Sales!

Victoria's Secret Semi-Annual Sale is going on right now (in stores till January 12th) and if you're looking for some great threads to wear on your wedding day, now is the time to check it out! Once upon a time, I worked for Vickis. While every store will be stocked with different sale items, they do receive new shipments every week, so their stock of sale items might be different week to week. I stopped in at my local Vickis last week and was surprised to see the abundance of "bridal" undies they had! Most of these were on sale for $5.99, rather than the original price of $14-$16. I, myself, scored a pair of undies with the ruffles (second photo). :o)

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Don't forget to check out Victoria's Secrets's website for cute dresses to wear on your honeymoon, or maybe even bridesmaid dresses for the "unbride". They also have some swim wear on sale if your going somewhere tropical after your wedding.

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Bath and Body Works (who is corporately linked to Victoria's Secret) Semi Annual Sale is going on too, which could be a great place to pick up favors for your shower or gifts for your wedding attendants. Like this lil' kit, $10 (originally $30).

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Have you been taking advantage of the after Holiday sales for your wedding or honeymoon? What sale suggestions do you have?

I am a photo whore: Part II

Our second engagement shoot was in New York City, by J'adore Love Photography, whom I found on the weddingbee classifieds. You bees should really take advantage of all the bee resources! Efrain and Jennifer from J'adore Love Photography are sooo cute; seriously they should be in front of the camera rather than behind it! We meet them in Times Square, where we shot there, Bryant Park and just outside the New York public library. It was very cold out, which made it difficult to find "cute" outfits and still keep warm. We did the best that we could do considering the weather.

A few of our favorites:

"Look hun, a bird."

I stop in the middle of the road to kiss ALL the time. :)

Peek-a-boo

I love hip hop, he is hip hop..all in all, I love him.

All Photography by J'adore Love Photography

I am a photo whore.

I am a photo whore.
I've never claimed to be much of a writer, which is why my posts are usually filled with photos and commentary rather than excellent writing. I loooove photography. Usually I am the one behind a camera rather than in front of it. But that's not what this post is about. I am a photo whore, in the sense that I had the opportunity for not just one engagement shoot, but two. From two different photographers in two different states. Yes, I am a photo whore.


Mr. Mek and I's first shoot was with Michelle from Redheaded Ninja. Can you believe I found her on Craigslist?! We met with her at Hershey Park to do our shoot. She has an amazing amount of energy. Seeing her excited about shooting made us excited to pose for her. Here are some of our favs:

The lil' one is Mr. Mek's 4 year old son. We'll call him Lil' B. He's a rockstar.

The two towers in the background are part of the Hershey Chocolate Factory.

The Dry Gulch train, is Lil' B's favorite ride. This photo is so candid; I like how Mr. Mek and I are both looking at Lil' B and that his hands are on both our laps.

Kissing on the Kissing Tower

This photo is just too cute for words. hehe.


My Fav.

Michelle survived the flying skee ball that Lil' B unintentionally almost threw at her head. Opps.

Trying to sneak a smooch on a moving carousel...not so easy.

If you look very closely you can see Lil' B playing between us.

All Photos by Redheaded Ninja check out her blog!

Inserts and Price Breakdown

Insert wise, I wanted to keep our invites clutter free. I figure that if there was any additional information that I needed to send out I could mail out later to my confirmed guests.

First, to answer a couple questions:
Mochacoca asked, "Looks great did you Gocco everything? I can’t wait till I pull out my Gocco. I have been stocking up on supplies"

Answer: I did not Gocco everything. I've been trying to save and savor my supplies so I printed the invite, inserts and labels with a laser printer. The only thing I did Gocco was the return addy on the envelope. I do plan on Gocco-ing thank you note cards though and can't wait to do so!

bugaboo said, "I would love to learn more about the wording you used on your invitation if you don’t mind sharing; it seems to be uniquely worded and I just love that!"

Answer: When I was searching for the right wording for our wedding invites, I wanted something heartfelt, not too, too cheesy and nothing that refers to "Husband and Wife". Verse it has some great suggestions and many, many verses to choose from.

