Recap #1 (Pre-ceremony)

Hello!

It's been forever since I've been on-- continually blogging when you're getting to crunch time while preparing for a wedding, right after the wedding, during the honeymoon, or when you're still basking in post-wedding bliss....well, I just didn't have the time :) I do have to say, I loved our wedding.

I loved the day of; I loved our guests, our food, our decorations; I loved pre-wedding, relaxing in my BIL and SIL's house, eating chocolates, drinking mimosas, making bouquets; I loved rick-rolling my husband during our wedding vows (oh yes, I did that); our '15 minutes of us time' right after the ceremony; our first dance; our first kiss; our first EVERYTHING as husband and wife.

So far, it's been incredible. Not much has changed in the way we live our lives, but there is something different. A nearly intangible newfound closeness that, while not necessarily absent before, not as present as it is now. Almost as if whatever cosmic link we had that brought us together is now stronger, tougher, and more indestructible. Yes, I know it's cheesy-- but you can't blame me, I'm unbelievably in love and a little buzzed off of a spiked root beer float.

Now that I'm back, I'm going to do re-caps-- since there are so many pictures, though, from pre-, post-, and during ceremony (plus the honeymoon!), I'm going to do it in stages, interspersed with what's going on in my life today.

So, without further ado, my pre-ceremony!

My bouquet: I made it the morning of, and the jewel on the ribbon belonged to Mikey's mother, given to me by Mikey's father. It was the perfect touch :)

Here's my bouquet in color-- I loved the splash of blue!

On the bottom of my shoes, I modge-podged "Mrs. Sadler", so when I walked away a

fter getting married, people would get a peek ;)

My garter-- I made it, and then also made a mini nintendo controller, since Mikey's nintendo pajama pants were the reason we got together at in the first place!

Our cake toppers! They were vintage "anthropomorphic banana people in green suits" as the description read :) My younger sister (and MOH) repainted them to match our outfits, and made a veil and top hat to go with!

Here are a few of the guys (two are my brothers, and two are my closest friends) relaxing earlier in the day.

The flower girl and ring bearer, hanging out on a playset. Aren't they cute?

Me, getting my hair done and veil set in place :)

The flower girl and bridesmaid's bouquets, all made that day-- it was such a nice 'day of' activity :)

My and Mikey's sweet heart table's decoration (among others)-- this is what I say to him, and he replies, "I love you to the sun and back"-- we have those engraved on the inside of our wedding rings <3

Our centerpieces (our homemade mead, for the toasts, instead of champagne toasts) and our favors (hand-written love quotes attached with ribbon to a skeleton key) on each bottle

Me, being 'pampered and prepared' by some of my bridesmaids beforehand-- fun picture opportunity.

A vintage glamour shot of me getting ready-- I *love* this picture!

My flower girl and I-- I also adore this picture. I'm a silly person, and so is she. It was perfect!

Here I am, sitting and relaxing-- I was all smiles, all day long!

Aaaaaaaand, last but not least for now, my lovely husband, waiting for me :)

More re-caps coming soon, in between current updates!

:D

Back on Track!

Hello!

It's been a few months since I've written a post-- and let me tell you, SO much has changed.

For a while, we thought we may have to postpone the wedding, and so I kind of fell off (out of?) the wedding world for a while. We were going to scale it back down, do a smaller ceremony and a reception in a restaurant or something along those lines, and then Mikey's brother and SIL did something incredible-- they offered to let us get hitched in their big, beautiful backyard.

Now, there's nothing wrong with out backyard, per se-- it's big and beautiful, with lots of flat land (which Mikey's bro does NOT have-- which may be a bit tricky), but their yard has a pond. And a pond house. And two bridges, and two giant nearly endangered swans (that I helped catch once!)-- all in all, it's an incredibly beautiful property.

So, it started out to be a small gathering there, and then it kind of exploded again. With about four months left until the wedding.

*cue slight freak-out*

Luckily, I did a whole bunch of stuff over the last year and a half to get ready for the wedding, and anyways, I do my best work when I procrastinate. Three months and one week left? No problem! Let's kick some wedding ass!

Also, I'm being proactive right now.

I've written about how Mikey is making mead for our wedding. After all, we met while drinking mead, and his proposal involved mead. It just makes sense that our wedding will have tons of delicious mead for us to enjoy!

So, for mead, you need wine bottles to bottle the mead with once it matures. So, I bought a wine bottle today while the Sam bought stuff for making oatmeal cookies. Of course, they do no good if they're full of wine, so...I've been drinking! Yep! Wine and cookies at 2:30 in the afternoon.

