Snail Mail! (Our Save The Dates)

Although it took a while for our actual vision of magnetic photo strip Save The Dates to come to life, they finally have -- and we snail mailed them out! YAY!!!

(Hard at work assembling the Save The Date's)

After both photo shoot sessions, we combined three new images from Tom's cousin and one image from our wedding photographer. Then I got busy in Corel Paint Shop Pro X and made them into a photo strip inspired by the ones you get at the mall -- complete with a top graphic. It was obvious ours had to say LOVE! That's the the whole reason behind all of this!

Here are how our Save The Dates looked in graphic-only form:

(Designed by yours truly in Corel Paint Shop Pro X)

And here they are completed in ready-to-mail form:

Now, I knew that we wanted to make these into magnets. Silly me, I just thought that we would cut off a few small chunks of adhesive magnet to put on the top and bottom. That obviously wouldn't have looked too hot and might have made for uneven paper on people's fridges... thank God for my sexy and smart sweetheart reminding me that we needed to put magnet backing on the whole backs of each photo strip - so that's what we did.

(Showing off his proud magnetic backing skills!)

Magnetic backing wasn't enough for these to be considered completed though. I have a strong appreciation (as I'm sure you all do too, of course) for crafty, cute packaging so once we had all of our magnets done we embellished these beauties. That's where the extra paper, tags saying "Made With Love" and raffia bows came in. I am really proud of our Save The Dates and couldn't have done it without Tom (so thanks baby- if you're reading this!)

(Just a few of the many Save The Dates all ready to be stuffed in envelopes and mailed out!)

My next post will be on a step-by-step tutorial on how to re-create these beauties. :) Get readdyyy for some crafting!

Did you make your Save The Dates from scratch? Why or why not?

What To Do About Shoes!

I bet you were expecting our completed (and awesome, might I add) Save The Date's to be the next post. Well, you probably would have had good odds of that happening if I wasn't such a ditz! I left my camera at Tom's house so the Save The Dates will get their big reveal tomorrow.

Until then, there's been all sorts of other exciting things going on in our wedding world. I picked out -- and purchased "the dress." Of course, I'm not going to give you any details about that right now. You'll have to go through the tedious proccess along with me as I re-cap (and mentally re-visit) the many bridal shops I visited and gowns I tried on...which should at least be partly entertaining.

The point is: I picked out my dress and now I get to accessorize. Although I've never been a huge shoe girl, I do love me some cute heels. Right now I'm dreaming off pink glittery heels. So I google image searched for some.


These for the wedding? Probably not. for anything. ever.

(source)

These? Definitely possibilities!

(source)

Ahh, beautiful. Rhonestones all over for lots of sparkle and just the right shade of pink for girliness! By far my favorite thus far...especially for only $140.

(source)

Satin = Sexy. The bow embellishment is so sweet. Too bad they don't have a back. I'd be afraid to dance all night in these. No glitter, though.

(source)

I never said they had to be all glitter. :) The brooch on these make them flashy yet classy.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure where else to turn to find pink glittery heels. And who knows, maybe I'll go with something different anyways. So I turn to you guys...

What are the good shoe stores out there to find beautiful heels for such a special occassion?

The Second Time Around...

As in my previous post, I mentioned that we had a second round of engagement photos because the first time my curls ended up falling out and we mistakenly left the most important photos (for our Save The Dates) as last on our agenda. So, Tom asked his cousin to help us re-create the Save The Date photos in front of a tree. This time, we did it in Tom's hometown at the park where our actual wedding reception will be. :)

I also learned a lesson from the first photo shoot - don't bother curling my hair the second time around, just in case it was really hot out again. Sometimes it's nice to have a redo... although it's a scary reminder there is no redo when it comes to the actual wedding! Anyways, Tom's cousin went above and beyond-- He actually stayed with us for quite a while taking extra pictures as well.

First, here's a teaser of how the second round of Save The Date's turned out!

Haha! Tom did not like this one when we attempted cheezin' but I think it's cute. I edited the text on there since we did a few with a blank piece of paper.

Here's the rest!




