Ties for the Guys

After finally finding a black slim fit suit at a reasonable price for our groomsmen (Many, many thanks to awesome hive member kirabee for directing me to LA's fashion district for affordable suits!), we moved onto the ties.

Mr. Cheetah loves the way a skinny tie looks with his amazing suit, so he'll be wearing the black striped skinny tie in the middle. Our two ushers will be in the fuchsia number on the right, and the groomsmen will all be wearing the black and silver (it looks white in the photo) bold stripe tie. Bonus: All these ties were at least half off at Macy's and Nordstrom Rack!

Which tie is your favorite?

The Last Pair Standing

Mr. Cheetah: It's not long before you get to see me in my full bridal get-up, so just wait a wee bit longer. Thanks!

So, I think the epic earring search may finally be over. What do you think?

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And of course I have a few back-up pairs up my sleeve, just in case. ;)

And There Will be Noms

Warning: Not to be read on an empty stomach.

One our favorite parts of planning this whole wedding shindig? The tasting! Mr. Cheetah and I made the two hour drive to and from Palm Springs in one afternoon just to attend our tasting--and those four hours in the car were not a waste, my friends. The Viceroy knows how to feed a person!

First up, Apps!

Bruschetta: Buratta Cheese, Marinated Tomatoes, Arugula Pesto

Sliders

Crab Cakes with Corn

Truffled Mac & Cheese

Tuna Tartare with Avocado, Tomato, and Crisp Wonton

We had our choice of four of these, which one do you think got the boot (even though it was super yummy delicious)?

The Salad:

Greens with Strawberries and Walnuts

Heirloom Tomato Salad

We only get one salad option, any guesses what we picked? Hint: It tastes amazing!

The Main Course (served family style):

Local Channel Island Halibut, served with a Farm Fresh Organic Yellow Corn Succotash (quinoa is pictured)

Petite Filet, Creamed Spinach with Roasted Tomatoes and Point Reyes Blue Cheese (Sauce on side)

Free form Spinach & Mushroom Lasagna (served plated)

The Specialty Cocktail:

Raspberry Lemondrop. I'll take one now, please.

I better find some time to eat at the wedding--there is no way I want to miss all this glorious food!

The Final Countdown

We are dangerously close to single digits in the Cheetah Wedding countdown.

I can't wait for all these last minute projects to be finished (and out of my house) and I am so freaking excited for our wedding to finally be here. I'm looking forward to standing at the altar with Mr. Cheetah, reciting our vows, surrounded by our nearest and dearest. It's going to be amazing to be on the dance floor in the best dress I'll ever wear, dancing the night away with my new spouse and all our fabulous guests. Hearing the toasts our loved ones are writing for us is going to be a beautiful, once in a lifetime experience. But the fact is I'm really going to miss being engaged.

We've had ten plus years as a dating couple. We'll have decades of marriage. But we've had only about 10 short months of engagement. Mr. Cheetah has also expressed sadness that this special period in our relationship is almost over. Being engaged has been fun. Sure, there have been lots (and lots) of stresses and hurdles in planning this wedding, but we've also enjoyed it. It's not everyday we get to plan an awesome party for all our favorite people. We've enjoyed the genuine interest and excitement that people have for us when they hear that we're engaged.

We're sad to end the engagement chapter in our relationship, but we're ready and thrilled to begin the next one. Here's to hoping that being a newlywed is just as fun!

Do you like being engaged as much as I do? Or are you ready to have it over with and just be married already?

All the Pretty Flowers

The Cheetah wedding is almost here and I just realized I haven't written one post about our florals yet!

Since I come from a long line of women who love flowers, it was always clear that we would have fresh flower centerpieces and bouquets for our wedding. We set up meetings with four florists on a big planning trip to Palm Springs. One wouldn't show us any pictures or samples (for reals), one had a different aesthetic than us, one was very talented--but took months to get us a proposal--that was twice our budget, and one was just right. It turns out that the first florist we met with was the perfect fit. He immediately got the pink, white, and yellow modern romantic look we're envisioning.

As we are having three long tables and a family style dinner, there isn't a lot of room left so centerpieces will be minimal and scattered.

Like this, but more spread out

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Not only am I super excited about how great the simple design will look, it also frees up more room in the flower budget for my absolute favorite wedding florals: bouquets!

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Oh man, I'm so pumped for my bouquet.

I gave our florist a bunch of images of bouquets I love (including those above) and I trust him to make something wonderful. Likely flowers include: roses, peonies, ranunculus, billy buttons, anemones and more!

Are you having fresh flowers at your wedding?

