The Day of Preparations {Wedding Weekend Take 2}

Just kidding there are some pictures of my aunts and cousin from the Bridal Luncheon! Tada –

Aunt Leslie, Kate and Aunt Cindy

Saturday morning things got rolling early, but not the butt crack of dawn early. Those of us staying in the hotel met at the Starbucks attached to it so we could wake up and make sure the below photo happened for the day.

At the Bridal Luncheon the day before the Bridesmaids passed out hoodies they’d gotten and one of their rockstar Mom’s embroidered them all with our names, well, my mom’s said “Mother of the Bride” and they gave me a men’s button down shirt they’d had embroidered as well for me to wear while I got ready (as seen in our latest Wordless Wednesday). Absolutely loved the shirt for getting ready AND my hoodie!

We all got to Old Red Courthouse about 9:00 a.m. to start getting the place ready for the entire wedding and the hair & makeup ladies were arriving shortly after that to get started on all of us ladies! There were reception centerpieces to set out, mantles to be decorated (the reception room had two), place cards to be put in corks, etc.  So very grateful to each and everyone of the ladies and Bitner for their help with everything! I really and truly have the best friends in the world!

 

 

One of the BIG wedding craft projects that took a TON of time was to make these flutter curtains. I’m pretty sure the original idea came from pinterest, but linked me to this blog.  You see I needed sooomething to decorate these beams that would be above the area that Brent and I stand for the wedding.  When I found the flutter curtains I wanted to do them just modified as narrow and long curtains.  Teal, Kate, Rebekah (on the right in picture below), Mandy, Brent and myself together probably cut a couple thousand fabric circles for this project.

Trying to figure out hanging the curtains, but ultimately my dad, Bitner and my brother would do the hanging later that day

I can’t even tell you how many hours went into making those curtains, but a whole heck of a lot of them that is for sure!  I like to think that it really wasn’t that stressful of a day.  We got things put out in good time and eventually got to all hang around in the bridal suite area of Old Red to watch others get their hair and makeup done. My wedding coordinator, Bethany, handled all the other details and if a vendor was late arriving, I had no idea! We may or may not have broken into some of the wine/prosecco/champagne at this point (shhhh – don’t tell the venue that) and the Caramel Eileen cupcakes I had Trailercakes bring extra with the delivery of the groom’s cupcakes so we could partake in a tasty treat before the wedding.

 

And then my flower girl, Meranda, and my ringer bear and nephew, Wesley showed up it meant we were really getting closer to the wedding getting started! The Groom and his Groomsmen and Ushers were arriving and pictures were beginning to happen.  My wedding coordinator had the idea of taking the follow picture since Brent and I were waiting to see each other until the ceremony, and I love how it turned out and that the huge staircase at Old Red made it work.

 

There are more with him turned around and me facing the wall and a couple of me peeking over the railing trying to see him. 🙂 The venue really does create a lot of great pictures and they do still have a courtroom in it which is where the wedding party mainly hungout before the ceremony began and then after while we waited to go back in the ceremony room for pictures.  I just think that Wesley and Meranda were the cutest on my wedding day and here are a couple of pictures of them in the courtroom.

 

And I can’t leave out a picture of my littlest nephew, Easton! He looked absolutely adorable this day!  This picture is technically from after the ceremony, but I wanted to include it now. This is half my blog I can do what I want right? 🙂

My brother, Scott, Easton & me

I’ll leave you with one last picture of me with my ladies before we officially started the evening!

 

The Good, the Messy & the Hilarious {Wedding Weekend Take 1}

For the two of us ladies the whole wedding weekend kind of kicked off Thursday afternoon! Teal rocks and took not only Friday off, but also Thursday to help me with last minute things.  Priorities first though we went that afternoon with my mom and sister, Kate, to get manicures & pedicures for the weekend.  The nail salon loved Kate, Teal and me because we all wanted the exact same colors on our fingers and toes, but it gave us more time to drink our wine since they only had one bottle of the green polish!

Green and gray to match the wedding colors!

Then the four of us were off to run a few errands.  Teal and I stopped by Target for wine and goldfish. 🙂 Y’all, these are essentials in our lives – haha! And then Teal very graciously continued to stick around and helped me do a mock of the cupcake table, pack up all those supplies in bins, get the place cards ready to go and really just get organized for the weekend.  Also, a big shout out to my sister too for all her input and helping me load up our cars that night to head to downtown Dallas Friday afternoon!

This is from Wednesday when my SIL, Tiffany, and littlest nephew, Easton, were over helping me with stuff. My sister & I’s house has been a wedding mess forever. Thanks for putting up with me and the wedding mess!

Friday my dad’s sisters and my one and only girl cousin threw me an awesome bridal luncheon! I’m sad because I don’t think I snapped a picture with just them at the luncheon. 🙁  But should you read this Aunt Cindy, Aunt Leslie and Erin I am truly blessed by the 3 of you and lucky to have such wonderful women in my life I get to call family! It was so fun to just get to hangout with the ladies in my family and  my wedding party!

Mother of the Bride & Bride

Sisters!

LiAR!

 

My House Party dude! 🙂

I was fiiinally able to give my Bridesmaids their presents for being in my wedding.  One of the things I gave them in particular I was trying really hard to either keep it all or aspects of it a secret, but one of them ended up having to teach my mom and me how to make so she knew ALL about it.  My mom sewed clutch purses for all of my Bridesmaids (well and me, my MIL and herself – a lot of purses!) and I don’t really sew so the only contribution I was really able to make was being the fabric cutter.  Lots of hours went into these bad boys but thankfully we started pretty early on them and they were done well in advance of the wedding! I think they’re sooo cuute!  Thank you to my mom for generously giving up all of that time to work on these for me amongst other things!

One of the other things I got them and was really excited about was that OPI in the spring, I think, came out with a Holland collection (my future last name), so I was able to find a good deal on a set of the Holland collection nail polishes. Perfect timing, OPI!

Anyway, after that we all kind of went in separate directions until the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner that night. Brent and I both grew up in Dallas, but didn’t know each other so pretty much the whole weekend of events was in Dallas proper which seemed appropriate with both of us being born (same hospital just a couple years apart) and raised here.  The wedding venue had some fabulous views of the Dallas skyline, and my in-laws also picked out a wonderful rehearsal dinner venue with just as awesome views!

Bride & Father of the Bride ready to rehearse!

with my in-laws to be (the next day)

The rehearsal dinner was full of good food, lots of laughs and just fun time with family and close friends.  Brent & I are truly blessed by the not only amazing family we have but the true friends in our lives!  After dinner a lot of us headed to the hotel bar to have more time to just hangout before we called it a night.  Eventually Brent left to head to his house for the night  and most of the wedding party was staying at the hotel so when we were ready to call it a night we just went upstairs.  And let’s end this Friday night on a funny note – when Kate, Teal and I got to our floor and off the elevator we look to our left and what do we see?  Two men in their boxer briefs wrestling. Haha.

**Disclaimer: There are SO many people that graciously gave of their time and helped me out throughout the last year of my life if you weren’t specifically mentioned in this post please know that doesn’t mean I forgot about you or by any means am not completely indebted to you for your time you shared with me.**

Tasty Tuesday: Bridal Shower Foods

You might have seen yesterday, that this weekend was Beth’s bridal shower thrown by the bridesmaids and since I’m a bridesmaid (highly doubt you would have missed that by now) I had a job to do. I volunteered to do the dessert part of our spread.

Kate (Beth’s sister) had us all pick what we wanted to do so I chose Cake balls and Oreo cookie balls. I’m on Pinterest so I totally thought it would be doable. I am going to give you the recipes and the how to make said cake balls, and even a few pointers of what they do when they completely fail at 10pm the night before the shower and a race you have to wake up at 5 o’clock to get to!

Kate is also blogging today about the other shower snacks! You can find that information over on her blog! You should totally check it out for any future snacking you would like to partake in and/or some other awesome recipes!

Oreo Cake Balls

1 package of oreos
1 8 oz package of cream cheese softened
White melting chocolate (for your sanity DO NOT buy this kind )
You really should probably buy this kind instead (trust me!)

How to:

Crush the Oreos in a blender, or if you are angry at the world you could pound them with a hammer. Just make sure they are as small as you can get it.

Mix in the entire package of cream cheese. It will end up being a ball of cookie mush.

Ball the mixture into the size you would like and then place in the refrigerator. I would recommend freezing them over night because when they are not hard enough they fall through the sticks and it is a holy annoying mess. You could also just never put them on sticks and life might be easier.

So you might guess, the next step is to place them on sticks and dip them in the melting chocolate and you are done.

Hint: Keep refrigerated until you are ready to serve if they are on sticks they won’t stay!

Cakeballs

Cake Mix
Icing
Melting chocolate (again use the candy melts not the other one)

How to:

Bake the cake using the regular directions. Once baked, let cool and crumble the cake into the smallest pieces that you can.

Mix in the icing- the original way I saw this was to use the entire jar of icing, I think this was part of the reason that these bad boys didn’t work, sooooo in the future I will probably use about half so that they are not as moist (eww I hate that word)!

Once mixed, ball the cake and freeze. Once frozen dip in the melted chocolate and you are done!

Hint: too much icing in the mix, not freezing and only refrigerating, and using the wrong chocolate will give you a holy mess that looks much like the picture! While my cake balls failed miserably, I did figure out how to fix them by using the hints above.

If all else fails you could always get your husband on the phone with every Starbucks that will wait for you to get there before they close and ask them for all their cake balls. Then you can buy melting chocolate and cover them in whatever color you need. See! No one would ever know!

I figured I would include some extra pics of the shower just because it was so cute! Beth also has a super crafty Sister in law (She blogs too- Shocking, I know) Tiffany made tons of cute decoration pieces and snacks as well!

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So there you have it! The showering aspect of our weekend! 🙂  Please be advised we are not claiming cake balls are healthy….we are sharing the recipe and parts of our lives right now with you. Ha. Tomorrow we’ll finally let you  know ALLLL about Tour des Fleurs! 🙂

Oh, and additionally it should be noted that Teal’s Oreo cakeballs were WAY BETTER than Starbucks! Sorry Starbucks! We know we are already kind of a traitor to you with our Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf obsession! Only 10 more days until a CBTL opens in Dallas! 🙂  Ok, that’s all from us for real now.

Racing & Showering!

Yes, our weekend included a little bit of both of those things! 🙂  Our race this weekend took us to the Dallas Arboretum where there is currently a Chihuly exhibit, so we got to see a few of his installations there.

Us with our friend Bitner waiting around for the 10K part of Tour des Fleurs to start.

After the race we all rushed back to Beth’s house to get showered and cleaned up for a wedding shower hosted by the Bridesmaids.  Just one of the MANY cute decorations at the shower.

We clean up nice don’t we?? 🙂

How was your weekend? Did you race? Get in a training run? Or just take it easy?

6.2 Things Friday

1. Two weeks from today we leave for Florida for the Princess Half.  Tired of this countdown yet? 🙂

2. Beth did her first ever tempo run on the treadmill Wednesday night. Check it out:

3.  Unfortunately Teal isn’t going to be able to do the Hot Chocolate Run on Saturday. 🙁

4. Because she’ll be busy taking her certification test for counseling!  Yah, another big thing with grad school that will be out of the way!

5.  Disneyland Half – we are officially REGISTERED!  Coast to Coast medal we are coming for you!

(source)

6.1 Last night Teal participated in her first ever social run at Luke’s Locker!  Got in 4 miles with the group and can’t wait to go again!

6.2 Last but NOT least! Beth finalized all of her Bridesmaids by asking her longest friend in life this past weekend over dinner!  They’ve known each other since they were 6 years old.

What was a highlight to your week – running or non-running related?