Jacob and I hopped on a zoom call with the priest facilitating the paperwork for our Catholic wedding ceremony last Friday, and wow…things are starting to feel so real!
We waited to start working on the paperwork until now, because if you know anything about Catholic weddings, baptismal certificates have to be requested no earlier than 6 months out from the wedding date. During our call, I had a major realization – we’re less than 5 months away from getting married!
5 MONTHS, Y’ALL. It feels like our engagement season has flown by so quickly, and I can’t believe we’re so close to the wedding day already! It’s been a while since I shared anything about our planning process, so for this week’s post, I figured I’d sit down and update y’all on how it’s been going so far!
I’ve capitalized the things we’ve checked off since my last update, and I’m so happy with the progress we’ve made!
✓ Church
✓ Date
✓ Dress
✓ FINALIZE BRIDESMAID DRESSES
This took a lot of though, fabric swatches, and asking for my girls’ opinions, but we managed to get the bridesmaid dresses finalized! We’re going with two different companies, Kennedy Blue and Azazie, and everyone is choosing their own dress style in a shade of light blue! If y’all would be interested, I can write reviews for both companies after the wedding!
Y’ALL. Our photographer, Erika Geier, is phenomenal. We booked with her back in August and got to meet her in person for the first time during our engagement shoot on January 4th! She’s a preferred vendor for the Brides of Houston magazine, has been featured multiple in multiple issues, and has such a wonderful and bubbly personality!
I’m so excited to work with Luis Magarin for our wedding film! He used to work for a corporate wedding company in Houston, but decided to branch off to do more films himself, and everything he’s put out has been absolutely wonderful. I love his creative energy and friendliness, and I’m sure our film will be beautiful!
We booked with Sunny Hair and Makeup Artistry pretty early on – partially because I knew they could handle my hair! You would not believe how difficult it is to find an artist, even in a place like Houston, that both works with and has a solid portfolio in natural/curly hair, but my artist, Erica, absolutely killed it! I had my hair and makeup trial the same day as our engagement shoot, and I felt so beautiful! I’m making a few tweaks for the wedding day, but after that experience, I trust my artist so much!
✓ DJ
We booked with Darrell from WE Entertainment just last week, and we’re so excited to have him DJ and MC our wedding reception! We’re still deciding on our special moment songs (like our wedding party entrance, Mother-Son Dance, etc.), but he’s made the process so easy!
✓ GUEST LIST
This…was a tough one. In my experience, all the wedding planning articles that say the guest list will be one of the biggest points of contention between you and your fiancé (and your families, especially) are definitely telling the truth. There was a lot of conflict over this issue, and we ended up with a list of 250 people (for a venue space that only holds 200), but it’s done and over with! And I’m so glad it’s not something we ever have to revisit again!
We ordered our save the dates through Basic Invite before we did our engagement shoot, so we didn’t get to include any pictures, but I still love the way they turned out! I put the last few in the mail earlier this week, and I still have my keepsake to hold onto! It was definitely a long process of deciding on the style and colors, but it was so worth it!
✓ SECURE HOTEL BLOCK
I’ve used WeddingWire to keep track of most of our wedding to-do list items, and they also provide a room block reservation service! I gave them the dates, the number of rooms I needed, the area I wanted the hotels to be in, and a name for the room block, and WeddingWire took care of the rest! Definitely one of the easiest things I’ve done on this list!
✓ ENGAGEMENT SHOOT
What a magical day! Jacob and I wouldn’t consider ourselves to be particularly comfortable on camera, but Erika captured our love so beautifully! She helped walk us through the entire process, posed us so well, and made the entire shoot such a fun experience! I’ve already ordered professional prints, and I cried looking at the gallery she sent over last week – if you have the option to do an engagement shoot when you get married, absolutely, 100 percent do it!
✓ FLORIST
This is a fun one! I love beautiful blooms and lush greenery, but I’m also trying to stick to a budget, so I decided to DIY my own flowers! I’m ordering through Flower Moxie and assembling all of the bouquets and arrangements myself (with the help of friends and family, of course!). It was such a great way to cut down on costs while still getting the look that I wanted, and I think it’ll be a great way to make some fun memories with my bridesmaids and aunties!
It took me a while to decide who I wanted to host our universal registry (I switched from Zola to The Knot, back to Zola, then to Blueprint, and finally decided on MyRegistry), and ever since that was squared away, I’ve had such a great time imagining Jacob and I’s future home and lives together! Jacob’s grandmother gifted us a set of china over Christmas break, so we were covered in that department, but deciding on crystal, cookware, decor (basically all the home items and then some) with Jacob has been so fun!
This was a process, y’all…and I’m not even really done yet! I ordered our wedding invitations through Minted at the beginning of January, but I’m still going through the proof process to make sure everything is just right (including adding our Shuler Studio wedding monogram!). I am such a perfectionist (too much, sometimes), so I’ve probably done at least 15 proofs at this point, and I’m a little nervous to send everything to print, if I’m being honest! The designers have been so accommodating, but I’m so worried about not noticing a mistake! Soon, though! This will definitely be something I approve within the week!
☐ Attire for Groomsmen
We know that we want all of the groomsmen looking dapper in black tuxes, we just haven’t fully decided on the style yet! Jacob just had his first fitting at Jos.A.Bank on Tuesday, which is very exciting, so hopefully we’ll have everything reserved by the end of February!
☐ Bachelorette Party
My maid of honor, Alex, and my bridesmaid, Sophie, are ON IT. They are so excited to plan everything, and I can’t wait to see what they come up with! The destination isn’t finalized just yet, but I’m pretty sure we’ll be celebrating the weekend before graduation, and I am stoked!
☐ Choose Wedding Cakes
I’ve gone back and forth on this so much, and I have a pretty good idea of what I want our wedding cake and the groom’s cake to look like, I just haven’t decided on a baker. A big part of that is the fact that I spend most of the year in Indiana, so I can’t really do cake tastings, which makes the decision really tough! I definitely want to have this booked by the end of February, though!
☐ Finalize Menu with Caterer
So, we recently (as in, yesterday) had a little bit of a doozy with our caterer, and I’m hoping all of the kinks are worked out now, but we still need to finalize all of our meal selections. We’re doing a plated meal, so this definitely needs to happen before we send out wedding invitations, and I should have everything together by the end of the week!
Looking back at all of this, it’s amazing how much progress we’ve made! I still feel like there’s so much left to do, but we’ve really gotten most of the big things out of the way!
Also, I just want to say, if you’re a bride-to-be currently going through the wedding planning process, just know that everything will work itself out in the end. Planning a wedding can be so stressful, but at the end of the day, it’s about getting married to the man you love – not the party!
I’m definitely planning on going a little more in depth into some of these things in future posts, so make sure to keep an eye out for the next Wedding Wednesday!
fondly,
Malia
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