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We have mailed two invitations and hand-delivered 47 others, making the coast clear to reveal the Boa invitations. After a sifting through tons of inspirations pictures, a couple of drafts, dozens of paper samples, and wording, the Boa invitations are finally done. The work was ALL worth it. I absolutely ADORE my our invitations; if it were possible to marry paper products Mr. Boa would be sitting in Dumpsville.
Without further ado, the Boa invitations.
We chose silver for the envelopes and the shimmery purple (violette) for the invitation mat, both from Cards & Pockets, and wrapped it all up with some pretty striped twine.
The first thing guests will see when the pull out our invitation is the information card.
Instead of having separate registry, reception, RSVP, and website cards, we got all the information we needed on one piece of paper, saving us a bunch on paper and printing costs.
I’ve been postponing shopping for Mr. Boa’s suit for quite some time, not because it was going to be difficult but quite the opposite. Last summer before Mr. Boa left for his summer internship we went shopping for suits at our favorite outlet mall and we both particularly loved a navy striped suit he bought at the Kenneth Cole Outlet Store. Once talks of his wedding attire came along, we both knew no questions asked that he would be getting another Kenneth Cole suit. We had already crossed off tuxedos and black as options for our semi-formal morning wedding, so we naturally gravitated towards gray colored suits. Thankfully when we popped up at the store last week, they had both: the jacket and the pants in Mr. Boa’s size (he always takes his pants to be hemmed just so) and in a great charcoal gray color.
Since I received a heirloom ring at my proposal, I didn’t get to go on the exciting ring shopping journey before getting engaged. This time around, you can be sure I was totally pumped up to finally get my chance to visit some jewelry stores.
I started the day without a clear idea in mind of what I wanted to buy. They only thing I knew for sure was that I envisioned myself having 3 rings, in three different colors of gold. I actually found Weddingbee after googling mismatched gold rings way back in April of 2010 and I instantly fell in love with the look of Mrs. Trial Mix’s rings.
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| Swoon… So pretty! / Mrs. Trail Mix’s rings |
At store number 7 (or was it 8?) in a forgotten corner of the clearance section, I found a little piece of jewelry that caught my eye.
I knew from the get go that I would do my own makeup for the wedding. As a gal that only paints her face for special occasions, I am appalled by what makeup artists generally do to me. On the other hand, there was no way I was spending the $100+ on make up for only one day when I could use that money to buy face painting supplies that will last me a long while. With this in mind I choose to drive the almost three hours to San Juan in order to utilize the services of the makeup artists at Sephora. For a minimum product purchase of $50, you can get a 60 minute makeup session by one of their artists and their recommendations on the best products to use for the occasion. My MUA went right to work after I showed her my inspiration pictures of Kim Kardashian. Kim has dark hair, big expressive eyes and full lips like me and since I loved her delicate bridal make-up I thought it would be a good look. But…
…here are the dragalicious pictures of me after my trial.
Featured on Weddingbee
Unique Wedding Favors
“Add a memorable touch to your wedding with unique favors that match your theme.”
Once the (soon to-be revealed) invitations were finished, we thought hand delivering them would be a great way to spend a bit of 1-on-1 time with our friends and family and save quite a bit of money. By choosing to hand deliver the invitations we eliminate the costs of stamps and RSVP cards/envelopes while having the benefit of sharing with people we really care about since all of our guests live close by.
The first invitations we delivered were to our close college friends, W and S, as they hung out in our living room. I had Mr. Boa document the delivery.
* Note the first Weddingbee appearance of The Boa’s furbaby, Sushi.
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Female version: ooooohhh shiny 
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After a brief unwanted hiatus, Miss Boa’s back in wedding planning overdrive (thanks IRS) with only two months to go before the big day. Realizing I have so little time left has made me buckle down and start to work on the details, the little things that will make our wedding us. Way back in June, in the beginning of wedding planning, I decided I wanted an common design element throughout the wedding, something that could serve as a theme of sorts. One of the first things I noticed on wedding blogs were the prominence of all things striped. This simple pattern inspired the background design for the wedding invitations and I knew I wanted to add more stripey goodness, which is why I’m very excited to incorporate two little wedding trends into my day.
Stripe Paper Straws & Striped Baker’s Twine
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| Photo by: Jessica Claire on Inspired By This via Lover.ly |
Create the honeymoon of your dreams.
I have a confession to make: I don’t like flowers. I don’t like receiving flower bouquets or filling my house with bloom-filled vases. But I insisted on having natural flowers included in our wedding. I just generally associate weddings with colorful blooms and their sweet smell.
I lucked out with Carlos, our wedding decorator/ florist, who is one of Mami Boa’s best friends best friends. He did the decorations for both of my cousins’ quinceañeros (We will be reusing the glass vases from one of these) and a couple of proms at their school. Since he has become a friend of the family and knows I’m on a tiny budget, he quoted us a fixed price for his labor and offered us all the materials, linens and flowers at cost. This made it possible for us to outsource all the decorating to him and avoid some crazy intense DIY projects.
Before meeting with Carlos to discuss all things flowers, we had narrowed down our centerpiece inspiration to modern, all-white centerpieces. I thought they should contrast nicely with the white table linens and dark purple sheer organza overlay I had already fallen in love with.
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| Close up of the detailed ribbon stitching in varying shades of purple on the table overlay. |
Some of the pictures I showed Carlos were:
Read more…
You might have noticed (or not) that I have been missing in action these past few weeks.
The reality is I have done zero wedding planning for more than three weeks. No vendors, no stores, no DIY projects, I’ve even tried not thinking about the wedding. After we hit the 3 month mark, I dawned on me that we had less than 100 days until the wedding and there was SO MUCH to be done! As much as I wish I could keep going with the planning full steam ahead, the wedding train has come to a screeching halt for the Boas.
We are still very much in love and the wedding is still happening. Love didn’t halt our planning, but money sure did. As you may know, we are planning a no-budget wedding with our parents graciously offering to cover great part of the expense (I wanted to elope, they wanted a wedding; we compromised for a relaxed morning affair). My parents are footing the bill for the reception while FMIL Boa is gifting us our incredible European honeymoon.
Then life got in the way…My parents’ only car broke down, Lil’ Boa had to have emergency dental work done and FMIL Boa got laid off. Our non-existent budget got even smaller.
The money Mr. Boa and I had saved up for wedding details (invitations, paper products, cake, and all the DIY projects) was used up to pay off other important stuff that our parents couldn’t cover because of the circumstances, and so began the great Boa Wedding Depression.
Read more…
Mami Boa sent me the best picture ever…our wedding invitations have arrived!!
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| Left side: Envelopes and Invitation Mats Right side: Invitations |
This weekend Mr. Boa and I went to Pre-Cana, the required marriage prep course for all couples getting married in the Catholic Church. Our church requires that we attend their local course which consists of an Opening Weekend Retreat, three months of weekly meetings with a host couple and a Closing Weekend Retreat in May, all of which are virtually impossible for us to attend. Since we are both stuck in our college town during the week, Mami Boa met with the priest to discuss other alternatives. She somehow got us permission to do one INTENSE (Friday 8-11PM, Saturday 8AM-11PM and Sunday 8AM-3PM) weekend retreat in a different diocese instead of the usual requirements.
Last Friday right after class, we drove three hours along a twisting winding road to the lovely mountain town where our retreat would take place.
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| View from my room at the Retreat |
Seeing as we will be attending our Pre-Cana retreat this weekend, it might be time to talk about our ceremony—particularly where it’s going to take place. Mr. Boa and I are both Roman Catholics, as are all our family members and 85% of the Puerto Rican population. Thankfully, living in a Latin American country means we have a gazillion Catholic churches to choose from.
In my wedding planning frenzy back in July, we drove around in circles in search of a church that was close to our already booked reception venue. We found a cute little chapel only 8 minutes away from the venue; its proximity to the reception space was incredibly convenient. We met with the priest, looked over some literature, and reserved a time slot for our wedding that same day. Flash forward to January, and I began to doubt my decision. I got wrapped up in all the wedding planning hype, treating the house of worship where we will exchange our vows as just another vendor. We put convenience and practicality over having our ceremony somewhere that was meaningful to us.
