It's been a while!!!

Well, we are currently 64 days from our wedding day! Lots of things are being put in a row at this point! Sorry for the lack of updates, but it's been a crazy time recently! So, here's where we are at!

We had engagement photographs taken: http://www.martiniphotography.com/weddings2011/JenniferLauranEngagement.html

Invitations went out a couple of weeks ago. Lauran had the very great help of MooseL and Aude, and the art of the lovely Jennifer Kennedy to help make out invitation just beautiful. Here are some photos of the invitation:
This is the front.

 This is the inside

 This is the back complete with the very pretty red envelopes we got at Paper Source here in Portland.

Every single one was individually hand stamped and sealed. We had a fun little party and with the help of Jason and Deana and Wendy and Chris it was all done very quickly! We also used Garden of Love stamps.

I ordered red love mugs from Mug Revolution of Bend, OR for my bridesmaids. Once I get the actual mugs I will get some photos of them and the super cute gift bags that we found for them. But, here's at least an image to give an idea:

We went yesterday and got all of the men's wedding stuff sorted out with Men's Wearhouse. All of the groomsmen should have the information, but if you need it again just let us know! I have only seen 2 of my bridesmaids dresses, so I am anxiously looking forward to seeing my last two, both Michelles by the way. :)

We took advantage of the back-to-school sales and got colored pencils and pens for our guest book pages. I am very excited to see all of the things our friends and family write down for us!

My mother will be doing all of the bouquets, and we've decided to go with artificial flowers rather than real flowers just for ease of handling and we don't really have a dozen refrigerators to hold flowers in to keep them fresh. Here's some images of the flowers I had managed to find! I have more than this, but they're not on my computer yet.

Today I went in for dress fitting (yay! no alterations needed!) and for having my dress bustled! I will get to pick it up on September 16th and it will have all of the bustling things put in. Here are some photos from my fitting!

These are my wedding shoes!

Deana, Lauran and I also were shopping at FancyFlours.com and got some really good cake decor and cupcake things!

These will go on the sides of our wedding cake.

 These will also go on our wedding cake

These are the cupcake liners were using for the cupcakes!

Well, that's about it for now! Stay tuned as we get closer!!!

253 Days to Go!

Well, we have 253 days left before the big day! And some things have finally been locked into place! It's been a very busy couple of days!

1. We have finally SET THE DATE. It is locked in and going nowhere! Sunday October 23rd, 2011 at 1pm.

2. We have set some of our musical things! The intro for the ceremony will be a slack key guitar hawaiian lullaby version of Pachelbel's Canon. It's a beautiful cover. Our first dance song: Make You Feel My Love by Adele. Father/Daughter dance: My Little Girl by Tim McGraw. Throwing the bouquet: Little Miss Can't Be Wrong by Spin Doctors. Throwing the Garter: Girls Girls Girls by Motley Crue. Last song of the night: Goodbye Goodbye by Oingo Boingo We still need to figure out some other songs, but that's what we've got!
Here is a link to our music list!!

3. Yesterday we went to Shane Company and we purchased our rings!
The one near the top of my finger is my wedding ring. It has to be custom ordered, so it will be to me in 6-8 weeks. They have to make it in my size and hand pick the diamonds and sapphires for it! It's beautiful!

Lauran got a Titanium band that looks like this:

4. We ordered our guestbook from the Guestbook Store. The cover looks like this:

The inside is the casual style pages. They are double sided and give folks a chance to fill out stories and memories and draw pictures. It will be something nice for people to do between the ceremony and the food and dancing.

5. We set our date and paid our deposit and signed the contract for our venue and for our photographer! We will also be putting down to have engagement photos taken a little later in the spring when the cherry blossoms are out! We are having it at the Troutdale House and our photographer is Martini Photography.

6. I am thinking of buying this garter from Etsy:

7. We did get our reservation at the condo in Maui set up! We just need to buy plane tickets and preorder for some of the activities we want to do! :)

Going to sign up for vendors!

