Announcements!

Hello every one so I have very exciting news! My save the dates have arrived!!!! I had them done by Magnet Street Weddings ( check them out! http://www.magnetstreet.com/home/market/517) They have great quality items at really good prices. You can even get samples sent to your house for free of whatever style invitation you want! I ordered about 100 save-the-dates along with guest information cards with included information about the hotel availability. I am so please with how they came out! They look just like they did when I personalized them online. They were really nicely (and carefully) packaged and even came a day early. My family and Shawn's family have been working on getting everyones address and as of today we have them all. So now I have to get down to business and start writing them all out. And buy the stamps of course!

I also went on the website just to see if maybe they had finally come out with a matching formal wedding invitation and it must have been my lucky day because now they do!! So exciting! They are a great price and now everything will all go together nicely. ( I was very upset about having to have a different look for our invitations). We will also be getting return address labels and seals to match. :) Cute right?

Also this Saturday our engagement announcement came out in the daily mail ( local newspaper). Were still contemplating wither or not to also put it in to the Times Union newspaper. The picture on the announcement was actually taken at my birthday dinner while we were out at Yanni's a  yummy seafood restaurant! 

The announcement reads : 

Schomaker- Burdick

Fred and Deborah Schomaker of Coxsackie announce the engagement of their daughter Brianne Kelly Schomaker to Shawn Lee Burdick, son of Roger and Maryanne Burdick of Coxsackie.

The future bride is a graduate of Coxsackie-Athens High School and Columbia-Greene Community College. She earned her associates degree in applied science and now works as a Registered Nurse in Loudenville. 

The future groom is a graduate of Coxsackie-Athens High School and Schenectady County Community College. He earned his associates in fire protection technology and emergency management. He now works in   Latham as a firefighter/EMT.

An October 2nd, 2010 wedding will take place at the Immaculate Conception Roman Catholic Church in Haines Falls, with a reception to follow at the Copper Tree in Hunter.

We are currently in the process of ordering our cake and flowers so be sure to keep a look out for a new blog on that! Oo and before I forget I was given an award!!!Thanks Becca! Becca aka Only a Mama Knows has given me the Happy 101 award horray!  :) If you don't currently read her blog you should seriously go do so! Her kids are aborable beyond words and her photography skills are simply amazing! Check her out!

http://onlyamamaknows.blogspot.com/

Ok, so here are the rules:

1. Thank the person
2. List the things that make you happy.
3. Tag people.

Things that make me happy:

*Reading outside on a sunny day
*Shawn :)        
*Back rubs
*Wine
*Trying on my wedding dress again and again!
*Baking....just about anything
*Chocolate covered strawberries
*My dads jokes
*Visiting my Grandma

I have chosen to give this award to these fellow bloggers because you make me happy and I love reading your blogs!  :) 
Courtney -Something borrowed, something blue http://clynnwatson.blogspot.com/
Amanda- Journey of lower jaw surgeryhttp://ark63088.blogspot.com/
Carah- carahmelie03 http://carahamelie03.blogspot.com/


Thanks for reading!! 


Only 195 days until the wedding! (were in the 100's now!! :) )

7 months to go!

Only less than 7 months left to go! I can't believe it! This time has flown by and now I'm really starting to get down to business. Last month Shawn and I went up to Haines Falls and attended Saturday Mass before meeting with father Motta. We went over a few more things involving the wedding and are going to be booking our pre-marital class for April. (Which by the way is 100+ dollars! I know crazy right?!) We will be meeting with father Motta again after we have finished our class.

I also ordered my save-the-dates Hooray!! And yes they are the ones I had posted in a previous blog. So they should be in at the end of the month and I plan on sending them out the first week of April. I'm also going to order the matching address stickers (the less writing I have to do the better!). I also like the ones under  it for the formal invitations. They had ones that matched the invitations I want to get but I didn't really care for them. Once I get those mailed out I'm going to decide on and order the wedding invitations. So within the next few weekends Shawn and I are going to be sitting down with my parents to go over what exactly we are going to be eating at the wedding lol!

I also went to Price Chopper a few weeks ago to discuss my flowers. However I quickly decided that I wanted to work with a different Price Chopper. The girl that helped me told me more about her wedding than I was able to explain about mine, and she also poo-pooed all of the ideas I had. Needless to say I was eager to get out of there. I plan on going to the Price Chopper Shawn's Aunt works at. She originally was going to help us with cutting the cost of the cake (by making the actual cake smaller and having a sheet cake in back) but I'm thinking about taking a look at Price Choppers actual wedding cakes and ordering that from them as well. So I figured while I was there I would see if there florists were a bit more helpful than the last one!

