Weddingbee

So far, I’ve already blogged about our photobooth and our slideshow. Another special aspect of our wedding (and Mr. Hibiscus’ favorite) was our first dance.

Now, we worked really hard to come up with a routine after a couple of lessons from Arthur Murray. I think we did a good job considering we had no previous training. It wasn’t “Dancing with the stars” by any means, but we were very proud. We recommend taking dance lessons to help relax you for your first dance. Shockingly, my hubby wants to continue our lessons. He loved it and it was his favorite part of the wedding because he had put so much work into it.

Perhaps one of the most special parts of our wedding was our slideshow. I used ProShow Gold which I downloaded for $69.95. I figure, it’s cheaper than paying someone to do it and I can use it again for vacations, my nephew, anniversaries and other life events. It’s a great program and very easy to use. Everyone at the wedding raved about the slideshow. (Probably because almost everyone at the wedding was in it somewhere.) I’ve used several other programs for slideshows, as blogged about previously. This by far gave the best results. All my hard work really paid off.

Click here for a short clip (well, 5 minutes) of our slideshow. In order to protect friends and family, I cut out the beginning with our baby pictures, the end with all the pictures of our friends and family and an audio thank you from us. The “story” might get a bit confusing since you don’t get the beggining or the end. The clip is just our “couple” pictures. The first part is our silly and fun pictures and the second is our romantic pictures. Enjoy!

I’ve gotten a million emails and phone calls from guests telling me their favorite ideas and details from our wedding. People keep commenting on how romantic, unique, fun and special everything was. I’m going to write about what stood out to my friends and family in a couple of different posts, and if you want to hear more about something specific I’ll review that as well. I’m going to be posting the special touches as they come to mind and in no particular order.

Our photobooth from Redcheese

I just got back from my honeymoon in Cancun. Yes, I’m one of those 7-7-7 weddings. Sorry for the delay!

Let me just say that it was the best day of my entire life. It was like a dream and I can’t believe I’m finally married to the love of my life! I will write detailed reviews on my vendors once I get the chance. For now here is some eye candy (a slideshow of our wedding pics) and a shout out to Weddingbee from our photographer Jessica Claire. Enjoy!

9 days left! Yikes! I went in for my final dress fitting last week. It felt so good to put my dress on, and I fell in love with it again after second-guessing my decision. I questioned my style of dress for my beach wedding but the only thing that matters now is I’m in love.

My dress is Maggie Sottero’s Madeleine in diamond white with a white sash. I got my alterations with Mahtab in Lake Forest, CA. She was very easy to work with and did a great job. I had it shortened and bustled (not shown) for a reasonable price.

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I’ve been engaged since September 2004.  All I kept hearing from everyone was, “You are so ahead of the game”, “You have so much time to plan”, and “Your wedding is so long from now.”  Now, I’m in major panic mode with three weeks left.  Since I’ve graduated, I have nothing to do all day except wedding stuff.  For some reason far less is being accomplished.  My to do list just keeps getting longer and longer, and every time I cross something off, three more things get added.  Every time I ask someone to help out, they agree enthusiastically and then enlist my help to the point where I do 90% of it anyway.  I asked my FMIL to do the rehearsal dinner invitations.  She bought them, told me what colors to use to print them out and then passed out on the office couch.  So, I ended up doing them. 

My fiance’s parents live in Northern California.  My parents live in Southern California.  I’ve lived in So Cal my entire life and I love it; traffic, smog and all.  I’m a beach baby and I actually do make my way to the beach every chance I get.  The problem is real estate prices.  My fiance doesn’t want to live inland (without the lake he has back home) and that leaves us with looking at very overpriced condos.  (We actually have a condo inland at the moment, but it was a temporary thing while I went to grad school.)  I don’t really want to live in a condo when we start having kids, so that leaves us with pretty much nothing…living on the streets with our cats. 

Another problem is there’s a billion eye doctors in So Cal… not much room for me.  Sigh.  So, after years of convincing on his part, I finally agreed to leave my precious southern California for his hometown.  After my graduation 2 weeks ago, we piled all our belongings in the U-HAUL and drove up the 5 freeway to my new home.  It hasn’t really hit me yet.  I still feel like I’m on vacation….that soon we’ll pack up our suitcases and take a Southwest flight back to our little condo.