Tainted Painted Nails

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I'm not normally one to follow every fashion trend but I decided after hearing the buzz on this new nail color that I would finally try it out. Normally I just stick with a standard red, french, or buff nail look since i'm always having to work in front of clients and it's not necessarily professional (in my eyes at least) to have a bright wild and crazy color on my nails.

Chanel came out in the fall with a new nail polish color called Jade. I heard all about it on the radio, from co-workers and in magazines. And the other day I decided to go bold and try it. I absolutely love the color to begin with so I was excited to try it.

(taken from my phone)

Ok so honestly I know the picture does absolutely NO justice (go figure!) but it was BOLD and very minty! Trust me it's a lot brighter than the pictuer above. My FI says my fingers look like M&M's. FML! I absolutely hated it and yet it's been about 5 days and i'm still wearing it! HA HA! I keep forgetting to take it off at night since i'm busy with Jillian Michael's kicking my butt!

This got me thinking about my nails the day of the wedding and I realize that if you are going to stick with a bold color so be it but try not to make it wild and crazy that it takes away from the beauty of the bride. :)

And so kids today's lesson learned is that you don't have to follow every single trend on the market because you make look like a clown!

Anybody else share similar stories of trying to keep up with the trends and miserably fail???

Let's Get BeDazzled!

As Seen On TV

Let's kick it old school for a bit and reminisce about the days of jean jackets bedazzled with colorful jewels. Not only jackets but hats, t-shirts, jeans, and skirts! OK so I wasn't so cool back then and my mother would never let me get one since she thought it was a waste of money and she could sew some jewels on a hat if I really wanted it.

So I've discussed my shoes for the ceremony but those puppies aren't going to stay on all day. I mean we'll be headed to the beach for pictures after and I know I won't be sporting the ballet flats in the sand. That just says "UNCOMFORTABLE" written all over it. So I've decided to find a sparkly pair of flip flops for the reception so I can be comfortable.

Crystal Flip Flops

These are so cool!! Swarovski crystals cover the straps to add that special touch! In my eyes that is perfect except they cost $65! Man is that expensive for flip flops! So the little light bulb went off in my head and I thought, 'what if I just buy the flip flops and glue them on myself?!'

Flip flop season is just around the corner and I'm sure stores like Old Navy will be stocking their shelves soon with every color imaginable. A trip to Michaels is in store for this weekend. Wish me luck!

Paper Goods

So my search for invitations started off rocky but thanks to my MOH I was able to get my invitations at 50% off. Woohoo!! So I started my search for pocketfolds and found a few that really caught my eye and one that I absolutely fell in love with....except for the price. ::sigh::

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I love the horizontal layout of this invite how elegant the font looks with the colors. Although when I tested it out the wording I wanted didn't exactly fit. Bummer! Maybe we can tweak it a bit.

Chloe B

Ok I'm not going to lie, but my heart melted when I gazed upon these invitations and was ready to purchase them on the spot. Then I saw it would cost about $800 for 150 invitations and I was bummed. Do I splurge on invitations that eventually will just be thrown out? Or settle for something in between?

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I found this invitation and thought it was pretty and easy to customize PLUS it fit all the information. It's not island themed which was a requirement but I would prefer it if I could. The price for 150 is only $250! That is way better than I was expecting although my heart still loves the more expensive beautiful blue ocean themed ones. What's a girl to do?!

Which one is your favorite? Should I splurge or just settle?

Better than a tasting!

Since we got engaged the idea of having an engagement party floated around in my head. Many gracious family members offered their houses for the party as well so I started to ponder the idea more and more plus many of my friends pointed out it's a great way to get gifts and money for the wedding. Wait, people give money? Heck yeah!

So my FMIL offered her house to us and she would cook for everyone. My FI is Italian so they cook for everything. It's yummy! We set a date for the beginning of January and I'm very excited.

I recently blogged about the baker we are thinking of using for our wedding cake. After watching the Cake Boss on TLC one Sunday afternoon I got the idea to contact Kelly at Sweet Rewards to see if she could create an engagement cake for our party. I informed here that we are looking to use her for our wedding cake and would like to take this opportunity to try her first for our engagement party. I didn't want to spend a lot of money on the cake and spoke to her about a few ideas. She was so prompt to get back to me with a few ideas and we ended up choosing a two-tier cake with hand drawn damask designs with a big FAT engagement ring on top of the cake. Since my FI hates chocolate we decided to go with vanilla cake and raspberry preserve and raspberry mousse filling. Y-U-M-M-Y!

