More getting ready photos

My dress hanging in my mom's dressing room.

 

 

 

Dress close up.

My dress hanging in my mom's living room.

Kristin (hair) and Aubrey (makeup)

False lashes are a must for your wedding day!

My awesome sister in law!

My beautiful and newly engaged MOH

My sister looked stunning!

Girls dresses, I should have had matching hangers!

My pride and joy of the day! I made this!

Old, new, borrowed, blue!

Something old, something blue, something borrowed, something blue. What does it all mean? This should help explain! Here are the items I used for my "somethings" and some other ideas as well!

Something old & something blue

I used a handkerchief that was a gift from my Aunt as my something old and something blue. I wrapped it around my bouquet to have in case I cried at all during the wedding. Some other good ideas for something old would be a antique broach to pin to your bouquet, a piece of fabric from your mother or close family members wedding dress or veil wrapped around your bouquet or sew a button from your fathers wedding day tuxedo or suit into the lining of your wedding dress out of sight! Something blue can be a challenge but I have seen some interesting ideas lately. Get a blue Hair Dreams hair extension put into your hair and blended into your updo (this one is not for the conservative bride), cute light blue bridal panties from Victoria's Secret, blue shoes can also be a good way to incorporate blue into your wedding day attire!

My something borrowed.

I think the best thing to borrow for your wedding day is jewelery. I am lucky enough to have a super awesome maid of honor who let me use her diamond bracelet as her something borrowed. My photographer snapped this amazing picture of her putting it on for me before I put on my dress. Does your mom, grandmother or other close family member have a pretty pair of earrings or a bracelet that you always complement? Tell them how special it would be to get to wear it on your wedding day! Or, do you have a friend that recently got married and purchased new wedding jewelery? Ask them if they would mind loaning you a necklace or even a hair comb. If no body offers, don't be afraid to ask! Chances are anyone that loves you would be honored to have you wear something of theirs at your wedding. 

Something new

There are an endless supply of something new ideas, I could have counted my dress, earrings, undies, veil, or perfume. I also had beautiful new grey satin Michael Kors pumps, so why not make them my official "something"?! Most people count their dress as something new but I challenge you to buy something new that you can use again after the wedding! I will use my wedding earrings again, also my shoes, undies and perfume! I feel special every time I use something from my wedding day and it brings back wonderful memories! I also got ties for my groom and his groomsmen so they could all wear them again! The first time my husband wore his wedding day tie to work he got a complement!

Thanks for reading, more to come!

Love, Anna

Hair and Makeup

I am blessed to work at a wonderful full service salon with a group of crazy talented women! Their wedding gift to me was doing my bridal parties hair and makeup. Let me just say that I have never felt so beautiful in my entire life! I know that that isn't the case for most brides, so here are some tips for saving money on hair and makeup.

Jane Iredale bb cream and urban decay eye shadow.

1. Travel to the salon instead of having hair and makeup artists come to you. A lot of times there is a traveling fee when stylists have to be on location, this is normally around $100.00 but could be even more.

My MOH being awesome yet again by painting my sisters nails at the last minute!

2. If you don't mind your bridesmaids not having updos, then just getting a shampoo and style with a flat iron or curling iron can be half the price of your average "updo".

Nina getting her hair done, her makeup looked amazing!

3. Try and look like yourself! So many brides get so over done on their wedding day that they don't end up looking like their usual self. I am normally a hair down type of girl but I really wanted to wear my hair up because I felt like it looked more bridal. But, if you don't normally wear heavy eye makeup or red lipstick then DO NOT DO IT!! Not only will your new husband be in shock, but your pictures last forever and you don't want to look like a different person in them. 

I used my favorite lip gloss, Peony by Revlon. It is inexpensive and not sticky!

4. Use good makeup that will last all night. I used Jane Iredale makeup which is also what I use every day. It will not move if there are tears or sweat! You can always go into a salon that sells Jane Iredale and get a lesson on how to apply it yourself. My salon charges $35.00 for a Jane makeup application.

I am just going to put this out there: my hair was AMAZING!!!! Kristin has mad skills.

