Back-splashing the Head Table

So, our head table will be sitting in front of a big, blank, beige wall. I'm not the first member of my family to have my reception at this establishment. Since I was not in the room when my mom & dad were married, I'm not sure what their room decorations looked like, most of the pictures have been discarded since they are also no longer married. I was however in attendance at my Aunt & Uncles reception and I know exactly what was behind their head table. It was two big pink hearts with their names spelled out in white lights. I've been trying to find a picture of it but haven't had any luck. The hearts had texture to them too, they were so pretty.

I've been thinking about things we can do to brighten up the "blah" wall behind us because even though we won't be sitting there long, people will still be taking pictures of us @ the head table during the clanging of the glasses/expected smooching moments. Plus, any excuse to add a little decor right? So, what do we have to choose from?

Fabric?

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Uplighting? I'm not so sure about this. We plan on having this through out the reception area so I'm trying to do something a little bit different.

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Fabric and Lighting?

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Balloons?

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Each of these are available to me by different vendors in my area at reasonable prices. I like the twinkle fabric but it maybe over-kill because our head table will be covered in lighted fabric as well.  While searching through all thing flowy and sparkly, I found something VERY cool, AND Oprah approved!

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How cool would these look with a black back ground and  a little bit of lighting to make them sparkle? These were used for Miss Oprah's 50th birthday bash! I'm going to have the Mr do a little bit of brainstorming on how we can get these to sit behind us so I know if we can pull it off or not.

What are you putting behind your head table?

Center of Attention

So, besides the "look at our cute kid" table numbers, we're still playing with ideas for our centerpieces.  The hotel is supplying black overlays, mirrors, garden bowls, & votive holders, we have to supply the rest. I personally have been to too many weddings where the mirrors have been used and want to do something a little bit different. I could do simple like place mats. I could always dress them up with some hot pink ribbon along the sides.  Plus I found these black ribbed ones @ Target (or Tar-jay as we call it) for $1.99!

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If worse came to worse & I didn't use them for the wedding, I could always use them for the house! I know, I'm terrible, any excuse to run out to the store and buy something right? Who's with me?! For the garden bowls, I'll be using floating candles and then some pink & white crystals at the bottom.

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I've also been nagging asking my friends and family to save all of their clear glass jars in all shapes and sizes. Everything from jelly jars to spaghetti jars because we want to add a little more color to the table. Stick some of the submersible lights in the jars and the pink aqua balls.

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I'm still looking at different elements and ideas so this is just a tentative rough draft. I'll do a mock up of the different ideas that are sloshing around in my brain. What are you using to add a little bit of color to your tables?

Save The Dates

My save the dates are still a work in progress. I'm having some serious issues with my designs, so I've been playing with different styles, fonts & layouts. For our first save the date headache draft, I used our original colors of brown & pink.

I do still like this one, I mean, who doesn't love poka-dots?!

The next few drafts are incomplete. Between the "Save The Date" and info, I was thinking about putting something there like ribbon, glitter or even a stamp. The first one was completely movie inspired. Have you heard of Twilight? Yea, that is Carmilla AKA Edward Cullens' script along the edge. I got the font here.

This next one is the nerd in David and myself, if you notice, the font is the very same one used for the Xbox that I picked up here.

The last one I made for fun. Dave thinks it's great but not really "traditional" enough. I saw a couple do this with their Mii's on their wedding invitations.

Yes, those are totally our Xbox avatars! I cracked up when I put this one together. I still think they are very cute. I'm determined to have these included in our wedding day celebration. Maybe for our place cards at the head table?

This is still a work in progress and I could always try to incorporate a little from each one too. I want to have them sent out by 11/07 so that will be exactly the 6 month mark. Now that I have said that out loud, it is much closer than it had felt a moment ago. Deep breaths!

So, which one do you like best? How many save the dates drafts ended up balled up on the floor or in your computers trash bin?

Toppin' the Cake

Through out this entire planning process, I have heard the term "whatever your want honey" consistently out of David mouth. He has not requested anything for himself besides his "chucks" for his feet. I agreed to this as long as he bought new ones in black because his brown ones don't match, and they are old LOL. I find something I like, tell/show him, and he tells me "whatever you want honey" or "I don't think I like that". If he doesn't like something, we go over the pros and cons and he either sees it my way, or I start back from scratch. An example, he does not care what the other boys will be wearing but he will NOT wear ANY type of pink. I have since left that subject alone, his tie will be white.

