Pros and Cons of a Short Engagement

Nathan and I will have been engaged for about seven months by the time we get married. Whether or not you consider that a short engagement (I actually think it's more like mid-length), it's definitely shorter than the average of about 15 months—apparently 40% of couples have a 13–18 month engagement. Nathan and I fall in the 27% of people who are engaged 7–12 months, but there's another 30% of people who have an engagement longer than a year and a half!

Before I go all statistics crazy on you guys (it's tempting), let's bring it back to what I actually want to talk about. Ahem.

Personal photo / Hiking in Utah with Nathan & his younger brother—a beautiful state!

No, I don't regret a short engagement! But there are definitely pros and cons.

Pros

• You'll experience less wedding burnout. Even though I've only been planning for five months, I already feel a good bit of "wow, can we just get this over with already?" I can't imagine how I would feel fifteen months into an engagement. 
• There's a greater focus on what really matters. Sometimes I look at other projects and think "if I had more time, maybe I would attempt that..." Then I come back to my senses and realize that it's not only unnecessary, it doesn't even fit our personalities! Having a shorter engagement makes me prioritize what is really important. 
• You don't have to wait (duh)! For those of you who are impatient (*cough* me), a short engagement means you get to move on past this stage in life to the next. I'm excited to no longer be in a long distance relationship and to actually live in the same city as Nathan.

Personal photo / I get bored of just words—so how about a mildly related family picture?

Cons

• It can be really, really hard to find vendors. Do you guys remember my original venue post? I had a number of venues I really loved but were booked seven months in advance. I ended up with a venue that I love, but I do wish I would have had more time to choose. 
• You'll have less time to do the important things. No, I don't mean doing calligraphy on 350 escort cards. I mean the really important things. For those who don't currently live with their significant others like me, this means finding an apartment, finishing school, hunting for a job, and oh—a gazillion other life decisions. 
• There's more time to save. Whether you're paying for your wedding yourself or your family is helping you out, you'll have more time to set away money for your wedding. This might also mean you spend more, but that depends on the family!

Did I miss anything?

Wedding Apps

This post is somewhat of a continuation on having a plugged-in wedding. I already noted that I wanted to encourage the use of cell phones and cameras during our wedding—especially during the reception. To try to get more people to take pictures, I created the I Spy cards I told you about earlier. But then of course there's the issue of actually getting the pictures.

Many of our friends and relatives have smartphones, so we looked into paid apps like Wedding Snap or Snap the Wedding. In the end, we just didn't want to allot any amount of money towards this when 1. We were already paying a professional photographer and 2. We weren't sure how many people would actually download the app and take pictures with it. We also weren't sure about those who had cameras—why pay for a service when only half of the guests at the wedding could use it?

We moved on from this idea and set about creating a wedding website. We decided on mywedding.com (more on how we chose a wedding website later). While setting up our free website, we noticed that they had a wedding app available for download and integration, at no extra cost. Thinking it probably wasn't all that great, I downloaded it to test it anyway.

Kind of a cute icon! Once you open up the app and join our wedding, you see a screen like this.

I really love the look of the app. I think it's streamlined and cute without being overpowering. There's also the option to post pictures or add a note by both the app creator or the guests. Here you can see a picture that I posted with the options to add a photo or a note at the bottom of the page.

Guests can like or comment on pictures—similar to Facebook. In fact, there's optional Facebook integration throughout the app. Furthermore, as the app creator, I have the option on each post to delete, share on Facebook, save the photo, or tag people in the photo.

I invited a people to test drive the app with me—so I have a few "guests" on my guest page.

So far I am loving it! I am really excited about being able to use this for our wedding. The tricky part will be encouraging guests to download the app (it's a free download available both in the App Store and Google Play) and encouraging them to take pictures through the app or use the app to upload photos. The current plan is to hand out small cards with app information, and it's on our website too of course.

For our guests don't have smartphones, I want to encourage them to still take and share pictures—but we're still working out that aspect! So far all I have is manually uploading them to Facebook and tagging us, using a hashtag, or emailing them to our wedding address. Any other suggestions?

Pictures can be viewed "timeline" style on the app, or on our website as a photostream. Hypothetically, we could invite people who weren't able to be at the wedding to view pictures in live time on their smartphones or online. I'm thinking about asking a few people to be especially diligent about snapping pictures! Of course, we'll try to upload pictures to Facebook as well.