Other fun wedding beauty tid bits: I used three layers of bubble bath OPI gel polish to get a little more of a pink look on my nails. I layered two colors of OPI polish on my toes (strawberry margarita on the bottom, princesses rule on top) so I basically had a one of a kind wedding color that I can replicate and I just think that's fun!

Aubrey making me pretty! She did my base makeup in the natural sunlight so it was perfect!

 **I also bought a new perfume that I had never worn before (Flowerbomb) to wear on my wedding day, so now anytime I smell the scent I am taken right back to the aisle. It is amazing! I also got a new scent to take on my honeymoon but it went missing after it went through customs (sad face). 

The amazing girls that did our hair and makeup!!!

Thank you for reading, more to come!

Love, Anna

How to save on attendant gifts!

I had a smaller bridal party, one maid of honor (awesome) and two bridesmaids. 

I used the canvas bag as my gift wrap and added curling ribbon and white tissue!

It was pretty easy for me to find cute personalized gifts for all of them. I found cute monogrammed canvas tote bags that were ON SALE!

Posing with their new bags!

I filled them with shampoo, conditioner, a nail polish, and a men's dress shirt with their monogram on the pocket for us to wear while getting our hair and make up done the next morning.

My beautiful girls

There are no rules about how much you should spend or what you have to get your bridesmaids. And if you really cannot afford gifts at all just a simple thank you card will do. They are your friends after all and will be understanding of your situation.

My girls wearing their shirts in front of their dresses!

If you are wanting to get your girls jewelery but stay on a tight budget you can find really really good deals in the clearance section of the Ross Simons website (I'm talking real pearl earrings for less that $10.00). Also anything personalized will seem like you spent more money or put more thought into it.

My new monogram!

I found a link to a website where you could buy the monogrammed button down shirts for $60.00 and felt like that was a total rip off! I was correct, I bought men's button down shirts from TJ MAXX for $14.00 each and got them monogrammed for $12.00 each! For 4 shirts that is a savings of over $130.00!!

I also got gifts for my friends that did hair and make up!

Having a larger bridal party will add to the cost of giving gifts, but chances are your girls helped you out a lot and they deserve a little something!

Awesome gift from my MOH!! A custom hanger for my dress from etsy.com

Another awesome website for bridesmaid gifts is etsy, you can find just about anything from personalized hangers, monogrammed cell phone cases, or beautiful handmade jewelery.

Love this picture of my MOH, we were having a blast while getting pretty!

 In all I spent around $200.00 on my attendant gifts.


Thanks for reading, more to come!

Love, Anna

Making your own dessert buffet

YOU CAN DO IT!!! 

All pictures in this post are by my awesome friend Jason!

So, I guess I haven't really explained the flow of my wedding day. We got Married at 2:00 in the afternoon on a lovely fall day, 10/21/12! After our ceremony at the Tucker House, the bridal party took the trolley down to the North Carolina capitol building for pictures. From 2:30 to 5:00 there was a dessert reception at the Tucker House where my 70 guests got to munch on sweet treats and we did our cake cutting. I put together the candy bar and dessert buffet and both seemed like pretty big hits. Making a dessert buffet is fun and easy, also everyone loves dessert! Here are some tips on how to plan and execute your very own dessert buffet.

Our pretty dessert table

• Decide what type of dessert bar you want. For mine I decided that having more bite sized desserts would be easier than having regular sized cakes and pies. Take time to consider this before putting yours together because when you have regular sized desserts (although they are pretty) can be difficult and messy for your guests to try and serve themselves. 

Fruit tarts and mini key lime pie

• Borrow pretty platters from your friends and family members who are willing to loan out their stuff. I used silver platters and china platters from my mom. I also had a few glass cake stands, and I made my own stands with mirrors from a craft store and candle holders from the dollar tree. 

I made this two tiered stand!

