twinkybel81 & workmantm's Wishes VR 12.06.16 Japan/ADH/Lochside UPDATE 11/23 Two Weeks Out!

[twinkybel81]

I think I am going to have to make a point of posting more often, at least for the time being. Lots happening lately and it’s hard to keep it all straight, lol!


A quick follow up on my last post, here is approximately what all the men (and my stepson) will be wearing for the occasion:

Also, we are sadly back to square one with regard to the MOH dresses. The style we all love is being discontinued, and they do not take custom orders. L I know we have time to get it sorted out, but I’m still bummed. Found this out over the weekend, so I still have to let the girls know about it as well.

Originally we were not planning on having a DJ, but for a variety of reasons, we have decided that we would like to have one. I know that Disney does not reach out to the DJs until much further along in the process, so I went ahead and reached out directly, and the DJ we(I) wanted was available for our date and time. He penciled us in, I emailed my planner to let her know, and now everything is set, so that is one thing ticked off the list, yay!


A couple weeks ago we finally decided on a Save the Date design, personalized it, and then sent it off to the printer. We ordered the large magnet style and they arrived today.

I am pleased with how they came out, and we didn’t pay too much, which was fantastic!


Now it is time to type up & print the address labels, get everything put together and mailed out by the end of this week.


We were having a devil of a time finding a wedding website template that we liked, but having something custom built just was not in the budget, and I was becoming quite discouraged because I really wanted to have a website for all the details, pictures, etc. Found a template on SquareSpace.com that we like the bones of and were able to customize to our liking. I have been working feverishly on getting content written, pictures uploaded, formatting adjusted, etc, so that there will be plenty of info for our guests to check out once they receive their STDs. It isn’t finished yet, but it’s looking pretty decent. The Husband checked out yesterday (and a couple of DisBrides from the FB group checked it out and provided helpful feedback a couple days ago) and says he likes it. Whew!


We also sat down a couple weekends ago and went through cocktail hour and reception menus and the cake tasting flavors, and are pretty much decided on what we want the menu to be and what we want to taste at our PS in June. Yay for one less thing to worry about!


I had my phone call with Jamie a couple weeks ago and I love her already! She understands the look/feel/direction we want to go for, so I’m totally relieved about that. She and her assistant, Courtney, have been fantastic about replying to my emails already, yay!


To end things on an exciting note, Thursday evening, my friend will be accompanying me back to the bridal salon so that I can order my dress!! I’m so giddy, I can’t wait to put it back on again.




P.S. Is it too early to start talking about hair and makeup inspirations?

 

[Seia]

P.S. Is it too early to start talking about hair and makeup inspirations?

It's never too early for that!!

 

[DisneyFirefly]

I like your save the date!

 

[twinkybel81]

I like your save the date!

Thank you!

 

[Alexsandra]

Wow, love the men's outfits. SO dashing. Great save the dates! Looks like it will be loads of fun.

 

[NikkiEla]

I looooooove your save the dates!!!!
They turned out fantastic!!!

 

[twinkybel81]

I looooooove your save the dates!!!!
They turned out fantastic!!!

Thank you! I was so worried they were going to *look* like I designed them myself (aka crappy/tacky).

 

[amalone1013]

Also, we are sadly back to square one with regard to the MOH dresses. The style we all love is being discontinued, and they do not take custom orders. L I know we have time to get it sorted out, but I’m still bummed. Found this out over the weekend, so I still have to let the girls know about it as well.

Nooooooooo I want one for myself lol

Following along!

 

[twinkybel81]

Nooooooooo I want one for myself lol

I know, right?! I told my girlfriend about it last week when we went in to buy my wedding dress, but I just realized that I haven't told my sister yet.... Guess I better get on that.

 

[twinkybel81]

Soooooo, I went in and officially said "yes to the dress" last Thursday night! Now I have 6-7 months to figure out where I am going to store it once it arrives (and to continue on my fitness journey so that I will look like the picture I have in my head!).