This was my little surprise to my FI since I love to surprise him with stuff. I picked up the cake the day of the party and it was gorgeous. I was super excited for everyone to marvel at this beautiful creation. The lady told me to keep the cake in the garage until we are ready to serve so it will keep the fondant nice. So I showed my FI the cake before our guests arrived and he was blown away and then instantly asked, "how much did you spend on this?!" HA HA! Well ummm....so I fibbed and told him it was $20 less than what I actually spent because I didn't want him to get upset. I mean it's my money anyways so why should he care?

I was beyond excited to show everyone the cake and after dinner was cleared off and the coffee was brewing I decided to move the cake into the dining room so everyone could ooohh and ahhh. And boy did they! Everyone was whipping out their camera phones and asking me where I got this from. I was patting myself on the back if I do say so myself. =)

Well I shouldn't have patted myself on the back just yet because when it came time to cut the cake and eat it, well that was another story. We started serving the cake to our guests and it was really cold and the cake was kind of hard to eat with a fork. I was super embarrassed! The batter was extremely dense as well and I was disappointed as well as my FI. Everyone tried to cheer me up and suggest that it just needed to stay at room temperature next time. Next time??? Yeah right!

After the part we decided to keep the cake in the enclosed porch section of their house. I took home a HUGE part of the bottom tier and decided I would bring it into work for others to eat since my co-workers are always happy to eat free food. I warned everyone though and decided to get a piece myself since I was hungry. WAIT! What is this? The cake was so moist and delicious it was AMAZING! It melted in my mouth after every single bite.

I texted my FI and told him all about the cake and he was shocked. I wish I had saved a piece for him to try but everyone devoured the cake within a matter of minutes!

(all pictures are from my personal camera)

I'm glad we were able to test out her cakes prior to our wedding because we could have had the same problem for our at home reception and that would have been more disappointing for us. We have decided to stick with her and when we go for the tasting for the wedding cake we can mention our feedback on the first cake and make sure to avoid the same problem. I would recommend using your baker if you can for your engagement party (if you have one) so you can really experience the cakes instead of a couple slices that they choose.

Have you worked with your baker prior to your wedding? Did you have better luck?

Let's Take A Step Back

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I think today was the one of the first days that I didn't have an extra skip in my step at the thought of the getting married. I normally have the biggest smile on my face whenever I think about the big day and welllll today doesn't seem to be that kind of day.

I went to David's Bridal this morning to look at bridesmaid's dresses for a wedding i'm in a month prior my own. Yes. A month before mine! The bride has chosen the color clover and has given us bridesmaid free reign on the choice of dress just as long as it is clover. So I decided to go in and try on a couple dresses to figure out which one looks best on me. Honestly it didn't go so well. The dresses were great but I looked horrible and bloated. It was a huge reality check and the images haven't left my head ever since.

I started thinking about my own wedding dress and the fact that I need to lose a bit of weight and tone everythng up especially my back up so that I can showcase the gorgeous open back of the dress. The fact that I haven't done anything about it sucks. It's hard to get motivated and not want to eat all those yummy delicious foods out there.

My biggest fear on my wedding day is not being able to zip up my own dress! Ahhh!

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Can you imagine?! I'm nervous to try my dress on again too. Being at David's Bridal today I saw the dress I fell in love with but was just too heavy to wear for a wedding in the caribbean, and a little part of me was sad because I really did love that dress. It's completely different from my own dress and more traditional with the long train. So not only am I have body image issues and i'm also questioning my own dress selection! It's like I want the best of both worlds! I love two dresses and I can't wear them both.

I understand i'm having a day where i'm bored (for once!) and left to sit around my aparment and continue to think about what just happened but I have to do something about this. I don't want to continue to worry about this either.

Soooo....I took a step in the right direction and after reading several wedding blogs about this DVD program I finally caved in and bought it. Jillian Michael's 30 Day Shred is officially mine and I hope she can kick my butt into shape!

Have you ever had a bad day where you let your worries get to you? What did you to fix it?