We are also going to be booking our honeymoon soon!!! We've decided on a Cruise most likely a Carribean cruise. We thinking of going a week or two after the actual wedding. We've looked at a lot of the 7 night cruises and I think thats what were going to go with. Were going to be meeting with a travelers agents soon.

We also have recently been looking at wedding rings. We went to Littman Jewlers which is where we have pretty much gotten all of our jewlery from. There prices weren't too bad either! I've picked out my ring something simple with a little "V" shape at the top to fit nicely around my ring. Shawn picked out a titanim ring that he liked however he wanted to see if it could come any wider. Unfortunatly we found out that it couldn't so were going to go back to make our final decision within the next few weeks.

Lets see I think that sums things up for now. Thanks for reading!!

Only 207 days until the wedding!

Bridal Makeup

So as some of you may know that have been reading for a while, I watch many makeup guru's on YouTube.  One of which is Carahamelie03-----> check her out and subscribe! Love her, her videos are great! http://www.youtube.com/user/carahamelie03

So a few months back I had requested that she do a bridal makeup video because I really didn't have a clue how I wanted to wear my makeup. I wanted something pretty and elegant but at the same time simple. I attached the link to that video here (click link above the video is called easy bridal/wedding makeup). I love this look and I am seriously considering using it for my wedding. Let me know what you all think!

This was the makeup pallet that she used. It is the 88 warm pallet by Coastal Scents which you can get for around $25!         http://www.coastalscents.com/cfwebstore/index.cfm

Thanks for reading!

Only 227 days until the wedding!

Arts and Crafts!

I got my bridesmaids dress! As some of you may know not only am I going to be a bride, but I am also a bridesmaid! A good friend of mine from college is getting married in June and had asked me to be in her wedding. Yesterday I got my bridesmaids dress from her so I figured I would share!

How cute is this dress?! She is having a Spring wedding and her color scheme is green and blue. It's also going to be an outdoor wedding so this dress matches her theme perfectly. Its a strapless dress that comes to get above the knee. Myself and another bridesmaid are going to be adding straps to our dresses while the 2 maid of honors remain strapless. The thing I love about this dress the most is that it can be worn again. Either to another wedding or bar-b-q! It can be dresses up or down. We are going to be wearing pearl necklaces with the dress which really makes it look nice!

Also today I stopped into Joann's craft store. I wanted to get some ideas for gift bags for guest who are going to be staying at the hotel for the wedding. I didn't actually buy anything but I did get some good ideas. I think what I'm going to do is get some plan brown gift bags like the ones below. Their very simple but they  have that outdoors/fall feel to them which matches our theme. Then I think what I want to do is decorate the outside with decorative leaf cut-outs. I think I might even layer them with a solid color behind the decorative one. I'm not positive on my idea but brainstorming.

I also thought about maybe added some simple stamp work to the bag. I saw these two stamps there and thought that they were so cute. However there about the size you see them on here and I kind of want something a bit bigger than that. I was also thinking about doing a simple Thank You stamp instead on the middle of the bag. I don't know I'm having trouble deciding on that part.

I also saw this stamp which I thought was really cute!  I wanted to use it for something but I don't think I want to put it on the bag. I feel that if I did it would just be too much of the leaf theme. But it's cute non the less so I'm going to see if I can come up with something for it.

Either way I want to get started making the gift bags. Just so that one less thing I have to worry about. We blocked 30 rooms so at the most I would only have to make 30 which isn't bad. The hard part is buying all the goodies to fill them! lol

Thanks for reading!

Only 231 days until the wedding!

Bridesmaids

I've got my dress! I was finally able to pick up my wedding dress from David's Bridal a few weeks ago, and needless to say I've tried it on again and again since I've brought it home. I  want to wear it all the time! lol So I figured being that I finally have it home I would give you guys a sneak peek, but a small one at that. I still want my dress to be a surprise to everyone. The 2 pictures below are some examples of the stitching and bead work on my dress ~ gorgeous!!! I love my dress and I can't wait until I can actually show everyone! I did however show my bridesmaids... After all they are the closest people to me and I also need their help in picking out a veil. Needless to say they all loved it! Although if I have to go to the bathroom at any point during the wedding they are all going to get to see a side of me they haven't seen before! lol

I also took the girls bridesmaid dress shopping on the 23rd on January and what fun we had! Unfortunately 2 of my bridesmaids couldn't make it do to work but it was a productive day none the less. We had an appointment at David's Bridal at 12:30 and it was packed! From the get go I was a little peeved because I didn't get the consultant I had requested weeks prior and had ended up with someone who barely helped us at all. By the way thank you Courtney for running back and forth to get more dresses! The girls tried on a bunch of styles because I only knew two things for certain that I wanted, the dress to be dark brown and for the dress to be floor length.

