The Day Before

The day before our wedding was a whirlwind. I was up early to get the world's slowest manicure and pedicure with BM Kelly and my MOH. Then it was back home to rehearse my dance with my dad (more on that later!), then back to the salon for an equally slow, but completely amazing, blowout. Then I met up with my MOH and BM Kelly to drive over to the hotel for the weekend.


Knowing that our wedding weekend was finally here made me incredibly happy and excited. I had planned so much and prayed a lot for things to go well and I just felt content and ready, feelings that were furthered by the appearance of lots of little fortuitous signs: Mr. B's hotel room was 602 (our wedding date), the Mets had some crazy no hitter (apparently this was legendary, I don't know, I don't do baseball), my hair and outfit were just as I'd always envisioned them.


Our rehearsal dinner was held at Mr. B and my favorite restaurant, called Due Mari. We had about 40 guests and served a buffet of appetizers, and delicious Italian entrees of pasta, branzino, steak, and chicken. It was laid back, with the guests just eating, drinking, and catching up for a few hours.


Couple of tips for your rehearsal dinner- if you plan to have speeches, make sure you know exactly how those will work. It was very difficult to hear on the mic we brought, so we wound up just listening to our friends' speeches in their hotel room later. They were so awesome and sweet that I do wish our families got to hear them too.


Also, take a little time to think about the structure of the party. We just figured everyone would show up at the restaurant and eat, but it got off to a slightly awkward start, since there were five huge tables and I don't think people knew where or when to sit. They waited for us and we were busy greeting everyone and running around.


Anyway neither of these were a big deal, and we had a wonderful time with our families and friends. I felt so loved by all the people who had traveled to be there, took the time to write thoughtful speeches, and spent the night with me.


Enough rambling, right? Here's some pics:

That's us at our table with the bridesmaids and groomsmen

Me and BM Kelly

Me with my MOH and BM Kaitlyn

With our groomsmen

With Mr. B's family

All photos by my dad. My awesome dress is from J. Crew.

Precap: Table Number DIY

We housed our table numbers in vintage looking, mismatched gold picture frames. Calling this project a DIY is kind of a stretch, but bear with me, this is an easy one:


Step 1: Go to Home Goods and TJ Maxx and immediately see large collections of gold frames.


Step 2: Estimate 20 tables. Find five differnet style frames you like, and buy multiples of each. (That's important! If you have 20 entirely different frames, it looks ghetto. If you have 4 of each of 5 kinds of frames, it looks cool and intentional).

Step 3: Buy frames. Get annoyed when you realize the 30 day return policy means you're stuck keeping all these after the wedding.


Step 4: Take shimmery cardstock and cut down to the size in the frames. Call calligrapher at last minute and feel relieved she only charges 30 cents to write a number on a piece of paper.


Step 5: Pop the numbers into the frames. Voila!

Extra Credit: Beg calligrapher to make signage for the bars as well:

(All frames were purchased at Home Goods and TJ Maxx. Cardstock was Opal Stardream from Cards and Pockets. Calligraphy was done by Carmela Mazzarulli).


(Also, my best friend and her cousin are using these for their weddings, so I feel better about spending $100 on picture frames).
What did you do for table numbers?

Precap: Menu DIY

Okay so before I get into the recaps, I want to finish my last DIY posts. My personal favorite DIY was the menus I created for our wedding:

Pic by Spark Photography

I used Microsoft Publisher to create this. I started with your standard 8.5 x 11 page, and split it into two columns. I copied and pasted our monograms off our invite proofs and placed that at the top. The text was all written in separate text boxes so that I could center it appropriately, and then I just copied and pasted from one column over to another. Very simple. I liked this because it allowed me to print two per page, which saved me about $80.


I had them printed on Opal Stardream cardstock from Cards and Pockets, like all my other DIYs.

Then, we had to cut down the middle of each page to separate them.

I used a corner rounder to round the corners, and then swiped the edges through a gold stamp pad.

Below, you can see how much that little edging added to the menus. (It also matched the gold edges on our invitation, though I cannot imagine a single person besides me would have realized that).

To make it easier, I ran stacks of about 20 menus at a time through the stamp pad. I had to do it twice to ensure everything got a bold enough gold color.


At the reception, we had these slipped into the fold in an ivory napkin. They looked beautiful and I felt this was a DIY well worth the effort.


Are you designing menus?

Married!

Well there hasn't been a post for a couple weeks now because Mr. B and I are MARRIED!

Our day was seriously amazing, we were so blessed to have perfect weather and literally a perfect wedding. Nothing went wrong and it was amazing to be surrounded by so many loving family members and friends. Easily the best day of our lives.

Stay tuned for some recaps!