Shall We Just Start with the Rehearsal?

I have so many photos from our wedding weekend -- which is obviously a GREAT thing, but it leaves a girl to wonder ... o-kaaay, where do I begin with editing, posting on the blog, etc.

Well... since the rehearsal came first, let's start with that!

I think I'm just going to chunk the rest of the photos in to blocks as well ... getting ready, ceremony, portraits, the reception, some dance photos, some gift opening, and then (oh boy) the massive amount of honeymoon photos.

I will get to all of this as time allows.

How does that sound? Good? Good!

Onto the non-edited photos, because well, I just don't have the time! (sadly...)

Hello, here we are ....

With our best man, Craig, and our maid of honor, Alanna:

One of my most favorite snapshots of us ever...

Making things official.....

My dad, my GORGEOUS bouquet, me, and Chris:

We are now at the rehearsal dinner....this is my brother and sister in law Shannon.... they also stood up in the wedding.....

Woo hoo!

Alanna, Burgundy (who played our ceremony music), and groomsmen Thomas getting all cheesy with their bridal party gifts .... girls got diamond + blue topaz necklackes, their favorite candies, and flip flops to wear for the dance ...... the boys got beer mugs engraved with their name and role in the wedding and also their favorite beer......

Chris and another groomsman, Dave:

Funny moment of the evening...refilling the pitcher with his own gift beer.....

Katelyn, me, and Jacque .... two of my other bridesmaids:

Another cheese shot with Alanna and Burgs:

Jacque and Jaelynn, bridesmaid and flower girl:

Now we (aka all the girls) are at the hotel and its time for gifts! I had a flower girl gift for JBug, a maid of honor gift for Alanna, and a birthday gift for Shannon! I got a surprise gift from Katelyn too! Thanks! I love the make up brushes, bodywash (LOL! FUNNY STORY!), and Starbucks card!

One final shot before it's time to sleep and wake up and GET MARRIED!

Just a Few Honeymoon Pics for Now...

This is going to be more of a photo-post instead of talking about our honeymoon near Playa del Carmen, Mexico. I am literally too exhausted from the trip yet to talk about it at lengths.
I will have more photos coming along with stories -- and don't worry -- I still have to post TONS about our wedding!

Some photos from the beach by our resort:



Our last night we went on a Lobster Dinner Cruise. The lobster dinner actually came after the catamaran drinks+appetizers+gorgeous sunset cruise ... here we are on the boat:




Sunset on the boat:


Back at the beach after the cruise. This is where we had our Caribbean lobster dinner. So gorgeous:


Us dancing.... seriously the best night of my life -- besides our wedding of course!


Earlier in the week we went on a deep sea fishing adventure.....please excuse my appearance!
Chris reeled in barracudas, a sailfish, and a spanish mackeral was also caught. Here are the barracudas:


And the gigantic sailfish:


Hope you enjoyed a little sneak into our honeymoon!
More to come!

Photos by Christy ... ckphotography

All the photos in this post are:


copyright ckphotography
http://www.ckphotosite.com/
http://www.ckphotography.blogspot.com/


I can NEVER thank Christy and her husband Ryan enough!


Here are a few of the sneaks she graciously provided me with!

Vows and Two Rings ...

Just call me Mrs. Filip!

Yesterday was... amazing, fun, blissful, perfect, and more-than-I-ever-imagined-it-would-be!

Before the wedding, I had this idea in my head that I was going to blog every detail the day after. Well....its the day after and I'm way too tired for that! It's a good tired, but I think I'm going to wait until I'm a little more clear-minded to write about it all (or at least until all the bobby pins are out of my hair, lol!).

Scrapjazzers (or former Scrapjazzers)... my official photographer was the generous and talented Christy Kennedy from http://ckphotosite.com/ or http://www.ckphotography.blogspot.com/ ....so fun and awesome to work with!!

THANK YOU SO MUCH CHRISTY AND RYAN! CAN'T WAIT TO SEE ALL THE PHOTOS!

Until the "real" photos are ready ....here are some guests' photos to tide you over ...

Our First Dance -

to Keith Urban's "Your Everything."

Later on, we had a second "first dance" to Chantal Kreviazuk's "Feels Like Home."

I absolutely ADORED (adored!) our cake. I found it in Martha Stewart weddings .... and I had NO IDEA it would turn out exactly as I wanted it to! I was so sad to see it cut into 200 pieces! LOL.

Our funny cake cutting story ... it was time to cut the cake, and then we got up there and realized we NEVER had a thought in the world during our wedding planning about getting a cake cutting set! So ... I got up there and said, "Whoops!" and found the next best thing to cut the cake ... a butter knife! :-) Good times!

Some of my lovely girls... and one very lovely little girl :-)

Tequila shooters :-) We have a special memory with Jose Cuervo so of course we had to drink some on our wedding day! (I love the sign in the back that says "Great Team.")

Of course, there will be MORE to come!

We have been married for one hour! Blogging from the car! Im officially Mrs. Filip! Woo hoo!

So {3} days, huh?

That's what my wedding countdown says!

I can't believe it!

Where has the time gone!?

Everyone keeps asking me if I am getting nervous.

No, I'm not nervous about the getting MARRIED part - that's the part I am just way too excited to be nervous about!

However, what I am nervous about is seeing how the day is actually going to come together - the schedule, all the details, etc...

I have found that you can plan all you want, but there is no way of actually knowing just how it'll all come together and flow until the big day! We'll see!

Today I visted the beach where I want some of the portraits taken. It was gorgeous and I hope it all works out and we can get there that day!

Some other "wedding" things I did in the past couple days....

• Met with the golf club and finalized the menu, guest count, and bar situation


• Ordered the food for the lunch reception in between the ceremony and dinner/dance reception


• Picked up our travel documents for Mexico


• Finished the programs


• Finshed the directions cards to be handed out at the ceremony


• Finished the floral decor for the reception


• Figured out who is driving what cars to where (this is actually a very complicated part of the day!)


• Confirmed rehearsal dinner plans


• .....and so much more!

This week I've also gotten busier with photography business stuff and picked up three extra days of subbing for summer school, trying to find a new apartment, figuring out how we are going to fix Chris' Jeep ------ ack! Such a crazy week! I can't wait til Friday .... when all I have to think about is WEDDING STUFF!

{3} days to go!

Chocolate Chip Pecan Shortbread

I made this shortbread this morning and it's delicious! (I'm obviously not on a "bride diet")






Ingredients:
1 cup flour
1/4 cup white sugar
1 stick butter
1/3 cup chocolate chips
1/4 cup crushed salted pecans


Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Combine flour, sugar, and cubed butter pieces. Mix with hands until dough forms. Then added in chocolate chips. Press into a glass 8 inch pie pan. Bake for 25 minutes. Take the pan out, and sprinkled crushed pecans on top. Bake for an additional 5 minutes.

Enjoy!

Oh God

I can tell the day is getting close .... you know how?

So I just listened to our first dance song .... and at the same time I was looking at hair pics I had picked out ...

And I started to tear up.

Oh boy.

(Don't worry - it was a good cry!)

4th 'O July Fun

It was a busy weekend for us ... a good busy though... Friday we did the Kenny concert, and Friday I also spent a long morning and afternoon at David's Bridal getting my dress in order. Glad it finally got done right and I was able to take it home ....

Saturday (the actual 4th Holiday) we went to the matinee of Johnny Depp's new movie "Public Enemies." They shot part of the movie in my town and also in a town a few miles away. They shot it in Wisconsin because that's where John Dillinger hid out from the police. It was neat to see my hometown in the movie -- but they got it all wrong! They made my town look like ARIZONA ... why the heck didn't they make it part of the Wisconsin part of the movie? Anyway ... it was a pretty good movie. A little hard to follow, but I think it was because I was still sleepy from Friday night. :-)

After the movie, we had a cookout at our place with our friends Kate and Josh ... we played Rodeo Golf and of course, the girls won. Of course!

Then, we headed over to Kate's parent's neighbor's house and enjoyed their festivities. The neighbors had bought over a grand worth of fireworks and they put on a great show! It was awesome!

Moving on to Sunday...

Chris and I headed to his parents house, which is a little bit up north, and we had yet another cookout. Chris rode around on his toys for awhile and I spent the day just relaxing in the sunshine.

Had to sneak the American flag somewhere in this 4th of July weekend post!

Isn't he cute?

Mmmmm YUM -- 8:30 pm sunshine is amazing light!

And what's on the agenda this week?

Today, with only {12 days} to go, I have my trial up do!

Thursday I'm getting my hair colored up...

And hopefully, the days in between, I'll get a few more wedding things scratched off my list!

Have a great week, everyone!

The Chez-Master

We went to the Kenny Chesney concert at Summerfest Friday night and we had a great time! It was Chris's first Chez-Master concert, and I'm pretty sure we're going back again next year. ;-) His show was awesome, as usual, but at the end, after his regular show, he decided to get drunk on stage and it turned into him singing a couple hours worth of stoner songs... weird!! I think he should have just kept on singing his own tunes, but hey, not my show. ;-)

Good times though!

We went with my bro and my sister in law....

Last weekend, we were on the OTHER side of Lake Michigan. :-) Now we are on the "home" side in Milwaukee:

View of the lake ...

Such a fun summery photo of us, I love it!

The Chez-Master:

I love love love love this photo! It was such a gorgeous night and I'm glad I captured it!

This Qualifies As The Cutest Thing ... EVER!

It's a flash drive that looks like a mini Canon 5D and L-series lens!

SO fun and have I mentioned CUUUUTE?

I kinda want one ...

Too bad I'm saving up for the REAL thing ;-)

Definately added to my wishlist, though!

Just had to share:

Look What Came Today...

I can't wait to find out what happens next in my career path!

Happy 4th!

I know the 4th isn't for a few more days ...

But I got the celebration started a little eary!

I made firework cupcakes :-)

And they are tasty....

I've always loved the 4th of July. It's one of my favorite holidays! I always loved going to the parade as a kid - we'd have to get to the firestation early to reserve the special family spot we sat at every year. I hope that I will get to go this year to spend some time with my family before the "big day!" (Which, there are only {16 days} to go!)

Hopefully everyone's schedules will work out and I'll get to enjoy some favorite 4th of July traditions!





Have a fun and safe 4th!

Gifts Galore

The house (correction: apartment) is a disaster, as always.

But today, it's espescially messy because I just finished putting together the 12 gifts bags for our wedding/bridal/party/attendants. There are snippets of orange and silvery aqua curling ribbon all over the living room. And scraps of shiny foily blue wrapping paper amongst the mess. Then, there are all the boxes and tags and bags from all the stores and online orders the gifts came from.

It feels like Christmas around here with all the presents and wrapping!

I can't tell you what their gifts were, because a few of them visit this blog, so for now, I'll just leave you with a little visual. This picture irriates me a bit ... I couldn't get the colors to expose correctly for the life of me. The orange curling ribbon is NOT red, and the blue tissue paper is actually aqua. The bags say, "Thanks for being part of our day!"

Aside from the last minute gift shopping and putting together all the gits, I got to scratch a few other wedding items off of my still-large wedding "To Do" list. Here is what I did today:

-Rescheduled trial up do

-Scheduled 2-color high lights

-Reserved our Stay, Park, and Fly hotel room

-Worked on the rehearsal dinner arrangements

-Settled on an up-do

{17 days to go!}

And from the backyard...

Look what decided to finally flower! My "mystery" seeds! And, I think it's a sign that the first flower came out orange! Our wedding flower color! I love these little delights in life. :-)

And just another flower (cosmo) I felt was photo-worthy:

Have a great rest of your week, everyone!