Our Save the Dates / Our Photo Booth

Two weeks ago Nate and I took engagement photos for our save the dates. We knew we weren't going to get all fancy and go pose for a real photographer but we wanted to do something...  so the photo booth it was! Free (since we both work there part-time), fast, and fun! So here's our postcards! I hastily designed them myself and then sent them off to be printed! We're getting our real invites professionally designed but these I just wanted to get in the mail ASAP so people knew we were getting married in only 4 months! 

Sorry, blocked out a few personal things (for now.) I'll fill you all in on the deets later!

Soooo, since we're already talking about the photo booth, we're also having a photo booth at the wedding (duh!)... But not just any photo booth. We're not talking about a webcam and a shower curtained area. We're talking about the greatest photo booth in the galaxy. The Traveling Photo Booth. 

If you need a photo booth, I honestly can't recommend them enough. I've seen some baaaaaad booths over the past few years but this one is hands down, the best. Period. And I don't even feel like I'm biased because I worked there. The quality of photos is the most important thing to me (along with the traditional photo strip format) and I love it's minimalist look so it's not this obtrusive, ugly box in the middle of my cute wedding. It's perfecto and I'm so excited to shove all my friends and family into it all night long! And Nate too, of course! 

Our wedding theme

If you follow me on Pinterest, this may not be new information... but here's our wedding theme:

Midnight baseball? Baseball Under the Stars? Constellations? I don't know what to "call" it but that's it. Navy, mustard yellow, and white are our colors (with tiny bits of red for the stitching.)

As I've said a million times at this point, Nate and I are pretty simple people. I want our wedding to be pretty but I'm not a flowery, chandeliery, elegant bride. We love baseball, the constellations will be easy to DIY in a bunch of ways, and it'll be fun and feel like "us." Plus we're hoping to avoid serving the same boring wedding chicken for dinner, and do burgers and fries instead! And do tiers of baseball cookies instead of cake. 

P.S. Sorry for the lack of outfit posts/posts in general. I always have a hard time transitioning from my school year schedule to my summer schedule. This year is even harder since I've mostly been wearing my waitressing uniform! But I'll try to do a few posts a week now that I'm a bit more adjusted to "summer mode." Toodles! 

Our wedding venue

Well, we've locked down our venue! It was scary, sending my first check with one too many zeros for my comfort level... but now we've got a place to get hitched. We're doing both the ceremony and reception at the McNamara Alumni Center at the U of MN! The building is ridiculously cool! They have a huge 500 person ballroom, but we're in three smaller rooms. This one we're using for the ceremony. It has amazing copper walls.

This one is for the reception. It also has some copper walls but then tons of floor to ceiling windows too:

And a third one for a cocktail area/gifts/photobooth/slideshow etc.

It has fun hallways for photos:

And the outside is awesome for photos too:

So that's that! Now I can start on the fun stuff like decorations!

P.S. I stole all these photos off McNamara's facebook page and they weren't properly credited there, so photographers, if you recognize one of your photos, I'd be happy to link it to your site if you let me know it's yours!

Engage! Engage!

IT'S THE LAST DAY OF SCHOOOOOOOOL! Woo! Even though it's like 50 degrees outside, it is in fact, time for summer break. I'm so excited! I love my job, but working 60 hours week the past two months has been rough and I'm ready to take it easy for a while (relatively speaking.) Nate is picking me up from work today, then we're gonna quick go take engagement/save-the-date photos at the photo booth office, then we're heading out of town to go camping with his family! Yay!

Necklace - belonged to my great-grandma B.

Oxford - F. by Faconnable (inherited from aunt)

Jeans - Earnest Sewn

Shoes - Minnetonka Moccasin

I wore this shirt and necklace specifically today because I knew I was taking my engagement photos and wanted something to wear something that was secretly a bit special/sentimental to me. Since we're doing them in the photo booth, you won't see my old holey jeans, so don't worry about the fact that I'm dressed like Elly May Clampett today. This shirt belonged to my aunt/godmother before she died of breast cancer three and half years ago...

And the Jade necklace belonged to my great-grandma B, whom I was kinda obsessed with in middle school. Hmm, I don't have any photos scanned of her (will resolve that next time I visit the 'rents) but she was awesome and in my mind is perpetually wearing a blue Gucci sweatshirt. Amazing.

My old friend

T-shirt - Target

Belt - gift (from when I was in high school)

Skirt - thrifted Ann Taylor Loft

Sandals - Frye

This outfit was inspired by an old purse I custom designed:

Like 6 years ago I went to visit my friend Hilary in Chicago and we went to this design-your-own purse store where you pick from their purse templates and then pick all your own fabrics and they custom make it and mail it to you. The sales girl was NOT a fan of my fabric choices (it has a bright orange floral inside too!) and kept trying to make me change it to something more "harmonious." But I loved this purse! This little wristlet was my everyday purse for like 2 years. It was nice because it was so small, all I could carry was my phone, keys, wallet, and a chapstick. Now that I've got bigger purses they just accumulate so much stuff on accident!

