Being April and all, it’s supposed to be spring here, right? It’s not. It’s sometimes in the 50s-60s during the day, but mostly it’s been cold and rainy, with some surprise snow. Yay.

We have just under four months until the wedding (119 days, according to our registry), so there’s my explanation for the lack of updates. Mostly everything is done, really. Need to address our invitations (once I work out the bugs with our printer). Need to paint votive holders (but it’s not warm enough yet). Waiting on our bridesmaids dresses to come in. Little projects here and there, mostly. It’s been fun, but honestly, we should have eloped. It would have been easier, less DIY, less money, less stress. The good news is that our reception venue ended up getting a new coordinator (who actually has event/wedding planning experience) who replaced the awful one I had to deal with for three months. I love her already–she’s been quick and thorough in answering my emails and has really taken away a lot of the anxiety I was feeling over the reception. Yay!

BUT. We’re almost there.

And, it’s Friday!

cardigan – Target
striped pocket tee – Old Navy
mocs – Target
cuffed skinny jeans – American Eagle
initial necklace – gift

I love these mocs, but they’re beat up after just over a year. I’m the worst shoe person ever; I love ballet flats, but find them mostly uncomfortable, boots aren’t year-round footwear, and sandals are frowned upon in some situations. Whatever!

I’ve wanted a navy gingham shirt since last year when I saw one on Sydney over at The Daybook. Hers was a j.crew boys’ shirt, and by the time I got to the site, it was sold out. I saw this one at Forever21 and had to snatch it up. I actually wore this outfit a couple of weeks ago on our engageaversary date night, and Josh loved it! I thought he’d hate the color combo, but he complimented it five times that night.

orchid cardigan, Target
gingham button down, Forever21
dark wash skinny jeans, Express
Pink & Pepper Racer boots, DSW
jewelry, gifts

Josh is gone until Saturday at the state wrestling tournament, which means that I am trying not to go crazy. I came home from work, did a quick workout, made dinner, and started sorting our wedding invitations. Murphy helped!

I designed our invitations, RSVP, reception, and thank you cards myself, to match our save the dates, and had them printed through Vistaprint. Thankfully, they keep offering Groupons, so we got everything for under $100 (plus, I got a cool new mug with my new last initial on it to put myself over the Groupon amount). I ordered the RSVP and reception cards back in January, and then the invitations and thank you cards a couple of weeks ago. The invitations and thank yous showed up and…they were the wrong color. The pink was way too bright, which made the text hard to read and wasn’t the color that I wanted at all. I emailed Vistaprint ASAP, and had a reprint and reship order the next morning. Yay!

Basically what I ended up doing was grabbing all four boxes of invite stuff that I had (different shipments from VP, as well as the envelopes that I ordered), pulling everything out, and separating it all into piles. The printed stuff comes banded in plastic with cardstock covers, so I took out all of those and put them in a trash box (which would be the one that Murphy took over). All of the pieces went neatly into a smaller box to be assembled and addressed later. All of the extras (the first set of invites, thank you cards, and the million plain white envelopes from VP that I won’t use) went into yet another box. I’ll most likely keep the thank yous, because we can always use those, and might do some crafty stuff with the invites, but the majority of the leftovers will probably be recycled.

I think we also have our honeymoon chosen, as well, and plan on going in December, after Josh’s finals. It’ll be a nice way to end his first semester in the Respiratory Therapy program, as well.

I’ve never been one for exercise. I was blessed with a very fast metabolism as a kid, so I could eat whatever I want and stay small. I’m only a grand total of 5’1″ anyway. Though I eat much better now than I ever have, I still don’t consistently eat what I would call “healthy.” I don’t eat fast food, but I LOVE carbs and sweets. And that’s okay. Really! (In moderation.)

Anyway, I started exercising recently. Not because I think I’m getting fat (though I am gaining fat in unwelcome places), but because a) I want to be healthier (and working out is obviously great for that), b) I want to continue to eat the fun stuff, and c) I want to look better. Exercise doesn’t have to be expensive or take forever–two things that were definitely holding me back. I also hate working out in front of other people–I tried the gym once, for a couple of weeks, and just didn’t like it. I get all blotchy and red-faced (and stay that way), and I want to wear whatever I want without feeling self-conscious. I gave up for a while, and then decided to give working out at home a shot, this way, I could work out whenever I wanted without having to go anywhere.

