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After four months of searching, Mr. Woodpecker and I finally decided on a DJ. It feels so good to have someone that we like and feel comfortable with, but best of all, we can now move on to our next vendor search…
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| Image via Martha Stewart |
CAKE!! The Woodpeckers love cake. I am beyond excited about cake tastings, and have been looking forward to this part of planning since…forever.
So, let’s talk cake.
I’ve said it before, but I just love the wedding planning world these days, and how each wedding is so unique and meaningful to the couple. No longer is there pressure to do this and that, and each bride and groom are pretty free to make their day unique to them. There are some things we are changing up from normal traditions for our wedding day:
One of the first things Mr. Woodpecker and I had to decide on early on was whether or not we were going to get married in a Catholic church. This was a hard decision to make. We felt that it would mean a lot to our grandparents and that it might mean something negative if we didn’t. At the same time, we both didn’t feel that doing so would be representative of us. After lots of contemplating, we decided to get married at our reception venue, and now we’re super happy about it.
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| Image via perfect-wedding-day |
When I walk down the aisle on wedding day, to be honest, I’m not sure who will be walking me down.
This project has been a labor of love…and a test of patience! But in the end, I’m going to consider this my most successful DIY project yet!
As you know, we are going with the nautical/beach theme for the Woodpecker wedding. One thing that I absolutely loved early one was adding details like knots, oars, etc, in small ways for the ceremony or reception. When I saw these on Etsy, and fell in love:
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| Image via Etsy by sweetteaandlinen |
This post might seem crazy to you if you don’t have a pet, and I totally understand that. But I know some of you can relate. You see, I have neglected to mention that Mr. Woodpecker and I have a 5 year old…
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| Pup and Mr. Woodpecker the week we met!! |
PUP! Meet Cooper. He is a crazy, energetic rescue dog, who is very lovable, and whom I humiliate on a daily basis:
Featured on Weddingbee
Spring Wedding Favors
“Embrace the season with wedding favors that are perfectly suited for spring! Adorable AND affordable.”
I just found the greatest invention known to man color-obsessed brides. OK, that statement might be a little bit of an exaggeration, but that’s pretty much how I felt when I found Whatsitscolor.
Let me start from the semi-beginning. I was super excited when I chose navy as our primary wedding color because I thought, “That’s so easy! Navy is so simple!” Turns out, there are millions of shades of navy and there is no such thing as just “navy.” I realized this when I started designing things for the wedding and found so many great templates and pictures I could use online that looked like they were the same color, but when put next to each another were very different. I most recently found this baby, and I’m pretty much obsessed:
Image via stock.xchng / Isn’t she a beaut?
And I loved her! I immediately began fidgeting around to see what kind of monogram/date I could fit in, when I realized my standard navy blue shade looked nothing like this one. I’d been trying to match everything I downloaded to one, but seriously it is impossible. There are just too many colors.
When we first started planning our wedding, I had no intention of creating a wedding website. I’d never really heard of them, and had no idea what weddings had to do with websites anyway. (This was clearly before I knew everything that the internet world had to offer me as far as wedding advice was concerned.)
After some planning and time, I decided to create one for a couple of reasons:
I haven’t been to too too many weddings, but in some of the ones I have, the registration information was included with the informal invitations. I hadn’t thought anything about that again until I read on the Weddingbee boards that it’s not really good wedding etiquette. (Who knew?) With that, I then decided pretty much to create a website so that our wedding registry information could be translated appropriately.
Create the honeymoon of your dreams.
After over a year of being engaged, and trying on probably over 50 lace dresses, it finally happened:
I GOT A WEDDING DRESS!!
I didn’t think I’d ever catch Mr. Woodpecker reading Weddingbee, but apparently men are full of surprises and I found out he had already my first two dress posts. That sneaky Woodpecker!
To be totally honest, getting into shape for the wedding was not something that had even crossed my mind until about a month ago (I know, I know). You see, I tried to tell myself that because I didn’t want to lose weight (I don’t), and because I eat healthy (I pretty much do, just out of habit), it was enough. But the truth? Even though I did those things, I wasn’t getting enough exercise, and I had lost touch with one of my favorite hobbies…
I used to love running. I never ran competitively, but running was my outlet. I used to burn stress and calories away and clear my mind. But somewhere between school and work I had let it go, and now I’m at the point where I leave when it’s dark out and and come home when it’s dark out. I’m not comfortable running in the dark, even though we live in a safe neighborhood, so I’m pretty excited about joining a gym!!!
Is anyone else completely intimidated by the gym?
Sometimes I have a big wedding fear: will all my crazy ideas go awry and not look coordinated on our wedding day? So I threw together this inspiration board to help myself see the “bigger picture,” and I have to say, I’m excited!!
Sometimes I get worried that this beach wedding style won’t be “formal” enough for a wedding, but I think I really just too need to concentrate on how to incorporate some elegance as well.