You're Doing What?

We're having a group run as part of our rehearsal dinner festivities.

Yep. 

Now, before everyone freaks out, no, the run will not be required! And yes, we're still having a dinner (we're calling it a welcome dinner now) and a time to relax and not do strenuous things. 

But, we love to run. I'm more than thrilled to have this chance for all of us to run together—a lot of girls would go get manicures together before the wedding, we go for a run together (although maybe we'll get manicures too). 

Personal photo / The three of us after a Thanksgiving run last fall!

Some of our friends will be joining us as well. We're not going to be racing—ahem, I say that but I'm pretty sure as competitive as some of us are this could prove less than true. On Saturday's long run I mapped out a course that I think will work. It's a 2.5 mile loop around the park where we're holding the welcome dinner. It starts at the shelter and wanders up and around the baseball fields, up a steep hill (oops, sorry about that, everyone's thighs), along the trail down by the river, around the dog park, down past some beautiful houses, and back along the river to the shelter.

Image via Cleveland Park / Awesome paint skillz by me

I've gotten positive feedback on it so far. Some of our friends are excited about running with us, and those who aren't interested don't seem bothered at all that we're going to run for 25 or 30 minutes at the end of the welcome dinner. We're titling the event the "Pre-Wedding Run & Fun in the Park," and everyone is invited. We'd love to have guests come and hang out after dinner and either run with us or just enjoy the park! There's an amazing playground for younger kids, great walking trails, and plenty of tables and benches.

The schedule will be something like this:

5:30—Welcome dinner with our immediate families and out-of-town guests
6:30—Invite all guests down to the park to hang out
7:30—Anyone who wants to is welcome to run
8:30—Everyone leaves the park around dusk!

I totally understand that there will probably only be a handful of us running. But I'm still more excited about this than anything else—besides the wedding itself of course!

Invitations Part III

Miss Part I or Part II?

Now that I had my invitations and mini Moo cards with website information, the only thing left to do was assemble the final product. I could have just dropped the Moo cards into the envelope with the invitations, but I was a little nervous that people wouldn't see them—and I wanted to do something a little more special, since I wasn't doing much else with the invitations.

I took my heart hole punch (you knew that was coming) and, well, punched some heart holes. Pretty self-explanatory, right?

Personal photo

After doing all 100 mini Moo cards, my hand was a little sore and I was bored. (I did all of them, not just the 25 with this shot. I had them stacked by picture.) Guys, if you're like me and your mom/fiance/a lot of your friends live 800+ miles away from you, doing wedding planning by yourself gets boring. Start a good show at the beginning of your wedding planning and just watch it through. And if you're like me and really bored, start a second show when you finish your first.

Anyway. All I needed now was a way to attach the cards to the invitations. I picked up two rolls of thin coral-colored ribbon. It looked like this. (I couldn't find the exact ribbon, so just pretend I was a good blogger and took a picture of the ribbon.)

Image via Easy Weddings

Note: Ten yards of ribbon is not the same as ten feet. Two rolls ended up being not quite enough (six invitations short!) so I went back to Walmart to pick up more to finish the invitations and to use with the crossword puzzle programs and I Spy cards. I was trying to mentally calculate how much I needed to buy but read "ten feet" on the rolls instead of "ten yards." So. I got a lot more than I needed. Good thing it was only $0.49 a roll!

Then I simply threaded the ribbon through one heart hole, under the picture, and out the other heart hole. I dabbed a little bit of glue on one end of the ribbon and pressed it against the other end to hold it firmly in place. Pictures always make more sense, so here's what it looked like in the end.

Personal photo / Cute carpet in my apartment, huh?

The ribbon holds the mini Moo card snug against the invitation, but all you have to do is slide the ribbon down to release the card and see the rest of the invitation information. I guess my only worry is making sure people look at the other side of the card. If you received an invitation like this, you would at least glance at the other side of the mini Moo card as you pulled it off, right? I'm hoping people will unthread the ribbon and hold onto the card since it has our picture and website.

Even just a simple project like this took me a few hours! I have way more respect for all you ladies out there to undertook a much larger invitations project now.

Bunting Everywhere

In an earlier post when we were talking about my simple do-it-yourself invitations, I mentioned that I wanted to include bunting somehow in the decorations to tie in the invitations to the overall theme of the wedding. I was thinking about maybe a ten foot section or so over the fireplace and figured I could do that myself, even though I don't have any materials on hand or a sewing machine. I was thinking about using tissue paper and ribbon to cut down on cost and time.

