Hodge Podge of Updates

I thought I had blogged about our trip to downtown LA's jewelry district but I can't seem to find it in any of my blog entries.  If I did write about it, apologies for the duplicate.  I just downloaded a picture I snuck on my iphone... this is just one of the little "rooms" with tons of jewelry "stores" in them.  There literally must have been thousands!  It was a bit overwhelming, but our main focus was to find Sean a wedding band so that at least narrowed down our options.  He initially thought he wanted a Tungsten band, but after trying on a whole bunch of them, he found it to be too heavy for his fragile fingers hehe... no but really, they were too heavy for him so he went with Titanium!  And the man who said he wanted no bling, just simplicity actually liked the look of one single diamond stone in the center.  It's really tiny but I was surprised that he wanted bling at all!  It made me proud ;-)  Anyway, it was quite an experience!  I like a dummy, forgot my ring at home (well, not really forgot, but left it there because we were house sitting for the Smiths and then going out for 4th of July and I didn't want to leave my ring in the car or wear to the beach...) but that kinda took away from me being able to find a band.  Oh well, at least we found Sean's!  

So apples have been kind of my inspiration.  I've seen a few arrangements for centerpieces which have kinda led my creative stylings that way... I have always been brainstorming on how to incorporate them in other ways and came across this handy little tool online!  It carves out a space for a tea light in fruits, veggies, etc.  So I ordered one and tried it out with a green apple and an "everlasting tealight".  One downside of my outdoor wedding I do have to say, is the inability to really use candles.  I feel like candles bring such an automatic sense of romance and ambiance to the setting, but with the wind factor we will have, it's very difficult to use candles outside.  BUMMER!  A lot of my ideas for centerpieces and decorations all have candles in them.  I especially love floating candles, but I guess I wont' really get to do that.  These everlasting fake ones are OK, but really don't give off the same effect.  So we'll see!  I do think this carver thing is really cool though!

Ok, what else... I am trying to decide upon a harpist and flutist or just harpist.  It's an extra $200 for the flutist and the samples I have heard online make me want to have a flutist, but now that I am actually seeing how much everything costs and where is this money coming from, I may have to pass.  The only problem is that the samples they provide online don't really have any harpist solos so it's hard to tell what it will sound like.  I've been emailing with Kimberly Bento, who'd be our harpist, but she is unable to send us any samples.  Kind of a bummer!  She will be at the Bridal Expo this weekend so hopefully my mom can go for me and listen some. Last weekend Sean & I sat down and went through the songs available for the ceremony and marked down potentials.  And good news relating to that, we decided on our first dance song!!!  Whoohoo!!!


Last night I met up with Aya to go over invitations, things are moving along nicely and she is just so so talented.  I feel so lucky to have her helping me!  Every design she had was great, which made it even harder to decide hahaha... but Sean & I finally decided on our invitation as well as our monogram and our font for the invite.  I am very excited to get it all to the printers and then assemble and send out!