Bow-hat Maker, Extraordinaire

 Ok guys, so in the spirit of powering through – here come some long over-due posts!   For the sake of fewer posts, and because SERIOUSLY how interesting can a bridal shower really be – I’m combining two of my friends’ showers into one post. 

My MOH K got married in September, so her shower was last July (yes almost a year ago, hush.)  The shower was held at her now mother-in-law’s house, and it was gorgeous!  The spread of food was amazing…

The decor was creative:

(We each wrote down advice to make K a bouquet!)

The gifts were plentiful:

And I got to put my bow-hat making skills to good use:

My friend (and bridesmaid) M’s shower was held this March.  I had never been on the planning end of a shower before, and Jesus was it stressful… and expensive.  But at the end it was so worth it!  This was also the first shower I’d been a part of where it was completely a surprise – and she sure was surprised.  It was great!

The favors were these intricately designed cookies in the shape of wedding cakes.  Each cake was different!  We also played bridal shower bingo as M opened up pressies… and if anyone wants the template, I should be able to find it somewhere to send you!  Just email me

And just as with K’s shower, I got to make the bow hat again!  I love how it turned out.  A lot of people think that showers get boring – but if you’re the one creating a bow masterpiece, it flies by! 

The bridesmaids all came together to put on a great shower for M.  She got tons of gifts, and I think she had a great time.  

Have you ever planned a bridal shower?  Tell me it was stressful for you, too?!

You’re Invited!

 Ok guys, I have no excuse.  I’m no longer stressed 0ut, or planning a wedding.  I’m bored as h-e-l-l at work now that I don’t have wedding projects to work on (shh don’t tell my boss), so here I am, for your reading enjoyment.  I’m going to try to go in chronological order through the rest of the planning (which is a lot of planning.)  I promise I won’t go 100% wedding on you though, I have some other things to write about too!!

Anyway, for months now I’ve been telling myself to blog about our lovely invitations.  And of course, like all of my wedding posts, there’s a story.

Once upon a time, I stumbled upon Blush Paperie.  I promptly fell in love with the colors and the beautiful designs.  I ordered a few samples, and received them over the summer when I had off from work.  I remember calling my mom going “omg I’m in stationary heaven.”  The invitations were embossed and the papers were soft like cotton.  They were matted on a complimentary color paper.  The fonts… oh – the fonts!  I knew I had to have them.

Flashforward a few months.  I’m in Target, and find a clearance rack with two boxes of 50 invitations… for $7.99 each!  I buy them.  They are pretty, but not as pretty as the Blush invitations… but for $16, the bride has to make it work, right?  Here are the invites:

So it comes time to actually print the invites.  We don’t HAVE a printer, and a good printer that would produce quality invitations would be ridiculously expensive and not worth it.  We reach out to the guy my MOH used to print her invites, and 1) he was rude and 2) he was almost as expensive as if we just ordered our my dream invitations.  A few nights of number crunching, and it was decided… why spend money on printing invitations that we didn’t LOVE?  Sure we could have saved money, but by the time we printed the invites, printed the rsvps, got a calligrapher for the envelopes, etc – we’d only be saving $100 from ordering the beautiful stationary-heaven invites through Blush Paperie.  So we did!

A few emails to the owner Michele, and we had our order placed.  It was so quick and painless.  We shot a few proofs back and forth, and she even changed her usual design a smidge for us.  She was so pleasant to work with (she even handled my OCD-esque requests with humor!), and I was almost sad when I didn’t have a reason to email her anymore!  But my sadness was quickly replaced with giddy joy over the beautiful invitations.  (And I mean quick – the entire process took approximately 2 weeks.)  Check out these beauties:

Savannah invitations with Adios font for the script wording and Garamond Small Caps for the body of the invitation, by Blush Paperie.  LOVE!

*sigh* and check out the insert cards:

You can see how she custom-made our RSVP card, as the typical design is that of the reception card above it.  I loved the way it looked with the design on the side.  Michele was so accomodating!

And finally, we had our invitations digitally calligraphered (is that a word?  it is now!).  Look at all the yummy font:

Plus – the icing on the cake is that since we sent them out around Valentine’s Day… the stamp cancelling machine printed a heart on the envelopes!  I had debated as to whether to get the envelopes hand-cancelled or not, and for once it turns out that my laziness actually paid off

Anyway, this story has two morals.  1) Go email Michele from Blush Paperie!  I promise you won’t be disappointed.  and 2) Don’t buy things just because they are cheap.  You WILL change your mind (this happened to me with bridesmaids jewelry too…) and you will be out money.  Even $15 adds up!

p.s. anyone want 100 champagne swirl invitations?  I’ll give you a bargain deal of free

Wedding Wednesday: Pre Cana

I’ve always wanted to get married in a Church.  I’ve never been that big of a Church-goer, but God and I have always been homies.  But there just seemed to be something magical about that walk down the aisle that I’ve been thinking about since I was like 7.  Luckily I have the most understanding fiance ever, and so it was decreed that we’d get married in a Church.  (see our Church here!)

