Weddingbee Blog

After taking pictures in the lobby with my family, everyone headed up to the terrace where Mr. N and his family were awaiting my arrival.

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After getting beautified, I was getting very excited! Ah, butterflies. Dress time…

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On Thursday morning I woke up and couldn’t believe it. The wedding day, 11 months of planning, everything I had been anxiously awaiting was finally here! I hopped in the shower and we hit the breakfast buffet like every other morning that week. When we got back to the room, Mr. N was off to hit the pool and he asked me what my perfect wedding morning would be. I didn’t want to get all sweaty and my plan was to let my hair air-dry which can take hours with my mop, so I decided to have a quiet morning by myself on the balcony lost in a book. It was exactly what I needed to keep myself from getting antsy. About an hour after Mr. N left the room, I got this in a text on my phone…

(personal photo)

Seriously, how sweet is he?

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Day 2 started off with what would quickly become my favorite daily ritual – mmmmmm, breakfast buffet. After breakfast, we met with the hotel’s wedding coordinator to go over all the details and get our welcome gift, a nice hardcover book of the islands. The meeting was super quick because we were only doing the ceremony and they had already emailed us the details. So about 10 minutes later, we hopped in a taxi and took it into town to pick up our marriage license at the courthouse. It is so weird being on the left side of the road and looking over cliffs the wrong way! Not that I make it a habit of looking over cliffs, but you know what I mean. The views on the way were beautiful, despite the fact that it was raining.

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Our friends Blair and Giselle were on the same flight as we were which made traveling so much more fun! After flight #1, we arrived in Ft. Lauderdale; we were all pooped and it was only 10:30AM. So what did we do? Hit the airport bar for some cocktails. What? I needed some red bull with a kick!

Sleepy, pasty Chicagoans

Unlike on flight #1, the flight #2 attendant told me there was nowhere to put my dress (psh, liar) so we were forced to shove it in the overhead compartment. Grrr. I managed to get a little cat nap in the air and before I knew it, we were in St. Thomas! We walked off the plane and were immediately greeted by my new bestest friend—a smiling, cheery lady with a tray of complimentary rum shots. It was much-needed after the long day we had had already! We strolled over to baggage claim, retrieved my bag and waited for Mr. N’s. And we waited. Aaaaaaaaaand waited. Then the belt stopped.

Uggggggh.
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2 weeks ago, Mr. Nachos and I hopped on a plane headed for paradise! Although, let’s first back it up a day or 2 before that happened… we decided to take a quick trip to Dollar Tree to fill up the OOT bags with some more fun stuff. Um…

Who in the world buys $90 worth of stuff from a frickin’ dollar store???
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We got home Friday night and the only good thing about being back in reality is…

… hmm…

… uh, I’ll have to get back to ya on that one. Anywho, I’m back and I’m officially a Mrs. Our 2 week journey in the Virgin Islands was more than I could have ever asked for. And one of the best parts for me was hearing Mr. N’s dad tell him that our wedding was the best wedding he’s ever been to. Our trip was perfect to me, even when life threw in some lost luggage, strep throat and a rainy wedding day. I seriously wouldn’t change any of it for the world because every little detail and happening made it what it was.

And oh boy, do I have so much to tell you all about! Fire eaters and stilt walkers, free wedding cake, playing the steel drum at my own wedding, and I may or may not have jumped in the pool with my dress on. Hee hee. But for now, I’ll leave you with this…
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Friday I finished up my last day of work ’til May!! Mr. Nachos had gone to the Cubs game with some friends and when I got home, I was greeted by 4 funny drunkies and this…

Mel insisted that Mr. Nachos and I use the real wine glasses which I told her probably wasn’t a good idea, but she insisted…
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On a trip to Party City a while back, I picked up this guestbook for $15…

(source)

It seemed a little plain but I knew I could add a few decorative touches to it.

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After my post about the water bottle labels went up, a few people asked for a template, and I’m happy to share!

Click here for the fully customizable Photoshop template.

Once I had my template personalized for our bottles, I saved the .psd file as a .jpg. I then loaded the MS Word template for Avery 6579 (I had to download it from here), inserted my .jpg 4 times and arranged on the Avery template. Once printed, I had to cut them out individually but with only 24 of them, it didn’t take too long. That’s it!

Oh, and while I’m here, I wanted to show you what my mom has been up to….
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Sunday I went up to my friend Sharon’s house for some foiling/hair cutting fun… we took care of each others’ atrocious roots (don’t judge the lazy stylists) to make sure we’re in tip-top shape for next week, and at the same time I was able to drop off our OOT bags. Ah, there’s room in my closet again! Sharon is truly my hero – she’s taking the bags down there for us in the same bag we plan to stuff full of wedding dress for her return flight home. Yep, she’s taking that off my hands, too. I figured I’d see if she could also stuff these bad boys into said bag to which she happily obliged…

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This is the bracelet I’ll be wearing for our wedding…

Look familiar?

I’m honored to say that I will be the 4th bee to wear this gorgeous bracelet on my wedding day. Can anyone name the other 3 bees that wore this when they got married?

Yesterday afternoon in the rain, we buried my good friend’s mom.

Because death doesn’t wait for weddings.

Then last night I received a voicemail from another friend, my best friend since kindergarten, and I just knew. I could hear it in her voice. She simply said, “Call me. I just wanted to let you know what’s going on.” I already knew it was her mom, the woman who I’ve considered my second mom for 27 years. So I put on my big girl pants, and I called her.

Because sickness doesn’t wait for weddings.

As she spoke, everything over the last few days just hit me like a ton of bricks. And I had a little tear-filled meltdown. But it’s such a roller coaster because at the same time, I have this happy little voice whispering in my ear, “14 days till the wedding, it’s so close!” This time in 2 weeks, I’ll be counting the hours instead of the days.
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On Easter, I was standing in the kitchen with Mr. Nachos and my parents while my dad was cutting up the ham, and we were talking wedding stuff. That’s when I decided it was the perfect time to ask my dad if he would walk me down the aisle. I know it didn’t have to be asked, but I wanted him to know that it was important to me and something I was really looking forward to. His response?

Only if we can both wear these…

(source)

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Now that we’re in the home stretch and I’ve recovered from by bachelorette party, I figured what better way to spend all my free time (ha!) than come up with another DIY project? So I present to you our water bottle labels for the OOT bags.

I started playing around in MS Word and tweaking with Photoshop and came up with this…

Oh, but wait, who’s that in the corner? It’s us in PowerPoint form!
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