I have been battling with myself about centerpieces for a long time! I love orchids of any kind, especially dendrobium orchids.

Orchids, via Jessica Claire

Orchids, via electic images

It would be ideal to have orchids at our wedding, but there are hefty price tags on those babies. Instead, I’m entertaining the idea of using carnations as our centerpieces. I always disliked carnations when they’re used individually, but I really like the look they have when bunched in a ball. Whatever it is we do, we’ll be doing it ourselves.

Carnation table setting, via hystudio

I have grown to really love the look of that. It’s so pretty and will definitely be affordable for 20-25 tables. I will post a DIY blog once we do a mock of one and it becomes DIY-blog-post worthy.

I shot up in bed this morning at the thought of only having 5 months to plan our wedding. The time has flown by, and now that we have our website out of the way… we are ready to move on to other things such as invitations. Except, we’ve been sitting idle doing nothing.

Wake up, Natalie. FIVE MONTHS!

Everything else has seemed peachy keen, until now. Things have come easily, I love planning and getting things together. But, there’s that other part of the equation. Noone else will work on my schedule. Therefore, we need to book our justice of the peace, entertainment and hotels.

The hardest part will definitely be paying for everything. It’s easy to sit here and imagine all the pretty, colorful purples we will have in our centerpieces or that nice photo booth we want. Then comes reality, where you have to dish out the cash for what you really want.

What we have left to do:

Today is a special today.
Today marks the day that I check another “To-Do” off of my “To-Do” list.

We have found the bridesmaid dresses and my girls have all purchased them.

I had a pretty standard criteria on what I was looking for. Of course, the purple had to be the perfect shade. I did not want my bridesmaids to wear something too typical or anything you can find from a David’s Bridal catalog. I wanted it to be a cocktail type dress that was simple and cute. It had to be a nice dress that they can wear again.

Albeit, it’s cliche of a bride-to-be to say that she wants her bridesmaids to be able to wear their dress again and then go on and choose a floofy thing that pretty much makes a mockery of the entire phrase “wear again”. But, I think I was able to do it.

For those who know me well, my style is anything but ordinary. Simple, yes. Ordinary, no. I want our wedding to be simple but not ordinary.

Without further adieu, I present to you the bridesmaid dresses.

I think it’s perfect. Heck, it even has pockets. Any dress that has pockets is awesome in my book.

We have also been planning our Bachelor/Bachelorette party.

I cannot believe we are only 6 months away. It is going to fly by!

Visit the Engagement Page to learn more about our special day.

There have been very little things in my life that I have been sure of, but Natalie was the first and only exception. Realizing that I wanted to spend my life with Natalie was the easiest, most crystal clear, and natural decision of my life. Getting the balls to get on stage in front of hundreds of my peers, with no time to prepare, was not as easy.

The truth is, as stupid as it might sound, I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with Natalie the first week we were dating. I was just tainted by past relationships where two people aren’t on the same page. I never that I would be ready to talk about marriage with a girl so much younger, but boy, was I wrong.

Natalie loved to talk about it. In fact, she would even point at her bare ring finger as to hint to me that I should put something on it to seal the deal. Natalie and I had already talked about the possibility of getting engaged and even started to dream and talk about what some of our future plans might be. The only thing I had to do was buckle down, make the decision and make the next move.

I wanted the time to be perfect, but most of all I wanted her family to approve. I wanted to ask them in person in respect of their family culture and traditions. Finding a time to get to Dallas to ask them seemed impossible. One day on vacation, I stepped into their room and asked them. HHer mom thought I wanted to get married immediately and asked me what my plans were and her dad didn’t look at me, busy browsing the internet. It was the single most awkward moment of my life. Later I found out her dad probably didn’t understand what I was asking, or maybe he was just in shock.

I popped my head up from the very back of the room to try and catch a glimpse of the stage. I was wondering if I heard that right, and I was surprised I did. Why on Earth would Anthony be on stage, let alone the first person to go up there? What secret is he going to have? For a split second I was embarrassed for him, wondering what would motivate him to do such a thing because it seemed so out of character.

