It must have been monsoon season on June 13th down the shore in NJ...because from the moment we arrived to the beach, sheets of rain came down on us all the way through the entire ceremony & reception.  But guess what?  That didn't even matter.  What mattered was that I was getting married to my best friend and that we had everyone who was important to us there to share our day.  Here are some pictures from our day that I will hold so close to my heart!! enjoy!

Here are some getting ready shots!  Loved my shoes, loved my hair, loved my flowers, loved everything!

So I know that a lot of brides go back and forth on the "do I see him, or don't I"?  At first we both were like NO WAY!  Well, let's thank buddha for going with it.  It downpoured the entire wedding, so without the reveal, we would not have had any of the great shots that we got.  Plus we got some nerves out of the way along with just an amazing moment between the two of us.

The rehearsal for the ceremony was great - everything outside by the water, we had a beautiful bamboo altar, but with the rain we had to move it inside.  I will say when I first walked in I was disappointed because everyone was looking at us come in and I didn't want them to see us.  My sister n law insisted that the venue move the altar inside the tent because that is what I wanted (she rocked)!! Look how wet the guys were!!

Loved our friends and our wedding party.  Many thanks to the hotel, Blue Bay Inn for letting us use their loung for pictures.  Again, so glad we saw each other and were able to get these great shots done - because we would have been SOL if we didn't!!

Okay so - I am not traditional and like not normal :)  So when I told DH that I wanted to have Chili Peppers as centerpieces his head cocked to the side and said "whatchu talking bout, willis?".  IF I had to put a "theme" to our wedding, I'd say it was a sweet and spicy wedding.  We used our favorite restaurants as our table names, we made our very own spice rub as favors, we had chili peppers as our centerpieces, we had salt water taffy for the guests seating and we had good humor icecream bars for our guests.  All and All - I loved my freaking chili peppers!!

We had a blast! We danced and danced and my only regret was I didn't mingle enough! Everyone all night kept on saying how much they loved the food, the music and just everthing about it.  No one cared about the rain, and some went out by the beach anyhow.  I loved my wedding from start to finish!

MY MOH did an amazing job as well as his best man at their toasts.  Later on in the evening, Stephen's aunt came up to us and my MOH and said you hit a soft spot during your speech, because how you feel about Kara and Stephen is exactly how I felt about Stephen's Mother and my Brother.  My MOH said that he took her best friend away from her, but now that I have a new bf and that she loves us both, etc etc.  It was very touching.

So my best friend was in town visiting and whenver my friends are in town, my boyfriend always made sure that we come to the restaurant for dinner. I hadn't seen my friend in a while so I brought my camera so we can get pictures :).

We had a wonderful dinner and Stephen said he would stop out to say hi, and he never did! I sent him a text, and no reply. So the restaurant manager came out and told me "Stephen is preparing you a wonderful desert". I laughed and said yeah right, if he is, he will have to bring it out himself (He is a chef and he said he doesn't do desserts!).

So, here he comes with a silver platter, and I thought nothing of it, other than, wow he really did make desert.

As soon as he lowered down to one knee, the tears started rolling, I looked over at my friend and she was crying with me!

I love my fiancee' more than life itself and he made this a moment I love to share with all. He proposed to me on Groundhogs Day and had it planned for a while. It is his favorite movie with Bill Murray because he finds love in the end! He got me the ring that I always wanted - it is a trilliant cut diamond!

So we picked our place and have our date and now it is time for me to get all of my ideas out of my head and onto paper!!! We are having an "informal beach wedding" and it is going to be a tented reception right on the beach. I am anxious to get back down to the beach to check out just where our wedding will be since there will be a formal wedding taking place on the other side of the beach.

www.merrimakers.com - I loved the facility, but it was too much for us and we would rather have the entire wedding outside :)

So - My dress came with some Drama.  It took me and 4 bridesmaids less than 50 minutes to find all of our dresses.  We all get up to the register, the girls pay and order their dresses and then it is my turn.  I go to order my size and they say - oh we can't.  They call corporate and the dress is discontinued.  I was devistated.  I made them call all the stores that had it in stock and it took another 1 1/2 hours.  I finally called my dear FI and told him to call all the surrounding NJ stores and see if they had that style in this size.  He calls back 10 minutes later and says, "whosyer daddy!".  I bought it over the phone and picked it up on that following monday.  I did get a great deal.  The only kicker is....I still have a little bit of weight to lose to fit into it.  (I know I can do it!) ***Update - I decided to have the seamstress let the dress out - I do not want to add any extra pressure to myself!!!

