All About Monograms!

Anyone who who has ever met me knows that I have a small (okay it's actually very large) obsession with all things monogrammed. (I am even having a Monograms and Mimosa shower in a few weeks!) I would probably monogram my underwear if that was a possibility! Ha! When it came time to come up with a motif to use throughout the wedding, I just knew it had to be a monogram!

I know that you aren't technically supposed to use your new married monogram until the reception, so I created two monograms with the same font to use on many, many things for the wedding!

I am not very computer savvy, so I Googled "how to make a monogram," and found an easy way to make them on Power Point. I didn't need anything fancy so this worked great for me. I found the monogram font I wanted online, downloaded it, made the monogram, and saved it as a picture file. Very easy!

This is the two letter monogram that uses the first letters of our first names (Molly and Joe.)

I am using this monogram on the invitation, the cover of the ceremony program, and it was used on stickers that sealed our Save the Date envelopes. Here is a little sneak peak of my gorgeous invitations (I'll make a whole post about them once they go out in the mail in April):

I then made a traditional 3 letter monogram that will be used on everything else such as a painting that will hang inside The Duncan Estate, favor stickers, and thank you notes, etc. Here is that monogram:

There are a lot of blank walls in The Duncan Estate and walls with pictures that I would rather take down, so I decided to paint our monogram on a huge canvas that I could hang up at the reception (and am going to hang it in our bedroom afterwards.) Here it is!

I would love to use the monogram in other ways at the reception, so if anyone has any ideas...I would LOVE to hear them or see examples of things you did at your own wedding!

Flower Girls!

I have always known that I wanted a lot of little flower girls in my wedding, and I am so blessed to have such sweet little girls in my life that are going to be standing with us on our special day!

My niece, Isabella, Joe's little cousins, Abby and Addison, and my mom's friend's little girl, Caroline, are going to be our flower girls. We don't have any ring bearers so these precious girls are going to be doing double duty!

Over the years I have saved a lot of pictures of cute flower girl dresses. Here was some of my inspiration:

Did you notice their monogrammed sashes? After seeing these pictures, I knew that this was exactly what I wanted! I never realized how expensive flower girl dresses are and I didn't want the moms of my girls to have to pay a lot of money for a dress they would probably outgrow within a few months. My sister-in-law is an avid eBay shopper and found the perfect dress for only $11.99! I couldn't believe it was such a good price but was a little scared that the quality was going to be awful. My sister-in-law received the dress today and said it is so pretty! My niece Isabella wouldn't let her take it off of her and told her she wanted to go to the wedding "NOW!" Here is Isabella in the dress (the sash is going to be champagne with an ivory monogram):

Isn't she too cute?!?! (My other niece, Lainey Kate, is in the background looking sad. I think she's saying "Hey! Where's my pretty flower girl dress???")

I know all of our little girls are going to be beautiful and I can't wait to see how it all turns out!

Tall Centerpieces

We are going to be using the milkglass centerpieces on the cocktail tables and some bigger tables inside The Duncan Estate, but the big tables under the tent are in need of centerpieces with some height.



I bought some brances from www.save-on-crafts.com and am planning on making these super easy centerpieces for those tables:

(the ones in the back)




I am going to use clear vases filled with green split peas at the bottom, water, the white branches, and white hydrangea. Can't wait to see how they turn out!

Cake!

A couple of months ago, my mom and I met with Kathy of Kathy and Company to design our cake. It was the most fun I have had so far planning the wedding! We went with empty tummies because we knew that we were going to be able to taste lots of cake!

We ate WAY too much cake and were dying by the time we left, but man was it worth it! It was so hard to choose only 5 flavors because they were all so tasty! Here are the flavors we chose:


Top layer: Chocolate cake with white chocolate filling
2nd layer: Tutti Fruity cake with rasberry filling
3rd layer: Lemon Cake with lemon filling
4th layer: Chocolate Marble cake with Andes Mint filling
5th layer: Rasberry Marble with white chocolate filling

The cake will be iced with ivory buttercream and is going to me so yummy! There is something different for everyone!

