Will you be my bridesmaid card

I asked my girls to be bridesmaids eons ago. Here's the card I made for them with a poem I'd written special for each girl. I got the paper at Michaels (where else) and I just came across the dress picture online one day, I loved it! The monogram is made out of sparkly stickers from Michaels.

Wedding Crashers

I drove to Indiana for Mrs. E's beautiful wedding. I figured "heck, I'm only SIX hours away from home, maybe I should stop by and say hi". It was, um, a HAIR out of the way, but SOOOOOOOOO much fun it was totally worth it. I called my Mom when I was halfway there to ask if they wanted some company that weekend. She was happy to have me and reminded me that I would never be considered "company". ;-) Thanks Mom.

As we were plotting what we'd do with our brief visit we hashed out QUITE a plan. We had been tossing around a few potential reception venues. One was Andre's West, not too far from my parent's home. SOOOO, since it was a Saturday night in the middle of prime wedding season, and we were dying to see Andre's West in ACTION and we didn't have anything else to do. . . Mom and I decided to CRASH a WEDDING. It was the most hilarious thing I've done in ages. Mom and I got all dolled up and waltzed right in to the venue like we were Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson. We totally held it together until some random woman waved at Mom and I lost it in a fit of giggles! :-) I'm sure other guests thought we were very rude, walking around critiquing everything... but in the end we decided that our venue will be ANDRE'S WEST! And a special thanks to cousin Sandy who figured out a route which bypasses the TWO sex shops you have to pass to get there... which was my only hestitation in going with it!! ;-)

Cards and Candles

Today I spent my lunch hour at Garden Ridge. There's a new one less than a mile from work. Yay! I forgot my debit card so I could only "look" (maybe I should forget my debit card more often!). This is NOT an original Aluminum Bride idea, I saw this on a blog or bridal magazine or television show somewhere, so if it's your's let me know so I can bestow credit upon your genuisness. SUCH a simple and elegant centerpiece idea. Take a flower (I used a fake one), a wine goblet and a pillar candle. Flip the goblet over, put the flower underneath, a candle on top and voila! Lovely! I don't think we'll be using this because my mom found a lady to do our centerpieces. More on her soon. But other Aluminum Brides, take note! Using finds from the Dollar Tree, you could end up with AWESOME $3 centerpieces!!! Maybe a little more if you surrounded it with votives or flower petals.

I think my latest hobby is Hobby Lobby. OMG, I was in a damask paradise. It took the utmost restraint to keep from purchasing EVERYTHING they had in black and white damask. I did, however, succumb to the most perfect black and white damask hat boxes that I've ever come across. I bought the large, medium and small and intend to use two out of the three as a card box and the extra one to put ladies room "supplies" in. Here are a few of my card box mock ups with the large and medium boxes, although I realized this morning as I was driving in to work, that the medium and small boxes might be better as there is more delineation between the sizes, no pics of that yet. And the sparkly ribbon from Michaels. I also bought a "C" Christmas ornament. J's favorite variations include the "C", what can he say, he's proud of his name! ;-) Which is your favorite???

Damask and whatchacallit blue

These are the curtains I bought from Craigslist, folded three times will make 12 runners. Not too shabby. The vase/candle holder is the result of a fun Sunday afternoon with my mom. More on this soon. All materials are from Michael's. The beautiful sparkly ribbon is in the Christmas section and the damask paper, is just damask paper. ;-)

According to Elegant Presentations, this swatch is considered Wedgewood Blue. According to Alfred Angelo, this dress is considered Robin's Egg blue. They look like the same color to me. How bout we combine them and make it WedgeEgg blue? Or Robin'sWood blue? Anyway, I ♥ this color and I think it looks lovely with damask.

Some pics!

Mrs. E’s platinum wedding on an aluminum budget:

Ana got married. I seriously cannot believe it!!! We always talk about how weird our 20's are! We’re not kids, but we don’t feel like adults, yet we’re doing these VERY adulty things (i.e. marriage), which seem so unreal!

Anyway, it was a breath taking wedding.

The Church was majestic, and I think that set the tone for the entire evening. When the doors opened, and Ana and her dad started walking down the aisle, everyone was blown away! I mean, we KNOW Ana's beautiful, but as a BRIDE... wow!!! :-)

She was STUNNING! She looked so elegant in her LaSposa Fanal gown. It fit her like a glove. It was extremely flattering and very hot mama sexy. And her hubby had a look on his face that read “Yeah baby, I know how blessed I am”.

The bridesmaid’s dresses were uber classy. Black full length satin. Each of the girls (2 bff’s and 2 sisters) looked gorgeous in them! Does that ever happen?!

The Mass was moving. The homily given by Ana’s friend Fr. Mark was right on key talking about the Theology of the Body and two becoming one flesh. It was so much better than those fluffy “you're required to love her even when Maybelline and Max Factor can’t help her anymore” homilies that I’ve heard in the past. VERY fitting for a VERY theological crowd.

The reception was held at a Country Club and we were greeted at the door with silver-tray-holding-waiters, passing out champagne. That made a big, very memorable hit! I’m trying to think of ways to incorporate that into our wedding. But we might need to get my brother’s to dress up like waiters to be able to afford it! Haha!

The room was awesome. It glowed! It was decorated with gold table clothes and white/ivory chair covers and sashes. So elegant! The centerpieces were a candlescape of several candles of varying heights, the candle light and the gold table cloths made the room seem so incredibly warm!

They had a dessert spread with any kind of dessert you could think of! Everything was so tasty! The cake was beautiful, the DJ was good. The couple was IN LOVE.

And EVERYONE had a BLAST. (The true marking of a stellar wedding, IMHO!)

Good work Ana, congratulations, and thanks for all the tips! :-)

Some of the ways Ana saved moolah on her classy and elegant wedding:

1. It was held on a Friday night. Fridays/Sundays are always more reasonable than a Saturday.

2. They had a dessert, drinks and dancing reception instead of a full meal. It was a perfect way to save money without losing any of the class and elegance.

3. The bridesmaids got their dresses from the Target website for $50!! YES TARGET! Who would have thought?!?! Wow! Definitely check out Target for bridesmaids dresses.

4. She used candles instead of flowers for her centerpieces and made a way bigger impact. Candles can be re-sold or used again... flowers just die!

5. Instead of renting an over priced limo, they borrowed a way cool car from some friends of the family.