Thursday, September 23, 2010

DIY: Wedding Guest Book

I made a scrapbook on Shutterfly to serve as our guest book. I'm not naive enough to think this is an original idea that's never been done before. I'm just really pleased with the final product and wanted to recommend to other brides-to-be.

I've been meaning to make a photo book that includes pictures of just the fiance and me from the first night we met (New Year's 2006) until the wedding. The need for a guest book was the perfect motivation!

All pictures are in chronological order with a lot of white space throughout the book, so guests will have plenty of room to write messages of any length! It's a year book meets scrap book kinda deal. I can't wait to see what our guests have to say. I highly recommend!









Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Work & Wedding

Last week, my coworkers had a lovely wedding/baby shower for my friend and me. (Important note: she's expecting, not me!)

Fiance and I registered at a few traditional places, but we also registered for honeymoon activities.

Well, my coworkers got us a Hawaiian Luau, which we're both really excited about! But even better, they pulled together their favorite recipes in a personalized cookbook. I love it. I figure since everybody contributes their best recipe, then I have one heck of a cookbook. So I'm going to pull a modified Julia Child and make every recipe in the book at some point in the next year. And with their permission (some were super secret family recipes), I'll share a few with you.

Last week at work was also simultaneous wedding prep. I really don't want Fiance to know anything about my wedding outfit, so I brought my shoes to work to break them in. I wore them around the office for five days and didn't have an ounce of pain. The shoes are a-go!

Since I was breaking in the shoes, I decided to multitask and give the new earrings a try. My ears are really sensitive to most metals, plus one hole is slightly ripped. Thus, I'm never able to wear drop earrings. But they would be SO perfect with my dress.

I tried on a pair at a bridal shop and my ears were inflamed and red after about 3o seconds. Despite a little pain and suffering, I wasn't ready to let the look go. So I invested in a quality pair of beautiful drop earrings. They're long, yet light. Perfect!

However, with my track record, I wanted to make sure my ears could handle them for at least a few hours. My goal is to make it through the ceremony and pictures and change to my diamond studs at the reception, if necessary. I put the earrings in while I was at my desk for a few hours each morning and afternoon. There was a little pain and some adjusting to the weight, but no redness or inflammation. In my opinion, that means the earrings are also good to go!

As for additional wedding prep, there were a lot of little things to handle in early September, but now we're just kind of coasting into the weekend. There have been a few minor hiccups along the way, but overall, planning has gone really well. The important thing is that everybody is on great terms and really excited for the wedding. I've heard wedding planning can tear families -- or worse -- bride and grooms-to-be apart. I'm so glad that hasn't been our experience at all. If anything, it's just brought our families closer together. A blessing for sure.