Our 1 Year {almost} Anniversary

Happy Monday everyone!

I hope you all enjoyed a great weekend. Frank and I celebrated our 1 Year Anniversary a few weeks early! We decided to celebrate early in order to save some money on our room since the prices at the shore increase dramatically after memorial day. Also, since my sister will be graduating and I will be graduating (yay!) soon, our schedule is going to be packed! So, we decided to head to Spring Lake, NJ a few weeks before our 1 year to celebrate almost 1 whole year being married. The best {almost} 1 year  of my life! 

We tried to re-create a few of our wedding details to bring back some sweet memories and get some quality rest and relaxation together. 

We stayed at The Breakers on the Ocean, our reception site, in a room with a fantastic view of the beach. 

Since it was pretty warm and sunny Saturday, we spent some time relaxing on the beach reading and soaking in the sun, the sound of the waves and the salty air. Nothing better if you ask me. 

Can't believe almost a year ago this gazebo looked like this:

Kara Loomis Photography

Kara Loomis Photography

Kara Loomis Photography

Can't believe those rocks were once a part of these pictures:

Kara Loomis Photography

Kara Loomis Photography

Then, for dinner, we went to The Wharfside, where we had our rehearsal dinner. 

My favorite, New England clam chowder. Not as good as real clam "chowdah" from Boston, but pretty good.

We sat on the porch with this gorgeous view!

I ordered 1/2 a lobster and grilled shrimp. Frank had crab-stuffed shrimp. 

After dinner we enjoyed my aunt's home made red wine--what we gave out at our wedding for our favors.

We also ordered a small cake from the bakery that made our wedding cake. We got the same flavor that we had for our wedding since our cake top was destroyed when it defrosted during Sandy. 

Best cake ever. Red velvet with cannoli cream filling and fresh strawberries with butter-cream frosting.

Kara Loomis Photography

Kara Loomis Photography

Kara Loomis Photography

So delicious!

Look out for more posts this week including a tour of our home! 

The Little Details: Sentimental Touches

So last time I talked about our wedding details I shared with you our stationary done beautifully by my mom! And I promised a post shortly after about some of the sentimental things I did to add some personal touches to our wedding. Here are a few:

1. Something Old. I wanted to incorporate something from my Mom as well as both my grandmothers in the wedding so the old saying which I'm sure you've heard before many times...something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue...was the perfect opportunity to do so!

The Something(s) Old was a beautiful brooch from my one grandmother and the beautiful silk handkerchief you can see in the second picture. Both were attached to my bouquet.

Photo Courtesy of Kara Loomis Photography

Photo Courtesy of Kara Loomis Photography

2. Something Borrowed. I had originally had something else in mind for this item. I wanted so badly to wear my mom's veil for my wedding, but unfortunately I thought of this too late and picked a dress that was far too ivory for the veil that was preserved SO well by my grandmother. Apparently using blue tissue paper does the trick and man was that veil still white! So, instead, my mom let me wear a gorgeous necklace that was very special. Apparently on my grandmother's wedding day her mother gave it to her (my great-grandmother) and so on my mom's wedding day my grandma gave it to her. So, on my wedding day I got to wear it. So special!

Photo Courtesy of Kara Loomis Photography

Photo Courtesy of Kara Loomis Photography

3. Just to finish this theme even though it doesn't quite fit with the post...my something blue was ofcourse those pretty blue shoes above this line. And, my something new were these gorgeous earrings my Dad bought me :)

Photo Courtesy of Kara Loomis Photography

4. Wedding Photos. This sentimental touch was especially important since my grandparents on my mom's side have both passed away as well as my grandfather on my dad's side. I was really upset that they couldn't be there for my wedding and began to miss them even more than I normally do. I wanted to do something special to honor them. So, to do that, we asked each set of grandparents for a wedding photo and framed them with a card with their name and the date they married to display on the favor table (and later on the gift table). The cards were supposed to lay in front of the photos not tucked into the frame, but the people in charge of setting things up messed up that one. Oh well...you get the idea.

Photo Courtesy of Kara Loomis Photography

Photo Courtesy of Kara Loomis Photography

Photo Courtesy of Kara Loomis Photography

5. We also played music from cassette tapes we had of my grandfather playing jazz music from when he was in a band called The Melody Men. I don't have a picture of it, but we had a photo displayed with him holding his alto sax with a big smile on his face.

There you have it! My sentimental touches. They were not that hard to incorporate, but definitely took a bit of extra thought. I'm glad I did though, because it made the wedding just that much more personal.

Happy Wednesday!

The Little Details: Centerpeices

Okay so let's be honest. Weddings are super expensive. When we first got engaged one of the very first things we did was decide on a budget. Luckily, very luckily we had a huge amount of help from my parents, but living in NJ where weddings seem to be more expensive than purchasing a car or even a down payment on a small house...we needed to do some creative money saving.

One thing we did to help out with the budgeting process was to choose 2 items to "splurge" on. Meaning, 2 of the most important aspects of the wedding that we would spend more money on and then figure out how to save money in the other areas. For us, photography was among the most important items and the venue which included the food/cake & location combined. My parents fortunately forked the bill for the venue, but we had to come up with the means to afford most of the other aspects of the wedding. 

One of the ways we saved the most money was with our decorations. I  was surprised to find that flowers/decorations are often one of the most expensive bills for the wedding! To me this was ridiculous considering that flowers die. Sure, you have pictures with the flowers and centerpieces (sometimes) in them, but for several thousand dollars I wanted to do my best to save a buck or two. 

Photo courtesy of Kara Loomis Photography

Ofcourse, I did find an excellent florist willing to work with us within our budget (that I will share was exactly $1,800 for all flowers in ceremony, reception, and wedding party). We used flowers that were in season as well as lots of greens and large blooms so we needed less stems to make big impression.

Gig Morris Florist: yellow daisies, green & white hydrangeas, white peonies, green hypernicum berries,  yellow freesia & plenty of greens
Photo courtesy of Kara Loomis Photography

In addition, we did a lot of the decorating on our own. The biggest cost cutter was doing alternating centerpieces. Every other table had the beautiful centerpieces the florist designed:

The florist used the same flowers in the bouquets and used a navy/white striped ribbon to adorn a simple glass cylinder vase.
Photo courtesy of Kara Loomis Photography

The other centerpieces were large hurricane glasses we purchased at Michael's for $7 each using a 40% off coupon each time to save even more money! We filled each hurricane glass with sand we purchased in bulk at Lowe's and wrapped an ivory rope around the base to give it a more nautical feel. My mom twisted the rope and glue-gunned the ends to make sure it stayed in place. We purchased navy pillar candles online to put in the center. 

Each centerpiece cost approximately: $11 including the hurricane glass, candle, sand and rope.

Photo courtesy of Kara Loomis Photography

As an additional touch to this super inexpensive but classy centerpiece, we added small tealights in simple glass holders we got from IKEA. The glass holders were $1.99 for 12 and the tealights were $4 for 100. 

Next time I'll share more details on the stationary, place cards & table numbers. 

Little Details

So, remember back when I was planning my wedding? Well, the planning is finally over! Horray!
The wedding went wonderfully and I have to say that after all that planning, things do come together nicely no matter how stressful it is beforehand. It's so hard to imagine all the little details coming together in the end, but they surely did!
The next few posts I am going to share with you a few of the DIY decorations/projects I did for the wedding. I can tell you that nothing I did took too much talent or crafty skills since I neither had the time nor the energy to put in that much effort. Also, I was pretty frugal and saved alot of money shopping with 40% off coupons at Michael's and finding great deals online. Hopefully some of these ideas will inspire you if you or someone else you know is needing to plan a wedding or even some other kind of party!

So to begin this series, I am just going to give you a few sneak peaks of what the actual outcome looked like. Then, on a night when I am far less exhausted I will share more details for each project.

My color inspiration was from this picture. Navy dresses for the girls and grey tuxes for the guys.

Pinterest.com

The dresses I picked for the girls are from Bill Levkoff's line of bridesmaid dresses. They are a navy satin with a sash that ties in the back. The groomsmen are wearing a grey calvin klein suit from Men's Wearhouse.

Photo Courtesy of Kara Loomis Photography

This was my inspiration for the bouquets. I wanted something with lots of texture and bright whites, yellows and greens to brighten up the navy. I hate roses so I wanted more garden-type flowers like ranunculous, green berries, peonies, hydrangea and daisies. I also wanted to give the bouquets a special touch with patterned ribbon like the second photo.