 

[twinkybel81]

I feel as though I am at that point in planning where there isn’t much to be done, but there are still many things to accomplish. We are at about 8 month out and I know the time is going to fly. I’ve been trying to share parts of the planning process with my mom and sister, partly because I know it will bite me in the bum in the future if I don’t. Unfortunately, neither one of them seems very excited about it. L After texting with my sister yesterday, I think I’ve figured out that part of the reason my Mom isn’t excited is because we aren’t inviting much family, including either of her brothers or their spouses. She is still from the more old school etiquette mind frame where you invite all of your extended family, even if they are disrespectful jerks who are not a part of your life. I’m able to push back, partly because we are basically paying for everything ourselves. My sister didn’t want a wedding, she just wanted to go to the courthouse with close family and friends, but my mom pushed her into having a wedding because “that’s what you do for family”, instead of making it about them and what they wanted. Without going into too much detail, the job/financial situation for my parents, and for my sister, her husband, and my nephew, is really not great and hasn’t been for a few years, with no real relief in sight. I hate that there is nothing I can do to help them. We are extremely fortunate to be in a much more stable financial situation and sometimes I think it causes distance. I was really hoping that my mom and sister would be able to put aside their feelings regarding their personal situations in order to be excited for/with me, but that doesn’t seem to be happening, and I know that it can be extremely difficult to see past your own crappy situation. There is more details, but I think I’d rather move on to happier, planning type stuff.


We still haven’t found a dress for my MOH, though I’m trying desperately and have found some ok alternatives, but nothing as “yes!” as the dress we can no longer get. This is the best we've found thus far, would have it made slightly shorter and with elbow or 3/4 length sleeves:

I really want their dresses to have sleeves, because it will make them both more comfortable to have their arms covered. I’m not too keen on the idea of a shrug/cardigan/shawl in place of sleeves because then you have to worry about the placement of said item being just so for pictures, etc and I just don’t want to have to worry about it. Hoping we find/decide on something soon.


Our Planning Session is 2 months away (yippeeee!). We need to book our flights soon, but due to some unpredictability in my husband’s work hours, we aren’t sure if he is going to need to come home a day early or whether he will be able to afford to take the 2 days off from work. I’m having my hair trial done the morning after our PS and I’m trying to narrow down inspiration pictures and how to word what it is I think I want. I know I want my hair completely up because I’m not taking any chances with my hair in Florida’s humidity. I know I want it completely off of my neck so that my neck tattoo shows. I would like there to be curls involved and I think I’d like my bangs to be on my face (as opposed to swept up into my hairstyle) since that is how I normally wear them and am most comfortable. I’m torn because I want everything to stay in place alllllllll day and I REALLY don’t want any wispy flyaway hairs visible in my photos, but I don’t want my hair to look shellaced either. Hoping my demands aren’t too unrealistic and that my stylist gets what I’m saying. I’m not planning on wearing a veil, but I may decide to wear a bandeau style veil with possible hair adornment for the ceremony (hair adornment would be separate so it would remain all day), and I know it would be helpful to have that decision made prior to my hair trial. Here are some of the inspiration pics I currently have gathered:

I’m a naturally pale girl with freckles and I want that to show in my makeup, but I want my dark circles as minimized as possible. I’m leaning toward a more natural look, but I really want to accentuate my eyes AND my lips, even though I know you are supposed to choose only one of those features to place focus on. I don’t have a makeup trial set up with my friend yet, but am hoping to do one shortly before we head to Florida for the PS. Here is some of my inspiration:

Love love love her lipstick color here!

What do you guys think? Thank you for still following along!


I’ll update again soon with bouquet inspiration, champagne flutes, shoe ideas, and more!

 

[twinkybel81]

P.S. I need to figure out how to do a Table of Contents.

EDIT - Table of contents created!

 

[Amanda132]

You might want to look at eshakti.com for dresses. I didn't use it for wedding stuff, but I have used it to buy dresses for work. A lot of the dresses are customizable, so you can choose to add sleeves, change the length, etc.

