I've been a very bad girl: Friday Edition

The Anniversary Sale strikes again.  Last fall I stumbled across one of the most beautiful pairs of boots that I've ever seen... online, anyway.  I convinced Nathan that he needed to buy them for me because my birthday gift (workout videos for the wii while I was in a back brace) was quite possibly the worst gift ever.  And I do blame my sister partly because I think she somewhat planted the seed in his head.  He complied and my Sam Edelman boots in Rainy Grey Waxy leather arrived in a prompt fashion, which is just how Nordstrom rolls.  Unfortunately, I sized 1/2 up like the reviews told me to and were entirely too big.  I returned them with exchange information and by the time the boots made it back home to Nordstrom, they were sold out in the size and color.  Well, I found an updated version on sale and...

Ta-da!  On a serious note, how in the world do celebs tuck in their jeans without getting them all bunchy and looking a total hot mess?  I would co-sign a pair of great fitting stirrup jeggings (mean it!) that stay in place and don't bunch up throughout the day.

Ignore the blue carpet.  Fall accessories are residing at Nathan's. 

I also picked up this Kiehl's lip balm because I was a measly 10 cents from free shipping when I bought the boots.  The lip balm was cheaper than shipping so I have another new product to try! 

*Ashley

I've been a very bad girl: Monday Edition

Remember, Ashley, the days when you were financially responsible?  Remember when you used to enjoy putting money in savings versus giving into many shopping desires? 

But those days are gone, there just memories.  ha!  My finance really liked this about me and I've been keeping my shopping under wraps so to him I still am the financially responsible, good head on my shoulders girl.  He's aware of all of the wedding expenses but not that I've been a shopaholic over the past year or when I say I'm thinking about buying something he will just say "you deserve it".  Why, yes... yes I deserve it! ;-)

I think that this will hopefully calm down soon, as I will see it as a resolution to why I've been shopping like its my job, because there is a definite why to this madness.  And while I know that material things will not make me happy, when this beauty arrived in the mail it sure did turn my tears into a big smile. 

I need to have some links taken out but I'm in looooove.  I've been eyeing it for months then my sister gave me the heads up that it was going to be on sale for the Anniversary sale.  I was going to be a good girl, I honestly was.  Then I ran into a little extra unexpected $ and well, you can clearly see the rest of the story. Thank you future MIL!  :-)

Happy Monday!  Ashley

Centerpieces with a touch of DIY

Ahh, flowers.  My floral budget is quite small as I would rather spend money on food, music, photography.  I want big style on little $.  White looking through pictures of centerpieces on The Knot I came across a few budget friendly ideas that I hope to put my own little spin on. 

Ok, this is just gorgeous and I'm in love with it.  Who knew carnations could look so chic?  However, this table is at least $300 and I have 16 tables to do something with.  I took the picture to a few florists where one quoted $150 for it while another $60.  I was shocked at the price difference between the two florists.  I was also shocked that the florist who I assumed would be out of my budget was actually under it.  So I signed up Bella Fiori to take care of my florals and I have an appointment with them in a couple of weeks to finalize the deets.  Notice the smaller vases with the floating candles- that's my DIY project.  I spent time today working on putting ribbon around vases and sealing them with personalized stickers.  This is one completed case, with one more to go. 

I scored these on the Dollar Tree website, yes, you read that correctly.  After going to Hobby Lobby and realizing that the best I was going to do for vases like these was $3 during the weeks they're 50% off, I was a little disappointed but that all turned around when I read a blog where the girl had bought vases at... the Dollar Tree.  I got 24 vases for $30 after tax & handling.  They were shipped to the store so no shipping charges or stress over them breaking in transit.  This project cost just at $42.

I wanted 2 different centerpieces to make it a little more interesting and give the room some dimension.  I, also, wanted to only do 8 tables with flowers and the other 8 myself.  This is my other inspiration: 

I found large pedestal vases at Wal-Mart for $15 that I'm thinking about using but want to check out a few other places to make sure I'm getting the best deal.  The tulle, if bought on 50% off week, will cost $2.50 for 75 feet.  All 8 of these tables would cost $160 total.  I need to do a run through before meeting with the florist to make sure this is doable.  I think it is but then again I pretty much suck at crafts.

