Danwich!

Just a few photos from this last week when some friends/fam bam went out to get Boiling Crab. They opened up a new one in Costa Mesa! (Oh, and an old friend of mine, Stevie, drove out from Arizona to visit.) Of course, we HAD to take her to the best seafood joint in town!

LADIES NIGHT!!!!! We grabbed dinner at Tommy Bahama's in Laguna Beach and then headed out for what was supposed to be  'a night out in the town'. We left home around 6:45 PM and got back home by 9:45 PM. PARTY ANIMALS, ya know? Hahahaha

My awesome girlfriend, Stevie, (on the left) who drove out from Arizona to visit, and a guest appearance by the wonderful Vickster also known as Vicki also known as Victoria. ;) 

A DANWICH with my beautiful sister, Debs, and me! :) 

Hope all of you have a wonderful, and most importantly SAFE Labor Day weekend! 

Engagement Photoshoot

SO...our engagement photoshoot is coming up this next Tuesday, and I've been scanning all over the internet for bright ideas on how to go about looking fantasmical in our photos. Here are some I came across for the type of "style" we're going for:

We're super thrilled we get to use the venue that we've chosen for our wedding as the actual engagement site since the owners said a lot of photographers die to get the chance to shoot there! I've been collecting (physically and mentally) prop ideas as well to have with us to use, and I'm just hoping the weather isn't sweltering---or at least by the time we shoot. (We're doing later afternoon.) 

Wedding invitations have finally been completed, and Daniel's mom has been so awesome with helping us plan our engagement party! In fact, I feel so blessed to have so many family members ever so willing to help look into different options for us for the many parts of the wedding planning process. (From the rehearsal, number of parties---engagement, bachelorette, etc etc---) Our day can't come soon enough! :)  

Diet Shmiet & Tag Grief

So, Daniel and I have been on a sorta detox/diet since returning from Tahoe. I've been eating steel cut oatmeal for breakfast and veggies for dinner. (Gotta get in shape for our engagement photos, know what I mean!) Surprisingly, it's been rather doable except I feel like we'd probably run out of ideas soon---you can only cook vegetables SO many ways. (And scratch salads! Who eats those anyway?!?!) ;) Really, though. If anyone has any great recipes on how to cook up veggies or even healthy meal options---message them my way!

As for our invitations, I finally got a hold of a giant paper cutter last night at FedEx. Daniel went with me and helped slice hundreds of sheets of paper. (Weirdest thing...I've NEVER been to Kinko's before until the other day!! I didn't even know they had a self service area where you can use all their machines and cutting boards!!) GREATEST. FIND. EVER. (For me, at least.)

My hand's still sore from 'doily' punching so many tags! The project started out with these 2" x 4" manilla tags from Staples. (They only came in boxes of 500, oy! Fortunately for me...I messed up one whole batch, so I'm glad I had a ton to spare.)

I took my Martha Stewart hole puncher thingy ma' bobs that I purchased at Michael's for about $25 and hole punched the crap out of them...all 170 of them!!! (Which explains my ridiculously sore right hand. Ick.)

I wanted a rustic feel to my invitations to match the theme of our outdoor wedding, so I had to find a way to distress the tags a bit. First, I tried using a giant pot of black tea soaked with 3 Tazo tea bags which gave it a darker tint to the tags, but I realized something in the tea was making the tags super 'spotty' looking. (No bueno.) Next, I tried using a cup of Nespresso coffee which I found gave the tags a rather even, but most importantly SMOOTH texture to them. I set my oven to 350 degrees and  lined up all the tags on the sheet...line by line...tag by tag, and baked for 5-6 minutes until they were dry:

Cute, no? The tags still had a leftover scent of coffee, so I put them all in a shoebox with 3 pouches of lavender potpourri which instantly cleaned up the smell! I spent the next hour stamping all of these puppies with the personalized RSVP stamp I purchased off of rubberstamp.com.

I woke up this morning and my WHOLE body was sore. I'm going to go ahead and say it was all the work I put in yesterday making these RSVP cards. Do I regret it? Not one bit. It was totally worth every dime!!! Until next time, au revoir!

Handmade RSVP cards

Well, it took two tries and lace punching over 350 tags, but I've finally finished these! Woohoo!!

Printing out the invites!!!

Wow, Kinkos is so efficient!!! Printing on vellum paper has never been easier. FEDEX FOR THE WIN!!!!!

A Weekend Wedding in Tahoe

Daniel & I just returned from a weekend wedding at Lake Tahoe---both of our first visits to Tahoe, EVER! We had a ball, and more particularly, enjoyed the company of many good friends and being surrounded by beautiful mother nature all around us. Oh, and I have to give a shoutout to dogvacay.com. We were unsure with where to leave McCrae for the weekend, and we found the loveliest semi-retired couple who watched him for the few days while we were gone. (Complete with a daily follow up of how he was doing with photos and videos!!!)

After a quick flight home and washing up for dinner, I checked my mail and found that my order of burlap ribbon had arrived! Woohoo! I purchased Martha Stewart's 'lace' punches from Michael's as well as an order of vellum paper, recycled brown paper and envelopes. Now...the only supply I'm still waiting for is our RSVP rubber stamp for the invites and 100 yards of twine...

Invitation supplies! 

Of course, to flow with the theme of our rustic wedding, I've decided to make a DIY wedding invitation. Let the creative juices flow! I already made a mock invite that I'll be basing the final product with. (Soooo excited to work on this project!)

