Wedding Stationary

         We are slowly approaching the 1 year countdown for our wedding, and boy is that exciting!! I have a wedding countdown app on my iPhone that tells me - to the second - how much longer until our wedding - right now I am at 1 year, 2 months, 15 days, 15 hours, 37 minutes, and 57 seconds. This means we are coming closer to mailing save the dates! First though, I want to mail off custom "Will you be my.." cards. I already have written up what will be said to each bridesmaid/man of choice. They know who they are, however I wanted to make it more official and personal. Once they are officially mailed and I have heard back from each of them I will of course make an official blog posting each of them, as well as the wedding website. We haven't published our wedding website, even though it has been done for months, because we wanted to ask each groomsman and bridesmaid/man personally before posting it.

A textured paper - Aggie Maroon - that will be used
 for the "Will you be my.." cards

The cream textured (can't see it too well in photo) cardstock
 that will be used as well

        So, with the need for stationary I made an appointment with Paper Planet today!! I was super excited for this - for those of you who don't know what Paper Planet is: Let's just say that it is a crafters dream. They have floor to ceiling walls of custom, handmade papers that you can buy the entire sheet of, or have them cut it to size. They have a ton of different embellishments, ribbons, pre-made envelopes, etc. They also make custom orders for various invitations that can be quite elaborate and gorgeous! They can help you with the single, smallest detail of your event stationary, to doing everything for you. Check out their link: Welcome to Paper Planet - Create, Inspire, Dream!
      My goal is for them to help me with a tree design. I have a vision for the stationary, however I have no idea how to create the dang tree without copying some clip-art or jpg file that I am sure has been used time and time again. That is where Paper Planet comes in! They will be helping me design my personal, unique tree that will be used to tie in all my stationary from my "Will you be my.." cards to the "Thank you" cards.

Slightly blurry photo of ONE of the many tables they have with
invitations they have designed

A tree they sketched for a previous wedding invitation

One of the invitations I previously found to show them
 what I had in mind - I liked the basic black and white
tree with the color coming through in the leaves

Another invitation I found that I like - from etsy.com

Instead of the initials in the heart - we want our initials to look like this - minus the year haha

            Unfortunately, Henry works and they close at 5:30, so I had to tackle this adventure on my own. I am sure Henry was just heartbroken over missing the excitement of browsing walls and walls of paper and books of different fonts - I know how excited he gets when I drag him all over Hobby Lobby. :-P So, off I went to meet with Julie and boy was she super sweet!! I felt so at ease with her right from the beginning and have full faith that whatever her and her girls come up with I will be amazed! After extensive notes, browsing fonts, and browsing the previous designs of theirs - she also made copies of any invitation they had previously designed that inspired me for mine SUH-WEET! - I whipped out my credit card and paid the big whopping $50 so they could begin designing the tree and monogram. She said it would be completed around August 17th, if not sooner. I am SUPER excited!! Another thing I was excited to hear was about the font of our monogram - which will be an H squared. To mix the city girl/country boy theme she let me pick out a few fonts I liked to depict each and said they could "merge" the fonts. Whoa buddy! However, I don't know if I will blog the design before wedding invitations are sent or not - we will see. :-)

Our venue is rather hard to find if you have never been to it before -
I saw these cute cartoon maps in a few of their invitations and she gave
 me a copy so my mom and I can create ones ourselves for my wedding :-)

       Despite Henry's lack of interest in my craftiness - until the final product - I am truly blessed with an amazing fiance. He has been so great when it comes to everything we have done so far for the wedding. He went to every wedding venue with me, helped me pick our colors at home depot with paint swatches, met with the baker, met with the photographer, e-mailed the caterer for me, and even went to a bridal show with me! We also have plans to attend 3 more upcoming bridal shows together :-). I don't think it matters so much to me that he gives an opinion on everything - that sounded kind of rude lol - although I more than welcome each and every opinion he provides, but it just meant a lot to me that he was there. He took the time to come with me because he knew it meant a lot to me - I hear all these girls about how the guy does nothing and lets the girl make all the decisions - that makes me sad! I know everyone says its "the bride's day", but to me it's "our" day - the day two become one - I am not the only one down that isle or footing the bill, he is too. So I am going to very much enjoy looking back on our big day knowing that each part - well almost - he was either there for the process or helped form the idea. I love Henry :-)

A fun day of house painting!

Henry after giving me a handful of black light paint on my face

Based off our previous painting photos - we decided to have an
engagement shoot in Michigan that involved a paint fight -
enjoy watching it unfold 

I asked Henry how he wanted to start - he said,  "LIKE THIS!" as he begins to
 squirt red paint all on me! So, I close my eyes and begin squirting - until Henry
grabs my hands saying, "STOP! STOP!" -
 this is the photo taken right after I open my eyes and see his face

We laughed so hard!! So did Lisa Kae - our photographer - and my best
 friend Riki who was with us at the time -
This was one of our best ideas ever!

We switched sides so we could get Henry's "good side" - in other words, the non-blue side haha
I love him so much!!!