So I have an incredibly talented family, I just have to say.  My mom is making our amazing ring bowls that I’ll be posting soon.  My cousin is making us our awesome cake topper.  My brother has made our signs–and I’m so excited to share them!!  I fell in love with this image a long time ago, and knew I wanted to recreate it:

Now I should probably let you know that Vince drives a smart car.  This is hilarious, because he’s a pretty big guy, and it’s so funny to see him in such a little car…

See?  Funny, huh?

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I don’t know about you other brides, but when I come across pictures of other weddings at our venue-I get so excited!  I love seeing shots that other photographers get, and I really love picturing us there in 91 days (YIKES!)

I love thinking about me and my girls chatting it up in front of this shed:

Love this dress shot from w. scott chester:

The above and below images were taken in the cabin where my girls and I will be getting ready!

So do you girls find yourselves googling your venue on a regular basis looking for images??  Yeah, me neither.

*unless indicated, all photos by The Reason Photographers

 I absolutely LOVE when bridal showers or bachelorette parties have a project, craft or activity.  This love does not extend to games, because, lets face it-bridal shower games are pretty horrific for the most part.  

A dear friend of mine has started a business called Wine and Designs.  I went to her house for lunch last week, and she had painted a glass for me with my married initials on it, and I LOVED it!  I think it’s such a cute thing to do with your bridesmaids or just some close friends.  Here are some ideas I came up with in a google image search:

I found it’s important to keep it simple if you’re not super artistic like me.  I love this one:

How cute would it be to make these for each of your girls, and have it look like them!?

Ok, so here’s my attempt.  The lighting is terrible, so the colors look wrong, but it’s kinda cute.  The letters are SO hard to do-so when I do another one, I’m probably going to stay away from writing anything…

Have any of you done this before?  It seems to me like the grown up version of paint your own pottery places.  Plus, you can do them at your house-and as soon as you’re finished painting you just bake them in the oven.  They are even dishwasher safe!  You can find all of the supplies here!

In case you haven’t noticed, I really love projects.  Like, when I am faced with a life event, my mind immediately starts racing about what kind of projects I can do and usually the more complicated the better.  See once I have an idea, it feels like a high at every phase from conception of the idea all the way until the project is finished.  This is what happened when I decided to send out moving announcements for our new house.

First, like everything in my life, I started my search on Etsy.  I found amazing letterpress, digital, and even handmade announcements.  However, none of them were just right.  When I am searching for something, I can’t explain it-I just know when I see it that it’s what I’m looking for.  This habit makes it very difficult for anyone to help me in my searches.

After etsy, I started thinking about moving, and boxes.  Then I thought it would be neat to use cardboard to make some sort of postcard to mail to our loved ones.  After about an hour walking around Michael’s trying to get ideas, I settled on some pretty vintage paper and some moving scrap book stickers.

From there, I went to the liquor store to do a little dumpster diving for boxes (classy, I know).  I also went to the post office and grabbed a few address stickers and some priority mail stickers (both free).

Here is the finished (very affordable) product:  I’m pretty happy with how they turned out!

Front:

Back:

So there you have it, handmade moving announcements that were fun, cheap and pretty easy make!!

Did any of you brides/new homeowners send out moving announcements?

Ok, so I have read so many blog posts about changing/not changing/hyphenating/merging names, so I thought I’d weigh in with my decision.

Vince and I have a very unique situation.  His last name has always been Klue.  He moved here 10 years ago from South Africa with his biological mother and his step father who has always been a true father to him.  Over the past 10 years this relationship has grown, and he and his step father are as close as a father and son could possibly be.  He has also had no contact with his biological father during these years.

When Vince and I began discussing marriage, I mentioned that while I love my last name-I definitely want us to share the same name.  However, the Klue name means absolutely nothing to me as I have never and will never meet the man who shares that same name.  I told Vince that as much as we both love and respect his “step” father, I would love nothing more than to take on his name rather than Klue.

