I'm so excited to be a Bride! My sister got married last July, and I was her maid of honor, so I got to do a lot of her planning (but I had the magazines since college ;) ) and now I'm so psyched to be making my own choices and doing whatever we want for OUR wedding! Payback time Sis muwahahahah! ;)

My fiance and I met in college, we both lived in the same dorm freshman year. I had JUST gotten out a of a pretty long term relationship from high school and was looking to really experience the joys of being at a college with 70% guys...but then I met HIM.

Just for fun, here's a picture of us when we first started dating in college...and I look like I'm in 6th grade.

He actually turned me down the first time I met him. My roommate and I were on the prowl looking for guys to come with us to the Freshmen Orientation activities, my roommate wanted to go ice skating and I wanted to see the Mentalist, so we went from our all girls floor to the all guys floor to go fishin. I walked by his room, and took him in: gorgeous blue eyes, chiseled jaw, hot and TALL (I'm only 5' tall, so that doesn't say much). I asked him and his roommate if they wanted to come out with me to the mentalist...and he said no thanks. Dang. I've been telling him about this site, so I 'm getting his perspective on the first time we met: "After you left, I turned to him (his roommate) and said 'You know, this is RIT, and that girl was good looking, and she asked me to go somewhere with her. I should probably do this.'"

Throughout those first weeks I kept my eye on him, reeling him in, but not wanting to commit to anything serious. He was so easy going, good looking, laid back, had a great sense of humor, was the perfect gentleman, I was drawn to him time and time again. He won me with our first kiss, we had been hanging out and talking for hours for weeks and I was thinking, what is he waiting for? I can remember the half second before we kissed for the first time thinking...this is it! You know how they say that a woman can tell a lot about a guy based on the first kiss? Well, I knew this was going to be something serious, a girl has to hold onto someone with lips like that. :D

We dated all through college, and the rest as they say, is history. We had been together just about 5 years, and we were continuing our relationship after I finished college (I live in upstate NY and just finished a 4 year Animation Program, and he lives in PA and was on a 5 year Software Engineering Program), and we were trying to wrangle a vacation together so we could spend more than a weekend together alone. Both our parents are pretty traditional, so when my mom didn't throw a stink when she found out we were going to go to Ocean City, NJ together for a week, I had an inkling that something was up.

We spent a whole glorious week on the beach (getting scorched in the process), walking the boardwalk and spending some much needed time together.

I was hoping he might propose during the vacation but by the end of the week, I figured if he hasn't done it yet, he's probably not going to. It was our last full day of vacation, and he decided we had had enough of boardwalk food, so we drove to a local place to get dinner to bring it back to picnic on the beach (he's a romantic kind of guy, so this didn't phase me). We're driving back to our hotel to get our blankets and picnic gear and he's getting really tense. There was a lady in the car ahead of us blocking our way to our hotel and she gets out of her car, with her vehicle blocking the entrance. He's looking at the sky, and cursing her existence, and I'm thinking, calm down, its alright! We race up to our hotel as the sky is starting to change colors and he's throwing our picnic stuff together and he's rooting around in his bag. What are you doing? I ask him, and he says...Getting a shirt in case it gets cold. Like most men, he NEVER gets cold, but I let it go, we were in a hurry, and both of us were starving. We get our stuff down to the beach and set up with our food, watching the kids fly kites and the waves crash in.

He scarfs half of his sub and asks me if I want desert. So, him inhaling food is not out of the ordinary, but him leaving half of it left, is, but I'm a chocoholic, so I never turn down desert. He says that he'll cut the cake and asks me to move over so he can sit on my left while we eat desert. Again, specific directions, but whatever, I like him to be close. We're sitting leaning on one another watching the sun set and I see the first star. Excited, I close my eyes to make a wish - and I wish the same thing I had been for the past couple months, I wish he would ask me to be his wife. And as I closed my eyes, the light bulb in my brain went off: the rushing, the impatience, the snarfing, the odd desert rearranging, the sunset...and that loving look in his eyes. I opened my eyes slowly, looking at him and he's giving me the look every girl dreams of, complete adoration and love. He shuffles onto his knee and says, "I have a question I've been waiting to ask you for a long time...Will you marry me?"
 

He's made me the happiest woman, and I'm so lucky to have found my Prince Charming, I'm a better person because of him and with him, and I can't wait to start our lives together! Let the wedding planning begin!! :D

SO, being the major control freak that I am when it comes to my creative endeavors, my DIY projects have been faithful to the extreme end of "yourself". It's not that I dont' WANT help, it's just that you'll probably do it wrong, or not fast enough, or I'll pick on you too much or look over your shoulder, and it's better this way that I'm doing it...trust me lol.

S A V E   T H E  D A T E S :
It all started with the Save the Dates, being the overly ambitious - and borderline insane? - Creative Bride that I am, I animated our save the dates, complete with a butler presenting the info on a silver tray. It took about 100 hours from making my models, to animating, rendering, burning, designing, and getting them ready to go out to the family, but everyone loved them, and my little cousin watches it for fun sometimes. I don't know how to post a video so here are the pics of the tangibles:

<--- Here's the cover of the DVD case
<--- the insert of the DVD

and the whopping array of them about to be mailed:

I N V I T A T I O N S :
I'm currently in the pain in the finger and cramp in the forearm fun of cutting out, gluing, organizing, drawing, printing, folding, and arranging all of the invite pieces. I'll let you know by the end of the week if I'm standing at my window looking out to the mailbox while my invites go skittering away to their owners, FLY MY PRETTIES FLY! FLY!

<--- the outside, a gate fold invite that lifts open to:

Unfortunately, like many of us know, nothing looks nearly as good in an amateur photo as it does in person, so you can't tell that the center paper is a clover green semi transparent vellum so you can see our monogram peeking through, but now you know, and knowing is half the battle. :)
And our RSVP postcards:

the back is the same as our Save the Date cover

U P D A T E :
The Invites...are finished, and I've released them into the wild:


P R O G R A M   F A N S :
Just a trial, I don't know all the info that will be on them yet, but here's my first attempt at the program fan (yet more things I get to cut out by hand, I must secretly like to torture myself) here they are (aaaahhhh raucous applause and crowd noises):



T A B L E   N U M B E R S :
In case you didn't think I was crazy before, I've just entered a new level of Tom Cruise kind of crazy. I designed a pattern based on a necklace I purchased for my dress to go around the table numbers themselves, and then I printed them out and CUT OUT ALL THE LITTLE SPACES with an exacto knife:

   
The even numbers will have the Ivory background like the one above and the odd numbers will be the inverse, Ivory pattern on top of a Teal Scrapbook paper, sound like fun? Don't kid yourself, but like I said, Tom Cruise crazy.

A N D   N O W ,  F O R   S O M E T H I N G  C O M P L E T E LY  D I F F E R E N T:
And just for fun, I had a beach themed shower and here's a caricature I did of my FI and I as Ariel and Eric cause The Little Mermaid my favorite Disney movie :D  :


T A B L E   S E A T I N G   C H A R T :

Well, I just finished glueing all the tables on, and I'm very happy with how it turned out:



I had left over printed designs from our save the dates, so I could use the same design for each table, I looked at the font (scriptina) I used in the invitations for the table numbers and made a stencil for the "rebecca and adam" by printing out the words on 8 1/2 X 11 paper and cutting out the letters with an exacto knife (a new hobby of mine apparently) and using that as a stencil for the metallic gel pen I "painted" in our names with.

TA DA, that's the end of show and tell for now, please go back to the forums and feed the addiction :D

I've always loved solving the creative problems (well, not problems really so much as...opportunities) for weddings, so my family has graciously let me help with their weddings, my sister, my cousin, and my grandfather, here's some things I got to do for them:

My cousin Jason got married in September of '08 and my sister, Laura, also got married that year in July, so for Christmas I made ornaments by printing these two out back to back and slid inside a clear globe ornament a la ship-in-a-bottle so when you spun the ornament, one couple was on one side, and the other on the opposite!

My Grandfather recently got remarried over the summer and I was happy I could help out by doing their invitations for them. Top fold invite, the design was based on Lilacs, his new bride's favorite flower and the colors for the wedding.

