Engagement Pictures (78 photos), by Jessica Pulliam

PEEP OUT THESE ENGAGEMENT PICTURES!

...a lot of these are fresh and new, never posted on FaceBook.
Click here to view photos

Oops

I feel very guilty because tomorrow marks three months since I've posted here. In all honesty though, I have a decent excuse...Verizon (yeah I said it!) has been putting FIOS in a housing development near our house, so our DSL service was drained. That's what they told us anyways, after 45 days of "trying" to fix it.

It's a very sore subject with us, hahahaha.

Anyways, a lot has happened in the last two months. In no particular order:

• We met with our photographer, Amanda Alt, and had our engagement pictures taken. Amanda is stellar, and I am going to devote an entire post to her work as soon as we get our engagement pictures back and I can post a few.

• We picked up our cardbox...it's actually a big metal and wood birdcage we found at TJMaxx. It's currently a very rustic red color...we may just leave it like that because it's so beautiful. I'll post a picture eventually.

• Our chapel double booked us. It's okay, but really unprofessional and lame. Apparently they do this a lot.

• I broke out the save the dates I ordered a very long time ago from The Knot (I got them at ridiculously rock-bottom prices). I collected most of the addresses I need, and those will go out ASAP. Again, an entire post will be dedicated to these little babies asap.

There is more, but those are the key items. More posts soon, I promise!!

blah

I am beyond burnt out, and if one more person says "Oooh you're getting married soon, aren't you!", I will snap! A lot is going on personally- job switch, cars, houses, etc etc. Nothing bad, but enough to submerge me into reality.

I really can't even think about wedding stuff. I got 1/4 through a Brides magazine last night before I had to put it down and chill out. We have on year and I am freaking the f out!

I'm trying to force myself to be positive. Tonight I searched Etsy for shower stuff. I think we're going with retro picnic theme. It sounds really fun, and appropriate for July.

Here's some links to things I've found- what do you think?

Jam Favors
Cupcake Liners
Cupcake Toppers (!!!)
Picnic Pennants
Invitations

I am tickled pink over everything i just posted! I think I'll wear a polka dotted dress.

Flowers/Fed Up

I'm pretty positive I haven't purchased ANYTHING for the wedding in a few months. I'm a little burnt out...not just on my own, but on weddings in general. We just went to our third in two months, and two of those I participated in. I think we only have one more this season, then we're DONE!

I've been going back and forth for awhile now on flowers vs. no flowers. I've decided last night after consulting with Mike that we will NOT be buying flowers! I appreciate other people's wedding flowers. I've seen gorgeous bouquets and cute centerpieces. It's just not for me. I'm too crafty and cost-conscious. They will die the next day. It's just not me. Bottom line. I don't care how abnormal it is or what people will say. I hate that I have to defend it in the first place.

We already have non-floral centerpieces covered (see nearly EVERY post I've ever written), so the only flower substitutes we have to worry about are the bridal party's. We really like bouquets like this. I could probably make them myself, but that girl does really amazing work. I like the idea of button bouquets. This one is special because it has other little bits of things. It's very me.

I know that guys won't care, but I'm wondering what bridesmaids will really think. Is it too weird and unconventional? I'd like to be in a wedding with alternative..stuff. I think these are great. I'd like to say it's my wedding and I don't give a shit what anyone thinks, but I guess I care too much. I'd like to think whoever I ask to be in my wedding will at least know me enough and love me enough to respect my alternative, non-offensive choices.

This is too deep. I need to stop caring!

PS, I think our flower girl will still throw petals, because I can't think of anything else for her to throw!

!!

I haven't posted in over a month! A lot (I suppose) has happened. I guess I'll recap.

• We booked a photographer! Amanda Alt WORK IT OUT. We weren't necessarily looking for a photographer yet, but I had a million people suggest that I "fan" her Facebook business page. I'm very glad I did. Her work is very fresh and new, and she's really inspired me to think outside of the box and just go crazy. I thought I had a lot of ideas about wedding pictures- what would look nice, pretty views, etc. I threw all of that out the window, now I'm just concerned about having fun and staying true to ourselves. Big bold colors and kitsch. Seriously. I'm done caring about what people will think!
  

• With our booking we receive a complimentary engagement session! We weren't going to do this otherwise, but this is free and gives us a chance to really get to know Amanda. I think we're going to do this later this summer. We've talked about it, and we're going to go with a yellow and gray color palate. I guess it's not necessary, but I'm into it. I've already bought...stuff..for the pictures, I can't wait! I don't want to give too much away, I love surprising people!
  

