Save The Date

Yesterday I finally mailed out our save the dates!

I hope you like them and were able to find this website easily. I designed them myself!

Feel free to visit our other website (the official wedding website) where you can view pictures, RSVP early, and check out the "about Erin" and "about Kyle" sections.

Here's a photo of us with Colleen and our tiny snowman on christmas at the Radford's house in Madison, AL.

Ceremony & Reception

Kyle and I made a trip down to Pensacola this last weekend to get the ball rolling on some of these plans!

We decided on the ceremony site and reception site finally :). We'll have the ceremony on Navarre Beach which is very close to Pensacola. We found a perfect reception site right on the beach there too! Navarre Beach is my favorite beach to go to. It's not crowded and you aren't surrounded by buildings. It's somewhat "untouched." It's also right next to the Gulf Islands National Seashore which is raw beauty. We drove through it a couple of times. You get to drive through it if you're going from Pensacola Beach to Navarre Beach or vice versa.

We stayed with our family friends, the Kinard's. Sheri goes snorkeling off of Navarre beach all the time and I plan to incorporate some of the shells that she has collected from doing so into my decorations.

I just love it down there. We saw lots of seagulls, a great blue heron, and a cute little rail that let us get really close. We went to Pensacola Beach one night to catch ghost crabs and we were the only ones there! Kyle had never gone "crab hunting" as I call it. I've gone "crab hunting" at the beach since I was a kid. They sure are cute.

We also indulged in our favorite food down there -- the seafood spinach dip at Flounder's. It's the best thing ever! I'm kind of persistent about eating as much seafood as possible when we're close to the coast like that.

yay for more plans!

We're still alive! I promise!

It's been a while since I've posted anything.

We're still alive just busy. The fall semester started so I have slowed down on the wedding planning. Genetics and physics trumped the planning haha.

I have narrowed down the wedding dress shopping to 2. It's difficult! I really love both of them.

Soon I will need to make decisions on bridesmaids dresses too.

The holidays are coming up which are always so stressful anyways between finals, work getting insane, and trying to see each 1/2 of each side of our families for Thanksgiving and/or Christmas. Adding wedding stuff to all of that should prove to be interesting. We're never bored though!

We'll be making a trip down to Pensacola soon to scope out some things :).

I'm holding Kyle's niece, Lucilla, in the picture. She's adorable!

Why a Thursday?

Several people have been realizing that our wedding day is in fact on a Thursday. Believe me, we're not in love with Thursdays or anything odd like that but, June 16th is a specific date that we wanted. I thought I would explain it to answer some questions.
We started dating on March 16, 2006.
My birthday is April 16, 1989.
Kyle's birthday is July 16, 1985.
So, because of this significant number, 16, we of course HAD to have our wedding on the 16th of some month!
I despise cold weather and Kyle is not fond of it either so a late spring or summer wedding was what we wanted. We were going to try and get married this year but it would not have been able to happen so 2011 seemed to be when we could have it. We didn't want the wedding day to be on either of our birthdays so that left May, June, and August. If we had it in May, not everyone would be done with school and it would be on a Monday (yuck!). If we had it in August, many people would be starting back school already and it would be awkwardly on a Tuesday. So that left June!

June 16th is a significant date all on its own. That is the day my wonderful Aunt Ginni and Uncle Jim got married so it's good luck!

So that's it! Now you know we're not weird anything... well, not more than usual. :)

pictures, wedding party, and dress shopping

Jennifer Woodbery took engagement photos of Kyle and I on Sunday in Montevallo. I love every single one of them! She made us look so cute. I plan on ordering a few of them to frame.

We have our final wedding party members set!
Colleen Radford will be the maid of honor. She is my cousin and we have been close our entire lives.
Stan Limerick will be the best man. He is Kyle's dad and my future father-in-law.
Andi Crist, Kelly Ianniello, and Emmie Kinard will be the bridesmaids.
Andi and I have known each other since elementary school and are great friends.
Kelly is Kyle's big sister and my future sister-in-law.
Emmie and I have been friends since the 4th grade and used to be neighbors. Our mom's are best friends and her mom Sheri is like a 2nd mom to me.
Trey Dozier and Austin McCombs will be the groomsmen.
Trey is Kyle's best friend and he's pretty cool.
Austin is my little brother and Kyle's future brother-in-law.

Today I went wedding dress shopping for the first time with my mom and Colleen. It was really shocking to see myself wearing a wedding dress... it felt totally unreal! Mom was fine until the assistant put a veil on me. She held it together though! :)
I probably tried on about 10 dresses and have narrowed it down to 5. I've still got 2 more bridal shops to visit though. There were other brides trying on wedding dresses in the dressing rooms next to me and I was definitely the one trying on the boldest dresses. I just don't like plain dresses. They're boring!

August!

We have made a BIG change!

