And pretty maids all in a row...

Thank you Martha... 

I mentioned before that I was planning on letting my bridesmaids choose their own dresses. This seems to be a new trend lately, but I can't think of why it hasn't been done before!  In my case I have four bridesmaids. All four of them have very different body types; two tall, two short, two skinny twigs, two of average build, one has chest, the other three, well... You get the idea. Very different bodies need very different dresses to look fabulous!

Taste also has to be considered. Even though we're all great friends and have a lot in common, our ideas of fashion are not all necessarily the same. Again, I want something that they love and would feel comfortable wearing for the night.

That brings up the concept of bridesmaids having to buy a dress that they will never w
ear again. It just doesn't seem fair! So, by letting them pick what they want, hopefully they will like it enough to reuse it!

So far , I've been out with two of my lovely ladies to pick out their dresses. First up was the lovely Jenny! We went to Classic Bridal in Buffalo (I wouldn't recommend them now) and Jenny tried on a wide variety of dresses. The poor girl probably tried on as many dresses as I tried on wedding dresses! But at last, there was a definite winner! It was super flattering on Jenny, comfortable and flowy and came in the right color!


The dress is made by B2 is chiffon and will be a color called "celadon". Jenny hasn't ordered it yet, but I can't wait to see her in it again!

Next up was bridesmaid Holly. Like all the rest of my lovely bridal brigade, her schedule is nutty, plus the fact that she lives on the other side of the state. This meant that our dress shopping spree was completed in the last 45 minutes before the shop (New York Bride) closed.  Like with Jenny, Holly tried on a number of dresses, including the one Jenny ended up with and it did not look good on her at all.  Still, Holly was successful and ended up ordering this dress from a bridal shop closer to her that night.

The dress is by Eden Bridals and is satin with a little chiffon poking out the bottom. Holly wasn't so hot about the flower at the bust line, but luckily its a pin so it can be taken off. We matched up a swatch of the color fabric that Jenny will be wearing and found out that Holly's dress color is called "green tea".

So far I think the two dresses will look really nice together, will fit in well with the style of the wedding and most importantly, look great and feel comfortable on the girls!

That leaves Corey and Jamie. We have plans to go shopping for their dresses in February. Check one more thing off the list!

Potential Wedding Location: The Sweet Briar Inn

Because Mike is very consumed with the completion of his thesis, I'm really working hard to narrow down the list so we can have a place picked out by the end of June. (You wouldn't believe how fast places are being snapped up!) Since I was back out in the WNY area, I decided to spend some time checking out our selections out that way.

Bridesmaid Jamie and I took a trip last Friday out to The Sweet Briar Inn, which is just a hop, skip and a jump away from our alma mater, SUNY Geneseo and neither of us had a clue of its existence! One of my mom's co-worker's daughters is getting married there this summer and tipped me off. I'm so glad she did, because this is definately the place I'm most in love with so far! I have to say, I was a little reluctant posting this because I didn't want to give away my little secret. Like all the good places I've found so far, the number of days that they have available for next year is quite limited!

Like the Hillside Inn, this used to be a private estate. Its has the long driveway and in the middle of no where. This place steps it up a bit more though. The inside is all gleaming hardwood floors and earth tones and hundred year old murals on the walls! The place is also a spa. What more could you ask for the day before your wedding!?

The site has lots of wandering space, a nice white tent already on site, and a two beautiful sites to have the actually ceremony!

The first area is a little bluff overlooking the Genesee Valley. I'm not sure if you can see it in the picture, but the stones on the ground are the foundation of a little old chapel that used to be on the grounds. How cute! To get to the bluff, the wedding party walks about 400m down a windy path of cedar trees. What an entrance! Plus, we wouldn't need too much in way of decor because of the natural beauty of the landscape!

Here's Jamie standing in as the bride, because as usual, she was dressed way cuter than me!

The second location is in the yard with the actual ceremony on the steps on the side patio of the house. Again it has a lot of natural/structural beauty and wouldn't need much decoration. See those pretty greens, that's Wisteria, which when in bloom, looks like a dripping purple grapevine and smells amazing!

Other amazing things about this place include the fact that you can get it for the whole weekend to yourself! I can see myself now, the day before the wedding, getting spa treatments and hanging out by the endless pool with my soon to be husband and my best friends. Sigh...

In other words, I need to get my butt in gear, check out some of the lingering possibilities on the list and get a deposit in somewhere, quick!

Beautiful Bridal Brigade!

Its official! All of my lovely ladies have said yes! I will be having four wonderful women standing next to me on such an important day of my life! I feel really lucky that I have a group of girls that all know each other well, as well as Mike and I as a couple very well. They all get along great too, so I know we'll have a blast! I've decided not to have a Maid of Honor because of each of these women have been very important to me at different stages of my life. Here's a quick run down of the Bridal Brigade!

Holly- a slightly older cousin who has known and loved me since before I was born. Its pretty easy to tell from the picture that we're related. We're known for being the "giggly girls" in the family. She's also planning a wedding for the same year as me and I'm her maid of honor! She's a graphic designer so I'm hoping she'll bring her design talent to the team!

Jenny- my best friend since late elementary school. She and I actually both started out liking Mike and I'm the lucky one that ended up with him! She's been there to support me for a long time and somehow hasn't run away yet! No matter how long its been since we have last talked, we always pick up just the same as we did in high school between periods. She has a lot of talents, one of which is lots of experience in a bakery. We may get brave and try to make a cake for the wedding together!
Corey- we were randomly assigned roommates freshman year of college and ended up living together for all four years! Corey was the one who supported me through the few months where Mike and I decided we should try not being together and saw how crazy that made me. She also was a big source of fashion advice, so I'm hoping she help make sure I look good in those pictures I will some day show my children! Corey's the one who lives the farthest away and is deep in the trenches of medical school, so I'm happy that she said yes to help me out!
Jamie- another beloved college roommate! I was actually friends with Jamie's now ex-boyfriend before I was friends with her. When we needed another person for our apartment Junior year, we thought Jamie would be a "safe" choice. If we only knew what we were in for! Jamie's another one with an eye for fashion and style and has such a sweet heart! I can't believe that I have known Jamie the shortest amount of time out of all four ladies- it feels like we're old high school friends! So that's my beautiful crew. I know we'll have lots of fun and they won't complain too much when I recruit them for all the crafty projects I'm planning! Most importantly, I know I can trust all four of these women with anything and I know that they all can get me through anything. They all have proven this time and time again. Not to mention the fact that each one of them can have me rolling on the floor in laughter in no time! So, Thanks girls! You make me so happy!

Tis the season to unleash my craftiness

Firstly, I'd like to congratulate myself and my classmates for surviving our last semester of classes, ever! Only student teaching left and I'm work bound (hopefully)!

That said, it is now time to focus on the holiday season and for me that means lots of fun, crafty projects! I've never had a lot of money for gifts, and I really want to give gifts that will be meaningful to the recipient. So often my solution is so make things! This winter I already completed gifts for my classmates and teachers, lovely little bags of homemade truffles! I even made the gift tags (getting good at paper crafts is another goal of mine). Here are some pictures of the progress.

Each person was to receive three homemade truffles. Ali was a big help with some of them, so there were a couple that I *had* to eat because they were a bit misshapen. The three kinds were chocolate truffle dunked in coconut, mocha truffle covered in white chocolate and dusted with hot chocolate powder and chocolate truffle dunked in hot chocolate powder.


I found these fun paper supplies, stamps and twine as well as some cute little gift bags at Michaels... definitely things that I can use again for crafting or classroom use!


I created some hang tags for the little gift bags :) I wanted a bit og a rustic/homemade look and I think they came out nicely! You can't really see in the picture, but in the bottom corner of each one is a punched out hand print. I thought that was a great little symbol for all of us aspiring signers! I ended up handwriting a little note on the back of each one.



The finished project! 17 gift bags of truffles :)



I have a few other crafty projects in mind, including simple fabric dolls for my cousin's daughters, and a dress for another cousin. There are a couple more, but I don't want to mention them just in case the recipient is reading...

Goodbye Tink.

I was planning to update my blog this weekend about the small goings on of a new semester and my new home #3 at St. Mary's, but after the news I got tonight none of that seems important enough. Tonight, one of my Geneseo classmates, sorority and pledge sister, and friend has passed away. For more than a year now Jacquie, whose friends and family knew her as Tink (far right in the picture), has been battling a form of juvenile Leukemia called A.L.L. She had so much support, from family, friends, sisters and even strangers as far away as England. Her blog, which her parents kept running for her (www.jacquieforall.com) was constantly being filled with words of enouragement. Still she had to go through chemo and a transplant, not once, but twice. I just can't believe that such a beautiful young woman, with so much left to do is gone now. She was going to be a teacher, but got sick in the middle of her student teaching. Its comforting that she is no longer in pain, but still difficult to bear. I had been planning on going up to Roswell to donate platelets to her and was still working up the courage. I tend to pass out after giving blood, and the last time I was on the couch for a whole day afterwards. I'm bothered that I wasn't brave enough to go through that, when upstairs in Roswell she was fighting for her life. Now, I'm determined to go, if not for Jacquie, then in her memory, so that maybe someone else will have a chance to live. If you're in the area, I urge you to look into it too. There is also going to be a bone marrow drive on the 16th of this month at Roswell. Its a quick and painless cheek swab to get into the donor list, and then you will be contacted if you're a match. A little more in the future is the Ride for Roswell in June. I'll be there. Jacquie will be missed by many people, but her stuggle has taught us all a lot. She will not be forgotten.