Becoming a Tech Savy Bride...

As soon as the wedding planning began I knew I wanted to have a wedding website but I was stunned at all the different ones available out there. Since I'm pretty frugal I decided to set up a free one. My FI wants one that is not too expensive and where we can get our names as our domain but he hasn't had time to set it up and since I like to get things done I went ahead and set ours up. These are a some of the ones I found in my search:

The Knot



Wedding Tracker



eWedding






Our Wedding Day


Project Wedding



The one I decided to go with is Weddingwire and I love it!

Okay so let me admit if I haven't previously done so my FI is a software engineer so he could easily set up a site write the code and make it fabulous but since work is keeping him so busy lately I had to do it myself. I love our wedding website because it keeps be very organized. Just to let you guys know he is actually very impressed with the tools that you are able to use. Since I got the thumps up from my FI it made me very happy.

Are you using a wedding website? If so which one?

"The camera can photograph thought."

One of the first things we did this year was book our photographer, Mike Stonis. He is part of Studio 7 Photography alongside with Miah Klein. They do such an amazing job that I wanted to share with you guys some of their work. You need to check them out because this duo has such an eye for capturing emotion.

{All photos Studio 7 Photography}

We seriously looked at over 100 photographers websites and meet with a few of them. Our obsession with photographers led us to discover Mike and Miah. Mike had such an amazing energy to him that we left elated after our meeting with him. We are completely excited and can't wait to reschedule our e-pics for next month.

So, did you pick the first photographer you found or did you become obsessed like we did?

Garment District + TLC = My Boutonnieres

Here they are my long over due boutonnieres. Like I previously mentioned I went to the Garment District in L.A. to buy the supplies needed to make my boutonnieres. Here is the break down of how much I spent.

I only bought one of these flowers because I wanted to make sure this is what I wanted. You can get a dozen for $5.00 or one for 50 cents. The flower comes closed up but it looks great when you open it up.

See the difference after you open up the pedals. Yay for spending 50 cents.

I also used these blue flowers which cost 75 cents a bunch and will make 5 boutonnieres.

I also purchased green petals for 75 cents a bunch which should be enough to make about 5 boutonnieres.

Then I moved onto ribbon which cost me $1.00 and will be used in more wedding related items.

Another type of flower I used was these little orange ones. These cost 50 cents a bunch which should also be enough to make 5 boutonnieres.

I used floral tape to bind everything together and a glue gun to add the ribbon. Here is final product. I hope you like it. Please let me know if I should change anything.

Viola! Total cost for 5 boutonnieres should be:

Blue Flower: $2.50
Small blue Flowers: 75 cents
Orange Flower: 50 cents
Ribbon: $1.00
Floral tape:$ 1.50

Grand total: $6.25 and I will have extra ribbon and tape left over.
Per boutonnieres: $1.25

So, what do you think?

"It's my birthday and I cry if I want too..."

It's my birthday today and I spent most of my day in the hospital with my dad. Which sounds worse than it really was. My parents came this weekend from out of town to visit me and right before they left my dad began to have chest pain. After doing some testing on his heart and spending the night at the hospital the doctors didn't find anything wrong with him. Although it was not the best situation to be in I would have to say that overall it was great to spend some time with my both of my parents alone. My mom and I got to sit down and talk about wedding details which made me really happy. One of the things that was unfortunate was that we had to cancel our e-pics session because we had to rush to the hospital. One thing we did accomplish is that we meet with a potential dj tonight.

Nothing else left to say but this is a picture of my engagement ring with the beautiful flowers my FI bought me for my birthday. He is too cute sometimes he got me two dozen peach roses to match our wedding colors. : )

Has life thrown a wrench into your wedding planning like it did in ours?

Flower + Ring = DIY hair accessories

As I previously mentioned I LOVE the Garment District. I was going to purchase a flower for my hair from Etsy but I realized I could DIY one myself.

I purchased the flower for $1.00.

I purchased this ring for $3.00.

I took the backing off the ring hot glued it to my flower and created my hair accessory.

Total price = $4.00

It's simply with a tad of bling and I feel that it goes well with my personality.

So, what do you think? Should I add something else to it to jazz it up or should I leave it as is?

Cute as a button, Oops I mean boutonniere!!

Okay like I've previously mentioned I took a trip to the Garment District this past week and I got some great finds that I promise I will share with you later this week but before I do that I wanted to show you some inspirational boutonnieres that I found on Etsy.

{Source}

{Source}

{source}

I thought these boutonnieres were so cute that I decided to make my own out of artificial flowers. I recently read that artificial flowers would be a better choice since real flowers tend to die out throughout the day.

Stay tuned this week to see my DIY boutonnieres.

Are you making your own or are you ordering them from a florist?

"Can you feel the love tonight..."

I can definitely feel the love from my MOH and bridesmaids. They are so darn cute. They are throwing me a lovely shower next month and they are going to integrate a theme from my wedding, sweets. Oh boy and you know how much I love that. I just wanted to share with you my wonderful invites that were sent out last week.


