Wedding Wednesday: Invitations

Lookie what arrived in the mail…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Invitations!

I won’t say too much about them because I have readers that will be getting them

But now we just to address them & deliver! One more thing off the list. It’s getting serious now, folks. Less than 5 months!!!!

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Workouts this week have been almost non-existent considering I got sick AGAIN. I did make it to the gym today for a quick 30 min incline walk on the treadmill. In the past, I would have written off a short workout because it wouldn’t really count. Not anymore! My short workout still burned calories that I wouldn’t have burned if I would have went home and sat on the couch. It all adds up, people!

Dinner tonight:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Random. Very, very random.

A black bean, shredded cheddar cheese, red onion and pepperoni with a side of green beans & carrots w/ ranch greek yogurt dip (and a peeking salsa cup). Told you, very random.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I would take out the pepperoni because it was weird. Not a good combo! Oh well, ya win some, ya lose some.

Off to watch American Idol! Am I the only person watching this show anymore under the age of 60?

Wedding Wednesday: Shoes

Shoes. OMG shoes.

Let’s get some shoes. Let’s party.

If you have no idea what I’m referring to, please watch here.

And stop living under a rock.

Annnnyways.

Shoes. I suppose I should get some for the wedding, eh? I go back and forth between loving looking for shoes and loathing it. I mean, no one will see them, right? And I’ll end up just taking them off halfway through the reception, right?

But I want to have blue shoes! So I want everyone to see them! So I will wear them all night! (Yeah right)

Here are a couple I’ve been looking at:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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A few ideas. I like the first one the best, but…they are $100. Soo…there’s that.

All of these I found via etsy. Does anyone else have any other ideas of where I can find cute, affordable blue (non suede ) shoes? Help!

Wedding Wednesday: Cupcakes!

It’s cake time. Well, more like cupcake time.

Yep, we’re doing cupcakes instead of cake and it will be amazing.

We had our appointment at Milwaukee Cupcake Company this past Saturday and…well it was by far my favorite appointment so far!!!

Eeee! Excitement face!

The menu. Well, one menu. They have 80 some cupcake flavors ranging from a simple vanilla bean to a cookie dough flavor! We were able to try every cupcake that they had made for that day.

Yes. We had 14 cupcakes. 14 CUPCAKES.

SO MANY CUPCAKES!

We were most excited about the red velvet cupcake. It did not disappoint! Love that cream cheese frosting.

Thumbs up for an empty wrapper!

Next favorite: Strawberry cupcake with strawberry icing. I am usually a chocolate feign, but holy cow this was sooo good!

So many cupcakes, so little time.

The cupcake above was a dark chocolate cake with a dark chocolate frosting. I liked it, but didn’t love it.

So full.

But there were more cupcakes to be had.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And done. We got to box up the leftovers and take them home. Granted, I didn’t want to see another cupcake until the wedding day because I was on such a sugar high. I immediately crashed once we got home. Hard.

Anywho, the flavors we picked were (drumroll, please):

– Salted Caramel

– Red Velvet Cake

– Grasshopper (like the alcoholic drink-vanilla cake with broken up Andes mints, & mint icing)

– Carrot Cake

– Reese’s Peanut Buttercup

– Strawberry w/ Strawberry Icing

Now to decide which one we will share on our wedding day….

Question: What’s your favorite flavor of cupcake?

Wedding Wednesday: Flowers & Cake

Hello there! How are you on this fine Wednesday? Doing well over here.

I figured I would give a wedding update since I haven’t in awhile…today’s topic—>

Flowers & Cake!

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Not gonna lie, flowers and cake are the two things I could care less about. I know, I know…I’m not a typical girl. I just feel like…why waste SO much money on flowers and cake when I don’t even really care for either? I do want the flowers to look nice, but I knew from the get go I didn’t want to use flowers as the centerpieces to make it cheaper. I would much rather spend money on something else for the wedding (like a photobooth!) than flowers. And I don’t really like cake…soo there’s that.

Flowers

We have an appointment with a florist this weekend (Ryan is thrilled) and I have no idea what kind of flowers I want. All I have to go off of is colors really.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m liking the purple/pink combo, but I’d really like to incorporate an emerald color somehow but I’m not sure flowers are the way to do it. I’m so terrible at these types of things.

Cake

Sooo…we most likely aren’t doing actually cake.

Cupcakes are the way to go, baby!