Love Letters

While on an envelope run to the Paper Source over the weekend, I impulsivly picked up these two bad boys:

Our Intials

I'm just going to give them to our DOC and let him figure out where to place them for the wedding. All I have to do is figure out how to decorate them. I think they'd look great with twine or yarn wrapped all around them, but I may just go down easy street and paint them a solid color.

Here are some letters at work at weddings:

Maybe I should have also bought the ampersand...

How perfect is this for a beach wedding!

Anther great idea for a beach wedding!

Hmm, maybe I don't need to decorate the letters at all...

Pretty in Pink

Do you have any suggestions on how I should decorate my new craft letters?

Wedding Locks

I'm pretty easy to please with formal hairstyles. I think I'm just so bad at doing my own hair that anything a stylist does looks like a masterpiece next to my everyday styling (or lack thereof). Even so I brought in a bunch of inspiration photos for my hair trial last month. While my inspirations styles were all over the hair-style map, the one thing they had in common was that they were all up-dos. I like wearing my hair down, but after a few hours I get sick of it and soon it's in a pony tail or weird bun-knot-thing on the top of my head. Plus, I feel fancier with my hair styled in an up-do and I want to feel like Ms. Fancy-Pants-Bride come the wedding day.

Since I'll be wearing two veils throughout the day, my stylist and I decided that a low asymmetrical style was in order. Here's what it looked like right after the appointment:

It's hard trying to take photos of the back of your own head

After the trial I went home to contemplate my hairstyle in the mirror:

Overall I'm really happy with the style. For the wedding day we will add in some extensions for a lot more volume (my poor fine hair) and move the chignon (Is that what it is? I have no idea.) forward a bit more, which I think will look fantastic.

Are you having a hair trail? Are you easy to please like me, or do you know exactly what you want for your hair?

Dress for Rent

I've been wearing new dresses for all my bridal events, but I haven't bought anything. I've rented.

At Rent the Runway you can rent designer dresses at a fraction of the cost for a few days at a time--perfect for all those special events leading up to your wedding. They even have a new wedding section to make it that much easier to find that perfect dress for your shower, bachelorette, and other wedding occasions--maybe even for the wedding itself! Of course there is always the risk that the dress won't fit or look good, so I always make sure to have a back-up outfit ready from my own closet.

I rented my two bachelorette dresses from RTR:

"She's about yay high"

Singing with Kenny

And my shower dress (shower post to come soon!):

Ready to be showered!

I was planning on renting again for my rehearsal and dinner. I knew exactly what I wanted. An asymmetrical sleeve with some sex appeal. In fact I had the dress all picked out:

I will wear you some day

But then while at the mall looking for groomsmen ties, I was introduced to this dress:

Karen Millen

As soon as I put it on I fell for the elegant modern style and that amazing asymmetrical shoulder (and the fact that it was very heavily marked down). The only problem: it was about 3 sizes too big. My very helpful sales consultant offered me an additional 10% off, so I bought the too-big dress. I pick it up from the tailor on Friday--cross your fingers that it fits!

Since I'm not rocking colored shoes for the wedding, I decided to pair the dress with these hot red pumps I scored for $19 on that same shopping trip:

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What are you wearing for your rehearsal?

Here Comes the Bride...

Sixteen Candles is one of my favorite movies--if you haven't seen it stop reading this blog right this second and go watch it.

Okay, you're back? Isn't the movie awesome? See, I told you it was good. Okay, back to the post.

Jake Ryan Awaits (en Espanol)

The ending gets me every time. Sam is walking out of the church after her sister's wedding when all the cars starting driving away to reveal Jake Ryan waiting there for her. So now every time I hear the song from that scene it makes me melt--it's the excitement and romance of seeing the guy you love and knowing he's there for you. That is exactly how I want to feel when I walk down the aisle towards Mr. Cheetah. So it was decided pretty early on the I would be walking down the aisle to If you Were Here by the Thompson Twins.

The only problem? The lyrics. The song starts: "If You Were/I Could Deceive You." Um, yeah...not exactly the words I want to hear at the start of my wedding ceremony. So I'm on the hunt for a lyric-less version of the same song. So far I've got nothing. We do know a couple audio engineers, but it's unclear if they can remove the vocals from the song file we have. Any other ideas on where I can find this song without the vocals?

Oh, and just for fun, check out this shirt:

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Paper Tease

Now that all our guests have their invitations and the RSVPs are rolling in, I can finally reveal the Cheetah invitations. First up, a little teaser to whet your paper appetite:

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The full suite will be posted shortly!