We have an appointment on Saturday morning to go put down deposits and sign contracts with our venue and our photographer!
Our wedding will be October 23rd, 2011 at The Troutdale House by the Sandy River.
http://www.thetroutdalehouse.com/
Our photographer will be Martin Burlus of Martini Photography
http://www.martiniphotography.com/

I am really excited to finally get things settled and locked in!

I am also starting to put together a bunch of pictures of us for a slide show and collecting music for the wedding reception mix CD. If anybody is willing to volunteer to run music the few times it needs to be done, please feel free to comment or email me at moredena@gmail.com. It won't be overly hard! I promise!

We did pick up some stuff to do the wedding scrapbook, which I am excited to do once we get pictures! Joanne's was having a 40% off sale on all of their paper stuff so we got a really good deal! :)

We got a quote on our Save the Date postcards. We need 50 of them and it's gonna cost about $35 to get them done. Still need to figure out invitations though...

Things are really starting to happen!!!

Also, I updated the main wedding website as well!

Wedding Food Plans

So, after pricing various catering services and not wanting to spend $500+ on burritos... I think we're going to do DIY hors d'oeuvres and punch. It will be a mid-day affair so it shouldn't be too hard for folks to have lunch before they come and we will end the party with cupcakes!

Food we are going to serve:
Veggie platter (various veggies and ranch dip)
Fruit platter (tropical, melons and berries)
Tortilla chips with salsa and guacamole
Potato chips and dip (ranch and french onion)
Cheese and crackers (3-4 kinds of cheese and crackers)
Potato salad
Cocktail wieners in BBQ sauce

The potato salad can be made a few days ahead and the fruits and veggies will involve a lot of prep time but I think it will be totally do able. We will be taking volunteers to help!

It's Been A While!

Not much has happened in the wedding planning world for us. A lot of things have already been decided on. We're just getting our deposits in for photographer and venue and such. We did get the artwork for our Save the Date postcards though! This was done by the wonderful Jennifer "Taen" Kennedy.

It will match really well with the picture she did of us getting married that you can see at the top of the page. 


In other world news, we did finally decide on colors for the wedding party!

To those of you in the wedding party! Here are your colors! (As seen in the David's Bridal catalogue) These colors to match up with Men's Warehouse!

As a side note, the men will get a discount and the women will get a discount on purchasing dresses and renting tuxes if you mention our names when you make your reservations! :D

Michelle Weaver and Jason Reynolds will be wearing Espresso

Michelle Brady and Kevin Clark will be wearing Cognac

Amanda Lack and Kris Thompson will be wearing Tangerine

Deana Reynolds and Edwin Wendell Dean III will be wearing Plum (Deana's dress only came in plum and it was close enough to lapis to do!)

If you need want to have an idea of length (about the knee) and other fun details!:

http://jirrisandmoredenawedding.blogspot.com/2010/05/today-i-bought-dress.html  has a pretty darn good post on it. As long as you don't go floor length I am okay.

As for Shoes! Ladies I want you in Converse All Stars. I am trying to decide if I want you to have color matching to your dresses (which might be difficult to find) or have you guys in classic black with white trim while I wear the solid white. 

PS: Michelle W- you may wear strappy fun shoes after all of the wedding pictures are taken. <3

We still need to decide on catering and what we're gonna do about that. SIGH. I am still thinking burrito bar! But not sure it will be a decent price to get it catered or if DIY would be better. Or to just serve light snacks and vegetables. Decisions Decisions! The wedding will start at about 1pm, so that's a good enough hour to not NEED to serve a full meal. I dunno yet.

I know we decided on cupcake flavors and I thought I wrote them down but I seemed to have not written them down. I know Deana has them though! And they will be delicious!

Our reservation for our honeymoon has been made at Ka'anapali Beach Club in Maui! Another big thank you out to my grandparents! I am looking forward to my first trip to Hawaii!

Today I Bought the Dress!

Today I bought my wedding dress! And the veil and the underthings that go with it. Plus a garment bag to keep it all in.

I look purrty! And the dress was on sale and everything else was sold at a discount so I ended up saving about $200 on the purchase! Woo! The veil has scalloped edges with really pretty sparkly edging. It is very delicate and looks really nice.

