The First Wedding Decision We Made

When Mr. Manatee and I first started talking about we wanted for our wedding, I had a few reasonably clear ideas, but a lot of fuzzy desires too. Manatee was adamant about only two things.

1. That we get married in a church.
2. That there be an open bar! 

I thought these were awesome terms, so we began planning! Our first priority when it came to decisions, like most other couples, was for our venue. The venue pretty much sets the tone for the whole wedding, and I feel its the detail all other details are planned around.

Living in Arlington and Mansfield most of my conscious life, I'd occasionally drive past a huge house with a beautiful courtyard garden and twinkling lights. I always thought it looked like something out of a movie.  One day I drove past and realized it was a restaurant and hotel, with a banner across the front advertising brunch. I filed it away in my brain and commented wistfully to whoever was in the car with me at the time that I was going to stay there one day. Soon after we got engaged, I drove past it again and a bell rang in my head. I circled it several times, checking it out. They probably thought I was casing the place. Not too long after, during a venue search on theknot.com, I spotted it! I had no idea it hosted weddings! I was on this idea like white on rice, and soon enough I was exchanging emails with the wedding coordinator. I was immediately smitten. The Sanford House was reasonably priced, had rooms for our guests (although only 12) and was unbelievably beautiful.

Images via The Blooming Bride, Photo by Bella Pop Photography

For some reason, a few days before putting a deposit down, I started getting cold feet. Had I looked at enough places? Was I making the right decision? Manatee didn't have any clear ideas about what he wanted for reception space, but when we went to visit it, he loved it too. The Sanford House was slightly above our price range, but at that point we didnt have much of an idea about budget. They did, however, have amazing per-person prices on Manatee's open-bar demand. The courtyard held up to 250 people, was less than a mile away from our University, and it was gorgeous! Our reception would be outside, and because of our June 1st wedding date, we were concerned. However, the courtyard was almost completely shaded due to all the huge trees surrounding it. The cons were as follows:

1. An expensive rain plan ($1000 dollars for a tent!) We also weren't in love with the tent when we saw it set up for another wedding.
2. We had to use their caterer (that we hadnt tried yet)
3. Slightly above price range
4. Outdoors in potentially sweltering weather

 I floundered for a little while, and checked out a few other options.

Was it love at first sight for your venue? Did you end up checking a few others before taking the plunge?

We're On a Boat!

We decided Summer 2012 that we better start taking some pictures. I hadn't lost the few pounds I'd wanted at that point, but I didn't see it falling off anytime in the next few months. A friend of mine from high school is incredibly talented with a camera, and was starting her own wedding photography business, so we took her up on her offer to shoot us! Because Lake Grapevine is beautiful and Mr. Manatee's family has a boat there, we decided it would be a fun and unique place to shoot. I was also inspired by adorable (and lets face it, super fratty) pictures such as these.

Photo credit: Krystyn Hogan

So off we went to Grapevine Lake. I had been stressing about what to wear, besides our Sperrys (of course), but my mom came through at the last second and pull the perfect breezy white linen top out of her closet. I got a bit cheesy with an anchor necklace, but it doesn't show up in any of the pictures. I feel like our pictures were perfectly on theme with our inspiration, and I couldnt be happier!
Here's some of our favorites. All photos by Natalie Sales Photography.

My personal favorite of the favorites.

Did you take care to involve an important part of your lives in your engagement shoot?

In Which Dates are Saved

Being that neither of our long-distance families wipe their fannies with dollar bills, we felt news of our Texas nuptials should be spread rather quickly if anyone we liked was going to show up. Well, semi-quickly, anyway. We were engaged in October of 2011, and around June of 2012 we decided to get our act together and get something solid in the mail. Fortunately, a friend from high school is exceptionally gifted with a DSLR, and was willing to photograph us!

We found the Save the Date design on Etsy.com, a godsend to the wedding world. It was $15 for the design from Sweet Azalea Boutique, and she was amazing! I also loved the idea of stickers to close the envelopes. Word to the wise, Paper Source envelopes have a point that goes all the way to the bottom of the envelope, which was not great for the little stickers I had made by Posh Girl Boutique. I decided not to stress and just stick them on there anyway. Surprisingly, my dad and brother had very strong opinions about sticker placement, so I just let them battle it out until they came to a decision.

Next was what my grandmother praised as an 'early act of compromise', or, as I see it, as example of how we can rarely agree on anything. We could neither decide on which picture OR what color envelopes to use. I wanted to go with an elegant charcoal gray, but Manatee and the Paper Source lady were ganging up on me that gray was Simply Too Dark For A Summer Wedding.

