Excitement the Day Before

We've been married for 21 days now; we've been back from our honeymoon for two weeks, and today is the first chance I've had to write a post! I'm going to write several posts on the wedding and honeymoon so I can break it up a bit. I'm going to write about the good and the bad -- so for those of you who want to keep your rose colored wedding glasses on, I will warn you before I post the bad side by putting that section in between ** symbols.

Overall: the wedding and reception were absoloutly amazing -- beyond anything I had imagined while planning. The honeymoon was perfect -- I am so glad we decided to do an all inclusive. I highly recommend the UCLA Faculty center for weddings and receptions and I also highly recommend going to Sandals Ocho Rios for your honeymoon!

Day 1: Settling in and the Rehearsal
UCLA is just far enough away from the OC that we had to get a hotel room the night before the wedding. My bridesmaids and I decided to get a 2 bedroom suite at the W rather than getting separate rooms. The plan was to check into the W in Westwood at 2:00pm (the check in time we were given when I made the reservation), go up to the room, unpack, relax a bit, and then go get our nails done at 3:30. The rehearsal was scheduled for 6:00pm, so this would give us plenty of time to get ready for the rehearsal.

**
So, we arrived at the hotel around 2:30 pm and first there was a problem with my credit card. When I travel I don't carry all of my credit cards with me, so since we were going to Jamaica for the honeymoon I didn't think it was necessary to bring everything in my wallet, so I cleaned it out. I only brought one credit card with me, one with $1000 available on it - just enough to cover our $650 hotel room. So I gave the guy my card when we checked in and he said it was declined. I was shocked, so I asked him how much he was running it for. He told me that they run it for double the expected cost at the end --so he ran it for $1400! I explained to him that when I travel I don't bring my big cards with me, so I only brought one that would cover the cost of the room and a few incidentals. He told me (three of my bm's were with me: Lisa, Meghann, and Nicolle) that I would need to put the $1400 down or I could not have the room. Then he proceeded to tell me that "the large suites are generally reserved for their high end clientel". Seriously, was the insult really necessary? After a bit of arguing with him, and me asking twice to speak to his manager (which he never let me do), I finally gave him my visa check card, so they could take the $1400 out of my checking account while we stayed, and then I could pay the balance on my cc. He threw out a few other insults while he was at it; one about how he has never rented out a suite for only one night, another telling us that we would have to sign a form promising not to "trash" the place or have more than 4 people at a time in the room, and another reminding us that there could be no noise after 10 pm. Seriously, how old did he think we were? I am pretty sure he decided that we were not the "proper clientel" for the W and decided to treat us like trash. After all of that he proceeded to tell us that the room was not ready and that we would have to come back at 4:00! So, we left our stuff with the bell hop and went off to get our nails done.
**

I love getting mani-pedi's! It was a lot of fun to sit there with my bm's and be pampered and to relax after the bs at the W. We were looking forward to getting to our room and getting ready for the rehearsal. So, we get back to the hotel and get our room keys. The bellhop said he would deliver our bags to the room, so we only carried up what we needed to get ready. We went up to our room, and it was big and beautiful but...

**
It wasn't the room I had requested. It was a smaller room than the one I had put a deposit on. I specificaly requested the two bedroom suite with a separate sitting room so the make-up artist would have a place to work on the day of the wedding. I was told that would not be a problem since I made my reservation 6 months in advance. At this point I was frustrated and just wanted to get ready for the rehearsal - so Nicolle and I started getting ready. Lisa and Meghann (I had 4 bm's but Kara met us at the hotel later) decided that they would try to take care of the room situation. In the meantime, our bags were delivered -- but 4 of them were missing! This part is really long, so I'm not going to get into the details, but the short of it is that while I'm getting ready my bm's told me that we would be changing room right then and there. So, I threw on a robe and they took me to the new correct room and they took care of making sure all of our luggage got to the new room.
So, we continued getting ready in the new room. Then I get a call from Elaine (my day of coordinator) saying that the rehearsal would have to start a little late because the ceremony area was being used. This was good news because we were running late due to the room changes. As we were almost ready to leave, the bellhop brings up 3 of the 4 "lost" bags and then tells us that they can't give us the 4th bag because there are wine bottles in it and they don't allow guests to bring their own alcohol. What? Who are they to look inside our bags? I wasn't the one to deal with this - Lisa got on the phone to deal with it (she is a travel agent and she used her status to get things done!). Eventually they delivered the 4th bag to our room and they told Lisa that they were going to give me a $100 room credit.
**

Okay.. I need to take a break now. I will finish this post later (8/30/08).

