Sunday was my "surprise" bridal shower at the Scarlet Oak Tavern in Hingham! It was such an amazing shower - my mom, sister (MOH), and bridesmaids put so much work into it and I had a great time. All just hours before jet setting back to Los Angeles.

I was so impressed with all of them because I am the first one out of all of my groups of friends (high school and college) to get married. They got a crash course in bridal shower planning.

We had a fabulous brunch (I had the bruleed french toast with blueberries and sweet cream). Wouldn't have been complete without mimosas of course!

After seeing Miss Gloss's post about a Wedding Word Search on WeddingBee.com recently, I thought a similar puzzle would be a great addition to our Friday Night Welcome Reception. The party is a dessert & cocktail "Welcome to Boston" get together where we hope to visit with a lot of our OOT guests. Most of them won't know a lot of other guests in attendance, so I wanted to provide a few ice breaker type of activities and I think this Welcome Word Search idea really fit the bill.

I got to work on this project last night and I am really happy with how it came out!

So here's the stuff I have been finishing up this weekend! I am so excited about my second try at a flip flop basket. I can't even tell you how much better these look than the first ones!

OK. I am back people!. I am feeling much better than my "Jerry McGuire" like moment on Thursday night. :)

I needed some sleep...and just to tackle through a couple of things that I just didn't want to deal with. One of them, the coordinator from the Reception hall. He was great in the beginning...and now...we're just not vibing and I think part of the angst was the build-up from meeting him with Friday (which went well in the end- maybe because The Reff wrote him a big check- but who cares now!)

So, after that I had a hair and make up trial- and it went well too! I think the pampering helped big time too! I am psyched with about my hair and my make up- is make up! (for me at least). I felt like a movie star!

Here's the result of the back:

I really love the look of dupioni silk, so I was hoping to find Flower Girl dresses made of it that didn't cost a forture. I just can't justify spending $250+ on Flower Girl dresses that they will outgrow in only a few months.

I found etsy seller BklynDoll who had a Dupioni Silk Flower Girl dress listing with the pic below. I contacted her and she was willing to create the dresses in any color and you can completely customize in terms of length & style. I opted for an ivory dupioni silk dress with a pink sash in a shorter length (to show the petti skirt!) without a band around the bottom.

I finally bought my rehearsal dinner dress on Thursday. Nanette Lepore "Desert Rain" Teal Dress. I love it and I'm so excited for it to come in (I bought it online) I hope it fits right. I love the bright color and the vintage feel.

We are also having our second round of engagement photos taken by our wedding photographer before the rehearsal dinner on Thursday. I figured this dress would look so cute and pop in the pictures!

I found this LOVE sign at TJ Maxx during Valentine’s season. I immediately bought it thinking this would make a cute addition to the guest book table where we will have three wooden pillars holding ball candles, frames of both sets of parent’s wedding pictures, along with framed pictures of our bridal party’s own wedding day pictures. With the help of my sister, I am going to make a poster of Mr. ESE and I’s childhood pictures at FedEx/Kinko’s. I’ll try and post these when they are done.

I spray painted it pink and then sprayed some silver spray paint dusted over the top of the LOVE sign to add a lil something more to the sign.

Ok, Since today is such a mile marker. I felt like I should finish up a bunch of projects. All I really had left was the Flip flop basket, some information about what is fun to do where we live for our OOT bags and a timeline for all of the bridal party.

Doesn't seem like a lot huh?

Rain on your wedding day… not exactly what a bride wishes for, BUT, thanks to the versatile photographers at Sara Zarrella Photography , Colleen and Michael “Ike” Schaible didn’t seem to notice a drop. Except when their ceremony was moved to the Oceancliff Ballroom from outside on the lawn.
Stoneblossom Floral's gorgeous flowers will travel! Congrats to the newlyweds.

There will be sunny skies ahead for this couple and the next crop of July brides….bet your bottom dollar;)

Since our wedding ceremony isn’t until early evening and all us girls will be getting beautified the day of the wedding together, that I thought lunch would have to be ordered! I’m sure you don’t remember but I posted a while back that I sent out a bridesmaid questionnaire to my lovelies about a month after I got engaged asking them various questions, one of them being what their favorite sandwich was….there is a method to my madness because I knew I wanted to buy them lunch the day of the wedding. But of course I had to package the lunch all cute and such and thus enter these pretty pink lunchboxes!

These were super simple to do. I ordered the lunch boxes from the Container Store and the ribbon I purchased at Ryko and the monogram I downloaded from marthastewart.com.

I used double sided tape to attach the ribbon to the lunch box and I printed the monogram on ivory cardstock that I purchased at Michael’s and used a 3” circle punch to cut out the monogram. I attached these to the lunch box with double sided tape as well.

I’ll put a cute napkin inside along with their favorite sandwich along with some sweets and chips as well and a bottle of water!

Are you doing anything fun for your bridesmaids the day of the wedding that involves food?