News for my Bridesmaids! If you buy your dress as David's Bridal  (in any state) you can get $20 off of your dress if you give them my full name and tell them I am in Oregon. Woo!

News for the Groomsmen! Please let the guys at Men's Warehouse know that you're in our wedding party and we get a free suit for Lauran.

Here is some information on pairing and colors for The Parade of Female Body Types and the Longhaired Man Brigade. The colors are from David's Bridal. You can look them up.
Bride Jennifer and Groom Lauran will be wearing Apple (red) (well, I am wearing white but the embroidery is apple)
Maid of Honor Deana  and Best Man Edwin will be wearing Lapis (a wine purple)
Bridesmaid Michelle W and Groomsman Jason will be wearing Cognac (a warm orange/brown)
Bridesmaid Michelle B and Groomsman Kevin will be wearing Espresso (a darker more chocolate brown)
Bridesmaid Amanda and Groomsman Kris will be wearing Tangerine (a warm orange)

Ladies will wear Converse All-Star low tops in colors matching their dresses. You can order them in any color from online. Yes, Michelle, I know you're against it. I want you to wear them for the ceremony and the photographs and then you can wear whatever shoes you want. :) Dress length and style I am wanting look a lot like this:

Dresses at the knee. Does not have to be strapless. I would prefer not chiffon and would like solid colors. If you have questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me and we can talk. :) You do not have to buy your dress at David's Bridal. I would like to see photos of you in your dress of your choice before you purchase it. Strapless, strapped, or whatever to make you comfortable.

Guys (groomsmen and dads) will be wearing tuxes with vests to match. Once we set on a pattern of vest and stuff I will post pictures and information for ya!

For our moms and grammas we got $20 giftcards with my dress purchase for you to put towards any outfit if you'd like to purchase something new to wear to the wedding. We will mail them out to you!

We also found a venue. Waiting to hear back from Dads about it. Link to see it The Troutdale House. It looks gorgeous and I think will be right up our alley! Planning is going splendidly!

Deana and I talked about cupcakes today! We've decided on the flavors! One will be lemon with white chocolate frosting, one will be dark chocolate with mocha frosting and one will be red velvet with cream cheese frosting! Made my Mrs. Reynolds herself! And trust me, they will be delicious!

A Very Wedding Friendly Day!

So, I figured out some stuff today! I had my hair crown braided and I think it looks fantastic. The woman who did my hair also does do weddings so we'll have to look into pricing for the braiding. And this was really without much of a brush out or anything and took about 5 minutes.

There was a woman sitting next to the woman who was doing the braiding who made these really lovely hair pieces and you can order them custom as well! I might do this instead of wearing a veil... Thoughts on the matter? It would, obviously, be done in white and red to match my dress and it's not completely set into my hair or anything and it's not completely centered on my head, but it gives an idea. I will see if we got another picture of it from Jason and Deana, they and Lauran all really liked it.

In other world news... I might have found The Ring! I really loved this one, it made my heart stop when I saw it... It's .53 total carat weight diamonds and 3 dark blue sapphires. It is well within our price range and it is a stunning ring in person. We went to Shane Company in Tigard and I was greatly impressed with their service and selection and pricing.

I also heard from MooseL today regarding ideas for the invitations and stuff so things are clickin' along really well! Starting to get people in contact with people... Jason and Deana have both made contact with Edwin and Deana made contact with Taen since she's making the cake topper and Deana is making the cake! We've had their and our friend Penny volunteer to help set up stuff and we've just been really starting to mold things. 

We started looking at ceremony stuff the other night too, since we're writing our own. I know what song I will walk down the aisle to! I heard it randomly on Pandora radio a few months ago and it took me by surprise! It's off of an album called Friends of Aloha which is an album of Hawaiian style lullabyes. It is a cover of Pachelbel's Canon in D, which I was NOT going to have! However, it's such a beautiful and intricate piece of guitar work that it's beautiful and amazing. Also I think I might have found the song for the processional before me... we'll see anyway! It is Concerto Grosso in C Major by Arcangelo Corelli. It was a beautiful piece!