Brand Spankin' New "Real Life Bride" : Week 1

 

Let the wedding blogging, loving, smiling, stressing and planning begin! The above picture pretty much sums up our lives to date:  Grant and I, hanging on for dear life to each other, as the world around us spins out of control, morphing into something new – but at the end of this journey, and at the end of him twirling me around, we will be left standing with our arms around each other, smiling and laughing about the ride. At least we hope – Ha!

Grant popped the question about 6 months ago and we both agreed that we wanted a nice, long engagement.  We also knew that we wanted a fall wedding in Los Angeles, September particularly, because it is the nicest time of year with ideal weather.  So we’re set to wed: September 24, 2010. T-Minus 322 Days.

We had our engagement party about a month ago at the Soho House in West Hollywood. It was a perfect opportunity for our families to meet and greet everyone. It was also a great warm up to what we can expect for the wedding. A few lessons we learned:
1.    Get everything in writing. We got taken for by the limo company as they charged us $250 one-way to shuttle guests to/from the hotel, not $250 total like we were told.  Now it’s a “he said, she said” battle.
2.    Food is necessary when serving alcohol. Shoes were off by 11pm and our guests could barely walk out of the place. Which actually isn’t too bad, but we felt a little guilty when friends called from their bed at 3pm the next day.
3.    When the party starts, have fun.  Grant and I learned that when the first guest showed up, that meant it was time to let go of any finishing touches and enjoy the party.  

We had a BLAST.  Our friend Andrea Trujillo at A.SweeT made an awesome candy table with custom lolli-pops.  My parents flew us some cotton from my Dad’s farm in Texas, so we had HollyFlora implement it in the floral arrangements. We also had temporary tattoo’s made and put them in the bathroom.  Beth & Susie recommended “StrayTats.com” where you can upload your own images and funny sayings. While it was a lot of fun getting to help our parents throw an awesome engagement party, we are so relieved that we have Beth Helmstetter to help us with our wedding plans! I can’t imagine doing it all on my own.

So right now we are forging ahead with wedding to do’s.  This week we met with a catering company and had a taste-test, which I absolutely love.  For some reason going to meet with caterers makes me feel like we are officially getting married. I think about all of the wedding movies I’ve seen and remember how I’ve always pictured getting to do it one day, and here we are.

Grant and I are also in the process of getting ready to mail out our save-the-dates, which we’ve found to cause a bit of tension.  I was convinced that Grant’s guest list had 50% more people on it than mine.  So, we finally sat down and divided the list in to two: Jacey vs. Grant.  Being an extremely competitive person, I was a sore loser when I found out my list had 45 more people on it than Grant’s.  Needless to say, we are making some adjustments before we start the addressing.

Planning status:
Wedding coordinator - Booked
Venue – SmogShoppe, deposit made
Photographer – Secured. As you can by the above pictures, we love our photog. Friend Lauren Ross
We have a few bands, a videographer and other things in mind but haven’t made deposits.  Stay tuned!

If you would like to get to know us more, you can visit our wedding website: www.grantheartsjacey.com where you can watch our “Save The Date Video,” read the story of us and see more pictures. 

 

xoxo