Our Wedding Part 1: Getting Ready & The First Look

This is incredibly hard to believe, but it has been 11 months since my sweet husband and I got married.
It's crazy that I haven't blogged much about it yet already (though we already know I'm a slack blogger), but my brain definitely needed a break after the six month whirlwind of meticulously planning that bad boy. Don't get me wrong - I LOVED planning every detail of our DIY, super on-a-budget big day (I'm a little crazy like that), but after pouring so much energy into it, it has been nice to just relax and enjoy marriage.

Now that things have settled down a bit, I fully plan on blogging about all of the DIY projects, the planning details, and a breakdown of how we were able to stick to a budget of $15K (yes, it IS possible).

But first, I want to count down the weeks to our first anniversary (May 11th) by reminiscing over each part of that amazing day. Starting with, of course, getting ready:

My sweet groom looked so handsome. He wore a vest he already owned from a friends wedding and we got his blush bow tie from Etsy.

Our groomsmen gifts were beige linen bowties that I also ordered from Etsy. We also provided the boys with snacks and glass coke bottles to pair with some whiskey to nom on while they got ready.

Before we arrived to the venue, the girls and I got our hair done at a local salon. My baby sister did my make-up. I loved having this special time with the girls getting ready. My parents gave me this necklace when I was 18, and these earrings were borrowed from my sweet great aunt - so while I'm not usually a big pearls girl, I loved having these sweet sentimental jewels on my big day.

The girls each got a white bangle from Stella and Dot. They each wore different dresses, so it was a little unifying accent - and I still see them wearing it every day! We also provided them with little lemon Pelligrino sodas to pair with vodka while we all got dressed.

My dress - oh, my dress. With a short five month engagement, I was so worried that I wouldn't be able to get the dress of my dreams in time. Most shops we visited swore there would be no way to order and alter any dress in time. I found this dress at our third stop and knew it was the one, but getting it ordered formt hat shop in time was going to be impossible, so I tossed it aside. Then, on our last stop we went to a shop called Formally Yours, and they had that dress on their sample rack in my EXACT size. It had only been tried on a few times, but they offerred to let me have it that day for 20% off! I almost died that I had found my dream dress, and on top of that it needed ZERO alterations!

After getting ready and having my girls come pray around me, we headed off for a first look.

I tell every bride that worries about breaking tradition that the first look was one of my favorite parts of the day. You don't get many moments alone amidst the chaos, so having a private reunion was so sweet and intimate - not to mention it helps calm the nerves before the big moment.

We hired an amazing photographer, Lesley Kerr, who was actually a friend of mine from high school. I'd actually known for years I wanted her to capture my big day, and was overjoyed that she was able to take these wonderful photos.

The Best Bloggers

Y'all. One of my resolutions was to blog weekly. Here it is 14 days after my resolutions post, and yet I have nothing prepared to blog about. I have tried taking photos of the house with my camera, but with my still limited knowledge and the incessant rain and overcast skies, I have nothing pretty to share. I have tons of old photos of wedding DIY's (all taken with my crummy iPhone), but none have been edited and prettified. Sigh. BUT even with all of these to do's on my list, I have found time (mostly when I take my necessary mental breaks at work) to peruse my daily dose of blogs.

(Hand raised) My name is Francesca, and I am addicted to reading blogs. I have been addicted since I started college and discovered some beauties through Flickr and Tumblr. I then discovered Bloglovin' which made it so much easier to browse through numerous blogs seamlessly (especially when they added their mobile app!) and my collection/obsession grew. Now I follow around 100(!) blogs regularly, and I love them all, but there are a few that stand out to me as favorites.

So, without further ado, here are (in my humble opinion) the best bloggers you should be following, like, now:

(via The Pioneer Woman)

The Pioneer Woman Cooks

Come on, if you aren't already following her blog, you're clearly living under a rock. She's a master of the kitchen and her ranch home. She has AMAZING recipes which she demonstrates with step by step instructions accompanied with beautiful photos. Seriously, whenever I want to try a new recipe, I always Google the name of the dish with "The Pioneer Woman" to ensure I do it her way.

(via The Pioneer Woman)

(via The Pioneer Woman)

The BEST part about her blog is her writing style and the humor she uses while detailing the cooking process. I aspire to be as dang funny as this lady one day. She also now has a cooking show on Food Network, which I've somehow never seen, but am determined to check out in the near future!

(via HGTV)

Young House Love

Ya'll, I am obsessed with the Petersiks. This super humble and cute couple have lived in three fixer-upper houses and used their DIY skills to make some amazing (and cheap) renovations and decorating changes. They have superpowers, truly.

(via Young House Love)

(via Young House Love)

My favorite part about their blog is how transparent they are about costs, the details of the processes, and the mistakes they made - all in an effort to benefit their readers. They take awesome photos along the way, and, of course, have an incredible honest/funny writing style, which makes you feel like you're actually friends with them. For real, I audibly squealed for joy in my cubicle when they announced they were pregnant with a second child. I have a problem.