*Ashley

Accessories

I'm about this.close to completing my bridal look... dress? check.  shoes? check.  veil? ordered-but-not-yet-received-so-I'll-just-go-ahead-and-say check.  Still on my to-do list is to pick out jewelry, finalize on an updo, and pick out a makeup look.  I found a website that has to-die-for jewelry.  I want to do earrings and leave the rest bare *I think*.  I emailed Ms. Regina with a picture of me in my gown and asked for a few suggestions, stating I wanted a beautiful earring but nothing to take away from the beauty of the dress.  These were the suggestions she made:

So many pretty earrings for such an indecisive person... *sigh*  What do you think about these choices?  I'd upload a picture of the dress but since my honey bunny uses this computer from time-to-time, I'm afraid of him finding a picture by accident... the dress is a surprise and all he knows is that it's ivory.

Ashley

I'd like to thank the academy

And by academy, I mean April at In My Shoes

Fun!

On to the rules...


1. Thank the blogger that gave you the award.
Thank you April at In My Shoes! 

2. Sum up your blogging philosophy, motivation, and experience in 5 words.
fun, pleasure, wedding, shopping, food

3. Pass it on to other blogs which you feel have real substance.
I nominate two of the blogs I read faithfully:
Anh at 9to5 Chic where you can find her dressing & looking beautiful on a daily basis.  If I didn't love her, I'd hate her.
Dana at The Possessionista where she tracks down celeb & bachelorette/bachelor style.  And she typically produces good laughs.

Heathy eating issues.

So it's less than three months away from our wedding and I'm starting to stress over looking my absolute best.  I love terrible food and have tossed around the idea of keeping a food journal.  The problem with this is, is that I have no shame.  Is writing down that I ate 4 two-bite coconut macaroons really going to bother me?  Probably not.  So I just may use this blog to talk about food choices and maybe then I will be disgusted with how I eat sometimes (like the fact that I had a mini and regular sized cupcake at work yesterday).  With that said, I ventured over to Whole Foods today and picked up some fresh fruits & veggies and made a delicious, surprisingly filling salad (sorry about the picture quality, RIP Samsung):

I also had Wheaties Fuel for breakfast, ate the food bar at Whole Foods for lunch with most of my plate consisting of veggies but couldn't resist my usual Whole Foods treat, the chicken fried tofu, and had some Greek yogurt with blueberry granola & a cup of 1/2 low-fat milk, 1/2 low-fat chocolate milk for dessert.

I've also been really bad about taking my lunch to work.  I think if I get a cute new lunch bag that I'll be more excited to pack it.  It will save money and be better for me in the long run.  I've been eating a grilled cheese & harvest cheddar sun chips for about two months straight now.  I really like these two :

I also think I'm going to pick up more Envirosax reusable bags.  I have 2 that I've been using for a couple years and always get compliments on them.  I've seen something similar being sold at B&B Works but prefer the quality of the Envirosax bags.  They are easy to role up, hold a ton of groceries and I always try to keep one in my purse when I go to the mall, Target, etc.  Not to mention I keep all of those pesky plastic bags away from the house until I need some to line bathroom trash cans.  Reduce, reuse, recycle folks!  I found this series of the bags below for $20.87 on www.reusablebags.com

I'll be at work tomorrow but then have a nice stretch of days off which I really need.  I had the best patients over the weekend and was actually happy to get called in on Saturday!  Hopefully tomorrow will go just as well.

Ashley

Wedding hair

Let me just share my excitement over purchasing a veil for $45.  $45!!!!!  I was lurking around the weddingbee site and saw a lady advertising custom veils on the cheap.  Yes, please!  I  picked out a cathedral length razor edge veil which really complements the dress.  It should be arriving in the mail by August 1.  Here is the website:    http://www.etsy.com/shop/Veilsandbeyond?ref=seller_info

I've been looking at updos in wedding magazines with no luck.  Below are styles of celebs and real brides that I've found online.  I'm looking for a style that is soft, graceful, sweet.  The more I look at the photos, the more I like style #1.

There has to be more updos out there that meet my approval!  I'm must continue the hunt.