Because Mr. Man so rarely has any opinion on wedding stuff, and I rarely ever completely give in to anyone else's idea - we got half "salmon" and half gray, and I bought contrasting mounting paper to include both colors in each.The picture he liked went in the salmon envelope, and the picture I liked went into the gray. And the compliments for our 'creativity' came pouring in, yay!

After that it was pretty simple. I went to Kinkos, a peppy, unfairly gorgeous and nice associate summarized the cardstock options, offered her professional opinion, printed them out and cut them all in about 5 minutes. The whole thing cost me around $25 dollars. I could have tediously cut them myself, but I wasn't about to mess it up just to save $8. I used some glue dots from Hobby lobby ($3) to stick all the layers together. Manatee used an episode of Terra Nova (RIP) to be my designated envelope licker and stamp/label sticker after my mom and I finished our assembly line.

Now, the only real problem I was gnashing my teeth over were these stupid labels. After finding a watercolor background and ferreting out addresses from relatives, I presented my labels and a flash drive to a frighteningly large man at Kinkos. And he just looks at me like some sort of Kinkos bouncer and says 'nope." Despite my pleas, he says that he absolutely will not print in color on these labels or any other labels. Period. Of course I was immediately upset. He said something involving heat and transfer whatever whatever and I've stopped listening because I'm imagining every homemade jar of honey etc on any blog ever with a beautiful color label.
Of course I should have just let it go, but instead I went home to whine about it and stomp around and seriously consider buying a household printer just to do the damn thing. I even call the next day, thinkin' I'm sneaky, hoping to get that super perky, helpful girl from my previous visit on the line. But apparently she was off that day too, because Kinkos Bouncer was on to me immediately.  
"Ma'am, I told you yesterday I cannot print color on your labels."  Busted.
After this, I threw up my hands in despair and printed off my labels at the university. In black and white. Whatever.
And of course, after all this mess I found that I had sent out a STD with a family friend's wife as Kim instead of Pam. Sigh.
Anyway! Did you run into any 'roadblocks' on the road to stationary perfection?

On Picking A Date

When picking our date, we first discussed seasons. In Texas, I'd like to think people do their best to not plan an outdoor wedding in the depths of July or August. Its just not nice. When temperatures easily reach 105-110 degrees between 2pm and 4pm, it simply doesn't make sense. Because I already had somewhat of an idea about a venue in that the reception would ideally be outside, we had to take that into account. This left us with Spring or late Fall.

Image via The Southern Mommy Chronicles

We agreed that for our purposes, Spring seemed to be the best option. Because we became engaged in October, Spring 2012 was obviously too soon. As we talked a little more about it between ourselves and our parents, it became clear that at least one of us had to graduate before we could feel good about us getting married, and it sure wasn't going to be me. I still had plenty of nursing school related struggles to wade through, and Clayton was slated to graduate Spring 2013. At our school, graduations are held the first or second weekend in May, but its impossible to tell which weekend your major will graduate on. Because of this, the 4th and the 11th were out. We figured we might as well play it safe and not plan for the 18th just in case, even though it was a 3 day weekend in Canada. We originally settled on May 25th. However, it was soon pointed out to us that May 25th falls on Labor Day weekend, and a lot of people have their own plans, usually boat related and not involving a church. This lead us to June 1st, which was dangerously close to summer in Texas.

I was pleased to find that the first day of summer is June 21st, 2013, which technically means our date is still in the Spring! I also found this nifty graph for Arlington, Texas that specifically shows June 1st ain't too shabby for outside.

Image via WeatherSpark

 June 1st is also my wonderful father's birthday, but he was quick to promise us that he didn't mind. We'll have to have a special toast for him at the wedding! I did have a silly little cry when it dawned on me that he'll be giving away his daughter instead of getting gifts on his birthday, but when I told him that, he said I was being dumb. Humph. Dads.

Us at the gun range: how Texan of us Canadians!

