The Bachelorette Party: Part 2 (Sin City)

The Bachelorette Party: Part 1 (Pre-Vegas)

On the way to Vegas for the Bachelorette: bride to be, the MOH and the bridesman.

Another Reason to Love Google: Wedding Templates!

I just saw this on the site GeekSugar - very cool!

"Google has taken notice and is rolling out 20 new wedding templates within Google Docs to utilize during your wedding planning. Manage your guest lists, catering, and flower details, and even set up email templates to get updated contact info from your guests so you get those (sometimes pricey) invitations into the right hands. "

Full article.

Disney Gowns at Costco with savings starting at 40% off!

You Washington peeps are so lucky!! I just got an email from Costco and the Costco in Issaquah Washington is having a Disney gown event & the gowns have savings starting at 40% off!! Normally stores trick you with UP TO 40% off (i.e everything is 15% off but somewhere in the pile there is something 40% off) but not good ol' Costco! Read about it *here* & also make sure to make an appointment! MOB/bridesmaid first blogged about the Disney dresses in her official first post here at WW check it out*here*

Wedding iPhone APP

 In addition to my bridesman/Bff & groomsmen who have tried to keep me sane & help out as much as they can, I also have another life saver - my assistant aka & right hand man, my iphone!!!  It's been a while since I told you about some of my iphone apps that have helped me with wedding planning,  and with only 71 days till the wedding, these 2 apps help me know exactly how many days till each wedding related event.

First up is the free Days Till app, I like this app because it allows me to add a picture (see pic below), choose the font/color for the words that appear on the pic & even lets me move around the words - in this case I moved them so you can see the Hollywood sign, pay no attention to the sign that says caution & no trespassing ;-) the second picture shows a list of all the events I added, as you can see it's crunch time!

The second app I have to keep me on track with the dates is the .99 Countdown  app, I had this app first & like it as well, it also lets you upload a pic, I keep this app too because it tells me how many months, weeks & days until an event. 

As you see I have 2 months, 1 week and 4 days till the wedding. I'm ready to get married but not ready for the wedding ...still lots to do! I don't know how 10 months past by so fast, I think I spent too much time researching and not enough time doing things. I hear so many brides say that they didn't want to keep everything till the last minute but then somehow did..I am know understanding how this occurs. Work has been extremely busy & the wedding to do list has taken over all my free time. Once again I have over 1K unread posts in my google reader, I think I am going to unsubscribe from all wedding blogs that do not belong to a "real bride blogger" because I rather spend the little time I have reading all your wonderful blogs & hearing about your experience. 

I'm sorry for the lack of posts, I am going to try harder to post at least 3 times a week, I wanted to make sure and post something, so even though it's 11:16 pm on a friday night & I am soooo tired from the week, I had to log on & write to you :-)

miss you much!

DIY: Emergency Tins for the Wedding Party

I've been thinking of doing this DIY since I saw a similar kit when I was staying at the Shade Hotel in Palm Springs with MOH/cousin for our friend's bday. The one at the hotel was in a little tin, had 2 tylenol, a towlette, and an antacid & cost probably $30 (this is what I like to call raping you up the you know what without spit).

I decide I can make these easily on my own & by on my own I mean I design them on my own and bridesman and mi amor help me assemble them :-)

1. I bought some tins for about $1 at Cost Plus at their after Christmas sale, I then put some Goo Gone on them that I bought at Michaels to remove the Christmas sticker on them. This was so easy!

2. I made a template in word, this took a long time only because I can spend hours finding the perfect font (perfect for me) and I also had to figure out how to center everything. The template says "If you've partied too hard relief is at hand..."

3. I printed it out and cut the sheets in half vertically with my Fiskars Paper Trimmer, this way I could put them through my Xyron XRN510 four at a time and not waste too much permanent adhesive. Then I trimmed them again individually.

4. Bridesman & mi amor assembled the tins, removing the backing of the adhesive and sticking the paper on the tin.

5. Now all that is left to do is buy the items that will go in it:

2- Tylenol  2 - Bandages  2- Alka Seltzer 2- Pieces of gum 

6. These are for the wedding party to put in their OOT bags (although only 1 person is technically from OOT, I am making an OOT bag for each person in the wedding party since we are hoping that they will be staying at the hotel with us :-) I liked the tins so much I made one for me & mi amor too.

