#WeddingWednesday: Wedding Makeup

 

This #WeddingWednesday is dedicated to my amazing makeup artist, Full Face Artistry.  This company is comprised of a sweet, very talented woman named Kerry.  I first saw Kerry's talents when she did my Matron of Honor's makeup at her wedding.  She looked amazing for her big day so I had to get Kerry to do my makeup too!

I had a makeup trial a few weeks before the wedding along with the moms.  It was so fun hanging out getting our makeup done together.  I usually don't wear a lot of makeup and its not because I don't like it.  Its actually the exact opposite.  I love wearing it, I'm just not that proficient in doing my own makeup.  Kerry made my wedding dreams come true with her dramatic eye makeup, bold lip colors, and I even had falsies!!

The day of the wedding, Kerry did not disappoint! She had 1 bride, 2 moms, and 4 bridesmaids to do and she made everyone look their absolute best.  She enhanced everyone's beautiful features and made the bridal party look gorgeous.  I was so happy with everything she did for me and my friends on the wedding day.  Her easy going nature and fun personality made me so excited to get ready for my big day!

If you need a makeup artist in the Columbus area check out Kerry at Full Face Artistry!

Check out some great pictures from the day of the wedding of Kerry's work!

 

#WeddingWednesday: The Dress

The journey to to find my dress was a short one however, the journey to fall absolutely head over heels with it was a LONG one!  I first went dress shopping with my mom and at the time my soon to be mother-in-law.  Since the dress was a such a big part of my big day, I wanted them both there for moral support.  And boy did I sure need it that day...

Ever since Danny and I had decided on our bridal party, I knew that I would need to go to David's Bridal to get the bridesmaid gowns since my girls lived all over the place.  I needed one central store that they could all get their hands on (this is how David's Bridal gets you, ladies).  Knowing this, I scheduled my dress appointment with David's because they give a discount to the bride if she gets her bridesmaid dresses there (this is how they get you too).  AND we ended up getting the tuxes from Men's Warehouse which resulted in getting the groom's tux for free (and that's the icing on the cake), so at the end of the day, we were okay with getting a ton of free stuff if it meant sucking the bridal party into it too.  Believe me ladies, they know what they're doing.

My appointment was scheduled for our first "wedding weekend" in Columbus.  Since we lived 150 miles away from where we got married, Danny and I would often plan these trips to Columbus that involved jamming everything we could in two days of wedding monstrosity.

Also, this was right after we got engaged, so I was not in wedding shape yet so I was feeling super self conscious.  I have always worried about the size of my hips.  Even at 1 day old, the nurses in the hospital nicknamed me, thunder thighs and for good reason (I was scared even from a young age).  I don't think my mom and mother-in-law were ready for the self conscious Suzy that was about to be.  I tried on dress after dress and they were all horrible! When you go dress shopping for the first time, rid your mind of all those images you pinned on Pinterest of the perfect dress because that's just not real life.

After trying on what seemed like a few million dresses, I finally found one that did not accentuate my hip area, but actually covered it up.  Without anyone noticing I started to tear up because I was so happy that a dress actually fit me and looked good.  From that moment on, I fell for the dress, but I wasn't in LOVE love. Turns out too that the very next dress I tried on, my mother and mother-in-law absolutely LOVED on me and I said absolutely not, so that made me overthink my decision too.



My first time with the dress on!
(Slightly obsessed with the train.)

That day we bought the dress because I did really like it and it was the best dress for my body.  Fast forward and I've tried the dress on a few more times and even once while I was alone in my apartment.  (It's so tempting when you're home alone and the big dress bag is just staring at you!)  I kept falling more and more in love with my dress the more I tried it on.  This was especially true at my final dress fitting.  6 weeks before the wedding, two of my bridesmaids and my dear friend came along with me to try on the whole shebang (dress, shoes, veil, and tiara) and I was mesmerized with the whole ensemble.  That moment was when I was head over heels, drooling over my dress.  That night I could not wait to show Danny what I looked like on our big day (believe me, I tried to convince him to let me show him a picture, but he would not give in).


At my final dress fitting

On the wedding day, the dress was perfect, but it was especially perfect because of the way it made me feel.  The dress was everything I dreamed of and I would not have wanted anything else.  It fit me perfectly and I was absolutely in love with it.

Below are some of my favorite pictures our photographer captured of the dress on our special day:

 

#WeddingWednesday: Invitations

This Wedding Wednesday is dedicated to the paper I used to create our save the dates and wedding invitations.  From the beginning of the planning process, a friend of mine told me to look at Wedding Paper Divas for all of my paper product needs.  As soon as I logged onto the site, I fell in love with their adorable designs and colorful invitations.

