Hopefully you received yours! If not, it should be arriving soon. Don’t forget to RSVP by June 10th.
Map it…
Spent the evening addressing invitations last night with both my mom and stepmom. The process went surprisingly fast once we got started. Who knew there was so much etiquette to follow? We debated for a long time to put a map with the invitation or in the program at the ceremony. We finally decided to do both! We did not put the address of the church on the invitation. Those non-Kansas City natives might have some trouble. So here ya go — the beautiful map!
Flower Power…
My last “big” item to pick out for the wedding are the flowers. I’ve done a little bit of looking and this is what stands out to me… what do you think?
Option 1:
White bouquet for bride. Yellow/gold bouquets for bridesmaids. All have fun ribbon that ties the bouquets together. Men will where either white or yellow/gold roses.
Option 2:
Add a pop of magenta to bridesmaids bouquet as a fun summer color. Bride will still remain white. Men would wear magenta or yellow/gold flower.
Option 3:
All white bouquets with a big fun ribbon that is yellow/gold or something fun and different. Men will wear white roses.
Thoughts?
Looking for your two cents…
Everyone has an opinion and we’re looking for yours. Please, we would love to hear what you have to say.
Opinion #1
Looking for honeymoon suggestions. Do you have any?
We’d really like to go somewhere warm and all-inclusive. Our first thought was West coast Mexico like Cabo San Lucas. Then we did some investigating into Jamaica and really liked it. Then we started hearing about “adult only” resorts and now, quite frankly, we just can’t make up our minds. I’ve read tons of reviews on travel websites but which one is the right one? Who knows.
Opinion #2
What kind of cake do you like? I’ve been given strict instructions to not do fondant. Supposedly it tastes like wax. Does anyone even pay attention to the cake (besides you Emily Gibbs)?
Opinion #3
How do you feel about when people ask for gift cards from a certain store because the store doesn’t do wedding registries… tacky? Practical? How many people actually look at a couples registry. I’ll be quite honest, I never have. I’m the wedding guest that is stopping by Walgreens on the way to the wedding for a gift card and greeting card. Thank goodness they have that section filled with gift cards from a variety of different stores all in one location.
Looking forward to hearing what anyone has to say!
Ashley
PS. This links to my Pinterest board – Getting. Married.
It must be official…
Well, it’s been awhile to say the least. I had an insane realization this past weekend that we are just 6 months away from the wedding. Holy cow.
It must be official because the Save-the-Date’s are signed, sealed, delivered (I’m yours!). The greatest part about these beautiful STD’s (ha!) is that they cost me less than $60. Except for postage, of course.
Here’s how I did it:
I started with the design. I created the design myself in Adobe Illustrator. It’s supposed to look like the calendar for the month of July 2012. Some people see it, some people just see a bunch of dots.
I used cardstock ($4.99 at Hobby Lobby) and my nice ink jet color printer at home to print four designs per page. I then used my teacher resources and found out that we have a die cut machine in our school library. I used the 4-inch “ribbon” die to cut the designs out.
My mom and I went on a hunt for grey paper that we liked and found the perfect color at a scrapbook store just up the street from her house. We had Kinkos/Fed Ex cut the 12×12 paper (25 pieces at $0.49 each) into 5×5 squares. I then used my handy dandy Walgreen’s app on my phone to upload one of our engagement photos to their photo center and ordered 115 copies of the photo ($15).
We used small “sticky squares” from Hobby Lobby ($5.99) that scrapbookers use to attach the photographs. The trickiest part of the entire save-the-date came with the application of the two yellow strips across the front and back of the card. Getting sticky squares on each one, making sure they were the right length, and the two trips back to the scrapbook store for more paper were what made this part a pain in the rear. But, I think it was the part that tied the entire piece together.
Once we had the photos and yellow strips applied to the gray squares we applied the small “Kris and Ashley” circle on front and the larger “Save Our Date” design on the back. The smaller circles were printed on the same cardstock I used to for the larger design. I purchased a 1.5 inch circle cutter from Michael’s for $9.99 to punch out the smaller circles. We set up a small assembly line and while my mom used spray mount to cover the back of the circles, I stuck ’em down.
Now for the envelopes. My theory on envelopes is that they end up in the trash anyway so what’s the point, right? Well, they do serve as a first impression so, they have a little bit of importance. I purchased 115 square “marigold” envelopes off the internet (envelopemail.com) for about $11 including shipping. We used two labels on the envelopes. The rectangular labels (Avery 5160) on front I already had. I mail merged my guest list from Excel into mailing labels and then formatted them to my liking. The round return address labels on the back of the envelope I found at Office Max. They happen to be on sale for $9.99 (originally $18.99). I created a quick return address design in Word and printed them on an ink jet computer.
The end. It sounds so simple when I type it out. It wasn’t. We ended up creating around 110 of these bad boys. Good thing I had Christmas Break to assemble them, otherwise I would have probably never been able to do them myself. Thank you to my mom for helping me! She is my other creative half.