And then, I heard the question. I sat there engulfed in a feeling of who-knows-what and started getting butterflies in my stomach. Apparently, my reaction was too slow since Sara and Jonathan were urging me to get up and walk. My walk was even slower than my reaction. Mind you, I was in the back of a large room whose length could be compared, at the time, to that of a football stadium. The walk seemed forever and towards the end, I started speed walking. It didn’t help that I was hauling around a huge purse that equated to the size of carry-on luggage.

I walked up to the stage with a big smirk on my face and whispered “yes, of course honey…” only to find out that I didn’t say that loud enough nor did I lean in towards the mic to say it. Repeating myself, I forced a monotone “yes” into the microphone which ended up sounding lifeless and emotionless. Trust me when I say I was anything but emotionless. I was ecstatic!

A lot of people say that the dress is one of the most important things of your wedding. It’s what you’ve been waiting for since you were a little girl, sitting on the porch day dreaming about Prince Charming sweeping you off of your feet and getting married in a beautiful Princess ballgown.

In reality, I never daydreamed of my Prince Charming or getting married. I was too busy fiddling around with AOL chatrooms and learning how to breakdance.

When it comes to a wedding dress, I want it to reflect my everyday style. I don’t need that extra poof, lace or bustle. I want something simple and elegant. I am not sure I fall for the “perfect dress” stories that I hear or read about. As simple as I want the dress to be, I want the process of finding one to be even more simple.

I love Jim Hjelm, Monique Lhuillier, Lara Helene and several other designers I’ve seen in the, oh..about 50 magazines that I’ve bought in the last few months. I also know I want a sweetheart neckline with a chapel/cathedral train.

J Crew “Lucinda” Dress

Lara Hélène “Jessica” Dress

Mary, my sister-in-law, and brother are coming to New York from Dallas on Thursday. We plan on taking the better half of Friday to visit bridal ateliers so I can find a style that suits me. Pessimistically, I doubt I will find anything I will fall in love with but you never know what can happen!

I remember starting out looking at wedding dresses and being completely overwhelmed by all of the wedding dress terminology. Now, as warned by Jessica, I have learned it all due to overexposure to wedding dress pictures and endless researching.

Because I have dubbed myself a creative and crafty person, I have decided to take a stab at designing (with help from the fiance, of course) and wedding planning our wedding.

I have decided that I will be making each and every invitation by hand. All 200 to 250 of them. It seems like a big task but hopefully I can enlist the help of Anthony and his best man. I found a machine that is only manufactured in Japan called a RISO Gocco. It is similar to screen printing, but a lot more efficient and not as messy or time consuming to set up.

The results look beautiful and I hope that once I try my hands at it, I’ll be as successful as everyone else. How hard can it be, right?

Image from uglykitty on flickr

Image from uglykitty on flickr

This machine will help us create our invitations, envelopes, RSVP cards, menu cards, thank you notes and whatever else we want to do. The savings just for doing the invitations ourselves is massive and I’m really excited about it so it should make the labor half as bad as it would be if I were to dread it.

On top of that, Anthony’s aunt owns a bakery in El Paso and she will be making our cake. We’re not sure how much she will be charging us, if anything at all, but that will also save us a lot of money.

For flowers, we are in conversations about doing trade work with Nathan, owner of Gro in Dallas, and we’ll be exchanging a website for flowers. Again, a lot of money saved.

That’s the general overview of where our wedding planning is going.

We’ve been engaged for five months now and will finally be finishing up our website. I am very much ready to get started on everything else that wedding planning entails. Hell, I haven’t even gone dress shopping yet!

Natalie Says…
We first met while we were working together at the same agency in Dallas, Texas. I was the intern and he was a freelancer working on the other side of the building.

One random summer day, I received a message through the internal messaging service, “Bonjour”, from Anthony Armendariz Being the friendly type, I carried on a casual conversation. After awhile, Anthony asked me if I wanted to go get coffee at the gas station next door to the building, but since I don’t drink coffee, I reluctantly agreed since I wanted to take a walk. Besides, I could go grab a bottle of tea. The plan fell through and I never left my seat.