The One Where I Say Yes

To give you a bit of a timeline, Clay proposed in October of 2011. After the first time around, he and I had talked about having a private proposal; as loudmouthed and outgoing as I am with friends and family, the idea of being proposed to in public again was still terrifying.  Even though I knew it was coming soon, he still completely surprised me by proposing in our apartment while I was cooking dinner. I was blabbing away as usual, when he called from the living room that he thought our newly adopted kitten wasn't feeling well. I didn't think much of it when he plopped the cat into my arms and turned to presumably go clean up a mess. I looked down at our kitty with concern. He didn't look sick to me, but he was was obviously distracted by something, and kept pawing at his neck. When I went to see what he was fidgeting with, I saw Clay had tied the ring onto his collar! I looked down to find Clay hadn't gone far, and was looking down at me expectantly from a few feet away. He was so nervous he forget to get down on one knee, which we laughed about. He got down so quick he had a bruise on his knee! He started saying some more gooey things about me, but I was so happy I just pulled him up from his knee and hugged him like a crazy person. I was so excited it took me a minute to even say yes! Things got dangerous when he tried to remove the ring from around the collar...he was so nervous it flung off and almost landed in the garbage disposal. We had a long laugh about it, and he put it safely on my finger while I recovered from my near heart-attack!

Partner in crime!

And speaking of the ring, he picked the 'right one'! Up until the moment of the proposal, I'd been racking my brain wondering which one I hoped it would be. When I saw it dangling from Cade's neck, I felt relief wash over me. They say when you can't make a decision, flip a coin. While it's still in the air, you'll know which you should choose because while it's still flipping, you'll find yourself wishing for one or the other. It was just like that with this!
Without further ado, here's the ring he asked me to marry him with!

We immediately headed over to my parents house to share the news! I should have slapped some makeup on, because this picture was on Facebook almost immediately after my mom took it! Ah! I still love how happy we look.

Was your proposal still a surprise despite 'witnessing' the ring?

P.S, in case anyone is interested, here's my chubby owl-cat all grown up, laying around like usual.

Pre-Reqs to "Yes!"

On to the sparkly stuff!

Now as you may have read in my pre-proposal post, fiance initially proposed lacking two very important things by American standards,

1. Permission from my parents
2. Shiny marriage bribery (you know, to convince us pretty ladies to give up the 'single ladies' dance) 

Anyway, after that first initial oops, my knight in shining armor circled around for a second charge prepared! He liked to tease me all throughout the year that followed by ducking in to my childhood home to 'help move furniture' or 'just to check in'. He practically drove me crazy with curiosity several times. Of course, my parents adore him as much as I do, and he needn't have been worried about their blessing. When he finally did ask, I called my mother practically beside myself with happiness. She is completely amazing, because she made sure to remember every detail of his nervous request and relayed it to me later that night!

When it came to the ring, he did the perfect thing. I was torn between wanting it to be a complete surprise, and wanting to pick it myself. Lets face it, I had been creeping the Zales website for months now, even going as far as to put bookmarks titled 'HINT" on his desktop. I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted....or so I thought. Mr. Manatee decided one day we should just 'drop by' Zales (in a completely casual voice) during a normal trip to the mall, and I did my best to keep my shit together. The sales lady sat me in front of a long, eye-popping case of diamond rings and asked me to pick a few to try on. Luckily for fiance, I've never been a fan of huge, Texas sized diamond monsters, the kind all my single friends like to Pin on Pinterest. I wanted something simple, white gold, and didnt 'stick up' too high on my finger (is there a term for that?). Since I also have 'piano fingers', which is a nice term for 'big hands', I also wanted something with a slightly thicker band. When I said 'nothing over a carat', the lady looked at me like I had two heads. Nevertheless. Despite my diamond-high, I eventually narrowed it down to three contenders.

 I liked the three stone because, well, that's what my mother had. It was classic and traditional, but it wasn't exactly making my heart stop. The round cut (top left) had been a favorite for a while, and it was actually the first to show up on the desktop. The cushion cut ring is not the exact ring they had at Zales, as I was never actually able to find it on the website. The one pictured is probably a little prettier/bigger than the one I tried on in the store. He requested I pick 3 for the most suspense, but in my mind it was a tie between the round and the cushion cut. The cushion cut was obviously gorgeous and trendy, but I couldn't stop thinking about the uniqueness of the round cut. At this point the sales lady got kind of bitchy and kept asking me to pick one already, obviously missing the point of the exercise. Manatee asked me to make myself scarce, and I flounced out of there unable to believe it was actually happening. After wandering around Forever 21 for twenty minutes so anxious I couldn't even find anything I liked (a first), he called to say it was all done. And there he was waiting for me outside the store, holding that beautiful grey bag and I'm looking at it like....

And I'm on cloud 9 all the way home because it's actually happening, until he starts teasing me that he actually just bought a really nice watch for his dad. This sends me into such a state of despair that he's serious that he has to show me a little peek of the outside of the little square box before I am calm. I had to patiently (yeah right) wait another week to find out what was inside that box, but it was so worth it!

Which one is your favorite? Did you help pick your ring?