Save. The. Date.

Save the Dates are in the mail! They have been stamped, stuffed, sealed, labeled, and dropped in the out-going mailbox at our apartment complex. Hopefully, they arrive safe and sound at all of their chosen destinations sometime this week!!

It was definitely nice to check this task off of the list, but I must confess that as I was dropping the envelopes in the mail, my heart did a little flutter and my stomach did a minor flip. This wedding is happening! Ahhh! Don't get me wrong, I love Tyler and there is nothing I want more in the world than to marry him. But there are still times when I feel like I am 12 years old and marriage seems like something far out of the grasp of my little 12 year old fingers. However, I am not 12. I will be 24 next month and a husband is coming my way this September ready or not. (99.9% ready!)

So, Sunday night my coffee table was cleared off of all the normal junk and turned into Save the Date central. I worked on assembling them as Tyler and I watched Country Strong. Tyler even came over to the couch to help out for a minute!

Be on the lookout for a Save the Date coming your way! And if you don't have one coming your way, I'm sorry. Guest lists are really hard. Don't take it personally. We really did want to invite you but we are limited on numbers. I'm sure you understand this if you have ever planned a wedding! I promise we like you!

Engagement Pictures

The engagement pictures are finished!! I got the disc from Leslie this week as well as the Save the Dates. I'm so excited!! They really look great and I am so appreciative of the whole Emanuele/Thompson family for all of their help and hard work with these.

If you would like to see all of the pictures, there is a link on the sidebar to the pictures. You will have to make a log-in on the Walgreens site to view them.

I also printed all of the pictures tonight and put them in a photo album for the coffee table :) This will be the first of many coffee table photo albums to come for the Bessingers! Can't wait.














This weekend I will also be assembling the Save the Dates and getting them ready to mail on Monday. I can't post a preview of them yet because they haven't been mailed but I promise to post one later! Enjoy!

Stamps, stamps, and more stamps.

We are currently in the stationary stage of this whole wedding process and while my wonderful friend and bridesmaid, Leslie, is designing my save the dates and invitations, I am working to figure out the details like postage, envelopes, and address labels.

Of course, I do not want to take the time to address a million invitations and write our return address on all of them. SO I have been researching alternative methods for getting this stationary put together....

#1- Hire a calligrapher.
While this would be nice and make the invitations look great, paying a calligrapher to write for us is just not in the budget. Strike out this option.

#2- Order invitations that have address printed on them.
Like I said, Leslie is designing the invitations so I don't think this is an option. Plus, it would probably be a lot of work and more money to pay someone to print them. Strike two.

#3- Print addresses on labels.
Ding, Ding, Ding! We have a winner. Right now, we have already printed out the addresses on the labels for the save the dates and all we have to do is stick them on the envelope once we get them stuffed and ready to go.

#4- Buy a return address stamp.
SO FUN! I was really excited when I came across this online and when I found out that personalized stamps are affordable. Here are a bunch of options I found on Etsy. These are all designs by lovetocreatestamps












































































I really wanted to get the first circular option with the Last Name in the middle but as my mom pointed out, we are not the Bessingers yet. Sad day. BUT once we say I do, I will be placing an order for a "Bessinger" stamp :)

Since we couldn't get a stamp that had a last name on it, I settled for the one below. This picture was taken with my new i-phone BTW... LOVE IT!

















Something else I really wanted but again, it was out of our budget, was the return address embosser. How cool is this?!? Another problem with the embosser is that technically the wedding invitations would be coming from my parents so it would need to be their address on the embosser. Maybe someday, I will buy an embosser just to have it....

HGTV Emily Style

Recently, I decided to change some stuff around in the apartment. Swap out some pictures, move around some knick-knacks, and take on some home improvement tasks...

Task #1: Paint the ugly hunter green bar stools in the apartment.




















These bar stools were painted a boring hunter green color and the paint was chipping all over the place SOOOO I decided on an impulse that they would be much prettier and brighter in a nice, simple white.

A quick trip to Home Depot and $15 dollars later, I began taping and painting! Here are some of the in process pictures:


































And now the finished product:





















A few dollars and some elbow grease and the chairs have made a big difference in the kitchen/living room. Of course, I do have dreams of newer, more modern bar stools one day. But for now, the newly-painted white stools will do the trick :)

E-shoot Sunday :)

This past Sunday, Tyler and I got to do that fun thing that many engaged couples do before their wedding- Brides look forward to it and grooms despise it...... Engagement pictures!!

On Sunday, we drove to Henry Co. to my friend Leslie's house... Well, actually her parent's house (Leslie and her husband, Mark, have a gorgeous home up here in Atlanta). Anyways.. we went to Henry Co. so Leslie's dad could take our engagement pictures.

Leslie did some brainstorming with her parents and they decided we should go take our pictures at Heritage Park- a small park in Henry Co. that has several cool buildings, old barns, bridges, etc. It was the PERFECT place to have a variety of really awesome backgrounds and scenes.

So we started taking pictures and at first it was somewhat awkward, but after a while it got easier-- well, for me at least. After about 10 pictures, it started to become a very painful process for Tyler. But as I kept reminding him, this is nothing compared to our wedding day. Plus, when we get married he will be in a suit which will make it 10x more uncomfortable!

Anyways, they went well and we had fun. Leslie is now hard at work (LOVE YOU LESLIE)editing the pictures and making them beautiful. I can't wait to see them!

Leslie did post this picture on facebook to show off her dad's huge Mac desktop, but if you pay attention, there are some pretty cute and familiar people on the screen :)
Enjoy!

Busy, busy. busy.

Just FYI- I have not forgotten about my wedding and the planning process.. It has just been a busy weekend and will be a busy week. A post will come soon!! Promise.

Power of the scanner.

Two weekends ago, Tyler and I went ahead and started the process of registering. While it ended up being pretty time consuming, it was also a lot of fun. I mean you get to take a scanner gun and scan gifts that you want other people to buy for you. How fun is that?! Now, I'm not writing this to sound selfish and say that I want or expect our friends/family to buy us lots and lots of gifts, but I'm just saying it is fun to have that power in your hands! I loved getting to scan things! I even let Tyler have the power when we went to Macy's. He won't lie. He enjoyed it.

We still haven't finished registering because we haven't been to Tena's in Washington/Elberton/Athens yet or picked out our fine china. But for the most part, we have picked out just about everything we could possibly need.

One of my favorite parts of registering was picking out our everyday china. I knew I wanted white and that I really liked the square plates, but I couldn't figure out exactly which brand I (we) wanted to go with. I thought about the Martha Stewart place settings, but Tyler and I really did not want square bowls so we crossed that one off of the list.














We ended up finding White Everyday China at Bed, Bath, and Beyond that does not come in place settings but is sold individually by piece. I must admit that I went a little crazy in the section and scanned just about every accessory piece possible. Here are some of the things we registered for:


























































































Fun, right? I can't wait to have a kitchen full of dishes that actually match! We also registered at Macy's and Crate&Barrel. Here are some of my favorites from C&B: