My mom and moh put a ton of time and energy into making everything look just right. My moh shopped for months for vases and other containers. It really made everything look extra special! My ...]]> This past weekend was my bridal shower hosted by my mom, Brooke and the bridesmaids. They sure did throw a beautiful shower, I feel so loved!

My mom and moh put a ton of time and energy into making everything look just right. My moh shopped for months for vases and other containers. It really made everything look extra special! My mom made homemade jam for the favors and the table runners – see, I told you she is talented!

The food was amazing! They ordered bruschetta from my one of my favorite restaurants, Postino’s. My mom, grandma and the bridesmaids made the rest of the food.

After we ate lunch, we played games. The first one was so difficult! We had to match up the wedding tradition with the original meaning. I had no idea what some of those things meant!

The other game started when people arrived. Each person got a ring pop and if they said the word “wedding”, they had to give their ring pop to the person that caught them. These girls played the game well and ended up winning!

And I think the last game was my moh getting back at me from her bridal shower, ha! We played the game where I had to answer questions about my fiance and if I got one wrong, I had to chew a piece of gum…I ended up getting six wrong! I will never chew watermelon gum again!

{images via author’s personal collection}

We also had a gift opening. We got so many fun kitchen things that I can’t wait to try out. I also got a beautiful hanger from Brooke and Leila to use for my dress for the day of the wedding. Its going to look amazing in pictures. My mom also gave me the garter she made for the big day. It is beautiful and has a piece of my dress on it and also some lace from her dress. I will get better pictures of those and post them soon!

I had such a wonderful time, it went by so fast! This is probably a small preview of how the wedding will be. Just have to enjoy every moment!

Have you attended your bridal shower yet?

© Elizabeth Anne Designs: The Wedding Blog, 2011 · Permalink · 3 comments · StumbleUpon It!
Posted in: bridal shower, floral and decor

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Invitations went out!

I wish I had better pictures, these were taken on my webcam.  We did the invitations ourselves and were really pleased ...]]> Today is officially 2 weeks from the wedding! I can’t believe we made it! I have been crazy busy with finals, wedding showers, wedding stuff and packing.  Here are a few things I wanted to share…

Invitations went out!

I wish I had better pictures, these were taken on my webcam.  We did the invitations ourselves and were really pleased with how they turned out.  Garrett designed them in illustrator and we had them printed at a local print shop.  The owner is a family friend and gave us a really great deal.  We purchased the envelopes online here. I believe it’s a small, family company, but we loved working with them and our navy blue metallic coin style envelopes were our favorite part of the invitation.

Hair and Make-up run through:

I decided a while back that my sister was going to do my hair and make up.  She is a couple years younger than me and I love how she does her hair so I just thought that would work just fine for the wedding.  The closer it got to the wedding, the more worried I was about how the wedding day would go down.  What if she didn’t know how to do my hair like I wanted? What if we ran out of time? What if we yelled at each other all morning? (We are sisters, sometimes we yell).  It was just a little worrisome to me.  I guess my mother could read my mind because she texted me a couple weeks ago and suggested that I hire a stylist.  So I did, and that was/is a great decision! Her name is Terin Sessions, and my mom met her at church! My mom was at a church function and saw the most adorable 3 little girls bouncing around in the hall.  Their hair was gorgeous and my mom set out to find there mother.  Sure enough, she specializes in wedding hair and make up! Don’t you just love church?!

She did my sisters hair and she will be doing mine…here are some pictures from the wedding run through:

Terin–you are amazing! I LOVE it! I have natural curls that the Captain goes ga-ga over so I wanted to accentuate those in some kind of romantic updo.  She hit my thoughts spot on! It’s simple, soft, elegant and definately brings out my curls! And my make-up–I didn’t know I could look like that! I’m not really a make-up girl, so I was completely terrified of covering my face with loads of make-up for the wedding, but this was wonderful.  We went for a more natural look, and I am completely in love with how it turned out!  After looking at the pictures, we are going a little darker on the eyes, and a different color on the lips for TBD. Love it!