Like I've said before my parents are very traditional and some of the things that are going to be happening surrounding the wedding are new to them. My FMIL asked my FI this weekend if the shower was going to have strippers because her sister didn't want to attend if that was the case. He had to explain to her that the shower is actually different from the bachelorette party. I can't wait until next month for the shower so that the females from my mom's side and my FMIL can see what a bridal shower consist of.

Have you had to explain a Bridal Shower to someone who wasn't familiar with it?

Can I get ketchup with that dog?

Wedding Mode Day 1:

If you are from Southern Cali and you are on a budget you have to go visit the Fashion District or what is more commonly known as the Garment District. I spent my day today in Downtown L.A. on the search for some DIY ideas and for great finds.

I totally scored and I will share my finds with you within the next few days. My recommendation to you if you decide to go is to take public transportation. Not only is it cheaper and great for the environment but you don't have to deal with traffic and parking. One of my favorite stores to go visit while I'm there is Maple Craft 925 Maple Ave # 1st Los Angeles, CA 90015 (213) 622-9602‎. This store has an array of stuff for DIY. You can find artificial flowers, ribbon, stuff to make favors, etc.


Another great store is Craft Beads. Both stores pretty much have the same things except that they sometime have different prices. Yay! This is handy when you are trying to score a deal.


The one thing you have to do while you are visiting the Garment District is to grab yourself a nice hot dog. A hot dog from an outdoor cart is such the L.A. thing to do while you are there. For $3.00 you can have yourself a treat that you normally wouldn't.



The reason I suggest the hot dog is because once you go there and start looking for deals you'll forget to eat.

Where have you recently scored great deals at for your DIY projects?

Speaking of love...

Finals are over and now I can go into full wedding mode. As I sat here on my couch checking out some wedding sites. I noticed that Mrs. Meatball a weddingbee blogger had some teaser photos of her wedding.

Wow! I was completely floored when I saw them. They are like nothing I've ever seen. I don't know if it is the photographer Dan Chen or if its their vibrant personalities pouring out, but these photos speak of pure emotion. They speak of love!

{chennergy photography}

Nothing else for me to say but their photos reconfirmed why I am a hopeless romantic and why I believe in love above everything else.

But teacher I have a wedding to finish planning...

I wish I could just tell my professors that I can't take my finals because I have to continue the planning but since I can't today will be a fun filled day. I will be at school all day doing a final, reviewing, and studying. Life doesn't hold still when you're planning a wedding and since I have other obligations you won't hear as much from me in the next few days. Once the madness is over I can move on to all the DIY projects I've been telling you about. Before I go away for a the next few days I will leave you with what I like to call my ring pillow. One of my bridesmaids was kind enough to give it to me since she didn't have a need for it in hers. I appreciate and welcome all items I can "recycle" into my wedding. I tweaked the pillow a tad and made it more personal. I'm trying to decide if this is what I want of if I should change it but as of right now this is our ring pillow.



Before:



After:


I hope to see everyone in a few days until then have a lovely week and wish me luck on my finals.

"Honey, Oh Sugar, Sugar. You are my candy girl..."

Question: So why sweet tooth?
Answer: I LOVE sweets!

I love them so much that we will be having an ever trendy candy buffet at our reception. I decided to jump on the bandwagon since it fits us (well, more like me) perfectly. I'm not the only one in my family that has a sweet tooth everyone on my mom's side of the family is the same way. She says we get this trait from my grandfather. I don't think my FI really knew to what extent we all loved sweets until I took him on vacation this past winter to my mom's hometown in Chihuahua, Mexico. He soon discovered that as we went to different family members homes the first thing they would offer us was a bowl of candy. After this revelation it wasn't difficult convincing him to go along with the idea. This made me really happy and to finally seal the deal I had to show him images of what others have done.

Source


Source

We like the idea of using our wedding colors for the overall theme with lots of "retro" candy as well. I plan on doing all the calligraphy to showcase the types of candy we will have. As soon as we purchase the containers and have an idea of where we are obtaining our candy I will post the pictures. I've already called our venue and asked if we can set this up. They said that as long as we take all the supplies a couple of days before with a detailed drawing of the layout we want they will take care of it for us. Yay!!

Are you having a candy buffet?

Eat, Drink, and be Married...

When we were trying to figure out what our overall feeling for our wedding was going to be we realized that it had to be something that was exactly us even if it meant that it might be nontraditional. We knew that our ceremony was going to be in a Catholic Church and like I previously mentioned here it took quite some work to get that scheduled.

The ceremony is going to be a very traditional mass which is going to be done in Spanish. I will share with you later what the details are going to be surrounding that. Until then lets move on to our what our next focus is, the reception. We went to look at a couple of places and I ruled out SEVERAL others without visiting them. We soon realized that the types of venues we were looking at all revolved around food. This was like an epiphany to us at last our search was over. We decided that our our wedding was going to be food based more than party based like is traditionally done in my family. It seems to me that food at any wedding or quincianera for our family is an afterthought. I have often complained that all our family ever serves at weddings is the "traditional" Mexican dishes which include: birria, arroz, frijoles, and pico de gallo.





