Our Wedding Part 2

MR AND MRS BARNARD...OHHHH YEAAAAAAAH!!!

Let us first start with the decor.  Apparently I have a beer taste with a beer budget.  When I was showing Diana all the pictures of the flowers that I wanted, she let me know that I liked weeds.  Which happen to be way cheaper than flowers.  Pretty awesome right?!  Those are some good looking weeds :)

Then we had the issue of the head table.  I couldn't find anything I liked on google or pinterest...I guess I should have tried bing ;).  Then I thought well, we can incorporate the paper flowers into the head table.  All my paper flower ladies basically said hell no.  (I guess 700 paper flowers was more than enough for them...)  But then I saw this beautiful sequin table cloth in a pic and was instantly inspired.

I forgot about our toasting glasses until the night before the wedding.  So I went to target and purchased a silver pearl Christmas Tree garland thingy and some champagne glasses and started hot gluing.  Diana had the idea to use her awesome real candle sticks!  And take a look at that arrangement.  I am not sure who mastered that one, but I know Andrea was doing A LOT of arrangements so I'll just give her the credit.

Next stop is the FLOWER WALL!  I am seeing this everywhere now, but originally I had seen it on a clip of a Chanel fashion show.  When I told everyone my idea they looked at me like I was crazy.  (Not William though, what a babe!)  But eventually they came around and actually took my idea to a whole new level.  I have to thank Diana, Grandma and Grandpa Murphy, William, Diana's cousin and everyone else who made the flower walls possible.  700 paper flowers were designed, folded and hot glued.  I was the only victim to nerve ending loss in the finger due to the hot glue thank goodness.

And then there was the cake and cupcakes.  Gabby and Jacky Flores made the cake and cupcakes.  As well as a few cake tastings (William's favorite part about planning the wedding)  Not only did they look good, they were "scrum dittily umptious"

And now for the festivities...

My Dad toasting :) If you know my Dad than you know a microphone is a dangerous thing.

I think this pic was taken during William's Dad's toast. 

And the Father/Daughter Dance.  I love my Dad.  He raised me to pick the PERFECT MAN.  

And the Mother/Son Dance

William picked her up and spun her at the end.  It was so precious!

Our first dance

Anytime I tell anyone that William doesn't like to dance he gets mad and says that he does.  But he doesn't.  And the following pictures are proof.

And for the send off/bouquet toss.  The vision I had stuck in my head was that I would toss the bouquet as we ran to the car.  For some reason it just seemed really romantic to me.  My mom wanted the whole traditional line up the single ladies and throw the bouquet.  But that isn't even real.  I know a lot of people who caught the bouquet that are as single as a dollar bill.  Anyway, I won the argument and my romantic scene was about to begin.  And we are running to the car and I look back right before I toss the bouquet and I throw it.....and it lands right in the middle of the bushes.  Pretty lame.  Anyway I think Brother Glen ended up with it the last I saw :)

(Oh and I just had to shout out this picture of my twinster Brooke, she is a rockstar!)

I will upload pictures more picture of all you party animals at the reception, but I will have to upload it on a separate blog entry so I can delete it in a couple months (I always run out of memory space on this dang blog!)

And if you made it this far, you are a true friend and should know that we have something big coming soon...you think you know what it is, but you have no idea...this is the blog of william and rachel (said like the interlude of the real world)

Our Wedding Part 1

We loved our wedding.  It was a lot of work, it was extremely stressful, but it was the beginning of Him & I, and I could not be more grateful for all of the wonderful people in our lives that helped get "us" started!  

Besides the fact that 3 out of 3 of my parent's cars broke down coming to our wedding, everything else went very smoothly as far as I know, or remember :)

I started the day at Murrieta Day Spa, and had my hair and make up done by Monique and Dani.  My dress was custom made by the lovely Kelly.

It was freezing and extremely windy, but no rain which was greatly appreciated.

Not everyone from William's family were able to make it, but here are half of them :)

 This was probably one of my favorite pictures of the day!  (William and his dad cracking up)

You can see where William gets his good looks. 

And here are my parents.  The photographer told me to kiss my mom, but my mom must have heard something else because when I turned my head I don't know what she was doing, but we almost did a real kiss!  (Like a gross one...ewww! lol)  

 This was before William and I saw each other for the first time.  They put us back to back, so that we could see each other at the same time.  Previous to our wedding, I kept telling him a bunch of lies about what my dress was going to look like so I think he was nervous.    

I wanted to add something to the back of my dress, and Kelly came up with the heart design.  I absolutely loved it!  And she made it so it still covered my G's!!!

This picture is funny to me because when I look at William I feel like I come up to his nose, so when I see this I get a reality check.  

Schyler, second from the right (top), lives in Utah, but he was in Florida right before the wedding.  He had his return flight fly into Vegas, and his wife drove their two toddlers from Utah to Vegas, pick him up and make it in time for the wedding.  Matt and Cary came all the way from Seattle.  So thankful for all of those groomsmen.

Yes I had 11 bridesmaids!  I love them all so very much.  And Amanda (far left) was 9 months pregnant at the time!  She even went out dancing with us for my bridal shower and showed us her moves!