(A note on running: I don’t. I hate running. It’s great for some people, but I can’t do it.)

I started out in shorts and t-shirts, but I find t-shirts pretty cumbersome unless they’re very fitted. I have long hair with layers and bangs, so I tried the pony tail/messy bun and bobby pins, which doesn’t work for me. I have (and love) yoga pants and sweat pants, but they’re too much, especially when you’re moving and sweating. Shorts are great, but they can move around a lot unless they’re super fitted. My current go-to outfit is this:

1. pink sweat-wicking top, Target

2. black leggings, Target
3. molded-cup sports bra, Kohl’s (mine is similar)

I also keep my hair tied back in a low pony (it doesn’t stay up in a higher one) and keep the rest back with a thick cloth headband.

That’s it. I don’t even wear shoes. I tried wearing the only tennis shoes I own, but it was so uncomfortable for me (the person who doesn’t like shoes in general) that they were off halfway through.

I spent an entire summer using Netflix fitness videos (mostly yoga and 10-minute pilates), but I believe those are gone now (from other bloggers, apparently one company owned the streaming rights to ALL of the fitness videos, and they didn’t come to an agreement before the license was up, so they’ve been gone since the beginning of August). I found FitSugar via Pinterest, and loved the 10-minute cardio, Victoria’s Secret, and weight work outs, and did those five times a week for three weeks. I was excited and a little proud when I found myself doubling up the videos.

Then, I decided to step it up little and give Jillian Michaels’ 30 Day Shred a shot. She is not screwing around! There are three levels, 20-25 minutes a piece, of a pretty intense circuit work out. Each circuit is strength, cardio, and abs, but something different each time for muscle confusion.

All you really need for this is the DVD (or the videos, which you can find on YouTube) and a set of weights. I already had a set of 5lbs, so I used those (they’re using 3lbs in the video). Now, I’m in no hurry to get toned, so I can probably stretch out each level longer than ten days, so I’m focusing on getting through the level completely with no stopping before I move on.

Picking out invitations sounds easy, doesn’t it? It’s not. Especially when you’re on a budget. Not only are there colors and designs to choose from, but then you realize how quickly an invitation that costs $1.65 adds up. Long ago, I pinned several designs for invitations and save the dates from minted and Wedding Paper Divas, but let’s face it: $1000 for paper goods wasn’t going to happen for us. There’s also etsy, but unless you print them yourself, it’s really not that much more cost effective. Another option was to purchase kits from Michael’s, but at $40 for 30 invitations (and needing about 80), that just wasn’t going to cut it.

So, what’s a bride to do? I knew that Vistaprint had invitation options, but was wary about what exactly they offered in terms of design. I’ve ordered business cards from them before, so quality wasn’t an issue. They actually offer a sample kit, which is a big folder full of printed examples, and they’re not too bad–I was pleasantly surprised. I decided to check out their designs, and they actually have quite a few that we liked, and you can change the colors of the designs (sometimes). The wording and fonts are all customizable, too, so you don’t have to have super traditional wording if that’s not your thing!

Some of ones we liked (but didn’t use):

I also loved this one from minted, with the swirly text. Vistaprint offers a similar one, but with just a white background instead of a photo. I really wanted to use one of our engagement pictures with them. I had settled on the second one up there, with some minor changes (fonts and font colors), but it just wasn’t right. I liked the idea of having paper goods that coordinate with our wedding website, but having built ours myself, I didn’t have that option. And then, it dawned on me: I could design my own invites!

The beautiful thing about Vistaprint is that they run specials on Groupon, usually $17 for $70. They also have the option to upload your own designs, which is what I chose. I downloaded the templates for each item (highly suggested!) and some fonts, and got to work!

I’m SO happy with them! They come with plain white envelopes, but I didn’t really like those, so I set out to find kraft paper envelopes for cheap. After some very intense Googling, I found them at envelopemall.com for super cheap. They have tons of sizes, so I picked up a bunch in A7 (for the save the dates and invitations) and A2 (for the RSVP cards), and they were here the next day (a nice surprise, even though the save the dates weren’t even here yet).