Ok, the colors look kind of wonky on this, but it's the cover for my sister's Wedding Program I designed. Inside we had a kind of playbill introducing the wedding party with pictures and obviously the stuff that tells you what the heck is going on and in what order ;)

So now that my hair is long enough to be really annoying, I figure this is the perfect opportunity to do something epic and awesome that you'd need Rapunzel head for: Braids, Twists, Intricate junk, curls, whatever...Here's the front runners for my hair inspiration:

My inspirations are in the other hair post, and here is the hair that I love almost more than chocolate...almost:

Here's the kiss:



Now for the Make Up:

I'm looking for something romantic and also something that will make FI DROOOOOOOOOL :D Some current Inspirations:

something smokey, sassy and something that will look really special, I'm going to use a MAC make up artist, and I can't WAIT to be sexified!

Well, I tried the DIY route again, and I think I got it finally!:



and my interpretation of the sexy smile, but I think it looks like I have to sneeze...it's something I'm working on:

hahaha oh that's special

After THREE pairs of shoes that didn't meet the mark, here are the fabulous supercalifragilisticexpialidocious awesomeness that is my footwear:

Here is how they came, but they needed some zazz and some shine, so I went to my local consignment store and found the PERFECT pair of antique clip on earrings, had my jeweler cut off the backs, and then my mom sewed them on the toe, I'm SO happy with how they turned out, the blinged earrings are the Juliet to my shoe's Romeo, and the pattern a brilliant echo of the invitations and all the botanical inspirations in my projects:



:D

So we decided on a little shop in Albany called Coccodotts, and after driving by it twice from my sense of direction that rivals a banana's, we found a sweet (ha ha) imaginative place, that ALMOST kept a straight face when we showed them our James Bond inspiration (see the other cake post). Here's the photographic evidence of our cake testing. PS-  Dear Frosting...a little goes a long way....talk about craving milk.



um...I'll have one of those...and one of those...and better throw in that shelf...



::insert JAWS music here::

  daaaaaa dun...daaaa dun....dun da dun da dun da

dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun

DAH DUNNNNNNNN



and that's how it's done :D

I have a serious sweet tooth, so I wasn't too hung up about what the cake would LOOK like as long as it tasted divine. Here is my favorite contribution to the wedding from my FI, he sent this James Bond cake to me as a joke, but we both really liked it:

My mom was in a word...horrified. Oh yes, she tried to hide it, but her silence speaks volumes. We wanted to capture the fun spirit of this cake, it still makes me laugh every time i look at it, can you see the bullet holes? (enter here my mom's voice: "I just don't think you'll look back and enjoy the fact that little men with guns were running around on your wedding cake!") So, we decided that we'd have a normal cake to appease the traditional people in our wedding, but keep the top layer kooky and the bride and groom off balance. We brought the above picture to our cake baker, and I think she was silent for a full 8 seconds trying to figure out what to say in response to it lol.  So we showed her another picture, a more traditional cake we both love:

So, we were going to do this cake, but with "Mad Hatter" layers - topsy turvey if you will...but as many of you are finding out, Wedding cake is EXPENSIVE! I have a personal issue with paying a lot of money for food, you pay for it, consume it and then what are you left with? Saddlebags and Cellulite lol (When I worked for Disney in college, I'd buy souveniers with what little spending money I had instead of food, cause a shirt or earrings last forever, but food is only temporary - stupid I know, but I still have all that stuff!) SO, moral of our cake story is we'll be using the second design, but keeping the tiers straight unless we can find a Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious cake topper that would convince us to pay more for the toppled look...we'll see!

Well it's about time I gathered all my flowery inspirations in one spot, I love garden flowers my favorites are snapdragons and dahlias, and I like weird unexpected elements, like Jade roses, seeded eucalyptus, bear grass, pussy willows, Pincushion Protea, Anemones, and Succulents (I call them Hens n Chickens...I don't know why...) dusty miller, caspia, fiddle head fronds, and I love the idea of having Lambs Ear around the outside of the bouquet so it's nice and soft to hold onto. As a side note, I'm drawn to smaller and punchier bouquets, If I'm gonna be hauling this thing around all day I don't want to drag a bush half the size of me, so I'd like it to be proportionate to my 5' frame and easily weakened biceps. As with a bunch of the other things I plan on and then change my mind on, here's the flavors of the month:

And for some Groom Blooms:

and since our colors are based on peacocks:

TA DA!! 