I wore my hair in a low-do in my bio picture and loved how it looked.  Since I am getting married on the beach, I wanted something soft and messy looking but nice.  I love all the low-do's I have been seeing, so here are a few that I am going to base my hair off from.

I am still unsure of veil & flower or just a flower.

I have decided to go with Tangerine and Brown with Aqua/Turquoise and Cream as accent colors.  The blue/cream will be in the paper lanterns, parasols, flowers & linens.

We are going for a long table effect like below - the lanterns will vary in size and all will be lit.

SO My girls - I love them.  We took a left turn from my original idea for their dresses, but I am happy with what they chose.  I am having them take the dresses up to right below the knee to get a nice fun, summery, beachy affect. (not the best pictures but close enough). 

My Dear FI will be wearing Tan while the groomsmen will all be wearing Chocolate Brown Tuxedo's!

They will all be wearing these:

My FI is a Big Kid along with pretty much all the groomsmen.  They talk comics, share comicbooks and love all the newest movies coming out like the transformers, star trek, the wolverins origins movie.  So how appropriate is getting the Comic Hero Cufflinks?  We found them at www.cufflinkaficionadocom

I decided to get jewelry for my girls. I say go for it, some may say it's not a gift, but just do it if that is what you want.  I was hoping to look for unique bracelets, but found these awesome rings from a local shop where I live.  They are all amber and silver.

We have 6 -Yes that is right six children in our wedding.  My FI has two nieces and one nephew and I have three nephews.  How can one choose?  Not us.  so, they are all in the wedding!!!!

The girls have cute dresses to match my bridesmaids and for the boys they are wearing linen pants and a nice light long sleeve shirt.  The two littelest boys have plaid, orange & blue shorts (perfect for our color combo!!)

We decided to get the girls starfish necklace and earrings.

They are similar to these.

For the two older boys we got them these pocket watches, except they have a compass and a hook so they can attached to say their bookbag or belt loop.

For the littlest boys (ages 4 & 5) we decided to get them embroidered duffle bags and will be filling it with all beach toys since we are going to be on the beach for 5 hours!)

So it was getting close to ordering the invites and I asked FI to take a look online with me.  We went to www.now-and-forever.com and started to look at them.  We get to the second page and we both turned to each other and didn't say a word.  I finally said, "are you telling me that I am sending out invitations that have people with lampshades on their heads?"  Without hesitation it was a done deal.  These invitations reflect both of us and our style - Perfectly...2 of a kind.

SO FI & MYself like to keep things fun.  We decided to use Chili Peppers as our centerpieces.  This is a rough mockup of the centerpieces, however, we are hoping for a more "fuller" bouquet of chili peppers in the middle and then using solo balls & sarracennia to accent each chili pepper centerpiece.  Are table swill be long and in sets of two - and each table will have candles to accent and hopefully the candle will reflect off from the water in the vases!

I bought magnet sheets at Staples and used Microsoft Publisher to create my Save The Dates.  I was going for something to reflect our wedding that is on the beach.  I found the picture in clip art and viola - my very own Save the Dates:  I bought the envelopes at Staples and everything cost around $50.

I bought this at Michaels forlike $15.00 - I love the idea of writing little notes and am pretty stoked about reading them afterwards!!

We decided to make our own favors and agreed to making Spice Rub.  We bought (120) jars from Ikea.  They were around $3 per 4pk.  My FI, who is a chef, made the spice rub, and I made the labels.  I bought the labels from www.paper-source.com.  The unfortunately thing was the labels were 2.5 inches and I needed 2 inches!!!  I went to michaels and they had this awesome whole punch that was 2 inches round, so I printed them out and then whole punched down to size.   We also incorporated the logo from our invitations and the "two of a kind"

To go along with I guess what is our theme?  Two of a Kind, we are using salt water taffy for seating cards.  I am kind of looking a sweet & spicy theme, with the spice rub and the chili centerpieces.    We plan on using the hole puncher for the tags and then for the table numbers they will be our favorite restaurants that have a special meaning to us.