wedding details

 

My wedding veil that I just loved. Personality made for by my friend Bonnie along with the dress alterations.

Because our wedding colors were orange and brown I made sure to have orange shoes. The men wore orange socks.

Yes.That's Wellington in a tux.

I made my own paper flower bouquet with a few pom-poms made from yarn.

One of my favortie photos. My Dad and I.

The wedding rings by Uncle gave us as a wedding gift.

With our wedding date ingraved in the inside and each other's name.

My engagement ring. That was Mike's grandmothers.

Aisle tissue flowers. 

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Boat ride to the reception house. My wedding gift from my husband. The man knows what I like. One of my favorite moments on your wedding day. Just time to take it all in together.

Center pieces with oranges. And water bottles on each table.

Pen holder made with yarn by me.

Mason jars with photos of the grandparents. Special brewed beer by Mark, my brother-in- law.

The guest book photos with DIY photobooth. Which I still need to put together.

More mason jars with candles.

Yarn balls on string I made for wall decor. 

We loved our photos. Thanks to the great photographers at: Artessence Studio

Our friends and family must think we are a rude couple as we still haven't sent out all of our thank you notes.

wedding invitations

tipping is not only for cows

I made these tags for our wedding. They were used to tell the guest the seating assignments. We also placed them around the reception area for miscellaneous information, and to make sure that people tiped our fabulous waitresses. I bought pre-cut mini broads at my local Michael's art supply store. Then I added masking tape around the edges and painted them with special blackboard spray paint. After the paint dried I removed the tape for the white border look. My Dad was kind enough to dust off the power tools and drill holes on each mini board. Later I added the yarn throw to be able to hang them. My maid of honor's handwriting.

W

This image rocks. Thanks to my father-in-law who took it. Makes Wellington look like the opposite of what he is really like. He looks pretty mean in this image. But he was just yawning. I guess the ceremony was boring for him.

We had to include Wellington in our wedding. We even got him a little doggy tux, as you can tell from the image. Luckily for me Wellington wasn't too mad about having to wear it. He understood it was a special occasions and he's no longer a bastard child. My maid of honor walked him down the aisle.

During the reception (while we were on the boat) we were told that Wellington followed the waitresses around the house waiting to see if any bit of food got dropped. We feed him very well (although we made sure to have a can of his favorite wet food at the reception, which is like a fast food happy meal for dogs). However, you wouldn't be able to tell by the way he hunts for extra food. At one point my maid of honor saw him having a cupcake that somehow got placed on the floor. Now we know he likes carrot cake.

cupcake

Thanks Micheal for the image.

Thanks to this site I was able to order my own DIY cupcake tower for our wedding. It was one of the first things I ordered, and one of the last things to get done. Which worked out well for me.

Once I had a clear vision of the main theme I could work on the cupcake tower. Our wedding had a brown and orange yarn theme. I used my limited crochet skills to make the border of the cupcake tower and a glue gun to make the yarn stick. I spray-painted the cardboard with cooper paint. On the sides of the tower I added fake orange flowers glued with fake diamond pins to hold down the flower pedals.

I knew I wanted cupcakes instead of a cake for our wedding. However, I wanted to be able to "cut the cake" so the cupcake tower was perfect because I was able to have both. Have my cake and eat too. ha ha.

Mike found the cupcake lady at the green market and came home with tasty cupcakes and my taste buds agreed, we were a match. We ordered red velvet, strawberry key lime and our favorite, carrot cake. She came and placed them on the tower for us while we were at the ceremony, so I didn't have a chance to see it before everyone else. But it was perfect. Her cupcakes are big and at one point I wasn't sure if they would fit. As you can see they did work out.

We also had mason jars filled with sand and a candle in each of them around the outside of the reception house. So the extra mason jars on the table with the cupcake tower tied in together nicely. I'm not sure who placed them there, but whoever did, thanks!

photo booth

Your love shines so bright. I need Shades. -Wellington

After reading tons of wedding blogs, I decided that having a photo booth was a must. It just seemed fun, and who doesn't like to have pictures of themselves?

Except having a photo booth was easier said than done.

I found this site and thought I had struck gold. Little did I know my computer's operating system needed to be updated to accommodate the program. So I placed an order for mac os x snow. That photo booth runs on automater. What? What is that?? I had no clue. My friend was kind enough to spend countless hours trying to make it work for me.

Then I found this site. I gave in and purchased spark booth made by adobe. Very user-friendly. I was able to make easy settings and to make all the photos print in black and white. Not only was it cost friendly but I think it also gave it the feel of a real photo booth in a DIY kinda way. The program printed the pictures on a 4 x 6 glossy paper.

The background for the photo booth was orange paper garland, which I found on etsy a little less then a week before the wedding. Thanks so much to the seller who didn't charge me a rush fee.

And no photo booth is complete with out photo props. I came across this site and got an idea of props for the ones we used. The huge sunglasses & the funny glasses in the photos above we got at Party City. To give the photo booth more light I got a 150-watt incandescent portable work light.

The photo booth is one of my favorite things we did that day. Our guest book will be filled with the images captured that evening. Every one wrote their thoughts and best wished on the printed photos.

what went wrong

Image also found posted on twitter. With my humorous reaction via instagram. haha.

