Bridey Night October Edition

Saturday night was the third edition of Bridey Night. (Read all about the beginning of Bridey here and the second Bridey get together here.)

Holly was unable to make it to this event. She has a pretty busy October schedule so she'll be joining us again in November for some more wedding planning and bridal talk.

This time around, the event was hosted by Samantha, and we had two new editions to Club Bride. One of my high school best friends, Courtney recently got engaged and I'm super excited to have her join us for our monthly get togethers! She and her fiance, Doug, will be tying the knot at Appellation California next September. Since Courtney and Samantha are both getting married at the same location I'm sure they'll have tons to talk about when it comes to seating arrangements and decoration ideas. The second addition to the group is Megan. Megan is engaged to Tony (a hilarious and sweet guy that Samantha and I work with). Bridey night was the first time that I've ever met Megan and I'm really glad that she decided to join us. I would have been really nervous to meet up with a bunch of girls I've never met before and hang out for an evening, but Megan is so sweet and fun that I'm sure she can fit right in with any group. I had a great time getting to know her and talking wedding with all the girls that night.

Though we did make sure to get a tradition Bridey Bling picture of all out our rings, we didn't take many photos since we were all too busy filling each other in on our wedding plans and concerns. (There was a little discussion about 'plus ones' that got us all thinking.) I'm definitely looking forward to the November edition of Bridey night! These ladies are such a great group of girls to hang out and plan with!

*Left to right: Courtney, Me, Samantha, and Megan*

*Top to bottom: Megan, Samantha, Me, and Courtney*



A Day Off

On Tuesday I was pleasantly surprised when I was told that I wasn't needed at work and that I could enjoy a day off. Of course a day off from my paying job meant that I had a whole day to work on wedding related projects.

You might remember that I relocated the office into the dining room. Although we have a nice office with a big long desk, I thought the dining room table would offer just a little more room. Also, although it's September, it's still pretty hot here (averaging about 95degrees everyday). Since our office is upstairs in a room that gets plenty of sunlight, even with the air conditioner on, the space tends to be warmer than the dining room.

So what did I work on? Let's refer back to a slightly modified version of the picture I posted on Tuesday shall we.

I. The blue notebook in the bottom right corner is actually my day planner. Now that all of our vendors are hired I desperately needed to update my calendar with due dates for payments and appointments for meetings.

One important date is coming up pretty soon. I set up a trial with the hair and makeup artist I hired, Emily Johnson. The trial is scheduled for the October 3 (just a few short weeks away). I know that it might seem a little early to be having a trial in October since the wedding isn't until May, but I like to get things done early. I also think that having a trial ealier than later will allow me enough time to start looking for different hair and makeup styles if the one that I like doesn't work out (which hopefully won't happen) and I can make sure that Emily and I mesh well together (which I'm sure we will!).

I'll be taking plenty of pictures at the trial so I'll be sure to post all about it.

II. You probably recognize that big white binder. That would be the wedding planner binder I created to keep all of our wedding ideas, price listings, contracts and other goodies all in one place.

The binder has been getting a little out of control and was in serious need of reorganizing. I had plenty of papers stashed in there from the bridal show that Zac and I attended a few weeks back. As our vendors have been selected it was time to get rid of competitors' fliers, price listings, and coupons. Since I know of other brides who are still looking for certain vendors for their weddings, I decided to hold on to these fliers and vendor sheets in case they prove to be helpful to my fellow brides.

Unfortunately ridding the binder of these papers did little to decrease it's size since the fliers were replaced with vendor contracts. At least for now the binder is more organized.

III. You might be wondering why a bunch of forks were just laying on the table in the middle of my workspace. Well, remember my post about some of my favorite finds on etsy.com? These forks had topped my list:

I thought these forks would be very cute for Zac and I to use come cake cutting. Since we're trying to cut costs as much as we can on smaller detail items that we don't really need so that we can have enough money to splurge on bigger items that are more fun for our guests, I couldn't justify spending $35 on these forks. (No matter how cute they are.)

Back in July I found a way that I could get similar forks for much less than $35. A few girls that I went to high school with, Kai and Katie, have started to make and sell some beautiful jewelry. (You can check them out on Facebook here to see pictures of their work.) Sometime in July they posted this picture of custom stamped spoons that they were starting to sell.

I sent the girls an email to see if they would be able to make the forks that I had my eye on, and if so, asked how much would they charge for them. I was happy to hear back that they could make me the forks for only $3 each. All I had to do was find the forks.