After having my one-on-one with my magical cake lady, it was still left up in the air what we would stick on the top of the cake. I told her I would be giving her enough notice ahead if we would have a topper or just flowers so she could plan accordingly. Again, I was told, whatever you want honey, that was until we walked into a bridal store, and he saw this:

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Now I love all things sparkly so I was very surprised that he liked this! So, since he hasn't asked for anything, I agreed without hesitation, but I also pointed to the hefty price tag that came with it. So, he told me no problem! Wow! He's going to spend some big money on a monogram cake topper, alright! Wrong. He assigned me the job of making one. It's actually nice that not only can I add another DIY project to our wedding, but he also knows I've got the ability to create something!

What are you toppin' your cake with? Has your FH asked you to make something?

Honeymoon

For the longest time, we've been thinking about going to Disney World for our Honeymoon. We thought it would not only be fun, but also a nice place to take Morgan along with us too. All that has changed after I took a short weekend trip to see my sister in MO. After the stress of traveling (and a cranky toddler), we will be leaving her at home. Now we have to come up with a new travel plan.

We've thought about taking a European cruise, going out of the country, even heading somewhere exotic like Hawaii. Then it hit me. We're not big on beaches and we are NEVER alone. So, I started looking into romantic secluded places. The first place I found was Gatlinburg, TN.  They have these cute cabins that are beautiful with full kitchen set ups & hot tubs!  They also have full kitchens so if we want to save a little money, we can take turns cooking for each other.

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You can surprisingly find these types of places all over the place so we have several different states we can choose from. We really love the idea of having our own space out of the way of everything and this way we can concentrate on our time together. If we want to venture out for dinner or any type of activity, we'll be able too. If we'd rather veg out & spend the day watching movies, we won't feel cooped up in a dinky hotel room.

Have you thought about taking your honeymoon outside of the sandy beaches too?

Me+a Craft Store=Trouble

So, I stopped into Buffalo Stamps and stuff with my Gram today. She's the queen of card making. We were just looking around for some stamps and fall-ish paper for our halloween cards. I showed her the embossing folders for the Sizzix machine I'd been looking at. Ok droooling over. After showing her all the cool stuff she could do, she went around picking out paper. Next thing I know, she bought it!!! She's just like me, no self control when it comes to all things paper. We picked up a Tinker Bell embossing folder for now just to play with. I also grabbed a really good corner rounder from Fiskars.

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I round 99% of my cards corners now. After getting through my projects for my bridesmaids, my thumb was killing me! so I figured with Thanksgiving & Christmas coming, now would be the time to invest in something to make my life just a little easier. I also found a cute punch out border on some baby paper that they had that I loved, but alas, they did not have it. Good thing we went to AC Moore because they had it there! Woo Hoo!!

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Today was a very productive craft shopping day! What new tools have you picked up lately?

Something Old

I wanted to be B.L.I.N.G.E.D. out on my wedding day. Even if it wasn't real, I wanted to be sparkly. So I did some peaking around and there are so many choices. You can either go the simple route or something completely outrageous. I got an email from The Knot that they were partnering up with a company called Adorn Brides. This company rents jewelry out to you for your wedding day! How cool is that?! And some of the stuff they have, won't break the bank. You recieve your piece 2 days before your event, and have to send it back the 1st business day after your event using the packaging and prepaid label they send you. It's also INSURED while you have it! There is a deposit required of 5% of the retail value of the piece as well. They have so many pieces to choose from!

You can have something elegant and simple like the Coleman Pendant which is a .53 TCW white diamond for $100

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You can get super fancy and get the 14.02 TCW yellow & white diamond Crestwood Necklace for a cool $1900.00. *Swoon*

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You can also rent them in bridal sets of necklaces' and matching earrings. They also have bling for your bridesmaids! Well, the other day, my grandmother asked me to clean my Bobcias' (polish for Grandmother) wedding set for her. This gets tricky but my Bobcia was my grandmothers' step-grandmother; my great-great grandmother. We pulled out all of her jewelry to get to the rings and that is when I saw them, the most unlikely piece of jewelry I would ever think about wearing because I thought they were so cliche. Pearls. Now, they are not real, but they are a very pale pink and they are perfect! (the next 2 pics were take by me)

My little camera doesn't do them the justice the deserve! The clasp defiantly has to be replaced as you can see in the last picture. My friend Jen, who is also helping me make the jewelry for my girls, will also be restringing these for me and replacing the clasp. The necklace is just too long and hopefully with some of the length she takes off, I can have her knock out my earrings too! Grandma gave them to me so they are now mine and I was given permission to take them apart and use them for the wedding! I'm so excited she showed these to me because it takes care of my jewelry and my something old.

