Wedding Wednesday....On A Thursday....The Invites :)

We completed our final per-marriage class last night hence the late post. We decided to participate in the Prepare and Enrich program at a local "mega-church". While it's not the church we call our church home, we do love that church and we were glad we did our per-marriage counseling through them. If anyone is looking at doing per-marriage counseling, I highly recommend finding a place that uses the Prepare and Enrich curriculum. I also HIGHLY recommend pre-marriage counseling in general. Honestly, M and I thought we didn't really need it since we've read tons of books, grown up around healthy marriages with our parents, are pushing 30, etc., but, we are so glad we did. It was SO nice to sit down each week and hear everything a second time and also to interact with other couples to see their views on things. We felt pretty prepared before, but now we feel super prepared to tackle this whole husband and wife thing :)


Now, on to the invites! As mentioned before, we found our invites for a steal of a price-around $1 total including personalized envelopes and reception RSVP cards. For me, invites weren't something that I wanted to drop big bucks on because face it, they end up in the trash. Little Miss Bargain hunter here was bound and determined to find something that looked fabulous, but was cheap. After receiving a catalog in the mail from Exclusively Weddings, I decided to order some of their invite samples since they had great pricing. They will send you five free samples, so I chose five different varieties of ones that I liked and had them shipped. They arrived a couple of days later and we quickly narrowed it down to two. One, elegant and simple and the other contemporary and colorful. Since we are doing an evening wedding, we decided the elegant ones were best and to our surprise, they were the cheapest ones of the five we chose. After signing up for the email updates from the magazine, we received a coupon for an additional 25% off any purchase over $100- score!
When looking at the over-all quality and construction and printing of the invites, it's hard to believe they cost us $1 per one. The paper is high quality card stock and the printing in the raised lettering. The envelopes were lined with gold (to tie in our champagne color we are using) and are high quality as well. We were even able to have my parents addressed printed on the envelopes in the same raised lettering as the invites. We've received lots of compliments on our invites and we just couldn't be happier with the overall product. If you're looking for your invites, I highly recommend Exclusively Weddings.

Paper is ecru color and font is navy

For our rehearsal dinner and bridesmaid tea (which I'm doing morning of rehearsal due to 3 bm coming in from out of town), I wanted to do something fun. After searching and searching and searching for something I loved, I finally stumbled upon PolkaDot Designs. I loved their design options and while they aren't super cheap (still priced reasonable though), I LOVE the invites-especially our rehearsal dinner ones! Since we were only buying a few, I felt it was okay to drop a few bucks per invite-they were printed and shipped super quick, too!

I LOVE these!!!

I stuck with the poem theme as I did with asking them to be in the wedding :)

Only 15 more days until we say "I Do" and only 5 school days remaining. The wedding party jewelery has been made (I'll wait until after the wedding to show- I dont want my girls to see them until the tea) and I'm planning to make some coffee filter wreaths for the front doors of the church. As if I need to add any more to my list of "to do's before I do" Ha! But I just love them and think they are perfect for our doors. I'll be sure to post how they turn out :)

XOXO
The Bride To Be

Have you been here?!

Have you been to Marshalls lately?! If not; go, now. Especially if you live in the Lexington area. Tonight, I scored a Juicy Couture swimsuit for only $30. There was nothing wrong with it, other than the fact that it was a style from last spring/summer; and really, if you care about that then you have serious issues :) It's oober cute and retro looking and because it's Juicy its very well made with great fabric that fits in all of the right places!

They also have tons of cute beach towels (not Juicy brand, but cute) on sale for cheap :) I'm hoping to find a few more crazy swimsuit steals there before our honeymoon!! If anyone else finds some cute swimsuit steals, let me know!!! 12 days in the Caribbean is going to require several suits :)

Yay for bargains!!!

Ash

Thrifty Thursday.....Lilly Knock-Off

It's no secret that I'm a lover of all things Lilly. I absolutely adore all of her fun, girly dresses and accessories. What I'm not a fan of is the high price tag that comes with it. My teacher salary does not allow for frequent $200 dress purchases. Well,it could, but then I wouldn't be able to eat for a few weeks to offset the cost ;) So, I'm always on the hunt for cute dresses that I can afford. I found a super cute Lilly knock-off at Francesca's Collections a few weeks ago and the two times I've worn it I've received tons of compliments. Best part is, the dress was only $44!

Here's the Lilly Dress



And here's a picture of me wearing my "knock off" on Easter :)


  Sorry, the picture isn't the greatest (taken with my old school iPhone 3 and in the sun)  and what you cant see is that the back of the dress ties into a big ol' bow! It really is an adorable and comfy dress!! I wore it in Charleston with flip flops and then dressed it up for church by wearing wedges and a white cardigan! It's so versatile and the glorious part is.....it's definitely not $200 :)
I tried finding it on the Francesca's online store and couldn't find it, but it is in stores!!

Happy Knock-Off Dress Wearing
Ash

Kohls 1 day Shoe Sale

At Kohls and at Kohls.com, TODAY ONLY, all shoes are 50% off!! They have some ridiculously cute ones there too! Here are a few of my favorites and all are priced under $50!!! 

Happy Shoe Shopping,
Ash