A Few Fun Things

I just wanted to show off some cute accessories I recently bought for the wedding! 

I've been searching and searching for yellow shoes for the wedding because I really want to do one of those pictures where I'm lifting up my dress showing my shoes and Mike is lifting up his pants showing his socks...I'm a dork I know.  And yes, I'm forcing Mike to wear yellow argyle socks.  He's a lucky man.

I've had a really hard time finding yellow shoes that don't look like stripper shoes.  Thankfully, I found some super cute, non-skanky ones on Zappos and got them in the mail yesterday and they're perfect!  Here they are:

Don't they just make you happy?!  Love 'em.

I also bought a clutch for the wedding day.  Of course, it's from Etsy.  Here it is:

I love it because it's kind of modern and graphicy, the perfect colors for the wedding and I can totally use it again.

I also ordered my dad a tie for the wedding.  He wants to kind of match the groomsmen since he's going to be walking me down the aisle, but not exactly match them.  I ordered him a tie from the same lady at Tux and Tulle on Etsy that we got the groomsmen ties from.  Love these too!!

Mike Said Aye to the Tie!

Pardon the pun...I couldn't help myself.

The main part of the wedding that Mike has been participating in and excited about is what he gets wear.  He loves clothes and especially loves suits so he's been having fun shopping around and finding pieces for the wedding.  The first part of the boys' attire that we decided on were their ties.  We looked on Etsy and Mike checked  a lot of his favorite fashion web sites and after a couple of weeks decided on these:

We loved the bright yellow color and just how darn cute they are.  I think they're going to look perfect with the boys' gray suits.  Love 'em! 

I ordered them from a shop on Etsy called Tux & Tulle.  She did a great job and we got them really quickly.  Here they are!  I don't want to take them out of their bag, they're so cute!

I Said Yes to the Dress!

Okay, I haven't posted in ages...I suck...but I'm back!

I'm so excited to say that I can check off one of the hardest and most important, (to me at least), things off of my wedding checklist!  The DRESS.

The journey of buying my wedding dress started like most of my journeys do...in a dirty dressing room in my underpants.  My mom and my mo-in-law to be Sandy decided to check out the one and only dress/tux shop in our town classily named Tuxego.  We knew we wouldn't find a dress there, but figured it'd be fun and we might get an idea what style looks good on my stubby body.  Thank God all three of us have good senses of humor because this place was a train wreck.  There was no one to help you, the dresses were dirty, there was not a single solitary one in my size, and the dressing room included a complimentary petty coat for you to try on which was found on the floor in the exact shape that it would have been left if someone pushed it off their body and walked away.  *Shudders*

It still ended up being pretty fun though because, well, it's still wedding dresses!  Even though most of them were either insanely too big for me, (and there were no magic clips  like at the next store), or they refused to zip over my boobs, they still had that magic thing that wedding dresses do where they make anyone look ten times prettier the second they put them on.  Also, my future mo-in-law got to see me in my underwear for the first time so that was fun.  My mom  did not enjoy the fact that I wore bright yellow underwear for the occasion, but it IS my wedding color after all!

One thing I did realize on that visit is that we all three had totally different tastes.  I liked anything with a waist band on it and Sandy did not because it cut my body off and made me even stubbier and my mom loved anything princessy and poofy while I felt like a cake topper who could barely move in those.  I started to think that this whole process was going to be pretty tricky.

A while later, my sister, mom, and I traveled to Bakersfield to try on dresses at Little White Dress Bridal Shop and had planned to go to one other shop.  It was the exact opposite experience than what we had at the local shop.  This place was adorable and everyone was so friendly and our lady had these magic clips that would hold the dresses as tight as physically possible and would make you look amazingly skinny and lovely.  The lady whom I called Magic Clip Lady the whole day asked me a bit about myself, figured out that I love Mod Cloth and Etsy and immediately picked out this dress for me that both Laura and I had disregarded.  We tried on tons of dresses, (and yes mom, I wore appropriate underwear this time!), and when it came time to try on Magic Clip Lady's choice, Laura slipped it over my head, zipped it up, and when we turned and looked at each other, we both teared up.  This was the one!

**Update:  since the wedding is now long over, here are some photos from that awesome day!!

Champs to celebrate the dress!

I don't know why I don't look this good in any of my wedding pics...I think it's the magic clips...

THE BACK IS THE BEST PART.

All Hail the Bridesmaids!!

When I first started envisioning my wedding to Mike, even before we were officially engaged, I always said I didn't want to have bridesmaids.  It just seems like so much work and money for them so I figured that since we were having such a small wedding, we didn't need a wedding party.  Then Mike dropped the bomb on me that he HAD to have his three best friends, Scott, Brian, and Owen as groomsmen so I needed to have three on my side too.  It took about two milliseconds to choose my wedding party because they are the three women who know me the best, (besides my mom of course), and who are always the most excited for me when good things are happening.  I really think one of the true tests of friendships is who can be legitimately happy for you when you are happy.  So here are my fabu bridesmaids and maid of honor, (hereafter referred to as MOH):

The MOH is Laura Loo aka sissypoopants aka Loo Buckets. She's my sister, she's got angel hair, and she has freakishly tiny bones.

My first bridesmaid, (in no particular order), is Kristin aka K-Furg. She's been one of my best friends since 2nd grade, she's gorgeous in an unobnoxious way, and she's smarter than you.

My second bridesmaid is Vanessa aka V-Dog. She's been one of my best friends since we bonded over our hatred of PE and our love of oldies in junior high, we're basically the same person except I'm way paler, and she's got an insanely huge mouth, but in a not creepy and still pretty kind of way.