7 Months To Go!

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7 MONTHS TO GO!!!!! I realized yesterday was the 7 month mark and that absolutely made my day. And to be honest it doesn't stress me at all. They say that this entire experience will fly by so fast but honestly it has been going a little slower than I would have liked. If I could have had it my way I would have liked to get married in March or April since I have no patience and just would like to marry my best friend!

Everything worked out well with the date we chose anyways since my sister is pregnant and due in May plus our honeymoon is time sensitive and that trumps getting married in March. LOL!

Speaking of the date, September 18th , it wasn't until after I confirmed the date that I realized that was an ex-girlfriend's birthday. And this isn't just any ex-girlfriend this was someone who didn't get it in her head that that chapter in her life has ended. Yea, i'm talking about the ex-girlfriends who don't just move on. She's created some drama in our relationship the first year and half we started dating and I find it funny that we chose to get married on her birthday. If that doesn't say "slap in da face!" I don't know what does!?

Once my FI pointed that fact out I knew the date was perfect! I know i'm not the only one out there ladies that has had to deal with crazy ex's?! What was your crazy story? How did you handle the situation?

Mmm Mmm Good!

One of my favorite channels to watch is the food network. Honestly it's like porn when you're hungry. Yes. I. just. went. there. But in all honestly i'm right! It's like going grocery shopping on an empty stomach and you end up buying so much more then you intended on buying because you were hungry at the time and not only did the cookies scream out 'buy me!' but so was the bag of chips, block of cheddar cheese (a MUST on every grocery list I have), Mama Celeste pizza, and the milk duds! So watching the food network when you're hungry is just like that. It makes you crave what you are watching.

My point is that one lazy Sunday I was watching the Cake Boss marathon (I know it's on not on the Food Network but they have food shows) and I couldn't help but start thinking about what I wanted for a wedding cake. Granted we will have the resort make their own which comes out looking like this:

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And don't get me wrong that's nice but our ideal cake would be something like this:

Project wedding

Is that just B-E-A-UITFUL! So my FI and I realized that we can get the best of both worlds and have a wedding cake at the at home reception as well since everyone loves cake and we can hav a second cake cutting for our guests. So I surfed the web for local bakeries in CT to see what our options are. BTW, love the website Project Wedding for their pictures and vendor search! I found one lady that owns Sweet Rewards in Brookfield, CT and she had tons and tons of pictures which me likey! Her website was very informative but the pictures said it all.

I love her attention to details ESPECIALLY in the cake below. Just beautiful!

*The cakes above are from Sweet Rewards
*Food network pictuer source

I showed my FI the website and he was extremely impressed and he was sold on the idea just as quickly as I was. I got super excited that an idea popped into my head! I have no patience whatsoever and I didn't want to wait to contact Kelly at Sweet Rewards so I drafted up an e-mail to her in regards to our engagement party.

To be continued.......

The Wedding Party

My last post mentioned my MOH and it hit me that I never spoke about our wedding party and who will be in it. Well it honestly won't be a long blog since we are having a very small wedding party. If I could have it my way I wouldn't have anybody but this way makes sense as well.

A little background on me: I'm the youngest of 3 girls and they are 5 and 9 years older than me. Can you tell I was a 'surprise' to my parents?! So my oldest sister got married 14 years ago when I was in the 8th grade. Both myself and my middle sister were in her wedding party. My other sister got married in 2005 and we were both part of her wedding. See the trend here?

So it only made sense that I incorporate my two sisters into my wedding and well they both will be my Matrons of Honors (MOH). Although my middle sister tends to be the leading MOH. Which can be a good thing but also a bad thing since she tends to only see things in black and white ONLY. Where I see things in Black, White, and anything else in between!

As far as the grooms side he is having his best friend be his best man. Easy peezy! We understand that not everyone make the trip down for our wedding so it makes the most sense to keep things simple.

Did you have a big wedding party or a small one? Did you find it to be easier with only having a few people?

Dun Dun Dun!!!!

I hate invitations (que the suspense music). OK fine I don't exactly HATE invitations but the thought of choosing out of a bazillion designs makes me cringe and put the white flag up. I am quite particular about what I am looking for and whenever I find something that is amazing and perfect I look at the price tag and want to pass out. $1000 for 125 invites?! Are you nuts?


