Posts from — September 2009

Ladies and gentlemen, meet my flower girls:

Harmony:

and Katie:

I freakin love the pictures of them!  They are my cousins and were total rock stars. See for yourself:

The girls wore dresses from J. Crew and shoes of their choice.  I bought them the headbands as gifts, also from J. Crew.

The church doesn’t allow petal tossing, which worked out because the girls were a little old for that.  They each got a small bouquet and walked down the aisle after my bridesmaids. No tips on this one, just cute faces!  And speaking of cute faces, our ring bearer was my cousin Allen (Katie’s brother). He held the ring in a little bag in his pocket and walked up with the other groomsmen. I have this awesome shot from the ceremony video showing him checking out the rings in his jacket while standing up there. Hilarious!

Images by Studio 7 Photography. Hire them! They are amazing!!

It all started with this picture. Bryan loved the white jacket look. Classic, sophisticated… and turns out, not possible. My dress was ivory, not white, and apparently Men’s Warehouse doesn’t rent ivory jackets. They sell them, but they don’t rent them. So we scratched that idea and just went with a classic black tux with the bow tie. I must say, the men of our wedding party were stunning.

Bryan’s men included his brother (and BM) Brendan, his friend/coworker Jason and my long time friend Ryan. Between the three of them we had a (future) lawyer, a cop and a pro-lacrosse player. Not too shabby… although I must say that the web designer was the most handsome out of the bunch

Tips: We went to Men’s Warehouse for the tux’s, mostly because there is one across the street from us and because Bryan’s family lives on the East coast and we knew there would be one close to them as well. Honestly, the service wasn’t that amazing.  Every time we went in there the staff acted as if they were doing us a favor by doing things like taking measurements. When we had an appointment. It was frustrating but not so much so that we left.

Want to know how well I did at not being a bridezilla? Jason already owned a tux, and even though I had asked Bryan to make sure his tux matched the ones being rented, he didn’t. So the day before the wedding I find out that it isn’t going to 100% match (no black button covers, a different fabric or something…) and you know what I said? “That’s ok.”  Yep. I didn’t even care. Or get mad that Bryan hadn’t been more on top of it.

(Funny story, while we were standing up on the alter, listening to the priest, I looked down at the groomsmen’ shoes and totally took note that Jason’s were dull while the rest where super shiny. But, did I say a word? Nope. Because I was standing there getting married to my love, and really, shoes didn’t matter.)

Images by Studio 7 Photography.

Ok the groomsman post was supposed to be up tonight but we are currently on our way back home from seeing Phoenix at the Greek Theater (it was awesome!)… I was going to post after we got home but I have a feeling all I will want to do when I walk in the door is sleep sooo… I will double up tomorrow with groomsmen and flower girls!

Phoenix Live in Los Angeles – Lisztomania from bryan harney on Vimeo.

My ladies, from left to right: Natalie, Lauren, Megan, Megan (youngest sister), Samantha (middle sister and MOH) and Lisa. I have known these girls since 6th grade (except for my sisters, obviously) and I absolutely adore them!  It is such a blessing to have friends who know you, the real you, the braces in 9th grade you, the ex-boyfriends you, the you you. You know?  They were rock stars, watching the SATC movie the night before and waking up at 4:45 to get the day going… Rock. Stars. And girls, even though you don’t read my blog, I still love you

(Yes, I am the oldest and the shortest… go figure.)

We got the bridesmaid dresses at J. Crew. I played with the idea of letting them all choose their own dress, but when it came down to it, I love the look of all of the girls matching.  I searched and searched for the perfect marigold dress. Actually, I take that back, I searched and searched for the perfect grey dress, and I just couldn’t find any I loved. Then, one amazing day I saw the new J. Crew color swatches and I died.

I let the girls pick their own shoes in whatever color they wanted (originally I said gold or silver but eventually I just didn’t care anymore!), wear whatever jewelry they wanted and I let them decide if they wanted pro hair and make up.  I was so glad that they all agreed to buy the dress and didn’t want to put them out any more money.

Tips: Yes, letting your girls pick their own dresses (and therefore budget) is the new thing and matching dresses may seem like ’so last year’, but ultimately you have to do what feels best for you.  I really wanted matching dresses. Matching shoes? Not so important. Matching hair? No way. But that is just me. Do what feels best for you, and just make sure you take into consideration your maid’s budgets. Not everyone can afford to get their hair and make up done, and in the end you want everyone to be happy… and not regretting the fact that they said yes

(Just an FYI, flower girls are in another post)

All images from Studio 7 Photography. Hire them!!

