Our Wedding [2]: Bridal Party

Welcome back to part 2 of our wedding!  You can check out part one if you're new here

1. Pre-wedding

 

<----- Part 2: The Bridal Party ----->

We loved our bridal party.  They were all so awesome in each way.  No "bridesmaid-zillas" here!  Or "groomsmen-zillas" for that matter.

We had 5 of each and that was perfect.

My step-mom made all the grooms their vests (thank you, thank you, thank you!) and they turned out fabulous.

Did I mention before that we chose the colors chocolate and lavender? Well, while idea hunting I loved the way lavender looked with some of the decor and why not choose chocolate to go with it?  Also, our first idea for a theme was a rustic look anyways so that was perfect!

The bridesmaids' dresses were found at a quite wedding boutique in Bellevue, WA after hunting for quite some time.  I really wanted to find a simple dark brown dress at an inexpensive store that would work for all the girls (my sister is 5'11 and Emi is about 5') and wasn't above the knee.

Well, that was actually really difficult to find (even after hunting online at so many places).  Why?  I'll never know.

Anyways, they turned out really cute.  They are a thin chocolate layer on top with lavender satin (I think) underneath (kind of like a slip).  You'll see them better in the next post!

I just want to introduce you to each of them because they hold a place so near and dear to our hearts.

The Girls

My maid of honor and best friend: Christin

My younger (and much taller, though the picture doesn't show that she's 5' 11 and I'm 5' 6) sister: Emily

My good friend: Allison

My best friend (who is now in Japan [sad!]): Emi

My awesome sister-in-law: Sarah

The Guys

Best man: David

Childhood friend: Brian

Musician buddy: Ben

One of our great friends: Birkin

Not pictured: my brother (to be discussed in the next post.  dun dun dunnn!)

Come back next week for part 3: The Photoshoot!

Creamy Parsley Salad Dressing

I love a good salad.  Especially one with a really good dressing!

I am going to share with you an awesome salad dressing recipe that my grandpa gave me (he is pretty ingenious when it comes to dressings).

The best part of this dressing is that it can be vegan (I'll label the changes in purplish pink)!

Ingredients:

• 2 Tbsp olive oil
• 3 cloves garlic - minced (or just make sure it's thoroughly blended in the blender)
• Juice of 1/2 lemon
• 2/3-3/4 cup of mayonnaise (can be substituted for veganaise - which is actually really good even if you aren't vegan)
• 2 Tbsp fresh parsley (actually as much as you want.  We put in a handful of parsley and didn't really measure it)
• 1 tsp dijon mustard
• 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
• salt and pepper to taste

Put everything into the blender (you can mince the parsley and garlic before, but we just throw them in the blender and make sure there aren't any chunks)

That's it!  You may want to see what your consistency is first.  You can add water if it is too thick (usually I add a little because it thickens a little in the fridge)

Enjoy your new salad dressing over an awesome salad.

Lately we've been making our own salads with some tomatoes, cucumbers, red onions, and goat cheese (I can't get enough goat cheese)

Have a great weekend!

Car rack!

Last week we got our brand new Thule car rack!

Nick works at REI and they have awesome pro-deals.  We snagged one on a car rack for our car (85% off!) because seriously, what kind of outdoorsy people are we if we don't have a car rack?!

Anyways, it was super exciting!

My man in action!

After a few stressful and frustrating long hours we finally got our car rack up!

Let me just say, that putting up a car rack is so frustrating!  There are two sets of instructions that you have to follow at the same time and you have to have precise measurements.  Ah!

Isn't it beautiful?!  

Once we got it up we HAD to try it out.  Luckily for us, the PNW was on a really warm weather streak so we got to take out our little canoe for a ride.

I'm so glad my husband knows how to tie knots and put up this canoe.

We finally got to the lake (after taking the back roads there, just in case the canoe decided that it didn't want to be up there, but hey!  It worked out just fine!).