• I'm ditching those shoes I posted about. I woke up the other day and realized I hate them. I'm pretty sure I'm going to have the boldest, bluest shoes I can find as my "something blue". I'm a total shoe freak, I have a million pairs in a million colors. nothing in the wedding is blue...I think that makes it all the more fun.

• We ordered half of our centerpieces! I bought 12 manzanita branches, 2 bags of moss, and 12 black wooden containers from Blooms and Branches.

Sorry the picture blows, I took it on my phone. You get the idea, though. I lined the base with a plastic grocery bag, then filled it halfway with plaster and placed the branch in the container. Once it was dry, I stuffed it to the top with moss and this is the (almost) end result. I love it...it's exactly what I had in mind. This is a little gloomy and not the end product- I'm going to add hanging tea lights or little ivory flowers to the branches. Maybe both.

• Today I entered Mike and I to win a wedding in Bermuda. LOL at this. In the contest rules, it says you are judged on your picture and 10 reasons. I am notoriously ugly in pictures, but I think we picked a decent one. Please comment if you feel compelled to do so. I don't think it has any bearing on the competition, but it can't hurt!

• I need a photobooth. I'm obsessed with this idea, and it NEEDS to happen.

More later, maybe!

CUPCAKES!

As I mentioned at the end of my last post, we had our cake testing this past Saturday! The bakery was a little far from us...MapQuest put it at a solid 36 minutes. Mike's mom came along and the three of us managed to take every wrong turn possible. We only ended up being 10 minutes late, so no big deal.

This bakery is run by a wife and husband team of chefs. I haven't met or talked to the husband, but the wife is so friendly and amazing. I felt like we all really clicked. I'm realizing more and more that getting along personally with the vendors is a huge deal, and vital to the overall success of the wedding. It's hard to trust someone who isn't nice. Early on when we were looking at reception locations, we talked to this one woman who was just awful. She was very pushy about stupid details (exactly where the cake HAD to be placed, etc.) and was just downright intimidating. I don't understand mean people to begin with... but when we're talking about contracts worth hundreds or thousands of dollars, you'd imagine people would kiss your ass a little (or at least muster up good manners).

Anyways, we went with them! I figured we would- the tasting would have had to of been horrible for us not to. We got to try both vanilla and chocolate cake with raspberry filling on top, and pistachio and banana walnut with chocolate on top. Everything was DELICIOUS! We ended up with red velvet, french vanilla, and banana walnut cupcakes all with butter cream icing; chocolate with chocolate icing; and carrot cake with cream cheese icing. We ordered 40 of each- Mike thinks we'll have to get more. I'm unsure. He's probably right. For our top/cutting/anniversary cake, we got a chocolate cake on top of a vanilla cake with that delicious raspberry filling. It will be frosted with butter cream icing, and they will pipe on branches and ivory hydrangeas. Oh yeah, all of the cupcake icing (minus the chocolate) will be tinted ivory as well.

I am so pleased. It's nice to cross something off our list. The price was really good, and we were able to put half of it down. The less money we have to pay out the week/day of the wedding, the better!

A few last minute wedding items: my BFFs wedding is THIS Saturday(!!) and I was just asked to be a reader in another friend's wedding in May. I'm loving all of this wedding action.

Let Down!

One of the reasons we planned on such a long engagement (about 2 and a half years!), was so that we could afford the things we wanted and not have to compromise too much. Before we even were engaged, we had many of those “well IF we ever got married we COULD…” conversations. Things we were dead set on as a couple were having Jones Soda (customized of course) for our guest’s favors, dancing our first dance to Iron and Wine’s cover of Such Great Heights, and using brown and cream as our color scheme.

Thank you Jones Soda for ruining our dreams! WTH!

Back, probably a year and a half ago or so, we used jonessoda.com to estimate how much it would cost for 175-200 bottles. With shipping, we figured maybe $400-$500 max for soda + shipping. Steep, I know, but it’s what we’ve wanted longer than we knew we wanted each other (ha!) and we were willing to pay the price.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago, when we went back to the website to start ordering. I want to say the price of the soda remained the same, but the shipping jumped so high that it would actually cost more to ship it to our home than it would to purchase them! With a few clicks of a mouse, our soda dreams died.

So with that, I am having my personal wedding crisis of the hour/day/week/month. I don’t know how other brides are, but I find something stupid to obsess about daily- shoes, hair, Mike, food, etc. I don’t mind it- I think I probably actually like it. I love the wedding planning process. Anyways, so now I have favors on the brain.

