July Updates

And the countdown continues through this hot, rainy month of July!

July held a lot of wedding related work for me, but some positive things as well, including a wedding shower thrown by M's family in Alabama, and my mom's visit for the event. July also meant our Pre Marital class for the Catholic Church, with the Pre Cana retreat being one of the last big items to check off our wedding To-Do List.

We received the cute invitations from M's mom a month ago, after having to reschedule due to Pre Cana dates. Keeping in tradition with what she had done for both of Michael's brothers during their engagements, she was throwing us a fabulous joint wedding shower at her gorgeous river house in Mobile. Check out the cute invites below.

My Father had planned many months ago that he was going to surprise my mother and I by sender her out to Mobile for our wedding shower. He spoke with M's mom, and she suggested he send her to Tampa instead, so she could spend more time with me instead of just the 2 days we were going to be in AL. M then suggested to him that he'd have to include me in the surprise so I could take the appropriate time off from work to hang out with her. When he broke the news to me, I cried with joy, as not only would it be my first family member out to Florida since moving here 2 years ago, but she would finally be able to meet M's family in person for the first time, and she could finally see my wedding dress during my first fitting, which I was going to specially schedule during her visit. It was hard keeping the secret from her, but when my dad broke the news to her a few days before she would be leaving, I could hear the joy and excitement in her voice. She finally arrived late Wednesday night, and early Thursday morning we were already hard at work on wedding stuff. And when I talk about wedding stuff, I specifically mean WEDDING INVITATIONS. These darn things had been the bane of my existence for the last couple of weeks, as I was making all of them by hand, and there were a lot of little details that had to be completed before they could be put together and mailed. First I had to cut all the scrap book paper and invitation paper to fit the folders I had cut to hold the invites, RSVPs, and map. Then I had to cut and fold the vintage dictionary paper for the envelopes. Check out the picture below showing my neat piles of a couple days of work of cutting.

I then had to print out the invitations, RSVP, and Map and Accommodations, all of which took me waaay longer than expected to even just type up, as I found I was very indecisive about wording, and had to do a little research on Pinterest. Once printed, I had to lay out all the invites on our guest bed so they could dry properly and not smudge. Quite an interesting site!

I then had to print the guest addresses on each envelope, as well as our own return address on the RSVP envelopes, and insert the vintage dictionary paper into the envelopes and glue in place. Check out my post on our Engagement Announcements for the step-by-step instructions on this process. During all this, I got laryngitis, and was supposed to have an invitation making party, but decided to cancel due to having no voice and a sore throat, but my sweet friend Shannon came through and with dinner in tow and helped anyways. She stayed for 4 hours gluing the invite folder pouches in place to hold the RSVP and Accommodation cards in place while I glued differently designed scrapbook paper in the middle of the folders (to be the backdrop to the actual invitation). I had already hole-punched two holes in the tops of each of the invitations and RSVPs for jute bows to be placed for decoration, which I had also spent time tying (fingers were sore after doing those!). I grabbed my glue gun, and sat on the floor next to Shannon gluing the Jute bows into place. She would grab the invites after the bows had dried, and glue them in place on top of the scrapbook paper. Once I finished with the invites, I moved onto gluing the jute bows onto the RSVP's. Poor M came home right before Shannon had to leave, and he got suckered into cutting curves into the edges of the invites, and gluing ivory card stock onto pre-cut scrap book paper to be stamped with our initial for the outside of the folders. I know all of this hard work must be confusing as to how it all goes together because there are no pictures to better show what I'm explaining, but not all of our guests have received their invites, so have to keep them secret until then!

I had wanted to have the invites sent out before my mother arrived, but due to my laryngitis, that didn't happen, and she arrived with crafting still needing to be done to complete them. The night she was to arrive, I sat from the time I got home from work (7:30 PM) till the time I had to pick her up from the airport (1 AM) putting our vintage stamps onto all the envelopes and RSVPs. The next morning, we worked tirelessly for 4 hours while she cut out our return address circles for the stickers on the back of our envelopes (once again, see my previous post on our Engagement Announcements for details), and glued them onto the recycled sticker circles. While she did this, I put the final touches on the invite folders by gluing and wrapping them in some beautiful lace-like ribbon, and attaching the "H" initial squares I had stamped a previous night onto the ivory card stock M had glued on top of scrap book paper. Once these had dried, I put the invites into envelopes, sealed them, and placed the return address stickers in place which my mom had finally completed. Luckily we passed the time by catching up, and chatting about wedding details. Here are some pictures of our ecstatic faces after completed all the invitations!!!

The weekend finally came, and we headed up to Alabama for our wedding shower, with my mother and M's fourth groomsmen, Warren, in tow. It was so exciting to introduce my mother to M's family, including his sweet Mama! We had a great time, and my mother LOVES M's fam!

We even got to have a little fun and all went out to a country bar the last night there. Aren't my man and I cute?!

Upon our return, we received our first RSVP's!

My momma left on Wednesday, and I felt so lucky to have had that week with her. This past Saturday, M and I checked another large item off of our To-Do list: our Pre Cana Class! It was a great day filled with interesting information on helpful communication skills, stages of marriage, children, and financial tips and tricks, all with questionnaires in between presentations. M and I had the opportunity to discuss privately between us our answers before moving onto the next section, which was really eye-opening. It was great seeing that we were on the same page about most of the items discussed, and the things that we weren't, we had the opportunity to discuss how we can work together towards our goals of becoming better together. We heard personal testimonies of the hardships of marriage, and how couples learned to work through them together. At the end of the day, we left with our certificate of completion, and our key to getting married in the Catholic Church!

Still have to complete a few more items off our July To-Do List from the Wedding Book, so will be having to update the blog again later this month with those items. Stay tuned!