A lady from Nathan's church who is helping out with my April bridal shower read my post and sent me an email about her making bunting for the bridal shower that I could then reuse for the wedding. How sweet is this? When I was in Detroit last weekend I went over to her house and looked through inspiration pictures.

The biggest problem we had was choosing fabrics. I knew I wanted small, casual prints in shades of coral, blue, and yellow. The problem wasn't that we couldn't find any that worked—it's that there were so many fabrics to choose from! We finally decided on six different fabrics: a solid coral, a flowered coral print, a flowered light blue print, a checked yellow print, a patterned ivory print, and a flowered print that pulled in hints of coral, green, and yellow.

Even though I had been thinking just a short length, she decided to make a larger amount so that she could hang it around the room at my bridal shower. Hey—I wasn't about to complain! I have visions of draping it along the food tables or the stage.

We ended up buying 3/4 of a yard in each of the six fabrics. We then folded the fabric in half and cut it into nine inches strips, which looked like this:

We used an old Cheerios box to cut out a 7" by 9" triangle to use to trace. Then we used a rotary cutter—I had never heard of this before, but it's basically like a pizza cutter for fabric—to cut out the triangles. The marble block you see in that picture? We used that for holding the template in place. It was so simple. Simply place the template on the fabric and zoom the rotary cutter along the edge. After moving the template a few times and a few more slices with the rotary cutter, the strip looked like this.

Ignore the rough outer edges. Those are going to get tucked under the ribbon! This picture actually shows ten triangles—each triangle is two because we folded the material in the last step. Anyway, while I was busy playing with my fabric pizza cutter, the real crafter of the two of us was applying a little bit of anti-fray glue to the diagonal edges.

Now you've seen three of the fabrics! That coral with the tiny white flowers is my favorite. After applying the glue she laid them out to dry for just a few minutes. Then it was time to sew! We had bought wide coral ribbon in the same shade as the band on my invites. After ironing it to create a crease, she started tucking the triangles in at 3.5" intervals and sewing along the ribbon. By this point I was way out of my element so I just stood and watched.

Then we stood back to admire our handiwork! After crafting about a ten foot section, we draped it along the fireplace to check it out. Hint: Each triangle was 7" wide plus 3.5" on either side. 12 triangles (two of each color) is about 129 inches, or just over 10 feet.

I'm going to pretend the reason I'm posting a really washed out picture is that now you'll have to wait around for the big reveal at the wedding! Trust me, Niki will take much better pictures and you'll be able to see our bunting in all its glory.

Anyway, I'm thrilled with the way it's turning out, and can't wait to see all of it in action at my shower and then again at the wedding. In about an hour and a half I cut out nearly all of the triangles, so now the rest of them just need to be sewed into the ribbon. It's going to look great!

Honeymoon Hotspots

People always ask where we're going on our honeymoon. Answer: We're not telling. Yes, we've booked our destination, but no details from us.

Hint: It's way more low-key and relaxing than any of these! But that doesn't mean I can't enjoy checking out some of the hotspots for honeymoons around the globe.

1. Curacao

Image via Romantic Getaways

Anyone else not know Curacao existed until the last season of The Bachelorette? After Jef (with one f, I never did understand that...) proposed to Emily with the darling buildings in the background, I had to add this one to the list. The fact that Jef & Emily are sadly no longer together does not ruin this beautiful island for me!

2. Spain

Image via Michael Jurick Photography

Spanish architecture floors me. It's so stunning. And after eight years of Spanish from middle school through college, I'm due a trip to Spain! I'm secretly still listening to Spanish music to stay up on the language... anybody want to borrow a six year-old Juanes CD?

3. New Zealand

Image via National Geographic

My grandparents went to New Zealand five or six years ago and brought back some truly incredible pictures. Ever since then it's been in the back of my mind—and this beautiful honeymoon kinda reminded me that oh hey, I need to go there!

4. Peru

Image via World Wider

We love to hike and just the though of hiking somewhere like this gets me so excited! Yes, I love hiking in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and the Appalachian Trail is great. But really, do they have anything on the Andes Mountains? Actually maybe this category should just be "Mountains." I'll take any of them—Rockies, Alps, Mount Everest...