Models: Kristie- MOH and sister of the Bride and Shannon- Bridesmaid and sister of the Groom

These were the dresses that we ended up picking! I love them of course these dresses are in the wrong color but there were a ton of the red in multiple sizes for all the girls to try on. We also decided to go with a sash around each of the girls waists. Which Shannon is modeling in the pictures. The pictures below are the actual dresses the girls will be buying. The first dress Kristie will wear. It's in the color Latte with a Truffle sash. However she will not be wearing the cinched sash shown in the picture she will be wearing one like in the picture above. Shannon, Amanda, Courtney and Kim are all going to be wearing the second dress. The dress is in Truffle and the sash is in Latte. They are so pretty and look so good together and according to the girls they are very comfortable too!

After working up an appetite in David's we went to lunch at the Olive Garden. Our waitress Patty or Peggy I cant remember which one it was, was amazing! She even chatted with us about the wedding and gave us extra bread sticks to take home to boot! Most of lunch was spent laughing and talking about the wedding. After we were full we headed up the Gowns by Yvonne to try on a few more dresses to make sure that the one we saw at David's was the one. They had some pretty dresses at Yvonne's but all the dresses on the racks were only one or two sizes so only one of the girls got to try them on and they were far more expensive than what we were previously looking at. So with that it didn't take long to make our decision.

I can't wait until the wedding. I had such a fun time shopping with my bridesmaids that I'm sure the bachelorette party will be a blast!

Only 233 days until the wedding!

Say cheese!

As you all know Shawn and I got an engagement picture done a few months ago at Country Studios. The picture came out beautiful but unfortunately their pricing was far too much for our budget. So yesterday we took to trip to picture people to see what kind of a deal we could get there. We got some really nice pictures done and they were VERY affordable. In total we got 1 8 x 10 of each of the pictures for our selves and then we also got 2 sheets of 4x6 pictures of each of the shots. So in total we ordered 24 prints. Both set of pictures also had special effects on them. The colored one below was done in "retro" and the black and white was obviously changed to black and white and the had a softening touch also added. (The backgrounds on the pictures are white...I took the pictures with a bad camera so they look blue :-/)Our total came out to be about $100 for everything! That same package would have cost us $245 at Country Studios without the special effects. I love our pictures! Not only were they affordable we only had to wait 15 minutes to get our prints! (It was not busy when we went so times may vary from person to person). They will also frame any picture that you want, make more prints etc. at a later time if you can't decide right then and there. I will definitely use picture people again!

We are also going to be meeting with father Motta again. We haven't decided which weekend yet Shawn and I are going but father would like for us to go to Saturday mass at 5pm and then meet with him afterwards to discuss more of the wedding. It will be nice to see how Father Motta gives his sermons so that we can get an idea of how he will conduct our wedding ceremony. (Father Motta is not our local pasture) Not to mention it will also give Shawn some more practice as to what the Catholic religion is all about...so his not completely lost on the wedding day lol.

I also attempted to call to arrange a consultation with the Price Chopper florist I had meet at my hair salon a few months back. However I forgot that Valenties day is going to be coming up and they are swamped right now. They asked that I call back after the holiday so that they could give me and my wedding their full attention. Which was fine with me...it will give me more to save anyway.

I've also been working on the save-the-dates. I don't think we are going to do pictures on the save-the-dates any longer because of all the headaches and money you have to go through to own the copyrights of the professional pictures we had taken. But they will still be pretty and I'm hoping that I can get them out a little sooner for everyone. So keep an eye out for them! And if anyone is interested....I'm using magnet street wedding.com they have a huge variety and reasonable prices. If you send in your address and what you would like to see/ test they will send you free samples so you can see first hand what quality invitations you will be getting. This is what I was thinking about doing for our save-the-dates. Its really cute and has the fall kind of theme were going for. It's a magnet so people can keep it on their frige and not loose it :)

I am also in the process of putting our engagement picture (the one done in retro) in the paper. One in the daily mail (our local paper) and one in the Times Union. For the daily mail its $50 ($25 for the write up and $25 for the picture). All I have to do is e-mail the reporter the write up/information and the picture and it comes out every 3rd Saturday of the month. I haven't heard back from Times Union yet...I have a feeling that they will probably be more expensive, but we'll see :)

Oh and my wedding dress is in!!! I'm going to pick it up on my next day off. I was going to pick it up this past weekend but I have to try it on again and they were too busy. So I'm going to go back during the week. I make an appointment when I pick it up to come back for my alterations. I'm soooo excited to try my dress on again!!!

p.s. I'd like to start looking into buying the cake soon, but I don't have a clue of where to go any suggestions?

