April 27th, 2012: 1 year from today....

Today marks exactly one year until our wedding day! And boy have I wanted to let the cat out of the bag but we had to wait until we were one year out to make sure our reception site was secure.  So now, without further adieu....We have set the date for Friday April 27th, 2012!  We will be holding our ceremony at our lovely church here in Buckhead; Peachtree Road United Methodist Church. 

The reception will follow at Cherokee Town Club which is literally 2 minutes down the road from the church.  We are so thrilled that the 1 year countdown has officially started! This time next year I will the happiest girl in the world! A lot of behind the scenes planning is going on and the Save the Dates are ready to be printed now! 

This past weekend, Kevin and I went home to Florida for Easter.  We spent a lot of time going over guest lists and details with my parents.  Here we are on Saturday for lunch at Mildred's Big City Cafe:

Time has been flying by and the next three months will do the same.  Kevin and I will be out of town every weekend in May and then June starts the wedding season for us.  We have several weddings throughout the summer of our friends and family.  I know this next year will be a flash- but I am so very excited for all that is to come!

Kevin and I are attending a work function for my job tomorrow night at the Atlanta Aquarium.  Kevin has never been despite his love for sharks.  So we are excited to get dressed up and attend this event for the Atlanta Interactive Marketing Association. 

I am also throwing a baby shower for my boss at work on the 9th of May then leaving for a work trip to New York the same week!  Perhaps this is a little preview of what is to come over the next year!?

Kevin will be visiting his parents this weekend to go over their wedding details at home in Augusta and I will be celebrating my Mom's birthday in Lake Toxaway, NC (my most favorite place in the world!)  I am so thrilled for this year's cake (I always surprise her with a fancy cake for her birthday...this year's cake will be fantastic as I got the inspiration from looking through all my wedding magazines! will post pics after her day!)

Hope everyone had a fantastic Easter and is enjoying every minute of SPRING! (despite the tornado's and hail!)

Wedding Planning Weekend Sneak Peak

It's not even 9pm on Monday evening, and I'm in bed as I write this short post about the first part of this past weekend.  It was non-stop, go go go!  My Mother and Sister were in Atlanta this past weekend and we made the MOST out of every minute.  Friday afternoon, my sweet Mummy insisted that we go bridal lingerie shopping so I would have a nice set to wear while we tried on wedding dresses and an ivory silk robe to wear in between dresses.  It is so easy to shop in Atlanta, or at least this task was...we found exactly what we needed between Nordstrom and Macy's and were in and out so quickly- we even had enough time left over to hit Anthropologie for a few moments. 

Mommy picking out the perfect bridal robe

Once Jenna arrived we grabbed a delicious dinner near Perimeter and were on our way to do our trial stay at The InterContinental Buckhead.  We had a lovely experience and decided this will be one of the suggested hotels on the Save the Date cards.  The customer attention and service was unparalleled. 

More to come once my sister sends me more pics from our fabulous weekend together! Just wanted to give a quick snap shot of how our girls weekend started!  We made some very important and exciting decisions this weekend which I cannot wait to share!

One more photo of my three best friends lately...I have been spending a lot of time researching and emailing wedding vendors using these three devices! How did they plan weddings before the internet???

Laptop, iPad, and Android phone...three must haves for wedding planning!

March Madness!

Kevin and I ended March with a bang! I am fortunately going to be married to a man who can predict his March Madness bracket better than most! Kevin got first place in a pool of ninety eight other young basketball hot shots.  Thankfully, this sports game had some monetary incentive behind it, so I gladly went along with watching hours of basketball to please my fiance.  We had previously gone to a Mexican restaurant to watch the elite eight games and then this past weekend, we went out on a double date with some friends to Taco Mac.  We had quite a bit of fun since Kentucky lost and that's what we needed to happen!  I was glad Kevin could take some time to enjoy sports during his busy season.

Saturday Night Out!

