Bridesmaids Dresses: LulaKate

Last week, Two weeks ago (wow time seems to be flying lately) I had to be in Charleston for a conference.  While on a break, I was walking down King Street and spotted LulaKate.

LulaKate has been featured a LOT lately and with good reason - their dresses are super cute and they offer a lot of customization that allows each style of dress they make to look great on the girls that wear them.  There are four skirt styles for each dress.  You can choose to have a waist band added or not (like the first picture below).  You can vary the skirt length.  You get the picture..

To be honest,  I was pretty anti-bridesmaids dress this entire time.  I wanted something off the rack that had max re-wear potential. But these dresses were so cute...and so much easier than trying to find something off the rack that was affordable, cute,  and would look remotely good on all 10 (yes 10!) bridesmaids.  I've officially become a fan.

After a quick consult with the maids of honor, it was decided, let the girls pick from one of their three ruffled styles:

 

The strapless dress will have a ruffle added at the top, that folds over - I saw a sample in the store with it and it is SUPER cute in person.  Probably the most re-wearable of the bunch, but also the most simple.

Can't wait to see which dress each girl picks.  And can't wait to pick colors.  I'm waiting on B to choose his ties and then we'll go from there.  Have my eye on navy with fun shoes or this awesome teal that would look great in pics and work with all skin/hair types.  We shall see! 

Post Office FAIL

We mailed our Save the Dates on Friday, December 3.  I dropped them off personally at the main counter; I wanted someone to weight them just to make sure B had bought enough postage for each envelope.  They passed the test, off they went.

We started getting emails and texts from family and friends within a day - great, right?

Well, turns out that many of our close friends haven't even gotten their Save the Dates yet!  Some got them only yesterday.

What is up with the Postal Service?  Is it the holidays?  Or is everyone so reliant on email these days that it has become acceptable for mail to take ALMOST TWO WEEKS?

God help us if the real invitations take this long....

Anyone else experience anything similar with holiday cards?  Or is is just bad luck?

YIKES!

Productive Weekend!

B was out of town this weekend, and while I was bummed that we weren't able to hang out (especially since I was out of town most of this past week), I was pretty excited to have a low-key, productive weekend.  It's amazing how much you can accomplish when you don't go out and drink alot either night!

Here are just some of the things I checked off my to-do list:

1. Mailed our Save the Dates
That's right..they are OUT!   I guess this means we're officially getting married!

Here's what the final product looked like, LOVE how they turned out!

2.  Found a SUPER AWESOME necklace to wear with my wedding dress
It's big, sparkly and will look great!  I keep taking it out of the box to look at it. I have an appointment to try it on with MY dress (the sample comes in early - in two weeks!), keeping my fingers crossed it will work!

3.  Looked for Mother of the Bride dresses
Mom tried on and was kind of considering a short beaded number.  Not so much.  We'll keep looking...

4.  Switched out my closet
One of the joys of apartment living is having to keep off season clothes under a bed, stuffed in a coat closet...anywhere but the main closet.   I know we're not alone in this, but still, switching out closets is one of my least favorite tasks ever.  However, it is also one of those tasks where the end result is always worth the effort.  I feel like I have a whole new wardrobe now that I can actually see all of my winter clothes again.  Am happily sporting one of my (much beloved) black turtlenecks as we speak.  Oh how I've missed you black sweaters!

I also have a new appreciation for that high-school retail job, where I had to fold sweaters with a board to make them perfect:

5.  Decided on Bridesmaids Dresses
On my recent business trip to Charleston, I took advantage of a little down time (okay, I skipped part of the conference) to try on dresses at LulaKate.  Yall,  I didn't think I wanted to go with a "bridesmaids" dress but these were SO cute I couldn't resist.  I had some discussion about diff. styles with the two maids of honor and it was a done deal.  I'll post pictures in a future post.

6.  Got out my winter wreath and FINALLY switched our doormat.
No more watermelon doormat - instead I found a really cute, affordable leaf mat at Lowe's.  Was there to buy something for the shower and stumbled upon this.  So glad - finally feels like we've embraced fall & winter!  About time :) 

--
I got a TON of other stuff done too; it was a VERY productive weekend!  Hope yall also had a great weekend - anyone get a taste of the winter weather?   