Time to continue...(8/31/08)
We arrived at the rehearsal around 6:30 and everyone else was already there. Apparently Daryl thought for a just a moment that I had gotten cold feet! Elaine made sure the rehearsal went well and it was actually a lot of fun. My dad was very nervous and had a hard time walking at a slow pace, but eventually he got it.

After the rehearsal we did the dinner. It was in the same location as the wedding, but in a different banquet room. They had it decorated beautifully and the food was amazing!

I could ramble on about it forever, so I'm just going to give you the highlights. The best thing about it was having all of our family there, because we knew that on the wedding day we would not be able to spend time with them. Daryl's parents had a bottle of Dom that they had been saving for a special occasion, so we broke that out at the rehearsal - it tasted like honey!
His mom also made blue and gold cookies shaped like flowers that were used to decorate the center of the tables -- they tasted great.

The food was excellent, so it was a good precursor to what would happen the next day. For me the biggest highlight of the night was surprising my grandma with a birthday cake and gifts -- it was her 90th birthday on 08.08.08; the night of the rehearsal. She was so happy and shocked!

When the night was over I had a special gift for Daryl that I gave him and told him not to open until he was alone. We had already exchanged our gifts to eachother the day before - I got him a Citizen Eco Watch and he got me diamond earrings. The rehearsal coudn't have been any more perfect than it was.

Okay, I will post separately about the wedding and honeymoon. Bye for now!

Update 09.01.08

**

So, the girls all go back to the hotel room to have our slumber party. Which would have been perfect except that I noticed that my dress was hanging outside of its garment bag and I decided that I wanted to get everything ready for the next day. At this point we realized that the garment bag was missing! Somehow as everything was being transferred from the other room, the garment bag got lost. Apparently, no one thought to put the dress in the bag before transporting it. I made the mistake of assuming that the hotel had made this mistake and I yelled "how stupid are they carrying a wedding dress 4 floors in an elevator without putting it in the garment bag!" When all of a sudden my moh starts crying -- how was I supposed to know that she was the one that did it? Anyway, this caused some drama, which eventually worked itself out with a long bubble bath, a long talk, and some champagne. In the meantime, the W hotel is still looking for the garment bag which was left in the room (btw -- this was not one of those plastic cheapy garment bags, it was a nice fabric one with a special pocket for the veil). The following morning my wedding coordinator, Elaine, brought me her garment bag to borrow for the day -- we had to transport the dress from the hotel to the wedding site where I would be getting dressed.

**

Okay -- I will finish this in a new post!

Wedding Pics...

I only have a few that are worth posting... who knows how long it will take to get the professional

ones!

I will say that every thing turned out even more beautiful than I ever imagined! :-)

Just a tease...

No time to post for awhile, but here are a few honeymoon pics for fun!

Bye Bye for Now

Tomorrow is my bridesmaids brunch and spa day, Friday is the rehearsal, and Saturday is the wedding. I really can't wrap my head around it all. I have moments when it hits me, like my minor freak-out Monday at the dentists office, but mostly it doesn't yet seem real. I'm sure it will all seem very real soon.

So, this is my last post until I return from the honeymoon! Ocho Rios here we come!

Thanks for everyone's encouragment, advice, and comments. You have all made this journey much easier and more interesting.

Bye bye for now.

Programs are Done!

Making the programs was a family affair. After printing them, I took everything down to my parents house and we put them together assembly line style. The best part about this was seeing my brother so happy to be involved. Here are the details:

• Cover: Stardream Quartz with aqua printing (I used my HP InkJet 932c)
  
• First layer: Vellum
  
• Middle layer: Copy paper (I cheated and made the copies at work, and used their paper cutter!)
  
• Ribbon from Jo-Anne's (50 cents a spool)

After looking at templates in Illustrator, Publisher, and MS Word, I ended up going with the Word template. I know that isn't very creative, but what I wanted was so simple.

I printed 100 programs for 120 guests and I've instructed my fh's sisters to hand one per couple or single. The Venn Diagram on the last page is printed on the Vellum. I think they look very pretty, but like my brother said, most will end up in the trash or on the floor of people's cars.

Table Names and Escort Cards Part II

The escort cards are done, well except for one person who called LAST NIGHT to say her husband will come with her. My moh did all of the handwriting on them for me.


We color coded the cards for the meals, but we also decided to add a stamp to the back with the meal choice. I found menu stamps at papersource.com and then used a Versa Magic Multi-Surface Chalk Ink Pad to stamp the escort cards (in Sea Breeze). I had tried other stamp pads, but they would just smear off of the Stardream surface.