I know what I do not want – chocolate anything, charity favors, bubbles, or bells. No real particular reason for not wanting any of those, I/we just don’t. I guess I like unique consumables. Maybe keepsakes that aren’t cheesy.

I’m thinking maybe I’ll start making apple butter in my crock and jarring it. I don’t think that would cost too much money- the ingredients are super cheap and I bet I can get an excellent deal on jars somewhere. I feel like it might fit our general aesthetic and vibe, too. Apple butter…trees…birds…sort of natural and organic, without being weird and hippie. Maybe we could go to an orchard and pick the apples ourselves? The Knot has favor tags that match our save the dates (brown with a while bird on a branch) – that might be cute to tie around the lid with twine or something.

Decisions, decisions. I still want the soda.

nom nom nom

First, I changed the blog name to something that made more sense and sounded better! I might remove the quotation marks, what do you think?

Second; about two weeks ago, I e-mailed a local baker about meeting up and placing a deposit down to hold our date. A few days ago, I still hadn't heard back from the company (still haven't, btw), so I checked into another one. I left a message on their site, and within 12 hours I had two e-mails and one phone call from them! We have a (cup)cake testing two weeks from tomorrow! I'm so excited. It's going to be tough figuring out if we want multiple flavors or just one. I'm thinking 3 or 4 different flavors, but we'll see!

One last thing, I think I might buy the supplies to try and make something like this:

..doesn't seem too hard!

Some Goodies.

As promised, another juicy update. I've been able to cross a few minor things off my large to do list lately and I'm pretty excited! First, we decided on and purchased pew decorations- for under $20!!! I think I might have mentioned before that I really liked the idea of hanging kissing balls from the pews, and that's what we ended up going with. Michael's just got in all of their spring shipment, and I found little baby hydrangea kissing balls in ivory. They are smaller than the 5"-6" ones I had pictured...about as big as a balled up fist.


They are obviously fake flowers...not quite silk...more like parchment flowers. They are gorgeous. Closer to the date, I just have to attach thick brown ribbon I bought with some straight pins and we're good to go! Our chapel has 8 pews on either side of the aisle, so we're going to place a ball at every other pew on each side. I am so happy to cross pew decorations completely off the "need to buy" list.

I had mentioned in a past post that I really liked the idea of an apothecary jar filled with nature-y items...feather balls, pine cones, twigs, etc. While I was picking up the kissing balls, I notice Michael's also had big bags of potpourri on sale. They have a really pleasant vanilla scent. The bag is full of ivory and brown natural items. It has twig balls, bark, pine cones, and plenty of other things that fit exactly what we were going for.


I was SO happy to find them! I bought every bag they had in stock- I want to say 4 or 5. I'm not quite sure how many centerpieces each one will make...I'd like to stretch it to two. I originally planned to buy everything separately and mix it myself, so maybe I can supplement the potpourri with stuff I can find on the cheap. Each bag was only 4 dollars (!!!), so if we really had to I could afford to buy 12 bags.

Probably the biggest and most exciting update is that Mike and I joined the gym together! I'm really not so concerned with how much I weigh when we get married...maybe I will be when I see the pictures? I don't know, it's just not something that's on my mind. What is on both of our minds though, is long term health and making sure we're around to enjoy each other for years to come. We've really made a commitment to each other to stick with this and be a team. I personally love our gym. I was a member in high school until college and I loved it then, too! We go about 2 or 3 times a week and it gives us time to be together away from electronic distractions. Obviously very excited about this!

One last thing- I might have bought my wedding shoes. It's totally random...last Saturday we were shopping and I saw them on a sale rack. They are ivory (the same color of the sash on the dress I think I'm getting) flats with little (what else) hydrangea-looking textile flowers at the toe bed. Gorgeous!


Even if I don't wear them for the wedding, they'll make cute spring shoes!


Awesome, right?!! I can call and reserve our wedding date with the baker this Wednesday. I'm very excited to get that done!

Bridal Showcase

I left off with the bridal showcase last post, so I'll start off with that this round. Overall, I suppose I'm glad I went. Through a few fall outs, Mike ended up going with me. I'm really glad he did- we are planning this- I'm just the only one who blogs about it. I think we paid $14 for the two of us for admission- I thought that was a little steep and not worth it. Maybe. Once we got inside, the place was packed. I'd say my only complaint is how busy it was. Total mob.

