It is getting so close to the wedding and I am started to freak out, just a little! Ha, ha. I am trying to put all the finishing details on the wedding and make a list of all the things I still need to order. One thing that I added to the list is a MUST!- sparklers for the grand exit at the end of the night. Since a firework display is just not in the budget I thought that sparklers would be a wonderful and unique exit.  Also, in previous posts I have mentioned  my love for  great, fabulous photographs, and this would be one!

Photo Credit: Bubbly Bride

This is also a great favor to give your guests, if you wrap about 5 sparklers and attach a custom matches with your wedding details, all your guests can take them home with the left over sparklers. 

 I found some great DIY matchbooks at Off Beat Bride. 

Make sure you have a small bucket of sand for your guests to put their sparklers in after they are done with them.

It was great to see that one of the colors I have chose for our wedding  is in the Spring Fashion Color Report.  Dried Herb is such a fun color for spring and paired with grey and white, I believe it makes a beautiful suttle background for the garden style wedding we will be having in March 2010.

I have been eyeing green shoes for my wedding for months now, but everytime I find a pair that I absolutelty love-- it does not work out! For instance, these fabulous green shoes by Christian Louboutins were featured in a Real Wedding post on Style Me Pretty but at a price of $760 it was just a little too much of a splurge for wedding shoes.

After months of searching without no luck I have decided to go with grey suade shoes from Aldo. I just absolutely love them! I have not given up on the green shoe search though for my bridesmaids. We will be going with graphite grey dressses and I think paired with green shoes, if we can find the right shade for them it will be absolutely amazing pictures with the pops of greens in their bouquets.

The more I searched for green and grey weddings and green wedding shoes. I realized green shoes are more popular than I thought for weddings. I just love the way brides are becoming less traditional when it comes to wedding traditons like white shoes. I love green shoes and modern touches without forgetting the old traditions of some old, something blue, something new and something borrowed.

Green wedding shoes have becomes so popular that there was even a wedding blog named after them--

What unique touches and non-traditonal touches are you adding to your wedding?

Source: Google Images, Style Me Pretty, Cory Parris, Green Wedding Shoes Blog

I just ordered my dress for our Reheasral dinner.  The dress is from Victoria's Secret and was a great deal! 

I decided to wear blue instead of white since we will be honoring my FI's college colors for the Rehearsal dinner. My FI met most of his groomsmen at Georgia Southern University so I thought this would be a great idea.  Our colors for the Rehearsal Dinner are: navy blue and gold.

Go Georgia Southern Eagles!!! 

Thought I would add a little blue inspiration for all the brides that will be using blue for their weddings For more inspiration, The Color Palatte is a great site for color inspiration.

Sources: Victoria's Secret, Google Images, The Color Palatte Blog

As I was searching for unique table numbers, I came up with an idea. What about mini chalk boards? I went to google images: my favorite place for finding images and ideas.

Little did I know that this would be so popular in weddings?

Above: Spice up photo booth photos with personal messages on a chalkboard; a variety of chalkboards with people's messages fills up those empty corners in a venue; hang a door sign to keep the boys from entering the bridal suite (or vice versa); the escort card stakes  are perfect for a garden wedding;  chalkboard place cards are easy to use and re-use; send guests away with chalkboard favor boxes with their names written on them

Above: A chalkboard seating chart is perfect for a beachside wedding; display a word puzzle to entertain guests during cocktail hour; chalkboard tags do double duty as napkin rings and place cards; write table numbers on mini chalkboards or chalkboard votive candles; keep the kids entertained with a chalk(board) fabric tablecloth.

I love all these ideas-- What fun, unqiue thing for tables and guests.

If you can't find any mini chalk boards, don't forget that you always DIY your own. Get some mini boards and use chalk board paint.

Source: Aylee.bits Blog, Caroline Tran Photography

After getting a quote recently from some florists in my town, I have decided to do my own centerpieces since it was out of our budget, $500 for delievery and set-up. WHAT?!

Though I have changed many things for the wedding-- I am still trying to stick the nature meets glam idea when I first started planning the wedding. The theme for the reception will be "nature meets glam", inspiration which came from the arrangement in my previous post. I think this was a perfect blend of our personalities. I am very girly and love my glam and Chad is very into nature and LOVES the outdoors.

I have ordered some things like a bird cage for card holder, floating candles and paper lanterns from save-on-crafts and was very pleased with the quality and price they offered. So I decided to order some DIY supplies from them for my centerpieces. I have three different braches and tree stumps that I have ordered to see maybe which one I like the best or maybe which two I like the best which I can alternate on the tables.

Option #1: A simple tree branch with some white hydrangeas and candle light around.... 

Option #2: A tree stump with a glass cylinder inside with some white hydrangeas.

Option #3: A small manzanita tree with hanging balls of hydrangeas. Ours will be on a much smaller scale though.

Sources: Save on Crafts, Google Images

I am kinda favoring Option #2. What option do you like best?