I went on a mission to find forks a few weeks ago and my one and only stop was The Salvation Army. They had six tubs of assorted silverware and I shamelessly sat on the floor and rifled through each bin looking for matching forks. In the end I found three sets of forks that I thought were both interesting and had enough space on them to stamp our desired message. At $0.25 a fork I bought all of the forks and brought them home to show Zac.

Here are the forks I picked up:

I picked up these forks because I was sure that they would have plenty of room for our stamped message. They were also the only set of forks that had space on the handle to stamp the wedding date. After taking them home and looking at them next to the other sets of forks that I purchased, they just didn't have enough detail. The lacked a little something special.

The second set of forks were definitely a lot more interesting than the first. The handles had a lot more detail to them, though they didn't have space for stamping. Unfortunately, not only did the handle not have any room to be stamped, but we feared that the mouth pieces of the forks wouldn't be big enough to have our message stamped on them either. So we opted to use another set of forks.

This was the final pair of forks I found and the pair that Zac and I decided were the best of the group. I wasn't able to find two forks with this design in the same size, so one is a little smaller than the other. Zac and I actually thought that having one smaller fork would be cute. At meals I always grab a smaller utensil than he does so it would only be right for us to have different size forks at the wedding. They also seemed to represent us a little. (Zac is much taller than me as I am a petite 5'0".)

The handle has a touch of darkness in it that really brings out the amazing detail.

So on Tuesday, I put the forks in a shipping envelope along with a note of details and got the package ready to be mailed. I'm excited to see how the forks turn out!



VI. The printer was necessary for my list of projects because I spent the majority of the afternoon designing (and eventually printing out) our save the dates! Since we've chosen the engagement photos we wanted to use on the save the dates, I thought that my day off from work would be the perfect time to get to work on designing these pieces of stationary. The project isn't quite finished yet, but I'll post all about it before we seal up the envelopes and send them off to our guests.

V. The last project of the day involved creating a Facebook page for the blog.

You might have seen the blog post I published on Tuesday after creating the page. As of last night the page had 13 'likes'. It's exciting to see readers of the blog liking the Facebook page. It would be so great to see that number get bigger, so if you like reading the blog be sure to like us on Facebook. You can find the Facebook page by clicking here, or by clicking the link on the right tab of the page.

So there you have it. A day off from 'work'. Once the save the dates are completely done I'll be sure to post all about them. Also look forward to another Bridey post as Samantha, Holly, and I have a Bridey date this weekend to go over wedding ideas. I'm looking forward to hanging out with the ladies!

Bridey

The last few weeks have been filled with some fun bridal time, which the girls (my fellow brides Samantha and Holly, and Samantha's maid of honor Michelle) have termed "Bridey". As silly as our name for it might be, celebrating, discussing our weddings, and planning has been really fun with these ladies.

Not too long ago Samantha put together a "Bridesmaid Day" to hang out with Michelle and I. 

Samantha picked up two bottles of champagne from her wedding venue, a wine tasting center called Appellation California. Here is Michelle with our yummy Sunday afternoon treat.

Michelle brought chocolate and I added some fresh strawberries for us to enjoy with the delicious champagne. We spent the afternoon catching up on the newest details of Samantha's wedding planning, looking for bridesmaid shoes online, and watching the first Sex and the City Movie. It was such a fun afternoon. Thank you Samantha for having us over. :)

A few days later we attended a vendor event hosted by David's Bridal. Our friend, co-worker, and fellow bride, Holly was in attendance as well. The vendors included a florist, a bakery, a dj, and a candy buffet table service to name a few. Dawn, a photographer from Composure Photo and Video was there as well. She snapped this photo of all of us girls and a few days later it appeared on her website. Samantha and I look like we're headed to our first day of school with our binders. What can I say, we're organized brides.

Michelle also captured this photo of Holly, Samantha, and me.

The shot definitely reminds me of the old Saturday morning cartoon, Captain Planet. Anyone remember that show?! This picture is very "Let our powers combine!" Ha ha. If you have no idea what I'm talking about check out this clip:

The vendor event was a fun experience, but since Zac and I already have a photographer (Van's Studio of Photography) and the dj in attendance was not on the list of approved djs for our venue (Wolf Lakes) it was more of an enteraining experience than a productive one. Afterwards, Samantha, Michelle, and I headed over to Elephant Bar to get some dinner and cocktails. (Holly was unable to join us.)

It was a fun night with the ladies, getting our Bridey on. :D I'm definitely looking forward to several more days/nights like this in the future. Michelle and I have a few nights like this ahead of us as we have a bridal shower and bachelorette party for Samantha that needs planning! We're going to have a lot of fun creating some special events for the bride to be.