How much is too much?

  So I had this idea for a post... more on the end of "How not to be a Bridezilla", sounds like it would be pretty useful right? Do you know someone that could use it, or could have used it? I've read a million different posts in forums from Brides complaining that their Bridesmaids aren't doing enough... And every single time the general consensus is "You're expecting too much", it never fails, readers simply think the Bride is expecting too much from her bridal party.

  I tend to agree with these posts, I don't expect much of anything from my girls. I want them to buy a dress, show up for the rehearsal dinner and wedding and stand by my side and have a blast. I didn't ask them to throw me a shower or bachelorette party, that is their choice and if they didn't want to do it, it would be fine. It seemed as if a lot of brides felt the same way about their bridal party, which made me feel better!

  So I started doing a little research for my blog and came  across this article 10 Ways to be the Coolest Bride Ever, and I was nodding my head in agreement with some of these things and then... I got to the comments section. Oh My God... were women ever upset!!! The women reading this article were not the ones I was used to! They believed that the wedding is all about the Bride and what she wants and not only should she stop at nothing to get it but the bridesmaids should do whatever she wants... Umm what?!

Image via Top Tenz

  I'm sorry, but I can't wrap my head around that. While I have definitely done way more than my fair share for a wedding, I don't think the fact that you're getting married gives you the excuse to demand ridiculous things from everyone else.  In fact, I don't know any other woman that said "I'll do whatever the Bride wants to make her special day happen", actually it's quite the opposite. When exchanging stories with my girlfriends, they always said the Bride was expecting/demanding too much.

So I turn to you out there today, what are your thoughts? Do you think a Bride is entitled to expect the world from her girls? That they will do whatever she wants no questions asked? Or do you think that Brides need to be more mindful of her bridal party? Is there such a thing as asking too much? Do you think Brides ask too much of their bridal party? Or is there no such thing when you're a bride?

" In the cappuccino bar everybody sits there smilin..."

   Today I scored an awesome addition to our wedding… A cappuccino/espresso bar!! Of course I got ridiculously excited  and then realized I had nobody to share that excitement with, so I’ll share it with you all!

 

Image Via Degrassi Wikia

  Last year when Bridesmaid Stylist got married she had a coffee bar come out midway through the wedding. It was FABULOUS. My mom and I hit that thing up several times and gushed about it! I told Bridesmaid Stylist how much we loved it and she told me it was actually the venues suggestion. How ingenious!

Image via Wedding Planning Link

 

  Naturally when I saw a cappuccino/espresso bar on the list of options for our wedding I had to inquire about it. Our venue also offered the option of a hot chocolate bar, which I thought was neat for the winter time so I asked about both options. Well a hot chocolate bar would be over $700… and a cappuccino bar WITH barista would be $350, what?! Well of course I know which route I’m going. Plus, I think some coffee would be a nice pick me up after drinking all night, not to mention our wedding is a little later. And as Mr. C stated, "Everyone's going to be so drunk, they could use some caffeine!" Well, he's right there (don't tell him I said that!)

 

  I have only been to one wedding with a coffee bar before, have you guys been to any weddings with a coffee bar? Any sort of extra "bars"? A candy bar, martini bar, heath bar?! Haha couldn't resist that one! Would you like a coffee bar, think guests will enjoy it? I sure hope everyone takes advantage of it! I think if it's affordable, a coffee bar is a great additive to a wedding!

"This Little Light of Mine..."

  Today I come to you with a view real question... What's the deal with uplighting?! Is it necessary? Is it going to make our break our wedding? Will guests notice it? Is it worth the money?! I just don't even know where to begin...

  I'll start with this, our venue is gorgeous, it's beautiful on it's own. There is one thing not in our favor though... the color of the walls...

Image via House Rockers DJ

  Really very pretty, but how does it look with uplighting?

Image via House Rockers DJ

Image via Fineline Weddings

 Not sold...  Brown walls with lights of multiple colors, not doing it for me. Are those few pillars of lights worth $800?! I don't think so, but I am totally going to get one of these great monograms for way cheaper.

Image via Canoe Club Ballroom

  If Bella Sera looked like this, I would be all over the uplighting.

Image via Lindsay Griffin

  Gawjus right? And yes I said gorgeous like that... But seriously, phenomenal right? That's what happens when you have a venue with white walls. Your room becomes whatever color you want it to, jealous.

  But I turn to you today, what are your thoughts on uplighting? Will you be having some? Do you think it looks gorgeous? Does it make a room tacky? Would you even notice if wedding even had uplighting?!

" Got her toes done up with her fingernails matchin "

I was recently reading an article by David Tutera (love him!) about wedding day nails. I was especially interested because I am slightly nail obsessed but I don’t think you put nearly as much thought into your wedding nails as you do your shoes. I jumped right into the article excited to hear what David had to say, I have to say I was a little shocked!

Your nails should be BLAND?! What? I mean, I don’t want to go crazy with some 3D art, but bland?

Image via Pinterest

They shouldn’t stand out? Well, No, they shouldn’t be the focus, but I don’t know how many people truly even notice nails… He then went on to say that your wedding day nails should not be a French manicure, wait… What? Isn’t that the standard? They shouldn’t be colored or blinged out… They should be plain and muted and blend in with your outfit.

I honestly was shocked. I always thought David Tutera of all people would want a bride to have a simple French manicure. To me, a French manicure blends in, it does not stand out at all. He was suggesting a bride paint her nails a simple boring pale pink color. Okay… sometimes I feel like doing that, but not most days. I’m actually staring at my nails right now as they are painted a lovely pale lilac color and wondering if this color is too bold for my wedding day…

Personal Image

This of course made me wondering what the rest of the brides out there thought. Do you agree with David? Is boring the way to go?! I always thought that your nails should look especially nice on your wedding day. After all, isn’t this one of the few times they will be professionally photographed? Won’t my nails have a moment to shine once I put my new accessory on my finger? I always thought I would like my nails done something like...

All Images via Pinterest

I think those nails are just beautiful. I would rock those on a regular day! And hey David, they're a pale pink, but is this more what we should be doing on our wedding days? Bah too boring for me!

Image via Pinterest

 Bridesmaid Zilla just got married Saturday and she went back to her pink and white acrylics for the wedding. I thought they looked great, a lovely French manicure that really looked classy. My sister, Bridesmaid Jazzy had a pale pink color, which is her standard polish. Bridesmaid Stylist had a gorgeous coral color to match her shoes. It’s odd that I can so easily recall the nail colors of my 3 friends isn’t it? Can you recall the nail colors of your friends on their wedding day? What do you envision for your wedding day nails? Think David is right about having muted wedding day nails? 

"Aruba, Jamaica, ooh I wanna take ya Bermuda, Bahama, come on pretty mama"

  It's that exciting time where we get to pick a honeymoon YAY!!! Mr. C and I take a vacation every year, but it's nowhere "exotic". Last year we hit Ocean City and this year we hit Virginia Beach, point proven. But I knew that we needed to take this chance to go out of the country and visit a beautiful beach, how many times do you get that opportunity??

  So I did a little research, asked around to our friends and they all told me wherever we went it had to be a Sandals Resort somewhere. Okay great, but umm which resort?! Do we hit Jamaica? St. Lucia? Antigua?  Wait... The Bahamas!! That's it! Everything about the Bahamas sounds phenomenal. It also helped that our friends had just gotten back from their honeymoon at the Royal Bahamian and couldn't stop gushing about it!

All Images via Sandals

  I mean who wouldn't want to honeymoon here? I've heard great things about Sandals. We are the type of people that just want to sit and relax and do nothing really. It was important to us to have a low key honeymoon. Then comes the next issue... cost... Ugh, honeymoons are expensive. At some point you have to stop and think how much do you really want to spend? If your wedding costs $5,000 do you want a $5,000 honeymoon? Is there a calculation out there somewhere to determine how much your honeymoon should cost? Well, no there isn't, that's a personal choice. Just like the rest of the wedding, you have to decide how important this is to both of you. Do you want to leave right after the wedding? Would you be upset if you wanted 3 months? 6 months? Would you rather go away for a weekend than not go anywhere?

  These were all things we had to sit down and talk about. Both of us wanted to go on a honeymoon. While Mr. C thought Ocean City would be okay, I begged to differ. Maryland in March? Essh!! We had actually done something smart by getting married in February, we could honeymoon and miss hurricane season! We wouldn't have to worry about weather or a storm ruining our honeymoon, certainly we should take advantage of this. This of course also meant we wouldn't be to go anywhere "close". Not that I wanted to drive further than the airport for our honeymoon!

  So we talked and looked at pictures and that blue water and white sand changed Mr. C's mind pretty quick. We are very fortunate that we can go on a honeymoon. I believe everyone should go away after they get married. Whether it's 2 nights in Amish Country or 2 weeks in St. Lucia, everyone needs a break after that chaos of getting married. Where will you be honeymooning? Will you be leaving right after the weeding? Waiting a week ( we are!) then leaving? Did you find your ideal honeymoon spot? A place you've always wanted to travel? Maybe a quiet bed and breakfast some place? Wherever it is, I know that your honeymoon will be amazing because it will be your first trip as a married couple!

For Better or Worse

   We all know that saying right? The part in the vows where you tell your fiancé that you will love him/her unconditionally for better or worse. No matter what twists and turns life may bring, you will be there, loving them always. For some people, that’s a scary thought, not for me though! I’ve read countless posts in forums about girls and their fiancés telling them they need to lose weight for the wedding, they need to do this and that… Wait, I thought you agreed to marry ME, this is me…

   It breaks my heart to see that, but it happens and every time I see something like that, I am reminded of how lucky I am to have a loving and caring man in my life that loves me for me. I’m not saying we’re perfect, far from it! But in the time we’ve been together, we’ve already experienced our own version of “for worse”.

   Around one year ago, I got ill and thought nothing of it. I was sick all night and all morning and went to work and realized I needed to go home. Thinking it was just a stomach bug, I laid on the couch all weekend and basically ate nothing. A week later when I wasn’t better, I made a doctor’s appointment to get to the bottom of this. Upon being examined, he instantly said “It’s your gallbladder” and sent me for tests. Well, this could get long so let’s shorten it up a bit…

   For months and months, I was sent for countless tests and not getting any better. Mr. C. almost took me to the ER a dozen times but I wouldn’t let him. My doctors were convinced it was my gallbladder, and I showed every sign of it! I had 3 Ultrasounds, 1 HIDA Scan, 2 MRIs, 2 CTs, 1 Colonoscopy, 1 Endoscopy and endless amounts of blood work. Yet nobody could figure it out. I couldn’t eat anything, I was in constant pain and sick every day all day long… And yet, Mr. C was there for all of it. He took off work to be there with me for my Endoscopy, he went out and bought me ginger ale and crackers. He suffered with me. We couldn’t go out to eat, I wasn’t cooking like I used to. I lost 25 lbs and was constantly cranky because I was starving and in pain.

  Mr. C. was my rock, I needed him like I needed air. I was horrible for at least 6 months. Not only was I sick and couldn’t figure out why, I had decided to go back to school and my last 2 semesters were making me just unpleasant. But he was there, through it all, he’d rub by belly when I was in pain and hold me when nothing else seemed to work.

  When I found a new doctor, and he ran some tests on me, he found out that I had Celiac…  This was in March, 8 months after it all began… 8 months of being sick when this test could have found the reason. I didn’t know whether I should rejoice because I actually had a name for what was wrong, or be livid because this should have been caught earlier… I was almost afraid to tell Mr. C that I had been sick for so long and a simple test could have given me a diagnosis….But when I told him, he was elated. Finally, we have a name, we know what’s making me sick and that’s what matters.

   Together, we both spent time learning the foods that I could eat and couldn’t eat. If you are unfamiliar with Celiac, it is a gluten allergy, (Visit http://www.celiac.org If you are not familiar with this disease )   People are learning more about it now than ever because people are aware it’s out there and can be correctly diagnosed. Instead of being angry that I couldn’t eat pizza or fried pickles or enjoy our favorite late night snack of ice cream together, Mr. C started learning about what my new diet would be like. He worried about what restaurants I could eat at instead of worrying about what he wanted to eat. It was the most unselfish thing anyone could do for me.

  We are a couple that loves food, Friday nights has always been our date night and time to go out to eat. Now it had all changed, we were faced with the challenge of finding a place that would be friendly towards my diet. A difficult task, but Mr. C didn’t mind one  bit. In fact, the night we got engaged, I cried about not being able to eat the cheddar biscuits at Red Lobster… and he still wanted to marry me after that!

  For better or worse is different for everyone. Nobody can tell you “I’ve been through worse that doesn’t count” or “Or that isn’t’ part of the deal, leave him.” I know there will probably be another event in our life that is worse, but I’m not afraid of it happening. I am not afraid of my soul mate running out on me at the first sign of trouble. I look forward to those times bringing us even closer. To me, for better or worse doesn't start the second you say "I do" it starts at the beginning. It starts when you make the commitment to be with each other, when you decide you want to get married, when you get engaged, when you fall in love. Loving someone unconditionally and being there for them through thick and thin is part of a partnership, and one of the best parts of having a partner in life.  

Meet the Maids

   Before I got engaged, I had the perfect idea of how to ask my girls to be in the wedding.  I had picked out t-shirts I wanted get for them and had the perfect "Meet the Maids" party planned. Unfortunately, I'm a tad bit superstitious and felt that doing all this before we got engaged would be a jinx. Even though I knew it was coming someday, I had no idea when, so I held off on planning anything. 

   Fast forward to one Friday night in April and we've just gotten engaged! All of a sudden, it hit me that I'm seeing 3 out of 4 of my friends that I want to ask to be in the wedding and I'm not prepared with anything to ask them. So instead I casually ask my girls to be in the wedding and decide to plan a special night out for all 5 of us in the next month.