Finding a save the date that I liked was easy, but for some reason finding an invitation was a lot harder.  I went through invitation after invitation until I stumbled on the new collection that Wedding Paper Divas just released last winter.  Instantly I knew the design went with the theme and colors of our wedding.  I also wanted a invitation pocket to finish the look and I found a great deal at Card & Pockets.  I was able to order samples of both the card pockets and also the invitations, however Danny and I made the mistake of showing everyone the samples.  We learned through this process that everyone has their own opinion and we had to pick what we wanted and not what everyone else wanted.  I ended up choosing the invitation and just barely showed Danny a preview before ordering them (he's pretty easy-going, so I knew he would be okay with whichever I chose).  This way, I chose the invitation I liked best and didn't have to worry about everyone else's opinions.



Our save the date- it acts as a refrigerator magnet too!

This obviously wasn't our wedding invitation, but it's just a sample of what ours looked like.
I loved the flowers and subtle pink tones since it was a spring wedding and our colors were Champagne and Pink.

#WeddingWednesday: The cake

This week's #WeddingWednesday is dedicated to the cake! We chose Sue from Le Gateau to create our beautiful wedding cake and after it was all said and done, it turned out amazing!

One of our favorite things to do during the wedding planning process was to taste test the different flavors of cake and Sue's cakes did not disappoint! We ended up choosing a chocolate mouse, a lemon cake, and an Italian pound cake with fresh raspberries! All flavors were amazing at the tasting and on our special day. 



Cutting the cake.

We were nice to each other...no cake smashing.

We also had asked Sue for a special request.  Since members of my family needed a sugar free cake, she made their own smaller cake to accommodate them so that they could still enjoy cake at the wedding.  We also had a guest that had a birthday on our wedding day and we wanted to commemorate with a small birthday cake in his favorite flavor.  With both of these requests, Sue was more than happy to provide us with the extra details that made our day that more special.

As for the design of the cake, we decided to go with a simple, yet elegant look.  We wanted to incorporate our colors (Champagne and Pink) and we wanted flowers on the cake.  I had found something I liked on Pinterest (of course) and showed it to Sue to recreate.  Our cake was perfect and we even got to keep the gum paste flowers that Sue created just for our cake.  They are something that we can keep forever to remember it by.  I already can't wait to have a piece of our wedding cake for our one year anniversary in March!


Check out Le Gateau if you are looking for an amazing cake for your wedding!

Sunday Shower

Sunday I attended one of my good friend's wedding showers! It was a beautiful day filled with laughter and love for Melissa and Doug.

I met Melissa when I was a freshman in college.  She lived across the hall from me in the dorm.  Since we were both business majors, we decided to study abroad with the College of Business in Hungary. 

After a crazy summer abroad and so many wonderful memories underneath our belt, we got to know each other really well.  After college, we stayed in touch especially since I moved to Cleveland.  Melissa and Doug bought a house in the fall and when we starting looking for a house in the spring, we looked in the same suburb because we loved their neighborhood.  It turned out the house we fell in love with was four houses down from them!

The shower was beautiful.  It was located at a new martini bar, called Billy's.  We had a great lunch and then spent the rest of the time watching the gift opening between Melissa and her soon to be hubby.

Billy's Martini Bar.

The happy couple opening gifts.

Beautiful cupcakes.

The bridesmaids also put together a "Beauty Bar" which was such a cute gift for the guests to take home with them!

Beauty Bar gifts.

It was a great day celebrating Melissa and Doug's upcoming nuptials!  I can't wait for their wedding day!

#WeddingWednesday: Photography

So now that I'm old and married and can never plan a wedding again, I decided to create a weekly blog post devoted to my big day.  Since I didn't blog during the wedding planning process, I wanted to reminice and create a collection of the amazing details that came together for our special day.

This week I wanted to blog about our wonderful photographer, Little Tree Studios.  The wedding is only one day, but the photos will last forever!  Since I live in Cleveland and the wedding was in Columbus, I didn't know any vendors to use.  The Knot was a huge help for me and I ended up finding our photographer and also our venue and baker on the site too.

Shortly after we started planning the wedding, I started stalking The Knot for the best photographer.  This search eventually brought me to Little Tree Studios.  We called and booked them for our engagement photo session in September of 2012.  Little Tree Studios is owned by an amazing woman named Kyle and from the very first time we met her at our engagement session up until our wedding day, she was so sweet, easy-going, and has an absolutely amazing eye for photography!  Below are only some of the great photos from our engagement shoot.

Fast forward to the wedding day and Kyle and her husband blew us away!  We were SO blessed to have them be a part of our special day and capture the amazing memories we had that day.  Below is a (very) small sample of the beautiful photos that were taken at the wedding.  If you are looking for a photographer for your wedding, check out Little Tree Studios.

So it's OFFICIAL!!

