Can you believe it?!? Lauren and John's wedding is on Saturday! Last Friday, one of my coworkers, Mindy, organized a surprise bridal shower for her, and it was super cute! A few of us snuck into the conference room about an hour before the shower to set up...
It worked! She never found out! This is a challenge when you have to invite the entire company and you all have access to each other's calendars...
She got a ton of Crate & Barrel cookware! And by "she", I mean John, because he's the one who LOVES to cook! And his food is to die for.
Laura giving the encouraging fist pump in the background...
Love her immensely! Can't wait to be in Dallas this weekend!
I let Nate wear my flower for a little while so he felt dressed up for the party. And yes, I did pin in on him like prom.
I loooove having coworkers who genuinely care about each other's lives. It's a sweet reminder that there's more to life than work!
Also, my contribution to the dessert table was a big hit... more on that tomorrow!
Remember waaaayyyy back in January when I posted about Rachael and Peter's wedding in Massachusetts? Well, Rach posted a few more pictures from it on facebook yesterday, and I thought they were too funny not to share!
The happy couple...
That large poinsettia is peeking over the top of my head...
Maybe the first time we had danced together on our feet and not in the car.
...aaaaand the kicker. Paul Smith. Envy of all.
If he doesn't make that his profile picture on facebook, I'll just die.
I'm dedicating this post to my sweet friend, Amy, who reminds us all the time how much she "loves love." Amy is getting married next February, and it has been an absolute BLAST talking about all things wedding with her, but I actually haven't even showed her this yet!
A couple weekends ago, I was flitting around on the Southern Weddings blog, and I saw a feature they did on Inkspot Crow, a husband-and-wife team who do "documentaries about love" and are especially good at wedding videos! They have a ridiculous ability to make a wedding video look more like a movie, and they have a scary sense for exactly which song should back it up. Sigh. I could just watch their stuff all day long (and you should click on that link up there so you can, too)! But, until you have that kind of time to devote, here's my favorite.
(Amy, please come over to my desk and grab my headphones so you can watch!)
As I've mentioned here before, I love the convenience of bridal registries, but I love it even more when I can get the bride something unique and creative and useful that I know she'll absolutely adore. So, after Clara and Bob's engagement session on Sunday, I handed her this...
...for her wedding dress! (Please excuse the fact that I hung the hanger from my bedside lamp and photographed it about ten seconds before I had to run out the door.) I first saw these featured on Southern Weddings, and I just thought they were to die for. Even though she'll only wear the dress once, she can always have a special way to hang and store it, and (bonus!), the lady who made this one is from my birth city of Greensboro, NC! She delivered the hanger right on time, and I couldn't have been happier with her work. You can check her out on Etsy here and on Facebook here. I definitely recommend her if you need a special bridal shower gift that will make all the other girls gasp when the bride opens it!
Happy Friday, and happy long Memorial Day weekend!
Guys. What have you all been drinking? I'm actually starting to lose track of all the wedding dates and the color schemes and the honeymoon destinations and the caterers and the guestbook options. I suppose at 23, I'm at that stage where having several weddings on the docket for the next twelve months is absolutely normal (and, I'll admit, I kinda love it), but WOW. This stuff takes some practice. You all have different tastes, and you all register for different stuff (I seriously had no idea there were that many types of ladles out there. Snaps for you). I love you all dearly, and a band of cracked-out horses couldn't keep me from attending each of your special days. But this post is kinda for you and it's kinda for your friends.
I'm loving and loathing quite a bit in the wedding world right now, so let's talk about it, ok?
I know all of you are capable of getting sick nasty with your florist. And I mean that in the best possible way. Please be creative! Bouquets are getting so unique these days, and my favorites recently have been the ones that include big, blousy flowers and succulents. It's like someone ran through a garden while being chased by Scotland Yard and just threw together whatever she could find. And I'm eating it right up.
I know the dress is pretty much the most important part, and I'm not really prepared to make a sweeping commentary on what you pick. You're all gorgeous. But here's my favorite dress that I've ever, ever seen in my life (photographed by Millie Holloman Photography). And that's all I'm gonna say about that.
