Meet Tommy!

TOMMY!!! I love me some Tommy. Tommy and his beautiful wife, Elizabeth, actually live in the house next door to Jasons parents and I will admit we are over there often :) Tommy is dad to a gorgeous little girl named Allison and has a little boy on the way as we speak. I always joke about Tommy to Jason and calling him his man-crush behind their backs. One of my favorite times with Tommy and Elizabeth was when I set up my karaoke equipment in their rec room and we just blasted bad karaoke all night. So fun :)

I will admit that Jason wasn't the best at actually "asking" his buddies to be a part of the wedding. It was like pulling teeth, I tell you. But of all of them finding out they were to be a groomsmen, Tommys story if my favorite. For the past several years, I have DJed for Tommys employee appreciation party and, get this, it is on a charter fishing boat out of Norfolk! How freaking fun!?!?! Well of course Jason came along to "help" me. Anyway...we were all standing there and I was listening to them chit chat and watching out for dolphins and Tommy looked straight at Jason and said..."So am I in the wedding or what?" hahaha. Thats what you have to love about Tommy. Straight and too the point with a sense of humor on the side. I wouldnt change him for anything!

Tommy actually still tells me the story on how Jason came over one day and talked about this "cute new girl at Fords Colony". Tommy still takes credit for our being together because he told Jason to go for it...i let him have it :)



Tommy and Elizabeth never miss our Halloween Blow Outs!



HAHAHAHAHA. He never fails to make me laugh.



Old pic of the two of them....hahaha. I would love to know what Jason is doing.



Meet Karen!

Karen. Karen. Karen. This girl is just amazing. I love her to PIECES. I met her through Jason because they had been friends for awhile and when we met, we just clicked. We have been there for eachother through some good and some bad. Whatever the occasion, we always make eachother laugh and seem to have a nack for reading eachothers thoughts. (We can actually finish eachothers sentences....how cute) What is great is during our nights of wine and gabfests...we have shared heartaches and hopes and dreams. She heard me talk about how much i wanted to marry Jason even after a few months of dating and I listened as she found her way to the man of her dreams, who she is ALSO marrying this summer....how perfect is that?!? To steal her words, its been wonderful being her friend and Im so grateful to be apart of her ever after as she is in mine. <3 I never thought I would find a best friend in her as quickly as i did, but it was unavoidable. We are friend soul mates and i wouldnt trade her for the world <3

Our first pic together at the infamous Foxfields

You know I had to love her to take her to a Gwen Stefani concert....I mean really.

I LOVE this picture of Karen and Jason...makes me laugh...

Love you so much Karen...Im so excited that we will be standing next to eachother in our weddings :)

{The Inspiration Behind} Our Invitations

Where to begin? First off, I knew I wanted me and Jason's invitations to be fun and set the tone for our wedding. Second, I knew I wanted to design and make them myself. I have always had a soft spot for DIY paper goods even if I was never really good at the DIY thing. Hoping my inner-girl scout would come out again, I started from scratch. No templates, NOTHING. Not smart. I must have gone through 5 different designs.....This is one of the ones that got rejected -->




 I kept going back and forth and kinda of throwing around the idea of giving up and just buying some invitations online. I even had some broad quote out invitations for her to make and I COULDNT BELIEVE IT. Seriously. The prices on some of this stuff is mind blowing. Anyway....I did more searching and hunting for ideas and then I came across some seriously fun invites on one of my fav wedding blogs, Hi-Fi Weddings, and it hit me. RECORDS. I wanted to incorporate vinyl records somehow. The ones I looked at used cds and just put stickers on em but no! I wanted real freakin' vinyl! So off i went and started designing what would become our wedding invitations....

I couldnt love anything more. Im so proud of them. Shout out to Gwen and Peggy for helping me laminate the record sleeves, stuff and address the envelopes. They were a big help to me!

PS. I know that Jason and I have gotten slack for not registering BUT there is a method to our madness. Check out the back of the invitations for our "registry"....Just in case you missed it :)



Wedding. Wedding. Wedding. House. House. House. Work. Work. Work.

…..not necessarily in that order :) My life lately has been all of the following:



1. busy

2. motivating

3. busy

4. EXCITING

5. busy

6. exhausting

7. busy

8. very….very….FUN



Between the wedding and building our house, needless to say we are going full throttle. I honestly wouldn’t change a thing though mainly because I really feel Jason and I have a system with all of this, or we kinda feel like we do. One of the best things I have found to help me are LISTS. Yep. The over-prepping, micro-managed lists that I never thought I would do but I have had TONS of them!! So here is a little sneak peak on whats going on!