• Use variety of textures and flavors. I had cheesecake bites, key lime pie tarts, mini pecan pie, chocolate and raspberry mousse cups, mini cupcakes, red velvet cake pops, chocolate dipped marshmallows, chocolate truffles, mini fruit tarts, cannolis, chocolate tarts, french macarons, and vanilla meringues. I didn't have anything peanut butter or coconut flavored and I should have! Whoops!

Delicious chocolate and raspberry mousse cups

• If you are going to have your wedding cake featured on the table with the rest of the desserts, try to make it the center of attention. We put the cake right smack in the middle of our table and covered it in beautiful flowers left over from after with made our arrangements. We also had a yummy grooms cake, which is totally optional if money is an issue. 

B's groom's cake and cheesecake bites!

• I was lucky enough to have a close family friend make our cake. There is something really special about having a cake made by someone that you are close with, because you can really tell it is made with love. We got to pick our flavors (strawberry cream, lemon with lemon curd, nutella) and have a tasting, it was just awesome! She also made our delicious grooms cake which was a dulce de leche with praline pecans...drool.

Chocolate dipped marshmallows

• I made two of the desserts myself leading up to the wedding. It was almost too much but my sister and awesome cousin helped me with some of the final touches the Friday before the wedding. First I made a treat that is so easy it should be illegal. Marshmallows dipped in melted chocolate and then dipped in graham cracker crumbs or sprinkles. Then I made cake pops! Cake pops can be made in a variety of ways and I will post later how I did it! I will say that they were a huge hit and unfortunately I was so busy I didn't even get to have one!

Pink and lavender cake pops that I made and decorated with my cousin and sister

• I purchased the rest of the desserts from the Whole Foods bakery. Some of the desserts are just 99 cents!!! What?! And, if you order them by the dozen, you save $2.00! $9.99/Dozen is not bad for beautiful pastries! Also, Whole Foods makes beautiful and affordable wedding cakes! I spent less than $300.00 on my entire dessert display!!

Cutting our beautiful cake!

This pretty much wraps up the food and beverage for my formal reception. If you do the math, I spent less than $660.00 on all of the refreshments served at the Tucker House. I realize that I had a very small wedding and I am extremely blessed to have such awesome people in my life that helped me like crazy. Just keep telling yourself that you can do it!

Making a drink display last

Our little drink display

When I was engaged I found so many awesome examples of drink stations on pinterest. Mine didn't turn out exactly how I pictured it but that is OK! I learned from my mistakes so I can now give good advice on what to do and what not to do! I didn't want to have to worry about having separate ice for people to scoop into cups in order to have a cold drink. I had a great idea that, if done properly will work better then what happened for us.

Frozen sweet tea cubes with lemon slices.

First of all, make sure your drink station will be in the shade. The way the sun happened to be tracking on my wedding day meant it was directly on the drink station table (whoops!).

Secondly, I didn't want to put regular ice in the sweet tea and lemonade because I knew some ice would melt and dilute the drinks. I made ice cubes out of sweet tea and lemonade by freezing it in cupcake pans with lemon and lime slices in them for decoration. I also froze water in cupcake pans with orange slices and raspberries for the water dispenser.

water ice cubes with oranges and raspberries.

Third, when filling a drink dispenser like the ones I used, I would recommend that you fill it half way full of whatever type of ice you plan to use. Make sure whatever liquid you pour into the dispenser is as cold as you can get it. Put bottles of juice or tea in the freezer for an hour before hand, they won't freeze and will be nice and chilly!


The thing is, due to the high sugar content of the sweet tea and lemonade it melts extremely quickly. If I were to have a "redo" I would use non sweet tea for the "tea cubes" and water with lemon juice in it for the "lemonade cubes". I wasn't at my venue when they put the cubes into the drink dispensers, but my husband to be was...and he said they melted within 5 minutes (sad face). You can also put regular ice in the water to keep the pretty ice cubes from melting so fast.

This picture makes me a little sad.

Although my drink display didn't turn out exactly how I wanted it to, I still had fun making the ice cubes the week before my wedding. I froze them and then filled gallon sized ziploc bags full of them so they were easy to transport to the venue. Overall I spent $60.00 on my drink display (this includes two drink dispensers from Target and one borrowed from my mother in law, the fruit, and several gallons of sweet tea and lemonade) for the formal reception at The Tucker House.


