We interrupt your normally scheduled wedding crap

to show you my super amazingly awesome rain boots:


I got them at Marshall's today for $19!! I am so excited I can't wait to wear them.

And, I bought a little man-candy as well:


Chris is reading it now for fitness tips, and then I will be the proud owner of the cover lol.

I promise to you, finding Christopher's clothing and the groomsmen's attire was FAR more difficult than figuring out my dress and the bridesmaids attire.

From way back when, tuxes were out. I never really liked the look, and our wedding isn't really formal enough to warrant one. I don't remember which one of us found this picture, but the grooms 'look' was our inspiration. Christopher saw the vest and it was all over, that is what he wanted.

One afternoon after I got off from work, Chris rounded up his best man, CJ and his grooms-dude, Matt, and we went on the scavenger hunt of the world to try and find clothes for them to have.

We went to EVERY store in the mall that carried men's suits. Finally, at JCPenney, we made a little progress:



Chris loved how this all looked together. He was ready to buy it right then. So then, we had Matt and CJ get the pants in their sizes. This is where we hit rough terrain:



Do you see how short those are?? No Bueno. Of course we try to see if maybe another store had them a little longer, but lo an behold, it isn't made that long. Damn CJ :)

A couple days later, this post by Miss Meerkat showed up on WeddingBee. It was like she knew exactly my struggle! I headed on over to studiosuits.com, fell in love and begged Chris to give it a try.

He did.

He coordinated with his grooms-dudes to have them come over and measure themselves, and we decided to order the full suit (pants, vest & jacket) for Chris.

We ordered our suits on 09/26. On 10/14, a mere 17 calendar days later, we received these beauties. From India! I can only imagine 3 or 4 of those 17 days was shipping alone. I was seriously impressed with their turn around time. Chris and I tore into the package like a bunch of hyenas, and I held my breath as he began to try his suit on.

...


.....


"IT'S PERFECT!!" I screamed.. Seriously y'all, this suit is fresshhh and it fits Chris to a T...almost like it was made for him.

His GD's came over and tried on their pants as well, no suprise they fit them really nicely as well.

Want to see Chris in the suit he will be married in??





I love it, obviously, he will be wearing a yet to be purchased white button up under the vest, but we are both so excited that now he has his W-day attire.

I cannot recommend Studio Suits enough, their work is amazing for the price you pay, and they are a great company to work with. I was telling my mom about it, and she is going to order my abnormally tall younger brother some dress pants from there as well.

What will your groom be wearing on the big day??

Our Guestbook..

I never really gave much thought to our guestbook, or where you tell us how much you love us and how ultra-fab our wedding is. =)

I love love love love love love (one more 'love' for good measure) this new idea floating around the interwebs:



But, I am saddened to say that I did not purchase the Mary Poppins upgrade in my luggage. So that (above) has no way of fitting in this:



Unless they invent folding wood. Which slightly defeats the purpose.

One day, I got a email (not suprisingly) from MyPublisher. They were offering $30 off any book. And then, LIGHTBULB MOMENT! I can make a guest book using our engagement pictures! I uploaded, cropped, and typed for days on end (read: 1 hour) and sent my creation to MyPublisher to turn my conconction to a real breathing..book.

We received it the other day, and Oh.My.Gosh. Love. It's completely awesome. Oh you want pics? I guess I will oblige..

They read my mind.


The cover. If I were able to rely better on my moment freezing skills, you would be able to see our names and wedding date in the bottom left hand corner.


We chose to add some quotes that relate to love every few pages.




I say 'relate' because not all our quotes are lovey, per se. I let Chris pick his favorite movie quote, and this is what he gave me:

"Well that's what we do, we fight... You tell me when I am being an arrogant son of a bitch and I tell you when you are a pain in the ass. Which you are, 99% of the time. I'm not afraid to hurt your feelings. You have like a 2 second rebound rate, then you're back doing the next pain-in-the-ass thing."
It completely fits us. I think it's kinda silly too, anyone at our wedding will read that and nod their head (side to side, not up and down), a chuckle a little.

We left a lot of white space to give everyone room to write their innermost ponderings about us, and whatever else they would like to write (or draw) about. But if I suddenly grow devil horns in a picture, they will wish that they could jump into a Mary Poppins bag. =D



Lastly, just to give you all an idea about how huge this thing actually is, I took a picture of it next to the standard magazine size "Brides". I can't wait to see what people write in here for us!!

What are you planning on using as your guest'book'?

The dress.

I am back. :)

Thanks for the comments about my last post-- really, I just thought the giraffe icon was the cutest thing ever, and double YAY for having 4 followers now! I feel spoiled. :)

Anywho, I realized that I haven't talked about my dress. Like, at all. Well, there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for this....

It has not been created yet.


**i'll let that one sink in for another minute**


Where were we?? Oh yes, my yet to be created beautiful fantabluous dress! Here is the dealio. My mommy is the most amazing seamstress ever. Like for real, I kid you not! You need proof?