'Tis the Season!

...for cute holiday sweaters:

 

Thank you, Bebe, for the awesome Thanksgiving present!   These are perfect for the cold weather we've been having on the east coast.  Love!

Our Wedding Photographers Rock!

Our wedding photographers are featured on Style Me Pretty today...The shoot captures a great, foggy wedding in the NC mountains.  Lots of great shots and gorgeousness, like this:

Check it out

So excited for them to shoot our wedding!!!!

If I Had the Guts...

...I would totally sport this at my wedding.  Made by Style by SOCA, this is a serious piece of gorgeousness.  LOVE.

One of my favorite wedding blogs, With This Ring showcased this earlier last week but I just saw it today.  (And the more I look at it, the more I think it might actually look gorgeous sewn onto the side of a dress as an accent piece.  It would definitely dress up a simple dress!)

Speaking of veils...I'm going to try on a veil with my dress the weekend after Thanksgiving.  Not only does this give me an excuse to put my dress back on but I will finally be able to take pictures, since we forgot the camera on our last trip. 

This is actually a special trip for many other reasons, the main one being that the veil we will be trying on was given to me by my godfather and his wife just weeks before he passed away from a long time battle with cancer.  I have never seen the veil out of the packaging (it was brought over from Belgium in the 80's by the wife's mother) but from the few peeks I got, it looks gorgeous.  What a special way to remember my godfather - I can't wait to try the veil on.  And while I won't share pics here, I'll definitely let you know how it goes!  (obviously those who really want to see can get pics via email...more than happy to share!)

Happy Thanksgiving week everyone :)

The Year for Christmas Cards?

B and I have been living together for 2+ years.  Each year around Thanksgiving, I always ask, "Should we send a holiday card?".  And each year the response is the same, "No, only once we're married."

Truthfully, I suck at cards of all kinds - thank you notes, birthday cards, holiday cards.  I'm just not a card person, I guess.  So I have never really fought the whole Christmas Card issue.  I'm sure I would have gotten them out the day before Christmas even if B did agree to sending them.  And secretly I'm too cheap too.  That money could go towards clothes :)

But this year...we're engaged, we've got the two cutest dogs on the planets, and I'm kind of in the "holiday mood".   Is it weird to send a holiday card before we're married?

If I had all the time in the world, I'd make holiday cards.  I love craft projects..baking..sewing..anything that involves making.  Unfortunately I don't have a lot of extra time, so over the years I've done less and less of things that involve "making". 

Enter...Shutterfly.

They've actually got some cute cards (which you can find, here):

For some reason, I love the cards with the retro touches the best.  They just seem FUN.

Who knows, maybe we'll get our act together and actually get cards out.   Everyone else seems to do it :)

(PS - yes, shameless plug for their xmas card blogger contest, which you can enter here.  but they really DO have cute cards...seriously, I looked at them ALL).

Wedding Checklist Fail

I finally got around to adding a few things to my (very bad excuse for a) wedding binder.  The first thing in said binder is a wedding checklist from my planner, so I decided to see where we were with everything.

I knew we still had a lot left to do, but good grief, we are pretty far behind, at least per the checklist.  Here are the things that we should have done by now:

• Start thinking about stationery/wedding invites (in the July - September list)
• Select and book florist 
• Select and book caterer
• Send out save the dates 
• Order invites (in the October list)
• Select and order bridesmaids dresses
• Select and order baker for cake
• Register for wedding gifts
• Book transportation
• Book honeymoon
• Take engagement photos

Holy smokes!  What the hell have we been doing?

To be honest, we're pretty close on florist, caterer and save the dates.  And I'm planning to ask my creative guys at the agency design our invites, so no stress there.  I'm waiting on spring on the bridesmaids dresses, for the brighter colors to come out, we're planning on doing cake stuff in January and registry in February. And we already told our photographers that we'd prefer to do our engagement shoot in the spring.

So I shouldn't feel so bad....right?