Last week I spent the majority of the week in Athens which was pretty enjoyable!  My company hosted a team building session which included a stay at our property, Hotel Indigo, a scavenger hunt all over downtown and campus, an 80's themed party complete with an 80's cover band and a photo booth.  Here is a picture of my immeadiate web marketing team from InterContinental Hotels Group.  My boss is the one in the floral tutu on the bottom right.

Working Hard for the Money

This past weekend I did a little hotel hunting for our save the dates (which I am excited to announce are in the works!)  I actually had never been to the InterContinental Hotel in Buckhead before, even though I work on it everyday on their website.  So, after hitting the gym on Saturday I ventured into Buckhead to tour some suites and rooms at the InterContinental Buckhead.  I found it quite refreshing and gorgeous!  I definitely think this will be one of our suggested hotels for out of town guests attending our wedding!

Sitting Area at the InterContinental Buckhead

Outdoor Courtyard at InterContinental Buckhead

On my way out of Buckhead back towards Vinings, I couldn't help but snap these gorgeous shots of all the blooming tulips in Atlanta.  This particular spot was near our reception location and I got very excited seeing all the blooming flowers thinking about this time next year!

The plan for this coming weekend is for my Mother and Sister to visit in order to start DRESS SHOPPING!!! I am so excited about this part of the festivities.  I have called the various boutiques and made my appointments.  The timing works out perfectly while Kevin is working all day Saturday.  Hopefully next Saturday night we will all be together having fun!

Keeping Busy

I hate starting out multiple posts with apologies, but I am slacking on the blog lately and I'm sorry! I had my sister in town two weekends ago, then I got the plague and have been battling that since.  I literally stayed in bed from last Friday until today!  Kevin caught whatever cold I had (to a much lesser degree thankfully) so we were both couch potatoes all weekend long.  What little time we actually did see of each other was spent in silence this weekend as we both felt that bad that we really didn't communicate much, beyond the extent of, "it's time for more medicine" or, "can you please refill my gatorade."  I will send out kudos to Kevin for unloading my dishwasher at my house when he doesn't even know where my stuff goes!  What a sweet heart for doing that while I was completely out of it!  I am really ready for tax season to be over, as I know Kevin is.  He continues to put in the long hours.  The only thing that gets us through is knowing that the next time tax season comes, our wedding will be on the other side waiting for us! (only a few days after tax season 2012 ends!)

So, two weekends ago, my sister visited spontaneously.  I was so delighted that she came all the way to ATL so that we could select our bridesmaids dresses together for my cousin Maggie's wedding in October.  Maggie selected some GORGEOUS dresses from Amsale through Bella Bridesmaid.  I have never been a bridesmaid before, so this process was quite interesting to me and will help guide my decisions for my own girls.  Thankfully, my sister is a pro and we helped each other select the best dress for our body types.  It was really fun being able to do the "bridesmaid" thing together.  It's also nice to know that I have my dress picked out and ready to go for the wedding in October.  As much as I love dress shopping, sometimes the options seem daunting (and with all that is going on wedding wise between now and my wedding, it feels great to have one dress checked off the list!)  Maggie let each of her bridesmaids select a style, but assigned everyone a color.  My color is Vanilla and I couldn't be more excited about it! Here is the style I selected:



I don't have any wedding developments to speak of yet, other than we are counting down til 1 year out (the end of April).  Then all the pieces can start to be fit together!  Once Kevin finishes with tax season and we get our weekends back together, we will resume our to-do list of all things wedding. During the past two weeks during my lunch breaks or right after work I have been investigating rehearsal dinner options and have met with two different location's event coordinators.  I am compiling some options for my future in laws.

Next week, I am headed to Athens for a work trip for three days so this weekend will be spent preparing for that.  The attire for one of the evenings is 80's chic, so I will have to do a little thrift store digging this weekend in preparation!  I threw out the majority of my social costume closet that was used for sorority functions in college, and here I am heading back to college for work and in need of my costume closet!

Happy Birthday Daddy!

Last weekend I made a quick trip down to Florida to celebrate my Father's birthday which was March 8th.  It was really nice to be home and spend a celebratory weekend with Mom and Dad (and Chelsea).  Mom made the gorgeous Italian Cream Cake in the pictures for Daddy's birthday.  She is quite the baker.

