A Chattanooga Wedding!

We were so excited for the big day! Here are some pictures of the Thursday and Friday before the wedding!

We just so happened to arrive at the hotel at the same time as one of my childhood best friends, Lindsey (she was one of my bridesmaids too) and the junior bridesmaid, flower girl, and ring bearer (my 3rd grade teacher's children). Here is a picture of us all. Can you believe the pretty blonde was my 3rd grade teacher--and she has 4 children!!!??? She is one amazing lady and has meant so much to me in my life--it was only fitting that her family was apart of my wedding :)


Here is a picture of the beautiful hotel lobby.


We got right to work on Thursday night. Luckily, the hotel let us have a room for storage :) (thank you wedding planner Pam!)
We got the candy into the jars, took the glad press n seal off the escort card display and put together the table numbers. We also gave the welcome bags to the front desk to hand out to all of our guests!!! Mom and Dad kept my wedding dress in their hotel room. They also had a steamer to make sure we could steam out any wrinkles from travel--and also so the bridesmaids could get wrinkles out of their dresses too.






This is Marsha (my sister) and me on thursday night before the wedding. Actually, Michael took me on a date that night in downtown Chattanooga. It was our last date night before we got married :)


I also spent most of thursday afternoon and evening greeting some of our guests.
Here are my Uncle Rob and Aunt Gloria. Aunt Gloria is actually an ordained minister and will be a part of our wedding ceremony.


A family friend of Michael's wanted to host my Bridesmaid Luncheon. She hosted it at a tea room in Chattanooga and she thought of everything. The food was delicious and she had a charm cake for us too as well as little favors for everyone. Michael's mom even had favors for us all too.
The tea room

My maids and me

The KDs

The charm cake

Getting our charms


While the girls were all at the bridesmaids luncheon, Michael and his groomsmen and some of the men in the family went on a golf outing.


The rehearsal
Lara and me getting ready

Jay and John rolling out the runner

Michael and me at the altar

Junior Bridesmaid, Flower Girl, Ring Bearer, and me

The men


And later that night, the rehearsal dinner was held at the Walden Club in downtown Chattanooga. This club is on top of a bank building in Chattanooga and has a panoramic view of Chattanooga--its soo beautiful. It was the perfect location for the dinner :) Michael's parents did such a great job planning this special evening. They even had personalized M&Ms (for Michael and Meredith) made up for everyone to take home as a favor---they even had our picture on the M&Ms. So cute!!!

My mom's side of the family


Our good friends Adam and Julie with Michael


The delicious buffet


We presented all of our attendants with gifts at the rehearsal dinner. We appreciate each of them so much. We have such wonderful friends and family!


A picture of the M&M's Michael's parents had for everyone for favors at the dinner :)


Stay tuned for pictures of our big day!

I'm Back!

Wow! It's been a long hiatus, but I'm back now. I have so much to update you all on. I'm married now! YAY!!!! It was such a wonderful day! We so much enjoy married life....but before I get into all of that, let's take a step back. Take a look at the weeks before the wedding. All of the last minute things were being wrapped up, my parents came in for the week before the wedding, and we had a pre-wedding BBQ for the groomsmen (so they could get their tuxes too). Here are some pictures leading up to our big day!

Here are a couple of pictures of the out of town welcome bags for the hotel to distribute. Michael's mother helped out quite a bit since she is a Chattanooga guru! We had some things that Chattanooga was notorius for as well as a few of our favorite things.
Skittles (packaged in Chattanooga and also we love them!)
Cheerwine (our FAVORITE and exclusive to the south)
FIJI water (the BEST bottled water)
Power T sugar cookies (because we LOVE UT football and that's where we met too!)
Moon Pies (made in Chattanooga)
Planter peanuts (packaged in Chattanooga)
Wrigley's gum (packaged in Chattanooga)
Chattanooga souvenir magnet
coupons to Krystal (perfect for late night snacking--and also headquartered in Chattabooga)
coupons to tourist attractions and restaurants in Chattanooga

We made booklets that served as a guide to Chattanooga including where to go for every meal.




Michael and I also had hand-written notes in each of the out of town bags for our guests welcoming them to our wedding and thanking them for what a special place they had in our lives.....it was a more last minute idea and became stressful as we got down to the wire. Michael's mother had notecards made of the Tivoli Theatre that had the marquee personalized with Meredith and Michael's Wedding. They were sooo cute--we just had to do something with them!!!