We have so much information to put on our invitations that a regular invitation with a reply card just won't do. I wish it was that simple but life's a b*tch and who said planning a wedding was E-A-S-Y!

Pocketfolds or envelopments are a dream come true.

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Aren't they beautiful?! Not only do you get an invitation but also pockets to include accommodations, reception and direction cards. I find it to be unique yet keeps things organized because I know for a fact that when someone sends me an invitation and it has other cards included I tend to lose them. The price tag though comes to over $6 per invite. ::Sigh::

I mentioned my invitation anxiety to my MOH, which happens to be my sister who got married a couple years back, and she told me that her company gets 50% off invitations from several companies. Whhhhhhhhhaaaaaaat???? Then all of sudden the choir sang in my head "hallelujah!" It was like someone was answering my prayers! I don't think of myself as a religious person but there are desperate times when I pray for something, but this wasn't one of those times yet it was like someone was listening to me.

Could my dream of having the perfect invite actually come true?!! My MOH sent me the link the next day and I stalked every page up and down for the perfect one. To be continued.....

Did you have an anxieties about invitations or with any other planning aspect? Do you think spending $1000 on invitations is worth it?

A Calming Affect Comes Over Me...

I just love these color combos and looking at these pictures has this calming affect for some reason. Is that sign?! I think it is because those are my colors and to see it put together makes me extremely confident I made the right choice. I'm not having a problem finding my sense of style, I just think it's narrowing it down so I don't look like a circus exploded! Even though we are getting married here and having our reception here I still want to make it elegant and simple. Clean lines and not over crowded tables with too much going on.

The LOVE bottle openers are definitely something I'm going to consider in our OOT bags and/or possible as our favors. THAT is another story to come in the near future, I promise! ;-)

The table set up is to die for but I don't have that kind of budget nor enough baggage to bring a lot of decorations down. So I'm thinking of incorporating the colors in other ways such as table runners and colored sashes for the chairs.

Has a color just captivated you to the point where your heart almost skips a beat?

Source: Love bottle, wedding party; BBJ Linens

Crave A Good E-Pic Session: The Finale!

So FINALLY the day arrived and it couldn't have been more beautiful outside. A high of 39 degrees with minimal wind which made me extremely happy. I decided on wearing jeans with a cute black buttoned down blouse. I figured that worrying over what I would wear is crazy because I will be wearing my coat pretty much the entire day!

We picked our photographer, Michael, up from Newark airport and headed into the city around 11:45am. We parked the car in mid-town (for those of you not fluent with NYC grid that is around Times Square and Rockefeller Center) so that we could walk to the subway quicker and we were close to Central Park. Our philosophy for the day was to start at Central Park, then grab lunch and some random shots, and then to the Brooklyn Bridge for sunset. And we actually stayed on track although we spent a lot more time in Central Park than we imagined and I didn't even get to go to Belvedere Castle. The ONE place I wanted to go to but we just didn't have enough time if we wanted to catch the sunset. So I decided that the sunset was more important and that I was already happy with the pictures we already captured. Take a look below.

This picture is great because of the beautiful mosiac ceiling in Bethesda Terrace and I was happy that Michael was able to capture all of it.

We also took a lot of pictures at the Mall in Central Park which is a forty foot wide flanked by it's majestic American Elms trees.

This is one of my favorite because of the angel and also how candid it is. The way he captures the moment is beautiful.

On any other day I would have NEVER sat on this bench in the subway since they tend to claimed by bums and not exactly clean. Although it made for a great shot so it was worth it.

Ahh the Brooklyn Bridge with city skyline...it doesn't get any better than this! It took us a while to get this shot since we had to make sure no one would walk infront of the camera which was kind of hard considering people were walking the bridge constantly.

Little do you know my FI is holding the flash behind us so you get that light effect around our faces. I love this photo because of the pure emotion we are showing, you can't stage that!

At this point we had been shooting for over 6 hours and honestly it didn't feel like that. My feet were starting to hurt though and I was finally getting cold because we weren't moving so much. This picture above we had to stand still for a minute in order for the shutter to open to grab as much as light as possible. Even though this is a very posed picture it's one of my favorites because of the incrediable skyline. Don't ya think?!