Still..looking at this list and thinking about what we have to do gives me a mini panic attack every time! Ahhhhhhhh!

Not Quite On The Road Again...

So, we didn't make it to Hampden-Sydney this weekend like we originally planned.  Everyone in B's family was sick, and since we'll be in VA for Thanksgiving (which is less than 2 weeks away - crazy!), we decided it would be better to stay here.

Needless to say we were both bummed, but decided to make the best of it by taking a day trip to Asheville. We woke up early, grabbed the dogs and hit the road.  B had never been to the Biltmore, so we decided to spend the day there.  Obviously we couldn't go into the house with the dogs, but we had a great time explore the gardens and vineyards that run throughout the property.  It was a gorgeous, gorgeous day:

After exploring the gardens and walking for over an hour, we rewarded ourselves with wine and lunch, outside of the winery.  I also did a mini photoshoot of the dogs :)

Hope you had a good weekend, too!

On the Road Again

This weekend we're heading up to Virginia to see B's family and go to the Hampden-Sydney/Randolph-Macon football game.

The good news is that our two terriers terrorizers will be coming with us.  This is the first time B's family has seen and met Charlie, so we took both pups to the groomer to ensure they looked their best ;)

Here are two pics of the dogs post-haircut (excuse the quality, since these are from my non-iphone phone):

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Save the Dates: We've Hit a Wall

Our Save the Dates are finally coming together, woohoo!  After sitting in a box in our condo for 4 months, it is SO nice to feel like we're making progress:

 

Well..we were making progress until we hit a major wall: I didn't order enough baker's twine...so now we're in a holding pattern until more comes in.  Mwah, mwah.  I really want to get these out soon, so they don't get mixed into the Christmas Card hoopla.   Thankfully a good friend has offered to help me finish them up next week!  Here's hoping that by next weekend we are done, done, done!  This would be a big thing to check off our list, so we can move onto more important things like cake tastings and caterer selection.

Good times :)

Bye, Bye Bride Magazines

I have a confession to make:  I think wedding magazines are kind of dumb and boring.

Wait, what?  Isn't every bride supposed to go ga-ga over bridal magazines and just looooove looking at them?  Well, not this bride.

When I first got engaged, I bought every bridal magazine in site, I guess because I expected to love them.  I tagged pages, ripped out a few pics...but that got old fast.  I quickly realized that all the magazines are the basically same...plus reading magazines takes too much time for a busy girl to read, especially a busy girl who loves her DVR :)

Despite all of that, I just couldn't bring myself to throw the magazines away.  I mean, what if I wanted to dig one out again?  So they've been sitting in our bedroom for months.  I was starting to feel like one of the women from hoarders, so I decided to chuck the entire pile.  I mean honestly, I am never going back to re-read those bad boys.

Bye bye bridal magazines.  It was fun for a moment:

Am I the only one who thought these magazines were pretty useless?

I am TOO Old...

It's official, I am just too damn old for Widespread Panic shows.  This is something that has been said before in our house, but after last weekend, I know it's true. 

Last weekend, we headed down to New Orleans for "three nights of Panic".  These were the infamous Halloween shows, and the tickets (and the entire trip, really) were B's birthday present to himself.  I love New Orleans, so I was more than happy to tag along.

We decided a few weeks before the shows that we would bail on the first night so that we could spend some time with one of my best friends from college.  We had a great time with her and her husband: we had a divine dinner here, followed by Po Boys and Bloodys the next day and an awesome (though very hungover) brunch the next day.  Yum.   B even made it to Harrah's to "check out the scene".  The only bad think about our time with them is that we didn't take one single picture - not one! This is the second weekend in a row I've been with college friends and the only picture any of us took either weekend was this horrible horrible horrible shot. 

I digress...After saying goodbye to our friends, the rest of our weekend was filled with daiquiris, hurricanes and great music.  Between the halloween debauchery on Bourbon to the craziness of the widespread crowd, we also took in some awesome people watching.  The shows were pretty good too, but I think I've seen enough that they're all starting to sound the same. Plus being trapped in a smokey arena surrounded by people doing more drugs than I've ever seen in my life...well, not exactly my ideal concert experience.  That said, both nights of Widespread really were fun and it was awesome to be in downtown New Orleans during Halloween & a home Saints game.  If these are going to be my last (traveling) shows, at least I went out with a bang!