We have decided to have the wedding in Pensacola on the beach instead of New Orleans. It will actually be cheaper and my wonderful 2nd mom/my mom's best friend Sheri lives there in Gulf Breeze so they can both help a lot with it. Having an artist for a mom and an artist for a 2nd mom is so great for this kind of thing! I love them. I think having the wedding on the beach will be more fun anyways. We don't have to wear shoes!!!

On Sunday, my super talented friend Jennifer Woodbery is taking pictures of Kyle and I. Check out her website and see how awesome she is: J.Woodbery Photography. I went shopping with my friend Christine the other day and bought a cute dress just for the shoot.

Next week, my maid of honor/cousin Colleen will be in town so I'm going to try on wedding dresses for the first time with her there! I've made appointments at David's Bridal and Alfred Angelo. I went to their websites and wrote down some style numbers that I have in mind.

Over the past month or so I have been putting together a wedding website: check it out! Kyle wrote the "About Kyle" section. It's hilarious and I laugh every time I read it.

SO EXCITED!!!

Birthday, Wedding Bands, and Honeymoon Ideas!

Today is Kyle's 25th birthday! YAY!!!!

We somehow managed to throw in some wedding planning fun along with the birthday celebration.

We went over to Darlene's house for lunch (my future mother-in-law!). We talked about some wedding stuff while we were there such as colors and things like that. She came up with some good decorating ideas which sound great!

We were playing around at the Galleria mall killing time before a movie started and we went in Gordon's Jewelers so Kyle could check out some wedding bands. The people at Gordon's have treated us really well over the past 2 years so we immediately went to them. When Kyle purchased my engagement ring from there, it came in a set with the wedding band so that is already taken care of for me but he needs one and needed to see all the different ones available. He tried on a few and decided on the darker tungsten kind with the brushed look. Yay! He said it felt odd to be wearing a ring :). The lady was very nice and wanted to make sure that Kyle did not work with heavy machinery because tungsten requires a special tool to cut off in case something happens. We assured her that he wouldn't be getting his fingers stuck in any computers.

We continued killing time in Barnes and Noble looking at magazines about traveling to the Caribbean and what islands of the world are best to travel to/live on (even though we've pretty much decided what we're going to do for our honeymoon if we get the money to do so).

We decided that we want a cruise and we actually checked out which ones were available. Norwegian Cruise Lines has an 8-day cruise leaving out of New Orleans just 3 days after the wedding which would stop in Costa Maya, Roatan, Belize City, and Cozumel. It looks like the one if we can do it!

Jennifer Woodbery (jwoodbery.com) is our wonderfully talented friend. She has her own photography business and she is taking our engagement pictures for us next month which is so exciting!!!! Yes, we can have engagement pictures after being engaged for 2 years ;).

Also, I plan on trying on wedding dresses for the first time next month!

Registries

We started registering for stuff the other day. It is so much fun! I have basically scoured Bed Bath and Beyond's website for anything organic, recycled, or bamboo that we need/want. Of course that's not the only type of items that we're registering for. I just get really excited about those. We've registered at Best Buy (duh!) and Potterybarn too. It's kind of difficult trying to figure out everything that I should register for. If anyone has any suggestions let me know. I've been adding a few things every day as I think about them.

I've still got to register for some china which is the cute kind with a bird on it that my cousin Virginia got for her wedding last year (Chirp). The women in my family have good taste! I think my great grandmother would be so excited about all of this if she were still alive. She was amazing!

The Beginning

Alright! I have a blog! I'm not sure how great I am going to be about this but we will see.

So after being engaged for 2 years, we have really just started planning things.

Right now it looks like we'll be having the wedding in Mandeville, LA or New Orleans, LA. We have checked out a few gardens around there online and are going to travel down there soon to pick out one of those. Kyle's dad, Stan, has been helping us out a lot with picking out a place. He's been checking them out a little bit for us since he lives there (such a great future father-in-law!!!).

The date is going to be June 16, 2011 and it will be an outdoor, casual, afternoon wedding. No tuxes to be seen!

We have decided to print out all of our invitations using vistaprint.com since their prices are good, we can design our own, and they can print on recycled paper.

OH! By the way, I'm going with a whole recycled earth friendly theme. We practice this lifestyle at home already so we're going to carry that over to the wedding planning. Kyle and I recycle everything possible and I take it all to the recycling containers at UM myself. I also make a point to buy free and clear Seventh Generation laundry detergent, biodegradable free and clear fabric softener sheets, dish detergent that is phosphate free and safe for lakes, streams, and oceans, and I also never buy paper that is not recycled including toilet paper. I also have this little obsession with bamboo since it is a very renewable resource due to how fast it grows (it's so great to have bamboo material in socks!).

Our colors are going to be brown and light blue mainly with some green accents possibly.

I have not tried on any dresses yet but have looked at SEVERAL online. I'm hoping to go with a tea length one in an ivory color. I'd like to have some beading too. It will be a challenge to find that in my tiny little budget.

Well there's the beginning.