On a Plugged-In Wedding

I know I'm not the first to tackle this subject, and I'm probably not the most eloquent either. But the debate rages for and against having an unplugged wedding—a wedding where guests are asked to turn off, put away, and not use their phones for the duration of the ceremony and reception. Some couples prefer their privacy and don't want numerous pictures of themselves on social media sites. Others simply want the attention on them instead of on the phones, such as in this picture.

Image via Offbeat Bride / Photo by Solare Photography

I think all of us would say we would rather have guests watching us in person than staring at us through a tiny screen, right? So why not post a sign like this and ask guests to stay unplugged for the duration of the wedding?

Image via Weddingbee / Photo by Jodi Miller Photography

A couple of reasons. In fact, I'll number them for you. Here's my personal justification for having a plugged-in wedding—which to me means more than just allowing devices, but actually encouraging them. I'll get to that in another post!

Note: If I was getting married in a cathedral, this post would probably be different. If I was having a formal wedding, again—this post would probably be different. Everybody's situations are... different. You get it.

1. It's hard to control. I don't want to be the "cell phone" police, asking people to turn off their phones or put them away because this is my moment. No, I don't think all unplugged weddings are like that! But I don't want to feel like I'm back in high school with the teacher taking away someone's phone for texting in class.

2. I love to use my phone at weddings. I snapped this picture at my cousin's wedding over Christmas. Awful picture? Yep! Great reminder of a moment I wouldn't have otherwise? Also a resounding yes. The photographer at the wedding mainly took group shots, pictures I'll probably never see. If I hadn't taken this picture (and some others) on my iPhone, I wouldn't have any memories of hanging out with my crazy family.

Personal photo

3. I really, really want those pictures. Not the perfectly posed and framed pictures with the guys looking dapper and handsome—ok, I mean I do want those!

Image via Niki Marie Photography

I mean the casual, "just happened to snap a photo as you guys were laughing" pictures. The ones the photographers can't always get, because, well they can't be everywhere at once. If you catch my dad crying as he walks back to his seat, take a picture. I want the pictures of groups of people at tables that I only got to visit with once or twice and the kids playing with their food. Heck, take a picture of your kid screaming because he can't have more cake!

I can't wait to see them.

Rehearsal Dinner Logistics

I can't decide if I'm really excited about figuring out all the logistics for the wedding or completely overwhelmed. The obsessive-compulsive side of me is screaming ORGANIZE ORGANIZE ORGANIZE THIS IS AWESOME. Whether that is a good thing for my sanity is yet to be determined...

Let's talk facts. The week of the wedding is going to be insanely busy—there's no way around it. I work Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, albeit only six hours a day. Wednesday my parents, Nathan, and Nathan's parents should be coming into town. Thursday thankfully I have nothing planned but my sisters have  required events at 8:30 and 10:30. Friday I have commencement rehearsal at 9:30 and commencement itself at 2:00!

The original plan was to hold the rehearsal dinner out at the venue. They have a number of pavilions available for rental around and near a lake and walking path.

Personal photos

This would have worked perfectly for us because it's a simple picnic-style setting. The menu for the rehearsal dinner is going to be pulled pork sandwiches, coleslaw, chips, cookies, and sweet tea—so it fits.

The problem is the logistics of getting everyone there. Everyone is staying in Greenville (30-40 minutes away). The drive isn't awful, but there a few things to consider:

1. Greenville 5:00 traffic is horrible. The highways slow down, the stoplights back up, and it's just generally a mess. You don't want to get caught rushing to get somewhere at 5:00.
2. There's a 5K in Traveler's Rest (mid-way between Greenville and the wedding venue) that evening that draws 3000+ people. Traveler's Rest is a tiny town and they close down roads to handle the 5K. Nathan & I ran it last year and it took us 45 minutes to make the 15 minute drive.
3. Everyone's going to be crunched for time all day long. Do we really want people rushing to get there, rushing to get back, hurrying around the whole time? What we're actually going for with the rehearsal dinner is a laid-back time for family and close friends to mingle and talk.

In my mind, I think I scrapped the rehearsal dinner at the venue plan a long time ago. But it wasn't until last night at 11:00 when I couldn't sleep that I came up with an alternative.

Image via SC Great Outdoors

Cleveland Park is three miles away from graduation and two miles away from the hotel where I reserved rooms for guests. It's a big park with eight shelters, several miles of inter-looping trails, a zoo, several playgrounds, tennis courts, and the Reedy River down the middle of it. It's also home to Rock Quarry Garden, which I happen to be very partial to.

