Wedding Picture Teaser!

Kim Irons posted some pics of us on her blog! Which means we'll get the prints soon! Yay!

Here's a snapshot of some of them:


View more at: http://kimironsphotography.blogspot.com/2008/09/jon-and-kirsten.html

Bridesmaid and Groomsmen Gifts

This is definitely something I could not blog about before the wedding... the Bridesmaid and Groomsmen Gifts.

Here's a picture of the gifts all wrapped up... can you guess what they are?

The Groomsmen got mongramed money clips/wallets that be bought on theknot.com. You can never tell with guys, but I think the guys liked them.

The Bridesmaids got engraved wine decanters from Crate & Barrel. The engraving was a small "8.16.08" on the back. I also wrote each girl a letter. I think the girls really liked them as well and hopefully they get some good use out of them.

My Maid of Honor was a special case since she's leaving for the Peace Corps very soon and really has no need for wine decanter. So I bought her a water-purifying water bottle from Katadyn. I think it is pretty slick and it could definitely come handy while hiking or serving in the Peace Corps in South America.

Out of Town Gift Bags

Something I added on near the ended of my wedding planning was the Out of Town Gift Bags -- but once I realized we had 30 rooms of guests booked at the Hilton I knew it would be worth the effort to give my guests a fun check-in present with items for the weekend.

We found ADORABLE plastic buckets at Michaels that totally fit the beach theme AND were on sale. We filled the buckets with water, chips, candy, granola bars, advil, tums, sunscreen, and chapstick. I think the water, tums, and advil definitely came in handy for some people after the wedding. :)

We also wrote a letter to welcome all of the guests and gave them key information about wedding events and things to do in San Diego.

They turned out awesome. Here they all are at the Hilton, all set to go!

Maui'ed - Honeymoon Recap

For our Honeymoon we went to Maui for one week. We stayed at the beautiful Grand Wailea Resort.


Here are some pictures from the week:

The highlights of the trip:

• Hanging out the Grand Wailea (amazing pools, slides, Jacuzzis, etc.) and we got an upgraded Ocean-View room
• Biking down Haleakala and tasting Maui wine which tastes like Boone's Farm- Sunset Booze Cruise
• Awesome Dinners at Mama's, Ruth Chris, and at the Main restaurant at the Grand Wailea (Humuhumu)
• Snorkeling (fed fish and saw some amazing fish including turtles, morey eels and what I thought was a sea snake but turns out it was almost certainly another eel)
• Grand Wailea Spa with Roman and Japanese baths and a hot lava stone massage

Wedding Reading: The Unbroken Circle of Love

From the moment we started planning our Wedding Ceremony we knew we wanted our families heavily involved in it. We ended up with my Dad doing a song, my Mom doing a Reading, Jonathan's Dad doing a Scripture Reading, and both of our Moms participating in the Sand Ceremony.

I'll do posts on the other parts of the ceremony later, but I wanted to start with my Mom's Reading entitled The Unbroken Circle of Love: We… We & She … She & He… He… We



The reading was actually a mix of several abriged readings including:
On Children by Kahlil Gibran
The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams
The Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Linbergh
Jerry McGuire
Love You Forever by Robert Munsch

And it turned out great! We loved it and our guests did too.

You can check out the full text of the reading here:
http://docs.google.com/View?docID=dhmdd69g_45cmbdg8ct&revision=_latest

Incorporating Photos into our Wedding

I LOVE photos. I always have. I've made bulletin boards, scrapbooks, and collages out of my photos for years. I knew I wanted to incorporate photos into the wedding without being over-the-top or cheesy.

I ended up making 3 poster boards of Photos to put on easels at the entrance to the reception. One featured Jonathan and me as babies, one featured pictures of Jonathan and I as a couple, and one featured our Parents' Wedding Photos. I love the way they turned out and I think the guests did too.

I'm not 100% sure what's going on here... but I think the bridesmaids liked the photos as well:

My DIY Pride & Joy: The Programs

My favorite DIY project and the one I'm most proud of are my Programs.

I got a bid for programs from Daydreams, the stationary store who did my invites, for programs and it came out to about $700. I thought to myself, "I can do that for less". And I did. When it was all said and done, with paper, printing, and ribbon, it was about $100.

I designed the programs in Word using a mix of Honey Script and Century Gothic fonts. I had them printed up and cut at Kinkos. I used a blue cardstock for the cover and a ivory resume paper for the contents. We bound them together with two colors of orange ribbon.

Here are some shots of the inside of the program:

The contents were:

- Cover

- Page 1: Welcome

- Page 2 & 3: Wedding Party

- Page 4 & 5: Ceremony Program

- Page 6: Picture

- Page 7: Wedding Weekend Agenda

I admit it, I'm completely in love with my programs and way to proud of myself.

Message me if you want my template. :-)