Last Minute Touches

The week leading up to the wedding was crazy. There were so many little things popping up. As we got closer to Saturday, it seemed that more and more things needed to be done. In fact, the craziness just kept expanding at an exponential rate until, at about 1:50 on Saturday afternoon. MOH MD and hid out in the choir loft for the last ten minutes pre-ceremony as all the finishing flourishes of chaos took place just a flight of stairs away. More about that later though! I want to share a few project with you!

One of the most fun/important wedding prep tasks was the practice flowers. If I had not practiced putting everything together before hand, I would not have had any  confidence  things would go smoothly the day of!

If you are planning to DIY flowers, I HIGHLY recommend a trial.

This sign was a HUGE time suck, and sadly was set up at the back door, not the front door but I was still super cute and I am glad we made it.

At the 11th hour, we decided not to do a seating chart. However, we had this great, huge frame that MIL Aardvark had gotten for us on the cheap. I didn't want it to go to waste so we decided to use it to explain our lack of seating chart. Mama Aardvark, Bridesmaid Sis and I worked very long and hard coming up with the following poem:

Seating Instructions for you:

Any Ol' Chair will do.

Pick where you sit.

Have fun with it!

We're so glad we invited you!

We wrapped the mass produced art that came in the frame in wrapping paper, then Mama Aardvark and I stayed up WAY too late cutting out the paper letters for the poem. It was worth it though. The finished product was cute as can be. Sadly, I am still looking for a photo of it! (You get the idea from what you see above). Also, I must say, glue dots rock! I had never used them until this project and they saved us HOURS with a glue stick. 

The glue dots also came in handy when we made signs that informed guests of the candy bar. We used a cute little poem that we found right here on the bee, printed it and stuck it to wrapping paper in the frame. (Clearly I was slacking in my blogger duty and did not get pictures of these either.)

The final last minute project was the "backdrop" for our DJ. Ages ago I purchased a whole bunch of navy blue and green fabric. I decided to go with the "Strips of fabric curtain" thing that I have recently seen used in all different ways for weddings. To give credit where credit is due, bridesmaid Sis and I cut all of the fabric and tied about half of it. Step-dad and Mr. Aardvark tied the rest. It was a very easy project, but also very time consuming.  You can see though, it did a good job covering the window at Arcadia so that only those at the wedding could laugh at our dancing. 

Papa Aardvark and I. Photo by Micheal Terri Studios

If you are not married yet, and you are planning a lot of DIY, please,  leave more time than you think you need. Way more. And as many other bees have said, do things early. I thought I was SUPER on the ball, but I still was rushed at the end. I think the rush at the end will happen no matter what, but the more you prepare, the better it will be. 

Married brides, did you have a last minute rush? How did you plan for it?

Mooning with My Honey

Before my professional pictures arrive (any day now!) I figured I better tell you all about our honeymoon! If I know myself, as soon as we get that CD, I will be in full on re-cap mode and I don't want this to get pushed off the radar!

Our honeymoon was amazing. If you recall, we went to Sun River Oregon. We did a lot of sight seeing and got a lot of rest. We for sure were not sick while we were there. We may have been coughing, and had runny noses, and sore throats, but we weren't sick. Who is sick on their honeymoon?

Not these kids! That picture was actually the last day. We drove down to Crater Lake. It was pretty amazing.

We lucked out. The early spring weather was a bit chilly and rainy and quite a few of our "maybe we should do this" type things were closed for "winter". How is that lucky? It gave our non-sick selves a great excuse to say in, order pizza, sit by the fire and watch bad TV, which was exactly what we needed, to relax and un-wind.

We didn't spend the whole time in our condo though, we did get out quite a bit and saw some pretty cool things. We spent most of our first day there at the High Desert Museum. It was really cool! We learned a lot about Oregon history and all sorts of native and non-native animals. The coolest part by far though, were the otters. I may have been a little obsessed. I think we stood there and watched them swim laps for about 20 minutes.... And I may have taken about 100 pictures. But I will only show you one.

Ok! I will show you two....