 

[twinkybel81]

You might want to look at eshakti.com for dresses. I didn't use it for wedding stuff, but I have used it to buy dresses for work. A lot of the dresses are customizable, so you can choose to add sleeves, change the length, etc.

Lol, it's funny that you mention them. The dress in the picture on this post is from eshakti, so I know we can get it with the customizations we'd like. They both like it, but we are trying to see if we can find anything we like better. I know they also have a good return policy (I had to use it for the only order I ever placed with them). Glad to hear you've had positive experience with their products. Thank you!

 

[Alexsandra]

Oh I love your hair inspirations. I personally prefer the top 6. They are all beautiful and think they would suit your face but do what you feel would work best with your hair type.

 

[Ariel92]

I just caught up reading your PJ. Everything looks awesome!! I think the vintage style hair would look amazing on you Can't wait to hear more about your planning (and your session at DW!!)

 

[twinkybel81]

They are all beautiful and think they would suit your face

Thank you! I'm hopeful that they will be.

Everything looks awesome!! I think the vintage style hair would look amazing on you Can't wait to hear more about your planning (and your session at DW!!)

Thanks for joining in! And thanks for the vote of confidence on the hairstyle.

I'm hoping to have another update posted today or tomorrow, but I have some sewing and work stuff that is time critical, so we will have to see how far I get with that first. ​

 

[twinkybel81]

Before I dive into this update, just wanted to say that we are officially just under 8 months away, hooray and eek!

When we originally began planning for our (2015) DFTW shindig, we had asked an ordained friend of ours to officiate. Since we are already legally married, we knew we didn’t need to have our officiant actually be ordained. However, I have know this man for over half my life, he speaks well in front of crowds, is funny, and quite charismatic, so he seemed the perfect candidate. I approached him about it and he was excited and agreed that if he could make it work for his schedule, he’d be there in a heartbeat, and so penciled us in. Once we decided to push things back to 2016, we let him know and told him we would let him know what our date was as soon as we had confirmation.
December 2015 rolls around and he was among the few people we notified immediately, so that he could put us on his calendar (he is a high level executive in his company and travels a lot for his work), but we got no response. I just figured he was busy with work/life/holidays/etc. Over December, January, and February, I contacted him multiple times via email, phone, Facebook Messenger, his Facebook wall, etc, and still nothing. The worst part was that I could see he was reading the Facebook messages, but I still heard nothing from him. At this point I was disheartened and had mentally started to think of who else we could ask to step in. He FINALLY sent me an email on March 10th backing out. I understand his reasoning, but I’m stilled bummed out about it. We have a couple other people we know we can ask, but haven’t done so yet, as we are still deciding.


Now let’s talk about personal “floral”! Although I enjoy flowers, I/we would rather spend the money on other things over, especially since we wouldn’t be able to bring anything home to enjoy because it’s a destination wedding. I knew I wanted to make my own bouquet after seeing other brides doing things like brooch or paper flower bouquets, a) because it’s something I can have after as a keepsake, and b) it’s another way to add personal touch and uniqueness. When my grandma was still alive, she would make paper balls out of old Christmas cards and hang them from the light fixture over her dining room table during the holidays and I always loved them. Here is an example of a couple I made for my Mom a couple years ago for Mother’s Day.

So I’m thinking the paper balls (in our colors) would be a great flower replacement and a way to honor and remember my grandma, I still miss her so and she’s been gone for almost 14 years. I am also leaning toward making it a “multi-media” bouquet and including things like Christmas ornaments, possibly pinecones, possibly dried/real touch thistles, possibly dried/real touch lavender, and some of those swirly things that I have no idea what they are called. I’m more a fan of the look/texture of a wild flower type bouquet than a perfectly round one, if that makes sense. Here are some of my inspiration pics, mostly for texture.

I’ve purchased a few items and some paper products thus far, but I’m pretty sure I’m going to need more.