I also hear this a lot: "I don't really know if I want strapless or straps or one shoulder or sleeves because it's gonna be cold/hot and I adore/despise my arms but I also don't want to yank at my dress all night and I don't want to look stuffy/matronly/crusty so I want to be regal/soft/elegant/classy/hot but also not make anyone hot under the collar." Great! That should be easy. No but actually, it might be. Little gems like this bolero from Embee Style at Etsy should do the trick! These little numbers are everywhere these days, and they can transform a dress in an instant. They basically go, "Oh hey, what's up, Dress? You lookin' good and all, but I'm about to make you the bomb dot com and also maybe a little schizophrenic. Don't fight it."
Ok, awesome. Let's move on to your bridesmaids. They don't want to hate you. They're your friends, or at the very least, acquaintances capable of pulling off that straight jacket of a dress you've had your eye on. So, maybe don't torture them. Maybe pick a dress they can wear to horse races and cocktails and (GASP!) other weddings. They'll want to hug you, and more than that, if your guests are anything like me, they'll cheer extra loudly when you enter your reception because you didn't send your maids to battle against their gowns. Now they can drop it like it's hot and Cupid Shuffle the way I'm gonna need them to in order to appear cooler than I actually am.
Hello, J. Crew. You are the epitome of practical and rewearable. I'm also loving dresses in colors that are close to white, but not quite white. They just feel fresh and unfussy.
Ok, for those of you who are really, really like me and get invited as a guest to lots of weddings, let's break free from the registry for a hot second. (If you're a bride who spent hours dragging her fiance through BB&B finding the perfect meat pulverizer, you may want to go ahead and click that friendly little red "X" in the upper right corner, because I'm about to rock your world.) You actually can get kind of creative and avoid spending a fortune on presents the couple already knew they would get. Remember my best friend Amanda's wedding? Well, by the time her wedding rolled around, she had gotten so many things from her registry that I decided enough was enough, and I did this:
I framed the date! There is actually a company called Frame the Date that will find/take pictures of numbers out in the wild and frame them for you, but they'll do it for close to $100, and that is insane. I just searched for high-quality pictures of the right numbers (12, 18, and 10) on Flickr, ordered prints of them from Snapfish for about $3, and put them in a $15 frame from Michaels. Ta-da! I kid you not, it was her favorite gift, and even the least creative person on earth can do it. I pinky toe promise.
Or, did your friend get married in a really fancy city? Or one with a lot of history? Dude, buy a map...
...and frame that sucker. If you got married in New York City, wouldn't you want that in your house?!? I would.
So, there you go. All the thoughts that have been swirling in my head about weddings for the last three months spilled (or vom-ed, you pick) into one post. My friends may have no idea what the heck they're in for.
Ladies and gents, it happened! Last Friday night around 11:30 PM, Clara called me from West Palm Beach, and I knew since it was so late that she either had a ring on her finger or needed me to airlift her out of a hurricane. And I didn't even let her tell me herself, I just screamed, "ARE YOU ENGAGED?!?!?!?"
I told Clara when she left last week to spend the week in Florida with Bob that I expected her to come back with a ring, and she (as most brides do) dismissed it as a tiny possibility, but not an inevitability. I told her I was pretty good at this stuff, because I definitely predicted my friend Lauren's engagement. And I was right AGAIN. Two for two. That gets me like 80% off at Tiffany, right? Or something?
Anyway, Clara told me that Bob proposed by writing what he wanted to say inside a new Bible that had "Clara Lutz" (her married name) engraved on the outside. He wanted her to read it, but she was too excited and emotional, so he read it to her!
So, before she got home on Wednesday night, I decided to make her an engagement cake! And since we're all watching what we eat and Clara's big on getting in shape for the wedding, I decided to make it a Rice Krispie cake. I'm really happy with how it turned out!
And then we took some ring shots! (I know they all look the same, but I couldn't choose!)
Didn't Bob do a great job?!? I think so! We're expecting that their wedding will be in July, so I'm excited for all the planning that will happen between now and then!