Flowers. They were the one thing that I had no desire to DIY.

I wanted to have all of my projects (and there were a lot of them) done a week prior to the big day. Flowers… well they have to be done the day or two before. And then there was the question of where would we put them all? And did I even trust my arranging capabilities? And then who would set them all up (remember our morning was packed full to the brim already)?

However, I also knew that spending upwards of $2,000 was not an option. Bryan’s parents were gracious enough to pay for the flowers, but I didn’t want to make them pay a ton of money just because that was the one thing I didn’t want to do. Luckily for me, I found Christa. Well actually, Christa’s grandma found me. Christa is the grand daughter of our churches wedding coordinator, Eloise. So one night on the phone I was being told by Eloise that there were no flowers allowed on the pews and no throwing flower petals and oh by the way my grand daughter is a florist and here is her number. Well I called, and thank God I did because it was one of the best decisions we made. We met for the first time at Starbucks, talked over things and she got to it. Of course, we met waaay before the wedding, because I am a planner like that, so we had lots of time to shoot ideas back and forth… which worked out because one day I decided I wanted to add pinks and one day she asked if I knew what a Billy Ball was and the end result was perfect!

For the boys (look familiar?!):

For the flower girls:

For my bridesmaids:

For the tables:

And for me:

Like I said, gorgeous! And isn’t that blue cameo amazing? It was my grandmas, she passed away last year and it meant so much to me to be able to carry a little piece of her down the aisle with me as my something blue.

Tips/Details: If you are like me and have a budget but just can’t bring yourself to DIY your flowers, I recommend finding someone who does flowers on the side, or someone who is fresh out of college, or Christa, if you are in the LA/OC/SD areas. We got all of those flowers (which included like 30 centerpeices) for about $900. That was a steal! Yes, it was much more than if I would have gone to the farmers market the morning of or day before, but again, it was worth my sanity to pay this money.

We provided the antique mason jars, most of which were from my moms collection, and then we supplemented that with some off ebay and from local antique shops. We may sell some of them since we don’t need 30+ mason jars, but I love having a few around the house!

The flowers also doubled as favors (which really made that $900 count), but that is for another post!

Another money/time/sanity saving thing was we had Christa be our set up person. I knew I needed someone to set the reception site up (kids table, cake table, hanging balls…) but wasn’t sure who I could get to do it. I asked Christa if she knew of anyone and she offered to do it for me for a small fee of $200. Maybe $100… I can’t remember. Whatever it was, it was worth it! She was a rock star and I can’t say enough good things about her! If you are in need of a florist and are getting married in Southern California, contact Christa, you won’t regret it!

All images by Studio 7 Photographers.

Oh how I loved this veil! It was long and flowing and light and airy and just wonderful.  The best part? My mom made it!

I knew I wanted a veil, including a blusher, and I knew that I wanted it to be long.  After, like, 2 seconds of research I realized they are extremely expensive and that there was just no room whatsoever for one in my budget.  My mom mentioned that she could probably make one so off we went to Joann’s.  She found a pattern and we bought a bolt of tulle, a comb and a little bit of fabric to put over the comb.  Once she got to work sewing it, it took her just a few hours to make the whole thing. We left the edges blunt (she cut it out and left the edges as is, no one was going to notice that there wasn’t a sewn edge) and we didn’t even iron the thing. It laid so nicely, was gorgeous in pictures and all in all cost $40. $40!!

Tip: If you or someone you know has a sewing machine, it is worth the $40 to try to make your own. You save so much money and in the end will have something just as beautiful as if you had spent $200.

Gorgeous images by Studio 7.

Coming up this week:

Veil
Flowers
Bridesmaids
Groomsmen
Flower girls

Image by Studio 7

(image by studio 7)

The earrings were $60 from Nordstroms. I saw them and they were perfect. People were saying that they were sparkling during the entire ceremony!

The garter was hand made by my mom!  I wasn’t sure I wanted a garter, especially because I knew we weren’t going to do a garter toss, but while shopping for veil material (the veil post is next week) I saw this delicate and very girly cream fabric and knew it would be perfect.

Images by Studio 7.

(The last shoes were my sisters… I just liked the picture)

I bought my shoes at Bandolino at the Irvine Spectrum, on sale, for $40.

Tip: Buy shoes you love! I wear mine all the time to work now and every time I do I am reminded of our day!

Images by Studio 7.