Ashley

Bridesmaids dresses & goodie bags

I haven't been one of those girl who always dreamed of planning her wedding so it was hard for me to get into the spirit, especially after whole almost-died and reset-a-year-later thing.  After Bun (Nathan) & I got engaged, I went to a local dress shop, tried on a few, picked a dress on sale, bought it, no big deal.  Well, things have changed. ;-)  I upgraded the dress because I felt after going through a personal living hell, I deserved something to be excited about.  Now, I have used a future Louis Vuitton purchase to push me through many physical therapy sessions but that was different.  That will be a reward I hope to buy soon for working hard and staying positive when it would have and still can be much easier to throw myself a pity party.  I haven't selected my bag yet but do venture into the store when I go to Green Hills from time to time.  Moving on, I needed a boost to get going with wedding planning and went to a ritzy boutique to find a specific dress after a doctors appointment really having no clue what the particular dress I wanted to see would cost.  It wasn't there but they told me it would be at an upcoming trunk show.  I decided to try on a few gorgeous gowns anyway.  The staff was helpful and let me indulge in several dresses even though I didn't have an appointment.  After I was finished, I made an appointment for the trunk show and informed my sissy we'd be going.  We showed up for the trunk show a few weeks later, I tried on the Jim Hjelm I had been obsessing over online:

Gorgeous, huh?  Still love it, but it just wasn't the one.  I had been thinking about this Lazaro gown I tried on my first visit and had showed Katie pictures of.  Tried it on, tried on others, and tried the Lazaro on one last time.  My niece who was 8 months at the time who had been quiet through all of the dressed let out an "ohhhhhh" and my sissy started to shed a few tears... followed by me.  I made a big purchase that day and it has been worth every penny.  I can't wait to wear it!

One wedding thing I did always know was that my bridesmaids were going to wear black and pearls.  I can't deny my love for a J. Crew dress and decided on the Juliet (below) for my girls.  3/4 have been able to snatch it off Ebay for great prices which makes me happy because I kind of have guilt over asking people to spend money.  I do think it's super rewearable, classy, and I know they are going to look beautiful.  I may need to require them to uglify themselves so no one upstages me. hahaha! 

Last, I found this bag while walking through Dillards:

Black & white (ok, ivory) damask and pink?! Perfect for my girls!  I did have to stalk this bag until it dropped into my price range.  It finally did and I called all over Nashville to get 3 of them.  In order for everyone to get the bag, I got a slightly bigger version for my MOH.  I'm going to fill it with goodies but I'm not sure what.  As of right now, I've just added a B&B Works travel size hand sani to it in Caribbean Escape- because it's pink and smells SO GOOD!

Ashley

First time blogger!

I've been reading other blogs after my sister/sole follower sent a link to another bloggers wedding planning site. I had decided on a color scheme and she was sending ideas for me to browse through. I'm well on my planning way with just 3 months and 1 week until our October 16th wedding- hard to believe since we were originally set to marry last October. Where has the time gone?

I received a couple packages in the mail this week that I'm excited to share. First, I just got my table runners in. Linens are something that can really make a huge decor difference and I knew I wanted floor length tablecloths, chair covers & sashes. After looking into how much this items would cost to rent, I decided to go ahead and pay for them myself so I could potentially resale them & not have it come out of my budget. So I bought black tablecloths and black and white flocking damask runners for the tables and then two black and white flocking damask tablecloths for the bridal party tables. Here's a pic of part of the runner:

Secondly, I finally decided on the shoes because my alterations lady required that I have them with my next fitting, August 11th. I originally fell in love with the "Lover" by Kate Spade and I'll be darned if I didn't search high & low for a good price on those suckers. I finally came across another pair that I loved, the "Lora". These shoes are wedding shoe perfection. I came across them on piperlime and they had one(!!!) pair left in a 6.5 in ivory. I put them in my shopping bag and then headed over to google to find a coupon code where a 20% discount was being offered for signing up for emails. Yessss! For whatever reason when I went to apply the code, it wouldn't let me. So I dumped the shoes from the cart and went to put them back in the cart. Then it said the shoe was no longer available, mild freak out. I called piperlime and with excellent service was able to purchase the shoes and they arrived just a few days later.

Fun! I'm just starting the blog so tell me: what measures did you take for cost containment at your wedding?

Ashley