Chraela,  In My Life,  Lifestyle,  Wedding

Chraela Wedding Planning: 1.5 Months to Go!

I absolutely cannot BELIEVE how close we are to the wedding. It seems like just yesterday we were saying how we have so much time to plan and figure everything out and now…the time is running out!! We’re at the point now where it’s getting down to the wire and we have to make a lot of decisions…and spend a lot of money! We’ve made a LOT of progress since my last wedding planning update post though, so I figured it was time for an update. Here’s the big stuff…

Hair Trial

I had my hair trial a few weeks ago and I am SOOO in love with how it turned out!! These are the photos I showed the stylist:

I wanted something that was curled but like, dainty I guess lol and I wanted to be able to have a sparkly headband and a veil in the back. And here’s the result:

I love it so much!!! 😍 I’m in love with my stylist too, she’s so nice and chill and I think she’s gonna do an amazing job with all our hair on the big day.

hair5

As for makeup – as of right now I’m still planning on doing it myself 😬 I’m a little nervous about it but I know that if I had anyone else do it, it wouldn’t feel right. Hopefully it turns out perfect!!

Invitations

Invitations are officially out!!!

We mailed them out the day before Thanksgiving which was pretty much right on schedule.

innvites

We ordered them from Minted and I was really happy with our experience with them! Sometime after the wedding I’ll write about where we got everything but that’s a matter for a future post haha

invites

Perhaps even more exciting is that we’ve started getting RSVPs back!! We decided to do our RSVPs online and I honestly think this was the best decision we’ve made so far in wedding planning. By far. It’s just so easy!! We used the website RSVPify – all we had to do was create an RSVP page and share the link with our guests. They can easily go on and accept or decline and even make their meal selection! It’s super easy to keep track of everyone, and bug people who haven’t responded…including my siblings….hint hint!

Food

We also had another exciting thing since my last post and that was our food tasting!! Our food is being done completely through our venue and it’s so nice to have one less vendor to worry about with a caterer or anything. The in-house chef can pretty much make whatever, but they gave us a list of options to start from and here’s what we chose…

both

So we decided to go with two entrees and let our guests choose, since we’re doing a plated dinner and not a buffet or anything. The two we chose were chicken marsala and London broil – and omg, they are both AMAZING!! Chris and I seriously had a hard time choosing which one we liked more and I honestly still don’t know. I don’t know how we’re even going to choose our own meals…good luck to all our guests haha

sides

We also got to choose two sides, of which we selected white cheddar mashed potatoes and carrots vichy – and again, they were both incredible. Chris has never in his life liked cooked carrots and he loved these. We were SO happy with our food choices and I absolutely can’t wait to enjoy them again on the big day!!

Wedding Bands

We have also both ordered our wedding bands!!! I’m soooo excited about this part. Chris ordered his from Blue Nile and it’s a simple classy palladium band. I went in a different direction…I actually am getting mine custom made from Etsy! I was having trouble finding something that suited my ring because it’s a split shank and I wanted a ring that would sit flush to it. I found an awesome seller that makes beautiful curved bands, and I saw that he had done some custom orders and asked if he could make mine. I haven’t received it yet, but we’ve been in pretty frequent contact and the mock ups look SO beautiful! It’s going to look something like this, except with white gold and curved to match my ring:

It’s so pretty and I can’t wait to receive it!!!

Honeymoon

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Progress on the honeymoon is my favorite type of progress!! We’re so excited to get married obviously but the planning has been admittedly very stressful, and we are so looking forward to having a fun vacation afterward to celebrate. We’ve had all our flights and hotels booked for a while but recently our window opened up to make some Aulani dining reservations!! While we were at that we also decided to research dining and activities for all the other places we’re going as well. It’s so much fun to plan for a place you’ve never been before…maybe it’s crazy but I feel like going in blind is so much fun sometimes haha. We’re hoping to get to do some really cool stuff too, like hiking up a volcano and going on a helicopter tour! We are soooo excited to get to Disneyland and Hawaii 😍

Marriage License!

This is a BIG one obviously – we got our marriage license last week!!

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Obviously I will not be posting a photo of our marriage license as it contains literally all of our personal information on it haha…but we got it! And I was pretty shocked that out of everything we’ve done so far, this has been by far the easiest and most painless part of the entire process??? We literally just had to show up with our IDs and proof that we did an online “premarital preparation course” (which was essentially a Disney e-learning, all you cast members out there) and then sign some papers and we were done! It took us longer to walk from the parking garage into the clerk’s office than it did to get our marriage license. Either way, it’s such a relief to have such an important step accomplished, and I’m so excited that we are one LEGAL step closer to being married!!

Odds & Ends

The biggest thing we’ve been doing this past month or so has been buying all the little things, and let me tell you…I wish we had started doing this more than 2 months before haha. There are just so many little things to buy and account for that I didn’t even think about until recently. We’ve gotten bridal party gifts, a guestbook, my veil and headband, and a bunch of other little things here and there…and we still have so much to get. One word of advice if you’re planning a wedding…don’t wait til the end to get all these little things! We still have to buy our cake topper, jewelry, a bunch of signs, gifts for each other, and all kinds of other stuff…we’ll make it work somehow haha

What’s Next?

We are so close now that it’s hard to believe we still have so much to do, but here we are haha

  • FLOWERS!! We were previously thinking of doing our own (real) flowers but that idea has been nixed because I did NOT want to spend the day before the wedding stressing about flowers. So now we’re back at square one and have a wedding in a month and a half and no flowers!! But we have a plan. We’re planning on using these awesome flowers made of a thin wood called sola, so we can do them ourselves and not spend a fortune but also get to keep them afterward! Fingers crossed it turns out the way we want it to!!
  • All day-of stationery – we need programs, table cards, and a bunch of cute signs!!
  • Finalizing all plans, touching base with vendors, and making all hotel reservations – basically, just confirming that everyone will be where they need to be and at the correct times they need to be there!
  • Honestly just buying a bunch of stuff. My Etsy list grows longer by the day and it seems like my credit card is just a never ending wasteland at this point and I’m scared to look at it hahahah

And that’s our wedding update with a month and a half left! I literally can’t believe that it’s almost here. We’ve been planning this day for a year and a half now and it’s just so unreal that soon we will be MARRIED. I’m finding that as we get closer, I am becoming simultaneously more stressed but also more at ease…if that’s possible haha. Like, I’m worrying a lot about everything as the days count down, but I’m also kind of adopting the attitude that everything will work out somehow. Hopefully I am not a complete and total mess on February 2…but that remains to be seen!!

Thank you for reading this post and I hope you enjoyed it! Not many more of these wedding planning posts to go now 🙂

<3! Kaela

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