Us: Adam and I both went to Michigan State University and met through a mutual friend there.  We actually met a few times before we actually showed any interest in one another, most notably at a MSU basketball game where he used one of the extra tickets we had.  I later found out that he, at that point, thought that I was just the kinda odd girl who really liked MSU basketball...We finally realized that there could be something between us June of 2005 when a large group of us went to a Lansing Lugnuts (minor league baseball team) game for a Thirsty Thursday ($2, 22 oz labatt draghts!)  He kept flirting with me and by the end of the night we were kissing during the 3 mile walk back to my apartment (we had missed the last bus!)  The next week we were pretty inseperable and the following Thursday (June 9th) we decided to be an official couple.  We moved in together a year later.  The rest, as they say, is history.

The Proposal:  This is where it happened!  Beaumont Tower, on this beautiful day on MSU's campus.  I took this picture on a walk we were taking before we went out to dinner for our 2 year anniversary.  Adam made up this story about having to do a report thing for on online class he was taking and he asked me where he should do it on and that it wanted it to be someplace on campus because it was convenient, and of course I said Beaumont, because I love it and he knew that. Anyways, I made these plans for dinner at a super nice restaurant and I put champagne in the fridge, because of the anniversary, and he basically thought, huh two birds, one stone, and proposed before we went to dinner.  I was definitely not expecting it because he would always say that everytime I mentioned it, the proposal would be moved back a year...haha.  I also have no idea what he said exactly, but I know it was something about forever and then he was down on one knee with this beautiful sparkler in his hand!  I cried and of course said Yes, then we took a little walk together around campus and made some phone calls before dinner.

The Ring:

 Here it is!  As with most people, mine looks WAY better in person and I apologize for the fuzzy pic.  It's a princess cut diamond in the center with 4 little stones on either side. I absolutely love it.  Adam and I went to look at rings a couple of times but this isn't one of the ones that we picked out together.  He did it all on his own and I like it better than any of the ones that I picked out!

The Location:  We are getting married on Saturday August 9, 2008 at 2 pm at St. John's Student Parish, just a block up from MSU's campus.  The priest that will be performing the ceremony is Fr. Mark Inglot and he is awesome!  So laid back and funny, he made us totally feel at ease during our first meeting.  I very much looking forward to having him marry us!

I can't find a good pic of St. John's so maybe I will just have to go some night and take them myself...but here's Father Mark!

Our Reception is being held at Hawk Hollow Golf Club in the Lakeview room, which is the upstairs room of the clubhouse and has a wrap around veranda that we have the pleasure of using also.  I'm sure that the guys will be enjoying many a cigar out there!  I think that we will be doing cocktail hour from 5:30 to 6:30, then toasts and everything and dinner is to be served by 7. Yes I know, I have a Catholic Gap, and I don't care :) 

Colors: Our wedding colors are going to be black and white with splashes of pinks.  I could do the color swatches now, but I don't want to. 

Bridesmaids:

My bridesmaids are:

Erin, my sister, is the Matron of Honor which we joke about all the time because 'Matron' is such an awful word!  Here she is at her wedding, last Sept. 15.  She was kind of a bridezilla...hahahaha she would kill me if she new that I posted this pic....

                           ^sis and BIL (usher)

Ok, here's a nice one of us (she's 4'11" and I'm 5'5") and our mom :) 

Sarah is my Maid of Honor and we have been best friends since we moved in together our freshman year of college.  We went in blind for roommates and ended up getting lucky!  She's the best :)  PS She's getting married Oct. 11, 2008 so together our wedding dates are 8-9-10-11...hehehe.  So here's a pic of the two of us and one of her in her beautiful Melissa Sweet wedding gown.

Caitlin is Adam's youngest sister and is the girl in this pic with the all black dress.  She's a freshman at MSU and is just hilarious.  She's my ANTM buddy too :)

Rachel is the middle child of Adam's family and is in this pic with the black and white dress.  She's just so sweet but definitely has some blonde moments.  Luckily, she realizes this and laughs along with everyone else.  She's in her last year at CMU and is going to be a K-2 grade teacher but is hoping for kindergarten.  Adam is also in this pic, and you can tell that he is white and cannot dance :)

And last, but not least, is Amy.  Amy is one of the only remaining people that I consistently talk to from high school.  Actually, it's kind of funny because we weren't really that great of friends in high school, but now we can talk about anything and everything. 