We got to meet our baker, and we found out by chatting that she is now booking events 18 months in advance instead of her old rule of 12 months. I was so happy to hear that- 18 months puts us at next week or so and gives us a little bit more of a chance to be the ones who get that date. You better believe I'm sending the reservation e-mail the morning of March 3 as soon as I wake up.

At the booth next to our baker was the Johnstown Party Bus. We know we wanted the PB for wedding transportation, so it was nice to find out costs and reservation stipulations. Luckily, they take bookings anytime in advance. We should probably jump on that quick- I think they are becoming Johnstown's hottest means of wedding transportation.

It was worth giving up part of a Sunday afternoon to get all of that information from our vendors in one place. We also met with a woman who we are very very interested in for photography...we'll see how that pans out. I firmly believe that it would be hard and overwhelming for a couple to go blindly to an event like this and come out with concrete plans. I've spent the last year researching- asking friends and relatives for vendor suggestions, googling, etc. This showcase was good for putting faces to names and getting info that may not necessarily be posted publicly.

I have a lot more exciting (maybe? haha) news and updates that just wouldn't match the flow of this post. Lookout for another one asap?

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Mike is a pretty hands-on groom. Almost every aspect of planning to date, from the dress I want to the color of the napkins, has been discussd and agreed upon. We have a lot of the same tastes so everything has been very smooth and easy..until now!

Even before we were engaged, I loved the idea of a candy buffet. I'm certain it's not popular in my neck of the woods. I'm even more certain my neck of the woods is severely behind on the times and very set in it's ways. No one I mention the idea to has a clue what I'm talking about, but it's fairly self explanitory - candy...set up buffet style. I dreamt about brown and cream candies in lux jars..surrounded by more color coordinated candies..in more lux jars. Scoops galore. Cute take home bags with our chocolate swirl design.

I'm all about the small details. I honestly want people to have a great time and really remember our wedding. I am not a cookie cutter type of girl- I will not have your typical Western Pennsylvania wedding! I enjoy pigs in the blanket and rigatoni as much as the next person, but for my wedding I want more than I could get at Grandma Petrunak's on any given Sunday. I want the kind of wedding I spend hours and hours oogling online. Go big or go home- I want a candy buffet!

Mike was a little aprehensive at first, I think because he wasn't quite seeing my vision. After a lot of discussions and looking at examples, he came around to the idea. Score.

A few weeks ago, I had an amazing idea...throw away the candy, I want pretzels! Hard pretzels..buttery...sourdough...salty...no salt...rods...nuggets! All shapes and sizes and flavors. Not to mention coresponding condiments! Cheeses and salsas and horseradishes and NUTELLA! Yum.

I know that this idea is a little unusual and surely if people have a hard time accepting the idea of candy, they will shudder at the idea of a pretzel spread. I have faith in my carb commerades. What everyone (especially me) needs to remember is that none of my ideas are hurting or offending anyone, and if anyone thinks it is odd or quirky, then so be it. I'm having a reception to celebrate my nuptuals, not to cater to the masses.

The one person I do need on board is Mike. He started out pretty against the idea...I think it was too off the wall for him. He might be warming up though...I make sure to point out all of the delicious combinations when we're in the grocery store. I love pretzels.

What do you think?

cupcakes n'at

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but I am so pro-cupcake it's unreal. Think of the benefits- no cake cutting fee...less cleanup...possibly more variety..way less expensive. The only downside to me personally, for my wedding, is that it isn't a traditional cake. I like the look of a nice big white wedding cake. Luckily a traditional cake is near the bottom of my give-a-shit list. Give me a big fat red velvet cupcake with cream cheese icing. Chocolate with chocolate. Lemon with vanilla. Mike agreed we can have a ton of delicious cupcakes and a nice 6 inch cake on the top of our cupcake stand to cut.

Speaking of the actual cake part, check out this cake topper. !!!!!!! I just about died when I found it. I need it! It fits our vibe perfectly.

Mike's mom offered to make our cupcakes, and that sounded like a really good (and inexpensive, helloooo) idea until I found out there is a local bakery that does GORGEOUS cupcakes on the cheap. Now I rationalize that it would be better for everyone to have a pro make and set up our little cake substitutes. She agrees! The only thing that's a pain right now is that they don't accept orders until a year in advance...so I just have to wait 7 months or so.

We haven't done a lot in the way of purchasing things lately, but that's okay. I'm breathing a little. I feel like we've made headway with a lot of decisions. First bridal showcase in 11 days, stay tuned!