Wedding: The fiance's band

Cocobolo Wood Flared

Buffalo Horn Ring

I love my fiance, our styles and aesthetic our very much the same and that makes me happy. We've known for quite sometime now what he was going to get for his wedding band. I found it perusing wonderful etsy.com of course. Its very unique and out of the ordinary so I knew he'd dig it. The ring is made by the husband and wife duo at MinterandRichterDes. I swear, the fiance was more particular about his band than I was about mine. We ended up getting a custom ring made for him and they were so helpful and accommodating to making sure everything was to his liking. He basically got a combination of the Buffalo Horn and Cocobolo rings. His ring will be in the style of the Buffalo Horn but with the rich, red Cocobolo Wood inlay instead. And come to think of it, our wedding rings really reflect us and our wedding style. My ring represents the vintage, his the rustic. A perfect match.

We're Legit...

Guess who has their own t-shirts. Haha. We're totally legit now :P

Wedding: Bridesmaid Dresses

Check out how classy my lovely bridal party will be looking ;) My lovely ladies will be wearing Alfred Sung dresses in the Pantone collection shown in appletini. Fits right in with the apple theme!

Wedding: Personalized Stamps

I highly recommend personalized stamps for an easy "wow" factor when it comes to sending out wedding save the dates or invites. You're going to be spending money on postage anyway, why not it be customized to your liking? Apparently a lot of my guests really enjoyed the stamps, which is always satisfying. It is really not a difficult process and they come out great!

There are two online sources I'd recommend. I used zazzle.com, we've ordered stuff from there before so I knew I could count on their customer service and business. Stamps.com is another online outlet that provides personalized stamps, I've heard good things about them too. Of course the USPS store offers them as well, but I could never get their site to work so sadly USPS didn't make the cut. Each time I tried to upload an image on USPS's site it would just freeze and do nothing after several attempts. So alas I went with Zazzle.

Wedding: My DIY philosophy.

I realize especially after completing our Save the Dates that yes, DIYing is very time consuming and can be quite stressful, but I wouldn't want it any other way. I considered scrapping my DIY plans and just picking an invitation suite with Save the Dates included out of a catalog, but then I realized that wouldn't be true to me. I wanted the creative freedom for everything to look uniform with our wedding theme. By doing my own Save the Dates I was able to customize them to our wedding website, all the same font types that are used in our Save the Dates are used throughout our website as well. I was able to use the same paper and colors that I've been using for various other projects (like the one pictured) from my bridesmaid badges. I loaded up on Martha Stewart paper while it was on sale at Michael's. I'm pretty sure I took every piece of green, brown, and teal paper in the Martha Stewart section at my local Michael's. Michael's coupons are key ;)

I love being crafty, I love being creative and creating things. And I believe that if I didn't enjoy being crafty in the first place I probably would've scrapped the idea a long time ago. But the fact of the matter is that DIYing is part of who I am and what I like to do. DIYing your wedding is definitely not for the faint of heart. If you aren't into craft projects in the first place, I wouldn't recommend the DIY route even if it does save you money. It'll save you a lot less stress and headache in the end if DIYing isn't your forte. I am by no means discouraging you all to DIY, but just be warned that you will need to dedicate plenty of time and much of your sanity to the whole process.

Wedding: Our Save the Dates

After two bridal breakdowns our Save the Dates are miraculously out. (Click image to enlarge.) The first bridal breakdown which I knew would be inevitable at some point (every bride graduate had warned me about it) was after I realized I had ordered the wrong paper. I didn't have time to send back the paper, get the correct paper shipped to me, assemble them, and have them shipped out in time. I was already pushing the Save the Date window by getting them out so close to when the actual invites should be sent. So after I had my mental breakdowns and regathered my thoughts, I figured I'd have to make due with what I had. Granted, I had to change my original design idea and opt for something I could just print out quickly and send.

I've been saving images of ideas I liked for our Save the Dates so I consulted those for inspiration. I came across one Save the Date that was pretty much the what I had in mind regarding an apple tree with our initials carved in the trunk. Then ironically enough I found a blog that had the designer of the Save the Date featured. And the designer was kind enough to provide a downloadable template! God was definitely on my side that day. They are inspired by Shel Silverstein's, "The Giving Tree" cover image, which I love. So with a few tweaks in Illustrator I was able to customize it a bit to fit our "you picked me/apple" theme. I didn't design the artwork entirely, but did assemble and print them out ourselves. It truly saved us a lot of money in the end.

I I truly am indebted to all the wonderful bloggers in blogland that aren't stingy with their designs and encourage them to be used to help spread the love of creativity and in my sake, help save my sanity.

Wedding: You Picked Me

Ahh my bliggidy blog. I apologize more times than I should for not updating you. I figure I better set aside a few things and make time for an update since #1: I realized that I started you around the same time a year ago. HAPPY BLOGAVERSARY TO ME! Most people in blogland do a giveaway or something for their blog anniversary but I figure I can't have that many readers due to the fact that I don't update it enough...sigh...life.

And #2: I finished our Save the Dates and they have a link to my blog on them and it would just be silly if I didn't have any recent updates with wedding planning up. Hi to anyone visiting from our wedding website! Which is located at www.upickedme.com by the way (shameless plug).