Here are a few pics from our trip, enjoy!

Whirlwind Few Weeks!

This weekend will be the fifth and final weekend in a row of travel for us this fall.  All of our trips have been awesome, so it's been a fun couple of weeks, but I'm also ready for a little down time, since work is currently kicking my butt. 

That said, being busy has taken my time away from the blog, so I thought I'd take a few minutes and catch everyone up on the last few weeks!  There are a lot of pics, enjoy!

Two weekends after our engagement party, we went down to Islamorada with B's family.  We stayed two nights at Cheeca, where B & I originally wanted to get married.  Ironically, there was another couple getting married there the same weekend we were visiting and after seeing a "real wedding" there, I think we're both glad we're not getting married there.  It's still beautiful and relaxing, but Charlotte is the right place for us.  It will be easier on our family and friends to be there, which means more of them can join us, which means a packed dance floor.  Woohoo!

At dinner at the Green Turtle Inn - YUM

Gorgeous Sunrise

Our attempt at a bike ride :)  We rode to get sticky buns & back, hah

At an outdoor cafe in Miami.  We scoped out all the Jersey Shore hotspots..

The next weekend, we headed to Wrightsville Beach for the wedding of a good family friend.  There were two things that made this an especially amazing wedding:  they had Trolley Stop AT THE WEDDING & both the wedding and the reception were at the Carolina Yacht Club, which is full of special memories for us and the family of the groom.

The gorgeous bride

They had perfect weather...we stuck around after the ceremony to snap a few pics

My parents, looking cute as always

SOOO excited about hotdogs (they even had veggie dogs!)

The wedding pies (the bride hates cake)

Tim's first visit to the beach!

The next weekend, I was in Chapel Hill for a wedding of a good college friend.  Almost everyone was sans dates, so it was fun and much needed girl's weekend:

Teal was apparently the "hot" color for the night

Cute Seating Assignment card - the bride is a teacher

We played "emotions" at the table after dinner.  I believe our emotion to act out here was "you just found out you were rejected from Kappa"  Hilarious since the two of us could not have been less involved our final years at school.

This weekend we head to New Orleans for the last installment of B-turns-30-palooza.  One night with good friends & two nights of Widespread?  Yup. 

Stay tuned for more updates soon!

Tacky Tuesday

Between work and weekend trips, I'm buried..but I thought I'd leave you with a few "inspirational" wedding pics. 

If only I could incorporate rifles into my own wedding...

Maybe I should have my bridesmaids wear a hot hair piece?  And I definitely want them to make the stink face in our pictures.

 And there's this.  I have no words, except to say that I haven't seen a bow that big since I let my mom put bows in my hair back in elementary school.  Wow.

Happy tuesday y'all.

The Ingredients: Fabric!

I seriously heart our wedding planner.  She nailed fabric swatches, just like she did our color palette and style board.

Here is a sneak peak of the swatches (excuse the pictures, my bberry isn't the best):

Our base colors will be a mix of beige and navy pintuck table clothes.  We'll use the bright colors on accent tables and possibly as ties around the base.  And I think the cake/candy table is going to be hot pink, hah.

We are also (hopefully) planning to have lounge furniture near the dance floor and we wanted to bring in a pop of yellow by putting making some pillows to go on the lounges.  We've been struggling to find a bright, preppy, yet budget friendly fabric...until I found this swatch on one of the blogs I read:

The fabric is Paula Prass for Michael Miller Summer Soiree Chevron in Yellow and it was on sale - score!  Fabric.com has a pretty awesome return policy so I ordered 4 yards to qualify for free shipping and crossed my fingers that it looked good.

When I first pulled it out of the package, it looked a little mustardy...but in better light, and next to the samples, I think it looks great (the light in the pics is still pretty bad, but it does have a little more of a pop than I originally thought):

Progress feels good!  Carla, you're my hero ;)