Scared of the unknown

I'm not sure what I should title this post. You see, after my last post on 12/22, I left my house to grab some last minute gifts and when I returned home, I discovered we had been robbed. The thief somehow got into the house via the back door and into our apartment via the back bedroom. He took some laptops and watches. The police were called and they found footprints and fingerprints so hopefully they will help catch whoever broke in.
It's so scary to know someone you did not invite in was in our house. That he went through our things. What kind of person decides to rob someone at Christmas time? I feel sorry for whoever he is that he is that desperate or greedy that he felt he needed to rob us of those things.
My mom keeps saying that they are just things and can be replaced. And she is right, they can be replaced. However the things on them cannot be replaced. The feeling that he could come back at anytime is so scary and unsettling. I don't feel safe in my own house right now. Every night something else pops into my mind about the data I lost that was on the computers. My wedding files, the invitation files, my work information. I luckily found a somewhat recently updated version of my master wedding spreadsheet in my sent emails which is just missing a few addresses--let me just tell you I about cried when I found it because I was so happy. I also have recovered some images I lost from this site and some other wedding sites. I have an external hard drive that was not taken which has most of my data on it (pictures, music, resume) but because I don't fully know what was on the computer, I won't ever know what all is gone.

Have you ever experienced a robbery? How did you get past it?

Things that smell good

I love flowers but know absolutely nothing about them! I know I like peonies, tulips, lilies, and dahlias. I know I really like the bouquets at Trader Joe's because they are gorgeous and cheap and tend to last for a good amount of time. So when it came down to our wedding flowers, I was clueless. Of course like a lot of brides, I saved photos I found online of arrangements that I liked and after awhile, I had a lot of images. What I noticed is in the early days of collecting, I liked arrangements with daisies, specifically Gerbera Daisies. Now on any given day, I like to have a bouquet of these fun and playful flowers in a vase in my house but on my wedding day? I don't think so. They just don't say 'wedding flowers' to me.
When I finally met with my florist, the awesome Kristen at Kio Kreations, I showed her some of the images I liked and she took that to a whole new level. Kristen works out of her house and with a wholesaler on floral design and she does graphic design as well which because she is the owner and operator, she is very budget friendly and very creative! So what did we decide on? Here we go!

We are doing 3 different types of centerpieces:

#1 are short round vases mixed with ti-leaf wrap inside, green berries, dahlias, football mums, green roses, green cymbidium orchid accents, green or white hydrangea and Lady's Mantle/Bupluerum foliage.

# 2 is 5 cylinders of various heights with submerged orchid heads and hydrangea and floating candles at top and bear grass wisps inside.

#3 are tall 24" cylinder vases with apples inside, rim of white hydrangea at top with Bells of Ireland, White dendrobium orchid sprays.

This is the inspiration for my bouquet but it will be all white.

The first image is the image that this whole look came from. From this one image, Kirsten came up with the 3 styles of centerpieces and my bouquet. The main flowers for our wedding are white dahlias, white hydrangeas, white spray roses.

I love the all white flowers with the punches of green! I think the flowers are fresh and very clean looking and will really pop against our navy tablecloths! So after knowing nothing about flowers, I am excited to see how everything comes together.

STDs...hehe

I'm not talking about a disease but our Save the Dates! Since we got so many great pictures from our session with Kara, I decided to use one on the front of a postcard. Why postcards you ask? To save money on postage, plain and simple. I was nervous that people may toss the postcard thinking it was junk but hopefully with our gorgeous picture on the front, that wouldn't happen.
I started by searching the internet for ideas, layouts and wording I liked. I wanted to try to do this myself, using my trusty Publisher and Vistaprint or something similar for the printing but I did not love anything that I came up with. So late one night, I stumbled upon Wedding Paper Divas and their fabulous products. After searching for something in our colors and in the right price points, I came across this simple design with a black border. Now black isn't one of our main colors but black goes with everything right? I used an image on the front and filled in our information and on the back I put a poem about us. I found the inspiration for the poem on another bride's bio about the two of them and I tweaked it to make it about us. Without further delay, here is our Save the Dates!
How did you come up with your Save the Dates? Was it easy or a quick decision?