We were really happy with all of them...BUT the actual date 10/2/10 ones! It was a bit windy and unfortunately we didn't get a good shot of the paper flat with the date. So now what were we going to do when we compiled our Save The Date photo strips? My hair is curled in the first set of photos by Brian, and now in the second set it's not... so our thoughts were something like this: We can't merge them, can we? Oh yes, we can, and so we did. (The idea of a third photo shoot could have been a"charm" but Tom isn't nearly into posing for a camera like I am, so we made the best of it for our actual Save The Date photo strip.)

Before I show you how our actual Save The Dates and the photo strip turned out, here's some other photos by Tom's cousin that we really liked.






Did you have any bumps in the road when it came to your engagement photos and the bigger picture of using them for Save The Dates?

Our E-Pic(nic)s

Last month, Tom and I had our engagement photos done by our wedding photographer, Brian of Ideal Impressions. We (well, I) choose to do a picnic-type theme shoot to match accordingly with our wedding. This was done not only for cohesiveness but also because we are planning to have booklet-type invitations where some of the pages will be photos of us! Our photographer had suggested the beach as we are by Lake Michigan and could get some really gorgeous shots but I just didn't feel that was us or matched our theme... plus it was a little cliche for my liking (as if picnic-theme shoots arent, ha I know right?!) So, we still went near Lake Michigan but to a park.

Meeting with our photographer was a wonderful experience. Right off the bat he explained to us how he works. The first picture he took was near perfect with the way he had the light cast off my hair. I packed three outfits for Tom and I; however we only got to two of them. No biggie. The pictures still turned out great with some planning on my part and our photographer's skills.

Packing props is a great way to maximize your photo shoot. I packed the following:

• a collection of inspirational photos so I didn't forget any ideas
  
• bright green apple -- to go with our bright outfits
• picnic blanket to lay on
• picnic basket
• mason jar & flowers
  
• bubbles (didn't get to use these, but what a fun idea!)
• and of course, the most important... our Save The Date papers! We wanted our Save The Dates to be a fun photo strip of us so I printed off on paper the words "SAVE" "THE" "DATE" "10/2/10" for us to hold up.

Are you ready to see how some of our photos turned out? I can't wait to show you..




This is my absolute favorite! I cannot wait to have this in our booklet invitations!


Do you spot our apple, flowers, and picnic blanket? :)



This one isn't picnic themed at all, but Tom loved these rocks and we couldn't pass up a photo opportunity...




Cute story about this picture above: When I was at home, I trimmed the flowers I bought and had exactly all of these stems left. They were the perfect size/amount to spell LOVE!

And here are our filmstrip Save The Date's from the shoot! Since our theme is shabby chic outdoors, we thought it would be really cute to do these in front of a tree so it was in the background.




The weather was extremely hot that day and the curls in my hair ended up falling out really quickly so we weren't exactly happy when we saw these. Of course, it's nothing that our amazing photographer did, it was just my hair and the weather obviously didn't cooperate.

Because of this, we opted to have a SECOND photo shoot-- but this time to save us the money we used Tom's cousin who does photography has a side hobby. We figured his skills were good enough to just re-shoot the Save The Date's for us so we didn't look so sloppy in something that would be going on 50 people's fridge for who knows how long!

Want to know how the second photo shoot turned out? Keep watching for the next post on it.

Did you have a distinct vision for your engagement shoot (inspiration photos, props, and a theme) or did you go with the flow?

Lack of update

Sorry dolls, but there has been a lack of updating this blog for various reasons.

• I had applied for my blog to be featured on WeddingBee.com and still have yet to recieve a letter either way so I've been a bit discouraged. All of my really "great" posts I've been trying to save for that day...but now I'm not sure it's coming. *Fingers AND toes still crossed*
  
• My cousin who was in his 30's recently died and left behind a wife and their young daughter. This makes me very sad and has had me thinking about how it will affect her in the long run. My father passed away when I was in the 3rd grade so I can totally relate. My heart goes out to my family.
• We closed on our house and have been super busy with that. It's also restricted us cash-wise.

The good news is I'm back and have tons of posts for everyone! After raiding tons of dress shops, I'm still not sure what dress I'll end up with but I have lots of photos for you to laugh at (don't worry, I'll be laughing too!) Also, we got our engagement photos (finally) so we can share those as well as our Save-the-Dates. I'm also working with an invitation designer right now on using some of our engagement photos in a little booklet-type invite. Lots of picture-filled posts to come! Stay tuned and thanks for hanging in there with me.