with me, and by whole family, I mean mean my WHOLE FAMILY. Twenty or so Aunts and Uncles, about sixty cousins, and then Pat's family on top of my own. It was outrageous.

The backyard was littered with mismatched tables, table cloths and centerpieces. Nothing was the way I wanted it and my dress was terrifying! Just as I was stepping into the dress of my nightmares, I woke up and that was that.

Maybe it wasn't really as bad as it could have been, but it definitely made me feel like we are even more behind in our planning than I had thought. :/

Time to get a move on, self!

We're not so great at this...

So things have been really slow on the wedding front these days. It's not that we don't want to go look at venues and FINALLY start making some decisions, it's just that we have been so busy with our day to day lives that finding the perfect place for the wedding has been put on the back burner.

June is always a busy month for us because it's Pat's birthday is on the 23rd and his family's reunion weekend is around the same date. Yea, it's all close together but we have to prepare for that weekend! Hahaha! And then this year I added another weekend of being busy because I planned a surprise birthday party for him for the weekend after his birthday. It went smoothly and he was in fact surprised! Go me! :)

We need to stop putting it off and really buckle down and find the place that is going to work for us. A couple places on the agenda for this month; Tyler Arboretum, Independence Seaport Museum and The Willows, which doesn't have a website. I just want for us to find the venue for our wedding so that I can feel like we have actually accomplished something as far as the wedding is concerned. Here's hoping that one of these places proves to be that place!

Wish us luck!

Morris Arboretum

So the Mom's and I went on a little outing this past weekend. I let Boy off the hook this time because he was completely exhausted and I kind of felt bad for him. We went and checked out Morris Arboretum, which is a place that I have been dying to look at. I'm not sure when I decided that I really wanted to check it out but it has been on my mind for a long time.


It was absolutely beautiful! Breathtakingly beautiful. The picture below is what the view would be from the place we would stand to be married.



There are all different kinds of gardens throughout the 92 acres of land. I think the one below is the rose garden.


This is me standing in a random little pavilion type thing.


I don't even know what that thing below is. It looks kind of like a giant beehive and I thought it was pretty awesome looking.


This is the train set that Pat thought was really neat once I showed him the pictures.


Another one of the gardens. So pretty.


I've said it before, and I'll say it again, it was absolutely beautiful. I spent the past couple days swearing to myself that it was the place we are going to have the wedding but then the reality of things set in:

They can only hold up to 180 people, we have 200 on our list.
Even if we could get our list down to 180, we would be left with a tiny dance floor and frankly, I'm not ok with that.

These two things are complete deal breakers and I'm pretty disappointed about that. Bummer.

So the search continues.

Lemon Hill Mansion

I forced one of my best friends and MOH to go driving around with me the other day to look at a couple different venues. I more just wanted to look at things from a distance to see if I looked the look of the place from the outside. Silly, I know but I wanted to easily rule a couple places out. Haha!

So drove over to Lemon Hill Mansion which was atop a hill and had an amazing view of center city. I mean amazing.



Naturally, my camera doesn't really do the view justice but it's fantastic. That's what I'm getting at here. Unfortunately, I wasn't so impressed with the look of Lemon Hill Mansion itself. Lame.



It was really pretty and all but I'm just so set on the garden thing and Lemon Hill doesn't really offer that.





And that weird little building up there is apparently the bathrooms. I must admit that I was afraid to go in. Too bad Lemon Hill, you could have been great!

Bartram's Garden

So last weekend Pat, My Mom, his Mom and I all went to look at Bartram's Garden. It's a place that I had found online months and months and months ago. Of course it was beautiful.



When we went there was actually another wedding going on. That made things interesting but it also gave us a good idea of what the place would look like all decorated for a wedding. This is the area for the ceremony. As you can see, the guests are seated and waiting for the ceremony to begin.



The building on the right there is Bartram's House. It was finished being built in 1731. Cool, huh? I love old houses!



That gate leads into the reception area. It's in between the Coach House and the Barn. It's a really nice set up and I really love that gate!



And this is the reception area. The picture is really dark so it's kind of hard to see how it looks but it's a nice set up.



So I really liked it but I think I went into it expecting to like it.

Pros: Outside garden ceremony, Historic Site, really really really pretty, holds all 200 guests, meadow with the skyline as a background

Cons: Only 4 women bathroom stalls, rocky pathways for those who aren't so great on their feet

We'll see what happens. I plan to check out a couple more places but the skyline thing really won my heart.

Long time no... blog?

Ok, so it's been a while and that's ok. We have been engaged for just under five months now and are just about to actually start planning things. I felt kind of silly having this blog when we weren't even getting ready to look at venues or anything that required actual planning. I was just tossing around ideas in my brain and occassionaly writing them down here.

Now that we are actually getting ready to do some real planning, this site feels a bit more relevant for me.

So here's where we are at:

We haven't actually looked at any venues but are in the process of booking a couple walk-thru's for the next couple of weeks. We have narrowed it down to three places which I think is a great idea. I know that if I look at too many places then I will feel all crazy about actually picking one. Too much pressure, too many choices! But the main idea is to have an outdoor wedding, where ever it ends up happening. The outdoor thing is pretty big factor, at least for me.

We got our Guest List together last weekend and it's not pretty. We were hoping to keep the number to about 170 but because of the whole Irish family thing, 199. We keep talking about cutting it down, but where do you start? Who do you cut? And how can you justify that cut? The biggest problem with the larger guest list is that one of the three venues that we like has a maximum of 170 people. Lame. That is pretty upsetting because it it one of the places that I have invisioned for years. I'm going to try to talk to them because if the 10-15% "No" responses holds true for us then we will either be right there or not far off. We'll see.

I still haven't asked my girls to be my bridal party. What am I waiting for!?!?1 Well, I guess that I'm waiting to actually set a date. We are still aiming for September 5, 2010 but what if we can't get it? We'll see. Plus, I have a whole thing planned out and I'm just not ready!

I still plan to make my own invites, save-the-dates, etc. I ordered some samples of colored cardstock but it has just been hanging out in my house for a while. I'll really look at it at some point.

What else?

Oh nothing. I'm going to try to post some of the actual ideas that I've had up here in the coming days/weeks/months whatever. I will let you know how the tours go. :)

xoxo
Keira