Don't get me wrong I LOVE this food especially when my family makes it themselves but I am just feed up with the same thing over and over again. I had to also consider that my FI is not Mexican but Guatemalan and his family doesn't necessarily have the same tradition. Another consideration is that my cousin is getting married a couple of weeks before me and they will be serving this for their meal. My other cousin is getting married the week after me and I'm pretty sure they will be doing the same. Since our wedding is food based as apposed to party focused like my cousins then it seems fitting that we go with something different.

We then began our search for a restaurant to have our reception at. We needed to find a restaurant we both enjoyed and that had great dessert (I'll explain later why this is a must). The search came to a halt when we both agreed to go with the The Cheesecake Factory . Yes, this is not a mistake we went with a restaurant we trust and that hasn't let us down so far.

I'm excited that I get to step outside the box and not serve the "traditional" wedding dish and go for something new that hopefully everyone will enjoy. We have our venue and the best part is that we were able to rent out the whole floor. The way that this works is that the restaurant is in the first floor and our reception will be held in the second floor. We opted to go for the entire floor because we don't want another party going on at the same time as ours. The restaurant has private bathrooms, an elevator to access it, and even a small dance floor. I love music so we are definitely going to have a DJ and since I'm Mexican-American we are also having a mariachi during the cocktail hour. Yay! We finally have a venue trying to convince my family of this is a whole different story I will continue at a different time.

Oh and it is cheaper for us to go with this venue and pay a floor fee than it would have been to go with a different venue. I will update the final cost after I figure in all the details of what we are having.

Cheering my way to decorations...!!

Who knew that pom poms weren't just for cheerleaders but can be used to enhance the decor of a wedding? Well Martha did. ; )

I am completely in love with these pom poms and I can't wait to DIY some for my wedding.

Source

The instructions seem easy and this project overall shouldn't cost a lot since I plan on going to some sort of dollar store to gather my supplies.

Source

I think it would be a lot cheaper for me to DIY these and use them in the church instead of having real flowers. This seems like a really fun project that I can't wait to do. I'll update you on my progress in the next couple of weeks. I wonder what my mom and the rest of the family is going to think about this idea. I hope they like it because I love it.

Source

Doesn't this look super cute and I'm glad I could just do them and put them away until our wedding date. The best part is that you can customize it to whatever colors you want as long as you find the tissue color. I plan on inviting my girls to come and help me out with this little project.

What are you using to decorate your ceremony?

Is that a clown? Oh, no that's just the bride.

The thought of globes of make up on my face makes my FI cringe.

Source

Seriously though since I usually don't wear any make up he actually voiced his opinion about the subject matter. He simply asked if I could keep it simple and natural. Since I was already planning on doing it I agreed. I thought it was really cute that he has thought about it enough to ask me. Although I do enjoy the idea of getting dolled up and paying someone (for the first time in my life) to do my make up I don't want to feel uncomfortable on my wedding date. I would hate to feel like I need to go wipe my face or something since I'm actually going to be splurging on this. My inner budget savvy self is attempting to fight off the urge to get it done professionally but I am doing it because I want great pictures.

This is the type of look I'm going for:

Natural

Clean

Simple

Soft

Pretty

Girly

These are the inspirational pictures of what I would like to have done. I hope that the amount of make up is just right and not to clumpy otherwise I might just take it off. ; )

Source

Source

Source

I still haven't actually scheduled my appointment for my hair and make up (see I'm still attempting to fight the urge) but at least I know where I'm getting it done. I love that the salon is about a block away from our apartment. Once I schedule my appointment and get my trial done I will post up some pictures to see if it's anything like I just mentioned.

Are you getting your make up done or DIYing?

Veil + Flower = Just Me

Like I previously mentioned I love flowers and it has gone to the degree that I am considering wearing one in my hair along with a veil. When I originally went to try out my dress I tried it on with a cathedral length veil and it was absolutely amazing that was until I looked at how much it cost. It seems to me that veils shouldn't cost you half of what your wedding dress budget is. My mom and I considered making our own since she is savvy with the sewing machine but since she lives so far away it doesn't seem like it's going to happen. I thought that a good compromise would be to purchase an inexpensive veil and accessorize my hair with a flower.

I purchased a veil at JoAnn for about $7 which was 50% the original price since the store was closing. I know that it seems like something that might have been pulled out from the '80s but in that case so was I. I couldn't pass up such a great offer when I can envision grandeur things to come with it.

These are an example of the types of flowers I plan on DYIng. Once I actually do it I plan on posting how I did it and how it turned out.

{Esty}

{Casando Ideias}

This is what I am shooting for. It seems simply and hopefully it looks just as great on me. I toiled with the idea of wearing a tiara but I think this style seems more like me. I like to wear my bling on my finger not in my hair.

{Altmix Photography}

{Casando Ideias}

So what do you think of the overall look? Are you wearing a veil?