This picture makes me laugh because our photographer had intentions of the subway to come in faster then it did. Normally the trains come flying into the station and then stop. This train unfortunately crawled in and we couldn't get as good of a pic of the train zooming by but I still like how fun it was!

Overall we had an absolute blast and John's attitude towards engagement photos changed (surprise surprise!) and he was extremely happy we had the opportunity to work with our photographer before our wedding. He was even more pleased when he saw the photos the days that followed and agreed that it was worth flying him in from Toronto for the weekend. I never would have thought our session would last 9 hours! Whhhhaaaattt? Yes. 9 hours! We ended the night in Times Square with a few photos and then warmed up in Starbucks before heading home.

Were you happy with your engagement photos? Did you think it was worth it? Was your FI against the idea as well?

*All pictures were taken from here

The Story Behind The Date

So I realize that I told you about our engagement and why we decided on a destination wedding but I never told you why we chose September 18th, 2010. Actually I don't think I ever mentioned the date to be honest! ha ha! Oops!

Well the date does not have any significance BUT we chose September because of where we wanted to go on our honeymoon. Yeah, normally it's the opposite way around but if you haven't already noticed, we do things backwards here in the land of moi. =)

My FI and I have traveled to the caribbean and Mexico and since we were getting married in the Dominican Republic we wanted to do something different for our honeymoon. We could have opted to stay an additional week at the resort like other couples do but we see this time in our lives as a prime time to travel and see the world before little mini-me's start running around!

As sad as this is to admit, we were inspired by a movie called "Beerfest" which is a movie about Oktoberfest. I'm German so I've always wanted to travel to Germany and see where my family came from so I wasn't against this idea at all. We thought to ourselves, 'Wouldn't it be awesome if we went to Oktoberfest for our honeymoon???' So from there was how we decided that September it is!

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Now it was just a matter of when in September. So I contacted the wedding coordinator at our resort to see what dates were available in mid-September since Oktoberfest is the last 3 weekends. Wondering why Oktoberfest is in mainly in September and not in October? Click here to find out why. Anyways, so the wedding coordinator got back to me with a few dates but we liked Saturday, September 18th because this would be perfect for those who wanted to spend a long weekend and not have to take much time off of work. Plus we have a few teachers in my family so this would also benefit them.

How do you come up with your wedding date? Was it easy?

Crave a good e-pic session: Part 2

As the date approached so did a nasty snow storm. It hit the mid-west and was coming straight for the east coast. I stalked weather.com to see what the weather would be like not only for the sake of our pictures but because our photographer was flying in for the day!

Our pictures were on the Sunday before Christmas and the day before was when the snow started and it forced his flight to be cancelled. For some reason I wasn't that upset since I stressed about what I would wear and how I would do my hair. And to be honest it was a blessing in disguise and I would come to realize this more and more over the weeks that followed.

So we rescheduled for Saturday, January 23rd and I was super excited since we didn't have to worry about heading to work the next day and also had more time to shoot photos. And in the mean time I stressed over what I would wear and how I would wear my hair. Well to be honest there was only one way to wear my hair and that was down straight like I normally do. Boring. Until one day I called in sick and needed just a mental health day. Everyone needs them, right?

I decided to clean the bathroom and stumbled upon a 3/4" curling iron unopened. It had been collecting dust for months and I decided it was time to play with my hair. Now for those that don't know me my hair is naturally wavy/curvy and any sign of humidity and my straight hair goes to sh*t. So I flat iron my hair in the winter time so it's pretty straight. For once I was thinking of going for the wavy curl look like this:

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So I have something to admit. I actually googled "how to curl medium hair" and watched a youtube video for it. And to my surprise it came out pretty darn good for never using a curling iron in my entire life. Whaaaaat? Yes, never before!

So I went to work the next morning with my hair done and everyone complimented on it and then it was at that moment I realized I would do this for our e-pics! I was beyond estatic and thought, "man I am so happy we postponed our pictures!"

Stay tuned for our e-pic adventures in NYC!

Giddy over flowers

I've always loved flowers at a wedding and have been picky about them for quite some time. I fell in love with my sisters bouquet when she got married in 2005 and fell in love with stephanotis with the pearl in the center. So when it came to my wedding I knew that was one of the flowers I wanted to incorporate into my bouquet. I browsed probably over a thousand pictures online of wedding bouquets and I started to narrow down my search.