Pictures at Sunset

We had a engagement picture session with our lovely and fabulous photographer, Kara Schultz, back in September in downtown Evanston on the Northwestern campus before fall classes started. She suggested we do a sunset session since it is the most favorable light for pictures. We started at the lake and walked west onto the campus and into downtown Evanston. Here are a few of my fav pics:

All images are from Kara Schultz

I love how they turned out and we used one for our save the dates! We had a blast with Kara and really just being our goofy selves, making each other laugh and having a good time. If you have it in your budget for engagement pics, I highly recommend it!

Fly girls (and guys!)

I have 5 bridesmaids who are the most lovely and fabulous ladies I know. Originally I wanted to find a dress that all 5 liked but as we got further into shopping, I really liked styles that were the same fabric and color but different styles. Plus this allows my girls to choose a dress that works with their body type and personal style. Here are our 3 options:
This is the style my maid of honor (MOH) and Bmaid Chitown have chosen:

This is the style Bmaid SB has chosen:

And this is the last option:

Source Davids Bridal

My last 2 girls, Bmaid Martins and Bmaid J have not picked a style yet but all have tried on the first dress.
All 3 dresses are from Davids Bridal, the first style is 83312, the 2nd is 83690, and the last one is F14138 in the color Marine in Cotton Sateen. And the best part is the first 2 have pockets!! I haven't shared my dress with you yet but it also has pockets!

We bought long ties from JCrew for all the fellas in Spring of 2009 that they will be wearing with their tuxes. K decided he wanted to do tuxes even though we are not having a formal wedding so that all the guys look uniform. We spent an hour or so at Mens Warehouse and found a Ralph Lauren tux that isn't too formal and is affordable since we won't be doing the accessories through them (vest, tie, etc).



















Source The Knot

Here is K's tie:



















The Groomsmen and Ushers tie:



















The 2 Dad's tie:



















And finally the 2 little men, they will be wearing a black 3 piece vest and pant set similar to this picture with a navy tie with green and pink thin stripes. We got the ties from JCrew and it's actually a Mens tie we are making into 2 little boy ties.
















Source Tux Gear
(Pictures are all personal unless noted)

Vendors

I feel like we have the A-Team for our wedding vendors.

Source Movie

We spent a lot of time researching potential vendors and got most of them off recommendations from previous brides. Vendor reviews are like gold...you get an unbiased opinion of a vendor based on previous experience. Once I find someone that sounds great, I also check out Wedding Wire and Yelp for other reviews of them. And today with media outlets like Facebook, I am friends with them which helps build that relationship.
Our DOC (day-of-coordinator) has been so worth the money, she's helped secure our hotel block, our transportation, plus I've bounced ideas off her and our wedding is still 6 1/2 months away!
Our photographer has become a good friend of mine, we both work from home so we meet for lunch or dinner at least once a month and we call it our "human-contact meeting". She uses us as guinea pigs for new products she's interested in and is giving us an amazing item for our guest book (I'll talk about that in a later post).
Our florist is simply put, amazing. She is so creative, I showed her 1 picture of flowers that I loved and we went from there. She also does design work and is helping us with our Map insert and possibly our seating chart.
The DJs we went with are exactly what we hoped we would find. They are non-cheesy and I'm really hoping they will keep our dance floor packed!
These are just some of our vendors, having these people on our "wedding team" makes me even more excited to see how the day comes together!

How did you research your vendors? Have any vendors become friends?

Starting over

I know I haven't been on here in a long time. Let me catch you up on my life:
-June 2009: Wedding is officially postponed
-August 2009: I move out
-September 2009: Get laid off
-December 2009: Got a fabulous job
-April 2010: Get re-engaged
-May 2010: Set a July 2011 date
-June 2010: Start contacting Vendors again
-July 2010: Made it to 1 year from our date
-August 2010: Move back in
-September 2010: Wedding planning back in full force

Here's basically what happened in June 09: K got scared. The idea of forever overwhelmed him and instead of talking to me about it, it was easier for him to walk away. It caused a lot of hurt and pain but brought us to a new place in our relationship. We were lucky that we were able to work through our issues, I was able to forgive him for the pain and we started to trust each other again. Now we are stronger than ever for taking that break apart.

Anyway, I promise I will try to keep up now and will fill you in on my plans thus far.