So it's official!!  I am a married woman now!  We have officially been newlyweds for 71 days now! So much has happened in the last 71 days that it is incredible how different my life was before compared to now.  Not just the rings and new last name have changed.  After we got back from the honeymoon, Danny and I closed on our house! We closed on the house 8 days before my 25th birthday.  It was a long, drawn out process, but I am so thankful that we were able to get everything figured out and now can just start living our new life, in our new house.  One day after moving into the new house, we added a family member...

The first day we took him home

His name is Yogi Steele.  We adopted him from Heaven 2 Earth rescue located in New Philadelphia, Ohio.  My coworker had told me about the rescue organization after his family adopted a new puppy from them.  They rescue puppies that are born from Amish working dogs.  Since the Amish don't believe in spaying or neutering their work dogs, they have a lot of puppies.  The rescue agency takes the puppies from the Amish so the puppies are not sold to people that use the puppies for dog fighting and other sad, terrible reasons.  I also love this organization because the puppies are GORGEOUS!! Since they are randomly bred, you always get a mix of some kind of dog.  Yogi is half German Shepard, half Collie mix.  I grew up with Golden Retrievers and Danny grew up with Labs so we wanted a big dog similar to that breed.  When I saw Yogi (formally "Casper") on the website, I fell in love with his sandy color and floppy ears!!


This was his picture on the website.

Two weeks after we got Yogi, his ears started standing up like a typical German Shepard and I knew that my sweet Golden Retriever looking puppy was about to start changing into a full bred German Shepard.  This last month of having Yogi have been a blessing, but most of the time he is a handful!! I have never raised a puppy before, so it is a learning experience for me.  I am still learning that I can't leave him wandering around the house when cleaning or doing other chores.  He is also too strong for his own good and has learned to get out of his own crate.  We bought him a new one last week, thinking the original crate was too old and he broke out of his new one too.  Yogi is a good dog and we can already tell that he is obedient and will be well behaved when he is older.  He is a joy to have in our house and the cats don't mind him as much as we thought they would! All in all, its a learning curve for everyone with the new house and new puppy, but everyone is adjusting well.

 



Look at those German Shepard ears!!

Nutty Irishmen

Danny and I had a great few days together this weekend.  It was filled with old friends, good food, and a variety of activities to keep us busy.  I love spending my weekends at home and I know I have to enjoy them before I won't be home every weekend due to wedding showers and such.  The weekends fly by, but I feel like I get so much more done on my weekends when I spend it at home with my future hubby and my kitties.

Thursday night, Danny and I met our friends, Doug and Melissa for dinner in downtown Willoughby.  Doug and Melissa used to live in downtown Willoughby, so Melissa and I always wanted to try Nickelby's when we got together, but it just never happened.  So this time, we decided to check it out.  It was very cold that night and there was still a good couple of inches of snow on the ground, but it turned out to be a fun evening catching up with the newly engaged couple.  Doug and Melissa are planning a September wedding.  It was exciting to hear all of the details that Melissa had been working on.  It brought back good memories of my first couple of months of planning.  Its hard to believe that our Big Day will be here before we know it (48 days, but who's counting).  Nickelby's was good food, just not too much to eat for a vegetarian like myself.  Danny had a healthy salmon entree with brown rice and broccoli, it looked enticing. 

On Friday night, I met one of my bridesmaids at the mall to do some wedding shopping.  I was looking for a wedding necklace.  I have earrings to wear on the day of the wedding that were given to me by my future in laws.  It was their "Welcome to the Family" gift.  It was so sweet and thoughtful and I loved the earrings!  They actually look very similar to my engagement ring which makes them the perfect accessory to my outfit and they also serve as my "Something New" on my wedding day.  I literally haven't taken them off since they gave them to me at Thanksgiving.  When looking for a necklace for the wedding, I wanted something simple, but yet beautiful.  I had purchased a necklace from Charming Charlies which is a store known for their costume jewelry, but I took it back realizing that I wanted something that didn't look as cheap.  I knew I didn't want to spend the money on real diamonds so I looked for the next best thing, crystals.  Ashleigh and I met at the mall after Ashleigh got off of work and we went straight for Swarovski Crystals.  There I found the most perfect necklace for my big day.  Also, it is not too fancy meaning I can wear it for special occasions after the wedding.  After purchasing the necklace, Ashleigh and I went into a store I had never been to before, Arden B.  They have a lot of short, clubbing dresses and Ashleigh was hoping we could find me a Bachelorette Party dress.  She was right, we found this amazing dress that was perfect for my party.  It made me more excited for my Bachelorette Party in March. 