WEDDING STUFF TO DO! – Not bad for less than three months away, if I do say so myself.
Wedding Baskets for out-of-towners. Have list. Need to buy and assemble.

Baskets for bathrooms at the marina.

Props for the photobooth.

Pick up flags from Nags Head Rental Company.

Buy materials for making boutonnieres.

Buy marriage license (!!!)

Finalize Playlist for pre-ceremony and reception.

Edit mix for Ceremony.

Final dress fitting.

Buy Jason new sandals for ceremony…and subsequently hide them so he can’t mess them up.

Get step stool and decorate for ceremony (you think im kidding…)



HOUSE STUFF TO DO!
Painting to be finished this week.

Final trim out with light switches, HVAC vents, etc.

Pick out ceiling fans and pendant lights for kitchen.

Carpet and laminate installed.

Toilets, sinks and vanities set.

Water, sewer and power connected.

Final grading.

C.O. INSPECTION!!!

MOVE IN!!!

Oh. And…….START PACKING. Hahaha.

{The Inspiration Behind} Our Ceremomy and Programs

Ill be honest. I am having a freakin' blast planning this wedding. There is something to be said for having a long engagement, no lie. Hats off to those who plan in short timeframes.


No matter how fun it is to plan the reception, we have not lost track of why we are doing this in the first place. When planning how our ceremony was going to go, Jason and I knew we wanted three things....short, intimate and fun. This was the beginning of our marriage and lives together! So I started brainstorming on how to make the short ceremony reflect the best of us, individually and as a couple. I did research on how to break down ceremonies and the best way to lay them out. Thankfully my sister Shelly had given me a few books from when she was planning her wedding and they helped out a ton. As much as this may not give enough credit to themeaning of the ceremony but it is a performance in a way. You have to make sure it flows and keeps the "audiences" attention and most of all tells the story. We wanted our story to relate express us. Give our family and friends an inside view into our relationship and whyit is we love eachother. Honestly you can never truly know what goes on behind closed doors of any relationship but hopefully our ceremony will give a peak on how we communicate and love eachother. I dont want to give out too much of the actual ceremony and be a spoiler so I will give some fun hints for the atmosphere we are picturing.......

• Pinwheel Boutineeres
• Bali wedding flags
• Ribbons, Ribbons, Ribbons!!
• Mousse in wedding attire. Nuff' said.
• The entire bridal party in a sea of blue..might be my favorite detail so far
• James River in the background.
• BOATS and more BOATS!
• Toes in the sand.
• Love in the air!
• Tying the "knot"...wink! wink!

How FUN is this!? Doesnt it make you think of a DMB or Jimmy Buffet concert? <3 it.



{The Inspiration Behind} Our Save The Date postcard

We FINALLY sent our save the dates this past week! YAY! Wanna know a little secret? I FRIGGIN LOVE THEM. 

My dad and I made these together and let me tell you, I have never laughed so hard. We took the movie poster from "Muscle Beach Party" and photoshopped our families heads on the characters. That bearded man holding the lady at the top? Thats my dad and mom. The two ladies holding up the guy at the top? Jasons mom, Peggy, and Gwen holding up Jasons dad, Mark. The girl balancing the beach ball on the side? Sarah. The girl inside that beach ball? Shelly. The couple at the bottom? Me and Jason. OH and the dog on the surfboard? MOUSSE MAN. I mean really. I cant help but giggle at the thing. 

Another cool little feature? The stamps! (not seen here) I took one of our engagement pictures by the lovely miss ashley and went to zazzle and made stamps. yeah. its amazing the things you can do nowadays. 

To be honest the idea was just a brainchild between my dad and I. I wanted them to look like a concert poster at first but then quickly changed my mind! Im so happy I did! 

Oh and if this is the first time stopping by the blog, welcome! I will be updating with wedding details, house details, our little adventures and maybe the few annoying stories about our dog. Sorry we are just those kinda people that like to talk about our dog :) I hope you start checking in and following! 

(if you havent watched the beach party movies from the early sixties you are missing out...i mean. seriously. they are so crazy)  

Wedding Inspiration

I have seen these profiled here and there throughout blogland so i decided to make one for Jason and mines wedding because i have a SERIOUS amount of pics that i have copied and pasted into my computer to keep my creative juices flowing for the wedding. Looking through all those pictures, I realized that I have had a ton of ideas for this wedding and only have a few stuck around. Which made me realize thatI have learned a few fun things over the past 8 months of being engaged (!!!) so i though i would share them:

1) With long engagements, you tend to change your mind alot with the miles and miles of information at your fingertips for wedding planning. Def. not a bad thing because you are just throwing your ideas around at first. When we first started planning I had a image in my head of the wedding. The image is the same now except i have more colors (im not a matchy-matchy kinda person and well, Jason? He is lucky if he gets a shirt on without holes in them so he could care less) and we are just doing what we want without wondering if people will "get it".

2) One of the first pieces of advice my Mom told me when we first got engaged was "ITS YOUR WEDDING. Dont try and make anyone happy but you and Jason. Do what you want and everyone will love it." Ive heard this advice before and Ive read about it in magazines and blogs and it hasnt really sunk in until recently. Jason and I wanted this wedding to be a party. Be FUN. Reflect both of us, not only individually but as a couple. So that is our mantra for the whole thing. We are doing it because we want to and we think the whole thing is gonna be a blast.

3) family, family, family. When it comes down to it? That is what is ALL about. Jason and I consider our friends a part of our family too so its all the same. When doing our guest list we carefully considered who we knew would be a part of our lives for a long, loooooong time. When we were done with it and looked over the list, i realized that every name i saw typed out was our family and who we wanted to experience the coolest day of our lives with. (Jason looked at it and said "looks like a kick ass party to me!") The most important thing isnt the colors of the dresses or what kind of "cake" we are gonna have but its about celebrating the choice that Jason and I made to spend our lives together. That is pretty awesome. Who better to surround you than family?

4) MUSIC. Seriously. The playlist is hard. I was going to include in the RSVP a section to where all of our guests can put down a song or two that they wanted to hear but I quickley vetoed that once i realized that just between Jason and I, we have almost 250 songs on our playlist. Its only October! We have many more months of hearing songs and going "OH OH! I LOVE THAT SONG!" or Jason texting me after a few bud lights telling me to add Children of the Sun to the list. So I have decided what the hardest part of this entire wedding is going to cutting down the playlist. (Either that or have a 10 hour reception....hmmm.)

5) I have learned that being engaged is just awesome. I love everytime someone asks me to see my ring and tell the story behind it. I love annoying Jason with how many days until our wedding (232). Most of all i love thinking about the feeling i will have once i can actually call him my husband. Its so cool. <3

have a GREAT WEEKEND!!!!!!!

xoxo

PEARL

Rewind button is where?

WOW. I know that time is going by too quick when I got this email from my mom this afternoon:

"I know you have been busy, busy but your blog is void of a September entry!! I look forward to checking it out occasionally to see what's up! LOVE YOU, MOB"

haha i love it. I just smiled when i got it.

To be honest it has been a little busy! Jason and I got our house plans finalized and sent off to the engineers, DJing is keeping me spinning in circles and wedding details are flooding my mind. Add some drama with my insurance company and sprinkle in the fact that Jason and I seem to want to keep planning every single day out in advance and you have the past two months! haha! We are lucky to be busy though so we are trying to keep on keeping on. We should be clearing for our house in the next couple of weeks so we are beside ourselves. I kind of want to start packing already.... :)

Wedding update? Im working on the invitations at the moment. (The save-the-dates have been done but delayed with the printing so they will be sent by the end of the month...FYI) The invitations are going to be one of my favorite details, I will be honest. Next up? Ordering the alter decorations. I couldn't see Jason and I having the typical "altar".  So Jasons mom, Peggy, and I came across these...

HOW AWESOME ARE THESE?!?!?! Dont worry...this wasnt a complete spoiler. I have a few things I want to do to them to make them our own. I just think they will look really amazing down at the marina waving in the wind....makes me excited!!!

So right now it seems to be the details Im focusing on...the ceremony music (super hard to decide btw) and programs are on my mind. Once i have another meeting with Kingsmill, the reception will be the focus again. This whole thing is just a blast. I love it. and I CANT WAIT to marry Jason. The wedding part is just the icing on the rice krispy cake.

Bouquets and Ribbons!

I have had flowers on my mind the past few weeks. I realized that I never have had a favorite flower. I like different flowers for different occasions. Daisies have always had a fun place in my heart as well as lilies. Honeysuckle reminds me of my Mabeccas house so it oozes memories of my childhood. So when thoughts of my bridal bouquet flashed in and out of my mind, they were always fuzzy. I didnt have a clear thought on what I wanted it to look like.

Now I have flooded myself in blogland looking for ideas. The wedding magazines seem to portray the same old bouquets. I have seen some FUN ideas. Like this one! And this one too! They arent really my style but it was fun to see something different. Then I came across this today....

I just LOVE the ribbons! I can picture doing something like this. I can see having my Maid/Matrons/Bridesmaids have something similar as well. It is so fun and feminine. As far as the flowers that I will be doing? Not sure yet. Plenty of time for that though :)

While checking this site out, I saw this too!

I thought this was very clever how they put the ribbons on the chairs like that. Time consuming but cost effective and ADORABLE. Fun stuff.

On a side note...this summer is flying by. May will be here before we even know it! Happy Thursday!

xoxoxo

Pearl

BURSTING WITH IDEAS!!!

I'm so in love with planning this wedding. Every part of it is so fun!! I came across this online and immediately got the image of what our invitations are going to look like....

Just a little sneak peak bc Im too excited to give the whole image away. I just cant wait! We got back a prototype of our save the dates and they are just as fun. I love how both of our personalities are coming out in this wedding..very fun. The save-the-dates are my favorite detail so far and we have a ton of details!! <3

xoxoxo

Pearl

Wedding blah blah! :)

Its set! Ready to GO!! May 15th is going to be when I try on my dress. I say dress singular bc I only have one in mind. Thats it. Even if it looks horrible Im wearing it bc its so beautiful. I just cant wait. It is gonna be a total girls day out. My mom, Jasons mom Peggy, sisters Sarah, Shelly and Gwen, my Aunt Carla, and MY NIECE CLAIRE are coming!! SHELLY AND CLAIRE ARE FLYING IN FROM MICHIGAN FOR THE FITTING!!! Im beside myself. It will be such an awesome weekend.

I admit I feel i need to pinch myself sometimes. Since we got engaged everything with the wedding seems to come out better than I expected.We are very lucky to have such amazing people around us.  I know that without them, none of this would have been possible. I kinda wanted to elope to be honest but I would not trade in any of it now. Planning a wedding so far has just been amazing. Not because of the stuff we are looking at or what kinda food we are picking out, its the family. Thats all it boils down to. My mom is fitting right into her Mother of the Bride role, being supportive and giving her advice at the right times. I think Im going to make up a role of Aunt of Honor bc my Aunt Carla is being so great and I want her to be a part of it all with everything! My sisters are just being as amazing as they always are. Shelly being so far away can be hard but we make a pretty good effort of staying in touch with the plans :) My cousin Sam just got engaged and she still manages to get excited about our wedding...i know its hard when she is SO excited about hers. I cant wait till she starts her planning...she always has SUCH cute ideas. What I love the most???????????? The wedding is still a year away and bc of all of these ladies, the plans are just falling in place. We can just sit back and enjoy all of the fun of planning a wedding!

Think of happy thoughts!

This is what I feel like doing.....

Im at work and completly over this day already!!!! We are remodeling our offices and the fun has now migrated over to my work area. Dont get me wrong! I love me some paint fumes and the chance to re-arrange but adding all this PLUS angry homeowners coming in confused about re-newing their gate cards kinda gets my heart rate going. Doesnt sound as bad as I write it but its more frustrating than I making it out to be. ARGH.

On a positive note! I have a meeting with a client this afternoon for her July wedding! I am SUPER excited. I went to high school with Desiree and and so happy that she is getting married. :)

Speaking of weddings!!!!! My mom and I went shopping on Saturday at the Williamsburg Pottery and got EVERYTHING for the centerpieces!!! They had exactly what I had envisioned!!! The best part? Everything was on clearance!! SCORE! I cannot wait to put them together. They had a huge wall with every type of shell you can imagine. They were cheaper there than buying in bulk online PLUS I am supporting the amazing Williamsburg Pottery :) LOCAL LOVE! Check out this wall!

We also stopped by Kohls and they have the cutest line of dishes and trinkets out now that are beachy and fun! AND ON SALE! We bought some shell dishes for the M&M's we are putting on the tables. After the wedding we will use them for salad bowls or soup... look how cute they are!!

SO. Now back to work. I think I just need to talk or think about wedding stuff whenever I get stressed because I feel so much more relaxed! BRING ON THE HAMMERS GUYS!!!

Hello weekend!!

YAY WEEKEND!!!!

Im so excited about this weekend. I dont have a gig (bittersweet) so I made plans to visit with my cousin sam tonight! She is the bestest i cant wait. We used to be attached at the hip when we were kids but time goes by and we have gotten super busy..which is how it usually goes. SO anytime with her is awesome.

This is us last summer at the B-52's concert. (Love Shack BABY!!!!)

Other than that, I am doing some wedding shopping with my mom tomorrow morning! WAHOO! I know people think that wedding planning can be stressful and all that but seriously? I freaking love it. Tomorrow we will be looking for stuff for the tables and such. Im thinking the combo of cattails and starfish? Very beachy and natural. I wanna make that pop somehow with some color but i have time to figure it out....Any ideas would be awesome!!!

I was thinking something like this, with the tall vase. Instead of water and the candle, i was gonna put bouquets of cattails inside the vase so they are kind of showcased inside and not hanging out. So...yeah. its gonna be fun to play with it.

Other than that fun stuff, I hope to hang out with Gwen on Saturday night. We always get into some fun... :)

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND!!!

Wedding...Set...GO!!!!

It is official! May 21st, 2011 is our wedding date!! My parents, Jason and I met with Noel at Kingsmill on Saturday. Having the date set just made me SO excited.

This is the entrance to the Marina deck

This is one of the views of the deck...to include the SWEET firepit (and our future s'mores table)

This is where the food will be set up!

Another view of the deck.

This is where the DJ will be...cant get a better view!

View of the dock. The ceremony will be on the other side of it.

Mousse had to come check everything out. Well not really. He just wanted to play in the water....and he did :)

SO thats a little sneak preview. It is going to be such a fun wedding. Jason and I are on a mission to have it all planned out as far in advance as possible so we can just relax (well as much as possible haha). Jason also told me what he has in mind for our honeymoon and I am COMPLETLY stoked for it. More details later on that though.

In other news, our townhouse is officially off the market now. It was for sale through a realtor an entire YEAR. We are going to try our luck doing the "For Sale By Owner". Fingers crossed! We are kinda stuck in this limbo between selling the townhouse and starting construction on the new house....eh. Either way. Steady as it goes :)

~Copper is a girls best friend~

The story of our proposal? Hmm. Well you would think that knowing Jason and myself, it might have happened impulsively and somewhat quirky but on the contrary it was romantic and absolutely perfect. (Que Jason walking away and shaking his head at me. He thinks he is incapable of being romantic but after this story, i know you will at least agree with me that he can be in his own way)

It was Thursday February, 4th. Jason had been trying to organize a "date night" for the past few weeks but it never worked out. That night we said it was happening no matter what. I got home from work and he told me to bundle up so I naturally assumed we would be outside. We packed up what he had prepared and our dog Mousse and got on our way! We ended up at the land we bought several months prior, the land our house will be built on, and we immediatly unloaded the truck bc we were losing daylight. He built a firepit and I started on the fire, both of us cracking a Bud Light. Mousse, of course, was running around just as happy as can be. I got the fire going finally and we sat back and relaxed while our steaks were cooking. I had no clue what tonight was about, I just thought it was the best date night ever! We were finally on our land, enjoying a great fire, smelling steaks cooking and throwing the first of 50 sticks to our puppy. We ate the amazing dinner and was just talking about where our house was gonna be built and several other things. Jason got up to grab the grate from the firepit to set it the snow to cool. I turned to grab a stick for Mousse (or something i cant really remember) and I turned and realized Jason was kneeling beside my chair. Of course I knew right away what was happening :) I wont share what he said because that will stay with me but basically it was "whaddya think? will you marry me?" Of course if said "YES! Hell yes I will marry you!" Now the best part of our proposal was the ring. I guarantee it is nothing you have ever seen before. My engagement ring, ladies and gentlemen, was handmade by Jason himself. He had taken a copper pipe from our house and made it into the most thoughtful and gorgeous gift i have ever gotten. What made it even more special is that my Dad did the same thing for my Mom with a pipe from their cabin they built together. If that falls into any pattern of the type of marriage we will have, then I am a very lucky girl.

Our makeshift firepit! Who needs to buy one when you have cinder blocks and a grate from our grill!?

Mousse had such a great time! Woods=bounty of sticks.

I had to bribe Mousse SO much to sit still....there was too many sticks to chew!(I love the rabbit bomber hat baby)

My gorgeous ring <3

All in all, it was amazing. I wouldnt have changed a thing. We even had Mousse there to share it with us, which always makes us happy. We even gave him a piece of steak. :)