It all really started with the shoes. Not just any shoes. I'm talking about the most important accessory that any woman and maybe a metro-sexual man could relate too... My freaking wedding shoes.

I started my wedding list with "Shoes" . I knew it was important, because of my ridiculously small, cute feet. Finding proper fitting shoes in the style I wanted was probably harder than finding the Groom (sorry Mike). In case you care to know how happy a lady can be when she finds the right pair, read this.

I found a great pair online, but most websites did not have my size. However, one website did list a size 5, so I excitedly ordered the shoes. When they arrived (from China), however, they turned out to be a size 6.

I should have known this one magical website which listed the shoes in my size was too good to be true. I should have questioned when the seller started asking me why I wanted to ship the shoes to an address different than my billing address (How many times do online shoppers ship to a work address instead of their home??? almost every time, right?). Another warning flag should have been the sellers curious complaints about how expensive the shipping would be. I mean, come on, your the seller, if you don't want to pay the shipping costs, you require on your site that the purchaser pays for shipping.

However, i did account for the fact I was buying from a small seller in China who maybe wasn't experienced with our consumer customs.

Here is a sample of the many emails regarding these shoes:

Dear Jessica,
Nice day, thanks for you ordering in our online store, About your order, we will devilery to you as soon as possible, but i have a question , why you shipping address and billing address is not the same, can you give me a explain, hope you can respons quickly. thanks.
yours, leo

Leo-

I entered my billing address and then to the address i need them shipped to.

When can I expect my order?

Thanks

Jessica

Dear jessica,
Thanks for you respons. we will delivery i t to you in 24 hours. and any problems, please connect us freely.

Great- I look forward to a tracking number.

Thanks!

hi jessica, you order shoes have been delivey, and the tracking number i will give you later, please wait some time. thanks for you understand.
yours,leo

Leo:

It has been 11 days since I placed my order. I haven't seen my tracking number. Where are the shoes I order?

You charged my credit card. Please advise.

Dear friend:
you may receive the shoes, you tracking number is EE423540265CN, you can check it inhttp://www.ems.com.cn/english-main.jsp, they show you have receive the package.
best wishes for you.
your,leo

I can't track the shoes with this number. Please resent.

I haven't received any thing at this point.

Please advise.

OK, i will check it, please wait sometimes.

What address did you ship them to? I need more information.

I receive the shoes. You sent me the WRONG size.

I need to return them to you!

I want my money back and I want to return the shoes to you. I didn't order a 6. I ordered a 5.

Please tell me what to do?

And it went on and on for several emails later.

Unfortunately, not only is that pair a very large size 6, but it still sits with shipping box under my office desk supporting my feet as a foot rest. I even offered to pay the shipping costs to return the shoes, just to try to get some money back- but I think the guy spent most of the purchase price on shipping them here.

The guy's main idea to rectify the situation was for me to give them to a friend. Really?? If I wanted to buy shoe for a friend, I would have done that. He couldn't wrap his head around the idea that I only purchased the shoes because I thought they were my size, and that I was totally un-interested in paying for shoes that are marked size 6.

After that, I decided to purchase domestically only, I settled on a pair from e-bay which the seller claimed were only worn once. Right... But that's another story.

wedding shoes

i'm in love with my new 4" high-stiletto heels. i've known for a while that my wedding shoes had to be orange. yes- orange- it is one of our wedding colors. they are from christian louboutin. the 4" heels sold me. also, with mike being 6"5 and me being, ... well my driver license says 5"1, i could use the extra inches. plus, i'm digging the red sole thing. even if the red sole comes off and they losing the trademark. i still happen to think they are very sultry.

mike mentioned that since they are my wedding shoes they should only be worn that day. where does he come up with that?! i have no idea- its the 21st century.

by the way, i'm starting to think that the only traditional thing about our wedding is going to be the fact that we are both from opposite sexes.

wedding dress shopping

what an experience. for a few weeks i shopped solely online for my wedding dress, as i'm an online shopping devotee. i feel more comfortable when strangers aren't lurking and watching my every move. however, i sometimes give in and shop in stores depending on what i need to buy.

either way, after spending hours shopping online, i decided that i had found the prefect dress. so i called up my mother and shared the news with her. we decided that my great aunt would make it and i was a thrilled soon-to-be bride. however, due to special circumstances that wasn't able to happen.

so back to square one, my mom and i went for a drive, all the way to david's bridal. apparently, they were having a huge sale and due to this, there weren't enough sales women to handle the massive amount of estrogen in the premises with customer service.

after waiting in line, i made an appointment for the following day because they were booked for the rest of the day. the next day, on time, i was taken to a room were the mirrors where placed outside the dressing room. so i was forced to walk outside to the mirrors and everyone and their mother stood voicing there opinions either by stares or vocally.

there, my mom stood as well, looking and laughing at me. i am the tiniest bride known to our bridal dress industry. the dress i chose was pinned back about 6 times, however, i looked and felt pretty good and just knew this was the dress i wanted. made the purchase. now i should have it ready for alterations within the next two weeks or less.

i'm also happy that i was able to share my dress shopping experience with my mom. thank God for that.