I also have an adorable flower girl.  My kindergarten teacher is also a family friend and I babysit for her nephew and niece and her niece is even named after me!  Here's my 'Little Emily' :)  Her brother is Nathan.  Here we are at the zoo.

We got her dress from ebay seller ducklingsdaffodils using a Buy it Now option so her mom got the dress and a headpiece (which she LOVES) for about $35!  It is just adorable and will look great with the black BM dresses and all the hot pink flowers.

My cousin, Andrea, is one of our readers, as I was for her wedding.  

The Girls' dresses:  So, I was planning on having them get JCrew dresses and choose between a strapless and non-strapless option but JCrew doesn't have the right color yet and who knows if it will come out this year or not.  But, I found this recently and absolutely love it.  It is Alyce Designs #1204 and we would be getting it in black with a hot pink ribbon.  This is me trying it on because my girls weren't there (just my mom).  I have now emailed this to all the girls and they all love it and are just going to get it.  So that was easy!  These should be ordered around late Feb/early March.  Please excuse my funny face and messed up hair.  Thx

The Boys:

Brad, the Best man.  Brad is our mutual friend who is pretty much the reason we met.  Him and Adam also lived together for a couple years.  Funny stories may come from him during his speech...

Kyle, Adam's buddy from high school.  Him and his gf Angela are our favorite "couple friends" and they are just awesome.  Unfortunately, they moved to california last Feburary.  We pretty much try to talk them into moving back every time we talk to them... :)  UPDATE! They moved back in April!!!  woo hoo!!  now they can come to all the fun pre-wedding stuff!!!

Mark (AKA Grimace).  All of my FI's buddies have crazy nicknames...and no one really calls them their actual name...it's strange.  Anyways, Mark is about the sweetest person you will ever meet.

Mike (AKA Meez) He lived next door to Adam for a few years of college.

Eric, another friend from high school.  He lived with Adam for a couple years...they even shared a bathroom.  I did not go into said bathroom without shoes on...EVER...even in the middle of the night.

Their attire will be 2 or 3 button black tuxes with a white shirt, black vest, and black tie.  Most likely, from Men's Warehouse.

Adam will be wearing the same tux only with a black shirt, white tie, and white vest.  The look we're going for is something like this only with the guys wearing black instead of pink.  Adam says real men DO NOT wear pink.  This was his one big rule for our wedding. (this is taken from Real Wedding Amy and Charles in Lansing)

The Decor:

Here are some pics I've picked up:

 Bathroom baskets that you could actually use again: (woodstockbride)

Test run of the centerpieces:  Vase was $2.49 and large size tealight holders were $1.29 for 6 of them from Ikea.  I LOVE ikea.  The roses will be all dark pink or a mix of this pink and dark pink...haven't decided yet.  I'm going to give the vases to my florist to fill.  Half of the CPs will be the vases of flowers and the other half will be groupings of 3 pillar candles on a square mirror.

Last time I was at Ikea I picked up a set of these candles holders for each table.  Half will use pink and half black. 

Some flowers I like:

I really love stargazer lilies so there will be some of those in my bouquet and in the altar/unity candle arrangement.  I will have mostly pink flowers and my girls will have mostly white flowers.  All the church arrangements, bouquets, bouts, and pew bows will be done by a Simon's flower shoppe in FI's hometown of Westphalia, MI. They are hella cheap.

 <--I don't know where this originally came from, but i Love it!  so simple.

 <--But without the gerberas and with lilies...maybe. (suziendon)

both pretty bouquets (simplyinlove)

 Yay for stargazer lilies!  Love 'em.

Love the corset wrap only I want white w/pink for mine and opposite for the maids.

 Our Champagne Flutes!!!!

I put my mom in charge of this because she is really good at picking out beautiful, nice quality crystal.  These are Debut Platinum by Lenox and she got us 4 flutes and 4 wine glasses.  We registered for 4 more of each.

Cake:  Baker is Charlene Parry of Sweetest Day Cookies and Cakes.  The cake will look kind of like this but there will be a black ribbon along the bottom of each layer and a few pink sugar flowers on the top with our cake topper.  Also, it will be on a silver cake stand.   I also want our monogram on the second from the top tier.  I used to want the monogrammed cake topper, but now everyone has those...so we're using my FIL's cake topper from their wedding.   