I thought about soft yellow roses with stephanotis but the look wasn't what I expected. Then I thought of white and yellow roses but nothing caught my eye. Blue hydrangeas are gorgeous and I loved the way they looked by themselves in a bouquet and pictured myself holding them. So I contact Pat from Enchanted Memories and told her about my idea of a full bouquet of blue hydrangeas and she got back to me quickly and mentioned that they could create a blue hydrangea bouquet but the quality of real touch flowers for hydrangeas isn't as nice as roses, lillies, or orchids. So that put me back to searching for the perfect bouquet.



I was totally against all white bouquets because I feel like it adds no color and just meshes in with the gown but I kept seeing these gorgeous bouquets of ivory roses and I just couldn't resist it. Then I stumbled upon this amazingly beautiful bouquet from a bride on weddingbee and it was instant love. Without any doubt I knew this was the bouquet I wanted.

Joie de Vie's bouquet was made up of ivory roses, blue hydrangea and coffee berries. It has just enough color to not be entirely all white/ivory and that was perfect for me. I drooled over and over again looking at these photos. Look at how massive her bouquet is in the last picture! So I e-mailed my florist and she assured me that she could recreate the same bouquet with no problem. I also asked her to add the stephanotis with a pearl center since my dress has pearls in the broach. I'm not sure how that will look but i'm confident I will love it no matter what.

I actually love everything about Joie de Vie's wedding from the beautiful flowered arch, her hair, and the bridesmaid dresses! Kudos to her for having such a gorgeous wedding!!!

I'm extremely excited that I found a bouquet and quite surprised that I went with something I said I wouldn't want (i.e. white bouquet). Now it's a matter of what to do for the BM bouquets.

Dun Dun Dun! Stay tuned!

MY way or the highway

As the months go by and the planning process continues to unfold, the money quickly comes out of the account just as quickly as it went in, and I start to be thrown in all different directions. And I realize how quickly we can be shaped and formed into something we're not. I became glued to the computer reading blog after blog of DIY ideas and inspiration boards wishing I could be like others who blog and then I attempted to apply to blog.

And I waited....and waited....and tried to make my blogs to their liking instead of just simply writing how I wanted. Then I got my rejection letter which I was expecting anyways since my gut feeling is never wrong. There are probably many things I could have changed or tweaked in my application but being so overwhelmed with excitement at the thought of blogging for a website overcame me and I hit 'send' so quickly without really looking at what I wrote.

My first reaction was really bummed but then I realized that I was trying to be someone i'm not and change my ideas, hopes and dreams for my wedding just to be recognized by a website. Losing sight of why I blogged in the first place; just to get MY ideas and MY thoughts down on paper (well computer) so that I wouldn't drive myself nuts.

NOT saying that my previous blogs were not my ideas but I tweaked some things to make my blog noticeable when really I don't care if it's read daily by tons of people or just myself (shout out to my best blog friend CurlySue who has been a blessing to talk to!).

So from now on i'm blogging my way and I hope you enjoy it! Don't expect it to have perfect grammar or punctuation! LOL

Crave a good e-pic session!

I spoke previously about my love for photography and how we decided on the photographer that we will use for our wedding and I also mentioned how when it rains it pours when it comes to weddings all in one year. I started seeing these beautiful engagement pictures that my other friends getting married this year had taken and I just was green with envy. I was bummed because our photographer lives in Toronto and it's not that easy to just schedule an engagement session. I mean it's easy to do, you just book a date and pay for his flight but should we splurge or should we just use one of the many pictures we have from one of our vacations?!

So I contacted our photographer to see how much it would cost us for the engagement session as well as when he would be available so I could get an idea of how much flights would cost. Although I already made up my mind regardless of the cost that I wanted to have e-pics taken! So we picked a date for Sunday, December 20th and even though I was super excited part of me wishes we could take them when it's a bit warmer out.