How are your DIY projects going?

 

Bridesman + Fiance = A bride to be's best friend

 With less than 80 days to go, it's been very stressful at the lovie dovie ranch. The time has come to stop researching and start getting things done. Problem is I spend too much time researching and not enough doing and on top of that I am *very* bad about asking for help, I tend to do things on my own, it's partly because I feel bad about asking people & partly because of that age old saying "If you want something done right do it yourself"...well in the case of the DIY that I did on Tuesday this saying did not hold true whatsoever!  If it wasn't for my bridesman I would have been lost on how exactly to cut my DIY matchbooks.  Bridesman and Groom both know that I do not ask for help, so unbenost to each of them, they both offered to help me out as soon as they saw me with printed cardstock, glue sticks, exacto knives, paper cutter & matchbooks.

Tuesday I decide that I am finally going to make the monogram matchbooks for the cigar bar, I did not think it was too complicated since I had 4 delicious bookmarks for wedding matchbooks, one from Project Wedding *here* and three from Style Me Pretty *here* , *here* (with template), and this one that has the template that proved very useful to me.  I managed to figure out how to place the monograms that Jeff Williams created for us onto the template but once I printed them on white card stock from Michaels, it was hard to figure out how to cut them exactly and that is where Bridesman saved the day! He saw me struggling and stepped in immediately! Once he figured out where they needed to be cut we had an assembly line, Fiance was responsible for peeling away the cover of each matchbook, & bridesman and I cut the paper, used glue stick to attach the paper to the matchbook cover and then assembled the matchbooks back. I was truly touched by how bridesman & fiance stepped in and helped me without waiting for me to say a single word. Without them I would be lost and alone with only my DIY materials to keep me company.  Oh and my little brother who came home after the matchbooks were already complete, wanted to help too but since we had already finished he helped me out by cleaning everything up & doing the dishes.  *Tear* Are these men not amazing?! Who would have thought that the three people to help a bride out were then men in her life?!  Did you have help with your DIY?

{Bridesman/BFF cutting the template}                    

5 Killer Ab + Core Workouts

Starting TODAY! I am doing these in rotation. No time to slack! I can't be a pudgy MOH!

List of 5 Killer Ab + Core Workout Videos on Ranker

Forever 21 finds for weddings

I was on the Forever 21 website today and saw a few things that maybe of interest to some of you, especially those of you that are having peacock feathers in your wedding like me: 
I bought the swallow to put on my bridal bouquet & the chandelier earrings just because ;-)

swallow Forever 12                         Charming Rhinestone Earrings $5.80

Ornate Feather Hair Clip $10.80       Feather Clip w/ Short Veil $6.80

    Rose Rhinestone Hinge Bracelet $13.80    Ribbon Tie Beaded Bracelets $4.80

The Last week of Dress Shopping part 10

Finally I am closing up the dress shopping posts! To be honest it's been hard for me to write about the final trips because once I decided what to do, I did not want to even think about it since finding "the dress" took so much research & time. But I wanted to let you guys know that there is a happy ending to the dress shopping! Ok, so we last left off with me having a master plan of finding a dress in one week. Instead of posting about each day, I am just going to have one post for the remainder of the dress shops that I went to that week, since I already told you about the first place I had gone to with my bridesman/BFF.

I went to Ibex Bridals in downtown L.A, because their website said they had "over 2500 wedding dresses in stock. I came with a list of dresses in mind, but that proved futile since they only had one of the 7 of the ones on my list. When I walked in they handed me 2 huge binders with pictures of dresses, the pictures were just like those you see in magazines or online, they gave me somebookmarkers to mark the dresses I was intersted in so I could try them on. When they noticed how quickly I was looking through them & how I had not marked any, they gave me 3 other binders. I found about 5 dresses to try on but also decided to try on the Provonios Galante dress that was on the window since the owner said I would look great in it & I should just see how it fits.  They took me to an upstairs part where I got to try on the dresses & out of all of them I really liked the Galante, it felt wonderful on & I loved the ruffles. I started thinking maybe this was my dress, even though it had two things I did not want - ruching around the hip & it had straps. But I thought it maybe a contender. Ipex had great prices, & I later found out from another store that they are the distributer for many of the smaller stores around Los Angeles, so hey why not cut the middle man!