Exhibit A: Senior prom dress, created the day before prom:


Exhibit B: (I CANT BELIEVE I AM PUTTING THIS FOR THE WORLD TO SEE....)Pink Ninja Turtle:


Yes, that is a fully custom ninja turtle costume, with a H belt buckle. Still my favorite costume to date, by the way.

So I am not too worried. We plan on going to buy the fabric here within the next month-- I can't wait to share this adventure!!

When Christopher and I first told each other that we love each other and are gunna get hitched (aka engaged) I gravitated towards these types of dresses:




Yeah, thats the dress Tess wore in 27 dresses. Love.

But then one day, I woke up, an had an epiphany. Like a full on gold light shining on my blonde little head moment. I need a poofy dress. Our wedding is on the ship wide formal night. Where people typically go all out, remember this pic?


Thats formal night, I gotta step up my game for our wedding day! That day, forevermore, these two dresses became my inspiration:




MRS POODLE! Wedding dress extraordinaire--her dress in the most gorgeous dress i have ever seen. EVER.

It's funny-- through my teen years i thought it was so uncool that my mother wanted to make clothes for me. But now, I feel like princess jasmine, cause I can pretty much have whatever I want created for me, my way, to fit me. Even better, my madre gets to do something that she loves, and create with her own hands, the single most noticed thing (aside from the actual wedding and, um, open bars)in our wedding. She is beyond excited, as am I.

I have been asked repeatedly "aren't you worried that your dress isn't even started yet? You ONLY have 6 months". The answer to that is not at all! My mom can whip this thing out in 2 days tops if she really needed to(including meals, bathroom breaks, showers and sleeping). I am fully confident it will come out better than I envision. I am so excited to share the progress of my dress with you all!!

I'm not gunna lie

I am kinda bummed:

Battle of the Ages...The Conclusion

Well my friends, I told you I would be victorious!

I recently posted about Christopher's perfect ring, which we found in a issue of Brides Magazine. Once I had amassed my dollars, the darn thing went into 'discontinued' status. My life.

I gotta be real with you all, after waiting 6+ days for Paypal to refund my money from buying the ring (as of this very moment, it is STILL listed on e-wedding bands as 'for sale'... ugh.)I was completely deflated. I was so frustrated that once we are ready to buy it, it was no longer available. I searched online but didn't feel like I would have much luck. Things were not looking up for us.

One day last week, I plopped myself on the bed, and told Chris we need to find him a new ring, cause that ring just wasn't going to happen. To be honest, I was really pissed off. I am a winner, and I always do what I need to do to get things done. I did NOT handle this well.

We sat down and started browsing on amazon.com. What is Chris' super manly wedding ring criteria, you may ask? It had to be black. That is all. He had his heart set on a primarily black ring. He made some references about it matching the color of my heart, but we aren't going to discuss that right now. :)

We went through what felt like 530,000 pages. none of them really fit him. And then, we saw this:



We looked at each other, I said 'yeah?' and he said 'yeah!'. That was it. I closed my eyes and hit the 'order' button. We received it over the weekend and oh my gosh it is perfect. No pictures for now, even though Chris knows what it looks like, he does NOT get to see it in person until our wedding day. It is locked securely in my madre's safe so that it may stay away from any prying eyes while I am at work

On a side note, this reminds me of a funny story about him buying my engagement ring. It was no secret that he was going to propose at one point or another, but when he got the ring, he wanted to be sure it fit. I had to sit with a blindfold on, while he put the ring on my finger to make sure it fit. It was the most torturous thing ever, I swear. Guess what I did as soon as the ring came in?? That's right, I made him feel the torture as well!!!

Oh, I almost forgot to tell you. The best part about the ring?? It was only 30% of the original price that I paid for the other branded one. AWESOME!

Did anyone else encounter troubles like these when ring shopping?

"I felt like I was invited to the white house! I felt so cool opening it"

That is what one of my friends told me this morning about our wedding invitations. I can't share them in their entireity yet, because I know not everyone has received them.

Christopher and I DIY'ed (remember that post about the weekend we were slaves to the invitations? Yeah...it was rouggghh)the whole invitations. Designed everything, minus the cover of our cruise info booklet, which I kinda stole from Mrs. Snapdragon over at Weddingbee CAUSE IT WAS PERFECT! We only bought the envelopes and the pocketfolder... Let me tell you, they are lookin fresh!

I gotta come clean with ya'all. We sent our invites out 6 months before our wedding. whomp whomp whomp...

Only because this is a destination wedding, and I want everyone we love and care about to have proper time to save their baller dollers so that they can bear witness to our one and only wedding.

The etiquite police can shoot me, I don't care! If they really want to go, they need time to plan accordingly. And if they plan on attending A CRUISE-- it's not something that you can forget.

We mailed them out on Tuesday evening (about 6), and I got a RSVP back to me at work less than 24 hours later. I. LOVE. OUR. POST. OFFICE!! They deserve some cupcakes or something cause they treated my little babies like gold and got them delivered faster than a rabbit being chased by a dog.

Of course, I had to take the obligatory post office shots, enjoy!