Photo Booth Fun

We've had so much going on that I almost forgot to mention that we are officially having a photo booth at our wedding.  I wanted one so badly, but after getting some price quotes it was completely out of the question.  However, we found a deal going on at  Complete Albany and could NOT resist.  We are only paying $300 for 2 hours of photo booth rental - which includes sales tax, photo booth with operator, unlimited pictures, unlimited prints, scrapbook, thumb drive of images and props!

Now we just have to decide where we are putting it and what time we want to have it for.  I am thinking of having it for the last 2 hours of the night to provide some more entertainment in case things start to die down.

  

RSVP Arrival

After sending out our invitations the other day, I couldn't wait for the RSVP's to start filling up the mailbox.  We received our first RSVP this past Saturday (only 3 days after the invites went out!) and we received several more today - it's so exciting!

In total, we ended up inviting 149 guests to the wedding.  According to a statistic that I read in my Brides magazine, about 85% of guests RSVP 'Yes'.  I'll keep you posted and find out how accurate that 'fun fact' is.

Spare Pair

I already found my shoes that I will be wearing for the wedding.  However, I'm assuming that I won't want to wear them all night, so I decided that I needed a second pair to switch into during the reception when my feet get tired.  First, I thought that I wanted a pair of flats for my second pair.  This would make it difficult to choose the length for the dress.

So then I started searching for wedges and that's when I found the most perfect shoes.  They are almost the exact same height as the first pair and had so many rave reviews about how comfortable they are!  Bonus:  they only cost $25!  And they shipped here in 2 days (they arrived today and I ordered them on Thursday).

Nina Risdy Sandal (the same brand as my first pair)

Signed, Sealed, Delivered

Good news:  invitations officially went out yesterday!

Bad news:  we had to spend way more than we had anticipated on postage.  :-(
After assembling an entire mock invitation, we weighed the invite on a digital home scale - exactly 1.0 ounces.    PERFECT!  So, we moved forward and assembled everything and had it ready to go.  We went to the post office to buy stamps and send the invites on their way.  The worker suggested weighing one invite just to be sure because they looked heavy.  It turns out that our invitations weighed 1.05 ounces!!!!  That meant we had to jump up to the $0.65 postage for each one.

Moral of the story:  Don't trust your scale at home.  Bring your mock invite to the post office.  We could have easily rearranged and cut things down to get down to the 1 ounce mark and we would have saved $0.19 per invitation.


Ending on a positive note:  INVITATIONS ARE DONE AND IN THE MAIL!  Now time to wait patiently for the RSVPs.

What to Know about Wax

We ordered our wax for our invitations from scrapbooking-warehouse.com.  I just want to say that after finishing our invitations, I am very pleased with how well the wax worked.  When the wax first arrived, I was concerned that we didn't have enough because the sticks looked SO small.

We had ordered 3 packs of 6 sticks for a total of 18 sticks.  We only used half of the sticks after doing 85 invitations correctly and messing up on about 5 - so 90 total.  So, we actually ended up getting about 10 seals (twice as many as we had thought) from each stick.  This is what our seals looked like (they were each about the size of a quarter).



To simplify things: one stick of wax from that website got us 10 quarter-sized wax seals.

We're just going to use the extra and seal our Thank You cards since we had so much fun working with the wax on the invitations!

Invites Assembled

Invitations are officially assembled and just need to be taken to the post office.  Here is how everything turned out!

Outer Envelope:

 The sealed inner envelope!:

The RSVP return envelope:

Alterations: Round 1

       Yesterday I went in for Round 1 of dress alterations.  First things first, after about 20 minutes in the dress I was SWEATING.  It was ridiculously hot in that thing.  I think I'm going to get an air conditioner unit installed.  On a more serious note, if you're worried about being warm on the big day I read a tip about putting a fan under your table to blow up the dress while you're eating to keep you somewhat cool.  I thought it sounded ridiculous, but now I'm seriously considering.