Were you given jewelry that belonged to someone in your family to wear on your wedding day? Did you have one thing in mind and completely switch after finding something else?

The menu is checked off the list!

Our menu is set! We decided to stop by the Holiday Inn to schedule a time for us to put our menu together. Low and behold, they have a new events coordinator since they hadn't had one for awhile! He was so wonderful and asked us if we had time, we could do it right now. Score! The first coordinator we were working with left shortly after booking the space back in December 2008. He also informed us that in between our first lady and him, there had been 2 more people hired and left!! He has made all of my stress MELT away. He caught my polish last name with the quickness and I think I caught his polish accent just as fast! I almost said jak sei masz which sounds like yock-sha-maash, it means "how do you do?" in Polish, but it's one of the few words I do know in polish that isn't offensive and didn't want to look silly. My Bobcia (great-great grandmother on my mothers side) was off the boat polish and used colorful language at times that I picked up as a child and it was hard for my family to explain to me why I wasn't allowed to say those things in public!

So we sat down with him and talked about what we were looking for and what we wanted. We finally made the choice to have the sit down dinner. You ma recall, I was having issues deciding between sit down and buffet here. Yes, it will cause a few issues with my mock up invitations, but no worries. It will also be giving me the oportunity to place cute little animals on the escort cards! I'm picturing a blue fish, a pink cow, and hmmmmm, I'll have to do some thinking on the pasta. So, what are we having!? Well, we'll be starting with just a green salad,

Italian Wedding Soup

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Then guests have their choice of:

London Boil

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or Pasta Primevera

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Or Davids choice, Bake Sole Mornay stuffed with Crab meat!

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This is a huge weight off our shoulders not that it's done. I am so happy to be able to check this off my list! It was also Morgans' first day of Pre-K and I needed a good distraction from her passing the milestone from daycare to Pre-K. We still need to make a decision about the kiddie menu since it was something I'd forgotten to mention to him while we were there.

How did it feel when you got to scratch a big need to-do off your list?

Will you be my bridesmaid?

When we picked our first date, I ran around asking all of my BFF's to be in my wedding party. I originally had 1 MOH, 3 BM's, & 2 Jr BM's. When we decided we had to postpone our date, they were all very supportive and promised to be there for me when we set our new date. This is why I love them all!

These girls and I try to go out @ least once a month for dinner to TGIFridays, with the exception of my sister BM#1 who lives in MO. :( We all started going out to dinner together and BM Tracey and I had become very good friends with Bonnie who we met at work. After we had set the new date, we came to the conclusion, well I did mostly, that adding Bonnie to the wedding party was only natural. So this time around, I decided to make a little project out of it! I have to apologize in advance, the pictures I originally took while I was making them are MIA. I had to borrow Tracey's so you will have to excuse the ripped envelope. We all went to dinner one night and I passed them out, Bonnie had no idea it was coming so it was a surprise for her!

Here's the envelope. I used black card stock and printed each girls name in black using Carmilla which I got here. Recognize it? Yes I am a Twilight junkie and Yes that is Edwards handwriting. The black showed up just enough for me to be able to use a white pen and rewrite the name out. I stuck a little clear crystal on each name as well. The pink strip was actually put there because the paper I used was pink metallic and I LOVE it and wanted to use it everywhere I could! My obsession with this paper inspired the wedding colors and my invitations. That strip goes all the way to the back of the envelope.

I used the same concept here and used the initial of my first name to seal the envelope.