With these thoughts swirling in my brain, I revisited my dream ceremony location: my hometown chapel, Parroquia San Antonio de la Padua in Isabela. The place where my parents (married 24 yrs), grandparents (married 52 yrs) (and great grandparents and great great grand parent and aunts and uncles) got married in.
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| My maternal grandparents wedding pictures circa 1960 |
First on this week’s wedding planning to-do list is working on a wedding website. We decided early on we wanted to have a website to share all the extra wedding information that won’t fit on the invitations. Being almost completely computer illiterate, I knew we would definitely use a template site. I narrowed my search of template sites using only a few requirements:
I visited around four or five different free wedding websites, but the themes they offered left much to be desired. WeddingWire’s theme selection was the most diverse so I decided to go with them. I toyed around with half a dozen of their themes before finally narrowing it down to two.
Dotted Hears inspired by Invitation Consultant
An awful week (three exams, two lab reports, and half-dozen meetings) messed up my life schedule, pushing wedding planning, Valentine’s Day, and blogging on the back burner. I’ve been a little frazzled trying to balance school, the wedding, the honeymoon, and some really good news (Mr. Boa got a great job offer). We were both lucky to be recruited for full-time jobs (in the same city!) after graduation. So now dealing with the whole hiring process and planning a cross-country move to Ohio for just after the wedding has been added to my HUGE to do list. Overwhelmed does not even begin to cover it!
Noticing it’s less than 100 days to the wedding put my little bee butt into wedding-planning-panic. I’m finally realizing planning a wedding with all these other things going on is freaking HARD! There is so much left to do and time just keeps ticking away with no regard to my schedule. I have a pretty light school load for this week and have an important event going on next weekend so hopefully I’ll be able to get some things done. I’ll try to start work on my DIY projects, which I have regretfully neglected.
Though I’m cramming everything into my crazy life, I’ve also come to realize that it’s okay if the details aren’t all finished.
Read more…
We finally made our final decision regarding our honeymoon after contemplating some different options for a while. Almost three months shy of our wedding, we booked our honeymoon cruise. We will be sailing the waters of the Mediterranean to visit the wonderful countries of Italy, Greece and Turkey. We’ll fly straight out of our wedding reception (old school style) and will be staying in Italy 4 days post cruise before flying home, just in time for our college graduation. I hope you can tell I’m pumped about our honeymoon, it’s as important as the wedding (marriage is a bit above on the awesomeness scale)! Going to Europe has always been my dream and it’s even more incredible that I get to share with my husband (husband!).
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| Our cruise ship via Royal Caribbean |
I’m obsessed with all things purple. My wallet, iPod, laptop, cellphone, bathrobe and bedspread are all some shade of the vibrant hue (no wonder it’s my main wedding color!). When it came to choosing what to wear on my wedding day, there was no doubt in my mind purple would be featured somehow. Since Mami Boa almost had a heart attack at the mention of a grape colored gown, my shoes are where I will be highlighting my favorite color. No ivory shoes for this gal!
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| Luichiny Moo Lah Platform Pump via Endless |
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Miss Boa Constrictor, Isabela, Puerto Rico Age and Occupation: 22, Undergraduate Student Fiance's Age and Occupation: 23, Soon-to-be Civil Engineer Engagement Date: May 19, 2011 Wedding Date: May 2012 Venue: El Faro Convention Center About Me: I’m a Caribbean gal, born and bred on the beautiful island of Puerto Rico, finishing her last year as an undergrad. I describe myself as a “closet nerd” as I secretly enjoy reading research papers, playing video games, and geeking out on Lord of the Rings movie marathons. I will marry my college sweetheart, a soon-to-be civil engineer, who loves Legos and old-school Puerto Rican cooking. This is sure to be a fast-paced year with our wedding, honeymoon, college graduation, new jobs, and a cross-country move all within less than 30 days of each other!
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