Pinterest Sunday

Time for my weekly Pinterest roundup! Every Sunday, I share with you a few of my favorite finds from the previous week.

I'm seriously craving strawberries right now, so this recipe looks quite tasty!

Source: sugarderby.com via Jenn on Pinterest

Strawberries stuffed with cheesecake filling and topped with graham cracker crumbs.

You know I really want to cut my hair off when it's long enough to donate, so I've been pinning pictures of possible new hairstyles.

Source: home.rasysa.com via Jenn on Pinterest

This is super cute and I love the volume. This is my top choice right now, but I've got until January to decide, so I'm sure I'll pin a few more!

How about some cuteness to brighten up your day?

Source: flickr.com via Jenn on Pinterest

I just want to reach into my computer and snuggle this little fuzzball!

And bonus, I've started pinning all the gorgeousness that is the Royal Wedding, so here's one of my favorites so far.

Source: weheartit.com via Jenn on Pinterest

I just love these two!

Royal Wedding Reactions

First of all, I'm so glad I got up early and watched the wedding live. It was fun even if I was alone (my husband chose to keep sleeping.)

The wedding was beautiful and I'm glad I already had mine because I would feel pressured to live up to that perfection if I was still planning my own wedding.

So, what about my predictions? While I didn't get them all right, I'm pretty proud of myself for pretty much nailing the most important one, the dress!

I said that I wanted to see Kate in something like this Romona Keveza dress.

And this is what she wore...

 

Pretty darn close, I'd say! Kate's Alexander McQueen dress was perfect and I'd love to have something similar if I had to do it all over again.

Did you watch the wedding? What did you think?

Royal Wedding Predictions

With nearly 12 hours until the Royal Wedding, I'm jumping on the bandwagon and sharing my predictions with you.

First, the most important detail that everyone is dying to know...the dress!
Kate will absolutely go with a British designer. I think the gown will emphasize her waist as that seems to be her style. I think the skirt will be full, but not ballgown full. And she has to have a train! At least 10 feet, I think. Why? It takes 4 minutes to walk down the aisle at Westminster Abbey because it is so long and Kate will be photographed from above. A train will make a statement and be perfect for a royal wedding. It will be long, but manageable.

As for details, I think the dress will feature lace and pearls. I also believe that she will have some type of sleeve. She cannot go strapless and at the very least must have her shoulders covered, so I'd like to see a 3/4 length lacy sleeve. Her veil will be long and lacy as well.

I think this Ramona Keveza dress is a great example of a perfect dress for Kate.


I think she'll wear pearl and diamond jewelry. Nothing too large, but I think some if will be borrowed from the royal family.

As for her hair, I think Kate will wear it half up and half down. I'm a firm believer that your wedding hair should be a fancy version of what you like best. Kate seems to like wearing her hair down (and she has beautiful hair!), so I think she'll do a polished half up do for her big day. I expect lots of curls. By the way, did you know Kate is doing her own makeup? She usually does her own makeup and hair for outings and royal duties and she reportedly did her makeup for the engagement pictures.

What about a headpiece? I'd like to see Kate wear a tiara, but I wouldn't be surprised to see a flower instead. If she goes that route, I think she should wear a tiara to the evening dinner and dance.

Speaking of the evening party, I do believe that Kate will change dresses and wear something more like what she typically wears to parties. I think we'll see something still white, but more form fitting. A sheath with some bling, perhaps?

So, what about the flowers? Westminster Abbey is going to be filled with flowers and trees!
Check out this picture!

Isn't that gorgeous? The flowers used in the Abbey are reported to include azaleas, lilacs, rhododendron, and wisteria among others. All of the flowers are shades of white. The flowers are coming from Windsor Great Park.

I think Kate's bouquet will be full of white English roses along with other white flowers. It's sure to include some myrtle, which is a tradition dating back to Queen Victoria. I think they're going for white with green as an accent color for the flowers.

The cake is to be a multi-tiered fruitcake covered in cream and white icing. It will have a British floral theme with lots of intricate piping. I think it will be gorgeous. I'm guessing at least 7 tiers.

Prince William's groom's cake will be a chocolate biscuit cake, which sounds really delicious!

I can't wait to see what the wedding is really like! Are you getting up early to watch?

Wedding Wednesday: Issues

Before I tell you about our rehearsal, I need to fill you in on some issues we had prior to the wedding. As I've said before, we booked our church nearly 18 months before our wedding. At the time, we loved our priest. He was a very nice and personable man with a great sense of humor. He knew both of us and whenever he saw me, he would always say my full name. I don't know why, but it cracked me up.

So when 11 months before our wedding he was transferred to another parish, we were sad. I was sad that the man who baptized me and gave me my first communion would not be witnessing our marriage. I tried to give our new priest a chance, I really did, but from the beginning it just wasn't working for me. And it got worse when it came time to actually talk about our wedding. He was incredibly hard to get a hold of. He was never in the office when we called and he never answered his cell phone even though he gave me that number in a voice mail he left for me one day. I got frustrated with the whole thing and eventually put M in charge of dealing with the man.

Finally, we were able to meet with the priest, fill out the paperwork and do the Foccus test. That was our first meeting. We were also informed at this meeting that we would have to attend a Engaged Encounter session given by our diocese. Because we were informed so late of this, we had to drive over an hour away one Saturday morning to attend because the local session would be too late.

Our second meeting was to go over the results of the Foccus test. The results were not surprising since many of the topics were things M and I had already discussed. We also had to fill out more paperwork. The organist came in and talked to us as well. We discussed some music choices and set up a cantor. We had to ask the organist (who isn't even Catholic) about getting alter servers because our priest was so not into the actual wedding planning stuff.

Having never been to a full Catholic Nuptial Mass, I asked if we were going to discuss it, but was informed by the priest that we could discuss it at the rehearsal. Oh you mean that thing we're doing 2 days before the wedding!? I was annoyed to say the least. I ended up Googling the heck out of Catholic weddings and trying to get as much information as possible from various wedding websites. It made making our programs so much fun...not. A Catholic wedding is a sacrament, but our priest acted like it was no big deal and to a stressed out bride, that was the wrong attitude to take.

And why was our rehearsal 2 days before our wedding? Because the day before our wedding was the Feast of the Sacred Heart and there was going to be a service in the church that night. Fine, Thursday night works just as well and I got to name my time so nobody had to get off work early. (Friday rehearsals are typically at 4 pm at our church.) Everything was fine until a couple weeks before the wedding, our priest announces at Mass that he will be on a retreat that week and will be coming back in time for the Sacred Heart service.

Say what? Did he forget that we have a rehearsal on Thursday? I nearly lost it right there. If he wasn't going to do our rehearsal, then he wasn't going to do my wedding. I made M call the church office Monday morning and find out what was going on. At this point, I was almost hopeful that he wouldn't be able to do our rehearsal and we could get the other priest in our parish to do it. In the end, it was all straightened out. Our priest would be back for the rehearsal and he would do the wedding.

After all the miscommunication and the lack communication, I didn't have high hopes for our rehearsal.

Did you have issues when planning your wedding?