(sdalian)

The flavor of each layer are: (biggest to smallest) Chocolate fudge cake with raspberry filling, Confetti cake with buttercream filling, yellow cake with Raspberry filling, and chocolate cake with buttercream filling.  Yum Yum, we love some Confetti cake!!!

 Groomscake:  I wanted to have a football stadium cake (using Spartan Stadium as a reference) made but, we don't need it too feed too many people and that got expensive.  So, he's getting a football helmet shaped cake that he doesn't know about!  I think that he'll like it.

 Cake topper:  we are using Adam's parent's cake topper.  it's a ceramic bride and groom and is so cute.  I absolutely love it.  

Paper stuff:

I'm DIY-ing all this stuff.  Invites are a work in progress right now, but I will post those when I have some time to finish them.  Other things that I like: (in order: woodstockbride, amjmp)

I finally have some checks in this section...Here are our favor boxes all decorated (still need tags on them and choc. covered pretzels in them) and the envelopes that I lined.  The favor boxes are 1/2 pint size from papermart.com.

 And the paper that I used for most of the envelope linings, and it may end up being used on the programs or something because I have a lot of little squares of it left.  I got 12x12 sheets at Joann's for 6 sheets for 96 cents.  Three envelope liners were made from each sheet.

Here are the mock-ups of our invites that I made (after several drafts) and the RSVP card and the map with directions, hotel info, and our wedding website with more info.  Since there's a folk festival going on right next to our church that weekend, I had to make a really detailed map with all the available parking options.  I'm really proud of my maps!!!  It's easy too, just go to weddingmapper.com and use the hand-draw directions.  Although, it's easier to make them in power point than in word.

 Unity Candle:  I got a plain "wedding candle" from Hobby Lobby for half off then printed off a monogram on vellum paper and put that on it...I also put black satin ribbon on the top and bottom of the vellum but that's not pictured.

The unity candle will be put into this pedestal bowl (raised up a little using floral foam) and flowers will be put all around it and draping down.  The side taper candles will just be in their own small holders on the side.  The bowl with unity candle will then be moved to the reception for use on the escort card table.  Extra bonus: this bowl matches my dish set (food network brand) from Kohls!  And, we got it for only $20 by catching it on sale then using a 30% off coupon and a free shipping code.  Turns out it's not available anymore...good thing we got it when we did!!!

The runner up dress:  Casablanca Bridal #1854.  For you ladies of 8/08...one of the big reasons i liked this dress was because my bewbies looked great :)

   <---Bewbie pic :)

The Dress! Just kidding...ended up not ordering this one. Casablanca Bridal #1847...LOVE IT! But I didn't order it right away and then started changing my mind and went somewhere else to try on others and didn't find any....then I went back to this store (The Wedding Bell in Okemos, MI) and was just going to try this on again to be sure.  Well, I found another one....see below.

 The ACTUAL Dress!!  For real, because it's now ordered!  So my mom saw this dress hanging up and we hadn't seen it when we were there before.  I tried it on first, came out and had goose bumps all over and my mom started crying.  So, pretty much we knew this was it and didn't even put on the Casablanca one!  This dress is Maggie Sottero Tabrett Marie and it's absolutely gorgeous.  I ordered it in all white and no one will know what it looks like (besides my mom and Maid and Matron of Honors because they need to be able to bustle it) before the wedding.  Also, the owner of The Wedding Bell came up with an awesome idea to make the bow snap on so I will have another bow for the reception that will be hot pink (matching the BM dress sashes)  I'm very pumped because then I can put on my hot pink shoes.  (PS I have no pics of me in this dress, sorry) Also, the bow tied from the corset will be tucked in so you won't be able to see it.

First Fitting:  Keep in mind, the bustle is just pinned and the dress hasn't been steamed.  This is also the dress in all bright white.  I absolutely LOVE it.  

 

I love my dress!  Yay! 

The Veil:  Custom ordered Jan. 10 from Occanseydesigns.com and received on Jan. 17!  I really like it because it's sheer and simple like I wanted.  it's 25" fullness at the comb, and 52" at the bottom, 26" inches in length so it will hit at about the small of my back and has a light scattering of rhinestones and pearls along the bottom few inches.  

Other randoms pics of us:

More to come :) 

Peyton, our beagle-rat terrier mix says GO STATE!