Yes, my husband is a dork.

It was so beautiful!  I think we're planning on going out to the lake to canoe around again this weekend (if it's nice out).  We're hoping to someday in the near future to acquire a double kayak.  Until then, our little canoe will do.

Do you canoe or kayak?

Currently

Currently link-up!  Join me!

current book(s):

Mud, Sweat, and Tears by Bear Grylls.  The autobiography!  It is so good :)

current playlist

A mix of Esperanza Spalding's newest album, Punch Brothers' new album, and Snarky Puppy (they are just awesome).

current color

Tealish blue.  That's my color as of late.

current food

I've been loving the salads we're making with some homemade dressing (sharing this recipe in a few days!)

current favorite show(s)

The Office, Grey's Anatomy (although they're both off season right now!), LOST (re-watching it), and Portlandia (amazing).

current needs

Coffee and a nice big healthy smoothie.  Yum!

current triumphs

Acquiring a new job as a nanny!  Woohoo!

current banes of my existence

Newage cartoons.  So. Weird.

current celebrity crush

You know.. after watching The Avengers and seeing this picture, Chris Hemsworth (Thor) and Chris Evans (Cpt. America) aren't too bad looking... (Chris Hemsworth is much better looking in other pictures with shorter hair and a nice scruffy beard)

current #1 blessing

Having such a loving and supportive husband.

current indulgence

Ice cream.  I've been craving it!

current outfit

Jeans, Kaua'i t-shirt and Puma zip-up sweatshirt.  Today is my Friday and therefore it's casual day :)

current excitement

Memorial Day weekend!  Four day weekend for me including hanging out at the lake house, WARM WEATHER (supposed to be), kayaking and just hanging out.  Love it!

current mood

Tired, but very content and grateful

current favorite quote or verse

The 3-year-old I'm currently nannying has been repeating this phrase "Go to bed with an itchy butt, wake up with a stinky finger"  Ha!  She also recently said, "When we die are we going to Kevin?"  :)

current wishlist item

A new car.  Pleeeaasee!

current favorite product

Tangle-free spray.  Combing out a very curly head of hair on a 3-year-old can be a pain in the butt (for her AND me)

Oh, How Pinteresting #6

It's been awhile.  So let's do an Oh, How Pinteresting with Michelle!

I love this idea.  I wouldn't do it with a US outline, but definitely love this idea.

Source: decorating-ideas-made-easy.com via Alison on Pinterest

Take a photo and cut out letters from the photo.

Source: tracys-trinkets-treasures.blogspot.com via Alison on Pinterest

Adult cupcakes :)

Source: ericasweettooth.com via Alison on Pinterest

Source: lumea.tumblr.com via Alison on Pinterest

Cute outfit!

Source: Uploaded by user via Alison on Pinterest

Definitely a summer outfit.  Soon!

Source: indulgy.com via Alison on Pinterest

I would love to go to a hot spring in the winter.  Especially in Japan.

Source: us.mc811.mail.yahoo.com via Alison on Pinterest

Another "Japan" thing, Strawberry Shortcake "sushi"

Source: takeamegabite.com via Alison on Pinterest

Our Wedding [1]: Pre-wedding

In 7 weeks, Nick and I will have been married for 1 year.  A whole year!!  This year flew!  What an amazing year it has been.

In honor of this momentous occasion, I have decided to do a 6 part series on our wedding (with a final post to sum up our year of marriage). 

I hope you enjoy, because I love recapping such an amazing and yet not so perfect perfect day in our lives.

<----- Part 1: Pre-wedding ----->

Our engagement story can be found here.

DIY Planning
As soon as we got engaged I was in wedding planning mode.  Note: We were also full-time students in our last year of college.

Our wedding, from the very beginning, was on a tight budget.  This meant that a lot of things had to be DIY.

I have no regrets for not hiring a wedding planner or professional help.  We had so much help from everybody around us that it was perfectly fine!

