shore thing

After a leisurely weekend in my favorite New Jersey coastal down of Cape May, I am revved and ready for more wedding goodness to come after taking the weekend off...for the most part. The weather was nice for walking on the beach. Diamond hunting. And beach house renovations. We painted the guest room. The dog even got in on the action and got paint on his butt. This picture is pre-paint…

I just made a late New Year’s resolution to not only take more pictures but to, more importantly, blog more pictures - wedding or not. Because let’s face it, that’s what I like most about blogs. I dunno about you though.

I am currently obsessed with thepioneerwoman.com. She takes some amazing pics out on her family’s ranch in Oklahoma. I spent much of my leisurely beach weekend reading her new book. She’s funny.  You can borrow it when I'm done.

Anyway, back to more pictures. I take a ton of pictures of Wilson.  See him down there?

I will be heading from one beach town to another late this winter.  I am a bridesmaid in my friend’s wedding at the Chesapeake Bay Beach Club in MD.  The venue looks phenom and since we all finally recovered from her Las Vegas bachelorette party nearly 2 and a half weeks later, we should be ready to do it again.  Our recovery time just isn't what it used to be.  So sad, isn't it?

Here’s what I threw together for their wedding stationery. The invitation is a square pocketfold style with 4 inserts including the response card. There is an ivory ribbon and the gold carstock is shimmery. This was labor intensive!

I like to think of it as muted beach club elegance.

Perfect for a winter wedding at the shore.

I have to get back to finishing the coordinating table numbers now. 
And Wilson is back to doing what he usually does...

-The perennial bridesmaid

overload

It is hard to believe it is already Thursday and a new weekend is staring me in the face. I am still recovering from last weekend’s bender.

Not that kind of bender unfortunately.

It was a full-on jam-packed weekend starting with a rager of a baby shower. Balloons hanging from the rafters. Diaper cakes. Banners. Cookies. Games. Music. Like I said, a real rager!

Although baby showers are not in my wedding jurisdiction, I am really spending a lot of time at them. I think I am almost ready to take on the DIY diaper cake. From what I am told, you just need a ton of diapers and rubber bands. Roll ‘em up, group ‘em together and hide all of your mechanics with some ribbon. I think I can handle it.

I aspire to make one this stunning...

The shower was a display shower as all the trendy ones are these days. It makes sense for baby showers, right? Either the boxes are so big that wrapping them is a total waste of paper or the little outfits and things are so cute that you just want them out on display for everyone to peruse. Plus, everybody wants to be green. This particular display shower looked like Christmas for the kid’s first 3 years. They cleaned up!

The theme was “Celebrate the Peanut”. The whole peanut thing is picking up in the baby shower world. It ran full swing in every detail. I provided the centerpieces which were a traditional vase arrangement of cut flowers in the shower’s color scheme. But look closer. I told you peanuts were everywhere so I subtly incorporated actual shelled peanuts into the arrangements. Hopefully people noticed them and you can find them in this picture. I ate some too while arranging.  Maybe next time I will make arrangements full of chocolate...

Having not seen most of my relatives since Christmas, we kept the momentum going. I spent the majority of the weekend with various family members. We covered everything from who’s walking to who walked out and absurd Facebook statuses - one of our favorite topics. Come on, you know you do it too. I suppose I’m good until spring.

Or at least until the next shower anyway.

The weekend also included one of my Nearly-Famous DIY wedding invitation parties. Yes, I just dubbed it that. Does it have a nice ring to it?

One of my 2011 brides got her bridesmaids together so we could hand make the soon-to-be-released invitations. Sorry, no teasers here. I can tell that all 120 are finished, return-addressed and even have coordinating thank you’s. We only ran into one minor (nearly major) hiccup. All was solved and completed by sundown just in time for the super bowl. Let’s just say “the eagle has landed” and leave it at that.

Oh!  And I just might have found the local and inexpensive tailor that I have been searching for thanks to a referral from one mf my SILs.  Stay tuned!

Did Christina Aguilera really mess up the national anthem? I was too busy eating and rounding out the gossip. I found out on Monday who won.

-The perennial bridesmaid

what happens in vegas

I promised no stories from the Las Vegas bachelorette party last weekend. I'm breaking that promise to tell you one of the most outlandish and fun things we did there. Maybe not the most but whatever.

After getting off of the plane, we were destined to head straight to a pawn shop . Not just any pawn shop but the pawn shop of the now famous History channel series Pawn Stars. God, I love that show.

Rather than going straight there, we thought it would be better to “get ready” for our first night out in Vegas. That can only mean one thing: Bronzer. Actually, it meant a lot of things but bronzer was the reoccurring accessory, if you will. We turned a shower stall into a spray tanning booth and were instantly transformed into west coast. What snow?

(By the way, don’t try this at home. Seriously. Getting the spray on tan off of a tub doesn’t look easy.)

With our instant bronze and party dresses on, we headed off the strip and into a territory filled with cheesy wedding chapels, bail bonds signs, X-rated gift shops and several pawn shops.

There was a line.

A long line filled with elderly and overweight tourists. It wasn’t anything like a line outside of a trendy club although that is exactly the line we looked like we should have been in. Just when we were reconsidering our outfit choices, we were whisked inside not because we were tourists like all of the others but because we were there for official business.

The bachelorette came prepared to kiss her past good bye. She sold all of the gifts of past boyfriends. After a little negotiating with a couple of guys that I've never seen on the show she collected a tidy lump sum.

Then we went to dinner. On the ex’s dime.

And I waved to Big Hoss who was the only one there filming at the time. No Old Man.

The rest of the weekend was a total bore.

The end.

-The perennial bridesmaid