Wedding Photos and Christmas Cards

Now that we've got our professional photos back from our wonderful photographer, Nathan Russell, we're trying to figure out what to do with them. One thing I knew I wanted to do was send out a personalized Christmas cards this year using one or some of our wedding pics.

I've used Shutterfly in the past to order prints and make photo books of our engagement pictures, as well as my boudoir shoot for my mister. I've also recently ordered our wedding thank you cards from there as well. Check them out:

Courtesy of Shutterfly

I decided to use a photo that we took on our honeymoon for the thank you card. The card was very easy to design so I knew I needed to go back when Christmas rolled around.

I decided Shutterfly must be the place for photo Christmas cards. These are the wedding pictures that I wanted to use:





I have these in color and black and white. However, I do think the black and white is more romantic. Which photo do you like the best?

Now on to the cards. Here are some of my favorites:

All courtesy of Shutterfly

Aren't these cards just the cutest? There are some many options it's hard to narrow it down. Which card do you think works the best with my photo?

Here's a link to the full list if you want to order your Christmas cards on Shutterfly as well.

***I am writing this post to get 50 free Christmas cards from Shutterfly. If you have a blog, you should do it too!

This Is It

I'm gonna be a wife by 6pm today. Holy crap, that's weird.

It's 11:45pm right now. I just got home from the rehearsal dinner which was awesome! I (ahem) just have to you finish the wedding cake before I go to bed. God...why did I save it til the last minute? I was organized, I swear. This week just flew by.

I'm so ready to be married. When we were practicing tonight Mr. P kept sneaking little smiles at me. I think he's ready too.

I know I haven't had a whole lot of time with the hive, but I want to thank everyone for showing me their support and love in the short time I have been around. Thank you for sharing your honest opinions with me and inspiring me to make my wedding the best that it could possibly be. I appreciate more than you know. And to the Bees, I love y'all. Thanks for making me want to be a Bee. I'm so glad I got this experience.

I don't know how I'm going to sleep tonight, I'm so dang excited. I'm leaving you with our current weather forecast for our wedding day. Eek!

Cloudy with a 30 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Some thunderstorms may be severe with damaging winds...small hail and heavy rainfall in the morning. Some thunderstorms may produce damaging winds...small hail and heavy rainfall in the afternoon. Highs in the lower 80s. South winds 5 to 10 mph.

See ya on the flipside!
Miss (soon to be Mrs.) Plaid!

It's Not a Lie

So I'm now two days away from gettin' hitched. TWO freakin' days! And I'm here to tell you that when people say the last week before the wedding is crazy, it really is. It's not a lie. It can not be overcome. At least I couldn't do it.

I don't mind the craziness. I actually thrive on chaos. But I did think this week would be a breeze. I've been checking things off my to do list since last August in hopes that this final week would be cake. Literally. I wanted to only have the cakes to worry about this week.

Yeeeaaahhh...not so much. So what exactly have I been doing all week? Running to eight million stores (some more than once), baking cakes, buying presents for ushers and parents, decorating cakes, cleaning, going out to dinner with family that has arrived early, oh, and trying not to go insane.

This week has been packed with weird wedding dreams, fear that it's going to rain on my wedding day (currently there's a 40% chance) and only one slight breakdown after a batch of icing didn't work out.

But I have to say, the programs are done, everything is organized to head to the venue, the groom's cake is complete and the wedding cake is iced and waiting to be decorated in the morning! I'd say this week's been a success. All that's left to do is buy the booze for Saturday, get my nails done and go rehearse for Saturday!

Was your final week crazy? Or did you think you'd be able to battle the norm and have a calm last week?

Find Your Dang Seat Already

Haha...I'm not frustrated at all. :)

Our RSVP deadline was over about three weeks ago. I set it a bit early knowing I needed to know guest numbers to finish some remaining projects earlier than the week before the wedding. Apparently many of our invited guests had a different idea.

I'm not sure what our RSVP return rate actually was, but it was not good. We had to track down many people for an answer. It surprised me to find out that many people think they don't have to respond to an RSVP if they're not coming. It also surprised me to find out that a lot of people don't feel the need to respond if they told you a year ago in passing that they'd be at your wedding. Honestly though, a week out from our wedding, this is the only thing that has caused us stress.

After all the tracking down was complete, I thought it was finally time I start working on my table assignment project. I told y'all I was planning on making Texas shaped lollipops for each guest with their name and table number on the back. Check 'em out!


Cute, right? So I got all my lollipops made and was ready to label. (It did take me awhile to figure out who to sit with who...seating charts are hard, I'm not gonna lie.) My sister, Co-MOH Sarah, came over on her day off and helped me label all the pops and stick them on my Styrofoam trees. It took us a few hours to get everything organized, but we finished and we felt triumphant.


Not two hours after we finished, Mr. P came home and to tell me someone else had RSVP-ed yes. Grrr! It wouldn't have been a big deal if this new guest had a seat at a table that made sense for him to be at. Because it was Mr. P's guest, I handed the seating chart over to him to be redone. A few more people decided they'd come to, so we ended up adding more tables and rearranging all our guests to fit the stragglers in.