Next I cut out long rectangular pieces of white, brown, and metallic pink card stock for the backing. I cut out smaller squares of white and the metallic again. I told you I love this paper! I printed each girls name on white card stock and used the Carmilla for the names. Next, I adhered the name flower, pink smaller square and white smaller together and punched holes in the corners after I'd rounded them. I then put the longer pink, brown, and white together. I used brown because at that time, we were still going with brown. To line up the holes to put the brads through, I put the already punched smaller square on top of the larger rectangle, and then punched through the existing holes on the top layers. The brands are the only thing holding the pieces together so I wanted to make sure they were lined up nicely.

I added a little poem on white card stock and glued a looped ribbon to the back, then placed a piece of brown card stock to the back so you couldn't see it. All the girls loved them and Bonnie gave me a very enthusiastic yes after I gave her the card. If I can find my original pictures, I promise to post them with a physical step by step, or I might just remake one of the cards, just to have an excuse to use the metallic pink again!

How did you ask your bridal party to stand up in your wedding, and did you make any additions later on?

***all photos by me

Chicken is not on the guest list....

I am a huge food fan. My favorite food combo; pizza and wings & football. My favorite food of all time, chicken wings. Morgan's also happens to carry chicken on her list of favorite foods. Due to being sick, I missed the annual Buffalo Wing Festival.

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I love this festival! You get to can try tons of different types of wings and sauces from all over. It is SO much fun!! Don't feel too bad for me, Dave brought home wings for dinner that night when he got off work, see why I want to keep him.

It's not just chicken wings I love. I love all chicken. Baked, Grilled, Bar-B-Qued. Chicken however, is not on our menu. Chicken is probably one of the most popular dishes you can have at a wedding, how could we not have it!? Well, there is a reasonable, yet bizarre answer to that question. My Aunt, who I am very close with, is allergic to poultry. Yep, it's the craziest thing. She developed it later in life, in her 20's, so she knows what it tastes like, she just can't have it. Doctors can't explain it, it's just like a peanut allergy but with poultry. The smell of cooking chicken bothers her and ingesting it is a trip to the hospital. I remember one time at Thanksgiving, her future MIL joined us and brought the gravy. Now, we have ham and beef on holidays, if you wanted turkey, you'd drop by a friends house who was sympathetic to our situation and they'd hook you up. Anyway, I digress. So at this meal I was probably 10 or 11, and all of a sudden, my Aunts face was swollen and her hands were starting to swell. She carries an epinephrine syringe for just this purpose and I'm not sure who got it for her, but she was on the ground finally breathing and then off to the ER. Her FMIL thought it was the meat she couldn't have, she thought making turkey gravy would be ok.

So, not only is chicken off the menu, just to be 100% sure there is no contamination, they are making my Aunt her own plate. As of now we are having a buffet, but the catering done at the hotel is done by the restaurant and we don't want to take any chances. Thats the only part of the menu we have so far. We haven't gone in for our meeting about the food yet so we still have the option of doing a sit down. The price is the same, I'm just not sure I want to stick people with food they might not like.

Do you have any food you're not having at the wedding. Are you having trouble deciding between a sit down and buffet?

I Dream of Weddings

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My first dream started out perfect. Everything went as planned early on in the day. We got to the church, and my dress was hanging up in the coat room. The church is packed, I can see David waiting for me at the end of the aisle, and we're supposed to start in about 5 minutes.

One of my BM's turn to me and says, so what are you going to do with your hair? You have't even dried it yet........Fantastic, I forgot to book my hair appointment. I'm not sure why it took me until 5 minutes to the ceremony to figure it out.

My second bad dream started just like the first. Everything was picture perfect, until I had to put my dress on. Yep, I'd forgotten to buy a dress. The last one I had, we had no transportation, and someone I was close to was getting married the day after me, copied everything I did and one up-ed me. I'm pretty sure that my dreams of our wedding, terrifying or not, are because of the stress of planning, and maybe my late night snacks have something to do with it. I've decided to reorganize all of my electronic files and all of my paper files into a binder so I don't take a chance of missing anything important at the wedding.

