We got married :)

And if you're a friend in real life, you can see photos on facebook.
We love being married. We love our little apartment and we love each other and we really really love Jesus. Life is good.

Lately I have been into couponing. I've been trying to save more than I spend at the Grocery store.
Last week at Ralphs, I spend about $13 on about $100 of food! The bug bit me.

This week I spent $45.96 on $244.85!
They are doubling coupons up to $1 off until 11/25, and a lot of things are on sale for $1.99, so it is pretty easy to get lotsa stuff for free! I got

1 Maruchan Yakisoba
5 Smart Ones
4 Uncle Ben Long Grain Rice
4 Swiss Miss Hot Cocoa
8 Green Giant Boxed Frozen Veggies
2 Cheerios
1 Apple Cheerios
1 Cinnamon Toast Crunch
3 Bisquick
3 Cake Mix
3 Frosting
1 Chex Mix
2 Fat Free Pringles
1 Refrigerated Buitoni Noodles
1 Box Butter
3 Popcorn
2 Pillsbury Grands
2 Pillsbury Crescent Rolls
2 Pillsbury Cinnamon Rolls
2 Tropicana 50 Orange Juice
2 Tropicana 50 Blueberry Pomegranate Juice
2 Reddi Whip
2 Knudsen Sour Cream
2 Caramel Apple Dippers
1 Silk Soymilk
1 Olay Bodywash
1 Secret Deodorant
2 Scope Mouthwash
1 Colgate Total Toothpaste
1 Crest Toothpaste
2 Always Pads

And my receipt is about three miles long. It's crazy to me that some people pay $250 for all that and that I used to be one of them!! Never again! We believe our money is a gift- no more careless spending! :)

progress

It's been a nice long time since I last said anything, and I have no idea if I have even accomplished much else. Lets see...

I'm going to wear this necklace:


With a pair of vintage diamond earrings from my aunt.

I kind of want to wear these shoes:


And I am thinking of something like this for the rehearsal dinner (I already have the gray shoes)

Rehearsal Dinner? by nootlebot featuring Minnetonka shoes

We're honeymooning in Hawaii! We've both never been there. We're excited! and we're going to a luau and I just might eat the apple piggy because it will be my only chance to try one in a very long time.

Casey and I are having a big huge garage sale this Friday and Saturday at my house in Orange. Email me if you want the address (natalie.rich@csu.fullerton.edu)! I would love to see you and all proceeds are going to pay for our wedding!!

things

We met with out minister yesterday. We talked about everything that could possibly be included in a ceremony and which things we could have or not have and there are many decisions that we need to make about those types of things. but not yet.

We now have wineglasses from craigslist to go with our champagne glasses. We had a wonderful save the date making party with most of the wedding party, and we've almost booked a photographer.

PHOTOGRAPHY IS SO EXPENSIVE. but we found one that will fit our budget! Her photos are lovely and she seems very sweet. Hopefully we'll get to meet her soon! If you're in southern CA, you should check out voirvenir.com!

We bought our guest books. They're vintage scrapbooks from the mid 19th century. We're having two - one at the ceremony and one at the dinner reception. The ceremony one is for most of the people we're inviting, but the reception one is for just our family (because they're the only one's invited to the dinner reception). At the dinner reception, we are going to have an instant camera and glue and pens set up so that each couple, person, group, or whatever, can decorate their own page of the guest book, put a picture of them from that night in their spot, and give us a wonderful memory!

Casey and i are so sick of college. But we graduate this semester! I am trying so hard not to be a negative nancy about going to school but it's very hard.

And we've been engaged for almost FIVE MONTHS. isn't that crazy!? It doesn't feel like it has been that long.

We've been collecting vintage unused stamps to put on our invitation envelopes. Hopefully we'll get enough soon enough! We obviously don't want to pay anything higher than face value for them but if you're lucky on ebay and at yardsales, you can get them for less than face value and save money on postage AND have cool looking stamps! win-win situation if you ask me.

flower change!

We went to meet with our florist yesterday (well, she's not OURS quite yet, we still need to book her). She was very sweet (I love that all of our vendors have been just lovely people!) and gave an amazing deal on the flowers.
For [averysmallamount], we're getting
- 1 brides boquet
- 7 bridesmaid boquets
- 2 mothers corsages
- 1 grooms bout
- 7 groomsmen bouts
- 2 fathers bouts

yay!
Here are some inspiration pictures. I am looking for some nice pictures of flowers over/around a white arbor. I have a couple but I'm not so sure about them. Anyway, on to pictures!


I like this one, they used the flowers as centerpieces at the head table during the reception (just swiped them right off the arbor and stuck them in vases).




Boy bout inspiration

flower girl.. if we decide to have one. If we do, we'll probably make this ourselves.

MY BOQUET! isn't it so so pretty?! It will be modified to include cream daisies.

yikes, i would be so afraid of being crushed by flowers.

this one is okay.


I like this idea but it wouldn't work for us.

I like how simple this one is.

girls bouquets, except without that big ugly white gerbera daisy or that other flower. they will mostly be green, tied with a coral ribbon. They might have some yellow/ other colors in my bouquet, and the groomsmen's bouts will match.
YAY!

peeks!

Ready for some pictures of things we're considering?
i think i love all of these things, but i dont think they'll all work for us.

This is kind of a random assortment of images, and i have no idea where they're all from. sorry!

a cake that scares me.

This cake is so huge and sprawling that it is hard for me to comprehend. There is so much going on and i am overwhelmed by a CAKE. insane.
anyway,
We've been looking into cakes. I cannot believe that people actually pay $600-$700 for a CAKE. A cake?! Cake is like, three ingredients and so easy to make! who pays that much for a CAKE!
sooo...
we might be making our own. Casey has been researching things like fondant and tiers. Seriously, if we made our cake ourselves I bet we could do the whole thing for like, $50 max. especially since we want funfetti cake and each box is only a dollar! and funfetti cake is guaranteed to be delicious, by the way, so we don't have to worry about making a recipe wrong or anything.
Everyone says not to do things yourself because you'll have too much to do. But Casey is more of a teammate than other grooms, and I think making our cake would give us something else to freak out about in the days preceding our wedding. Like, instead of worrying about something that we can't control (spilled beverage on dress, wilted flowers, late arrivals, whatever), we can worry about the cake together, be a team, and cross something off the checklist. And save at least $500.

Another thing we were thinking of doing is having a baker make a smaller wedding cake that is like, maybe $100 and then making our own grooms cake. Unfortunately though, most bakers don't offer box funfetti as an option, and they try to make it all fancy and gourmet when what we really want is the $1 box. so who knows.

Food Presentation

While probably none of these would work for my own wedding, i really love the way the food was presented at these weddings and I hope I will be able to make ours look as wonderful!









I've also been looking at place settings. I found some sort of examples of things I like, but we'll have to see how it all works with the budget (and the wooden cutlery which was already purchased, as well as my centerpiece idea).







images from oncewed.com

i cannot stop looking for wedding photos! it's insane.