Life's Tidbits

Geese - A couple weeks ago I shared a picture of the Washington Monument.  As I was reviewing the pictures from that day I realized there was one more shot from the day to share.  I love how the wings are fully extended for just one of the geese and the rest are just kind of chillin’. =)

Pillars in DC -  A shot near the Arlington Memorial Bridge

Gravel Road in Kansas City, MO - Some of my favorite pictures are taken when visiting the in-laws in Kansas City.  There is so much wide open space and the sun light is phenomenal.

A Bride and Her Bridesmaids - I’ve spent the past few weeks sharing my photos, but this week I wanted to change things up a bit.  Soooooo this week’s photo Friday was taken by Sara from Photos from the Harty!  Sara is not only a great friend, but she’s an amazing photographer!  Without further-a-do here’s a little note from Sara about her photo …

It seems we have come to the end of the wedding related posts.  I’ve shared my bridal shower and the bachelorette party as well as my wedding dress purchasing experience.  And let’s not forget about it pouring down rain only a few hours before what was suppose to be an outdoor ceremony.  Below I’ve listed all of the DIY projects we tackled along the way as well as the vendors we used.

But before we get to that here are just a few of my favorite pictures from the big day!  All of the photos below were taken by Korie Lynn Photography.

Check out the full blog post here.

It’s almost time to call our wedding stuff a wrap, but before I do I MUST, must, must share with you my DC bridal shower.  My girls planned a lingerie bridal shower for me which was fabulous and the details were perfection.  The Newlywed Game was was pretty hilarious.   Before the bridal shower they asked my husband questions about the me and our relationship.  Then I was asked the same questions.  For each question I got wrong I had to chew a piece of bubble gum.

View the full blog post here.

In the picture on the left we are all laughing and my sister is passing me some gum since I got a question wrong.  In the picture on the right I am clearly hesitant about the next question that will be asked.

A year ago I married my best friend and love of my life.  Our special day feels like so long ago and yet at the same time like it was yesterday.  It is one of those days I would absolutely love to relive.  Exactly a year late my husband and I celebrated our 1 year anniversary in style!  After a romantic weekend away in Charlottesville we celebrated the actual big day with a glass of wine on the balcony followed by dinner at Tosca.  Tosca has some AAAmazing Italian food!!  If you go to this place you MUST MUST MUST try the Rosemary and thyme fettuccine with a roasted leg of lamb ragu and braised artichokes … it’s absolutely to die for!

Read the rest of this blog here.

A few days ago a friend of mine linked from her Tumblr account to this Huffington Post article.  The article “15 Ways to Stay Married for 15 Years” by Lydia Netzer has a lot of great advice on thing she and her husband have learned throughout the years together.  All her tips are a home run - in my opinion - the only one I really can’t decide if I totally agree with or not is “Go to Bed Angry”.  Although I see her point I would almost want to modify to say “sometimes go to bed angry”.

I’ve noticed a lot of married couples have their own tips/tricks to a long and successful marriage and I enjoy hearing their tidbits.  AND … with the husband and I quickly approaching our one year anniversary together I often think this  first year was a great start to the rest of our lives together!  I hope to write my own 15 tips for saying married in 14 years and 1 month. :)

Photo Credit: Korie Lynn Photography

One of my absolute favorite pieces of advice is #12.  So FRIENDS I make this husband (and wife) pact with you …

“12. Make a husband pact with your friends - The husband pact says this: I promise to listen to you complain about your husband even in the most dire terms, without it affecting my good opinion of him. I will agree with your harshest criticism, accept your gloomiest predictions. I will nod and furrow my brow and sigh when you describe him as a hideous ogre. Then when your fight is over and love shines again like a beautiful sunbeam in your life, I promise to forget everything you said and regard him as the most charming of princes once more. The husband pact is very useful because you want to be able to vent to your friend without having her actually start hating your husband. Because you don’t really mean all those things you say. And she, the swearer of the pact, knows this.” source

The husband and I always say we are a team and it’s kind of become our thing.  So much so that we made sure the word team was in our wedding vows and made team sweat suites for the morning after our wedding.  Due to my love of the team mentality tip #14 really hit home for me …

“14. Be loyal.  All the crap you read in magazines about honesty, sense of humor, communication, sensitivity, date nights, couples weekends, blah blah blah can be trumped by one word: loyalty. You and your spouse are a team of two. It is you against the world. No one else is allowed on the team, and no one else will ever understand the team’s rules. This is okay. The team is not adversarial, the team does not tear its members down, the team does not sabotage the team’s success. Teammates work constantly to help and better their teammates. Loyalty means you put the other person in your marriage first all the time, and you let them put you first. Loyalty means subverting your whims or desires of the moment to better meet your spouse’s whims or desires, with the full understanding and expectation that they will be doing the same. This is the heart of everything, and it is a tricky balance. Sometimes it sways one way and sometimes the other. Sometimes he gets to be crazy, sometimes it’s your turn. Sometimes she’s in the spotlight, sometimes you. Ups and downs ultimately don’t matter, because the team endures.” source

What do you think of Lydia Netzer’s tips?  Is she missing any important tidbits?  Do you like the husband pact?

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A few weeks ago we went to a friend’s beach themed wedding.  She had EVERY detail covered.  Knowing the amount of time and effort even small details take I can’t even imagine how many hours my friend put into everything for her wedding.