We had been searching for WEEKS on something that would fit the garden setting for the ceremony and reception, and I truely wanted something that they could wear again, so I knew it had to be short (who ever really shortens those past bridesmaids dresses?) and I wanted something that was a little different...this pattern has the perfect balance of the colors we wanted: teals, greens and golds:


and here's the update, we finally found a Matron of Honor dress for my dear old Sister, good gracious but that was hanging over my head, and I'm pleased as punch (...pleased...punch? who makes this stuff up?) that we found a compliment to the girls!

Here's my lovely engagement ring! I figured here is a safe place to show it off endlessly without being a pain :) My FI picked it out all by his onesies, and exceeded all my expectations. He went to a tiny privately owned store in Lewisburg, PA and bought it from an old man who bought settings from a store in NYC that was closing a long time ago. The jeweler had sold all the rings from that adventure, except mine because he wanted the perfect center stone to compliment it. Soon before FI bought it, he found this stunning sparkler that completed it, it became the one FI had to have. I love that the center stone looks square but is actually round brilliant - so it's got all the crazy sparkle of a round, but the unique look of a square. Once at the dinner table my semi-stoic dad interrupted our conversation to say: "That ring is radiant."  lol GOOD JOB FI!!!

Here she is, I tried this on the day I did my hair and make up trial - yyeeeaahhhh!!  :D

Just a few more inches to go, and she and I will look beautiful together!

Alright Ladies...Here she is...she's popped up in some posts here and there, but NOW it fits and looks Faaaaaabulous! And the next time I put her on...I'll be getting married!!! :D

Well. To say that it was the best day of my life is the biggest understatement I can imagine, it's like saying, yeah...there's a couple grains of sand on the beach, it was...well, the only word that seems adequate is


SUPERCALIFRAGILISTICEXPIALIDOCIOUS!!


I suppose I'll have to do a full recap at some point, but I've just moved all my wordly goods and my entire life to PA with my husband (AHHH!! :D ) and it's been a pretty bizarre, but happily-ever-after-worthy adventure post-wedding, and we had a remarkable honeymoon in Costa Rica (guess there's another post), but here's what we've all been waiting for anyway, you can't fool me, we're all visual beings...

N O N   P R O   P I C S ! !


Here's just a sampling of my favorite moments captured day of:


Here's my Uncle/Godfather/Officiant and my BM Julie who were walking down to sing their duet, "So This is Love," from Cinderella which brought tears to everyone's eyes, it was beautiful!!!



Here's my dashingly handsome groom, and our amazingly on time, good natured, and supportive groomsmen



And my happy, beautiful, and loving bridesmaids, and my sister, my MOH



Here's my new inlaws - how cute!!



My brother in law with the death grip keeping my Mom upright, we wanted to sew some ShamWows on his shoulders to sop up her eye puddles, but she held it together, she was so very happy for us :D

Can you feel the anticipation, I hope it was this way for everyone too, here comes the BRIDE!!



My dad was so sweet, I barely cried (SHOCKER!!! I thought I'd flood Death Valley from the east coast) and he was all weepy and happy!



Here's some quiet moments during the ceremony, my Uncle, the officiant was HILARIOUS weaving the story of how we met and became engaged with quotes from the Princess Bride :) Everyone said it was the most unique and enjoyable ceremony they've heard, good job Uncle Kevin! We didn't even notice it was raining, we were in our own little bubble of love and happiness (yeah I know I know sap sap sappy!)



Awwwwwwww the kiss!!!



HUSBAND AND WIFE - and the beginning of a fairytale life and night!

Well, I have no really good excuses for why it took so long to post these, but here's the full link to all 800ish pictures from the wedding:

http://paulandbrenda.zenfolio.com/beccaandadam

And just a few samples of some of them for us visual creatures:


  

There are way to many to post in one thing, but trust me - if you're anything like me and love stalking other people's weddings - you will thoroughly enjoy going through all 800 pics - not just the "best of" the reception dancing pictures crack me up, we had SUCH a great time, I couldn't wish for more, and I got my Prince Charming out of it too! Love you ladies, thanks for all your love, laughs and support through the adventure we call wedding planning! :D