After my shopping trip with Ashleigh, I met Danny and we headed over to the west side to meet up with Danny's former co-worker and her boyfriend.  Danny and Erin had been through everything when they worked with the Indians and they had a lot of catching up since they had both recently accepted other job opportunities outside of the Indians.  Erin and her boyfriend, Marc will be coming to our wedding.  We were so excited when we got their response since we weren't sure how many people from Cleveland would be able to make it since they have to travel.  We ended up going to a restaurant/bar called the Lava Lounge.  I loved this place! It was so artsy and fantastic.  The cocktails were all different concoctions and their menu was almost all vegetarian.  Danny wasn't as excited as I was when I saw most of the items were made without meat, but he settled for an appetizer of fried calamari.  All in all, it was a great night catching up with Erin and Marc and trying some place new!

On Saturday, Danny and I ran a few errands.  We went to the mall to finish up ordering the last of the wedding gifts and then went to Joann's to get supplies for our unity candle.  I spent the afternoon crafting while Danny napped and then at 6 o'clock we decided to head to our favorite restaurant, Manhattan Bar and Grille for dinner and drinks.  I ended up having my usual drink called the Nutty Irishman.  Its coffee mixed with Bailey's Irish cream, Frangelica hazelnut liqueur (which is amazing!!), and whipped cream.  After having three of those, I was good to go!  Danny and I spent the evening hanging out and talking that night which turn out to be my favorite of our nights together!


Nutty Irishman

54 days!

54 days until the wedding

28 days of work left before the wedding

8 Weight Watcher weigh-ins before the wedding

10 days until my first dress fitting

19 days until my two consecutive weeks of showers commence

40 days until my Bachelorette Party

25 days until my hair and makeup trial for the wedding

56 days until we leave for Jamaica!

There are so many things to look forward to in the next 54 days that it's hard to control my excitement and my nervousness for all of the activities in my future.  I feel like I should sit back and enjoy these final days as a single woman, but its hard when I just want my wedding day to be here.  More and more friends are getting engaged and especially facebook reminds me of all of the relationships that are taking the next step into matrimony.  When someone new pops the question, I just think to myself, "wow they are so lucky they get to start this wonderful process".  I think more and more of me wants to take it slow and enjoy this process, but then the other part of me just wants to be a wife to my wonderful fiance!  Regardless, wedding planning leaves me with a large list of things to do.  Luckily I have a wonderful family and future family to help out with some of the tasks of this wedding!  I sent my mother a draft of what I wanted our ceremony programs to look like.  She wrote me back saying, "It is not fair making me cry at work!! LOL".  I loved that.  It makes me feel like I am truly apart of something bigger than myself.  My mom doesn't show her emotion as often, so the fact that she was moved reading through just a draft of our ceremony program really touched me.  I can't wait until Danny can officially become a part of my family and vice versa.  Even though we feel like we already are, this day will mean so much more to our family than I had ever realized when first saying "yes" to Danny's proposal.  I truly believe that my parents feel as lucky to have found Danny for me than I do, which means a lot to me.

Less than 70 days!

This weekend Danny and I visited my parents in Columbus.  After the holidays came and went quickly like they do every year, we knew that we would have to hunker down and actually get some wedding tasks crossed off of our list or we would be stuck doing everything at the last possible second.  Since we are getting married in Columbus, we usually have our wedding weekends in Columbus and stuff it full with everything we can possibly do for the wedding, and this weekend was no different.  We met with our venue contact this weekend to finalize plans.  I didnt think I would be having this meeting for awhile, but unfortunately the Country Club that we are getting married at closes for the month of Febrary and this was the only time that we could make this meeting. The whole country club was decorated for Christmas and was beautiful.  It was hard to believe that in 70 days, Danny and I would become husband and wife at that very place.

After the meeting, it was craft time.  My mom, being the crafty woman she is, helped me with my ideas for the escort cards and other important items that needed to be put together for the wedding.  We were on to Hobby Lobby and ended up working on a variety of dyi projects that we found on Pinterest.  I can't wait to see the final results and I hope my plans come together.  With less than 70 days left, this wedding will be here before we know it!

Reasons why I know my wedding is getting close:

-Diet and exercise regimes are in full swing
-I just scheduled my first dress fitting for later this month
-Danny is dreaming about the honeymoon
-Response cards have been filling our mailbox
-We just had our final appointment with the venue

Us at The Lakes

The Lakes Golf and Country Club decorated for Christmas.

Wedding Invitation day!

Today, Danny and I sent out our wedding invitations for our March 16th wedding! This was a very exciting turning point for us because it announces the special day to our family and friends. We have been looking forward to this day for so long and it's weird to think that the time is actually going by way too fast! We have 84 days until the wedding and before we know it, it'll be here. I am just excited to spend these little moments with my future husband like we did this weekend. It's nice to share these moments together before we have the big moments ahead in our lives... like tying the knot. I am truly thankful for everything that has happened to me and to us this year. I could not be more fortunate as I reflect back on this amazing life God has blessed me with around Christmas time. I'm looking forward to getting response cards in the mail as family and friends RSVP to our wedding!