Our invite wording:
Please accept our invitation to join family and friends, in witnessing the sanctity of our love, devotion and dedication to our new life.

For a better view of how I organized the wording:


Onto the inserts.
Although majority of our guests are from the mainland, we do have a few local Hawaii guests that we are inviting so we made two versions of our postcard RSVPs; one for the local guests and one for the OOT guests. The OOT RSVP has a spot for the guest to put when they are arriving and where they will be staying at. We're getting married on a weekday rather than a weekend, so for our local Hawaii guests we gave them the option of coming to the ceremony and/or the dinner afterwards. Our ceremony is during regular work hours, so we had to factor in that our local guests might not want to take off of work to come to the ceremony, but might be willing to join us for the dinner later.

OOT RSVP

Local RSVP

The back of our RSVP postcard was the same for both cards. It just had our return address and a spot for our guests to write something back to us.

We also had an invite and directions insert to our Welcome BBQ.

As a budget bride, I can't go on without sharing the price breakdown:

Bright White Linen Cardstock (100pk)	Paper and More	$15.99
Japanese Paper (5- 25 1/2" x 19"sheets)	Paper Source	$47.00
60 Jackets	Paper Presentation	$79.40
Envelopes (2-50 packs)	Paper Presentation	$27.35
TOTAL Total includes shipping		$169.74

That equals out to $2.83 an invite. Plus Postage and Gocco supplies.

And I still have left over paper and envelopes for future projects.

Could I have made them cheaper? Sure. But for being "custom", I think I did pretty good on price.

You're Invited!

So let me start the New Year for apologizing for my...um...lack of existence lately. The holidays swallowed me whole and just finally spit me out. My last post left off with the send off of my invites. This is the follow up...my invites!

These are the labels that I wrote to Miss Etiquette about. I printed these out on 8.5x11 label sheets (6 on a sheet). Mr. Mek and I cut them out individually by hand. I am sooo glad we did; I might be a lil' biased, but I think they came out quite nicely.

Return addy was gocco'd on the back of the envelope.

This is what the guest pulls out of the envelope. A jacket, complete with bellyband!

Invites gets pulled out of jacket and ta da..."You're Invited!"

Close up of our invite; it's printed on bright white linen paper.

Next up: the inserts.

And They're Off!

My invites are officially sent. Finally after some delay and procrastination, I finally stuck them in the mail box today. Not only did I use labels on my envelopes, I also used non-matching stamps. Ohhh the horror! I was hoping to be able to use these:

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They would have matched very nicely with my red envelopes. But low and behold, my invites needed 59 cent stamps. These were my options:

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At the first post office I went to they did not have any 59 cent stamps; they were going to order them for me, but when they called to put in an order they were told that because of the holiday rush, they wouldn't make it to the post office till January 9th. Since my RSVP date is January 15th, that was a no-go.

The second post office I went to did not have the heart stamp, but had plenty stamps of Mr. Michener. At this point, I could care less what stamp was on my invite, I just needed to mail them out. The lovely post lady pointed out that the guy was wearing a lei, I said, "Perfect, since my wedding is in Hawaii". LoL. When I got home, my curiousness got to me and I googled James Michener. Not only is he originally from Pennsylvania but he wrote "Tales from the South Pacific" and "Hawaii". Coincidence? I think not.

Make me up 2

Following up my make me up post, pretty much everyone agreed with the smokey eye/neutral lip, which is what I was leaning towards too. Guess I just needed some "bee-assurance". :o) You guys had me sold when you pointed out the red lipstick on teeth and re-applying issues with the other look.

Like Miss Snapdragon, I'm usually only a weekend make-up wearer, mainly because I look and dress like this during the week...

uniform, glasses, hair up and make-up-less

I did do some grooming prep for wedding day this week though! I got bangs!

Before

After

I figured I should get them cut now so I can
1. get used to them
2. give them time to grow out a little in case too much was cut off
3. have time to think of an alternative in case I hated them

I might be a lil' biased, but I think bangs suit me just fine. I like subtle change.


How did you beauty prep yourself?