Toss Me

After the vows, after the food, after the speeches and dancing there will be no grand exit. We newly wedded Cheetahs will likely be the last to leave our wedding reception, either to retire to our hotel room, or to hit the bars with a number of our guests. While we won't be leaving our wedding in any kind of grand exit, we still want that moment of walking through our cheering guests as they merrily toss or wave a little something at us. So like many before us, we are moving the "grand exit" moment to our ceremony recessional. Now we just have the choose that little something for our guests to shower (or wave or blow or wiggle, etc...) at us.

Petals

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It's so pretty and romantic! We are already having a petal scattered aisle, so I think a petal toss at the end of the ceremony might be petal-overload.

Birdseed

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Birdseed is a stand-in for the traditional rice. It seems like it'd be fun to throw...and not so fun to pick out of your hair (and perhaps even cleavage...)

Poms

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Hello adorable! Not as likely to get caught in my fancy up-do, but they do seem a bit heavy and clunky.

Confetti

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A classic tossing item, and I'm partial to large circular confetti. Though sometimes I think it might be a tad boring? Perhaps our wedding colors and some heart shapes can make it more fun?

Bubbles

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As you can see, bubbles look great in pictures and they can be so fun for the kiddies, but I'm paranoid about the soap residue.

Flags

Mrs. Stripes' so-cute-I-want-to-faint heart flags

I'm totally on board with wedding flags! Although you have to work out where to store them during the ceremony (perhaps on the seats or in buckets near the seats?), and it would be another project to take on. I'm sure the few kids at our wedding would love them, but I also worry that they may love them too much, and wave them throughout the entire ceremony and/or use them as a weapon--because that's what I would've done as a kid.

Ribbon Wands

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These fun wands are another wedding trend I'm keen on. Yet I have the same worries with these that I do with the flags.

Sparklers

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Love! It won't be dark enough at the end of our ceremony, however, so sparklers are out.

Right now we are deciding between the confetti, flags, ribbon wands, and poms. I think I'm leaning towards the confetti. We could customize it and package it in cute tiny bags--and it will make for some great photos!

Are you having any kind of grand exit at your wedding?

Let's Spend the Night Together

Mr. Cheetah and I have lived together for years, but we still had a little debate about whether we'd be spending the night together before the wedding.

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On one hand, it would be fun to spend our last legally single night apart. We would say goodnight after the rehearsal dinner and not see each other until we're all dolled up in our spiffy wedding garb at our first look. Perhaps I could even have a little slumber party with a couple of my bridesmaids, or I could spend the night by myself, relishing in a little alone time before all the wedding craziness. Spending the pre-wedding night apart might also up the romance and suspense of the next day.

On the other hand, why would we want to spend this special night apart? I'd love to spend our last single night together, in our sweet (or suite!) hotel room. We'll be arriving the Thursday before the wedding, and it'd be easier not to have one of us have to switch rooms just for one night. Plus, I think I'll sleep better if we are both together, just like normal. If anything exciting and/or nerve wracking is is happening the next day, I have a hard time sleeping. I was so excited I even had trouble falling asleep before my first big wedding dress shopping excursion, so I fully except some pre-wedding tossing and turning. Having Mr. Cheetah curled up in bed next to me would help keep me from counting sheep until the wee hours.

When Mr. Cheetah and I first started talking about where we should each sleep the night before we get hitched we were on different pages. I wanted to spend it together, he wanted to spend it apart. Fast forward a couple months, and Mr. Cheetah is now on my page. He too thinks he'll get a better night's rest next to his future bride :)

Are you and your betrothed spending the night before the wedding separately or apart?

Let Them Eat (Cup)Cake!

The cake vs. cupcakes battle is over.

The winner: Cupcakes!!!

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Cupcakes just made sense for the Cheetah wedding. We love cupcakes, they're cheaper, and since dessert is being served away from the dinner tables, it made more sense to serve something that didn't require a plate and fork (don't worry, there will be plenty of napkins!). Plus cupcakes will look great on our sweets table and we can get them is lots of scrumptious flavors! It was hard narrowing down the flavors for our wedding from the dozens of options on our baker's menu, but after two (yes, two) tastings with our baker I think we have it figured out.

Introducing the final flavors:

• Coconut
• Red Velvet
• Cosmopolitan (vanilla-lime cake with a hint of vodka, topped with cranberry-lime butter cream frosting)
• Rice Crispy Treat (vanilla-rice crispy cake with marshmallow-butter cream frosting, topped with rice crispies)
• Meyer Lemon

Vanilla (First Flavor Runner-up), Cosmopolitan, Meyer Lemon

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Hungry yet?

What kind of dessert are you having?