Within the past two weeks, two of my very best friends at work, Lauren and Amy, have gotten engaged! It has been SO much fun talking weddings and colors and save-the-dates... oh my goodness, I'm in heaven! AND, Lauren even asked me to do her engagement pictures! I'm so honored, and the ideas are just spinning in my head! We're going to wait until April when the weather is better and the cherry blossoms are out, though.
Here's Lauren right after John proposed!
...and Amy's ring!
So last night, a bunch of us went to Vapiano in Gallery Place to celebrate! I absolutely loved the feel of that place... so relaxed and plenty of space to move around.
Here is a really bad picture taken on my phone...
Anyway, we are just having a blast talking about all the possibilities, and I really am very, very blessed to work with so many wonderful people my age!
I know a bunch of you have been anxious to see the professional pictures from Amanda's wedding back in December, and now you can! Just go to waltersandwalters.com and in the client login box in the upper right corner, type amandawwedd. Enjoy, and here's a sneak peek!
I was so honored to have led this prayer before the ceremony!
Happy 100th post to me! I started this blog allllll the way back on August 18, and I just can't believe I've made it this far already! And I have 17 followers... chump change to some, but ridiculously flattering to me. I just love you all.
Anyway, the main event! Let's start with the fact that Friday was NOT a great day for any of us at work, but no one suffered the consequences of it quite as violently as Molly's suitcase.
I mean, no, of course she didn't rip the handle off her bag and fling it across security and then drag it down the terminal by a glorified metal and plastic shard. Why would you ask that?
Molly, Clara, and I flew into Hartford, CT in the MOTHER of all snow storms, but our exceptionally gay flight attendants didn't seem worried. So, we just let them distract us. By the grace of their own hearts, Andrew and Grant picked us up from the airport and drove us all the way back to the hotel at 45 mph on the highway before heading straight back to pick up Paul. I think better men would be hard to find.
Before the ceremony, we definitely hit up Panera in all the outfits you see below. People stared, but to be fair, the spectator experience was probably like stepping inside Vogue magazine for a hot sec. Then, we arrived at the church a full hour early. Suave. So, we went to CVS to find the boys a card for their gift, and we came across this little gem.
WTF, Hallmark.
Upside: our extra hour turned into a raging car dance party. If you were within a 50-mile radius of Agawam, MA on Saturday afternoon, that sonic boom you heard was Grant's sound system. Sorry we're not sorry.
This was in the church lobby... everyone's concerned about Andrew except Andrew. (Ok, and Paul. But homeboy is more prepared for pictures than a Boy Scout.)
That's a whole lot of Cedarville royalty right there.
Roomies! (And yes, the poinsettia did make a return. DBJ. A girl asked to take a picture of my head at the reception. Not of me. Just my head.)
Some people complain that their faces are always too close to the camera. Other people have trouble keeping their mouths completely in the frame. (Love you, Paul. Truly.)
MAWWIAGE!
... is what bwings us togevah today.
The Lonely Island (of singleness and questionable conversation, but just as hood as the real thing).
First dance!
Learning the Cleveland Shuffle on Grant's iPhone. Tragically, only family got to do it. But for the five minutes we were watching this video, we were that much more committed to humiliating ourselves on the dance floor.
Ummm, how many pictures of Grant have been on this blog in the past week? Is anyone keeping track? Do I need to start charging?
Clara and Paul!
Daddy/daughter dance... always one of my favorite parts!
Wallflower commitment. No one does it better.
Ok, we've all officially spent too much time together.
Just kidding. Love you, Granty Squishy Ishy Face.
Top shelf.
We joojed ourselves up at the photo booth...
Funfetti cake with silver-coated mint M'n'Ms! Geniuuuuuuus.
Oh dear. Here come the dance floor pictures.
Just adorbs. I kind of want to pinch the proverbial cheeks of this picture.
Paul Smith. You are dance floor royalty. And my life is richer for it.
The Brandts! Oh my goodness, they're offish!
Can we all just hate Rachael for a second because her hair stayed perfect all night? Ok, great.
Some people should make a music video.
So that was it! About a half inch of snow fell during the reception, so even getting back to the hotel was a challenge, but Grant drove like a champ!