We've been sending e-mails back and forth, which has really made me feel like a bride...it's surreal..and we picked out their bridesmaids dress. 

They're all going to look so pretty in it, be comfy, and hopefully be able to wear it again.  Love it!  Thanks girls for being so awesome and thanks Nordstrom's for having a non-obnoxious yellow dress!  

A rose by any other name...

So, we picked our wedding flowers!

I'm really enjoying Mike and my snap decision making during this whole wedding planning process.  For people who have a really hard time deciding what movie to watch and what to eat for dinner we are rock stars at choosing stuff for our wedding!

The other day, we walked into Walmart, (because we live in a town with no Target so it's not shameful), and I had the brilliant idea to check out the gardening section to look at all of the yellow flowers for inspiration.  After a couple of minutes we came across these:

The yellow ranunculus!  I was immediately drawn to the look of them.  I love that they are so delicate looking and kind of different, not totally traditional.  I keep describing them to people that they look like roses made of paper.  Mike loves them because he thinks the name sounds like redonkulous.  He's great.  

So I started googling wedding bouquets made out of these gorge yellow redonkulouses and found some really good inspiration.

So yes, we found our wedding flowers by walking into a Walmart and picking something that was for sale for like five bucks, but I'm still pretty excited about it.  

Any good florists in Northern CA have ideas???

On a Wedding Invite High

This one is going to be a quick one.  I haven't posted much because A:  I'm busy and tired and B:  I'm lazy and have nothing to talk about.  And yes, I can be both of those things at the same time.  Wedding planning has been going along great minus a few mini freakouts and one color change which was reversed the next day. Last night I ordered our wedding invitations and RSVP cards and was so impressed with the service we received, I had to post a quick blog about it.

I ran across the site Wedding Paper Divas while doing research for my wedding planner certification and ordered a couple of samples to put on my inspiration boards.  I had really quick service from them the first time so I decided to check them out for my own wedding, (seriously, that is still really weird to say...this rock on my hand freaks me out every time I look at it).  Mike and I like to make snap decisions and go with our gut so after only a couple of times perusing the site, we decided on a simple and modern invite.  I finally bit the bullet last night after hemming and hawing over spending money on something and ordered them.  Not only did they give me free shipping because I left my order in my shopping cart so long they got nervous that I had died, (coincidentally, I have done this on more than one web site and never do it on purpose, but it always ends up getting me free shipping!), but I also had forgotten to put in a discount code to get 10% off so when I e-mailed them about it, they refunded me the eleven bucks I would have saved.  I just ordered them last night and I already got a proof today and my estimated shipping date is next week.  Basically, they ROCK.

I went back and forth about showing you guys my invites, but here is the one we've chosen so if you don't want the surprise ruined, (the four of you I'm actually inviting to my tiny, weird, little wedding), then don't scroll down!

The invites!  We love the soft yellow, the simplicity of the invitation and the cute font.  I'm a sucker for a simple/modern layout no matter what it's for!

And the RSVP cards!  I love the wording and design.  The only thing I didn't love about these cards is how little about the food you can fit on there because our food all has really long descriptions and I love how fancy our food sounds so I was bummed out that all I ended up fitting on there was new york steak, chicken, and halibut, but it would have been that way with most any RSVP cards, they are usually this size.





So we love them and I'm so excited how insanely ahead of the game we are so far with the wedding.  I'm sure I'll be eating those words come the first of next year, but I'm enjoying my cheap wedding invitation high right now!

And the Wedding Journey Begins...

Welcome to the first of many wedding blogs by Not-So-Wedding-Planner extraordinaire Valerie.  Today, we're going to talk about inspiration.  The thing I've been struggling with the most as a bride/planner is knowing when a decision is "right."  This is a problem of mine not only with the wedding, but with life in general and it drives Mike insane.  How do you know you're right?  Isn't life black and white? And so on and so on.  The answer is, of course, no.  There are no right and wrong answers when it comes to stuff like wedding planning.  Okay, 2 tables + 4 tables = 6 tables, that is a right answer, but "should I do my wedding in black and white or black and pink?" has no correct answer.  That is my point.  Took me a while to get to it...whew!

When I first started planning the wedding, I spent a lot of time flipping through bridal magazines and browsing The Knot.  A couple of weddings stood out to me during my research and I was immediately drawn to the colors yellow, white, and gray.  Now I know the first thing that is going to pop into everyone's head when I say the color yellow is how much I've been complaining about the yellow walls all over my house.  I know I don't make sense and I'm a total flip flopper, but just go with it.

My all time favorite wedding inspiration came from a real wedding shown in The Real Simple Weddings magazine for 2010, (pretty expensive magazine at 10 bucks, but it only comes out once a year and it is totally worth it).  Here are a couple of pictures of their yellow and white wedding:

The things that stood out the most to me were the crispness of the colors, the simplicity of the decorations, and the comfortable, handmade feel of the entire event.  After looking at weddings like these and deciding a time of year for the event, (late April of 2011), Mike and I decided on yellow with accents of gray and white.

I think the most important thing I learned when making this decision is that you can find tons of weddings you fall in love with.  I love the pictures I posted of that yellow and white wedding, but our wedding is not going to look anything like it except for the color scheme.  You have to gain inspiration from pictures and be able to convert it to your own style and feeling.  Mike and I constantly verbalize what we want our wedding to feel like and it helps so much with the planning and decision making.