Map It Out

When Jimmy and I first got engaged, we knew we wanted a small wedding. Many of our past couples have told us that if given the chance to do it all over again, they too would plan small weddings, so we took their advice and decided to have a destination! :) We had heard of people having larger receptions a few weeks after their destination weddings so the people who could not attend would still get to join in the festivities. I loved this idea!...Except for one small detail. After the wedding the only thing we want to think about is the honeymoon, haha! So we planned a pre-wedding bash instead!

I can't even describe to you how excited I am! What better way to celebrate with your closest friends and family than to host a lakeside BBQ on a beautiful summer day?! Or at least I hope it's beautiful!!! All of you summer brides out there know what I'm talking about! :)

Anyways, as soon as we set the date, I got to work designing our invitations. We wanted our travel themed wedding ideas to be present at our big bash as well so I tried to come up with a design that represented our theme.

One super cool idea that I got from a few of our past couples was marriage advice cards. Your guests write down their most valued marriage advice so you can refer to it later or apply it to your marriage right from the start!

That's it for this week!

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Up In The Air

Hello all! I hope everyone is enjoying all of the beautiful weather we've had  lately here in St. Louis! Jimmy and I took advantage of it this past weekend and decided jump back into wedding planning.  Our most recent wedding project we worked on was our wedding lights.

While Carol (my future mother in law! :) ) and I cut burlap for our table runners, Jimmy and his dad worked on the lights stands.

During their first trip to Lowe's (notice how I said FIRST haha!), they decided to use pvc pipe to hang the lights because it's so light and would be super easy to bring out to Utah.  There was only one problem....

The lights were too heavy for the stands to stay upright.  They supported the buckets with boards while they contemplated the best way to hold the lights up.

After a few hours of testing out a couple of other ideas, they made a second trip to Lowe's (thankfully they only had to go twice!).  They came back with cables to anchor the poles to the ground. It worked!

The next step? Plugging the lights in.

We waited until it was dark enough to see them and.....dun du dun!!

Seeing the beautiful lights had made me even more excited for our destination wedding in Utah!

While Carol and I were working on the burlap table runners, we came across an idea to cover up the buckets. We were pulling out the strands of burlap to make it easier to cut when Carol said, "These would make cute skirts for a little girl!"

"Skirts!" I said excitedly. "We could make burlap skirts for the buckets. What a genius idea?!"

And incredibly, it worked!

After this past weekend do have a few more stands to make and we need to fine tune the burlap skirts but we finished the hard part! And best of all? We only broke one light bulb the whole time! Luckily we bought plenty of extra :)!

And I couldn't thank Kevin and Carol enough for helping us out with our wedding decor. They truly are the best for putting up with all of our trial and error wedding ideas!

Take care!

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Our Destination Wedding Photographers

Dear readers, Yesterday we hit the one year out mark for our wedding! (Yay!) So today I thought I would share some big news with you all!

As I mentioned in our most recent post, last Saturday we had the pleasure of working with the wedding photographers that we have chosen for our own wedding. While on the trolley with the rest of the wedding party, one of the bridesmaids said, "I think their (Brittany and Kevin's) pictures will turn out awesome!"

I overheard this and thought, "Yes, yes they will. Without a doubt their photos will be amazing!" :)

So I give to you the big news, the answer to one of the most asked questions we have received throughout our engagement. Jimmy and I have chosen Miller + Miller Wedding Photography to shoot our wedding!!!

Ahhh! We're so excited!

We met Sarah and Ryan in Fall 2011 at our first ever Chicago wedding. They were fantastic to work with and we immediately loved their shooting style. After getting to know them, and realizing how awesome their personalities are in addition to their work, we added them to the list of possible photographers for our own wedding.

Soon after Jimmy proposed, we drove up to Chicago to film Teresa + Ryan's wedding. Before arriving in Chicago, we stopped to visit Sarah and Ryan at their farm house outside of the city (They have the most awesome pet chickens I have ever seen! :)). Originally we hadn't planned on asking them if they were available to shoot our wedding, we just wanted to hangout and catch up. However, that evening we found out that they also love traveling out west, and had even been to Lake Powell in southern Utah! Jimmy and I were so happy to hear that!

We had been over our list of photographers many times, trying to decide who would want to photograph our super remote destination wedding. After visiting Sarah and Ryan the choice was clear. We are inspired by their work, we love their personalities, and always look forward to shooting with them. Added bonus, they've been to Lake Powell and know the area. Bingo!

So half way through dinner we decided to ask them if they would be interested in traveling to Lake Powell to be a special part of our big day (This sounds like a proposal in itself haha!). Thankfully they said yes! After discussing available dates we narrowed down our options and decided October 2, 2014 would be best.

We are so thrilled, excited, over-joyed, and ecstatic to share with you all that Sarah and Ryan of Miller + Miller Wedding Photography will be shooting our wedding!!!! :))

Feel free to check them out! They are AMAZING!

Until next time & much love,

captured in frames - St. Louis Wedding Videography