Have you had any nightmares or dreams about your wedding while your in the midst of planning?

iDress

I am the anti-bride when it comes to wedding dresses. I'm not very comfortable wearing a dress and never really have been. I'm not sure if it's the tom boy in me or just my comfort zone. I have gone dress shopping 2 times. The 1st time I went, was right after we set our 2009 date. I tried on I think 3 dresses, fell in love with the last one, wrote the number down and left. I didn't need to order it right away since there was a lot of time before I had to make my final decision and I wanted my mom to see the pictures we took first since she's in NJ. Now, this is the only picture I could find from this trip, my friend Susie used her cell phone and gave it a fuzy edging, sorry about the quality but, I can tell by my posture and the fact I'm smiling, I was in love with this dress. I remember I felt like a million bucks wearing this.

*my photo*

Well, about a month ago, I was online and found the same dress, for HALF OFF!!! I couldn't believe it! I checked for my size online, they didn't have it. BOO! I had to stop in there anyway to pick up some color swatches so I decided to go right after work. I brought along friend J with me since she wanted to look @ the swatches. She's helping me make my girls jewelry for the wedding. While I was in there, I nonchalantly asked the girl @ the front desk while I was paying for my swatches, if they had my size in that style and what the price was. She asked one of the ladies who helps the brides if she could check for me and off she disappeared into the rows of white poofy dresses. Within minutes, out of the corner of my eye, I see her walking back towards us, with a big bag full of dress. She immediately told me to come with her. Here's a picture of it spread out and steamed.

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She told me that this was my dress, but in cream, it's been discontinued, and was half price and she wanted me to try it on. I was so excited and got right into the dressing room. I put the dress on, and looking down @ myself, everything looked the same. I stepped out into

the mirrors and got a good look at myself. This did not look or feel like the dress I'd tried on last year.

It was the right dress, and it was a beautiful dress, but I felt horrible in it. I mulled around the dressing room for a bit and decided to plunk my deposit down. I decided to sleep on it and see how I felt in the morning since I have 3 days to change my mind for a full refund. I work up, still knowing it was not the one. I went back into the store and told them I didn't want the dress and got a refund. I'm glad I just placed it on "hold" before making an irrational decision that I would be regretting now. I didn't have a camera or my phone the second time around. I'm having some real issues getting motivated to get out and find a dress. I don't know if it's because I don't wear dresses or if it's physiological.  I do know that if I don't LOVE the dress, I won't be buying it and thats that. It's hard enough putting dresses on so until I put one on that sings to me, I'll keep on looking.

Anyone else second guess themselves while buying your dress? Any advice for me with my dress complex?

Add a Dash of Color to Your B&W Photos

Everything I've learned from computers was either self taught, or from David, who is a computer genius in my eyes. I've spent a lot of time playing with Photoshop and learning different things I can do with it. I use it mostly for making a blemish here or there disappear. I've never taken classes and in all honesty, I'm not very good, I've just learned some good tricks. One of my favorite tricks, is having a black and white picture, with a hint of color like the photo below.


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I love how it's black and white and the flowers just pop out of the picture! So, with this in mind, and a project I'm doing for the wedding, I thought I'd share with everyone, how to make this happen!

First you start by selecting the photo you want to work with. I'm using a picture my cousin took of Morgan at a family graduation party. After you have the image you want to work with pulled up, go under Image, then Adjustments and select Desaturate. This will remove all the color from your photo.

The Tool you will be working with is the History Brush Tool.

As for the settings on the brush, it really depends on the size of your photo, how large you zoom in and how accurate you want the color to be. If you try a brush that's too big, you can always undo it and change your brush size as needed.

The next setting for the brush is hardness, just make sure this is at 100%

Next, you take your brush and start "painting" the area you want to have the color show through. Your actually not painting a color, the picture color is showing though because you are removing the black and white from the picture. It's almost like your undoing or erasing the desaturation, but in very small sections!

Once you have the area colored that you want, your done!

The final product comes out really neat! This is one of my favorite pictures of her.

I also went in and played with her eyes so you can see that this can be done in multiple areas. That and she has the pretties blue eyes :)

So, there is a method to my madness here. The final product of this particular picture, will be one of our table numbers! We're taking all of our favorite pictures of Morgan, and making them B&W, and adding a hint of color to it! One of the other picuters I will be using was also from this day. Now, in normal circumstances, I wouldn't have thought of using it, it's Morgan, after she has eaten the BLUEST cake ever made. She's laughing in the picture and her face and tonge are covered in blue icing. This is an inside joke between my Aunt and Uncle and I so that will be the picture at their table. I'll be sure to show the final prduct when I'm done because that one will be a fun one! I will probably make them 5x7 so they're not too big, I just have to figure out what frames I will use. I have also been playing with my Cricut Machine, so we may get the actual numbers from there! Feel free to let me know if you have any questions!