Alright, it's been a long, long, long weekend. Have a great evening, and I promise to update soon with some new photos of the invitations! Goodnight, all. :)

The countdown begins!

Good morning, errrrbody! 

[So, I was sitting here trying to crank out some work on my computer---bright and early with coffee in tow---and I thought I'd better update my blog! (Over 400 views on my first entry in a matter of a couple days? Geez, peeps. I can already tell you're going to be a demanding audience to entertain!  (jk!)]

221 days left to go....

and it seems like we're almost done deciding on what's typically the most important parts of the wedding! In 3 weeks, Daniel and I have managed to:

• pick a venue and date 
• decide on our theme 
• create a guest list 
• invite our closest and dearest friends to be apart of our bridal party
• decide on our colors 
• choose a dress (I said 'yes' to the dress within less than an hour of trying on dresses!) 
• nab a photographer 
• pick a caterer and our style of food
• pin down a DJ to rock our socks off all night 
• order all the essentials for our invitations   

And I thought wedding planning was supposed to the worst part?? Come to think of it, I was telling Daniel I'm not sure how people even planned weddings prior to the internet. Can you imagine!!!! (Having to make that many phone calls with vendors and actually having to drive to places to see things!?! Eesh! I get shivers down my spine even thinking about attempting something like that!) I guess it helps to have a fiancee who is impeccably organized with Google docs and excel spreadsheets! (Done right like the true financial analyst that he is!)

Fortunately, for us we both have great friends who are eager to help. My sister's my maid of honor and she's super stoked to have something fun for us to plan together...In fact, she's already talking about the bachelorette party (which is still ways away!) Not to mention, our mothers who are equally  even more excited and have already been such a huge help! Daniel's wonderful mother (and soon to be MIL) has been so proactive in offering her help and advice. She sends us links to websites that embody the theme we're going for and even helped refer us to a list of photographers where we actually ended up deciding from on who to use for our photography (after A TON of browsing, mind you.) My mother's been offering her help on flower arrangement ideas and both my parents came along bridal dress shopping with me to give their input! 

It's been a fun journey so far with a ton of planning (in the most excited sense of it since planning events never stress me out, truly!) At the end of the day, when all is said and done, I think Daniel and I will look back and know every minute of planning was completely worth it. Most importantly, it'll be a day we get to share with our families and closest friends. (A small wedding is in action, friends!!) 

To leave off...a quote from 'When Harry Met Sally' which embraces our mentality on all that's going on~

When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.  [~Nora Ephron]

Of course, I must include another photo from our venue! Taken directly off their website...here's a past wedding onsite:

(Absolutely darling, no?)

....And next up...my DIY Rustic Wedding Invitations! (Just have to be a little patient and wait for my paper order to be delivered!) 

He put a ring on it

After having my old blog on Xanga for almost eleven years, I have decided to retire there and start a fresh beginning here. It's a new time in my life for my best friend (turned fiancee) and I! So, I suppose I'll have to start right from the beginning, eh? Daniel and I were engaged two weeks ago (July 27, 12' to be exact) on the sandy shores of Makena Surf in Maui. Hopefully, this new blog will cover all our basis from the big parts of our wedding planning down to the details. 

First things first. This, here, is Daniel and I. (Of course, if you've followed me either on my last blog or know us personally....this isn't news to you!) 

Isn't he handsome? :)

Onto the next. SO, we realized (after talking to a few of our other engaged friends) that finding a venue would be the biggest decision and the first thing to do before planning out any of the finer details. I LOVE PARTY PLANNING. (In fact, if I could've had it any other way in my life---I would've already owned a wedding site by now and been in charge of coordinating every single wedding as well!) Since we were on vacation and had plenty of time to sit/lay around and be complete wastes of space, we decided to start looking up venues in the LA/SD county areas and put our excellent planning skills to use. If you know Daniel or me, you'll know that we're both weird eclectic. We're both free spirited/anything goes-goes type of people. We try not to make big deals out of most things---which is probably why we get along fairly well. Naturally, finding a few venues to start with was a piece o' cake. We found four venues to see---which at this point, we were pretty sure one would do the trick. 

The first weekend back from Maui, we were in the LA area for a friend's birthday party, so to kill two birds with one stone---we were able to scope out three of the venues which were located in Camarillo, CA, beforehand. The day was beautiful, the weather was great, and out of the three venues we saw, we narrowed down our choice to a beautiful garden. (Maravilla Gardens) We were pretty sure we were going to settle on this venue, but had one last venue to see a few days later. Later that evening at the birthday party, a friend told us that Camarillo smells like cow manure 300 days out of the year due to the large number of farms surrounding the city. Nothing screams holy matrimony like the smell of methane gas! 

Yesterday, we visited the last venue that we had decided on. A two hour drive east into the 100 degree mountains, we stumbled into our appointment....and instantly fell in love. For the details of the site, well, you'll just have to sit tight and wait. I promise you, though, it is to die for! We were so excited to secure our spot and date (they were already making bookings into 2014, because 2013 was almost booked) that I drove up to the owner who resides in Huntington Beach to put down our security deposit for the venue. And like that, mis amigos, it was done. 

Without further ado, here's a super top secret photo of just a mini portion of the wedding venue. I can't help myself. We're absolutely elated and feel so blessed that we get to tie the knot at this special location!!!!!