Only 257 days until the wedding!

Oleg Cassini

Hello everyone! Sorry its been so long since I've written. Shawn and I finally moved into our house and are loving being home owners! As I'm sure you can imagine we have been quite busy unpacking and whatnot. I did however shoot a video of the "house tour" so feel free to take a look. We plan on doing a bit more renovation to the house (not that it needs it we just want to change things for our own personal taste) which I try to explain in the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=er1GXHgIiww

Also there has been a change in my wedding dress. I had originally put a dress on lay-a-way that I loved. But its been nagging me for the past few days that the bottom of the dress needed more. I was online the other day and an ad for David's Bridal was on the side bar and I LOVED the bottom of the girls dress. So I think that this is where that all started.

So I called David's Bridal to see what we could do to the bottom of my dress. I just felt like it needed an extra something I was looking for. They said that weren't sure what could really be done to it because of where some of the beading was, but to come in a see what options I had. Well it turns out they really couldn't do what I wanted to the bottom of my dress so they suggested maybe trying on a few dresses that they thought I might like. I tried on a few dresses but none of them gave me that "wow" feeling. Then my consultant asked me if

I had tried on any of the Cassini dresses. I hadn't, and I didn't have a clue who the heck Cassini even was and incase some of you don't have a clue either I threw in a tid bit about him 

Oleg Cassini is considered one of the most prestigious fashion designers in the world, Oleg Cassini is known for creating wedding gowns that are nothing short of extraordinary. The exclusive wedding collection features modern interpretations of classic styles, inspired by the dresses Oleg Cassini created as personal couturier to First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy. Cassini's timeless dress designs have been the gown of choice for Hollywood legends from Marilyn Monroe to Renee Zellweger. Oleg Cassini wedding dresses are available exclusively at David's Bridal. The designer gowns are crafted from high-quality fabrics and lavishly embellished with opulent hand-beading, embroidered lace applique and detailed embroidery. The collection features a variety of styles, from elegant contemporary designs to vintage-inspired classics.

I tried on the dress and it was absolutely stunning! I loved the top of the dress. The bottom was ok it just didn't thrill me. My consultant said that she thinks she has a Cassini dress that is just what I'm looking for. It had the similar top which I loved, but the bottom was exactly what I had asked them to do to my original dress. (I'm hiding the details encase my nosy fiance decides to read this lol) It was AMAZING!!! I was absolutely speechless I can't even describe the feeling that came over me, and I started to cry! lol It fit like a glove. I felt like a princess. So needless to say my old dress was yesterdays news I wanted this dress, but I was afraid it was out of my price range. I looked at the price tag and was a little worried. It wasn't a ton of money but It was a good 500 more than my other dress. My consultant caught me looking at the tag and told me "Don't believe that price its on sale!!" The dress was actually 300 cheaper than the ticket price. That sealed the deal for me. On my last visit I had also bought a bra but this new dress already had one built in. So I returned the bar and took my other dress off lay-a-way and transfered the funds that I had paid for that over to my new dress. So all in all I only owe 200 more than I did on the other dress. I am so incredibly excited and have absolutely no doubt now that I have found my wedding dress! So I guess what Im really trying to say here is that feeling that they tell you you'll have is totally true. Don't try and "think you feel" its the one...you'll know! (The above picture is not my dress, but an Oleg Cassini magazine ad.

Oh and one more quick thing before I end this blog. I have to show you all what my best friend got me for Christmas this year! It's a wedding planner! It has our names, picture and wedding date on the front. On the inside is a quote she put it and it says "Some say the I do's are the best part; but it's the planning that gets you there!" The inside is filled with all kinds of things. Pages for the wedding party, Bridal gown, hair, shoes etc, honeymoon, guest list, rehersal dinner, photographer, wedding party gifts. You name it its pretty much had everything you could need to help plan every part of the wedding. Plus Its nice and durable so that I can save it and one day look back at all the fuss it took to put this whole thing together!

Thanks for reading!

Only 273 days until the wedding!