Both photos from: Pinterest.com

The bouquets came out exactly how I imagined and now that I look at my inspiration photo--very much like what I originally wanted! Plus the florist put in more peonies than I thought she would since they are expensive. I was pleasantly surprised!!

Photo Courtesy of Kara Loomis Photography

For a special touch, I wanted to rock some colored shoes instead of the usual white.

Pinterest.com

I went with navy shoes with bows on the heel to match the girls' dresses. I loved them and they were even pretty comfortable!!

Photo Courtesy of Kara Loomis Photography

Photo Courtesy of Kara Loomis Photography

I originally wanted to have the place cards on a large picture frame tacked up with pretty tacks and background fabric that matched our color theme somewhat like this.

Pinterest.com

Fortunately, my aunt makes wine and offered to make us red and white wine for the favors. Then, we had the idea to hang tags on the bottles as place cards for a kind of "two-for-one" deal. With my aunts expertise and my mom's artistic skills we ended up with beautiful favors that doubled as place cards eliminating the need for my original idea. But I liked the end result much better.

Photo Courtesy of Kara Loomis Photography

That's all for the sneak peak. Stay tuned for actual tips & details on how I did a few of our DIY projects.

If you were married what special touches did you add into your wedding to make it unique? Have you ever been to a wedding where the couple did something really neat that you loved?

Hopefully everyone had a fabulous fourth of july! Even if it was in the middle of the week. Maybe some of your were smarter than me and actually took off some days of work... Happy almost Friday!

** Side note: All of our professional photographs were taken by Kara Loomis Photography. Please visit her site for more of her exceptional work! Kara Loomis Photography **

Wedding Inspiration

Don't you love Saturdays that allow you to just relax?? I love them. I used to think that I fed off of being busy. And to a certain extent, that may be true. I am a huge procrastinator. So, if I have a paper to write for school, or a project to accomplish and I have too much time to complete it--I will wait until it is crunch time to begin it. In high school and even in college, I was able to feed off of that last-minute adrenaline rush and get things accomplished quick and also well. However, I am noticing this is becoming less and less true of me. The last time I waited until the last minute to write a paper (okay, okay it was last weekend) I pretty much had an anxiety attack trying to complete it before bedtime (maybe it's more stressful because my bedtime is now 3 hours earlier than it was in college?). 

Anyway, this Saturday was lovely. I cannot remember the last time I had little to nothing actually planned. So, what did I do? Whatever I felt like doing. Whenever I felt like doing it. Basically. 

Woke up around 8:30. 

Ate breakfast (my Dad's famous scrambled eggs on wheat toast). 

Spent some time on Pinterest and Etsy looking for headpieces, flower ideas and cake ideas for the wedding.

Went with my Mom to the post-office to mail out, YES FINALLY!, the invitations. 

Then, we went to a few antique shops/thrift stores to look for a large frame to use for our place cards.

This is my inspiration for that: 

(all from Pinterest)

Source: snippetandink.com via Brittany on Pinterest

Source: etsy.com via Brittany on Pinterest

Source: scrapbook.com via Brittany on Pinterest

We didn't end up finding anything remotely close to the size that we need for it. I think our next stop will be my favorite places: the Christmas Tree Shop, Marshalls, and HomeGoods. 

After that, came home to eat some lunchy. yum.

Went on Pinterest again....

Then went to the gym with my sister. She's home for the weekend and totally kicked my butt today!! 

Now,...you guessed it. Back on Pinterest :) 

I figured I share some of my wedding inspirations while I'm wasting my time some more.

Colors. Navy, Grey & Yellow (with hints of green)

The girls are wearing navy dresses (with nude shoes) and the guys are wearing grey tuxes with navy accessories. 

Source: bridalmusings.com via Brittany on Pinterest

The girls will have yellow bouquets with hints of green and I will have a white bouquet with hints of green. 

Source: 100layercake.com via Brittany on Pinterest

Source: stylemepretty.com via Brittany on Pinterest

And I want blue shoes!!

Source: stylemepretty.com via Brittany on Pinterest

That's all for now. I really need to start working on figuring out what in the world to do with my hair...but that can be for another post. 

What did you do on your Saturday? I hope you took some time to relax :) Happy Weekend!