And guess what all you Pheonix lovers….Terin is moving back to Arizona (Mesa/Pheonix area) so she will be available as soon as this spring! Let me know if you want more information!

Bridal Showers

I wish I had more pictures to post from both of the wonderful bridal showers that were thrown for me! These pictures are from my local shower…friends and family I have been around the past 4 years while at school.  I had a hometown shower last weekend that included lots of good family and friends that I grew up with.  The best part about showers is seeing everyone that you haven’t seen in forever, what a special treat!

This cake was make by a sweet friend, isn’t it incredible?

One of my favorite parts of the shower was Bride Bingo.  This helps the awkward hour of opening gifts.  Each guest receives a blank bingo sheet.  They they can fill in all the squares with what they think the bride-to-be will open.  As the bride opens the gifts, guests can check off items on their bingo sheet until they get 5 in a row and yell….Bingo…of course! It is actually a lot of fun and everyone at my showers got way into it (Cherie, love you!).  One of my aunts kept yelling, “Spatula…where is the spatula?”  Hilarious, to say the least.  

Now that I am officially finished with finals, I can focus on the last minute details.  First on the list, packing up and moving our stuff out to Lubbock! We are getting our marriage license tomorrow and eventually finalizing our music playlist for the reception.  I am moving back home this weekend to spend the last week of single-ness with my family. Oh…and it’s Christmas! Maybe I should start buying those christmas presents :)

I can’t believe it’s almost here!

Any last minute suggestions?

© Elizabeth Anne Designs: The Wedding Blog, 2010 · Permalink · 5 comments · StumbleUpon It!
Posted in: beauty, bridal shower, the planning process

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We were supposed to be meeting my mom for a long overdue trip to get some wings when a last minute location change made us somewhat suspicious. Wings at a hotel? Um, ok mom. Only, when we pulled into the parking lot, Mr. named every single car there: “Hey, ...]]> We knew it was coming, just not when, where, how, or what.

We were supposed to be meeting my mom for a long overdue trip to get some wings when a last minute location change made us somewhat suspicious. Wings at a hotel? Um, ok mom. Only, when we pulled into the parking lot, Mr. named every single car there: “Hey, that’s my parents’ car…your mom’s, Aunt Candy & Uncle Billy, Ferd & Larisa…” and so on, and so on.

Add on top of that…when we got inside mom took us to a ballroom outside of which sat a sign, “Kyle & Christen’s Couple’s Shower”.

Uh huh, this was it! We walked inside and saw all our immediate family (some of which drove hours and hours to get there!) and some of our parents’ close friends. How cool!

My mom reads my blog and had done her best to use everything that I said I liked to decorate for the event. Blues and browns everywhere, it really was beautiful! Blue and tan paper lanterns hung from the ceiling,

Even her version of Amy Atlas’ dessert tables!

They served my mom’s famous mint iced tea lemonade (I always know it’s summer when she serves it!) as well as a bunch of desserts made by different members of our families.

My uncle Jim and my mom made lovely speeches. My mom explained to everyone how I have been blogging about our wedding planning (thanks for keeping it a secret, mom :P ), and how she tried to do everything I liked for the shower, even telling everyone about my floral design shower post…only to announce that our florist was coming and going to give a floral arranging class!! Now THAT was a surprise!!!

Sarah from Allium Designs is awesome and I can’t wait for her to do our wedding flowers. She gave us a quick tutorial with some tips and tricks and then circled around helping us all out as we made arrangements of our own. Even most of the guys made arrangements!

The best part about the class wasn’t that we all got to bring something home afterwards, but rather how it completely squashed any sort of awkwardness of the event and brought both families together. People were meeting and talking to new people, working together, getting each others’ opinions, showing off and complimenting the floral masterpieces (ok, sorta) we had all created.

Me, my mom, my fantastic bridesmaid Megan, and our creations!