First of all, I had no idea how freaking expensive a slice of cake was! When I first started asking around to friends & co-workers. Holy COW. Why is a piece of cake $10?!?! That is completely insane to me and not necessary. When I first started thinking about a cake, I initially wanted to do cupcakes because I like them more (yes they are essentially the same thing…whatever). It’s looking like cupcakes are most definitely the way to go, considering I’m finding places that make them for $2 a cupcake! Now that’s what I’m talking about.

Here’s one place we’re looking at…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Milwaukee Cupcake Company comes highly recommended to me from several different people. None of which who have used them for a wedding but supposedly their cupcakes are amazing.

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Liking this set up!

Also looking at Classy Girl Cupcakes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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We’re hoping to only go to two maybe three places to try cupcakes because they do charge you for the tastings (can’t blame them…). Hopefully we will get that accomplished next weekend!

Question: Cake or cupcakes?

Couple Assessment – Wedding Talk

Like I mentioned last night, Ryan & I had to complete our couple assessment yesterday as a part of our requirement to get married in our church. It wasn’t something either of us were really nervous about, because we’ve talked about everything serious we would need to way before now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I will not be hyphenating my name, so I will in fact be, Brittney Lynn Lynn.

There were general questions (gender, age, if you’re living together, etc), family questions (how does your family handle leadership, what kind of house did you grow up in, etc) and then a lot of “strongly disagree to strongly agree” type questions.

Most were okay and could easily be answered, but a few I/ we had a hard time answering (we answered the questions separately but discussed them after). Here are a few of the questions that we had “what the heck?!” kind of responses.

“Even though we have relationship issues now, I think having children will make us happier”

Well, no, we don’t have relationship issues and I don’t think children will make our “issues” go away, but…children would make us happier (at least I would hope) so…agree or disagree?!

“Love is all you need to have a healthy relationship”

Love isn’t allllll you need, but…it is definitely important…agree or disagree?!

“You get stressed out about wedding details”

Kind of, but not crazy stressed. Stress can mean different things for different people…agree or disagree?!

These questions were worded in a way that made you question which answer your partner would pick. It all depends on how you interpret the question. I know that you can’t “fail” this test but I feel like questions like these were put in on purpose to throw couples off.

Question: What do you think? Are these questions off the wall or justified? Would you agree or disagree with these? 

A Lazy Sunday

Hiya friends!

This weekend has been one of those rejuvenating, IneedtowatchNetflixallweekend kind of weekends.

Friday evening was spent partially freaking out about Murphy eating a Reese’s cup (with the full wrapper on, of course) and frantically googling how much chocolate will kill a dog…and partially watching Mad Men on Netflix (I needed a new show after Lost…)

Yep this sweet, innocent looking dog…

is a beast that will swallow anything within 5 seconds flat. I discovered after googling for an hour (and missing my window to go to the gym) that he had to have eaten 35 oz of chocolate to be in danger…and he ate .7 oz. So I over-exaggerated a bit.

Saturday was spent getting free prints of our engagement pictures at Walgreens (!!!), pinterest, cleaning the house, watching even more Mad Men (and Dexter) and making a delicious spaghetti squash dish  that I will have to share on the blog some time!

Speaking of engagement pictures…here are a few of my favorites:

*Love our photographer!!!!

Sunday we went to Church, ran some errands, finished our wedding website (check it out! RyanBrittney.ourwedding.com) and did our couple assessment assignment. It wasn’t too difficult, but I really didn’t like how some of the questions were worded. I think I’ll touch on this in a different post.

Well, time for me to hang with my boys & eat some yummy pot roast!

Question: How was your weekend? Do anything fun? Tell me!

Colors!

The post you’ve all been waiting for….

Ha. In all seriousness picking colors for our wedding was a somewhat difficult task. I really have no preference toward any one color so I really had to compare a lot of colors before picking a palette. I love almost every color (except brown, at least not for my wedding) so I wanted to try to pick one main color, and then use a bunch of other colors to compliment the main one (without looking like a rainbow).

I’ve finally decided on….

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Jewel tones!

The main color being blue (most likely the color of the bridesmaids dresses)

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With maybe a hint of hot pink (for my flowers?)

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I’d also like to throw in some emerald too. Anyone out there have any ideas?!

 

And The Venue Is….

Country Springs Hotel in Pewaukee, Wisconsin!

Now I’m not gonna lie, I did first judge this place by their website. I took one look at it and immediately dismissed it because the website…needs some work.

But then someone at work recommended the place and another also said they went to a wedding there this past New Year’s Eve and said it was really nice, so I gave it a shot.