I purchased a circle cutter last week so that I could start playing around with different sizes for the paper balls (they are made up of a bunch of folded circles put together), so that I can figure out which sizes are going to work best. Hoping to be able to start working on it next week (at least enough to make sure the circle cutter is going to be easy to use and helpful on the project). I’ll post pictures once I have some stuff made up.


For my MOHs, we are thinking that making Mickey head pomanders from the paper balls would be cute, they would coordinate with my bouquet, would be a keepsake, etc. I know that pomanders generally are hung/dangled from a ribbon, but I’m contemplating perhaps just attaching a loop to the back so that they can be held at about waist level and not dangling down in front of their tummies.


No idea yet on the groom’s boutonnière or the groomsmans’ boutonnieres . My husband wants to wait to see where we are budget wise, since those would be an easy thing to add if we are under enhancement minimums. If we do go through Disney for the boutonnieres (and probably for corsages for the moms), I think I may still send in some tiny paper balls and have them incorporated (this is something I am going to inquire after at our Planning Session, to see if I send them something if they’d be able to incorporate them or not). Here are a couple inspiration pics of things I like, no idea if the husband likes them or not.

We are slowly moving forward on our invitations, sort of. Just like when we were looking for Save the Date designs, we just aren’t finding anything that we like enough to spend money on, which means we need to design our own. I did our Save the Dates, but would rather not do our invitations (I’m not skilled enough to create what we are thinking of), so I approached an acquaintance of ours who does graphic design about hiring her to design something for us. She was excited to help us out and suggested a trade of services rather than us paying her cash. We talked about it and agreed, so we will be doing photography for her niece’s wedding reception in a few weeks in exchange for her design services. I’m excited for the opportunity and excited that we are saving some cash out of pocket.


We don’t have a clear vision of what we want them to look like, so I’m hoping she’ll work some magic. Here’s what we do know: we want all the information on one card (preferably a z-fold configuration, either 5x5 or 5x7) since all of the detailed info is on our website already, we are opting to go completely digital for our RSVPs (through our wedding website and possibly through a private FB group, which doesn’t exist yet), dark background (purples or greys) with light colored text, multiple fonts, and leaning on the Jack & Sally theme rather than the Haunted Mansion theme. We are unsure whether we want to have any photos of us included, and though I think it would be nice to include at least one, it’s not a must have. (Also trying to see if we can make it work for our budget to do an engagement session with our photographer in May or June, which, if we can make it work, then I think we will include pictures).

I love this drawing of Jack & Sally!

I love when they make larger objects of smaller ones like this.

Poked around online and found some fonts that I would love to incorporate, I just think they are so beautiful!

I still have more to update on, but I think this one has gotten long enough, so I’ll end it here for today Until next time!!!

 

[amalone1013]

I hate when people ignore you about something important... It's like, I understand if it doesn't work, just give me an answer! It's less upsetting to know right away than drag it out.

I love those fonts you found! And that you were able to trade services with your friend. That's a con for us going with Colorado - I have lots of friends and family in Nebraska I could trade with or perhaps pay a discounted amount for things like cake/desserts/food. I'm stuck on our invites - same as you, I have a general idea of what information should be where, and kind of color/design ideas, but not enough to be motivated to work on it. I can't wait to see how yours turn out! I think we're going to do digital RSVPs too, except maybe for the older computer-illiterate family members...

I think the paper balls are amazing, and what a great way to remember your grandma. I lost my grandma 2 years ago, and I have a few things up my sleeve to have her and my mom there in spirit. I hope if you do Disney for bouts they'll add your paper balls - I think that would be so neat. I don't know why they wouldn't, but then again, I have no experience with them... I can't wait to see everything! I am also leaning towards more texture/less perfect shape with my 'florals'!

 

[Ariel92]

Ooooo LOVE the thistle!!! It's so unique! I also loved the hidden Jack in the button boutonniere, it's such a nice touch...you're ideas are all coming together so nicely!!!