At her bachelorette party she mentioned they were going to have a Photo Booth at the wedding.  I had been to a wedding last year with a photo booth and loved it. At the last wedding I had taken pictures with friends, but by the time the husband and I made it to the booth it was closed.  Total pout! So this time I was determined to get a photo booth picture with my lovely husband.

After quickly locating the photo booth during cocktail hour I noticed a poster board.  On the posterboard there were a few photobooth pictures of my friend and (now) husband from other weddings.  She had the photo booth picture strip size increased and then added some cute text about taking pictures in the booth. I wish I had taken a picture of the poster board to show you exactly what it looked liked. 

It took us the first two shots to understand where to look and how the booth worked. You would think two grown adults could successfully take pictures, but I guess we aren’t coordinated enough hahaha.  Here’s how our pictures came out:

See what I mean? The first two we are a little caught off guard.  When we sat down at the table in the reception room we found these cute frames to put our photobooth picture into. 

Each frame had a message from the bride and groom.  On the back there was a clear label with our name on it so we knew which frame was ours. Such a cute detail! I just love the message and idea to send each guest home with a frame.  Check it out!

And can you believe it … each one was hand signed by the bride and groom!  I told you this bride had every detail covered! :)

The cost of the frames seem pretty reasonable. I did a little Googling and found a number of places like this one.  There are many places that sell the perfect size frames for photobooth picture strips.

Have you seen this tidbit at a wedding before?

Happy wedding planning!!

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The title sounds worse than it is by A LOT, but I thought it accurately summed up the situation.  My husband will tell you I am one of those people who loves something in the store (or online) and then immediately second guesses my choices once the item is purchased and home.  For example when we got our dining room table chairs I obsessed about if the cream went okay with the beige/darker cream couches we have. I think it took a good two weeks for the buyers remorse to dissipate.  I love the chairs and think they look great … so seriously what was up withe the buyers remorse?

If it happens with purchases like a pair of jean or a chair, then clearly the buyers remorse would kick in for a wedding dress, right?

I started watching “Say Yes to the Dress” before I got engaged and once we were engaged I thought heck I will try on 5 or 10 dresses and find the one I want quickly.  Unfortunately I wasn’t a 5-10 dress kind of bride. I think I was probably more in the 30-40 range.  I would chalk a lot of that up to trying on almost any dress suggested so I could narrow down what it was I really wanted.

I tried on a lot of dresses before deciding on THE dress. The day I found my wedding dress I was with my MOH and one bridesmaid.  And just to make things interesting the dress I decided was THE ONE happen to be part of a trunk sale.  This dress was only going to be in the store for that weekend and then it would be packed up and sent to another bridal shop.  There was no way I was going to buy a wedding dress without my mother seeing it. The owner of the store suggested we skype with her, however while having lunch, my sister and I decided my mother should fly from Boston to DC just for the day.

Oh yes I am that crazy and thought it was TOTALLY appropriate to have my mother fly in Sunday morning and out that evening just to see the dress.  After some serious convincing my mother agreed to fly in for the day.  We found a “reasonably” priced ticket and the next day she arrived bright and early to do some dress shopping.  Smartly, she requested that we go to at least one other store so she could have other dresses to compare THE dress too.

We began at Hannelore’s and I tried on two dresses for her.  The first and the immediate favorite at that store looked like this:

Anne Barge, Style 612

The second, which I had liked the first time, but not loved got cut almost immediately. We quickly realized in pictures you couldn’t see the beautiful lace in the boddus.  It just didn’t “pop” to us.  Here’s the second dress:

Romona Keveza Legends 804 - Look at my sister in the background … how bored does she look. hahahahaha. It was because she knew it wasn’t the right dress!

After taking my measurements for the first dress and pretty much talking myself out of the dress my mother had initially flown in to see we headed to Love Couture.

They already had “the” dress as well as one other I had been considering ready for us.  I slipped into the dress and was grinning ear to ear.  As my sister had predicted while we were in Hannelore the Stephen Yearik dress was a better match for the look I was going for.  Here we are trying on the dress at the store:

Stephen Yearick

Two days later the buyers remorse kicked into high gear. I started pulling up the two dresses and comparing/contrasting them. My sister, the MOH, kept telling me I was crazy for doubting my initial decision. I waffled back and forth for the next few months. I started checking out second hand versions of the Anne Barge dress and seeing if I could afford (heck no!!) the second dress I liked as well.

In the end all the buyers remorse was erased when I went to the store to try my dress on the day it came in!  After the alterations, makeup, jewlery and all the other good bridal stuff here’s how it looked on our wedding day:

Photo Credit: Korie Lynn Photography

Thanks for taking a walk down memory lane with me.  Buyers remorse be gone because on the day of our wedding I wouldn’t have wanted to be in any other dress!

Happy Dress Shopping!

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We had received a few wedding and other party invitations with super pretty writing on the envelopes.  Specifically gorgeous calligraphy!  Despite loving calligraphy I couldn’t justify the cost of paying for hand done calligraphy on something 99.9% of people just throw away after opening the invitation.

So we went the route of DIY calligraphy.  By DIY I mean using the computer and printer, because my handwriting is less than ideal even for meeting notes. :)

View the full blog post and DIY direction here.

Good luck with your printing press!  If you have any questions about the process, please leave a comment … I’m happy to provide additional details!!

Happy Planning and DIY!!