As the date approached I started surfing the web to get inspired and map out where I wanted to go in the city. I definitely wanted to go to Central Park but the question is, where in Central Park?! One night I was watching WE TV because I love watching everything and anything wedding related (I think I have a problem but I'm sure I'm not the only one!) and one of my favorite shows "My Fair Wedding" with David Tutera was on and the couple had a photo shoot in Central Park at the Belvedere Castle. I squealed and then picked my jaw up from the ground since I was so blown away by the beauty of the castle. I just knew that we had to go there for our pictures!Source

Ok so Central Park...check! Since it was around Christmas I thought it would be perfect to incorporate Rockefeller Center and the big Christmas tree PLUS our first date was at a restaurant located near Rockefeller so I figured we could swing by and take a picture or two there. What better way to have some symbolism in our photos!

For almost a whole day at work I scanned tons of websites trying to find more inspirations and then BAM! I stumbled upon this photographers blog and my eyes lit up! Everything I ever wanted in engagement pictures were right in front of my eyes. I fell in love all over again! RJT Pictures had a blog on a couple who had their engagement photos in NYC and I drooled....over and over again.

Doesn't it just make your heart melt at how beautiful and fun these photos are?!

I instantly forwarded the blog to my photographer and he agreed that those were great spots. I couldn't be more excited! Now it was up to figuring out what outfit to wear.....

Did you have to pay extra for your engagement photos or was it included in your package? Was it worth the splurge? Were you happy with your results? Was it easy finding an outfit?

My ideas are blossoming!

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So now that i've got the dress, picked our location/theme and colors...the next best thing is to decide on the flowers! Now typically most brides like the incorporte the tropical theme into their wedding by having local flowers from the island in their bouquet. Even though we are getting married in the caribbean I still want to maintain a simple, classy and elegant affair in a far away place. Does that make any sense? NOT saying that having a tropical themed wedding is not classy nor elegant but I want to keep it simple and not go too bright with the colors. Thanks to the Facebook Group "Majestic Colonial Brides" I was able to stumble upon real touch flowers. What are real touch flowers you ask? Well they are state-of-the-art-man-made flowers that look and feel geniunely real. They are not the type of flowers you find in Michaels or any other craft store. AND they won't wilt in the hot humid heat! I realize many brides use these flowers for their weddings since they don't have to worry about the flower being in season or not.

So I wandered around the internet for companies that provide these services and stumbled upon two that really catch my eye. Angels Accents has many gorgeous options and I've heard wonderful things about their products although their ordering process is a bit intimidating to me. There is also Enchanted Memories Store that also provides not just flowers but favors and such.

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LOVE hydrangeas and think they look so amazing in a bouquet.

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Love to incorporate yellow flowers into the mix to add some accent color with the blue. Tweedie flowers are so cute!

The Knot
I'm thinking this would be a top candidate for my bouquet.

Have you ever considered getting faux flowers for your wedding? If so, did you enjoy the quality? Would you do it over again with faux flowers?

If the shoe fits....

Ok so I previously spoke about my love for heels but how they can't be part of my wedding unfortunately. So the next best thing is ballet flats which I found by Dessy and I love how they have so many colors to choose from! Although I think i'm leaning towards ivory since I don't want people to focus their eyes on my shoes when I walk down the aisle. "Hello i'm up here!" ;-) PLUS I can wear them after wedding with jeans and cute top! Score!

What do you think? Should I add some color or keep it Ivory?

No heels allowed!

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Part of wedding dress shopping is figuring out what footwear to choose that will compliment your dress. Unfortunately I don't get to have fun with this category since i'm about half an inch taller than my FI. Boo! I didn't realize how excited I would be about a pair of heels until I went to shop for dresses for the first time and the wedding consultant mentioned to pick out a pair of shoes to try on with the dresses. So I went over to the shoe section and saw all these cute and pretty heels and that's when it hit me that I wasn't going to be able to enjoy a great pair of heels on my wedding day.

Normally I will wear heels at work since I don't need to worry about towering over people. I'm 5'8" to begin with so with heels I can look like a giant. LOL! Whenever my FI and I have to dress for a formal affair I have in the past worn heels but not a high ones.

I've read several blogs where brides talk about their shoes choices and I envy them!

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I just think the color would pop and add some flare! Oh how pretty you would look with a great pedicure!

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So now I am forced to wear a ballet flat most likely which is fine but let me just drool over these for a while. =)

Anyone else have to resort to flats for the wedding day? What did you choose to do?