Nick & Allie’s Wedding ~ June 6, 2009

I had completely forgotten about this but have seen other blogs where brides do “the bling post” and thought I should show you our rings. Nick picked my ring out (with the help of his mom) and I must say, he did a great job. It’s gorgeous! You don’t see the wedding band in this picture, but it slides in the middle of the two bands and looks just like the other two bands with little pave diamonds all around. Its hard to tell from the picture but it is a brilliant cut pear shaped diamond. Its got an antique vibe to it and is very unique.  Love it!

And Nick’s ring is really unique as well. He wanted a tungsten carbide ring- which is an unbreakable steel, similar to titanium. The down-side of titanium is that it cannot be cut off in an emergency, but tungsten can be shattered and has the look of titanium. Tungsten carbide is four times harder than titanium, twice as hard as steel, and is virtually scratch resistant. He wanted some sort of design on the ring and was glad to find this celtic cross ring here.

I am so excited about our rehearsal dinner! It will be the night before the wedding at Maggiano’s Little Italy. I just love their food and their service is amazing. We have been to two rehearsal dinners there in the past and the service is so great. The food is endless, so I don’t doubt that I will be gaining 5-10 pounds that night. I better watch it if I want to fit into my dress the next day!

YUM!

The dress I selected for the rehearsal dinner is much dressier that the tone of our overall wedding weekend. I wanted one opportunity to dress  up in a cocktail dress and satin shoes and this is the perfect chance for that.

My dress is a Maggie London mesh tiered dress from Macy’s.

How cute!

And the shoe, which I haven’t decided if I am going to wear this or keep looking, is a bright purple satin shoe from Dillards:

Kind of sassy, right?

The food for the evening is going to be AMAZING. We are going with the following menu:

Appetizers: Calamari Fritte & Stuffed Mushrooms

Salads: Maggiano & my favorite- Tomato Caprese

Pastas: Fettuccine Alfredo with Broccoli & Penne with Marinara

Entrees: Pork Tenderloin & Lemon Herb Salmon

Desserts: I cant remember which ones we got but OH MY they all sound so good. Take a look at this listing:

Chocolate Zuccotto Cake
Chocolate cake layered with Sambucca chocolate mousse; iced with chocolate frosting and dusted with cocoa powder.

Creme Brulee
Rich and creamy vanilla custard with a hint of citrus, caramelized sugar crust, topped with fresh strawberries.

Homemade Profiteroles
Pastry shell filled with vanilla bean ice cream and topped with our own hot fudge and fresh whipped cream; dusted with cocoa powder and powdered sugar.

Maggiano’s Signature Spumoni
Maggiano’s signature spumoni made especially for us. A blend of pistachio, chocolate and cherry ice cream.

N.Y. Style Cheesecake, Seasonal Fruit
New York style ricotta cheesecake topped with fresh berries and whipped cream.

Nonna’s Pound Cake, Caramelized Bananas
Pound cake toasted and served with caramelized bananas and our own hot fudge sauce. Vanilla bean ice cream available upon request.

Tiramisu
Ladyfinger cookies soaked in espresso and coffee liquer layered with mascarpone cheese;dusted with cocoa powder and served with chocolate

Vera’s Lemon Cookies
Crescent shaped lemon cookies glazed with lemon frosting.

Apple Crostada, Caramel Sauce
Warm apple filling of Granny Smith apples, sugar, butter, nutmeg, cinnamon, baked in a pastry crust dipped in cream and crystallized sugar. Served with caramel sauce and a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream. Garnished with mint.

Since Nick and I are having a casual outdoor affair, we thought it would be fun to reflect that in our choice of food, so we decided to go with my long time favorite place that I always said would cater my wedding one day…San Antonio Taco Company, the best Tex-Mex in Nashville. It’s been around forever. I used to go as a kid and have always loved it.

You can’t beat the price and its an all-you-can-eat deal. We will be having chips, salsa, the best cheese dip in town, chicken & steak fajitas, and all the fixin’s! YUM! I can’t wait. SATCO brings in a giant grill on a trailer and makes the fajitas right there so everything is piping hot and fresh. I am SO excited!

I finally stumbled across the inspiration for our wedding cake the other day! I was looking through Google Images of wedding cakes and found this one. I like that it has different designs on each layer giving it unique interest and that it incorporates a little bit of color with the ribbons. Disregard the tulle all around it- I’m not a big fan of tulle.The cake will be sitting on a really cool whiskey barrel table under the tent.

For a long time, Nick has had his own brand….you know….cowboy brand….like the kind you would brand a horse or cow with. Its this really cool G that he designed and puts on lots of things…like his belt buckle, see below. I had him create a monogram for us, incorporating his G brand and this is what he came up with:

Isn’t it so cool? I love it! We planned on using it on our invitations but we couldn’t get the resolution of the image high enough for it to fit with our invites. The bakery is going to mimic it the top of our cake and we hope to use it on our programs and hopefully in other ares of the wedding as well.