   I decided to order the t-shirts I had been eyeing and make up goodie boxes for the girls. I found these great boxes at Pat Catan's that fit my vintage theme.

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  I filled the box with a bunch of goodies:

- Mini bottle of Champagne

- MAC Lipstick

- Hand cream 

- Masks

- Nail polish

- Nail File

- Smashbox primer

- Hand sanitizer

- Tissues

- Personalized T-shirt

- Crystal snowflake suncatcher

- Personalized compact

- Mini calendar

- Magnet and card with a list of all the girls contact information

All Images Personal

  I searched high and low for a little bag to put all the little goodies in and finally found a set of 5 bags on eBay for under $10, what a deal! I hit up MAC and had my very good friend find lipstick colors for each girl, and boy did she do a fantastic job picking the right colors! I made t-shirts for all the girls on Bridal Party Tees, which had the cutest t-shirt designs by far! After I had most of the goodies for the boxes, I hit Vistaprint and made magnets and cards for the girls, and these cute little invitations. 

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 I mailed out the inviations and awaited our fun evening out. I waited until all the girls arrived and then... they got to finally open their boxes! I was so excited, and all the girls were even more excited. I wanted my girls to know how much I appreciated them.  If there has one thing I have learned through being in weddings is show your bridal party how much you appreciate them. Being in a wedding is a ton of work, and your bridal party is glad to help, we are there to help, but it's a two way street. There is nothing worse than a bride that demands the world and gives nothing in return. A little love goes a long way! What kind of things have you done for your bridal party? Have you asked your girls to be in the wedding in cute ways? Had a get together dinner for everyone to meet?!

Lashes, Lashes, Lashes

   So my very good friend and bridesmaid is getting married tomorrow, YAY!!  So excited for several reasons, but that's a whole other post... So in wedding preparations, she got eyelash extensions which I have always wanted to do! Until I started doing some research and trying to find an experienced stylist. I came across a salon here in Pittsburgh that looks amazing, expensive, but amazing. It might be a pre wedding splurge for me... but I thought I would share this great blog by Allison Roth Studios. Her work looks amazing and one day, I will experience it!

    In the meantime, I decided I would get some false eyelashes for the wedding. I've heard a lot about House of Lashes and decided to test them out. Their eyelashes are are natural human hair, and well priced. So I ordered 2 pairs, Femme Fatale and Tigress (pictured below).

Images via House of Lashes

   I couldn't wait to get them, and they were offering free shipping with purchases over $25! They came fast and I rushed home to try them... FAIL... I put them on and showed Mr. C and he thought I looked ridiculous. Well, okay they were extremely long... And maybe I have really big eyes, but the lashes were too short for my eyes. Nonetheless, I thought they looked okay.  Mr. C continued to laugh and tell me that he "liked my original goods better." 

    I have been blessed/cursed with a lot of hair, so I don't actually need fake eyelashes or eyelash  extensions. But what women doesn't want longer fuller lashes?! Having long full lashes changes your whole look. I've found that using the individual lashes works best for me. I've always found that sometimes, it isn't about the brand of lashes, it's all in the application. You can get Ardell lashes at Target for well, cheap, and they aren't bad! In fact, the Ardell lashes come with some of my favorite lash adhesive. Not only does it come in an easy to use application it also is some of the strongest adhesive I've used. 

    I think the House of Lashes are just gorgeous. They have every type of lash you could ever want. From natural looking to glam, they are simply gorgeous!!

Image via House of Lashes

   So will you ladies be wearing false eyelashes for your big day? Will you try lash extensions? Do you have a favorite brand of lashes to wear?!

Wedding Bells!!

   With another wedding approaching in less than 48 hours, I thought I would share some of my sister's wedding photos. She got married 6 weeks ago in a beautiful intimate-ish outdoor wedding. It was gorgeous but simple and just perfect. With 9 months to plan she kept the details simple and dare I say "Shabby Chic". So without further ado, pictures!

The entrance to the Morning Glory Inn

Shot from the stairs

Cake topper made by my sister

Yumm carrot cake! 

These boxes were painstakingly stenciled by all of us, the result was gorgeous!

All these cookies were made by my mom!

Nighttime shot of the courtyard

*All images personal *

    My sister had a friend take her photographs and she did an amazing job. I was really impressed with all the photos and not to mention, her friend is just the sweetest! What kind of route will you be taking for your photographs? Do you like the photojournalism approach? Looking for something more standard? What about cookie tables? Is that something that is common in your area? Here in Pittsburgh, you cannot have a wedding without a cookie table, guests will not be happy!