18 days...
Excited, tired, and looking forward to the weekend.  Nothing else to say today!

19 days...
While paging through a Nordstrom's catalog I saw these bracelets. They might be over kill, but I ordered some for my sister and I. (the circled ones).  They arrived last week and they are really fun!

20 days...
Grant and I are both 'San Diego transplants'.  G is from South African and I'm from Ohio.   We have family and close friends coming from many different places to celebrate our wedding.  We are so fortunate that they are making the journey to San Diego. We've been thinking of a creative way to welcome them to San Diego.  Below is an early draft of one of our ideas...and the second picture was our inspiration...We want to design a special market style bag that represents where everyone is from. 

21 days...
With so many websites + blogs to help inspire any couple to customize their big day...it has been really fun to get ideas for our wedding.  100 Layer Cake and Style Me Pretty have been my 'go to' sites.  Here are some of my most recent wedding inspirations. 

22 days...
Several months ago, I Googled "peach and seafoam heels" and these shoes were one of the results.  Aren't they fun?!   I had to do some hunting to find who made them and a place to buy them...seems they are discontinued. I eventually found them a seller ebay who had a stockpile of themof all places. 

23 days...
These tissue paper poms make me smile.  Pom Love on Etsy sells sets of 12 for $42....I thought that was a good deal.  I bought a set yesterday in seafoam, mauve, and dusty rose.   Excited to hang them from the trees over our dance floor. 

24 days...
This is us!  A very creative student of mine made Grant, Phebe, Nala, and I out of recycled wood.  How cool!?!  We are going to use them as our wedding cake toppers! Talk about custom made. :)

26 days...
It's scary how much money people spend on their wedding. Grant and I wanted to avoid the pitfalls that suck up your wedding budget.  We are doing a lot of DIY, asking our friends to help, and getting creative, all of which will make our big day more personal and will save us lots of money.  Money we can use for other things...like our honeymoon or our bank account!  Here are several of our wedding wise tips.

1) Wedding Venue- Instead of paying a fee for a venue, we decided to have the wedding and reception at The Brigantine.  They have an amazing outdoor garden that over looks Del Mar.  The best part...NO FEE...we just have to eat their yummy food and use their bar service.

2) No Sit Down Dinner- From the beginning we knew we didn't want a sit down meal.  We want our guests to be able to get up and move around and mingle.  We have friends and family coming from all over the world (literally) and we wanted to avoid having them stuck in their seats for over 1/2 the night.  In turn we are doing a cocktail hour, followed by tapas. There will be plenty of food, but because we won't be serving entrees the bill will be way less!

3) Decorations-  We are making all of our decorations.  We are saving tons of money on this, but in return we are investing a lot of time...well worth it!!!

4) Photographer-  We are very fortunate to have talented photographer friends.  We hired, friend, Bryce Johnson to shoot the big day.  He is super talented and shoots lots of different type of events, not just weddings....so his rates aren't insanely high.  

5) Flowers - In San Diego there is a farmers market literally everyday of the week.  My friend Rachel is my florist and we are going to head to the farmers market a couple of days before the wedding to buy our flowers. Then the plan is to have family and friends help make the arrangements on Friday.  A huge savings. 

6) Cake-  After doing my research, I learned that when you say you want a wedding cake, the price basically triples. It's ridiculous.  So we headed down to our local grocer...Seaside Market.  Seaside Market has the most amazing cakes and they sell them by the slice.  We enquired about buying the entire cakes, unsliced...and they said, 'no problem'.  So we will have four different round cakes, Red Velvet, Lemon Twist, Carrot, and Triple Chocolate.  We were even able to order a second smaller version of the Lemon Twist, so that we can tier them and make that cake the focal point. We literally save hundreds of dollars on our cakes.

7) Hair- My sister is doing my hair...this is such a blessing...and another way we are saving some dough.

Can you hear the Benjamins laughing as they avoid falling in the black pit of wedding expenses?!?  The best part is that Grant and I don't feel like we have scarified anything that we really wanted for our big day, instead we have a sense pride that we have truly customized our big day. 

 

27 days...
I'd like my hair to look natural and effortless on the big day.  My amazing sister took time this morning to put some highlights in my hair and to test some different hair styles.  Here are a couple quick snapshots.

28 days...
Ahhhh, the lists.  They are everywhere...to do lists, music lists, food lists, decor lists, and so on..after June 25th there will be no more lists! :D  For now here is a snapshot of some of these crazy, but essential lists.