Here is the belt buckle I was talking about.

Yep, he made it. How talented is he??!! Take a look at his website for more custom jewelery, art, and woodworking. If anyone needs a special gift for someone, Nick would be a great person to call.

I am so excited about the photographers for our wedding day! They are Noelle and Mark McCoy of McCoy Studios based in Franklin, TN.  They are so much fun and really great at what they do. What I like best is that they like to document then entire day, from beginning to end, so that they get almost a storybook of photos that tell about the entire event. Since both Mark and Noelle shoot the photos, we will get two different perspectives of the day. They explained in our meeting that Mark will stick with the groom and groomsmen while they are getting ready and Noelle will stay with the bride and bridesmaids. They will meet at the ceremony site and start getting pictures of all the details…everything we found important to us, they will get pictures of it. Then during the ceremony Mark will shoot the groom and his reactions as he first sees the bride and throughout the vows. Noelle will do the same for the bride. I love how they do this! Instead of one photographer catching different moments of each person, we will get to see each moment throughout the ceremony and the day! They stay throughout the reception until the party ends which is sometimes rare with photographers. Most times you are paying for a certain number of hours instead of for the entire event. They are very photo-journalistic and artistic- I just love their style. Instead of posing every picture they capture real moments and details. I am so excited to work with them! Check out their blog by clicking here and their website by clicking here. Below are some photos from their website that I just LOVE:

For some reason I am obsessed with the idea of a really cool and unique guest book. I’ve had trouble coming up with the perfect idea, but surely one of these would work…

This is one of my favorite ideas right now. It is the most unique guest book I have ever seen. Nick could probably even make one of these for us. This one is from an artist on my favorite new website ETSY. It would be cool to use this as a guest book and then add pictures of us on a few pages using photo corners.

I like this and seeing as though we are having a country wedding, it might be perfect. If we could find a wagon like this, it could be really neat. We could use one of the whiskey barrel tables to hold to guest book too. Found here.

From here. This would be neat. We could make a photo book of all our favorite pictures (since we aren’t doing an engagement session) and put it out for friends to sign. My friend Mary makes photo books as a keepsake for each year of her and her husbands life. She makes them over at snapfish.

I am thinking about asking a cousin of mine, who loves to take pictures, do this for me. It would be really neat to have polaroids of all the guests. The guests could then sign the white part below the picture and we can put them in a book. From here.

This picture is one I found on my photographer’s website, whom I plan to write about in a post soon. This idea is really cool. Guests can sign one of many bottles that Nick and I can enjoy each anniversary for years to come. See my photographers website- McCoy Studio.

Anyone have any other ideas that I could add to my list of choices?

i haven’t been good about blogging this week….sorry to all of my 2 readers….hahahaha! i wasn’t sure if i wanted a getaway car because knowing nick and i, we will be closing our party down. but, it does need to end at some point and usually the best way to end a wedding reception is to have a formal exit…so i’ve been dreaming of ideas for a cool and unique getaway car that could actually take us to our hotel destination (i thought a tractor, a horse drawn carriage, or even a golf cart would be cute….but not really functional). here is what i have come up with.

from here

got this from some car website (sorry that i cant remember)

nick would love this! from here.

here

I really love the idea of natural textures and materials used in our wedding. Take a look at these awesome wood elements….

from here

from here

who knew…inlaid wooden rings!!

more wooden rings

ring pillow here

LOVE THIS- we might make one! From here.

so cute! Here.

I have been inspired to write my very first blog about my wedding planning experience. It’s been fun reading so many others and this would be a fun way to collect all my ideas in one place and share it with, well, anyone interested….

So….here we go…..

I never really thought much about my wedding until I actually got engaged. I guess I thought it would be bad luck or something. Little did I know, the more you thought about it before it actually happened, the easier it would be to make decisions within time constraints. I did know one thing. I, or should I say we, wanted an outdoor farm wedding. Nick and I love the outdoors. We spend a lot of our time out in the country and riding horses…so what could better than a wedding on a farm? We are so lucky to have such great friends to host this wedding for us. Mrs. Gale, we appreciate you so much! Thank you!

Here are some ideas that have inspired me the most so far….

I love these whiskey barrells! Our friends have some at the farm where we are getting married and we plan to  borrow them for cake tables at the reception.

from here

from here

Mason jars with candles and country flower arrangements would be perfect. We’ve already started collecting them! We also want to use glass pitchers for centerpieces.

from here

from here

from here

from here

That’s it for now….its getting late. Thanks for reading my first post!