Good bye Frederick!

I can’t express enough how much fun I had keeping everyone in the area posted through my wedding planning journey.  It has been a great ride.  I’m a married woman now, so this will be the last you read from me.  Thanks to the FNP for letting me be a part of this.  Good luck with planning for all you future brides.  Thank you to my family and friends for all their love and support in helping to make our big day a wonderful event, we’ll never forget!

Love,
b2binfredmd
The New Mrs!

I’m a married woman!

I’m back!  I was married, had a honeymoon and now its back to work and reality!  My name is officially changed and I’m beginning a new life with the man I love! 

The wedding was beautiful, despite hurricane Hanna showing her ugly face.  The rain subsided after the ceremony, which had to be moved in doors from the rose garden.  We were still able to take some pictures outside and everyone had a wonderful time! 

We left early the next morning to enjoy our honeymoon in Puerto Vallarta Mexico, where we stayed at the Velas Vallarta Suite Resort.  It was beautiful there!  The food was amazing and the service was top notch!  It was just what we needed after a hectic year of planning a wedding and all the stress that leads up to the big day. 

Over the next few days (it might take weeks) I am going to be writing up reviews on all the vendors that we used to make our special day possible.  Hopefully you can learn from these critiques and it might give you some good recommendations on who you should or shouldn’t use to help plan your own wedding.  I feel like a pro after planning mine, so please feel free to ask about any dos and don’ts on planning a wedding.  I am here to help!

5 days left!

The seating chart has been finalized and the place cards have been printed!

Ceremony is designed and the program is done.  I will be printing those up today and tying black satin ribbon around them to hold the accordion style programs together.

I put together all of the OOT bags and they are finished!

We found gifts for our parents, the groomsmen and our 2 readers.

I had my final dress fitting and both my rehearsal dinner dress and wedding dress look wonderful.  They were steamed and taken home, ready to go.

Have to pick up a few last minute items today.  Tomorrow we’ll load up the car and drive everything up to the Antrim to be dropped off.

Its almost here!

The countdown continues….10 days to go!

I cannot believe how fast the past year has flown by.  I feel like I just got engaged and now our wedding is right around the corner.  So much to still do and I feel like I’m running out of time.  I took off next week because evenings after work just don’t allow enough time to finish everything up.  Here is where we are with things left to do:

FI went this week and got the marriage license, so I’m glad that’s all taken care of.

My sister and I worked on a DIY project of making personalized water bottles that will be put in the OOT bags and given out at the ceremony.

Only a couple vendors left to check in with and pay off the balances owed.

The venue has our final head count and specialty meal requests.

I am finalizing the seating chart and getting ready to print the place cards.

I’m also working on organizing the program and printing those up as well.

We still have to buy gifts for the groomsman, parents and the readers and make sure those are wrapped up and ready to go.

My last dress fitting is tomorrow to make sure everything is taken care of.  The dress should be steamed and ready to go.

Just reading my list is exhausting!  I’ll keep you posted in these last few days leading up to the wedding!

18 days to go…..busy, busy!

18 days to go and counting!  What I’ve been up to lately….

We met with our Reverend last week to go over the details of the ceremony.  Now that we have that laid out, I can start working on designing and printing the programs.

I have been packing all my “wedding stuff” up in boxes and labeling them to prepare to drive everything up to the Antrim the week of the wedding.

I finished a DIY project of making our unity candle with 2 tapers to match and several white pillar candles with black ribbon and rhinestone embellishments.  They came out fabulous and will add some nice touches to the party.

I ordered my flower girl basket and ring bearer pillow and they just arrived.  The basket is definitely smaller then I expected, but will do the job.

I have another DIY project planned of putting white and black ribbon wrapped on glass votive holders with rhinestone embellishments.  Since I have over a hundred to do, I’ve been putting this off, but I’m running out of time, so its now or never!

My current task is working on the seating chart.  This is proving to be a more difficult task then first expected.  You have to think about who knows each other, who will get along, pairing up the singles to fill a 10 person table….phew!  It is coming along though.  The way I see it is that our guests will only be in their assigned seats while they are eating dinner, so it shouldn’t be too big of a deal if some people are mixed up.  Its hard to please everyone!

Things to Do:

• Call up all vendors and finalize details of service, time line and final cost
• Design/Print programs
• Finalize seating chart
• Print place cards
• Buy/wrap gifts for parents, readers and bridal party (of course all the gifts for my bridesmaids are bought and wrapped, but the FI still has to get gifts for the boys)
• Pick up marriage license (also on FI to-do list)
• Finalize reception play list

Lots to do and not alot of time.  Better get to work!

Vistaprint…a bride’s best friend!

If you are looking to get anything printed for your wedding, or any other event for that matter, I highly suggest visiting www.vistaprint.com  It is a wonderful website that offers very inexpensive professional printing for just about any item you can think of.  I have already ordered my STD’s with return address labels and printed a note for our OOT bags.  Today, I ordered a card with the schedule of events, return address labels for our thank you notes and a set of personalized stationary with my new married name!  Everything I have purchased from them has been top quality, arrived quickly and was very inexpensive.  I really cannot say enough good things about their company and customer service.  Highly recommended!!

Back from the beach!

Well my bachelorette party was a success.  It was a great weekend with all my best girlfriends at the beach.  We got a little crazy and had a great time!  I think I’m going to pay for it now though.  I’m starting to feel sick…boo!  I guess that’s what happens when you crush your immune system with too much partying.  But it was so worth it!  We went to the beach, ate at some great restaurants and hop around each night to several Ocean City hot spots.  Seacrets was my favorite!  We made sure that on my night out we were sure to get noticed.  Each of the 14girls wore pink tops and big, pink feathered boas.  We were a site walking down the street, leaving a trail of pink feathers wherever we went.  I couldn’t have asked for a better bachelorette weekend.  It was a wonderful trip!

Our guest book is here!

We finally decided on ordering a guest book for the wedding from www.snapfish.com that I created using our engagement pictures.  It just came in the mail and it looks lovely.  I chose one with a black, leather cover and all the pages inside have black or white backgrounds.  I made sure to leave plenty of blank space around the pictures so there is enough room for all of our guests to sign it. 

I added a little surprise for my fiance on the last page.  He chose our first dance to be to a song by Lifehouse called Everything because he said the lyrics made him think of me (which I thought was one of the sweetest things he has ever said).  I put my favorite e-pic of us on the back page with a few lyrics from the song.  I thought that this would really make the book special and personalized just for us.  He really loved it! 

I would recommend this option to anyone who is trying to look for a different option from the traditional guest book filled with signatures.

Met with our DJ

We met with our DJ last night to start going over the line up for the reception.  It’s crazy that it is coming up so soon!  He was great and very helpful.  He has a great knowledge of music which my FI really appreciated. 

Our “homework” was to come up with songs for the following:

Mother/Son Dance

Putting on the Garter

Bouquet Toss

Last Dance

Any suggestions would be much appreciated!

Meeting with our DJ tonight

We are meeting with our DJ tonight to go over what kind of music we want to have played at the reception.  We will have mostly young people at our wedding, so we definitely want an up beat party feel.  I want everyone out on the floor dancing the whole night.  I want people to leave and say, “I had a great time!”  Music is what makes a good wedding, so this is an important aspect that I want to focus on.

 

Also, we will be composing a list of songs to play during all those wedding events, i.e. our entrance, first dances, bouquet toss, etc.  We have some ideas and some we have decided on and then others that we just have no clue.  I’m really looking forward to working with our DJ to plan a great party!