As I mentioned in one of my previous posts- we recieved our invitations! YAY! We are debating on getting professional calligraphy or trying to do this ourselves. We bought some calligraphy books from ebay and a calligraphy pen from Michael's this past weekend. I found an amazing calligrapher, Carrie whom has recieved many amazing raves by other brides.

  Here are some samples of calligraphy I found online that I just loved!!

Source: Google Images

What are you doing for your outer envelopes for your wedding invitations?

Rock the Reception, is a show that was on TLC for a couple episodes and I just loved it. I mentioned in a previous post that Chad and I would be taking dance lessons in a couple of weeks. He mentioned to me the other day that in our dance lessons that he would like to do a chorgraphed "fun" dance in additon to learning some ballroom dance steps. These are some Rock the Reception clips:

This guy has moves!!

Here is a dad and daughter dancing to Soulja Boi. Ha Ha-- What a fun dad!

Are any of you doing dance lessons or a Rock the Receptio type dance?

Our newcomer, rachelw410 told us the story of her proposal last week. It made me think that I do not think I ever told my story when I introduced myself to blogger brides.

My Point of View:  Chad and I have been talking about getting married for while and went looking at rings a couple of times.  One day I decided to do a little investigation work for my job at the time and went to visit a local jewelry store. I fell in absolute love with the diamonds that they had.  The moment I left the store, I called Chad and said " you have to come see these diamonds that I saw today. They are the most amazing ones I have ever seen."  He agreed to come look at them with me.  The next weekend we went and I showed him the diamond I was looking at. I said this thing is amazing and just left it at that.  I was hoping Chad was taking notes so he knew, this is what I wanted. ha ha.

A couple months went by and I asked him if he went to see our girl Lindsey at the jewerly store and he told me "I don't know." At this time I knew he was thinking about getting a ring but he wanted to ask my dad first.  I was getting so antsy and was thinking when is he going to do this?  I was thinking maybe our anniversary that was coming up in March and then thought no, thats too obvious.  I was thinking of all thes other ideas but I had no idea.

The day of the proposal I was on my way to a scrapbook luncheon with my friend Gina.  As we were driving to the luncheon she mentioned to me, that the luncheon was off Bayshore Blvd somewhere, but she forgot what street so she might have to call her friend when we got close. (I'm thinking okay no big deal she has never been to this person's house before so she is not sure of directions, that's normal).  As we are driving down Bayshore Blvd. she pulls off on a side street and hands me an envelope and asked me to look to see what street the luncheon was on.  As she handed me the envelope, I said to her, "you haven't even opened this invitation yet?"  I opened the envelope and it said  " Sarah, I love you but you need to get out of my car !  Love Gina."  I was like "Oh my god, Gina I hate you!!"  When I got out of Gina's car I was told that I had to follow a pathway through the park. (This whole time I am thinking.. oh my god! I can't believe they tricked me).  As I am walking down the path, I see Chad step out from behind a bush waiting for me in a gazebo, in a suit, holding a rose.  I started crying the minute I saw him and knew what was happening.   As I stepped up into the gazebo, he started talking to me, but I don't remember too much of what he said though since I was still in shock that they tricked me.  He got down on one knee and before he even had the words out "will you marry me?"  I said "YES!!"

I'm sure you are all wondering if it was the ring I had picked out.  The answer is yes.. It's perfect and I love it more and more everyday!

Afterwards, Gina snapped a couple of shots of us in the gazebo, then we shared a glass of champagne together.  We then headed over to the Cheescake Factory for lunch, where we had our first date (which was actually on a Sunday and it was the 11th of the month). 

Source: Personal Library

After all the choices I have made, we finally all agreed on a dress and they were going to be ordered until my MOH went to order it last night from Dillards. When she went to place her order she realized her size was sold out and the smallest size was an "8". She called me immediatly to let me know so we could pick a new dress.

After searching for hours last night we have decided on a new dress. She ordered it tonight so now this is the dress, I promise! The other two girls are going to be ordering theirs by this weekend. Here's the new BM dress (it is shown in green but we will be getting ours in charcoal gray):

Source: Dessy- After Six

Let's just pray that everything will go smoothly til the end. It has been extremely fun but stressful. The only major things I have left are picking BM shoes and a florist!

4 months, and a couple weeks to go!!!!!

With a new wedding dress, comes more changes to the decor. Since my cake that we had designed was going to be amazing, but based off the design of my wedding dress we have to re-design our cake. I have found some ideas that I love!

This style cake (from a previous blog) reminds me of the bottom of my dress and think it would look lovely as our bottom layer of our cake.

I like this style cake (on left) since we are releasing doves at our wedding at the end of the ceremony I thought birds would be a great accent to the wedding cake as well. I have never been a fan of cake toppers but when I saw this I thought it was lovely. I started re-thinking the whole cake topper idea. To add a little decorative to the cake  I found this polka dot design that I liked (see right). It is gray and white just like our main wedding colors.

We may not end of with any of these designs but I am hoping something maybe close. I will definately try to fight for the bottom layer though since I love it! We are meeting with the cake designer again next Wednesday so I will let you know what we decide.

 Source: Brides by Demetrios, Google Images