The perfect storm

Dudes, wedding planning is so stressful! Ok, so last Thursday I posted about how I was spazzing out about something? That something is the fact that my "platinum" engagement ring is in fact white gold with some yellow gold trim. After a bunch of trips to the jewelers and emails back and forth with the lady who sold it to us, it's finally resolved. I get to keep my ring and we got some money back. Phew!

Necklace - thrifted

Oxford - thrifted little boys Cherokee

Bangles - thrifted, garage sales, flea markets, etc

Skirt - thrifted Ralph Lauren

Sandals - Old Navy

On Saturday Nate and I went and visited a venue. And fell in love with it for the ceremony and the reception (in seperate rooms.) The room rental was affordable, the right size for our 125ish guests, it's close to hotels, close enough to cab for our friends in MPLS, perfect! We reserved the room and emailed their catering manager and were so excited.

When I got back from waitressing last night, I saw an email from their catering manager saying we had to spend a minimum of $10,000 on food and beverages (PLUS pay a 20% service fee, 8% tax, and 12% liquor tax on top of that.) I was devastated. I cried. All night long. It was like a perfect storm of sadness and frustration. I was exhausted from working 14 hours straight, I'm ridiculously stressed trying to find a venue on short notice so we can start planning everything else, and of course it's that magical lady time of the month. It was an epic cry. I sent them an email calling them outrageous and insane. 

I woke up puffy and dehydrated and resigned to the fact that my dream venue was gone. Then, this morning they emailed me back and the catering woman was confused. The price she sent was for the 500+ person grand ballroom. Our rooms are totally reasonable (as in a THIRD of the price she sent) and we booked it! Venue = done! I'm SO SO SO SO SO SO SO relieved. Phewwwwwwwwwww.

I'm so glad we decided to do it this fall. I don't think I could do this for a year and a half! 

A tiny energy ball

Another cold and rainy day... surprise, surprise. Luckily this skirt is a sweater knit, so it's pretty warm but still feels springy because of the color.

Chambray shirt - thrifted newstock Target

Necklace - from my mom (she got it at a garage sale)

Skirt - thrifted Liz Claiborne

Cuff - J. Crew outlet

Sandals - thrifted Candies

My mom is in town for a few days so I went over to my sister's to hang out for a while. We talked about some wedding stuff (which was difficult because Henrik needs to be the center of attention at all times or he gets all whiney and crabby.) I don't know how Kim does it all day every day! She's pregnant (due early August - another boy!), her husband is out of town a lot (he's an international pilot), and she still works (I think mostly to keep herself sane by getting out of the house!) while constantly dealing with a needy 19 month old. Phew! I watched him on Saturday for a few hours and he wore me out!  Gooood thing he's cute... and dresses business casual.

I've been trying to teach him how to say "Go Twins!" but he just says "Go Tons!" He's really good at saying/waving goodbye, blowing kisses, and screaming "Quirl!" out the window (he loves squirrels!) He also runs to the window every time he hears an airplane goes by and says "Dada" since dad flies planes. But his main obsession is cooking and stirring. He loves to watch my sister cook and always carries around a wooden spoon (which came in handy a few weeks ago when he got strong enough to open the bottom freezer for the first time and promptly helped himself to some Haagen Dazs while mom was getting ready for work.)

Farewell, sailor

I skipped blogging on Friday because I had an appointment in the morning so I only worked a half-day.  And in the afternoon I left work to go look at a wedding venue down the street with Nate. So maybe it was more like a third of a day. But then I waitressed from 5pm to 11pm so... I don't know. It was a weird day. Here's today...

Blouse - thrifted Quatre-Franc

Jeans - Gap

Wedges - Franco Sarto

This is one of those shirts that I love in theory. Perhaps it's just a bit too cutesy for me, but I never wear it. I've had it for 4 years and only worn it twice before (looking at these photos, I realized the last time I wore it was exactly three years ago.) Perhaps it's time to put it on etsy and let it go to a better home...

I had the whole day off on Saturday, which is rare. It was nice to relax most of the day, and Nate and I went and visited another possible wedding venue in the afternoon. Sunday I waitressed a brunch and then went boating all afternoon with some friends. It was only 58 degrees outside, so I didn't go in the water but it was so nice to be out in the sun for a change. Two of my friends did go waterskiing, which is crazy! The lake was SO cold!