Can't wait to show you all the pictures from the reception!  But until the next post here is a teaser.  This is William uncomfortable on the dance floor bahahahaha. 

William's Peep Show

  I will start this post with my absolute favorite picture from our engagement session.

Unfortunately some of you have already seen this on facebook.  For those of you who haven't, you might be thinking, this is so cute!  Well look harder.  This picture could be X rated!!!  This was not set up!  I promise!  In fact after a long weekend of engagement pictures (that my sister Jenny took), we were sitting on the couch looking through them when we got to this pose.  My sister said, "How cute!  The baguette is sticking out!" At that point William, my mom, my sister and myself all realized what this looked like and went into hysterical laughter for the next 30 minutes!

And here is the one I think we were going to go with...(thanks Carly)

Okay now for the seriousness of life's temper raging through my life.  If that statement doesn't make sense to you, don't worry it doesn't make sense to me either.

As if trying to plan a temple wedding while waiting on a temple clearance isn't stressful enough, we decided that it would be perfectly safe to take outdoor engagement pictures in August as it is summer time.  So William and I packed our bags at 9pm and left for St. George Utah at 10pm (6 hours away) to wake up at 8am to go another 2 hours to take some pictures.  

On the way to the pictures our hot summer day started raining.  And everyone was like just take cute pictures with an umbrella etc.  This was NOT SEXY RAIN, this was POURING rain, the kind that has thunder and lightning and flooding.  My sister calls me (as we are an hour into caravanning) and suggests that we head back and see if we can take pictures in St. George.  But William and I felt really good about the original location Jenny found and so for some reason we felt really good about continuing the drive in the storm...

And right when we got to the mountain it STOPPED!  It was so beautiful!  And when we left it started raining again!  So lets hope that was a reminder that all our wedding plans will work out from the man upstairs.

After the pictures, William and I left the mountain to go see the kiddos since they were only 3 hours away from where we were.  I made Hunter a dinosaur cake for his 5th birthday and my Dad, aka "Grandpa H" :) took us to the lake so we could ride on the inflatable boat.

We came back and ultimately fell into my family's trap.  America's Funniest Home Videos.  Oh my goodness we love that show.  So we stayed an extra hour cracking up at other people's misery.  Then dropped off the kids and headed back to St. George to awake again for some more pictures.

My sister made me promise 5 times that I wouldn't share any of the pictures (beside the baguette one) until she gave me the go ahead.  So I have to wait to share them, but I LOVE them!!!  We had so much fun, AND it was real.  We were really cracking up, really smiling and really making some hideous faces.  So hopefully I can share them soon!  

DIY Budget Invites

Posted this a little late, but had to do it because I think they are so cute :)

For the Bridal Shower for Daniela, she has a lot of family that lives pretty local and A LOT of friends. 

The first thing I started on was the invites.  Since I figured everyone throws invitations away I wanted to keep the cost on the invites as low as possible.  And at 100+ people invited, I need to get creative!

If you purchase invites from the store you are paying $1.00+ an invite, plus postage, plus envelopes, plus labeling.  And not only that, but its really just not as fun.

Thank goodness I have a good friend Stacy over at www.leafletlady.blogspot.com that designs all types of marketing/invitations/cards etc. for SUPER CHEAP!

I told her what I wanted, and gave her all the information and for $10-$20 (design fee) she can come up with a design for the invitation!

It was cheaper for me to print the design myself (instead of sending it to a print shop) and print it on photo paper.  I made them 5''x7" so I could fit two per page, and cut them myself.  I got the photo paper at Staples for $14.99 for 50 pages (remember 2 per page).  You can get glossy or matte finish, and I would recommend glossy, it just looks richer to me.

The next thing was the envelopes.  I really wanted orange envelopes, but since specialty envelopes are pricier than normal ones, I just got regular ivory envelopes Staples brand for $13.98 for 100 envelopes. But they were SOOO boring looking and I wanted to spice them up so I went on a mission to find some spice.

I found it at Target where I picked up a pack of 4 specialty designed tapes in my colors (orange/yellow) for a whopping $2.08 for the pack of four (on clearance of course)!  I trimmed the bottom of the envelopes with the tape as well as the middle of the back of the envelopes.

Then I used Avery labels that I already had to address the invitations and to also make the return address label.

So break down:

Design: $10, www.leafletlady.blogspot.com (I got the trade for services discount at $0) - Total $0

Paper/Printing: Photo Paper Staples Brand - Total $16.15

Envelopes: 50 Basic envelopes Staples Brand - $6.98 x 2 Total $13.98

Envelopes: Tape to trim envelopes with - Total $2.08

Labels: Avery (already had) - Total $0

Postage: 75 stamps (I passed out invites to people I would see in person) - Total $33

So for 100 invites, I invested 3 1/2 hours of my own time, and finished and mailed the invitations out at A Total of $65.21 or $0.65/invitation including postage!!!

Shout out to Stacy, she does ANY kind of invitation, wedding announcement, Christmas Cards, Senior Announcement, Baby Announcement, Flyers, and anything you can think of for only $10-$20 a design!!!!!!!! You can see her work on her blog!