Image via Rachel Hughes Photography / A wedding in Rocky Quarry Garden—I'm kinda jealous!

I think all around it just makes more sense. It's a lower-key evening and (hopefully) everyone will love the park as much as we do!

The Guests Need a Place to Stay Too

Who would have thought, right? I've been so busy thinking about where to hold the wedding, where I'd stay the night before, where I'll get ready, where we'll go on our honeymoon—that I completely forgot about reserving blocks of rooms for our awesome guests.

But no big deal, the wedding is still three months away, right? Plenty of time to book a few rooms, I mean Greenville is a nice place to visit but it's not like there's a huge demand for tourism in early May. We're not having a huge wedding plus a lot of people know friends in town to stay with so we'll only need 10-15 rooms maximum.

Duh, Laura. Not only is it my graduation that weekend—oh right, meaning people are coming to see their children walk across the stage—it's also Furman University's graduation.

Which didn't hit me until I clicked on the website of the hotel I planned to reserve rooms in from the beginning and saw that they had zero rooms available the weekend of the wedding. Zero rooms? In a tiny town like Traveler's Rest? Except... it's five minutes away from Furman. Right.

That's ok, I'll just reserve rooms in Greenville. It will be an extra 15 minutes of travel time for my guests, but they'll get to experience Greenville—which on the plus side is a pretty neat city. I've grown quite attached in my five years here!

Downtown hotels are really pricey, I mean I never expected my guests to pay $319 a night, even if it means a hotel that looks like this:

Image via Uptake

Go outside of the downtown area though and you get to the hotels that are too close to Bob Jones. And even if they have rooms available (there are plenty, although you're limited in some ways), the prices have been jacked by at least $20 because of the higher demand.

Fortunately I found a hotel with availability that's near downtown—close, but not so close that it's wicked expensive. Rates are reasonable and the hotel looks nice without being overly ritzy. It's a longer drive to the wedding venue, but I'm really hoping people take advantage of these kinds of sights just a mile away.

Image via City Data / Our cute Main Street

Image via Black Olive Photographic / Riverwalk along the downtown area

Image via Forbes / Listed as a top rejuvenated area!

Image via Greenville Daily Photo / Falls Park Liberty Bridge—the coolest park in the area!

Invitations Part II

It's about time I continued my previous post about invitations with an aptly named Part II.

Remember, we had nixed the full invitation suite in favor of keeping costs and effort down, but I still wanted to do something casual yet fun. I googled "free wedding templates"—no shame, guys—and found Wedding Chicks, who has some really awesome custom wedding printables and downloads. Take the work out of it and get something personalized for free! Granted, this does not mean you're the only person to ever use that invitation. I know that—although I figure the chances are slim that someone would receive two invitations using the same template, so I decided to go with it. 

I wanted something casual and cute that was at least vaguely in our wedding colors. I think the bunting invitations were instantly my favorites.

Image via Wedding Chicks

They have a fun coral and yellow vibe to them and preserve a little bit of traditional wording and presentation along with a casual feel with the fonts and design. After messing with the wording for forever, we came up with the following:

Dave & Ellen Dickinson

Along with Bruce & Cindy Miller

Invite you to share their joy at the marriage of

Laura Ann Dickinson

to

Nathan Bradley Miller

Saturday, May 4, 2013

at 11:00 in the morning

Pleasant Ridge Camp & Retreat Center

4232 Highway 11 Marietta, South Carolina

Brunch reception to follow

And they look like this:

Personal photo

A note on printing—we had ours done at the campus print shop and got an incredible deal on it. They also did a really great job. Breakdown on costs turned out to be $0.47/sheet for color printing plus $0.04/sheet for the ivory card stock. For 75 sheets (150 invitations) that was just under $40, but we got a 30% wedding discount, which put us just under $27 for all of our invitations.

Also, I now need to have bunting somewhere at the venue. I'm thinking draped along the mantle? For real, how perfect would that be? I can match the colors pretty closely with tissue paper I'm thinking and pull in the invitations to the decorations. That's a huge victory for an obsessive-compulsive bride like me.

Don't worry, we still have to discuss assembling the invitations and printing the envelopes. Much more to come, so stay tuned for Part III!