Just what you have been waiting for…
The After Party…
Traditionally after the wedding ceremony comes, what most consider to be, the best part of a wedding… the reception. To me, this is the part of planning that I want to pull the hair out of my head. There is so much that goes into a reception. Holy moly. I’ve asked Kris multiple times if he is sure he doesn’t want to go to Vegas but he continues to reassure me how much he hates Vegas. Needless to say, I’m not very good at this reception planning and I have nightmares of having the average, forgettable reception. I want an epic party.
Before we were given a budget for our wedding we went to visit our first reception venue appointment – Terrace on Grand. This place is phenomenal. It was obvious the guy we met with had shown the place to a million brides-to-be. He spoke so fast it was hard to keep up and he waited til the very end to tell us that the average reception at Terrace on Grand costs about $17,000. Are you kidding me?
Next stop on the reception venue hunt – The Mission Theatre. Talk about one extreme to another – this place was, well, not as nice. Infact, really dirty. The average reception price with everything included – $4,000. Yes, that includes alcohol. And believe me you got what you were paying for.
As I began to spend a lot of time combing the internet for Kansas City reception venues and making a whole lot of phone calls I started to pick up on a common theme – the price of a venue for a Saturday night rental is a whole lot more expensive than a Friday night rental. Like we’re talking thousands of dollars cheaper at some locations. People like to party on Friday nights too, right?
Now, do not misunderstand. I am not being cheap. If I were cheap I’d go with the Mission Theatre. I like to call it creative. Using my creativity, I narrowed my choices down to two – 1. The Vox Theatre and 2. The River Market Event Place. Both venues have a lot to offer but once The Vox told us we could bring in our own alcohol we were sold.
You can imagine my excitement tonight at dinner while Kris was watching football and I was reading The Pitch and what they consider to be “The Best of Kansas City 2011” and I stumble across this…
Ecstatic! I gave Kris a high five over the table and then of course tweeted it. It even got a retweet by The Vox. I was proud.
What’s the best reception venue you’ve even been to? I’ve never been to Boulevard Brewery for a reception but I remember eliminating them pretty quickly from my list because they could only hold around 150 people for a reception. Not because it wouldn’t be a stellar place to have a reception. We’ll definitely be making sure that we have some Wheat and Pale Ale going on at our party.
If you have an exceptional reception planning tips you’d like to send my way, I welcome all ideas and will take anything that makes this process a little easier.
A new love…
I think Karen (that’s my mom) would tell you that from a young age she knew I was a very visual learner. I’d rather draw a picture than write a paragraph. In fact, she’d probably tell you how much I loved to draw and she would tell you all of the things I loved to draw ON.
What does this have to do with planning a wedding? Great question. Glad you asked.
Pinterest.com
There isnt a thing I don’t totally love about this site. I have been nothing but inspired since it was introduced to me by my good friend Becky. The idea behind the site is that people virtually “pin” pictures on a “board”. Sounds so simple. Why didn’t I think of that? I’ve created a board for my wedding. Placing ideas all together to visually invision what the big day will hopefully look like.
Here are a few items from Pinterst that have caught my eye.
Item #1
What isn’t to love? I’m all about creative but simple and that’s exactly what this is. Don’t be surprised if you see something extremely similar when you walk in the door to our reception.
Item #2
Becky sent me this photo on Pinterest because she knew I had just purchased two large similar doors at a garage sale last weekend for this very purpose. I’m not usually the garage sale type but with remodeling a house and a wedding I have been lately. I didn’t even actually buy the doors. The guy saw me eyeing them and told me just to take them because his wife wouldn’t know one way or the other.
Item #3
Ironic that I was in Hobby Lobby just the other day and passed the felt aisle and thought to my self “Who uses felt besides a Sunday school teacher?”. And I’m not exactly sure if this will work it’s way into any of my creative plans but I think it’s super creative, simple, and low budget. Which, of course, I love!
Check out Pinterest. It won’t let you down.
Here we go…
So, here we are. Kris and Ashley… engaged! So very exciting and a little overwhelming. I (Ashley) am amazed at what it takes to plan a wedding. Holy cow. It seems like it is a never ending To-Do list. But if you know me, I LOVE To-Do lists. Drives Kris crazy.
Here’s why I’m doing this. I’m overwhelmed with what it takes to plan a wedding and especially a wedding on a budget. Going to get real creative and probably a little untraditional. Every time I’m shopping, designing, thinking, breathing wedding I’ve often told myself – you should start a blog. So I did. I not only started a blog I added extra’s to the blog with wedding party, ceremony, and reception info. And there will be more of that to come later.
I plan to share all my super adventures of wedding planning right here with you. So here’s my first little item. Save-the-date’s. See below. Designed ’em myself. I plan to mount them on gray paper, place a small magnet on the back, send in a gold envelope (evelopmail.com – 100 for $9.99).
Let me back up a minute and tell you our colors for the wedding are yellow/gold and gray/silver. More on that later.
Enjoy!
We are the Scheuerman's. 