wedding signs

Two of my favorite people got married May ----- Tana (my cousin) and Jess (best friend/college roomie). I got to make some wedding signs for both of them.

Here's a couple shots of me and Tana from her day:

*the high quality photos in this post were taken by jordan burch.

Back from mini-vacation

We went to Florida last week to visit family and celebrate our one year anniversary (!!!). I'm back to work trying to make progress on a couple of big summer projects I'm working on for classes...but wish I was still sitting on the beach and eating raw oysters everday.

Happy Anniversary, Eric! (posting this late)

I love you soooooo much!

Necklaces

Things are good, but very busy. I'm clocking more than 10 hours on campus multiple days every week, so I'm not doing much of anything until the weekends. I haven't made much lately other than some muffins and catching up on sewing hems of some pants and skirts (boring). I never posted the jewelry I made for my bridesmaids, so here are those. They are so simple, but somehow took far longer than they should have.

Thank you

As I wind up the wedding posts, there are a few people whose generosity was endless in the days prior to our wedding that I would like to thank.

Thank you to my parents,

who ran more errands than I can possibly count, planned tricky logistics, and all-around unselfishly gave their time weeks prior and the day of. I can't think of the words to express my gratitude; you move me to tears.

 Thank you to my Aunt Robin,

for the most beautiful and perfect wedding flowers I could have ever dreamed of. I showed my aunt several pictures of flowers I liked and before I knew it, she had a complete breakdown of exactly what I needed to order. She went so beyond her call of duty; she was willing to do a million more flowers than asked. She worked the entire week before my wedding round-the-clock to create a record number of bouquets of flowers, bridal party bouquets, corsages, and various other floral decorations.

My grandmother's house was open, so my aunt took over the house with flowers. My aunt stayed there, with the air conditioning uncomfortably low, all week...even developing sinus pressure because of the cold temps! You rock my world Aunt Robin.

Thank you to my cousin Tana,

who took off the entire week of work before my wedding to help. She made signs, ran errands, and even sat with me more than once while I practiced my makeup. She stayed up late every night with me to help finish decorations, soothe my worries, and listen to me sing petite feet repeatedly. She is the #1 reason I didn't have to be really stressed out the week before my wedding. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. I love you so much.

Thank you to Jake Brown,

who played the role of groomsman, DJ, and dad that night. One of my aunts told me later that she saw him at one point using one hand to control some stuff on his laptop and the other to push a stroller back and forth trying to get his son to fall asleep.

Jake and his wife Megan were so thoughtful throughout the whole process and my family kept telling us how sweet our DJ was (we agree). Thank you so much Jake and Megan.

If you're getting married in St. Augustine or anywhere close by, we can't recommend Jake and Megan enough. Check out their adorable website here.


....
Thank you also to my brother, sister-in-law, brother-in-law, Ian, Jess, Keeley, Brennan, Uncle Eric, Uncle Chris, and Uncle Jim for your incredible help in setting up and enduring much stress the day of. Thank you also to Max Soelzer for officiating. And lastly, thank you Jordan Burch for our beautiful photos and being such a joy to have around on our wedding day.

Our Wedding Day - Favorite Moments

Our wedding day was perfect. We debated having a wedding or eloping for a long time; I think we were actually still debating what to do up until the last possible time we could. We're both pretty practical, so the arguments for eloping made sense to us. The last call was in December when we realized we would never have the opportunity again to have all of our closest family and friends together in one place.

I can't imagine now not having done it. The planning, stress, and money were without a doubt worth it. We had such a special day and nearly everything was as good or better than we imagined.

Here are some of my favorite moments from our wedding:

Getting ready. I had a pretty relaxed time getting ready. I think the key to being calm getting ready is having alone time. I had an hour completely alone - it was so relaxing. I was nervous, but didn't have to small talk to anyone during that time and could just get myself together. My friend Lauren did my hair and it was great to have the room quiet while she did my hair, too.

First look. Instead of waiting until walking down the isle to see Eric for the first time, our photographer helped us set up a first look before the ceremony. I hid at the top of the court house stairs and she positioned Eric's back to me. Getting to see him alone was really sweet and in doing so we were able to knock out a lot of our photos before the ceremony. This allowed the picture time after the ceremony to be really short. I would suggest this to anyone planning a wedding; we got to jump into cocktail hour and visit family and friends before the dinner started.

Being outside. My #1 wish for our wedding was to have it completely outside. I love outdoor weddings. We found a great venue on the bay in Pensacola with lots of outdoor room. All week it was calling for a high chance of thunderstorms for our wedding day. I sat on pins and needles watching the weather, and the day of it rained in the morning and then turned into a gorgeous day. We couldn't have been luckier.

Having all your close friends and family in one place. There are no words for how amazing it is to have so many special people in your life in one place.

Eric's dad officiating. Eric's dad officiated, making our ceremony even more heartfelt. Our script was personal and intimate thanks to Eric's work in writing it. Writing your own vows is a detail I would recommend to never skip, too.

Thank you to everyone who traveled and shared this day with us. Proper thank yous to some special people that helped us tremendously coming soon.


  All photos by Jordan Burch Photography.

My Wedding

I'm married! And back from our honeymoon. We're still unpacking, and getting ready to go to a friend's wedding in Florida, but we should be settled soon. Our wedding day was perfect, Italy was fabulous, and we enthusiastically returned to Austin ready to eat tex-mex. We are both sick though, so we're resting up and then we'll kill the tacos.

I'll be posting crafts from our wedding and more photos when we get them. More soon.

Glad to be back!

All photos are from our wedding photographer, Jordan Burch (amazing).

wedding cake.

My brother's wedding was amazing. Hands down the most fun and different wedding I've been to.
Two of Jamie's friends (who were bridesmaids) made the cake themselves and it turned out really cute:

wedding toppers.

I suppose weddings is the theme for the week? My brother is getting married on June 26! I asked him and his fiance, Jamie, if I could make the wedding people for on top of their cake.

I tried really hard to get into a ceramics course this past spring, but once again I was snubbed. Since I didn't have access to a ceramics studio, I went searching in Michael's to find some clay that I could bake in my oven or air-dry.

A sales worker suggested Amaco's porcelain air-dry clay. I did a trial run and really liked the way it dried.

So here are the final products and the mess along the way:




(on the left [bride] is what the clay looks like before drying. the groom is dry)


finished:

more rings.

My dad decided to take the leftover of the valve and make a second wedding band. He's now wearing the second band, and I liked this one so much, he made me a matching mini one for my pinky. They all came from the one shower valve!

DIY wedding bands?

My father is a plummer and he has been married to my mother for 37 years.

My dad's original wedding ring is paper thin now from his many years of working:



Here is his band compared to a fairly new wedding band's width:





For at least a couple years he's been saying (and my mother has been nagging him) he needs to get a new wedding band. Today my dad decided that he wanted to make his new wedding band.

He found a stainless steel pressure balanced shower valve he had and went to work.


(original valve)



Dad hacksawed the center section out of the valve to use for the ring, and used a dremel tool with an abrasive bit to carve out some out of the center and to shape the ring.

finished product: