And the count down begins....

Today is Sunday, a mere six days away from the big day. This time next week I will be waking up as Mrs. Sara Kay Hart, what an Exciting day!!! Everything is coming together so well too!!! I stayed home this weekend so I could relax a bit before a very hectic week while my Absolutely Wonderful Momma and Aunties did all of the things on my to do list! Can you believe it!! They picked up my dress at the cleaners, took it up to Fresno, did all of my last min shopping, picked up the napkins at the wedding venue to fold etc. Amazing... right? 

As if all of that wasn't good enough, our venue space greenery is actually filing in!!!  I know this may not seem that important to some of you, but for me, it has really been weighing on my mind. You see, this is how our wedding venue looked when we picked it.

Beautiful Right? Everything is so lush and green, it just felt like a secret garden, I fell in love with it!!!

Also this was the entry way to the space, everything just looked so Perfect!

Now, when we went to our food tasting about a month ago, I was Very disappointed... As if you didn't already know that though ;) I haven't been very subtle when it comes to my disappointment with how the venue looked... But seriously, from the walk way above to this..

And the venue space to this...

and this...

When we were there at the tasting everyone kept reassuring me that in a month the place would look totally different... Needless to say, this did Not make me feel any better. But... there was a light at the end of the tunnel.. It was just a little hard for me to see ;)

Dun Dunta Dun.... Here is how it looked as of yesterday :D

Yes, that is my adorable momma posing for the camera! :)

Ahhhhhhh...... Yes, that is a HUGE sigh of relief!!!! :)

Tasting Time!!!

This post is a little late, never the less I wanted to make sure I shared the adventures of our food tasting. So the way it works at our wedding venue is that they do a big food and wine tasting for all the brides and grooms of the whole year. Unfortunately the tasting was on March 10th and our wedding is only a little over a month later, so we had to make our choices pretty quickly. Now making our wine choices was super easy ;) however it was a little harder to make our food choices. I think that we made some Excellent decisions though and I can't wait for everyone to taste them on our big day!!! The venue made this more than just a tasting day though, they had all sorts of vendors there so we could see all of our options. They had bakeries, DJs, Photographers, Linen suppliers etc, however, again since it was only a month before our wedding I of course already had all of my vendors booked.... Just my luck.. That doesn't mean it wasn't a wonderful day though!!! Chris's mom and step dad had yet to see the venue so it was a great opportunity for us to spend some time with them and show them around.

Luckily Chris's step dad is a wonderful photographer and he captured this special day for us, because Chris and I were too lame to even remember to bring a camera! Hahaha 

Here we are in line getting our food samples

There were so many people there tasting with us....

It was also a great day because we were able to see how all of the flowers and greenery were just starting to bloom and grow. I was a little worried because some of the foliage was a little sparse in some areas... Although with all of this rainy weather, I am confident it will be Beautiful for our big day!!! :)

All in all we had a Magical day, my mom, grandma Betty, sister and Chris's mom and step dad all were there to make it even better. It makes me so excited for the big day we have in only..... 11 days!!!!

Yes that is my husband to be.... LOL.

I just Love him!!!!

A little something Sweet...

Candy! Is there anything better than a sweet little piece of candy? The delectable little morsel that melts away on your tongue giving you an oh so sweet sensation... Well what about an entire candy buffet???? Yes Please!!! Wish granted!!! At our little shindig we will be providing our guests with a fabulous candy experience.

Candy buffets have been slowly catching on at weddings or so that is what I am seeing. Often brides use it in place of a wedding cake, now if you know me, you know that would NOT happen at my wedding. Instead my goal is to give my guests an Amazing experience!!! I want them to drink out of swirly straws and kick off their shoes and dance the night away in flip flops, snuggle with each other under the stars and most importantly... I want them to over indulge on delectable sweets :D I am having a 3 tier white wedding cake, caramel cupcake wedding favors and most importantly a white candy buffet!

I have seen candy buffets done in so many ways, they can be playful and silly or elegant and sophisticated. Many brides match their candy colors to their wedding colors, however as you may or may not know my wedding colors are black and white. This doesn't leave much room for color on the candy buffet and for some reason to me black candy sounds a little repulsive. Therefore we will be featuring an all white candy buffet!

This was my inspiration for my candy buffet, but I warn you mine does not look this amazing.

These were some other inspirations

Creating a candy buffet became more of a challenge to create than originally planned... The containers were costly and I had to think about what candy was going in which containers before I purchased them... Also since I will not be setting up the buffet on wedding day, I had to some how convey my vision to my wonderful aunties and wish them luck ;) I am doing my best to make it easier on them though, I made a chart with numbers explaining which candy goes in which jar and I drew an elevation and a plan view of the jars. Hahaha I knew all this design schooling would come in handy some where ;) I would show you this drawing but it isn't very exciting, however to further assist my aunties I set up the entire candy buffet at my momma's house and took pictures. Hahaha I know this probably sounds a little extreme, but I wanted to make sure I had purchased enough candy to fill the jars. Nothing looks worse on a candy buffet than anemic candy jars...

Here are my pictures, I think it turned out great! I cant wait to see it all set up on the big day :D

Shower Time!!! Bows and Cupcakes and Cotton Candy.... Oh my!!

Hello my dear readers, I am so sorry I have abandon you for these past couple of weeks. Things have been very hectic!!! The wedding is now a mere 23 days away, eeek! There is so so soooo much to do still. I hate to tell you though, I wasn't just working on wedding stuff the whole time I have been away. I managed to squeeze in a little bit of fun at my bridal shower on St. Patricks day :) The shower turned out better than I had hoped. Now you are probably wondering why I said the shower was better than I had hoped.... Well I know traditionally a shower is thrown for the bride by other people, but as most of you may know, I am a bit of a control freak. Also I came up with some ideas of things I wanted at my shower so I couldn't very well demand my wonderful family do it while I sat around doing nothing now could I. The most fabulous thing I wanted was a Ribbon Wall!!! I have seen these during my wedding blogging and just fell in love with them and I being the crafty person I am thought they seemed very simple to make. Here are some examples of the ribbon walls I had seen... Take at look and let me know if you fall in love with them like I did ;)

Pretty great huh?

Well I feel like our ribbon wall came out just as great and it hardly took much time at all. My mom ordered 3 colors (Black, Pink and White) of 2.5" ribbon in 10 yd rolls and she got a 10' piece of PVC pipe. We measured the wall that it was going to hang on to make sure we cut the ribbons to the right length, this was the part that took the most time.

Once we had all of the ribbon cut to the same size we began laying the ribbon out on the floor, alternating the colors. This is just how I wanted to do it, but I have seen it where there is no order to the colors and they are just placed randomly, this looks just as cute :)

Here are the ribbons being laid out in our pattern, pay no attention to the black one on the end that was clearly placed out of order... haha :)

Here are the ribbons all laid out

We used double sided permanent tape to secure the ribbons to the PVC pipe, it seemed to work rather well.

After we got it all taped to the PVC pipe it was time to stand her up and see how she did...

And what do you know, it turned out B-E-A-utiful!!! Just as I had hoped it would and it really made an amazing focal point at the shower, I was so happy with it!!! Here are some of the fun pictures from the shower.

Didn't it just turn out perfect???? :) And so Yummy!!!

Published!!!

Hello all, today is an Fun day for Chart and I. Our photographer finally put our engagment shoot on her blog! I know that may sound lame to all of you, but we are pretty excited!!! We selected our photographer, Allyson Magda Photography after seeing her beautiful pictures on my favorite blog Style Me Pretty. Her pictures are just stunning, the way that she plays with the sun in her pictures and her ability to capture all of the important details. Every detail is important to me so this just made me want her even more. Allyson has been featured multiple times on Style Me Pretty, as well as many other magazines. She is an Amazing photographer and we couldnt be more thrilled that she is the one that will be capturing our special day!!! :)

Click on the picture below to view a couple of our pictures on her blog!!!

Only 61 days to go... So Excited!!

Hi friends and family, as you may or may not know, the wedding is now a mere 61 days away!!! Chart and I couldn't be happier!!! I have been working frantically on the finishing touches for the big day, along with some very wonderful friends of mine!! (Who I probably owe a glass of wine... ok, a bottle :) I wanted to up date you with the wedding programs which are now about half way done and the wedding favors. Now Chart said I shouldn't post the pictures of everything on here because then it wont be a surprise for people on the big day, so..... I decided to post them anyways :)

If you would like to be surprised then DON'T scroll down any further!!!

Yay!!! Some of you wanted a sneak peek!!! I am all for surprises, but I myself like a sneak peek now and again.

As some of you may know, we spent quite a bit more on our invitations than we originally planned on spending. This meant that we had to cut costs other places, like our programs and menus. Originally I wanted them all to be done in letter press, just like the invitations. I feel like letter press is such a sophisticated style and gives everything such a classic and elegant look. So as you can probably guess, when we were breaking down costs and we realized the letter press was no longer something we could do I was pretty disappointed. However, I was determined to come up with an alternative wedding program that looked just as exquisite but had a little modern flare mixed with some architectural design... I know, what place does architecture have in wedding programs. But that is what I do all day long, so I squeezed some in there, or at least I think so.

Here is how the programs started out.

I know they look pretty simple but I had some ideas to make them a little more special.. First I wanted to add a black background to give the programs a little more weight and to add a beautiful black border.

Then I had to add in my favorite piece... Ribbon! :)

Here is the final program, I feel like the way the ribbon is wrapped gives that architectural/conceptual element to the design. However the black border gives it that elegant look and keeps it sophisticated. I love how they came out, what do you guys think?

Also just to give you a little clue on what is to come for the wedding favors, I thought I should show you guys what my wonderful friends Gita and Caitlyn helped me put together...

Yes that is a mound of over 200 clear boxes.... What oh what could they be for? Guess you will just have to come to the wedding to find out :)

Post Holiday Festivities

Hello my dear followers, I am so sorry that I have not posted in a while. The holidays caught me a little off guard this year... busy busy busy! I loved every minute of it though!!! The holidays are my favorite time of year, mostly because I get to spend so much time with the Most important people in my life, my family! I think my family spends more time together around the holidays than the average family, we make extra holiday events just so we can! First there is Thanksgiving, then usually that Friday or Saturday following Thanksgiving we celebrate my birthday and my sister's so we can have another party. Then in the next couple of weeks we have cookie day and that night we have a mini Christmas party. Then there is actual Christmas eve which we have a party and the next day we do another Christmas day party. Then, as if we haven't seen each other enough, my little family leaves Christmas day for our family Tahoe skiing trip. This trip is always so much fun, I look forward to it every year because its one of the few times that my mom, dad, sister and I can all spend a whole week together just enjoying each other. This year my holidays were a little different, due to the up coming wedding means that I am blessed to be joining another wonderful family. However this threw a wrench into my traditional holiday festivities. This year for Christmas I went to Chart's family Christmas which was just as wonderful as mine. His sister's family was able to make it so I got to spend time with my new nieces whom I just love! His brother's family was also there as well, it was just a wonderful time, even though I missed my family terribly... Oh well, there is always this year... Hopefully ;)

Now as you can tell I have been so busy with all of these family events and trying to maintain my momentum with the wedding planning as well. We set a goal to get the invitations out the first week in January... We ran into some snags along the way but we got them out! Now it is so exciting to get the response cards in the mail every day, so far we have only received one "no." Hmmmm dunno if that is a bad thing or a good thing ;) Also all of the decor for the wedding has started to come in!! I went home to my parents house this last weekend only to find about 20 large boxes, it took me almost half the day to unpack everything. I ordered glass apothecary containers for the candy buffet, glass lanterns for the bar and stairs, vases for the centerpieces and planter boxes for the aisle. Everything made it in one piece and it all looks so Beautiful!!! I cant wait to see everything come together!

I do have some new projects I am working on as well.... I love the idea of personal touches at the wedding just so my guests know that I am thinking of them. So after pouring through my favorite blog, Style Me Pretty I noticed some unique details brides kept having for their guests. One of which is the shawls just in case the wedding day is a bit cooler than the guests anticipated. Since our wedding is in April I thought the chilly factor might be a definite probability, so this is what I am doing for my guests...

However since my colors are black and white and my goal is to have as elegant of an affair as possible I thought I would put my own little twist on this idea. I purchased about 50 pashmina shawls for guests (obviously they don't all get one, but hopefully everyone doesn't forget a sweater or jacket)

Here is what the shawls look like, what do you think?

Then to add that elegant touch I ordered a silver tray to put them on.

I haven't assembled them all of the way but I just wanted to get an idea of how they were going to look, I personally think they look fabulous on their tray!

I am also having a little sign made up that says " Chilly? Please take a shawl" I just love little touches like this, I hope my guests will too.

Now that that is all figured out I am moving on to another project, the escort cards. I found this picture that I fell in love with and am determined to do at my wedding.

I thought this display was just Beautiful and in black and white it would be Stunning! I told my idea to my wedding coordinator and she pointed out the unfortunate detail that the wedding is going to be outside and the slightest breeze could send my cards a flying... Like I said though, I am determined to have a display like this.

In comes my modification! I found this idea online and figured I can modify it so the blocks are the width of the ribbon I am going to use and I can just place them on top of the ribbon! Problem solved! Now all I have to do is figure out how to use a table saw..... Chart was nervous about that so he enlisted the help of his amazing wood working uncle!!! We sent a sample escort card to uncle Glen about a week ago and he already sent us pictures!!!

How cool do they look?!?!? I am so excited!!! Now since the ribbon we are using is only 2" wide we thought we should scale down the width of the block... Uncle Glen did it right away and already sent new pictures to us!!!

The one on the right is the original which is 3" wide and the one on the left is the 2" one, I think they are going to be perfect!!! Thank you so much Uncle Glen!!!! I don't think we could have done this without you!!! I probably would have been missing some fingers at the end if I had tried ;) I will post more pictures soon once Chart and I get them all painted. Yay everything is coming together Beautifully!!!