Here are the candy buffet vases. We had to hand wash each of them--in addition to the jars for the guests to take the candy home in. It took a while, but it was totally worth it. Our guests LOVED the candy buffet!


Here is the escort card display. We had to get this ready before making our way to Chattanooga to ensure that every card would fit. We had some trouble but somehow we managed. We wrapped it up in Glad Press 'N Seal to make sure the cards didn't fall off in transport. I think it turned out really great. Our calligrapher wrote all of the names and the ladies at our local scrapbook store helped me figure out how to make it all how we wanted it.


Time to go to Chattanooga! (I really wish we had pictures of all of our cars packed down with wedding stuff) In the weeks leading up to the wedding, we had put a large table in our entryway and started gathering everything that we needed to bring to Chattanooga. We had my Rav4, my parents in their Avalon, my sister's Santa Fe, and Michael and his best man loaded Max's car down too. We also had my cousin and Adam and Julie bring things too. It was definitely a group effort and we couldnt have made it without them :)

Entering the WEDDING WAR ZONE....enter if you dare

Thats what we have been calling the media room downstairs in my basement.....these pictures do not even do it justice. All of the invitations were sprawled out on the floor in box lids....the jars for the favors, hundreds of strips of ribbon, wedding gifts, etc.....It was a nightmare down there for my fiance who is a neat freak--and somehow he could not see the organized chaos that existed down there...--it was just chaos to him. These pictures were taken actually before the invitations came in and aftr Mom and I had picked up the clutter--





Luckily, the invitations were sent on Tuesday and the jars have ribbons tied on top and a label in the bottom....so we were able to clean it up a bit.

Here are some pictures of the wedding invitations and the calligraphy! (and yes, in case you are wondering, we did send ourselves an invitation in the mail) :)







I have so many DIY projects for the wedding I have been working on for the past few months.

ESCORT CARD DISPLAY --that i blogged about a few months ago
My cousin's wife, Ashley, came over with her school's diecut machine and I had ordered a diecut shape of a gift tag to use in our escort card pockets. Its kind of a confusing project.....
Each family will receive a "pocket"/envelope--names will be written on these pockets. Inside the pocket will have the gift tag shaped cardstock. One that has the table number assigned to them. Then, each individual will have their own gift tag that has a "C" or a "B" (i.e. chicken or beef). Thats how the servers will know who has which entree.
Ashley cut out SOOO MANY gift tags with her diecut machine. WHAT A HUGE HELP!!!
I had Kinkos cut strips of paper which i then turned into "pockets" with a circle punch to cut a semi-circle in the center and then used this heavy duty adhesive to stick the edges to make the pocket. This makes it look similar to a library pocket.







Candy buffet with small squatty mason jars for the guests to fill up and take home.





We have had the rubber gloves out while we have been sorting candy by color for the candy buffet so that it goes with the wedding colors....we have all of the vases downstairs that we have been hand washing and measuring how much candy will fit. Mom ordered the last of the candy and it should be arriving on my doorstep sometime this weekend or beginning of next week. YAY!!




Candle wax dripping protectors: You know those green and wite circles that fit around those small congregational candles (the candles we are giving each of our guests during the unity candle) to prevent the candle wax from dripping all over you? Well, I wanted to make them coordinate with the wedding collors so I decided to make some myself with peach colored cardstock/scrapbook paper! Luckily I found a large circle punch at the scrapbook store. Then we got an extended reach hold punch to punch a small circle in the center and then used scissors to cut and "X" through the center to feed the candle through. THEY ARE DONE!!!!! Thank goodness....Mom punched the large circles, Ashley helped me out with the center circle punch, and my sister helped me cut the "X" in each one.




Next up, the menus. We are having our AMAZING calligrapher write up our menu and then we will photocopy it onto some shimmer paper and I have a corner punch to make it fancy and also some small rhinestones to glue 1 or 2 at the top in part of our wedding "logo" header.

As for our wedding gifts, well, I don't have the room to "display" the gifts as they used to traditionally do. I have been breaking the rules a bit and putting the gifts away and actually start using some of the gifts. The only ones we haven't used or put away are the monogrammed ones.

Our cocktail napkins arrived in the mail a couple of weeks ago! They turned out great and are a really pretty peach color.



ENJOY!!!