Countdown: Three Months

Cue a few minutes of panic, cause I really really hope I managed to complete last month's goals! With two jobs and diving back into class full time (and my car dying...) it's been a busy month.

 1. Invitations: I need to get the invitations printed, start assembling what I need, and working on getting addresses in place. Oh DEFINITELY! 

I totally finished printing the invitations, assembled all that I could (until I ran out of ribbon), and got all the addresses. I have the first batch of about 70 completely done, and I only have about 15 more to print and stamp. A few things I do need to do: finish assembling the invites that will go to shower attendees and decide on a date to mail these things.

 2. Flowers & decorations: Make progress on the table flowers (I don't need to finish these yet!) and figure out how many more books I need. EHH.

Ok, so I didn't really do anything on these last month. The good news is I'm far enough ahead that it's not a huge deal. Actually, it's not a deal at all. But I probably should work a bit on this next month.

 3. Registry: Fill out with some more items. YEP!

 I think we have everything on the registry that's going to be on the registry for now. I'm not sure if we need anything else on there, but if so it's going to be added on a case by case basis.

4. Programs: Print, cut, & organize! MADE PROGRESS.

I printed these, had them cut, and they're sitting waiting to be assembled. I decided how I want to wrap them but I haven't gotten around to doing it yet. Again though, no rush.

Goals for next month:

1. Invitations: Finish the last few and mail these babies!

2. Flowers & decorations: Same as last month. Just make some progress on creating/assembling decorations.

3. Programs: Assemble and put away not to be touched until the wedding.

4. Dress: Get dress altered! (As long as I still fit. If I don't fit, this goal becomes "Fit into dress.")

Heel Height

Nathan is definitely taller than I am. In this shot from our engagement pictures, you can see he easily has four or five inches on me—taller but not towering over me.

Image via Niki Marie Photography / Photo by Niki Marie Photography

If I wear a normal-sized heel, I'm just shorter than Nathan by an inch or two. I'm totally comfortable with this, and wear heels often. Would I wear a pair of shoes like this with a 6 and 1/2 inch heel?

Image via Zappos

Well, probably not. I mean, I'm not even sure I could walk in those, but that's beside the point!

Now look at this picture of my whole family at Lake Superior this summer...

Personal photo / Nathan, me, Emily, Dillon, Abigail, David

Ok, so maybe it's a slight incline. But it gets my point across—I'm definitely the shortest in the family! And Nathan is pretty close in height to both of my sisters.

In fact, throw a pair of three or four-inch heels on either Emily or Abigail and I'm pretty sure he'd be looking up at them. Nathan's brothers (the groomsmen) aren't necessarily tall either. Now, I'm not saying it would be a huge deal if they wore heels, but we're definitely think of going with a flat sandal. I'm pretty sure they'd be more comfortable like that anyway!

If they wear a more casual sandal, what should I wear? I was leaning towards heels at first, but now I love the idea of being able to walk around all day no problem, not trip on my dress, be comfortable, match my sisters...

Flashback Friday: The Ring

I've already talked about my perfect proposal and the jealousy that inevitably creeps in when you compare yourself to others. Because what's right for you is almost certainly not right for someone else. Even when someone tells you "Oh, that's the exact ring I want!" (that happened this weekend), that doesn't mean their story is anything like yours—or should be!

I already mentioned I knew the proposal was coming—well, I also knew what the ring looked like. Way back in June I went and tried on rings with a friend. I told the lady at Kay's I was looking for a princess cut solitaire with a cathedral setting, and she showed me this ring.

Personal photo—The ring I preferred is on my right hand. In the second picture I'm wearing a similar but slightly bulkier ring on my left hand.

The jeweler wasn't pushy necessarily, but she definitely encouraged me to try on some other rings. I did, and each time I kept gravitating back to the simple solitaire. For me, once I figured out what I wanted, trying it on didn't make that much of a difference. It simply solidified how I had felt while looking at rings online, on other people, etc. So I sent the pictures to Nathan—not subtle at all, huh?

Nathan ordered the diamond and band separately from a jeweler friend, and I may have gotten some pictures along the way. Shh. I don't think people are supposed to know he sent me the original ring pictures!

Somehow, though, when I first saw the ring I wasn't thinking "Yep, this is the one I picked out." I was thinking "We're getting married!" And having a gorgeous ring was pretty cool too.