Everyone and their masterpieces!

If anyone is considering this idea for their shower, I would say TOTALLY DO IT!!!! It was a perfect activity for the afternoon, especially for the bride who isn’t the “just sit around all afternoon and play embarrassing games” type. What started out to be a somewhat awkward gathering turned into a true celebration by the end. It was such an amazing day. The fact that we got presents was neat, but totally not as neat as the feeling of seeing every single person of both families happy and truly enjoying themselves and the afternoon.

{ all photos courtesy of my aunt }

© Elizabeth Anne Designs: The Wedding Blog, 2010 · Permalink · 7 comments · StumbleUpon It!
Posted in: bridal shower

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[If you slowly pull the paper out of the sleeve, the text is framed by the pretty die-cut.]

I’m so excited and am so thankful to have such great friends and sisters with great taste ...]]> Today I received an invitation–to a party for me! It is for my bridal shower, which will be at Crown and Crumpet in San Francisco.

[If you slowly pull the paper out of the sleeve, the text is framed by the pretty die-cut.]

I’m so excited and am so thankful to have such great friends and sisters with great taste in stationery. If you are in need of some cute invites, this one is a kit from Michael’s! You can check out all the invitation kits here.

What are your bridal shower plans? Anyone opting for a couples shower?

© Elizabeth Anne Designs: The Wedding Blog, 2010 · Permalink · 3 comments · StumbleUpon It!
Posted in: bridal shower, stationery

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First up…MY SHOWER!!

I went back home to Nebraska over President’s Day weekend, and somewhere in the jammed packed schedule I had was my bridal shower!  Two of my fabulous aunts threw ...]]> Oh man…where did the time go?!  Sorry for my absence…wedding planning and life just sorta took over!!  But alas…I am back and full of fun stuff to tell you about!

First up…MY SHOWER!!

I went back home to Nebraska over President’s Day weekend, and somewhere in the jammed packed schedule I had was my bridal shower!  Two of my fabulous aunts threw the shower for me and it was perfect!

Aunt J on the left…me in the middle..and Aunt K on the right!

We ate Pizza and cake, played some non-cheesy games, and I opened gifts with a time-of-day theme.

What is a time-of-day theme you ask??  Well each guest was sent a specific time with their invite for which their gift should correspond…brilliant no?  I think it made the whole gift-opening process less awkward for me and a little more fun for my guests.  I opened the gifts in the order of the day…and it was fun to see what all the ladies in my life came up with (and what they thought I might be doing! haha).

For instance…my Aunt C decided that around 8pm I would probably like to drink wine (yep!), watch a movie (yep!), and eat popcorn (double yep!)!

My little niece (to my right) was quite the helper when it came to opening gifts!

My Aunt J thought she was pretty funny…she had midnight.  Which apparently starts with me as a princess at the ball…

notice the crown and fancy champagne flutes

and then ends with me as a maid (get it….like Cinderella!)

see the giant thing of cleaning supplies on my lap…and the scrubber that looks like me!

Of course I got a lot of things off my registry as well…new towels and bath accessories (7am!)…baking and cooking stuff (4-7pm)…and even some work-out gear from my BM S…she really does know what I am doing at 5pm most days!

The few days leading up to the shower I have to admit I was quite nervous.  I was worried about having all the attention on me and not saying or doing the right things…but once I got there and saw everyone…my nerves just went away!  It ended up being a lot of fun and my friends even said they enjoyed it!  Ok so wanna see who some of these important ladies in my life are??

I’m in the white…top left with my BM A, top right with BM S, bottom left with my sisters (& BMs) J & A, and bottom right with my Mom!

So there ya have it…my bridal shower was a success!

How about yours??  What kind of theme did you have…or are planning to have?

**All photos via author’s personal collection

© Elizabeth Anne Designs: The Wedding Blog, 2010 · Permalink · 8 comments · StumbleUpon It!
Posted in: bridal shower

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