I knew I wanted a simple ivory cake with swiss dots, our new monogram, fresh flowers, and my parents cake topper; and that is exactly what I am getting! Here is a drawing I made of the cake to give to the cake lady.


Can you tell how anal I am?? ;)

Instead of using the traditional silver cake stand, I found a super cute way to uniquely display our cake. I bought vases at Hobby Lobby and will have a piece of round glass cut at Lowe's to hold the cake. The vases will have some water and flower buds in them and there will be some battery operated candles under the glass to make everything shine. Hope it turns out as pretty as this:



Our cake is going to be set up right when you walk in the front door of The Duncan Estate in the big two story foyer. I wanted the cake to be the first thing people see when they walk in!

Here were my inspiration pictures for my cake: 

Bridal Portrait Inspiration

Here are photos I have collected that are serving as inspiration for my portrait shoot at the monastery in April. Hope the weather holds up!

Bridal Portrait

I am SO excited because I have finally decided on a location for my bridal portrait shoot. My amazing photographer, Allison, agreed to drive to Charleston, SC for my shoot! I have always dreamed of having my portraits done at one of my most favorite places in the world, Mepkin Abbey, since I first visited there when I was in 8th grade. Mepkin Abbey is a monastery in Monck's Corner that is near my family's lake house. It is on the Cooper River and we always pull up our boat and hop out and look around. It is absolutely gorgeous (the picture in my blog header is a picture I took there on one of our many trips.)

I want my portraits to be very southern and outdoors, so this will be the perfect place! I am doing them on the weekend of my bachelorette party (the last weekend in April)and I can't wait!

Joe and I at the Abbey in 2008:


A picture I took of one of the pretty gates:


Here are some pictures of Mepkin Abbey from their website...the oak trees and iron gates there make me melt!











Next I will post some examples of portraits that I love and that have been my inspiration!

Practice Bouquet

I am planning on doing my bridesmaid's bouquets and centerpieces myself to try and save some money...but the problem is that I have never really done these things before! I have seen my mom make gorgeous flower arrangements and have seen a million pictures of bouquets so I figured, why not try? I knew that Costco would have pretty flowers out because of Valentine's Day so I dragged Joe out to the store with me in search of flowers to use in a practice bouquet. For my actual wedding, we are using hydrangea, cream roses, and hypericum berries; but for the practice run I just bought two dozen cream roses with some eucalyptus and some sort of small berries.

I had already gotten floral tape, ivory ribbon, and pearl corsage pins for the bouquet at Hobby Lobby when all of their floral supplies were on sale. (Gotta love their %50 off days!) I searched "how to make a bridal bouquet" on YouTube and watched a couple of videos until I felt like I knew enough about it to get started.

I started taping all of the flowers together and in no time flat, it actually looked like a bouquet from a real florist! I couldn't believe that I just made such a gorgeous bouquet on my very first try!

I trimmed the stems to the length I wanted and wrapped the part with the floral tape with the ivory ribbon, and affixed it with the pearl pins. I remembered that I had a pearl and rhinestone broach in my jewelry box from one of my Proms and stuck that in the middle of the ribbon.

I took my new little beauty out on my porch and snapped some pictures of it with my new fancy camera. The snow turned out to be such a pretty background! Sorry for the picture overload...I got a little camera happy!











Here are a couple with my engagement ring peeking out!

The Holy Grail

One of the bad things about being so obsessed with weddings for so long is my infatuation with things that are often out of our price range. I have extremely expensive taste, as my mom says, and I have tried really hard to recreate those same looks at a fraction of the cost. I've been so good about it but there was one aspect of the wedding that I COULD NOT do without; my holy grail...gold Chivari Chairs! It may seem silly to most people who aren't familiar with these beauties; but I am absolutely and utterly in love and often dream about them.



My mom and Joe think I am crazy but I know these chairs will really make the reception and tie in the theme of gold throughout The Duncan Estate. We cut out some other things that we could live without so we could fit my dream chairs into our budget.

Who knows...people may not even notice but I know that when I walk into that reception and see my little babies, I will be over the moon! :)

Here are some pictures of weddings with the lovely gold chairs: