Tease Alert!

So I decided I would post a little preview of what is to come once I get my professional pictures.

So I'm sure you can tell I am extremely impatient but and pretty proud of how good I have been about this entire process. It helps that my photographer also showed me some pictures early ... and by early I mean the day after the wedding ... seriously BEST. PHOTOGRAPHER. EVER.

I have the HONOR and pleasure of working with David Mierlcarek who was like a kid in a candy shop when he came to check where the wedding would be held. I can't even tell you how amazing it is and energizing to have a photographer who is just as excited as you about shooting your wedding if not a little more. I may have had to say "no" to a couple of requests (actually just one). Tromping in a pig field when it had rained ALL week WITH the pigs in the field .... no sorry I will draw the line there and ONLY because 1) you would stink the rest of the night and 2) female pigs are extremely aggressive ... oh and the mud is so deep after that much rain we would have all sunk to our knees and i think everyone would have MURDER me.

Speaking of murder here is the sencond picture I received from David, to which I have to say ROCKS!Now if you are wondering what you are looking at I would take a good look in the background and you will see my husbands legs dangling from a tractor. David told us "Marriage isn't all roses". I would have to say I have never had more fun in my life shooting this! Patrick probably not so much but he was SUCH a good sport. The even lined the barrel with some bubble wrap we found in my mom's studio so he wouldn't get his suit all muddy because it was really nasty in there. Also that is mud on my arm not a cut and that was there my chance and just happened to look AWESOME for this shoot.

Next is the picture that made me cry at the airport for about 20 mins .... it's really hard to stop once you start going, people kept looking at me and probably thought someone had died lol quite the opposite. Take a look for yourself.I might be a little biased but I think this is the most beautiful wedding picture I have ever seen and cannot believe it is us. Don't ask me how they got it because there is no light behind us and it is about 10pm and pitch black. He actually had to keep at me about doing this one because I was so tired by this point but I gave in and was so glad I did ... way worth missing my favorite song on the dance floor for this.

Reason #486 why David was the BEST Photographer ever .... we got a package from him about a week or 2 ago and we thought it was our pictures already except it was pretty big. When we opened it we see a 3x2 canvas print of the above picture. A gift from our lovely photographer. Tears again. We now have it hanging above our bed and still can't believe how lucky we were to have such an amazing photographer that genuinely cared about not just our wedding but us as well.

Invitation Preparation!

When I was doing the invitations I had taken pictures fully tending to post about it... hey just cause it took me 4 months doesn't mean I didn't do what I planned to. It just takes me longer to do things sometimes ;-)

So since I ordered my Invitations from Etsy really all I had to do was address the envelopes, the RSVP post cards and put the guest names on the RSVP line.. Since there were no kids at the wedding and only people in a serious relationship were allowed to bring a guest didn't want any confusion so I typed in the names of the guests who were invited on the RSVP line for them :-) Smart I know and worked really great.

Also since I was on a budget I refused to hire a calligrapher to do it. I actually found this wonderful site with free font downloads thanks to Jacin from Lovely Little Details for posting about this site where you can get free fonts to which i downloaded and used for SO much stuff for this wedding. Free = AWESOME!

So here is my little station all set up :-)

Let's make some Invitations!

I got this pearly white ink pad at Michael's for $5

This Stamp; also from Michael's and totally worth the $10 i spent on it.

What did I do with these little lovelies you ask?

WA-La!

I also used them on the brown paper bags that held the homemade chocolate dipped rice crispy treats that were our favors :-) Best $15 I spent!

Our First Returned RSVP post card ... note the space at the bottom for the song request ;-)

I'm MURRIED!!!

That's right y'all I am officially a married woman. Mrs. Patrick Murphy :-)

And yes I know the title is spelled "murried" cause thats how I say it cause it fun :)

If I was left on earth for being sinful than thank god cause at least I got to enjoy my wedding and honeymoon! ;-) But we did also have a beer called Salvation which could have saved us as well. My brother was in charge of the brew selection and decided Salvation would be a perfect beer selection for a wedding held on the day of the supposed Reckoning. We halso had a beer called Red Barn because we have a huge barn ... It's not really red more of a pink barn lol.

So this is the story of the week before the wedding. As you know I live in Dallas and the wedding was back in Bucks County, PA so I went back a week before to help get things ready. Nothing can ever go smoothly for me I swear. I'm marrying a Murphy which has made me ultra pron to Murphy's Law "what ever can happen will happen". Oh not to mention 5 weeks before the wedding I had an accident in the kitchen and gave myself Second degree burns on my right hand fingers. Uhg it was not starting off well.

So like every bride I was checking the weather as soon as it was in the 10day focast. It was a little more important for me being as our wedding was completely outside. We did have tents for the reception but the ceremony and cocktail hour were not under tents and I strongly disliked the idea of having to get married under a tent. But i was also in the mind set that what happens happens and we will deal with it when it does and I refused to let it stress me out.

BUT the weather was forcasted rainy the ENTIRE week leading up to the wedding with rain on the wedding day as well. I kept watching it though and it mostly stayed at 50% but than 2 days before it dropped to 30% ... praise the lord! Although it POURED the entire week almost. The first day back was good and we got tons of gardening done and the next day was good but finally the rain broke at 4pm and finally were forced to stop soon after because of lightning. So the landscaping prep had officially ended that day but everything was gorgeous and I could not have asked for more.

The rain did prevent us from setting up lighting and the tent company didn't get the tents up till the day before! I was rediculous actually but I won't go into it. Not to mention our rental company we got everything else through tried to screw us with the dance floor. When we went in to finalize everything they ask us if we have sub floor for the dancefloor to go on top of.

Ummm what do you mean? Yeh they told us they would not give us the floor without a sub floor and they didnt have any for us because all theirs was rented out. They told us the sub flooring should be provied by the peole we get the tents from but how does that makes sence when you are the people we are getting our dance floor from and this is needed if it rains AND we were never told that if it rains you will need a special sub floorling to go under the dance floor so it doesnt break apart and get destroyed? No one ever told us this and being as there knew it was an outdoor wedding they should have. Basically that day was the worst day, 5 days out. Basically everything got figured out and they eneded up magically finding some for us to use.

Also we decided instead of having the tents in the back yard we would move them to the driveway. Our house isn't a typical house so what you are picturing is not what our driveway looks like. It's red gravel and has a ton of space and actually is surrounded by my favorite gardens on the property. It's like a big jungle! I actually think everything worked out for the best. I don't think the tents would have been half has beautiful if they had been in the yard and this way people weren't sinking in the mud :-)

My mom was really worried about my dress on the red gravel but I was ok getting a little dirty. I had actually bought rain boots that my photographer and I had decided would be awesome and would allow me to stromp through all the mud in the world! Glorious!

Another thing that went wrong but ended up working out was my personalized escort cards that were to be tied around mason jars. See my printer back in Texas kept eating them when I would print the names on them and I ran out of the cards with just 10 people left to do. It was horrible so I had to order more but I had to have them delived to PA because they weren't going to come in time. Well when I tried to print them on my parents printer it was no luck, it straight refused to even recognize anything being in the basket. So than my dad took them to a printer place along with the font type I was using and they could not do it either. It was so aweful lol I know it's stupid now but I was freaking out because these were my babies. They were my favorite detail of the wedding and I had worked so had to get them done only to fall short. What did I do you ask? Well my bridesmaid Heather (who happens to be the most talented painter/artist eveR) hand wrote them out matching the font pretty darn good I must say and saved my sanity.

Heather also made a sign we put at the end of the driveway. See our driveway is SUPER long and you actually cannot see the house from the road so we wanted to make sure people knew THIS was the place. She also made a second sign for the parking lot people had to park in. Yes thats right. We were originally going to have valet and have the cars parked in our neighbors side yard that lines our driveway BUT because of all the rain we could not do that. Luck for us we have a HUGE greenhouse across the street and they let us use it. So people parked and then we have a suttle to take poeple to the wedding :-) I know so great right?! I worked out so great and my brothers friend drove the big van my dad rented to be the suttle so all we did is pay for a one day car rental. SUPER cost effective if i do say so. I'd like to take credit but that was all my smart Dadda who thought that one up. I was thinking a school bus but being as the tents were taking up most of the dirveway there was no way a school bus could turn around. anywear.

I had also planned on making a rice crispy treat gooms cake. Well I forgot to order the square molds to make them so I decided well I will just make them in a thick pan and cut them and than arrange them into a grooms cake. I even got small brown paper bags (againa thanks to my Heatho for finding them) and everyone helped to stamp dandelions onto them so that guests could take them home as a favor!

Yeh that did not work out. It is WAY hard to cut them even and each one the same size so when trying to piece them into a huge tiered square cake it just wasn't working out. So than Rach, or maybe it was even my mom suggested we just put them IN the bags and have our caterer arrange them for people to take. Genius. Good to know I have all these smarties around me :-)

My MOH and brideasmaid Heather and I also decided to get an airbrush tan which was very funny because not only can you NOT get wet for 10 hours but they also dont tell you that when you wake up the next day you are a different race lol I'm serious, I am a pale irish/english gal and I woke up and I was middleeastern lol It was a hoot. After I showered though more than half came off so it ended up being perfect and I didn't look so horribly pale in Mexico either ;-)

I had also bought bubble tubes in which we planne on putting one on each chair for the ceremony so that when Patrick and I walked down the ilse as Husband and Wife everyone could blow pretty bubbles!

Tying these tiny bows was a little time consuming but way worth it I think :-)