Thank you for reading, more to come!

Love, Anna

Can you be your own DJ?...YES!

My girl friends and I love to dance, so I was worried that having a playlist on my ipad hooked up to a speaker system just wasn't going to get people hyped up like a DJ. Boy, was I wrong! I mixed some old school jams, classic wedding songs, and some up to date dance music...the party went on all night! Add several bottles of champagne and it was a serious blast!

During our first dance! (Ray Lamontagne- You are the best thing)

My close friend Kellsie's awesome fiance Jason (who also took the pictures in this blog post) let me use his speaker system and a microphone for people to do toasts. He also kept track of the ipad which was set up to play straight through from slower music to dance music towards the end of the night.

Yes, we did "the matrix"

I got a few quotes from different local DJ's one was $1,200.00 and the other $700. I spent $50.00, yes you read that correctly! I used some different websites to find some good song ideas, I also asked my wonderful husband to be and we went on itunes. We ended up spending way less then what a DJ would charge.

Packed dance floor on my Mom's amazing patio!

Some of the artists on my play list were: The Temptations, Etta James, The Isley Brothers, The Four Tops, Chubby Checker, Ray Lamontagne, Flo Rida, Nicki Minaj, Wiz Khalifa, Carly Rae Jepsen, and Cali Swag District.

That really happened, these two girls did my hair and makeup! They rock!

Making your own candy buffet

There are so many things that can be done a week or two before the wedding day so during the busy couple of days before the wedding you aren't running around like a chicken with your head cut off! One of those things is throwing together a candy buffet! There are a lot of companies out there that will charge you an arm and a leg to put one together for you, but since it is really easy and fun to make one there is no reason why you should pay triple the amount of money for a candy buffet! 

Very early morning prep, sorry I have no makeup on and my sis is in a robe!

Step 1: Find a variety of clear glass containers. Vases, apothecary jars, trifle dishes, and bowls work well. To find unique containers first look in your own home, then ask friends and family members ( I borrowed my wonderful sister in law's apothecary jars) your local flea market or antique malls will also have a good selection. A website that has a lot of candy buffet supplies is save on crafts. 

Candy buffet ready to go!

Step 2: Choose your color (colors) or theme. Maybe you want a striking all white candy buffet that will look really elegant, or like me have a few different colors, or you want a vintage candy theme with no color scheme. No matter what you choose you will be able to find plenty of different kinds of candy options. I chose pink, green, and a little bit of lavender as my accent color. I ended up with flavors like watermelon, sour apple, peach, raspberry, grapefruit, pomegranate, key lime, and strawberry. 

Step 3: Ordering candy!!! It is so hard to try and guess (basically) how much candy you will need to fill a container (My largest container held 4 lbs of pomegranate salt water taffy). Some things I had a little extra of and others I wish I had a little more, but I made the best of it and it turned out great. I used an amazing company to order my candy, but before I did I watched a few videos on youtube to make sure I had an idea of which candies give the most bang for the buck. Salt water taffy that comes in a variety of colors and flavors is the cheapest for how much volume it takes up. Also tootsie rolls, gumballs, gummy bears, or anything with a wrapper takes up a good amount of volume in a container. There are also several colors and flavors of yogurt covered pretzels that taste amazing and take up lots of space!

 M&M's give you the least bang for your buck, they are so expensive AND 5 lbs of M&M's takes up as much space as 1 lb of salt water taffy. The main reason I chose to order from nuts.com is their fair shipping prices, I ordered over 40 lbs of candy and when they have to ship that overnight with cold packs it can get pretty pricey!

I spent about $300.00 on my candy bar and not only was it beautiful and yummy it also served as my wedding favors. I made gift bags by taking small plain white bags from a craft store and putting a cute heart stamp and then a stamp with a little saying "all you need is love". I used ice tongs that I borrowed and small scoops from my local restaurant supply company as the serving pieces.

Thank you for reading, more to come!

Love, Anna