Surprise!!!!! It’s cake!

I probably should have written about this earlier but that would have ruined the surprise!

Will all of the wedding plans and decisions, Michael was quick to let me off the hook for the whole crazy grooms cake tradition….Knowing me, he should have known that my lack of arguing with him over something so important (and delicious) meant that I was plotting! I even bought 200 cream puffs and convinced Mike that was all I wanted to serve for dessert. Little did he know, was already scheming with our baker to give him the coolest grooms cake ever! We used to be obsessed with cake shows…like DVR the food network obsessed….The crazier the better! And if one toppled over even better!!!!… I remember seeing a grooms cake that was shaped like a full-sized, life-like golden retriever holding a pair or BMW keys in his mouth…Like really, how am I supposed to live up to that? Luckily for Michael (and me) he never saw that episode of Ultimate Crazy Expensive Cake Wars (or whatever that show was called) so Michael’s expectations wouldn’t be too high even if he did have some idea that I was planning a grooms cake…which (yay!) he didn’t!

I knew I wanted to do something that Micahel would love but a life sized Missy holding a pair of Camero keys was kind of pushing it. My mom and Nana thought I should get an armadillo shaped cake a la Steel Magnolias…Instead I went with a USC Gamecocks Jersey! I had the backer incorporate our last name and our lucky number- 13!

Here’s how it turned out!

I arranged for our baker to deliver the cake as guests were arriving. I figured Michael would be easy to distract at that point and that I could hide the cake for a few minutes until it was time to show it to him…The only problem with that was that most of our guests were over an hour late…which meant I had to hide a cake from Michael for over and HOUR! It needed to be put in the fridge but we couldn’t get it in unless we pulled the fridge completely out of the wall….Once we got the cake in and put the fridge back, we had to keep Michael from looking inside..keep in mind we are preparing dinner at this point…Turns out Jd, our brother-in-law can only stand in front of the fridge for so long before Michael starts looking at him like he’s crazy… Luckily for JD, one of my bridesmaids arrived with her football player hubby (Thanks Nick and Jamie!) so as soon as he walked in the door I told Nick to get his head in the game and play some serious defense on our fridge! I just remember Nick saying “I cant tell him he cant look in his fridge in his own house!” Poor Nick, ten seconds into walking into our home I stuck him in front of the fridge for 30 minutes! “Welcome to our home. Now stand here and don’t  move.” (Sorry Nick! You were a great sport!)

Once everyone arrived (or mostly everyone), we showed Mike his grooms cake and he was completely surprised! We still have over 100 cream puffs in our freezer but I really don’t see that as a problem!

Cake by Rebekah’s Sweetart Cakes of Savannah – Thanks Becky Hamilton! You are amazing!

Oh Shoot!

When we booked our photographer (or should I say my dream photographer), we received a free engagement shoot. I guess in our case it would be an Engaged-for-over-a-year shoot. We scheduled out shoot for mid April thinking that things would be turning green (well greener than usual), the weather would be nice and we would still have plenty of time before the wedding as I am planning on incorporating some of our photos into the wedding decor…To bad the weather didn’t cooperate. After our first rain out, we had to reschedule for a weekend in May. The weather was becoming got increasingly more beautiful each day..until the week of our shoot. The forecast called for a week of rain with 100% chance of rain on the evening of our shoot…We had given up any chance of taking photos or even having photos for our wedding. It was dark and pouring just hours before our scheduled shoot and we hadn’t seen the sun in a few days….About an hour before our shoot, the sun came out, the clouds disappeared and it wasn’t even humid! The tide was timed just perfectly to be at it’s highest point and with the extra rain, the water was just beautiful! We took photos under the live oaks and because of the rain, the Resurrection ferns were blooming! They disappear against the tree bark except for just after a good rain! We were able to get dressed and ready in record time! Our photographer met us last minute (She’s a saint!) and we had the most perfect photo shoot! Our photographer is AMAZING and we cant wait to see her again on our wedding day! She even sent us a sneak peak of one of our photos right off of her camera! If you are in the Savannah/Hilton Head area, and need an amazing photographer, Jerina Mac Photography is the best!

As soon as the rest of the photos are ready, I’ll post them here! XOXO

Flower Girls

First of all, I wanted to say a special thanks to Cole and Blanca, and to Courtney and JD for really coming through and supplying us with two perfect flower girls!

 

Mainly their job is to be cute-which they are already good at!

 

   

 

Aubrey is even modeling her flower girl outfit and practicing throwing flower petals….technically she is throwing her “chupie” but the skill set is the same.

 

 

Surprise!!!!!

A few Thursdays ago, I was sitting in my office waiting for 5 o clock to arrive when two very special clients walked in the door… I looked up from my computer to say “How may I help you” when I realized who it was!

Subtitles:

“What are you doing here!?!?!” *Sobbing* “My mom is here!” *More Sobbing*

Turns out Michael and my mom had arranged for her to fly in and surprise me! Michael even contacted my boss (after a bit of light stalking on our company website) and arranged for me to have the day off on Friday!

This was absolutely the best surprise of my life!

If the shoe fits…

I walk down the isle in 51 days….If you know me at all, you would think that I have had wedding shoes picked out since the day Michael proposed…. Turns out, I’m not as predictable as I think I am. I’ve looked and looked and looked some more. I LOVE the pair that I picked out for my bridesmaids, but since I didn’t buy a bridesmaid dress for myself (although, I want one of those too) they are twice the price that my girls paid for them… I figured I would buy those if I couldn’t find anything else. As I began hunting through every online shoe shop imaginable, I realized what I was looking for (a comfortable peeped toed, sling back that coordinates with my gown and that has some serious bling) was in my closet all along. Well, almost.