Of course, we always knew that getting married in the Catholic Church would mean that we had to go to Pre-Cana, but in our heads it wasn’t real.  I mean going to talk about your relationship in front of a priest?  AWKWARD.  But alas, we came to a point (umm February, aka 2 months before our wedding!) where we couldn’t put it off any longer, so we signed up for the one session in a place where we would at least feel at home… Saint Joseph’s University!  (Go Hawks!)

SJU Campus Ministry runs a one-day program for couples about to be wed, and I am so glad that we approached Pre-Cana in this way.  First of all, one session meant only having to dread going ONCE.  Not every week for six weeks.  (That would be a lot of dread!)  Second of all, since the program was on a college campus, a lot of the couples who ran the program were professors at the university… aka they were great at public speaking and discussing topics with a younger crowd.  (Robert and I actually recognized a lot of the couples from our undergrad classes, so they were mostly around our age.)  Time passed quickly, and I actually left Pre-Cana feeling awesome about our relationship.

Decision Making:

We first started talking about how to make decisions, and the best way to fight in an argument.  The couple presenting was lively, and they brought up a few excellent ways to approach things.  First, they mentioned that in decision making, you should reframe the situation so both the husband and wife were on the same side of the decision.  This way, the husband and wife are a TEAM, and not individual players trying to win.  (This might have been why Charlie Sheen’s marriages didn’t work out.  #winning.) 

The couple gave an example of when they were debating whether or not to buy a boat.  “it’s a lot of money,” said the wife.  “but it’s a great deal!” said the husband.  “maybe we can buy it in a few years,” said the wife.  And around and around they went… until one of them brought up the subject of the kids.  With only a few more years until their oldest went to college, they realized that there wasn’t much more time to spend as a whole family on the boat.  And once they were on the same side of the argument (the “it would be a great way to make memories” side), it was an easy decision.

The couple also discussed how to properly fight, and gave good suggestions such as:

• make physical contact with each other while you’re fighting.  fight the urge to push the other away.
• don’t go talking to third parties about your issues.  resolve it with the person who matters – your husband (or wife, or boyfriend, or fiance, whatever!)
• figure out what scares your partner.  this could help you figure out why they fight with you.  maybe your spouse comes from a broken family, and they are just afraid you are going to leave them like they were left before.  take this into consideration when you fight.
• don’t bring up anything in the past.  focus only on the matter at hand – not how many times that issue has come up before, or any unrelated issues that you think will help you “win.” 
• it’s not about winning!  really.  listen to each other instead of trying to formulate your next point while the other person is talking. 

Natural Family Planning:

One word: ugh.  You guys, I really tried to go into this one with an open mind.  I think I even said to Robert that this might be an option for us to try once we were ready to have kids.  (AKA in approx a bazillion years, for those of you keeping track.)  Then the couple started talking. 

First – I have to say, that both the husband and wife were doctors.  I.E. not college professors, and therefore they were not in the least engaging.  They were very preachy, and for someone who was talking about Sex and Intimacy, they were too shy and uncomfortable, which made everyone else uncomfortable.

Second – once they started discussing NFP, they mentioned how they were kind of… surprised… by their first child.  A real poster couple for how NFP really works, right?  They then went on to discuss the process of NFP, and words like cervical mucus were involved.  After I finished vomming, I really didn’t want to hear much more.  I think I’ll be on the birth control pill forever.  (TMI?  Sorry.)

(Something tells me that NFP isn’t all rainbows and star power as seen above.)

Hot Topics:

 The last segment of the day was hot topic-type issues such as budget, children, where to live when we get married, family, friends, and more.  We did a lot of exercises individually and together to see where each other stood on things.  This was very helpful, as it showed us how in sync Robert and I truly are.  (Barf, I know.)  But I’m serious guys, we rocked all those quizzes.  Go team!

Anyway, guys, Pre-Cana wasn’t all that bad (minus the NFP section… oh and the terrible, long Mass at the end!)  Ultimately we were happily surprised, and walked away feeling warm and fuzzy, and super in love.  (Barf again, right?)  And in the process, I feel like I learned a few more things about my religion.  (here are a few, in case you wanted to learn too!)

• Priests can’t because your family is supposed to be your highest priority.  And if your highest priority is your family, how will you take care of your church?  
• The church believes that marriage is meant for procreation.  And if you’re in a homosexual relationship, you won’t be able to procreate, and therefore the Church isn’t so keen on gay marriage. 

Do I agree with these stances?  Not necessarily!  But it was nice to learn about why the Church has the rules that it does. 

Anyway, Pre-Cana turned out to be a great experience, and provided us with lessons that actually seemed applicable in life – not just in the church! 

Did/would you do pre-marital counseling of any sort?  If so – what was your experience like?