Personal photo—I think this picture turned out pretty well for a quick shot on my iPhone in front of the waterfall where we got engaged! Good memories.

Tangent Tuesday: A Moment of Silence

This post is in honor of my little red Honda Civic.

Born April 25, 1995.

Died January 20, 2013.

Dear Honda,

You lived a good, long life. Eighteen years is a long time in car years. Fifteen years of winters in Minnesota and Wisconsin—I know those were tough on you. And yet all you did was rust a little in complaint. I appreciate it.

You taught me how to drive stick. I actually don't always remember how to drive an automatic now after so many years of driving a manual. Now when I drive an automatic I always reach for the stick and occasionally slam my foot on the brake thinking it's the clutch. Oops. Sorry about that, Katie.

You didn't die at the greatest time. Sixty miles from Greenville or Charlotte in the middle of nowhere? On a Sunday morning when I'm standing on the side of the road in heels and a skirt? But you know what, I figure that's just payback for everything I put you through. You probably didn't like carrying four or five people all the way to Charlotte every Sunday, so it's only fitting you would die on one of those 240 mile trips.

Yes, I'm looking to buy another car right away—but it's not because I don't appreciate everything you did! After 210,000 miles I could never forget you.

The guy I'm selling you to is a good guy. He'll take care of you. I promise.

Love,
Laura

Tissue Paper Flowers

Just a quick post today to show you a preview of a project my sisters and I worked on over Christmas. I knew from the beginning that our budget wouldn't allow for a huge flowers allowance. I toyed with the idea of buying flowers wholesale and just arranging them myself—but I discarded the idea after realizing that one, I'm not a florist and two, the week of the wedding is already going to be insanely busy with graduation. In fact, in the entire planning process, we have the most non-wedding events scheduled for the week of the wedding. Also known as—we need to get everything done ahead of time.

There are a lot of different ways and materials to make flowers. First up were crepe flowers.

Image via Design Improvised

I actually tried making these beautiful crepe flowers. Mine didn't turn out quite like the ones in the picture, however. First off, I couldn't find crepe paper sheets to experiment with, much less anything in coral. Second, I couldn't get the hang of manipulating the floral tape and wire. Basically, I'm lazy and this was too hard.

There's also paper flowers, which are beautiful (especially out of pages of books or music) and incredibly time consuming.

Image via Etsy / Photo by annemusingdesigns

Fabric flowers fall into the same category, although if purchased are more expensive than real flowers sometimes—check out the price on this one!

Image via Etsy / Photo by Katie Reim

That leaves tissue paper flowers. There are lots of tutorials out there, but we used this tutorial from Martha Stewart. Honestly, it was so, so easy. And it didn't take up days and days. We did both bridesmaids bouquets and my bouquet in less than two hours (two and a half episodes of Leverage). We also made some extra flowers and started on bigger poms for table and hanging decorations.

Do they look expensive and fancy? No. Is our wedding expensive and fancy? No, so it looks like they'll fit right in! Tissue paper flowers were perfect for the time we wanted to put in and the money we wanted to spend (about twenty dollars including way more tissue paper than I needed and floral wire). This is my sister modeling her bouquet. We used coral, light blue, and light yellow tissue paper. I think I'm going to add some green as well and wrap the stems nicely.

Oh, and my dad pulled out his electric drill to twist the wire on the handles. When my dad participates in wedding planning, he does it in a big way.

Dressing up the Dress

Remember, my dress looks like this:

Photo credit.

Gorgeous and classy! I do want to accent it though—without taking away from the elegance of the dress. I've seen a lot of pictures lately that look something like this.

Photo credit.

I'm looking at the necklaces, not the really awesome veils! I actually love the bling of these, although it might be a little too over the top. I'm looking for something that will bring a little color and excitement to the dress without screaming look at me. So maybe something in the wedding colors?

Necklace 1, Necklace 2, Necklace 3.

Unfortunately the first and third are sold out, but the middle one is only fifteen dollars. But is this really what I want to do? In my mind I can see it looking fabulous, but maybe I should stick with a traditional strand of pearls or diamond necklace...

Necklace 1. Necklace 2 is my grandmother's—this is my cousin's wife wearing it at their wedding.

I'm going to be honest, my preference is to wear a chunky but tasteful coral necklace. I feel like the casual day and simple dress call for something different than a pearl or diamond necklace, but I don't want to go overboard either. So tell me, what should I do?