(via A Beautiful Mess)

A Beautiful Mess

Elsie Larson's blog is one of the first blogs I ever started following when I happened upon her cute photos on Flickr. Back then, she wasn't married, was running a cute vintage shop, and merely blogged little craft projects and outfits. 

(via A Beautiful Mess)

(via A Beautiful Mess)

Fast forward five years, she and her sister, Emma, are running the blog full time and I have witnessed as they have planned weddings, bought/decorated new houses, written two books, made a smartphone app, and covered an array of craft/photo/DIY/food/fashion topics. They are basically just the coolest, and I wish I had the guts to dress like them. Sigh.

Bedroom Wish List

No, not that kind of bedroom wish list... my bedroom furniture wish list!  ;)

Right now, we have three bedrooms, but only one bed. Our master bedroom is looking moderately swanky, but our guest bedroom is looking a little lackluster (to say the least).

Our current bedframe is from Ikea and Jordan bought it over a year ago for his on-a-budget bachelor pad apartment. It's great, but we both definitely want something a little more stylish for our room. So we're hoping to move our that bedframe (and the sort-of matching Target nightstands from my college apartment) to the bedless guest room, and Jordan wants to build us a new bed! He's got the blueprints ready to go and has made some progress.

I'm excited to see how it turns out! In my mind it will turn out somewhat like this:


                                                                     (via West Elm)

That's probably a stretch, but how cool is this bedframe from West Elm?! Once the bed is finished, we will need new nightstands too. Dreaming we could have these matching beauties:


                                                                         (via West Elm)

And our current dresser is mine from my childhood. It's even more nostalgic because it was my mother's as a child, and my parents had it refinished for me.

I love it, but it's wood veneer finish is definitely showing some wear and tear. P.S. I learned the difference between laminate and wood veneer furniture here (before I had no clue why my dresser was chipping in such a strange way).

The plan is to sand the chipping finish off and either stain it (if the wood below the veneer will allow) or repaint it (maybe a daring color like this). But I can't say I wouldn't love to replace it with the matching West Elm dresser:


                                                                               (via West Elm)

We also need to spice up the room with a nice rug, and I love this lovely piece:

(via West Elm)

Ahhhhh... Dreaming is so nice. If only, if only. Until we can afford all of this, though, we're excited to pinch our pennies by doing our own DIY versions of these pretties. We'll keep ya posted!

Wedding Video

We just got our wedding video back from our amazing videographer and dear friend Ben Ramsey. Ben did such an amazing job capturing some glimpses of the most joyful day of our lives.


Francesca + Jordan from Ben Ramsey on Vimeo.

DIY Bridal Party Invitations

It's time, my dears, to talk of pretty wedding things. You have the date, you have the place, but do you have the people you want to stand by your side? Choosing your bridesmaids and groomsmen (as I've talked about before) can be a stressful process, but asking them to be in the party is such a rewarding experience! They will light up with joy when they learn that they are the "chosen ones" (it's never a wrong moment to insert a Harry Potter reference), especially if you do it an adorable way! For my ladies, I looked at a few options, such as these adorable cards from Rifle Paper Co.:

                                     

But Jordan and I really wanted to hand make something (DIY is pretty much the name of our wedding) that both the girls and boys would appreciate. And like most of my good ideas, I saw something someone else did on Facebook that inspired me! They gave their bridesmaids a frame with a note saying "Reserve for a picture of the bride and her bridesmaid on (wedding date here)". We loved that it was surprising and cute, and the frame could (and should!) be used again!

So, we headed to Michael's and found these raw wooden picture frames for $1.99 each. We grabbed some cheap drawing paper, a small tin of wood stain and headed back home. We deconstructed the frames, laid out some tarp (a.k.a. the Michael's plastic shopping bag), and got the stain ready.

Jordan carefully and meticulously stained the frames (outside because it's stinky) and we laid them out to dry (on another plastic bag).

As you may know, I received Calligraphy pens for Christmas because I really wanted to try my hand (so punny) at lettering! So, I've been practicing and practicing (shown above)... And honestly, it's not really looking like the real thing, BUT I'm still enjoying it and like the results! So I figured I'd put my amateur skills to work and start writing these cards.

I played with a few styles until I found what I liked! I tried to be a little manlier for the groomspeoples. 

So, we put the frames back together and lined them up for shipping. We have 11 attendants each  (don't judge me) so that's a lot of frames.

Without a lot of research, I figured the best way to ship them was to stuff them in 6"x9" padded envelopes (which you can find at Target or the post office). I was right, but kind of too right. A 6"x9" envelope on a 6"x9" frame means a very difficult time stuffing. I love that they fit perfectly (twas adorbz), but the amount of time I spent tugging on the frame while trying not to rip the envelope was not fun. Get bigger envelopes people.

The funniest part of this story is when (due to mishaps in scheduling) we had to move our wedding date. And thus re-write all of the cards and haphazardly reseal some envelopes. And two of the frames broke, so we had to buy some replacements at Target. We are learning that you cannot control everything.

Once they were REALLY ready to be shipped, I dropped them off at the post office and sent them away for $2 each. Within a few days the flood of texts came in. our attendants loved them and couldn't wait to be a part of the party!

How did you propose to your bridal party?