Showing posts with label Invitations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Invitations. Show all posts

Monday, October 19, 2009

And We Have A Winner!


Happy Monday everyone! Hope you all had a great weekend.

Well it's finally time to announce the winner of the Wedding Paper Divas Giveaway!

Thanks so much to all of you who entered. I really wish I had enough prizes for all of you!

Congrats to Cape Cod Bride who said ...

Thanks for this giveaway! As I'm having a winter wedding on 12/12/09, I would love to send out newlywed holiday greeting cards with my 3 favorite wedding photos of me and my then husband. This would be especially great for guests who are unable to attend the wedding!Here is the link to my favorite style: http://www.tinyprints.com/product/9275/personal_stationery_flat_holiday_photo_cards_woodsy.html#color/1

Be sure to email me @thealternativebride@gmail.com to claim your fabulous prize! :)

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Great Giveaway!

I'm so excited to announce my very first giveaway! I've teamed up with the ever so fab Wedding Paper Divas to offer an amazing giveaway. I know I've been kinda lax lately with posts ever since the wedding so I wanted to give you guys a little something to make it up to you :)

Now I'm sure many of you know Wedding Paper Divas but if you don't you should head on over to their site to check out their amazing designs. I'm looking at a few options for our Thank Yous as we speak. I really have to get on that, btw. I'm already putting the pressure on us to get these thank yous out within the next few weeks. More about that later....

Anyway, you totally need to check out their awesome selection. Oh and don't let the name fool you, they don't only sell wedding paper goods, they also offer holiday cards, party invites, moving announcements & thank yous, just to name a few. You need to check them out for yourselves!

Here are a few of my faves:

Floral Edge Party Invite


Big Apple Personalized Address Label


So now that I've got you all excited, I'm sure you're all wondering what's the giveaway??? Well, Wedding Paper Divas has offered a $50 gift certificate to the lucky winner! All you have to do is check out their site and then leave a comment here with a link to the product that you would buy if you won the gift certificate. The contest closes at noon EST on Sunday, October 18th and the winner will be announced on Monday the 19th.

Happy shopping & good luck to all!!!

Thursday, July 23, 2009

And They're Off!



So here they are! The final product, as promised. We sent them off last week and we already have been getting a ton of responses. All yeses so far! Yeah, I know that the nos probably wait till the drop dead date to reply but that's ok - it's still super exciting! We can't wait to get home every day to check the mail!

We had our first fittings last night and they went great. J looked absolutely gorgeous in her dress. It needs a lot of alterations because it was too big on her but that's never a bad thing, right? :) And mine fit perfectly. I was hoping it would be a little big, but I guess it's ok... Pics coming soon!

Monday, July 20, 2009

Starting The Week Off Right!

Happy Monday! Hope you all had a wonderful weekend!

Today is my 21st (wink wink more like 37th) birthday! (how did that happen????) I had a wonderful weekend with friends & family and actually even took a break from wedding stuff. It felt like I was on a mini vacation!

I'm happy to say that our invites went out last week and we're getting a lot of positive feedback which is great. I promise this week to post some pictures. I didn't want to put anything up until after our guests received them.

There's much more to do on the wedding list this week. We have dress fittings on Wednesday. I'll have to try to restrain myself from eating too much at my bday dinner tonight. It's really not right to have a dress fitting during birthday week, now is it? ;)

And we're supposed to have our e-session tomorrow but it looks like it may once again get postponed due to weather. J thinks it's a sign that we shouldn't do one but i'm not convinced of that! It'll happen one day in the next 6 1/2 weeks. I'm not giving up!

Image: via Audrey Hepburn Complex

Friday, July 10, 2009

Happy Friday!

I'm so happy it's finally Friday. The weeks seem to get more and more hectic the closer we get to the wedding. We're only a little more than 8 weeks away now and I'm starting to feel the noose tighten!

Well the good news is that are invites are in! Our planners sent one over to us in the mail yesterday so hopefully we get to see them later on today. Maybe I'll even post a sneak peak of them next week.

And we finally set up our dress fitting appointments. That's a big relief & a huge stress at the same time. We're so undisciplined about our diets now that the weather is finally nice here. All we want to do is sit outside at a sidewalk cafe and eat & drink all day long. Guess we have to get our butts in gear!

Anyway enough stressing. It's finally the weekend and time to kick back & relax! Hope you all have a great one!!!

Image: found here

Monday, June 8, 2009

T-Minus 3 Months!

Wow what a weekend! We had some amazing weather here and had a ton of fun dining al fresco and celebrating Nat's bday and my cousin's bridal luncheon. And on top of all the fun we even managed to accomplish a few wedding tasks.

Saturday was my hair trial and I was thrilled with the results! Sarah, my amazing stylist over at Parlor, created the exact look I was envisioning. I actually started to well up! I was so happy!!! I didn't even do that when I tried on my dress a few weeks ago...is that a bad sign about the dress??? I'm thinking that maybe I should try to recreate the look before I go for my fitting in July so I can see hair & dress together to get a more accurate picture of what it will look like on the big day. I'm sure I'll love my dress with the right hair. Finger's crossed....

