Fortune Favors the Bold

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Monday, August 12, 2013

Wedding Planning Whirlwind


Last weekend was a whirlwind of wedding planning. I picked my mom up at John Wayne on my way home from dropping Sam off at LAX. He’s in Thailand with his parents this week visiting his brother. 

Mom and I stayed up well past midnight looking through The Knot’s quarterly magazine that Carrie brought down for me last weekend. We also went online and perused a bunch of invitations and get a feel for what we liked. Luckily, Mom and I both liked the more formal invitations and she agreed that it would be cute to have something with some kind of beach theme. 

Saturday morning she wanted to get her nails done at my local nail salon, so I took her in there after breakfast. When she was finished, we headed over to South Coast Plaza to check out the Papyrus store and see what they had to offer as far as invitations go. As we were flipping through books, Mom found the PERFECT invitations. They are very clean and elegant, the wording is very formal, and they have a starfish accent at the bottom of the invitation. I’ll have to take Sam back in a few weeks and make sure he likes them too, but I don’t think he’ll have too much of a problem with them!

After the invitations, we headed home and had lunch with Hunter. He was happy to see us and spend some time getting spoiled while we were getting ready for our appointment at The Surf and Sand.

Ironically, the photographer and florist I have booked for my wedding were at The Surf and Sand on Saturday doing another wedding. It was fun to meet the photographer, who I booked through her boss, and hadn’t met yet. The florist wasn’t there in person, but Mom did get to see the flowers she did.

We also got to meet our wedding coordinator, Kat. She helped us figure out what our wedding costs would be and answered a bunch of our questions before I signed the contract and Mom handed over her credit card. During our meeting, Kat had us sample the house champagne and we got calamari comped by the resort. It was really nice, and obviously, since we’re going to pay a LOT for this wedding, I am sure they were doing their best to impress us.

After the business was done, Mom and I wandered around the hotel so she could get a better feel for it. We went down to the beach so that Mom could get an idea of where our wedding photos will be taken, and while we were there we got to see the photographers taking photos of the bridal party. It was really fun.

After we were done at the Surf & Sand, we walked across the street to Laguna Brisas, The Best Western hotel we are getting a special rate at for our guests. Mom and I hadn’t been in there before, and we checked it out just to make sure everything was on par- which it was! 

We headed home at 8pm… pretty impressive since we got up 12 hours earlier!

On Sunday, we conferred with Dad about the best way to communicate all the hotel information to our guests on the wedding website. After sorting that out, Mom and I went down to Fashion Island to do a little shopping. It was funny, because we’re trying to figure out if coral or turquoise bridesmaids’ dresses will be prettier. I would love to find something in Tiffany Blue to match the colors of The Surf and Sand, but we’ll see how that goes. Anyway, while we were shopping both colors were EVERYWHERE! They were on the racks in the stores and on the people wandering around the mall. It was hilarious.

After lunch at R&D Kitchen, I dropped Mom off at the airport. 

It was kind of strange to see her go since I’m now home alone with Hunter all week while Sam’s out of town. Not that I mind it so much, but we had a really nice time while she was here and it was all SO easy! Nonna said she once heard planning a wedding compared to planning the invasion of Normandy and that's been our running joke for about a year now.  I just hope the rest of the planning process goes this smoothly and the day goes off with minor hitches!!!

Late last night, I was watching The Newsroom and texting with Carina about my dress and everything Mom and I accomplished. I wish Carina had been here, but it’s been really fun bonding with her on Pinterest posts and texts and phone calls. I think this is going to be a really fun experience for us as sisters. J

As I was walking Hunter, Dad called to say that he and Mom were going through their guest list and he wanted to add another 8 people who he felt would be offended if they weren’t invited. He said it’s not likely these people will pay to travel down here, but who knows, they might. He said he’ll send an email out to let everyone know that they shouldn’t worry about offending him if they can’t make it, but that he wanted them to know they are in the VIP circle of friends. I told Dad that since he is paying for all of this, I don’t care who he invites. As long as we stay under the max capacity of the ball room and can afford for all these wild people to come and suck booze down at the open bar, I feel like the more the merrier is our motto!

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