 Kevin stayed behind in Atlanta to work on everyone's taxes so it was a solo trip for me.  He really has been putting in the hours lately! 

Happy Birthday to a wonderful Father!

Wedding Party Invitations

I am so excited to be sharing my wedding party invitations now that all the girls have received them and have accepted!  It was really hard to keep this a secret until they had received them!  This was a project that I started working on before Christmas and one that I was so excited about!  I knew I wanted to do something special, unique, and truly "girly."  I dreamed up the idea of having bridesmaid dress shaped cookies customly made for my girls.  Of course I had to ask the girls to be part of the wedding somehow along with the cookie, so during one of Mommy's many visits to Atlanta so far, we spent one Sunday afternoon at Paper Affair (a fabulous stationary store that I could do some serious damage in!).  We knew our customized wording for each girl and picked out some sagey green scalloped card stock to have each poem printed on.  The wording was as follows (using the MOH version as the example here):

We thankfully had a very patient and creative store associate who donated much of her time to get the wording, alignment, detail, and printing just right for us!

Paper Affair

So once the individual customized cards were printed for my sister, my maid of honor, the seven bridesmaids, two program attendees, and two brides book attendees we were ready to rock and roll with the cookie portion of the invitation!  In late December I had been in communication with a baker on Etsy who customized cookies.  I was able to convey my vision for the cookies (pearlized dress color with gold pattern on top and gold pearls) and in turn she was able to execute my vision quite perfectly!  I was so thrilled to see the finished product! I asked her to attach each girl's individualized poem invitation to the cookie with gold ribbon.  Most girls received their invitations late last week. 

It was such a wonderful feeling to receive the many phone calls, text messages and acceptances over the weekend!  I am so excited to have my closest girls by my side on my special day!  I also heard the cookies were quite delicious as well:)

Here is the rundown for my bridal party:

Jenna Rentz- sister and maid of honor

Amrita Ford- best friend and bridesmaid
Whitney Smith- high school friend and bridesmaid
Kittery Neale- high school friend and bridesmaid
Caitlin Ellery- sorority sister and bridesmaid
Tiffany Fogg- cousin and bridesmaid
Maggie Rentz- cousin and bridesmaid
Mary Shiver- cousin and bridesmaid

Courtney Engelke- childhood friend and program attendee
Whitney Engelke- childhood friend and program attendee

Amanda Rickles- sorority sister and brides book attendee
Suzanna Willis- sorority sister and brides book attendee

And the beat goes on...

Things are progressing slowly but surely in our wedding world.  Unfortunately, we cannot book our reception site until a year out, so we are patiently waiting for that time to come so we can move full steam ahead with plans.  Right now, I am enjoying having a little time to read all my bride magazines, research photographers, and dream about the honeymoon.  This timing actually works out perfectly with Kevin's schedule as he is knee deep in tax preparation until April 18th.  The long hours and weekends have started.  This past weekend left me with idle time on my hands which is something I haven't experienced in a very long time! I went to the gym, relaxed on the porch with my magazines, and talked to a wedding photographer.  We also went to go see the movie "Just Go With It" and now are considering Hawaii as an option for the honeymoon! It was so gorgeous!  A very funny movie...it was just what we needed for our date night after focusing on the wedding 24/7! 

We also used a Groupon this past weekend that my best friend Amrita had given me for my birthday to a delicious sushi and noodle house in Buckhead called Genki.  They had live music and amazing food.  Kevin doesn't care for sushi like I do, so he ordered an outrageously delicious brown rice bowl.  It was a great date and made me appreciate living in Atlanta around so much culture.  On Sunday we played a round of putt putt golf with sorority sister, Caitlin, and her boyfriend Chris.  We also did a little residential neighborhood looking for that glorious day when we can move in together!  Even though I have a 25-30 minute commute to work everyday, we both feel strongly about our desire to remain in the Vinings area, where I currently live.  It fits our lifestyle very well and is so close to Buckhead.  Kevin and I love house looking, so much more to come on this subject!