If you didn't know already, I'm a bit OCD.  Not hiring a planner made it very easy to be picky and plan each detail according to how I wanted it and how I wanted to do it.  I even made my own gigantic all-wedding excel spreadsheet. You may get a post about this later, but I love excel and word.  I use them WAY too much.

Just a snapshot of my excel spreadsheet.  It had all of my addresses (labeled by family, friends, etc.), my timeline to-do list, food info, decorations, music selection, photo-ops, and job list.  Yup, OCD.

Picking the church was very easy because we knew that we wanted to get married in an orthodox church.  There are two where I grew up, but I never went to them.  Nick grew up at his church and so it was a pretty easy decision on where we should go (I'll admit, I really wanted to get married near my hometown, but we made the right choice).

Picking the date was also easy because we knew that we didn't want to get married while we were still in school and we didn't want to get married too far into summer because it gets ridiculously hot on the east side.  July 3rd ended up being the perfect date.


Engagement pictures
About 3 months after our engagement we had our engagement photoshoot.  We were so lucky to have Nick's best man, David, be our engagement photographer.  He is an awesome photographer (mostly landscape) and knew of some great places in Seattle to get our photos done.

We ended up getting pictures taken at the UW campus, the arboretum, Kerry Park, and one of the marinas.  He did such an amazing job.  Thank you David!


Save the dates and invitations
We had so much help with the wedding process.  My aunt and some of her friends are extremely talented in the art of scrapbooking and paper-crafts.  She, plus a few friends, offered to help me out with our save the dates and invitations.

My aunt and I put our brains together and, with a few details from me, she came up with a beautiful idea for our invitations.  I loved them both and am very proud with how they both turned out!


Dress shopping
Dress shopping was so much fun.  When, as a girl, do you ever get to dress up in huge fancy dresses?!

We only had to go to one dress shop.  We ended up picking dress #3 of about 7 or 8 dresses from Alicia's Bridal.  If you haven't heard of them and are ever looking for a place to find a dress in the PNW, I HIGHLY recommend going there.  The staff is incredibly sweet and supportive.  They aren't pushy and somehow they know what kind of dress you want.  I didn't pick out my dress (I was 99% positive that I wanted a non-strapless dress), they did!

 
Anyways, we found the perfect dress.  Yes, people cried.


Bridal showers
I had two bridal showers.  One was put on by the church, where we were getting married, and my mother-in-law and the other was put on by my mother and maid-of-honor.

They were both so much fun.  I can't believe how many gifts we received from everyone!  I am so thankful for everyone's help with the showers.

Bachelor/Bachelorette parties  
My husband and I had two totally different parties on two different weekends.

His party was a camping trip to a beach on the Washington coast.  Complete with hiking around, campfires, crazy manly activities, and lots of booze.

Mine was a quiet, but very fun, party at our lake house.  Complete with jello shots, very naughty fun games, penis cakes, and naughty presents.



Thanks for reading part one of our wedding series.  Stick around next week for part two!

Fill in the Blank Friday!

1.  Something that is very near and dear to my heart is,  my husband.  He is such a great man and I can't begin to tell you what he means to me (and what he has to put up with)  .

2.     Multiple birds on the bird feeder (YAY!)     is good cause to celebrate .

3.  The most fun I ever had was    getting married and having a wedding with most of our family and friends with us.  Pure bliss .

4.  True friends are    always there, no matter how your lives have changed.  They are still there ready to laugh and talk about anything, even if it's been quite awhile between those talks.

5. Something that makes me terribly happy is       accomplishing more than 3 things in one day from my to-do list .

6. A good way to spend a sunny day is    kayaking! Come on sunny and non-windy day!

7.  My favorite celebratory food is   ice cream.  Always has been and always will be.  Actually, we just bought some greek frozen yogurt and I have to say, it is quite amazingly addicting.

 Happy Friday everybody!