Next up was Rosa's Shop in Culver City. I had passed by this place many times on my way to Traget, but it looked very small so I never thought of going in, but we were in desperate times and on a time deadline so I thought why not? The store is pretty small, but it did have a great selection of bridesmaid dresses. I tried on a Maggie dress that I had seen online but as soon as I put it on I did not like the way it fit me. Rosa the owner was very sweet & tried to help me in my search by showing me catalogue but I could not find anything that I liked. If you like Maggie dresses you should definitely come here because Rosa had the best prices.

Another day that week I made the trek out to Glendale to Karoza Bridal. They had a huge selection of dresses, but the only problem was they were all in their plastic bags so it was difficult to get a good look at them & hard to get through the aisle...I literally was stuck amidst a slew of dresses and could not get out! After a few minutes I managed to crawl out. 


Again, I did not find the dresses on my list but I did try on a Mon Cheri dress that the sales lady picked out & I again thought it maybe my dress & it was only $600!!!  I loved the way the top was sculpted and the mermaid fit, the only thing I was not sure about was that the crystal belt was already attached & I kind of wanted something that was detachable. The picture on the site does not do it justice, it is a very flattering dress for women with some curves & the model does not have any so it kind of looks like a plain dress. It also looks A line in the picture but when I tried it on it was very much a mermaid shape. I left thinking that was another contender.

Thinking about the dresses I had as "contenders" I realized I had lost sight of what I had wanted, I was so overwhelmed with dress shopping, so stressed about finding "the one" and so tired of looking that I was beginning to settle. All the dresses were completely different!!!


Once I realized this I asked mi amor, "what is our theme?" traditional or modern? he replied "modern but get whatever makes you happy :-) I love a man who loves emoticons as much as me :-)  So I got to thinking, there was one dress that I had seen in a magazine that I loved, but I knew it was WAY out of budget so I had not bothered to try it on for fear of falling for it. On two separate occasions, my mom & mi amor happened to come accrross the dress in my bridal magazines and pointed at it & said "wow". They had not said that to any other ones. So my plan was to go try on the dress so I can stop thinking about it. I called R Mine Bridal & as it turned out they happened to have the dress even though it was for 2010 because they were having a fashion show of the 2010 dresses. My bridesman/BFF who started off the first day of shopping that week with me also offered to go with me on his day off to make the trek out to the Valley so I could try on the dress and so he could offer his honest opinion. R Mine Bridal had so many gorgeous dresses all in the beautiful satin I had imagined existed, apparently my problem this whole time was that my taste far exceeds my budget. They had the beautiful Kenneth Pool Sophisticate dress I had been keeping in my wedding folder, it was even more beautiful in person, but it was freaking TINY! I looked at it then looked at the sales girl & asked the girl why it was so small & that there was no way a piece of me was going to fit into it. She explained the dress had been worn the night before by a model during the show & they only happened to have the dress because of he show but were returning it in a few days & were suppose to get their own sample dress in a few weeks, she also assured me I could fit into it - bless her heart! Well she was right I managed to shimmy my way in the dress but it did not zip at the top. I loved it! Did I get the crying feeling? no but I'm not a very emotional showing person so that did not surprise me. Was it everything I wanted? No, I wanted buttons & wanted the belt to be straight & removable. Was it "the one" - it was the "inspiration" for "the one".  My bridesman/BFF loved it too & that is just what I needed to hear & make my decision to have my dress made! And how sweet & amazing is my bridesman/BFF to put up with me & be there from the very first day of dress shopping, to the first day of my operation find a dress in a week,  and right to the very last last dress shop place I went to and where I found my inspiration dress & made my decision on "the one".

So there it is ladies, I am having my dress made. I promise to post about that asap too! 

Ibex Bridals
836 S Los Angeles Street Los Angeles, CA 90014

Rosa's Shop 
4352 Sepulveda Boulevard

karozabridal.com
618 E Colorado St # A Glendale, CA 91205-1753

rminebridal.com

12242 Ventura Blvd Studio City, CA 91604