The table names are schools where we have either been students or where we have worked (in some cases both). We are seating my side at tables with my fh's schools and his side at tables with my schools.


On the back of the table names we put our school picture and some interesting info about us from that time.


I found the daisy holders on ebay for cheap -- they are really seating card holders, but they work pretty well for holding up the table names.
We thought this would be a nice way to tie in our Education Theme without it being too cheesy!
~ The only project I have left to do is making my veil! I've finished our programs and I will blog about them later today!

Sweet Things

On Friday my moh and I spend the ENTIRE day making my wedding favors --white chocolate daisy suckers. They look and taste amazing! Instead of posting about the entire experience, I'm just going to post lots of pictures. Enjoy!





This is what 150 suckers in a box looks like!

Daisy Treats

I don't have time to blog tonight, but I wanted to show the world what me and my moh worked on all day today. More to come...

Making that hair Bling!

I was at the mall the other day and I saw these beautiful hair pins with crystals and beads. I thought they would look lovely with my curls and my dress. So, I asked the sales girl how much they were... I gasped... $35.00 each plus tax. I would need at least 6 of them... they were sooooo small...There was no way I could spend over $200 just for some hair bling. So, I decided that I could make my own hair bling!


First, I must give you some back ground information. One of my hobbies is making jewelry. I've been making it since about 1996 and I am pretty good, but it is an expensive hobby, it is hard on my eyes and finger-tips, and I never found a way to make any real money at it; so, it remains a hobby. I made my best friends wedding jewelry a few years ago, and I've made lots of bridal party jewelry. However, due to time restrictions I did not make my own bm's jewelry; instead, I found someone who makes a similar style to myself and I hired out! Okay, so I got a little off topic.

The point is that I have tons of swarovoski crystals and gold wire just sitting around my house. So here is what I managed to come up with:





9 crystal hair pins! I have no idea how much they cost me; the pins were left over from my hair trial, the crystals and gold wire I bought years ago and was just sitting around not being used. So, in a way they were free. I made 3 of the 9 pins with Pacific Opal crystals, which is the color I had my bridesmaids jewelry made of. This is a fun project that I did while watching TV, it was very relaxing and a bit theraputic as well!

Bustles, Buttons, and Beads

I got rid of the butt button! I decided to take a risk and fix the bustle on my dress myself. After perusing many websites on the topic of bustles, I figured that the simplicity of my dress would allow for a single point french bustle that would not require a professional seamstress to do (see image below on the right). First, I had to remove the butt button and the loop from the dress.

Though this was easy, I was not pleased with the black/grey residue it left behind. I tried using Oxiclean on the spots, but it only faded it and did not actually get rid of it. There are two things keeping me from crying about this A) from a distance the stain can not be seen B) I still have to take my dress to be cleaned and pressed before the wedding.

I bought the supplies I would need for my bustle at JoAnnes:

• very fine bead needles (thinner than regular needles since the fabric is so fine)
  
• clear thread
  
• clear nylon snaps
  
• off white ribbon
  
• Stop Fray glue

The rest of the supplies I already had at home: Off-White thread, pins, swarovoski crystals, scissors, seam ripper.

After removing the button I cut a length of ribbon and sewed a snap on to it; I then sewed the other part of the snap to the underside of the dress on the lining (underneath where the original butt button was) and a small piece of ribbon above that to create a loop.

Then I took the ribbon with the snap attached and sewed it to the underside of the first layer of my dress -- in the same spot where the original loop was. By folding the fabric in half so the seams met, I was able to determine that this was the center of the fabric. I used the clear thread here and then added a crystal to the outside so it would be easier to find. Picture on the left is of the underside of the dress. Picture on the right is what it looks like from the outside -- the crystal does not photograph very well, but it can be seen and felt easily.

To bustle the dress: Lift the outer chiffon layer where the crystal is and bring up underneath itself to where the button and loop are on the dress lining. First snap the button, then pull the ribbon through the loop and tie. The first picture on the left shows what the loop and snap look like underneth the chiffon - if you look real close you can see the black residue. The other pictures are of the dress bustled.

Since I'm not wearing the dress, you can't see the whole effect -- but this is pretty much what it will look like. I used the Stop Fray on the ribbon and let it dry before testing the bustle. It took me about two hours to do this -- a little slow because I was so concerned about messing it up.

Let me know if you have any questions! I am not a seamstress, but thankfully I was in girlscouts for 10 years and I learned a little bit about sewing by hand and I learned that I can do anything if I put my mind to it!