sarah's bridal shower!

i stole some photos off my madre's facebook of my pretty sister's bridal shower last weekend!  my aunt hosted the party at the cutest little tea house and we all got to eat yummy finger sandwiches and played a few games before sarah opened her new kitchen.

i say this because that girl is stocked with kitchen wares now!  if anybody is looking to have a tea party in michigan, i'd highly recommend sweet afton's tea room in plymouth.  it was adorable and delicious!

as maid of honor, i enjoyed the duty of making some bizarre bouquet of bows that really looked more like a hot mess of purple and orange tulle.  my on-the-fly repurposing DIY bouquet skills might not be top notch.  oh well.  maybe it'll get spruced up a little before the rehearsal dinner.

since the shower was near ann arbor, sarah and dave stayed with me steve and bert and even though it was a little tight in our one bedroom apartment (it may have inspired us to add a new air mattress to our wedding registry) we miss you guys already!!  hoepfully we'll be making our way closer to the west coast asap!

happy friday everybody!

notes from the weekend

last weekend my seester and future-brother-in-law came from san diego to play in ann arbor for sarah's bridal shower!!

we all had a tea-party and sarah got some house-swag and on sunday night we all watched the oscars.  i must admit, i love ellen degeneres, but i was pretty shocked by how boring the awards show became. maybe i'm not up to date enough?  i don't know... selfies and pizza weren't too riveting.

oh well, better luck next year.  at least we got to enjoy the show while sipping champagne from the prettiest glittered glasses sent to us by amy from cupcakes n couture!  merci beaucoup girl!  we're lucky ducks!

we also got to ride around in the back seat of dave's rental dodge charger.  and i won some yummy smelling bath and body works for one of the shower games!

mostly we've just been trying to catch up while the week has barreled forward!  could not be more ready for a relaxing weekend of chores and binge-watching dance moms.

happy weekend to all and to all a good night!

our save the dates!

it has been an exercise in great patience waiting to show off our save the date cards!  my completely official bit of wedding DIY has been hard to contain while i've waited to send them out.  having taken the photo, done the photoshopping, rubber stamped, postage stamped, and addressed them all on my own i'm rather smug with myself right now as my phone continues to receive snapchats like this one:

the save the dates were too fun to make and i'm hopeful future DIY plans work out as swimmingly as this project did (lest the emotional breakdowns about organza drive me completely to the brink).  now i have to wait to show off the invitations! we just crossed the less than 200 days threshold.  hey stevedore, let's get married already! 

back from the lull!

enjoy these belated valentines day images... jeff's chain is counting down the days to our wedding

hi self, welcome back to the blog!

for those of you who have missed me, i can promise i have not been blowing off blogging for no good reason.  family guy reruns are a very good reason thank you very much.  well, at least they are when you've actually been stretched thin with too much to do.  so what have we been up to lately?

things are changing a lot around my workplace and as a result i have a significantly greater workload.  high hopes this won't keep me from blogging too much in the future, but a reasonably demanding job is actually quite a time suck.

planning a wedding is a task and a half.  particularly while planning on being a bridesmaid in two weddings, a guest at three more, planning an international vacay, and existing as the point of contact for everyone who is planning parties related to these weddings.

also somewhere in there we're fitting in a cross country move and related job hunt.  which honestly is becoming more of a stress reliever than stress producer given michigan's cruel persistence of mega-freezing temperatures.  science has confirmed it:  michigan's winter 2014 officially sucks the most.

on the plus side:  i finally replaced my battery charger for my DSLR so with any luck there might be more pictures coming to pretty this place up.  i'm going to do my best to keep pre-blogging when i can to try and spread the fun out over several posts for y'all.

now re-reading this it's occurred to me... not much is new (well my boss is new, but she's great).  i hate when people bemoan how busy they are, so let's call it a day.

xoxoxo

PS like the heart garland on our mantle?  it's easy to make - check out my post here.

my gals

so one of the things about planning a wedding, which i'm pretty sure was single-handedly invented by the collective internet consciousness known as pinterest, is engineering some new, creative, ridonkulous way to ask your girlfriends to be in the wedding party.

feeling that a boxed gift set of ugly, decorative, oversized diamonds was a bit over-doing it (not to mention the fact that my brother once bought me an ugly, decorative, oversized diamond from a gas station in indiana), i decided to flex my skills at photoshop instead.  i sent my ladies (well minus my sister who was already maid of honoring it up before steve and i were officially engaged) these awesome greeting cards with their lovely faces stitched onto the bodies of truly the least lucky bridesmaids the fashion world has ever known.

fortunately for me, none of them were too offended!  now that my girls are all signed up for the 2014 wedding-showdown i finally can show everyone my handiwork!  when i went to walgreens to pay for the cards the guy at the photo counter was very excited when i asked for my order.  "i hoped i would be here when the bridesmaid cards got picked up!"

hope everyone is having a happy wednesday!

word count: 33,709

we have a wedding photographer

and we could not possibly be more excited about her!

choosing wedding vendors is not an easy task, but steve and i decided on alison bank of first comes love wedding photography without much debate.  i think it was when steve said "i like her eye; i like what she sees," when i knew we couldn't bother thinking about anyone else to shoot our big day.  she is insanely talented and we are completely thrilled thinking about all the great memories she is going to record for us next year (plus she's a total sweetheart to boot)! take a look at some of her beautiful work!  it feels good to know our pictures will be in such capable hands!

(photos by alison bank from http://www.firstcomeslovephoto.com/)

one year from today

on september 13 2014 i get to marry

the greatest person i have ever met

the best friend i have ever had

and the most handsome devil i have ever seen.

am i lucky girl or what?  i've basically been floating around on my own personal cloud since picking steve up from the airport last night.  beyond the fact that i'm giddy to have him back, there was also some exciting news about our potential-future-home-prospects for when his training program finishes next year!

sometimes i worry i'm going to look over my shoulder and have someone tell me this isn't really my life.  but here we are 365 days away!  now let's plan a wedding!

by michelleink88.

happy friday!! 

word count: 23,426

we're getting murried

at the gull lake country club to be more specific.

it's a bit hard to tell from the photo, but the room has a panoramic view of the lake, where we're hoping to have a waterfront ceremony outdoors.  it really doesn't matter what time of year you hold a wedding in michigan, you always want a plan b for weather.

hashtag: pure michigan.

lately things have been quite wedding-y and we are currently gearing up for a lot of travel in the upcoming weeks.  first, steve is flying to texas for business.  he's going to be gone for four whole days and i'm having trouble coping.

then we are heading to virginia for emily and colin's wedding.

then i am meeting my sister in chicago to go wedding dress shopping.

then we should have just enough time to squeeze in a nap before halloween.

so things are rather busy, but i still found time to throw together a wedding website for us.  personally i think the header graphic is pretty cute.

ta!

word count: 23,281