      Secondly, I won't be able to have the cups sewn in and will have to wear a bra, which means I need to go find a really awesome, strapless, push-up bra.  I also still have to find my flats that I will change into at some point in the night.  She wants to hold off on determining the length of the dress until I actually have both pairs of shoes.  Basically, it's time for another shopping trip.

     Finally, it costs a decent amount of money to have someone hack away at your dress!   I am having the length shortened, the corset top taken in a little, and a bustle put in and it's going to cost $220.  Anyway, I suppose I should get out and get shopping.  I need to get my bra and shoes and schedule another appointment.

Happy Homeowners

      So we officially closed on our house last Wednesday.  Since then we have been extremely busy.  We went up to the lake for fireworks and a cookout for an early 4th of July celebration the same day we closed.  Then we spent ALL day Thursday and Friday getting the house ready to move in.  Then Saturday with the moving truck and a help from MANY, MANY friends and family members, we got everything moved in by Sunday.

     Well everything except for the furniture that is.  After being in storage for 3 months all of our furniture had mold on it (from the crazy weather we've been having).  We found out the hard way that insurance does not cover mold and storage units aren't liable for any damage done to your property while it is there.

     Fortunately, someone recommended an awesome cleaner specifically for mold - Concrobium.  All that I have to say is that if you ever have any mold you HAVE to buy this.  All of our furniture looks as good a new.  And you can use the spray on anything.  We did it on our wooden furniture and the couch.  Now that that's fixed and we have furniture we can really get settled in and get back to wedding planning.  Updates will be coming soon!

Plenty of Packages

        My fiance stopped by his parents house to grab some of our mail the other day and we had 3 packages for us!  The sashes, the bridesmaids gifts, and the menus and programs had all arrived.  Everything looks AWESOME.  I LOVE the sashes - they are PERFECT.  The bridesmaids gifts are just what I wanted.  And the menus and programs look WONDERFUL (just like everything else that I order from Vistaprint).

     The only downside to the sashes is that they have the creases from how they were folded, so I'm going to have to unpack the iron and get to work pretty soon.  I'm hoping that I can iron them out now and put them over some hangers in one of the spare closets until the wedding.  I'll let you know how that adventure goes!

Mission Complete (Bridesmaids Keep Out!)

I found and ordered my awesome gifts for my bridesmaids, but I needed the last piece to the puzzle!

To go along with my travel theme, I found these perfect toiletry bags from L.L. Bean to add.  Right now (through July 8th) if you use your L.L. Bean card you can get 15% off your purchase (along with the usual free shipping and free monogramming).

So I bought one of these bags for each of my maids and monogrammed it with their first initial.  My favorite thing about these bags is that they're from L.L. Bean which means that they have a lifetime guarantee.  If anything ever happens at all you can just return it for a brand new one, no questions asked.  You really can't beat that.

I am looking forward to these arriving, I can hardly wait!  I'll let you know how they turn out.

Envelopes Arrived

Our outer envelopes have arrived.  We ordered them from Jampaper.com this Saturday (2 days ago), it was processed on Monday (yesterday) and arrived today - talk about awesome service.  They were packed very nicely and arrived in perfect condition.  I could not have been happier.

Side note:  As you know, I ordered my free samples of envelopes from envelopesexpress.com.  I ordered my sample in Dark Purple and it was a perfect match.  However, Jampaper.com was cheaper, but didn't offer free samples.  They also offered Dark Purple envelopes, so I decided to just to for it and order without seeing  sample.  The Dark Purple envelopes from both sites were identical.  I don't know if this is always the case, but it worked out in this situation.

I SPY

If you've ever looked on Pinterest for wedding inspiration, you've probably seen the many variations of the I Spy cards.  Well, I got sucked into the trend.

I wanted to tie our I SPY cards in with our Wedding Party App.  Here's what I came up with.  I just plan to print these on regular 8x11 cardstock with 2 per paper.