They were SO CUTE! Speaking of really cute things, we also saw this heart shaped puddle. And being the cheese ball that I am, I had to take a picture of our reflection in it....

The next couple days we did quite a bit of hiking. The highlight were Tumalo falls and Smith Rock State Park. We also saw some really cool lava fields but I am not sure if they had a name or not. And now, pretty pictures!

Lava up close and a whole field of it!

Pretty!

Because it was "winter" the road to Tumalo Falls was closed. So we had to hike the 2.5 mile in to see it. On the way we discussed the difference between a Butte and a Butt:

Sorry, sometimes I am a child. And like a child, I was getting tired of hiking about a mile in, "Can we just say these are the falls?"

But, we kept walking and it was SO worth it! 100 feet of falling water. Totally beautiful!

And then we hiked up to the top and looked down:

So powerful! I would highly recommend checking it out if you are ever in central Oregon. However, if you only have time to do ONE thing in central Oregon, I would HIGHLY recommend Smith Rock State Park. I was SO blown away. it was totally breath taking. It made me want to get back into rock climbing and be more in touch with nature and sing like Pocahontas (colors of the wind anyone?). Words do not do it justice, so check these out. 

This is where we stopped for lunch (romantic no?):

At the summit

Monkey Face

Needless to say the whole trip was amazing. This (very long) post is just a quick snap shot of  our incredible week. I am so glad we took the time to get away right after the wedding! We surely needed it! With the help of the hive and a few friends for Oregon, we managed to find amazing restaurants as well! The whole trip was very "us". It was perfect.

As amazing as it was, I was happy when we got on the plane home.

We had been away for 14 days, the whole week before the wedding and then the honeymoon. While many people are sad when it is all over, and the thought of "real life" is a drag, we both agreed, we were ready. I was ready to be done planning, I was ready to just enjoy day to day life with my husband and I was ready to be home.

How did you feel after your honeymoon?  Did you use it as a chance to unwind or go on adventures or both?

Final Fitting

I am so glad I wrote notes when I picked up my dress! Between the final fitting and the wedding, Mama Aardvark and Grandma Aardvark came to visit me and take my dress back to Michigan. When I tried on the dress for them I had some panicky thoughts and worried about weather my dress was bridey enough. I started seeing flaws were there had been none before. In short, I freaked right on out.

I wouldn't go so far as to say I had dress regret, but I had dress, "I'm not sure-and-IT'S-ONLY-TWO-WEEKS-TO-THE-WEDDING-WHAT-AM-I-GOING-TO-DO!?!?!??!"

Luckily I got over it. And by the wedding day, had fallen back in love with my dress.

Now here are my thoughts following the final fitting, along with Bridesmaid OT's cell phone pictures:

"I have my dress now. I am so excited only 21 day to go! I am beginning to wonder is I should have had her put a bustle in. I don't think so. If I decide I am going to keep the long skirt on for some reason, I can pin one in.  I love it. It is SO soft and light and comfortable. Natural fiber FTW."

Somehow, in the week that lapsed between these pictures and my mom's visit, doubt had crept into my mind.  At first, when I put on the dress for Mama and Grandma Aardvark, everything seemed OK.

I showed off how it converted. Mama and Grandma were very impressed. When I put the big skirt back on, everything didn't tuck quite right and that really started the panic (I thought I'd be a wrinkled mess on my wedding day!)

In fact, I am pretty sure this picture (and that lovely face I am making) was was the result of me taking off the  big skirt in a in a hurry because I was worried it would ruin the little dress!

Already on edge about the whole dress (and possibly suffering from Pre-wedding crazies aka Bride Brain), my freakout was complete when I saw this picture:

Aside from the dopey smile, you can totally see my BRA! After seeing this I was SO ready for Mama Aardvark to take that dress far far away. There was no time to get anything else. I would have to wear it. I tried not to think about it. When I couldn't push it out of my mind, I tried to hope that everything worked out....

Needless to say on the wedding day, I loved my dress. I loved getting married in it. I loved getting pictures taken in it. And, I really loved dancing in it!

Did you have any dress related panic right before your wedding? Did everything work out in the end?