The one part of the website that I did enjoy was the Cost Calculator. A lot of reception venues have little or nothing about the cost of having a reception there, let alone a system that you can pick out the specifics you want for your wedding. Obviously, it was just a rough estimate but it was nice going in there having a cost in mind.

We took few pictures (I was really excited and had a lot of questions so I kinda forgot…) BUT we are going back this weekend to drop off the deposit &  signed contract (!!!).

A few of our non-negotiables for the reception were dinner, open bar (for at least part of it) and at a hotel or near a hotel for guests to stay in. We get all of this at Country Springs Hotel and it is within our price range!

We are still spending a pretty hefty amount of money, but once we calculated all of the potential costs we will have we realized we would be able to pay for all of the reception ourselves (with a combination of our money & both of our parents money).

We will still be taking out a loan, which will indeed stink, but it’s a better option than putting it on a credit card.

It’s our one day that is completely ours and we’re both comfortable with taking out a small (ish) loan to help pay for our day!

Sorry this lacks photos, but I’ll add more after we visit again!

Now for that dress…anyone willing to help me?! Events I can plan, finding dresses I can not.

The Iron Horse Hotel – Wedding Venue Visit #1

Friday evening Ryan and I had our first wedding venue visit at The Iron Horse Hotel in downtown Milwaukee. We were pretty excited because this finally felt like our first step toward wedding planning. Yes we have a date, and a church but honestly that’s it. Of course it feels real, but it’s hard to picture having an actual wedding….when you have no venue.

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Anyways, our first visit went very well. It has such a unique, boutique hotel vibe that we both really thought fit us well. The cost was…decent and around what we are willing to pay (and not cry ourselves to sleep every night). They work well with other vendors and have great meal prices and selections. Sounds perfect right?

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Well one problem. A kind of major problem. They only have 100 guest rooms.

Okay, no big deal. We can handle that.

 

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Except we can only be guaranteed 10 rooms set back for our guests. 10 rooms?! Uhh with 175 guests I don’t think blocking off TEN ROOMS will even come close to covering it! We were both really disappointed because there’s really nothing else keeping us from snatching up the place for September 2, 2012. There aren’t any other hotels close enough and our guests will be…drinking and I don’t want them to have to pay for a cab to get across town after paying to come to our wedding AND getting us a gift. I’d just feel too guilty and I want our guests to enjoy themselves and not have to worry about getting a ride elsewhere.

I e-mailed 5 more venues on Saturday after freaking out about not being able to find the perfect place. They all responded back today but…none seem comparable to The Iron Horse. One was way too expensive, two already had that date filled, and two are closer to our price range but still more than what we want to pay.

We’re hoping to look at a few more venues and see if we like anything else. I’d really love for our reception to be downtown so people get to experience Milwaukee and get to see the downtown area but we will see. I’m also highly considering connecting with the wedding coordinator of The Iron Horse to see if he is willing to block off more rooms for us if we guarantee guests will book there (I’m talking so sure that we will offer to pay for any rooms that aren’t used up…because I know that they will be).

We shall see!

Q: Is it okay to negotiate with a venue? Did you have to make sacrifices on what you wanted on your wedding day?

Day Two

Evening! Day two of blogging and I’m still going strong. The weather here in Wisconsin has been crazy. It was supposed to rain and storm but…nothing ever happened and it just stayed uncomfortably hot. Tomorrow it’s supposed to be 59 degrees…what the heck Wisconsin?! Just decide on a season and go with it!

Anyways, I wanted to take this post to talk about my (our) upcoming WEDDING! Ryan (fiance) and I have only been engaged for a little over a week and I (we) are so excited! I really wanted to use this part of this blog to document all of the fun (and not so fun…) aspects of planning a wedding. I’m hoping both of our families & friends can use this to keep up-to-date with all of the shenanigans of our adventure (that way I don’t have to call everyone every since time we make a decision).

So far, there’s not much set to be honest. We are thinking of having the special day on Labor Day weekend 2012. Seems like foooorever away but it’s what will work best for us. There’s no way I could plan it for this September and we really would like it on a long holiday weekend for people to be able to travel (and now on an anniversary we get an extra day off!)

We are talking with our church this coming weekend about the date and hopefully it is open! We have an appointment for a possible reception place as well at the Iron Horse Hotel in a couple weeks. I will definitely give an update for that (pictures included!).

Besides that there’s not much else to update on. 3 out of my 4 bridesmaids have been contacted, all said yes! I feel like after we have the date set with the church everything will take off at once. I have no idea what I want with basically anything so it will be interesting to say the least.

Until next time!