Next up, addressing and stamps! I don’t have great handwriting, although it’s better when done in Sharpie, so I grabbed a black one and did what I could. I’m going to attempt printing addresses on the envelopes with my printer for the invitations, I think; I wanted some cool/fun calligraphy in white ink, but I don’t think that’s going to work out. The addressing went pretty quickly; even with the bridal party, it only took an hour or so to get them all put in envelopes and addressed. Collecting addresses was pretty easy for the most part, too. We did our guest list in a spreadsheet on Google Docs (shared with Josh), with columns for addresses and other things. I had a lot of addresses saved from when we sent out holiday cards last year, and the rest we got through text, Facebook, and family (and, in two cases, the phone book online). Stamps were fairly easy to choose, though I really wanted to go for a vintage, eclectic look by using a few different stamps on each, that would have been a huge pain. I bought a few international stamps, and then picked the bonsai ones for the rest:

Hopefully they’ll still have these next year, or the cherry blossom ones that we also liked (well, that I liked, since Josh doesn’t really care about the stamps, haha). Between the invitation suite, stamps, bridesmaids’ dresses, my flowers, and Josh’s tie, that’s pretty much the only pink in the wedding. The RSVP and reception cards (which I just finished last night!) are white with pink headers (so the opposite of the save the dates and invitations) and grey text, so I think that’ll look really nice once everything is printed and put together.

Ready to go! (Excuse the random bicycle tires on the deck–we had to buy new rims for my bike and haven’t put them on yet!)

We had our engagement pictures done a few weeks ago, and it was a blast! Our photographer and her husband were awesome and fun, and our pictures turned out great. We got our photo DVD yesterday, and not only is is really cute (hello, custom-designed case and laser printed disc!), but looking through the pictures and laughing at ourselves was tons of fun.

A good photographer for your wedding is key for most people–this is the person (or people) who will capture your wedding day for the rest of your life. We found Jenn of Emily-Waid Photography through my longtime friend, Jess, actually; she did makeup for another wedding she shot, and I fell in love with her shooting and editing styles. She also happened to be right in our price range, and offers awesome packages that include an engagement session, a DVD of all of your photos, and print rights (this is very important if you want to print the images on your own).

We chose three outfits for our session, and two locations. If I could do it over, I’d wait until the fall for two reasons: better weather and fall outfits (my favorite); however, I really wanted to get them done so that we could choose one for our save the date. I did lots of research on what to wear, but most of it didn’t take into account the fact that we weren’t doing these in blazer-boots-scarf weather. The biggest thing I took away is to coordinate your outfits, but don’t match, and look natural. That is, don’t wear uncomfortable clothes or something that you wouldn’t normally wear (same goes for hair and makeup, ladies)–you do, after all, want to look like yourself. I looked through our closets, Pinterest, and played on Polyvore to get ideas and combos for stuff that we (mostly) already had.

Our first location was downtown, a place we love for food and festivals, and also the place where our reception will be. I wanted to be a little dressy for this, but not formal, and a little chic.

On me:
- cobalt lace skater dress, Kohl’s
- black skinny belt, Forever21
- black peep toes, Target (I have had these since high school!)

On him: 
- grey military-style button down, Old Navy
- black and blue tie, Kohl’s
- black dress pants
- black shoes, Payless

Our second location was a municipal park where we spent an entire summer walking the trails, and also the place where we’re getting married. I wanted to be more casual for these, and I had a dress in mind, and so did Josh! Now, a lot of websites will tell you not to wear prints, or make them minimal, but Josh and I love my purple ikat dress, and Jenn agreed that it was cute and perfect.

On me:
- purple ikat dress, GAP
- braided sandals, Target

On him:
- grey polo, JC Penney
- dark wash jeans, Kohl’s (his favorite!)
- brown shoes, Payless

The white lace dress was a Pinterest-inspired look, which I LOVED with boots of some sort. I found the dress right away, but the boots were just not happening. We looked everywhere for an affordable and cute pair of cowboy boots to no avail. I have two pairs of non-cowboy boots, but they didn’t look great with the dress, so sandals it was.

On me:
- white lace dress, Forever21
- braided belt, Target
- braided sandals, Target

On him:
- white and blue plaid button down, Kohl’s
- dark wash jeans, Kohl’s
- brown shoes, Payless

All images copyright Emily-Waid Photography.