Krisa White Halter Dress (comes in 3 colors) // MISA Burnt Orange Midi Dress
87 days, 13 hours, 57 minutes, and 35 seconds until we say "I do"! Where has the time gone?! As we head into the last quarter of our engagement, I wanted to take a minute to reflect on what we accomplished in Q3.
This phase was filled full of lots of ups and downs, and honestly felt somewhat like an emotional rollercoaster for me. At the very end of June, I was forced to make a decision regarding my wedding party that I honestly never thought I was going to have to make. Everybody hears stories about bridesmaid drama, and after talking to several brides past and present - it's almost inevitable. Bridesmaids are typically like family to you, and families fight. With that being said, this situation wasn't exactly an ordinary situation where you can choose your battles wisely, I'll spare you the not-so glamorous details, but it severed the relationship between my bestfriend and I for good. (Click here for a great article by Wedding Wire on how to avoid bridesmaid drama)
Time heals everything. It took me awhile to overcome the wealth of emotions that came along with this ordeal before I got back on track with planning. So, the months of July and August felt like we really didn't do much towards planning this thing. However, I think anyone who has a year or longer engagement experienes this "lull"(outside of my personal debacle) where you feel like you should be doing something, but you're not. You've planned all the important stuff like the venue, photographer, save the dates etc. but it's not time to send invitations or start working on little details yet (click here for 10 ways to make the best of a wedding planning lull). With that being said, September rolled around and we went 0 to 60 overnight. Here's what we accomplished:
THE HONEYMOON
We are super excited to spend two weeks on our honeymoon in Hawaii! We will spend 5 days at the Four Seasons, and then move on to a Marriott property. While we have booked our flights, and our hotel, we haven't booked anything in terms of excursions, spa treatments, food etc. So if you have any reccommendations, please leave them below as we need all the reccommendations we can get! (Click here for helpful Honeymoon Tips & Ideas)
ORDERED INVITATIONS
Like our Save The Dates, we ordered our invitations through Minted as well! This was actually a really overwhelming process for me. I feel like this isn't dubbed a "stressful" part of planning by most, but my head was spinning in all different directions trying to make sure I picked a cohesive suite. I didn't want our entire suite to match perfectly, I liked the idea of picking designs from different designers that looked nice next to each other when all laid out together, but not "matchy matchy." This proved to be more difficult than I anticipated, but I'm really happy with the end result. Because our wedding is black-tie invited, we chose a white invitation, with black lettering, and gold foil. All three pieces are also wrapped by Minted's new Belly Band option to keep them put inside the envelope! I loved the idea of adding a Belly Band because it gave the white invitations a nice pop of color as well! We plan to send these out in the next two weeks.
BRIDAL SHOWER
I wasn't kidding when I said we went 0 to 60 this month! My MOH (my sister), and my mom threw my bridal shower in September! We chose to have the bridal shower at my house instead of renting a venue or having it at a restaurant. The theme was brunch and bubbly, and it was everything I wanted! If you know me, you know brunch is my favorite meal of the day so this was only appropriate and I ate my little heart out. Nothing like moms cooking!
REFINING THE BUDGET
We have spent a good portion of September looking at our budget and refiing our wants vs. needs. I've learned that this can be a really discouraging process! We are paying for most of the wedding ourselves, and we do not want to enter our marriage with debt attached to our names, so keeping all of our wants within the budget has been testing. I think my biggest piece of advice here would be to remember that your wedding day is soley about you and your groom. You are celebrating the unity of two people becoming one, and that can be done sans all the bells and whistles. We asked all of our married friends for one thing they couldn't have lived without on their wedding day, and one thing they could've lived without. Almost everybody said they couldn't have lived without the videographer, and that they could've lived without the wealth of flowers and minute details they didn't even notice. This was an interesting excercise that I highly reccommend trying if you're planning your own wedding! (Click here for 10 ways to avoid going over your budget)
"GETAWAY" TRANSPORTATION
Everything about our wedding is classic and elegant. Being that it's on New Years Eve, I invisioned a vintage getaway car. With that being said, we chose an old school Rolls Royce as our exit vehicle from AWC Limo in Charleston. (Click here to find transportation vendors reccommended in your area).
SHOP THE POST:
Thank you to Wedding Wire for sponsoring this post
No comments:
Post a Comment