What I've been doing...what's left to do?

Escort cards/favors:  done

Names smeared to protect the innocent!  

Ribbon Wand Tutorial

No idea who this couple is! I copied this off the web years ago!

 I finally got around to some of the wedding crafts on my to-do list. Today, I put together most of my ribbon wands (before I ran out of ribbon)! These are for the "staged exit" as we leave the Wedding Pavilion after the ceremony, like that random couple above. They make for a prettier photo than bubbles, which can be hard to see and don't show up well in photos.  The ribbon wands also give the photographer a longer opportunity to shoot than rose petals, which are thrown and then fall to the ground really quickly. I love the photo above so I knew we were going to do this! Here's how I did it.

 

I bought a DRESS!!!!

This is the David's flagship store, not the one I went to.
Just sayin'.

I was nervous about dress shopping.  I haven't lost all the weight I want to yet.  I've been feeling pretty down on myself.  For some reason my skin is breaking out like I'm still a 15-year-old oil factory.  I needed a good sized dose of feeling like a princess.

So my sister and my friend and I went to a local David's Bridal.  Our big budget buster is having the wedding at Disney so spending lots of dollars on a fancy dress was never going to happen.  It just happened to be the weekend of the David's clearance sale and I was hoping to snatch up one of the dresses I'd posted about last year.  

Music! For the Ceremony! We picked some!

Time is running out and there are lots of little decisions being made every day it seems.  Today it was music.

Yesterday I had a phone conference with our wedding planner (the AMAZING Maxine!) to discuss our BEO- the Banquet Event Order- basically the entire script of the day from transportation pick-ups, to the ceremony order and music, to the meal, to everyone leaving and someone packing all the remnants up.  It's an intricate document that also spells out the prices we're going to pay for the elements of the wedding.

The BEO is a daunting, scary thing.

There was a big hole on our BEO: I still owed Maxine our chosen ceremony music.  Our ceremony is going to be very simple and very personal  to us. We've chosen to use all Disney music for our ceremony and it will all be played by the organist who comes with the Wedding Pavilion.

So while I won't reveal what song is being used for what, here's what we chose:

Candle on the Water from Pete's Dragon

Our Disney Wedding Planning Session, part 2: floral and cake

After returning to Franck's from our trip over to the Grand Floridian kitchen, we returned to Merriweather and met with Elizabeth from Disney Floral & Gifts, who handle all of the floral arrangements and decor elements of the wedding.  I sent her the link to my wedding board on Pinterest and partially filled out the floral planning form indicating what we were want ahead of our meeting.  I wasn't sure what to expect.  I've seen other Disney brides' floral bills and I think it's insane what Disney charges for flowers but, if you use outside floral, you get stuck with fees. So we plunged in...

For myself, I wasn't really sure if I wanted all of the floral elements to be matchy matchy or if we were going to go with personal floral that was different from the decor floral.  We decided not to do matchy-matchy. 

For myself, I requested a hand-tied, red rose bouquet in the bridesmaid size.  The stems will be wrapped with a black ribbon with white polka dots.  The ribbon will cover the entire stem.  No green sticking out the bottom. 

Our princess will carry a red rose wand.  I think that's three roses and a big bow of black ribbon with white polka dots.  She will totally love it.