Well, my mom came in on Saturday and the first task we tackled was relabeling all the lollipops with everyone's new table numbers. Thank god I had enough sense to print the table number on a separate label from the names. Now our seating assignments are really done. Project complete! And only one more major project to complete before Saturday!!!


What was your RSVP return rate? Were you surprised by people's assumptions when it came to RSVPs? How did you tackle seating assignments?

"Tying the Knot"

***I'm sorry y'all. The last couple weeks have been crazy so I haven't been updating. I'm gonna post a whole bunch today to catch y'all up. ***

In less than 2 weeks!

Ok, back to the blog post. I told y'all a long time ago that I wanted to add some Celtic traditions into our wedding. But I've been struggling with how to do it exactly.

Then I stumbled upon Mrs. Cherry Pie's ceremony and more specifically, her handfasting ceremony. Handfasting is a Celtic wedding unity ceremony that symbolizes the coming together and remaining together of the couple.

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Once we decided we wanted to include this tradition, we had to decide what material we wanted to use to bind our hands together.

Cords...

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Ribbons...

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Oh ribbon. Confession time: I've probably spent more money on ribbon than anything else (craft-wise) for this wedding. It's ridiculous how many spools of ribbon I've gone through in the last year while creating my wedding look.

I only got as far as ribbons for options and it was decided. Ribbons! After Googling handfasting ribbons I found out even more about the tradition. Apparently each ribbon color represents something about the marriage.

• Red: passion, strength, lust, fertility
• Orange: encouragement, attraction, kindness, plenty
• Yellow: charm, confidence, joy, balance
• Green: finances, fertility, charity, prosperity, health
• Blue: tranquility, patience, devotion, sincerity
• Purple: Power, piety, sanctity, sentimentality
• Black: strength, wisdom, vision, success
• White: purity, concentration, meditation, peace
• Gray: neutrality, canceling, balance
• Pink: unity, honor, truth, romance, happiness
• Brown: earth, grounding, talent, telepathy, home
• Silver: treasure, values, creativity, inspiration
• Gold: energy, wealth, intelligence, longevity

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I do love me some color so of course I had to buy all of the colors. I just couldn't leave anything out. So I was off to JoAnns once again in search of ribbon.


I started by cutting the same length of ribbon in each color. But because I got such thin ribbon, I noticed the ribbon was getting all tangled up. So I grabbed a piece of fabric and sewed the center of each ribbon to the fabric. This way the ribbons are way more manageable.


What type of unity ceremony are you including in your wedding day? Are you planning on incorporating any ethnic rituals in your day?

A New Man

I have a secret to confess. There's been a new man in my life lately. At least there has been for the last week or so. His name is Fred and he's adorable. Move over Mr. P, there's a new man in town. :)

Are you ready for an introduction? Here goes nothin'. Meet Fred...the zombie!


Isn't he adorable? I love how he turned out! And if you don't remember (click here), I'm planning on making a big brain cake for Mr. P's groom's cake. And what goes with a brain? Why, a zombie, of course!

Fred is made mostly of gumpaste (a material used for making flowers on cakes) with a little help from some wire and Styrofoam. I tried to add a bunch of subtle details to make Fred even cuter. If you look closely his ribs are exposed on his chest. And under his ribs, a giant heart. I also decided to have Fred hold a small yellow gumpaste flower identical to the ones that will make an appearance on the wedding cake.

Are any of you ladies brave (or crazy, which is what most people think) enough to make your groom's cake? And more importantly has your fiance adequately trained you for the inevitable zombie apocalypse?

Why I Love Him

Do you ever just stop and look at your boyfriend (or girlfriend) and think, "God I love this person!" The feeling just overwhelms you, right? Well, it got me thinking, what are the little things that make me love Mr. P so much? So I did what I always do, I made a list.

1. He makes me laugh everyday. I once told him if he makes me laugh at least once a day it's a great day. He doesn't even have to but he does. This is by far the most important thing on this list.
2. He's cute. For some reason I feel the need to catcall or whistle at him when he walks from the bed to the bathroom in his boxers.
3. He's got an even cuter butt. I seriously have to use restraint not to slap him on the butt every time he walks by.
4. He sings to me. Badly, but still he sings. And he comes up with his own songs too.
5. He's sweet. He takes me to dinner when I don't get the promotion at work that I wanted so badly.
6. He's supportive. He gets angry at my bosses when I don't get the promotion that I wanted so badly.
7. He loves me. He takes me to chick-flicks without complaining. He's even the one to suggest it sometimes!
8. He's practical. He teaches me how to shoot zombies in the head. You never know when the next apocalypse might happen.
9. He's a sugaraholic just like me. He likes Dr. Pepper just as much as I do and loves sweets, especially the ones I make for him.
10. He's got a nook that I fit perfectly in. Seriously, when I hug him we fit together like two Legos. God, that sounded dorky.
11. He makes me smile. I still get this huge grin on my face every time I come home to him.
12. He's nurturing. He's gonna be a great dad someday. I can just tell.
13. He's a total geek. He's comfortable enough to dance around and do weird things in front of me without getting embarrassed.
14. We can enjoy silence together. And it's not awkward at all. I hate awkward silences.

There are plenty more, but I won't bore you with more of my reasons. What are your reasons for loving your man or woman?