simply living: JBwedding

Time is moving right along...at record speed might I add, and I still haven't posted about the week of Brian and Jessica's wedding. I had imagined I would do a separate post for each the bridesmaid luncheon, rehearsal dinner and wedding. But now that it's already almost been an entire month; I think it might be best to put them all together. Otherwise, it might not get done at all, and that would just be sad.

The weekend started off with a beautiful bridesmaid luncheon at Cafe 615. I'll let the pictures do the talking.

Funny that I have another post with a picture of dessert and not my actual entree. I chose pizza for lunch and it was very tasty.

Amazing chocolate gateaux! I was very happy with my choice of dessert; I always tend to choose chocolate. But, everyone that ordered the creme brulee, said it was the best they had ever tasted.

An add a pearl necklace as a bridesmaid gift. So pretty and so thoughtful. Jess also gave us each a monogrammed bag with goodies to use on the day of the wedding. Forgot to get a picture of that, but it is super cute too.

The bride with all of the bridesmaids.

Sisters and best friends.

Jess with her little flower girls.

Later that night we had rehearsal and the rehearsal dinner at Felix's Fish Camp.

Soon to be Mr. and Mrs.

Favors and seating arrangement

Grooms cake

Gold letters on the petit fours!

I love this scripture verse my mom chose for the theme. So fitting for a husband and wife and for my brother, since he's in the metal business.

Malted milk balls for the favor...my brothers favorite!

Poor mr. crab, from Kim's big bateau platter. I think this was a popular choice for dinner. I ordered the fresh catch almondine and chose grouper. It was so good! I don't think I will ever order anything different from the menu.

Gracie joined us for dinner while Ella Claire stayed home with a babysitter.

I could kick myself for not taking ~~more pictures~~ any pictures at the wedding!! It was beautiful! There were pretty things everywhere. In my defense, I was a bridesmaid, Jeremy was best man, EC was a flower girl and Gracie was 2, almost 3 weeks old! We were a little busy.

Here are a few I took before the wedding.

Jess was a beautiful bride! She was literally glowing.

And that's it! I wish I had pictures from the ceremony and reception. But after the wedding, I was too busy feeding a hungry infant and chasing a crazy 2 year old. So sad all the Cooper/Dean wedding fun is over! However, the Dean/Manley wedding fun is just beginning!

The week before Gracie arrived, my sisters and I hosted a lingerie shower for our future sister, Jessica. We had a blast and think it turned out too cute!

I'm hoping the insane amount of pictures I am planning to upload doesn't slow down the blog...we'll see!

So a few months ago, Kim came up with such a cute theme for the shower....yellow polka dot bikini! Perfect, not only because we had never seen this theme used before, but yellow was one of Jess' wedding colors. We (Kim, Steph and myself) all got together and started planning.

We started with invitations.

We found a great shop on etsy that we loved. Tori from SweetBeeDesigns was amazing to work with. We told her exactly what we had in mind and what we wanted our invite to say and she immediately set up a custom listing and had a proof back to us in no time! She was willing to send as many proofs as we needed to be 100% content. I'm not kidding when I tell you she was super fast. She also custom made our toppers...

food labels...

and water bottle labels.

I didn't print out the water bottle labels until the Friday night before the party (not smart!) and came across some trouble getting them lined up with my blank water bottle labels. I emailed Tori and she literally had the problem fixed in a matter of minutes. It had something to do with her using a PC and me using a mac. I was really impressed that she responded so quickly on a Friday night. Another reason why I will use her again and would recommend her to any of you if you have a party or shower, and need some cute invites or party printables.

So, here are our invites ready to be sent out in the mail...

I added a cute bikini to the return address labels from the PDF file I purchased.

Front door sign...

We decided to have a dessert bar along with our dinner.

Steph and I made this doilie banner to hang above all of our sweets. :)

Here are some of our desserts....

Paula Deen's lemon blossoms

Petit fours

lemon squares and lemon cookies...lots of lemon!

chocolate covered pretzels

thumbprint cookies

white chocolate fountain with marshmallows, rice krispy treats, brownie bites, and fruit skewers

...and the only thing on our dessert bar that we can't take credit for baking ourselves (we just added the doilie wrappers), were these amazing cupcakes from Twist. They were cream cheese pound cake and I'll say it again...they were AMAZING! And how cute are those fondant toppers? There were three different designs and in my last minute haste, I didn't get a picture of the other two, polka dots and a "D" for Jess' soon to be new last name. :)

For dinner we had chicken parmesan and chicken alfredo from a local Italian restaurant and a homemade salad.

We made Jess a birdcage blusher veil. :)

We had paper straws and made personalized name flags so we could all keep up with our drinks.

Playing a fun game to the tune of "itsy bitsy teenie weenie yellow polka dot bikini"

I hope no one is offended by this next picture... Everyone was asked to bring an extra pair of panties that suited their personality. Jess had to guess who brought each pair. I have seen this game played so many times and I have never seen anyone get as many right as she did. She probably guessed 95% correct...CRAZY!

Do you see the garland on the back of that chair? We hand made fabric ruffled garland and had it hanging in a few different places throughout my house. It's so girly and so fun! My sewing machine and I became best buds and spent a few really late nights/extremely early mornings together making sure that the garland got finished. :) If you sew regularly then I'm sure this would be no problem for you, but it literally took me forever! It was worth it though and we will definitely be using it again at other parties. So, I'm sure you'll see it again on the ol' blog. :) Toot here.

Jess, got to open some pretty packages...