:D

Hooray for working on the wedding!

Tradition #2: Bridal "Things"

My finals are at last finished for the semester-I literally just finished about half an hour ago. I then grabbed a sandwich, a tall hot chocolate, poured a mini bottle of gin into said hot chocolate and am now commencing with the celebration known as "FINALS ARE OVER!"

It makes me a very, very happy woman.

Now that my week and a half of a hellish work-load has passed, I can concentrate once again on that time-consuming passion: wedding planning.

I've mentioned before about how excited I am for Santa this year (and Christmas in general-- not just the gift giving/receiving!) because I'm anticipating some wonderful wedding goodies that will help me along my way. However, since it's still a few days away (four! four days!!) I don't yet have some fabulous new pretty stuff to share. I also haven't yet found the time I've wanted to paint my alcoholic lemonade jugs, and so I figured I'd write today to you about...bridal things.

Now, I know the title is rather general, but that's because there are so many things that are chalked up to being a bridal experience. There are some necessary ones (dress shopping, for instance), nice ones (bachelorette party! woo!) and the not-so-needed, but definitely intriguing one on which I will be focusing on: the bridal show.

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I have never been to a bridal show. I have been engaged for over a year and a half by this point, and although I've received invitations, heard announcements, read blogs about them, I have yet to attend one. I always thought that the pushy sales people, crazy crowds, and bridal fashion show (although I'm sure it's very neat to watch, I'm not the most *fashion forward* person) just weren't worth the potential gain.

That is, until I realized three things.
1) We have this wedding mostly planned. If I see something that catches my eye, great! If not, well-- it's no huge loss.
2) I've read a lot lately from people winning things from these little gatherings. Not necessarily big things (though I've read a few things about the honeymoon package giveaway...) but things, nonetheless- and I am a BIG sucker for free.
3) Free cake and champagne. Did I mention that it was free?

I want to share with you now, that a phrase used by my closest friends to apply to me is "gypsy"-- if there's an hour long lecture about sub-atomic carpet particles, but there are free cookies? I'm there. Those bags they give out at banks or colleges filled with useless advertisements and a few magnets? Never pass one by. Hell, if someone came up to me and offered me a free kick in the ass, I'd probably consider it, just because it was free. Free is one of my two favorite words, the other one being (if you haven't gathered by now) mini.

Free mini things? *Heaven*

So, the lure of free mini things forced me to really think about the idea of going to a bridal show. If I had attended a bridal show early in my engagement, I think I would have been sucker punched by the experience. So many people telling me what my wedding needs to be, shoving products I didn't know I needed to have in my face, the pressure-- I did not need the stress, and I didn't think I'd find it to be an enjoyable experience.

However, as a bride, engaged woman, and human being, I've grown in the last year and a half. In that time, I've learned to *PUT DOWN THE WEDDING MAGAZINE* from time to time, when the ideas were not my style (even though they were very pretty, sparkly, and enticing), or I started to question my own designs. Mikey and I have worked together to create a wedding that is going to reflect who we are as people, not the cookie cutter ones displayed in magazines.*

*not that there's anything wrong with those! They're almost always exquisitely beautiful-- but they're generally just not who we are as a couple.

So, the other day, I got an e-mail in my inbox (where else?) inviting me to the Bridal Show Expo in Chicago! Now, it's not really hard to get tickets-- you can just google the bridal show, find the discount code (I think it was Chicago10?) and get four free tickets to the show in January.

Well, I decided that I was going to try it out this year. I "ordered" the tickets, and I now have them in my possession. On Sunday, January 9th, my besties Sam, Mom, and my Sister and I will all head to Schaumburg, Illinois, to the expo.

Following the directions given to me in an insert, I plan to be armed with a bunch of pre-printed labels with my name, address, e-mail account and wedding date to hand out to vendors, like a good, prepared little bride. I don't really care if I get wedding stuff in the mail-- I adore getting mail-- nor do I care if my wedding inbox gets flooded with offers. I'm pretty sure that to win things, you need to sign up for information, and doggone it, I wanna win stuff.

I will also be prepared to eat as much cake and drink as much champagne as possible.

Basically, I'm going to treat it less as a day for planning, but a day of feeling special, free food and drink for my special peeps, and an interesting experience which will, I'm sure, entitle you to an interesting recap.

And hey, if I win a Hawaiian honeymoon, who am I to complain?

So:

TRADITION #2: ATTEMPTING, BUT WITH CAUTION.


Have you ever gone to a bridal show? Any tips?