It's still TBD how my hair will be clipped back because I didn't have the chiffon flowers yet. I ordered them from Oh My Deer this weekend. I can't wait to get them!

After the hair trial we went on over to VeKa, a bridal shop in Nolita, and bought Jen her hairpiece. I don't have a picture of it to post right now but I will soon. Her hair trial is this coming Saturday so I'll post some pix next Monday.

Overall it feels like we're making some more progress. We decided today to start Operation "This is SERIOUS 52" aka wedding boot camp. Jen coined the term and came up with the idea. Basically we have 13 weeks left until the big day so we need to get 52 workouts in before then, 4 times a week. We really super determined now. My sister gave me her Perfect Pushup yesterday (she used if before her wedding and the girl had GUNS!) and Nat sent on over the Women's Health Belly Off Club Workout today. Loving everyone for all the support and great ideas!

So here's what we have on tap for this week...
  • Sign off on the final proof for the invitations which we're expecting sometime today or tomorrow
  • Jen's hair trial Saturday
  • Make an appointment for a cake tasting...yummm! A little cake won't kill us, right? :)
  • And I have to get on over to M&J and some other stores the finally solve the shoe problem.
  • Oh and we still don't have a computer...it's at Apple for repair. I fear that the hard drive is corrupted which is an absolute disaster. I have a ton of wedding stuff on there that wasn't backed up and worst of all I think there are pictures of Antoinette that we don't have anywhere else. I'm praying that someone can recover that at least!

Hope you all had a great weekend and have a happy Monday!

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Back & On Track!


Hi everyone! Hope you all had a great week or so. I meant to check in earlier but between vacation and our computer breaking I've had some issues...sorry!

Well I'm happy to say that I'm back! Our vacation was fanatastic! It was exactly what we needed before wedding planning starts to go into overdrive.

First on the list...get back into shape! There's only three more months left and we kinda let ourselves indulge a bit on vacay...we figured why not, go for it, it's the last hoorah. But now we're super determined since dress fittings are only a month away...oooh boy!

Our invitation proofs came while we were away and we're really happy with them. We're making a few minor tweaks but overall they look great. I can't wait to get them. We should have them in a little less than a month.

Next on the schedule...hair trials. Mine is this Saturday and Jen's is the following Sat. We have to reschedule the engagement shoot and also schedule a cake tasting. Oh and I still have to get shoes. It's a thorn in my side but I'm gonna do it. Maybe this weekend I'll tackle some of my creative ideas I had before vacation.

Well I'm really glad to be back and into wedding world again. Hope you all have a wonderful day!

Image: found here

Monday, May 18, 2009

Making Progress

Happy Monday everyone! Hope you all had a great weekend. We had an extremely eventful and productive one. Firstly, as you can see, I tried my dress on! I decided to let you have a little sneak peak :) It was the first time I had the opportunity to see it since January and I'm happy to say, I still love it. It's very simple, but it's just right for me.

So, like I said, it's been eventful, and I don't want to leave anything out so I'll start from the top. On Saturday we decided to take our flower girl, Ally dress shopping and we just happened to find ourselves shopping at the same bridal salon where we purchased our dresses from. As I mentioned before, my dress came in well over a week ago but I haven't scheduled a fitting yet because I still haven't decided on the shoes. As you could imagine, the suspense was killing me so I just had to try it on shoes or no shoes!

After that excitement, we ventured on to find Ally a dress. I don't remember if I've mentioned this before but Ally is Antoinette's six year old daughter, our best friend who just passed away last month. As I said before, the weekend was eventful and this certainly was an eventful experience. I'm gonna try to keep this short and spare you some of the gorry details.

Well she was a dream child at first. She tried on about seven or eight dresses with no complaints at all. She was having a great time, she was loving every one she tried on and she even did a little dance for us in each one. Everything was going perfectly and we ended up narrowing it down to four dress. There were two that I was absolutely in love with, one that I hated, it was a horrible shade of pink that did not go with our color palette whatsoever and it had a ridiculous amount of beads, and one that I was pretty indifferent about. So naturally what happens is that Ally decides that she LOVES the horrible pink beaded dress that didn't even fit her. The dress that I hated! I couldn't, for the life of me understand why she wanted that one. When she tried the dress on it was actually hurting her because it was too small and the beads were scratching her skin! Why would she want to have that dress? So, as you could imagine, things ended up taking a sharp turn for the ugly. She ended up throwing a fit in the store, hysterical crying, laying down on the floor, refusing to take the dress off. And it killed us to see her so upset because we knew the real reason she was acting out was because she had just lost her mother. It wasn't really about the dress. But there was no way we could make her undestand that. So after about a half hour of antics we gave in and compromised and bought her the dress I was indifferent about, her second choice and my third choice. I wish I had pictures to share but it really wasn't a photo op moment. It's an ivory dress with ivory grosgrain spaghetti straps an a grosgrain bow. It's a little too plain compaired to what I was envisioning so I decided that I'm going to liven it up a little bit. Yesterday I bought a wine colored sash that matches the girls dresses and I think I'm going to see if I can find a light pink chiffon peony and have a seamstress attach it to the sash.