1. Image created via The Wedding Chicks 2. Image via Love & Lavender / Photo by Lavender & Twine 3. Image via Love & Lavender / Photo by Lavender & Twine / Design by Paper and Thread Studio 4. Image via Style Me Pretty / Photo by Corey Hendrickson 5. Image via Style Me Pretty / Photo by Gabriel Ryan Photography 6. Image via Style Me Pretty / Photo by Jonathan Wherrett 7. Image via Style Me Pretty / Photo by Andrea Polito 8. Image via Martha Stewart media boards 9. Image via Style Me Pretty / Photo by Lauren Methia Photography 10. Created by me 11. Image via All Women’s Talk 12. Image via Style Me Pretty / Photo by Corey Hendrickson
Have you made an inspiration board? Have you stuck to your original ideas or has it evolved over time?
I’ve always enjoyed playing around on the computer with graphics and fonts. Most days during wedding planning, I wish I had the educational background of a graphic designer so that I could effortlessly whip out graphics in a matter of minutes. But alas, my training is in psychology, so the best I can do is to try and talk myself down after spending countless hours of unsuccessfully trying to craft graphics of my own.
But, I still have managed to have some success and fun with it. How? GIMP. Don’t get me wrong. Photoshop is the best; it has so many features and actions you can use that it’s hard to top. But at hundreds of dollars, it wasn’t in my budget (only the 30-day free trial was), and by the time my trial was over, I had done enough researching and playing around that I could transfer a bunch of what I knew to GIMP. GIMP is completely free, and while it certainly doesn’t have all that Photoshop does, it has enough to play around with. Today, I’m going to give you an easy demonstration of my wedding frame sign.
There are tons of free image sites out there. My personal favorite is sxu.hu, and I’ve been using that one for years. I found my labels for this particular project by searching for “free vector images” and then searching for “labels” on each of the websites. I downloaded a free PDF of images that looks like this:
All you need to do is search for an image that is the same shape as the one you want. I was searching for weeks for one like this one, and was glad to find it.
So for this project, you’ll need your free GIMP program and an image of your choice.
Once you have downloaded your image, you want to open it up with GIMP.
Deciding to have a cookie bar at the wedding was a no-brainer for us. Mr. Woodpecker loves cookies, and my family loves to bake! My mom was always baking throughout my childhood, so I knew having her and my other family members contribute to a cookie-bar favor would be perfect for us.
A few weeks ago, I got the wooden tongs for our cookie bar in the mail. As I ripped them open and jumped up and down to show Mr. Woodpecker, he gave me the “crazy” look. “You’re really excited about this cookie thing, aren’t you?” he asked.
Of course, I’m excited…they’re cookies! I am also excited, however, to finally have a project done. I finally gathered all of the supplies for our cookie bar and decided to create a mock-up so that I could put this project to rest until right before the wedding, when I would put everything together and make all of the labels.
It, of course, did not come our exactly as planned, but I am happy with my final results:
Personal image
I had initially purchased paper to do a wrap-around label on the bottom of the inside of the jar. After scouring several craft stores, however, I could not find any patterned paper to match our colors, so I decided to try ribbon. I think I like this idea better—it’s simpler. And I like simplicity. I am going for a similar look to this for our cookie bar:
Since my thoughts for the wedding have been coming together, I’ve been trying to spend a little less time on the wedding/events board of Pinterest. It’s so hard, though, because there are just sooo many amazing ideas. I’d say about 50% of my wedding-planning designs originated from this site. It. is. incredible.
Recently, I’ve been trying to pick out a guestbook idea. Simple enough, right? Not with Pinterest. There are so many ideas! I really want the guestbook to be something that we can display and reflect upon in our home far after the wedding, so I’m putting a good deal of thought into this. Some ideas:
A fabulous new idea is the guestbook puzzle, where you have guests sign their names/ write well wishes on something that you can have fun doing with your new love for the rest of your life!! This is just so sweet.
Image via Etsy by Bella Puzzles Too
After scouring Weddingbee, The Knot, and Pinterest for months, I was super excited to get started on my first DIY project:
Personal photo
Monogrammed cocktail napkins!
You might have noticed that throughout my wedding planning, there has been one (pretty huge, if I do say so myself) thing missing:
We are not going on a honeymoon. Not now, anyway. 
For some reason, this doesn’t bother me at all, and I am still super excited about our day. So why no tropical sun? There are a couple reasons, but this is the main one:
My wedding shoes were literally the very first decision I made about the wedding. Before I knew when it was, where it was, and who was coming, I had my shoes…and here is our story…
I have always been a shoe girl. I love pretty shoes. And I insist on a good heel. I’m short at 5’2″, but not too short, so wearing heels allows me some great height. I have no problem walking in heels and have been wearing them for years to work, to go out, and for everyday activities. So, it’s not surprising that wedding shoes to me were very important. Not only did they need to make for some fabulous photographs, but I wanted to feel pretty in them, and nothing less than a four-inch heel would do that for me.
As soon as I saw these Badgley Mischka shoes on a blog (I can’t remember where now!!), I knew they were it. They were gorgeous—freaking beautiful—and they came in gold.
Image via heels.com
Plus, they share a resemblance to Carrie Bradshaw’s pink Louboutin’s that she wore in the episode where where she has a big romantic sendoff with Big, and Miranda later has a baby.
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