Fast forward to this week.  Vince’s step father OFFICIALLY and LEGALLY adopted my 28 year old fiance on Tuesday.  This has been a very exciting and emotional week as we have been sure of this decision for a long time, and it means the WORLD to Vince and to his Dad that they are legally father and son.  SO, after the adoption was final, Vince was able to legally take his step father’s last name.

I love that we had this unique situation for a lot of reasons-one of them being the fact that Vince and I are BOTH getting new last names around the same time.  I am taking a last name that I am proud to have.  A name that comes from one of the most amazing men I’ve ever met (his father).  I feel so honored that he is going to be my father in law, and I’m so happy to share his name.  I also like the fact that I’m not the only one changing my name, and we are both going to have  a new name, and begin the first line of this name here in America!  Amazing!

So, that’s my situation. Unique, huh–but I think it’s pretty cool :)

Oh, and since I have to have a picture in every post, here’s a picture of my wedding band that I got today!  I am SO in love with it!  (although I don’t know why my hand looks so man-ish!)

What about you chicas?  Do any of you have a similar situation?  Anyone out there combine your last names to make a new name?  That is always so interesting to me, but I’ve never met anyone who’s done it…

The wedding videos I’ve seen lately are NOT your grandma’s boring wedding video.  These videos are incredibly creative and so well done.  I am currently working with our videographer, Steve to figure out how we can do this and what song we should use.  These three are my inspiration, and I only PRAY that we can come close to the coolness of these videos.

Check this one out-I love how the couple used the entire wedding party to make it more fun.

Brandon and Jessica - “I Believe in a Thing Called Love” from Toad Productions on Vimeo.

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I have never regretted our decision to not do an engagement session.  I didn’t think it was necessary for us, and I never saw a photo shoot I felt like I couldn’t live without.

Until now…

As you know, we were engaged in Paris.  So when I came across this photo shoot on this blog that was found on this blog taken by this photographer.

–I fell in love–

These are so incredibly romantic!  I just can’t stand it-and we must go back to Paris ASAP to recreate this session!

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Ok, so we are 115 days away from our wedding.  WOW.  That seems so close to me-and I know from following blogging brides that these days go by FAST!

I’m trying to decide what to do with my hair, and I hope you lovely ladies can help me!

First of all, I have very fine, wavy hair.  I straighten it all the time-as I can never get the curl to look right.  However, when it dries naturally, Vince LOVES it.  He is a big fan of curls, so I really would like to wear my hair in curls on our wedding day.  I don’t want to wear it down, though-because it tends to get very frizzy when I’m warm-and frizzy hair is not conducive to dancing the night away.

SO, I’m thinking something like this:

My mom says it’s too messy, so I found LC’s hair in this image below:

{found via google image search}

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While I am in the middle of planning our wedding for October, I am also a full time wedding planner.  To be honest, I get much more excitement and joy out of planning for other brides than I do planning my own wedding!  I think it’s because I don’t get stressed when it’s someone else’s wedding.  I am much more confident in my abilities as a planner than I am when it comes to making decisions for our wedding.

We were recently involved in the planning of a backyard reception after the couple were married in Vegas. The reception had a very simple budget and one goal: to celebrate their love with their closest friends and family. I believe this goal was definitely achieved!

Months leading up to the reception, clear wine bottles were collected, washed and labels removed in order to serve sweet tea…

Hundreds of hours were spent creating these lovely paper roses for the centerpieces…

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Before I start my post today, I just wanted to tell you sweet readers thank you for your excitement about our house, and we are happy to announce that they have accepted our offer!  We are doing inspections this week, and we close on August 10th!!  It is so surreal and exciting.  I told Vince the thing I’m the most excited about is putting our new KitchenAid Mixer right here on the counter:

So, on to today’s post:

My mom and I were browsing Etsy for ideas (naturally) for bridesmaid gifts and we came across this pattern that we love from seller Keyka Lou:

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