I apologize for my absence for the last month and a half. Life and work gets really busy for us (and the rest of the world) around the holidays. In the last month alone we have traveled about 2,000 miles and have attended three weddings! Going to so many weddings had me reminiscing about our own, so let the recaps recommence!
When I left off we had just ended our short rehearsal and it was time to say goodnight to all of the extended family. I scheduled our rehearsal dinner/rehearsal to end early (8:30) on purpose so I could spend some time with some of my good friends who had come in to town for our wedding. Amarillo doesn’t have a ton of night life, so we opted to go to a late movie.
Image from themoviedb.org
While the guys opted to see Ted the ladies took a different route and chose to watch Channing Tatum shirtless for two hours. I was so excited to be able to have some fun with my friends, but for whatever reason, my mood was starting to turn from relaxed and happy to sad/upset/somber. Something about being in the same place where Mr. Scepter and I had began our relationship, exactly 10 years earlier, made me super aware of what was going to happen the next day and all of the emotions I had been suppressing for three days bubbled to the top and began to cause an inward freakout.
So, when it came to the “grand entrance” of the bridal party, I didn’t give anyone much direction. My main objective was to get people seated and eating. So I chose possibly one of the cheesiest, but shortest songs ever, Bruno Mars’ “Marry You,” and let the kids roll with it. It was quick and fun.
First came our parents:
kendra14 is selling a hair clip/fascinator with an aqua fabric flower, rhinestone and feather. She is asking $60.
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Once we had wrapped up our “formal” bride and groom shots, we raced back to the Club to get bridal party pictures. We rallied the troops and dragged them out to the tennis court. The light was super harsh that day, so it was a bit tricky getting pictures in the sun, but I absolutely love all of the below photos. Mainly because they include our best friends all in one place, but hey, the pretty photography is nice too.
We took a few pictures on the tennis courts, but the light was super harsh and the pictures weren’t turning out how Sarah and Chris wanted, so we headed off to the dock!
Actually, just a moment of silence.
We have three grandfathers (both of Mr. O’s and my pappy) who have passed, and won’t be present on our wedding day. Also missing will be my best friend, and now precious angel, Kirsten.
Personal photo / Kir and I during school one day
Kir passed away in December of 2006. I was a sophomore in high school. Anyone who has lost someone close to them can attest to the fact that it never gets easier. To this day, Kir is always on my mind. Even little things like shopping trips where I find something and think “oh that’s perfect for her!” So to not have her standing beside me at my ceremony is just as devastating as my pappy missing.
I just posted about the events surrounding our engagement photos. And I thought it would surely be at least a couple of weeks before we got our photos back. But lo and behold, I opened my e-mail yesterday to find a link to our photos!!!
We won’t get our disc for a little while, but I copied and pasted from our photographer’s blog so you can see some of my favorites! A few days before the photoshoot, I e-mailed Brenda and told her what kind of photos we were hoping for. Basically, I said we liked “candid-looking” photos, we weren’t afraid of some PDA, and we weren’t opposed to getting on the ground (in fact, I really wanted to take some photos on the ground). I also sent her my engagement photos Pinterest board so she could see the types of photos I liked. Beyond that, I trusted her to take good pictures. And I think she totally delivered.
(All photos by the amazingly talented Brenda Upton Photography.)
I completely forgot to mention where we are. We ended up choosing the Southeastern Railway Museum in Duluth, GA. It turned out to be incredible. If you’re looking for a cool location in the Atlanta area, check it out. You can get inside all of these old train cars and buses. It’s AWESOME. And now, on to the rest of the pictures!
Mr. Whale liked that we basically got to snuggle the whole time. (Who am I kidding? I loved it too.)
mickey84 and her newly minted husband twirl for the camera.
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When I first shared our Once Upon a Time invitations with the hive I talked briefly about my love of online RSVP’ing, but I figure it’s worth sharing my thoughts again and this time in more detail.
I have a confession to make, I placed a lot more importance on our RSVP deadline date than I originally thought I would. I ended up attaching some emotion to the RSVP waiting game and frankly, it’s not something I would recommend!
I have secretly been waiting for Jan. 15th for a while now; feeling beyond curious about who will be able to attend the wedding and who will not. I know many bees before me have written about their disappointment when certain family members or friends submit a “no” response, and I am here to commiserate with them. But I truly believe that everyone who is meant to be there will be there and the wedding day will be fantastic no matter what.
We chose a deadline early enough to give us plenty of time to track down the stragglers and to be certain that guests had ample time to make hotel reservations and flights. If most of your guests are in the same state/city, I wouldn’t think you need to know as far in advance as we do. I’m also anxious to have a real number in my head! For the past year when talking about our guest list it’s always been a range of numbers, like 110-150 or our best guess, 130ish? Soon enough, we will have a confirmed number.
Speaking of numbers, out of the 186 people invited, we have heard back from 129 of them with 102 folks attending and 27 declining. A great start! Since we are inviting a few families, I think it also makes sense to look at our guests as households or invitations. We sent out 86 invitations and have heard back from 63. Out of those 63 households, 50 have accepted and 13 have declined, with 23 households left unknown at this point.
While I love the idea of receiving the RSVP cards in the mail because it’s traditional and beautiful, I have to say going online with our RSVP system was one of the smartest decisions we made! I love the ease of it and the way it keeps track of everything for us. I can just log in and see our numbers quickly without counting or entering in information myself.
So imagine you are a guest invited to our Highland Fairy Tale wedding. Your first step is to type in our wedding website URL to find this home page.
After browsing our engagement photos and reading our proposal story, you’ll locate the “RSVP” tab on the left and click it. After which, you’ll see this:
Read more…
Okay, since the RSVPs have started to roll in, it’s finally time to reveal the Armadillo wedding invites! Keep in mind these were made 100% by hand, printed on our rinky dink home computer and cut and assembled by yours truly (along with a LOT of help from Mr. A.). While not everything went exactly the way I envisioned, overall I was really happy with the way they turned out.
Okay, enough chitter chatter! Onto the photos!
First up is a photo of the front of the envelope. I kinda went against the grain of etiquette and decorum by NOT handwriting the names and addresses on the front; rather, we ran each envelope through our home printer using the font Jellyka Western Princess, which I downloaded for free from fonts101.com. Mr. A and myself are both lefties, which, if you could imagine two left-handed people trying to write on metallic silver envelopes, all that would have probably resulted would have been smudge overload (and lots of frustrated tears!) I thought the font we picked lent itself to looking handwritten, and many of our guests have comment on how pretty the calligraphy is! I had to confess that it wasn’t “real” to them, but I don’t think they minded.
We did a corner embossing on the front of each envelope using a pretty little flourish stamp I stumbled on at Hobby Lobby. I thought it really amped up the fancy factor and loved the finished result!