A few summers ago, I had bought some cute shoes to wear to a friend’s wedding to go with a pale yellow dress.  They are silver sequin mesh, peep toe, pumps with gold stiletto heels. They aren’t sling backs but for a pump, they are super comfortable and the fact that I have already worn them in is a HUGE plus!

I decided that I didn’t need to spend an extra $100 plus bucks on a pair of wedding shoes when I have so many other things on my mile long wedding shopping list and that I would just wear my sparkly peep toe pumps. Although I love them, I wasn’t all that excited.  I feel like my bridal shoes should be somewhat special. I’ve put so much thought into every other aspect of the wedding it feels weird to drop the ball on something like SHOES. Heck I put more thought into the groomsman shoes than into my own. Then I had an idea…I couldn’t wait to get home from work (after a quick stop at the craft store)…. I spent most of my night hand sewing a little something special to my shoes…

and TA-DA!

So it turns out that the prefect pair of shoes (with a little DIY bridal flair) was right under my nose all along! Well, technically they were under a pair of pink stilettos but I’m not complaining!

While we are on the topic of shoes…Here’s Micheal buying shoes for the groomsmen! Is there anything dreamier than a man in a shoe store buying 6 pairs of shoes? This is on of the many reason’s I am marrying this man!

Saving the Date!

One of the first things we did once we chose our venue was design our Save the Dates. There were a lot of designs online that I liked but I decided to do my own and have them printed as photos for 12 cents a piece! Luckily, Michael’s aunt provided us with some amazing photos of us on the golf course where we met before we moved! (Yes, that’s the same golf course where he found Missy-He is not allowed to bring home any more cute girls from golf courses)I wanted to write this post post back in the fall when we were actually doing out Save the Dates but I didn’t want to ruin the surprise for anyone. Here’s the final result and another design that almost made the cut.

Here’s the final result!

This one almost made the cut!

Having these bad boys printed was the easy part! It wasn’t until I ruined my first 5 envelopes by trying to hand write names and addresses that I downloaded a cute font and busted out the printer. So now the special pens that I bought at Michael’s are sitting unused in the junk drawer. Sitting for a few hours hand feeding sparkly envelopes into our printer wasn’t half as bad as I thought it would be. Little did I know that once it was time to do the invitations that I’d really be in trouble! So far, I have spent two Saturday mornings on the floor hand feeding envelope after envelope into the printer to print a new address on each one(and I’m still not done).

Speaking of invitations. These are a whole ‘nother story! Clearly I am a deliriously-crazy bride with no life because I am making my invitations by hand (well mostly by hand). I swear I’m not an over achiever  I’m just trying to have champagne invitations on a beer invitation budget. I found some amazing invitations on Pinterest (Where else?) but they were $13 dollars a piece! That doesn’t include the two envelopes, response cards, stamps, info cards, and more stamps….So after I had a heart attack, I had the same thought that a lot of people have when they are on Pinterest- “I can DIY that!”

I don’t want to give away too much about the invite since they will be in mailboxes soon but they are going to be amazing! -or a disaster, we’ll see! I will say this though, I learned not to set sparkly card stock on the living room floor because Missy will roll around on it until she is covered in glitter and then she will jump on the couch so you have to get out the vacuum and then she will bark at the vacuum like its possessed by the devil and then she will fall asleep in your lap while you are trying to make 180 invitations…..

Here’s a sneak peak at part of our invitations!

Knee Deep in Wedding Plans

Up until now, my wedding was always something far in the distance. Something that was more of a dream than a reality. Even when we first got engaged, a Spring 2013 wedding sounded like it would never get here. But suddenly, our wedding is less than 3 MONTHS AWAY! Now I feel like our long engagement was one of the best decisions we ever could have made. I can’t imagine doing everything in just a matter of months (Let alone while I was coaching High School Cheer). Now, Michael and I are somewhere between excited and overwhelmed. I feel like every weekend we have at least one wedding related appointment (Bridal shows, Menu Tastings and the weekly trip to Michael’s craft store). Poor Michael has be such a good groom! When we first started planning we were super OVERWHEMED! Food, Linens, chairs, music, flowers, decorations, invitations, cake, an officiant…..it seemed like our list of who, what, and how much was never coming to an end.

We started with the big things and let all of the pieces fall into place.

Most of the first year of our engagement was spent on Pinterest but now that it’s almost spring, it’s time to get out the glue gun, stop pinning and start doing!

I started this blog so that everyone could follow along as we planned our wedding but actually planning the wedding seemed to get in the way and starting my new full time job hasn’t helped either….

I’m so excited to start sharing all of the ups and downs of planning our wedding.

May 26 is right around the corner!

It’s official!

It’s Official! Michael and I are getting married!!!!

Well it’s technically been official for 1 year and 5 days (who’s counting anyways, right?) but now that we have found our venue and set a date, it really feels official!  (Not that the large rock on my finger hasn’t felt official all this time) As if planning a wedding isn’t hard enough, Michael and I are now living what feels like a million miles away from my parents in beautiful Bluffton, South Carolina. As nice as it is to be an arms reach from the ocean, it’s harder than I thought to be so far from my family. Technology has been my saving grace. Not only has Pinterest been my guilty pleasure since my mom got me hooked on it after our engagement, Facetime and email have been a Godsend. Being able to video chat with my mom has made it possible to see my Sweet baby Niece and even give my mom a virtual tour of our new house!

So I decided to take technology one step further and start a blog. To be honest, I was inspired by Alexis Weigand’s baby blog.  (Who by the way is bringing her second baby boy into the world TODAY! Congrats Alexis and Chris!) It is so nice to follow her journey to mommy hood and beyond even from so far away. I hope that my friends and family will be just as excited to follow my blog as I plan our wedding, adapt to life (and the humidity) in The South, and finally become Mrs. Clayshulte.♥