Do you have any good tricks you can do with the computer that you will be incorporating in your wedding projects?

Pucker Up

I signed up for Sephora's email list the moment our mall announced we were getting one. The catchy subject of the most recent email caught my eye. Twilight Venom. I knew this could be one of two things, a very very dark color, almost a deep blue like the night, or a reference to one of my favorite fictional series, Twilight. I pulled up the email and the description reads "Based on the fresh-bitten lips from the Blockbuster movie".

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Now I don't think this would be an appropriate color to wear on my wedding day, and it's hard to tell if that's even glitter in the bottle. I wonder how that would even spread on. It did get me thinking about wearing a classic red lip for the wedding. There is a fantastic picture of my grandparents on their wedding day, and my grandmother looked so classy and she had red lipstick on. I've never been a big lipstick wearer. My lip routine consists of a light pink gloss when I go out, or Soft-Lips in Cherry or Vanilla-YUM.

I don't think I could get away with red lips on a good day so I'm not sure if I can pull it off on my wedding day. Part of me has always been a little bit chicken about wearing red lip stick. I've always had this idea that only certain people can get away with it. I've been thinking about my wedding day make up and when the time comes for my trial, I'll ask for my normal pal pink first and then maybe take the red for a test drive to see how it goes. I'll be sure to post pics so I can get some feed back.

Have you decided to try something out of your comfort zone since it's your wedding day?

His Ring

When we first started looking into wedding bands for David, he said he wanted a heavy metal, like Tungsten or Titanium. We looked around online just to get an idea of the styes that were out there. He favored the light colored metal which is a close match to my white gold set, something like this...

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We read all of the rumors about people having to lose fingers to have them removed ect. Several companies did say however, even though it's not as easy to cut these types of rings off in an emergency, like gold, most ER's do have the equipment to remove them.

Not that long ago, he told me he didn't want to go buy a wedding band. He wanted to take his fathers wedding band, have it sized, and use that as his ring. David's mother passed away about 8 years ago and after she passed way, Davids' father gave him his wedding band. I love the fact that he wanted to do this and I know it means a lot to his dad. I took the picture on our Playstation 3 controller since that's David's favorite gaming console.

*pic by me*

It's a plain gold band, but the meaning behind it makes it priceless. My Uncles childhood friend owns a jewelry store so we'll be taking both his and my rings for sizing since mine are a bit snug. Our reception hall has a vestibule right before you walk in and we're going to do something special for his mother in remembrance of her. I've been digging through pictures trying to find ones with him and his mother when he was younger to use as the picture on the table.

Did anyone else have jewelry given to them that they will be using?

iRing

I thought the title was appropriate since our Mac's keyboard got into the pic. David and I actually have our rings already. My rings were bought as a matching set. It has a wedding band and an anniversary band. David and I are both hard core gamers so what better way to show off my bling than with my favorite controller!

As you can see, I'm an Xbox girl. I got the pink remote for my birthday! Our engagement wasn't very romantic, and I'm not a very romantic girl so it really didn't bother me that there wasn't a big production made out of it. We were living in Virginia at the time and we had been talking about marriage for awhile. We knew we wanted to get married and I wanted an engagement ring. Getting him to go into any type of jewelry store was like pulling teeth. I got lucky one day when we were walking by a jewelry store and he saw a really nice watch in their window. Well all of a sudden he wanted to go in. He was looking at the watches and I made a bee line for the ring cases. It didn't take very long for me to fall in love with it, and on hold it went. Fast forward a few months later and we're moving back to my home town of Buffalo, NY after I'd lived in Virginia for 6 years. We paid the ring off after we had moved and they shipped it to us in New York. As SOON as the box came, I was running around the house so giddy, but as quiet as I could because little miss Morgan was napping. He knew I wouldn't wait, and he knew I didn't want a big deal made of it, so he opened the box, got down on a knee and officially asked. I jumped up and down like a lunatic, and we were engaged. Next up, his ring......

Anyone else have their future fiancees get cold feet when it was time to look for your ring?


*All pictures take by me*