So that was Saturday and the fun filled dress excursion. Yesterday was a better day. We made a lot of progress and now I'm feeling pretty good about things. We went to Bloomies and finalized our invitation design and placed the order. We should have the first proof by the end of the week. I am sooo excited and I can't wait to see what they look like! I think they're going to be absolutely perfect!

After Bloomies, we headed on down to Gracious Home and while we were browsing we found the perfect solution to our cocktail hour table centerpiece dilemma. Aquamarine mercury glass votives!


These aren't the exact ones but you get the idea. I'm can't even tell you how excited I am to cross that task off our list. We've been trying to think of more affordable alternatives to bud vases and I think we came up with the perfect solution. We're going to put two mercury glass votives on each table, they were only $2.99 each! and then have a hurricane with a burgundy pillar candle in the center of the table. Our venue provides the votive candles and clear glass votive holders so we'll probably put a few clear glass ones on each table as well.

So all in all we had a pretty productive weekend. We'll try to get a few more things accomplished over the next few days...shoes & hair trial appointments and then Saturday we're off to sunny St. Thomas for a much needed vacation. Let the countdown begin!

Image: found here

Friday, May 15, 2009

Busy Busy

Image: found here

Happy Friday everyone. Sorry I've been absent for a while. It's really been a hectic week between being sick and wedding and work so I've been a bit ovewhelmed. Unfortunately we ended up canceling our engagement photoshoot for today because I am still pretty under the weather. We'll just have to reschedule for early June after vacation. The good thing about that is that we should be nice and tan and relaxed so the pix hopefully will turn out good :)

We have a busy weekend on tap. Tomorrow we're planning on going flower girl dress shopping and we really need to try to finalize the invites by Sunday too. Oh and I'm still desperately searching for the perfect shoe. I think I'm making this a lot harder than it needs to be but I just can't find anything that I like.

Here are a few of the options I've been considering. Keep in mind, my ideal shoe would be burgundy, feminine - ie petals, flowers or bows or something of that sort, and ideally comfortable.

Christian Louboutin Petal Sandal

I absolutely adore these shoes! But they're not the right color. They're so perfect that I would take them in a second if they came in ivory but I think the pink is just too yellow for my color palette and I don't want to introduce another shade. Someone suggested that I get them hand painted burgundy but there's no way that I would risk that.

Christian Louboutin Glittered Platform Pump

And I think that these are fun. But they're not very bridal, are they? And when I showed them to Jen she said, and I quote "what is our wedding, the wizard of oz, dorothy? no ruby slippers." So I guess that's the end of that....

Christian Louboutin Satin D'Orsay Pump


These are really pretty but I think they're kind of plain in white or ivory. I guess I just really had my heart set on color. Should I have these dyed? I'm just terrified of a bad result. And what if they bleed? I would be horrified.


Image: found here

So now I'm thinking maybe I should just get a basic ivory shoe and add color with a flower clip-on? Problem is, I haven't been able to find a clip on that I like either. But I really don't know where to look. I searched Etsy and haven't found anything.

I hope that I find something I like this weekend and that I can just get this over with. Who knew that shoe shopping would be such a chore? If you guys have any suggestions, I'd love to hear them!

Hope you all have a great weekend :)

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

One Step Closer!


Sorry for the late post today. I started the day giving an 8am breakfast training of the Wholearth product line at the Rockefeller Center Anthropologie store and my day hasn't slowed down since! By the way, I have to mention that it was nearly impossible to control myself being in that store before regular business hours. Can anyone say PARADISE?!?!

I just have a second but I wanted to say how excited I am about the NY State Assembly passing the Marrigae Equality Bill last night! One house down, one more to go!

On another note, invitation shopping was very exciting last night. We were at Bloomies for over 2 hours! I'm happy to say that we've definitely narrowed down our search...we're just waiting for a few more paper options to come in from the designer. Once the swatches come in we'll finalize the design and hopefully we'll end up placing the order by the weekend. I can't believe how difficult this has been! I'm thilled to announce that the invitations will have a couple of aquamarine crystals so needless to say I'm a happy girl. Thank you darling for giving in :)

I'll be back soon with more details about the invitations and the never ending shoe search.

Image: found here

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Invitation Inspiration

So tonight we're headed to Bloomingdales to finally select our invitations. We've been searching for months but we've had a really hard time finding anything that we really like and that we both agree on.

Well time's almost up so this weekend we did a pretty extensive search and we finally found some ideas that we're liking.

We really like the pearling details on the side of this invitation and the foil accents. It's simple yet very elegant.

And I love the swarovski crystals on this invitation and I also love the silk folio it's incased in but Jen doesn't really love it and I know that will be too expensive so I'll get over it.

And we're in agreement about liking pocket folds like this one and the ones over at Jill Parkin Designs.


I have no idea what we're going to see tonight but I hope that we're able to find something that we're both happy with. This is one task that has been weighing on us for a while and I can't wait to finally check it off the list. Wish us luck!

Images: KK Bloom , Nickelsons Invitations and Renaissance Writings