Music: DONE!

Guess what, peeps?  We are flying from Denver to Philly in less than 12 hours!  Our big day is on SATURDAY!  Ahhhhhh!  Unfortunately, I'm not sure the weather is going to cooperate.  There's a 40% chance of rain on Saturday.  :(  Oh, well.  The show must go on!  We'll be dancing in the rain!  :)

Speaking of dancing, I finalized our music playlist for the reception.  Ready?  Here goes!

• Only You Can Love Me This Way - Keith Urban
• My Little Girl - Tim McGraw
• Forever Young - Rod Stewart
• The Twist - Chubby Checker
• Magic - B.o.B
• Meet Me Halfway - Black Eyed Peas
• Sparks Fly - Taylor Swift
• Shakin' - Eddie Money
• Electric Feel - MGMT
• That's the Way (I Like It) - KC & The Sunshine Band
• Moves Like Jagger - Maroon 5
• Y.M.C.A. - The Village People
• Ain't No Mountain High Enough - Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell
• Around the World - Daft Punk
• Crazy Little Thing Called Love - Queen
• Pumped Up Kicks - Foster the People
• Legs - ZZ Top [Garter Toss]
• Gonna Fly Now (Theme from Rocky) - Bill Conti [Bouquet Toss]
• God Gave Me You - Blake Shelton
• Summertime - Kenny Chesney
• Dirt Road Anthem - Jason Aldean
• Cotton-Eye Joe - RedNex
• Staying Alive - Bee Gees/Coolio Remix
• All I Want To Do - Sugarland
• Sweet Thing - Keith Urban [Cake Cutting]
• Love Song - 311
• All Over You - The Spill Canvas
• CrushCrushCrush - Paramore
• Livin' On A Prayer - Bon Jovi
• Don't Stop Believin' - Journey
• the rockefeller skank - Fatboy Slim
• I Like To Move It - Reel 2 Reel
• Shake It - Metro Station
• Barbara Ann - The Beach Boys
• Chain Reaction - Ke$ha
• Come What May - Moulin Rouge
• Red Button - Mike Posner
• Mas Tequila - Sammy Hagar
• Jump Around - House of Pain
• Song 2 - Blur 
• Tootsee Roll - 69 Boys
• Da Dip - Freaknasty
• Electric Boogie - Marcia Griffiths
• Crazy Girl - Eli Young Band
• Chicken Dance - Bob Karnes
• On The Floor - Jennifer Lopez
• Then - Brad Paisley
• Where the Blacktop Ends - Keith Urban
• Here's to the Night - Eve 6

I tried to get a good mix of genres.  I think it's definitely all over the place!  Hopefully it will get people out dancing.  :) 

Unexpected Last Minute Beauty Concerns

First, let's start with the tan line issue.  I tried laying out but it wasn't going away very quickly.  And I was running out of nice weekend days to lay out (when we weren't busy doing a billion other things).  And then I started running out of time.  I didn't want to lay out in the week or two before the wedding because I didn't want to worry about my skin peeling.  

So, I bought this product:

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I wasn't sure how effective it would be but I got it for like $3.50 at Walmart so I thought it would be worth a try.  I have been very pleasantly surprised!  The tan lines on my back are almost non-existent.  I'm still working on the ones on my chest, but I have faith that with a few more days worth of applications, I should be fairly tan-line free.  So, if you're trying to even out your tan or just get a little more tan (which is what I'm doing to my pasty-white legs!), I definitely recommend this lotion!  

Now on to the bad news.  I've been under a lot of stress lately.  I took over another person's job (on top of my own) at work.  Not only that, but the person left the job a mess and I've had to clean up month's worth of mess in order to even get started with it.  It's been very stressful.  Normally, I'd come home and cuddle with my beautiful pups and they'd make me feel better.  Not this week though.  They've been with my Mom (she's the dog-sitter when we're on vacation).  So, I haven't seen them since last Sunday.  And it's incredibly depressing.  

On top of that, we're waiting to hear back if Philip got a promotion.  It would be fantastic, but it would require a very long distance move to Chicago and Philip and I spending a month or more apart from each other (not to mention having to hire and train someone for my job here and find a new job in Chicago).  Oh, yeah.  And we're still planning a wedding from 1,700 miles away (with less than a week to go!).

So, yeah. Stress: I've got oodles of it.  What's that stress doing?  Causing my face to break out like a teenager.  Seriously.  It's ridiculous.  I haven't been wearing make-up and I've been trying to refrain from touching my face.  I'm slowing seeing an improvement.  However, I'm thinking that I will need plenty of concealer on the day of the wedding. 

Next up, I got my last haircut before the wedding on Saturday.  The lady was nice but she cut my hair so that it looks really choppy.  I'm not pleased.  I don't think it's super noticeable (especially since I just dyed it a really dark red color), but it still irritates me.  I may go back and try to have her fix it.  However, that scares me.  I think I'll just see how I feel about it in the next few days.  

Oh, what's that?  You want to see the color?  

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I freakin' love it!  It's the color that I used to dye my hair when I was in high school.  I haven't been able to find it for years and I just happened to see it on the shelf last weekend.  I will try to get a picture of it tomorrow (or rather, later today) when I actually have it styled for work.  

I think that's all for now.  I'm sure hoping that no more "beauty concerns" arise!  And I'm hoping that these will be fixed for the big day.  :)

Less than a week to go!

I can't believe it.  We've got less than a week to go.  The wedding is THIS Saturday!  Ahhh!  We will be flying to Pennsylvania on Thursday.  It just doesn't seem real.  By this time next week, Philip and I will have landed in Rome!  Oh, how I'm looking forward to that! 

I'm kind of in shock that it's so close.  Today, after doing invoicing for work (yes, I've been bringing work home all week -- I'm hoping to actually be caught up by the time we leave!), I downloaded a bunch of music and ordered some last minute items.  What did I order?  

Well, since you asked!  I ordered this lovely to sit atop our cake:

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At $29.67, it's much more than I had intended to spend on a cake topper.  However, I'd been searching for months and months for something that I would fall in love with.  I wasn't able to come up with anything until last week.  This little guy caught my attention and I knew it would be perfect.  

Next up, I finally ordered the server set for us to cut our cake with:

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At $39.95, this is definitely more than I thought I'd spend on a server set; especially one without engraving.  However, I searched and searched for a good set and didn't find anything I liked.  The ones I liked the look of were light or hollow and I wanted something solid and usable beyond the wedding.  The ones that were solid were just not very pretty.  I ended up with these because I know Oneida makes a great product.  And, I thought if I was going to use the serving set in the future, the engraving would wear off anyway.

I also bought a veil.  I actually bought one back in July off ebay but it didn't work out.  The lady attempted to scam me but I was able to see it before it went too far and cancel the order.  I got my money back but it left a bad taste in my mouth.  So, it took a while for me to reorder.  I ended up with this one: 

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It's just a plain, fingertip length, double layer veil.  I think it's probably going to end up being too white but we'll fix that with some tea dying if need be.  We shall see.  At $14.99, I can't complain too much!

I also bought my garter set.  I wanted a keepsake garter as well as a toss garter so I just bought them in a set.  

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They're nothing spectacular but they will certainly work for me.  They're just plain, cream, satin garters.  I was hoping to figure out a Yankees garter, but I just couldn't get myself to spend that much money on something that I didn't really like that much.  I'm still hoping that I can find a Yankees charm of some sort to attach to these.  That would make me very happy!

I also bought some gifts for parents and host/esses and grandparents.  I am not going to share them here though because I know that those are the people who most often read this blog!  You'll just have to wait, ladies!  :)

I think that's about it for now.  It's going to be a busy few days.  Wish us luck!  :)

Let the weather stalking begin!

It's that time, folks.  Our wedding day is finally on the 10 day forecast for the Weather Channel. And guess what!?  It's glorious.   :)

Saturday is supposed to be 75 and sunny with a 0% chance of rain.  That's my idea of perfect weather!  I realize that it's still over a week away and weather forecasting isn't an exact science.  However, it makes me happy that everything looks good so far!  And now I will begin stalking The Weather Channel website every day!  


Also, the sunny days leading up to the wedding should help dry everything out for us from all of the floods.  So, hopefully we won't be knee deep in mud!  If that's the case, I hope my bridesmaids know that a new task has been added to their duties for the day: carrying me down the aisle!  LOL  just kidding, ladies!  ...sort of.  ;)

Favors: Part 2!

I mentioned before that I wanted to do something extra on top of the vanilla extract. Well, Sunday night, I had very little to work with and I still wanted to make it happen.  So, this is what I came up with.  

So, blogger is being a pain in my butt tonight and shifting some of my pictures.  I don't feel like spending the time to try to get it to fix them, so just turn your head to the side.  ;)  

I made homemade vanilla sugar.  I bought burlap bags from Uline at the same time that I bought the giant roll of burlap.  I also bought small plastic bags.  I wasn't sure what I was going to use them for, but I knew I wanted them!

I put a bunch of sugar and some vanilla beans in my food processor and blended it until it was all mixed up and the vanilla was just flecks in the sugar.  Then I filled the plastic bags with it.  Then I put that bag inside the burlap bag and cinched up the strings.  

For the labels, I printed out "Homemade Vanilla Sugar" a bunch of times in 1.25" x 1.25" squares.  Then, I used my square hole punch to cut each square out.  Next, I punched a hole in the corner of the square using just a regular old hole punch I had laying around.  

 

Then I cut out small strips of navy blue ribbon and tied it around the string on the burlap bag and ran it through the hole in the cardstock.  I just did a single knot.  It held tightly.

 

Again, easy peasy.  :)  I think they're adorable and I love them.  The vanilla extract is going to be on a table right as the guests enter the tent.  Then, the vanilla sugar will be at each place setting.  I'm thinking about printing up recipes that use vanilla extract and vanilla sugar to set out at the wedding.  I guess we'll see if I have time before this wedding sneaks up on me!

Vanilla Favors: Finished!

The vanilla favors were one of the projects I finished up on Sunday.  I'm so happy with how they turned out.  Please excuse the crappy photos.  I was hot, tired, sweaty, and running around like crazy so I'm lucky I took the 10 seconds to get a few crappy photos before stuffing them in the back seat of Philip's Pilot!

I need to snip off the excess string but I ran out of time Sunday night.  But, that should take 5 minutes tops when we arrive in Pennsylvania.  :)  

I printed out "Homemade Vanilla Extract" a bunch of times in 1.25" x 1.25" squares.  Then, I used my square hole punch to cut each square out.  Next, I punched a hole in the corner of the square using just a regular old hole punch I had laying around.  

Then, I took some twine I got from Dollar Tree and wrapped it around the neck of the bottle three times.  When I came around the fourth time, I ran one end through the hole in the square cardstock.  Next, I just tied a double knot.  

That's it.  Easy peasy.  :)

BUSY!!!!

That's my response whenever anyone asks me how I am lately.  Originally, I was supposed to take all of the wedding crafts and the dogs to Indiana this Friday (the 16th).  Well, plans changed when Philip got an interview in Chicago for this past Tuesday (if you want to know more, you can check out my other blog).  It was decided that he'd just take everything since he'd be heading that direction anyway.  

Well, that pushed the trip up by a week which meant that I had to finish all of my projects in about 2 days instead of a week.  And, I also had to shop for the honeymoon, pack, and get everything boxed up and put in Philip's Pilot.  It was exhausting!  But, I managed.  My house is so quiet without the dogs though.  I miss them terribly already.  They don't bark in the house, but it's so weird to not have them under my feet all the time or hear four sets of dog feet running down the stairs to greet me. 

Philip with Cody the day before they left -- they were wrestling.  Obviously Philip was winning.  ;)

On top of that, I also took on a ton more responsibility at work and have been crazy busy there (and working longer hours).  Have I mentioned lately how much I'm looking forward to the honeymoon??  ;)  

Speaking of the honeymoon, I got some Euros today from the bank.  It's just to get us through the travel and first day or so (when we can't use our debit card).  It's exciting though because I think it's the last thing we had to do for the honeymoon!  That means that it's REALLY close!  Eleven days until we leave!  :)

Anyway, I got a bunch of projects done, so I'll be blogging about them soon.  Thanks for bearing with me through the insanity.  :)

Thank goodness we changed our minds!

(Breezyview Gazebo at Chickies Rock Park in Columbia, PA - our ceremony site)

I'm sure that most of you are aware of the flooding in Pennsylvania and New York.  It affected the area that Philip and I are having our wedding in.

When we first started wedding planning, we intended to have the wedding on 09/10/11.  That didn't work with his work schedule, so we changed our date to 09/24/11.  Thank goodness!  Otherwise, our wedding would have been very soggy!

Also, when we first started wedding planning, we planned to have the wedding reception at a pavilion in the park where our ceremony is being held.  Well, I got a call on Friday from  Lancaster Parks.  The pavilion is flood damaged, it has no electricity, and the road leading to it is completely washed out.  It will be impossible to have it fixed in time for the wedding.  Thank goodness we decided to have the reception in a tent at Philip's aunt and uncle's house!  Otherwise, we would have been in a panic trying to find a very last minute venue!  Not cool!  

I had just kept the pavilion as a back-up plan.  I'll just keep my fingers crossed that we don't need any back-up venue space!  Fortunately, our gazebo (ceremony site) is high on a cliff and wasn't seriously affected by the flooding/rains.  And, our reception site is a bit soggy but will hopefully be all dried out by the time our wedding rolls around in ELEVEN DAYS!  XD

I'm keeping my fingers crossed for good weather for the wedding.  We're not on the 10 day forecast yet:

But Accuweather has a 15 day forecast:

Do you see that there?  September 24th says "abundant sunshine."  Doesn't that sound like a great day for a wedding??  I'm not going to panic even if the weather forecast changes.  At this point, I don't care what the weather is doing.  We're going to have a fantastic party, rain or shine.  We've come this far; I'm not going to let anything ruin our day.  :)

Pretty, Pretty Pashmina

Last week, I bought pashmina shawls for my maids and I.  The three of us are wearing strapless dresses so I wanted something to keep us warm should our September evening turn chilly.  And, I love pashmina.  It's so soft and beautiful.  

First, I searched on Amazon.  The ones I liked were pretty pricey.  And, I'm a ch-- I mean, frugal bride!  ;)  I don't like to pay too much for anything!  So, I took my chances on ebay.  And, I definitely got a great deal!  

I went with seller lj_backpack.  I got 2 ivory/cream colored pashmina shawls:

and one navy pashmina shawl:

I paid $7.65 each for them with free shipping.  I bought them Friday night at about 7pm.  They arrived this afternoon.  So, technically only a business day later!  I'd say that's pretty quick.  :)  They are beautiful and great quality.  I'm really happy with this purchase!

I can't wait to see how the navy looks over my dress and how the ivory looks over the bridesmaid (navy) dresses.  Only 18 more days until I get to!  :)

RSVP: The Hunt

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Since the deadline passed yesterday, I've been trying to hunt down a few of the stragglers.  I've called and texted a few and even sent some Facebook messages (as has Philip).  And, I've just said that some people aren't coming.  I've managed to figure out most of the people on the list.  I've just got a few more to track down.  

As of right now, we've got 41 yes RSVPs (including the ones I've managed to track down).  I'm thinking that we should have a few more to add to that list.  So, we should have right around 50 people (including Philip and I), give or take a few.  

Honestly, I'd resigned myself to the fact that no one was going to show up.  So, the fact that we've got a few more than I thought we would makes me happy.  We are going to have a small, personal wedding.  And, it's going to be beautiful.  Now I just have to make it the 3 weeks until the big day!  ;)

RSVP Deadline

I have read countless blog posts about brides having to track down guests who have failed to RSVP by the deadline.  I was under no illusion that I would be any different.  However, I didn't think it would be this bad.  

The RSVP deadline was Saturday, September 3rd.  That gave people plenty of time to figure out if they were coming or not.  It's not as if I made things complicated.  I gave them a self addressed, stamped envelope.  And the RSVP already had their names on the card.  All they had to do is put a check mark next to "Will attend" or "Will not attend."  SUPER EASY PEOPLE!

However, apparently it's not nearly as simple as I thought.  I have now received 81 responses out of 161 people.  That's right at half!  

I will now call out people who should be ashamed.  First of all, I'd like to point out that Philip's paternal grandparents sent back their RSVP despite the fact that Pop Pop has been in the hospital fighting for his life pretty much since the invitations were sent.  So, all of the rest of you have no valid excuse!  :P

We have not received RSVPs from ANY of my dad's siblings (there are five of them).  We also haven't received RSVPs back from Philip's dad or from either of his invited siblings.  We've only received one RSVP back from Philip's dad's siblings (there are seven of them).  And, we never received an RSVP back from the best man.  

Of course, we didn't receive a whole lot more of them back, but those are the people who are most on my shit list and should've been the first to send theirs in!

I'm seriously irritated that I spent that much money on stamps for them and made it SO easy and we still only received half back.  I know that some of them were probably not sent back because they assumed that I knew they wouldn't be making it (or that they would).  However, that should mean it's even easier for them.  The day you get it, simply check yes or no and stick that envelope right back in the mailbox!  Easy as pie!  

Grrrr... I can't believe how irritating this process is.  I just have to keep thinking, we're going to have a beautiful day no matter who did or did not remember to send back their RSVPs.  And, I'll eventually forgive those who did not.  ;) 

Dresses have FINALLY arrived!

I know I've been quiet here for about a week.  I have been dealing with my emotions and lack of motivation in my own way (I mean I reread The Hunger Games series this week - HA!).  I have been slowly finishing up the last of the projects.  I'll have more to blog about later about those.  

I got bad news tonight, so, for now, I'm just going to jump into something that makes me really happy.  The bridesmaid dresses and my mom's MOB dress arrived!  We bought them from http://www.plussizebridal.com.  They were the cheapest place, by far.  However, they did take quite a while -- even longer than they were supposed to.  I had to contact them on Tuesday because they still hadn't shown up.  The person I spoke with assured me that they'd just come in that day and they'd be shipping out that day.  I honestly think he was full of crap and that they'd arrived sooner but they forgot to send them out.  Oh, well.  They're here now.  

And they're gorgeous!  :)

They're probably going to kill me for posting these (mostly my sister since she's got her messy hair look goin' on!).  I think they're beautiful!  The word that comes to mind is glamorous.  The pictures brought tears to my eyes when I opened the email.  I can't wait to see all of us looking glamorous together!