A few minutes later, I receive another message from Anthony Armendariz claiming that the previous person I was chatting with was not Anthony but rather Jonathan Rea, who thought it would be funny to message people from his computer while he was outside smoking with Matthew, his brother who also worked at the same agency. This is the day Anthony and I began our daily Bonjour chat routine with a lot of happy hours at Grapevine Bar to follow, some of which I was lured out by trickery. We even went to lunch together at Taco Diner in Las Colinas.

The following month, we started hanging out much more and I honestly enjoyed his company. We talked often about an array of things, often random and spanning from music to our goals in life. At times, I was taken back by our similarities. I couldn’t over analyze it much because at this time, I had a boyfriend. As time drew on, the more I got to know Anthony, the more guilty I felt about the situation. I genuinely liked hanging out with him, and albeit, that is no crime, it felt it was time to let go of the relationship I was in. Being with Anthony in the initial months of our friendship made me realize that there were compatibility issues in my current relationship, in relation to my own personal goals. I had to move on and during the dramatic transition and self-reflection, I fell head over heels for Anthony. And as they say, the rest is history.

We now live together in Brooklyn, New York with three dogs and a cat. Okay, just kidding. Only a lizard named Oscar. We’re both designers thrown into this chaos that you call New York City. Our relationship is filled with laughter, fun and a lot of movie watching and home-cooked dinners. I love spending my weeknights with him, and I really love getting to spend Saturday and Sunday mornings in bed together. It has to be the best feeling in the world to wake up next to the person you know you want to spend the rest of your life with.

Eventually, we’ll move out of New York City and settle into an environment that nurtures a quiet, laid-back lifestyle.

Anthony Says…
I remember my friend Jonathan Rea trying to convince me to work with him at this company he was working for, IMC2, in Dallas. He mentioned that there was an Asian design intern there that he thought I would like to meet.

I ended up working there as a Freelance Art Director consultant, and on one of my first days at work he walked me by her desk, while she was working and unaware that we were there and asked me, ” Eh! So what do you think of the intern? You should make her scan in stuff for you.” One day while I was outside on a smoke break, Jonathan got on my computer and started sending Natalie messages on instant messenger. When I arrived back at my computer I had a message from him that read, “Welp, you have a date with the intern.” Apparently he was pretending to be me and was asking her out on my behalf.

She had a boyfriend, but I was content with being her friend because she was one of the coolest people I had met in a long time. My first memory of Natalie was shooting pool with her at The Grapevine Bar. I told her we were all heading there for happy hour, knowing very well I was the only one that was going. It was a desperate attempt to hangout, but very much worthwhile.

We shot pool, I won twice, and then we had drinks outside. Neither of us drank very much, and we talked about how much we both liked the pretzels in Chex Mix, and I told her about my three drink limit. I drank 4 and received a call from Behavior Design about my new job opportunity in New York, so we parted. I went to hug her and she gave me the infamous “ass out, one-armed hug” and we were on our way home.

After that, I was absolutely crazy about her and tried to spend as much time with her as I could before I moved away from Dallas. We ended up dating and I asked her to help me move so that I could spent more time with her and explore this new exciting relationship a little more. I never thought we would end up together, but by the time we made it to New York City, I knew I was in love with her and I knew I wanted to make it work. I told her I loved her on the roof of my apartment on 22nd and 4th avenue, while we were watching the Manhattan skyline. I’ll never forget that moment and the feeling of fear and happiness I was experiencing at the same time.

I’ve been collecting wedding images from all around the internet, as the folks who are my contacts on Flickr will know. There has been a steady stream of centerpieces, party favors, ribbons, table settings, candy bars images flowing through my Flickr account. I apologize for not noting the photographer or source, as I was speeding through in desperate search of ideas that I neglected doing anything besides right-click + save. If you see your photo here, please let me know and I will give credit where credit is due.

Centerpiece, perhaps, for the guestbook table

Another centerpiece idea, it’s so beautiful