- Finishing Touches -

Tonight, we finished writing thank you cards and wrapping gifts...

...finished threading ribbons through the programs...

...and finished the bridal bouquet! [...Which couldn't be finished without a chainsaw, obviously.]

Thanks for your last minute help Susie, Marchelle, Kate, Dena, and Joe! [Poor Dena and Joe stopped by to drop our wedding gift off and got stuck working for a few hours!]

By the end of Wednesday, there was nothing left to do except get our nails done and then have a celebratory margarita! 

Cheers to the culmination and completion of wedding week! [And it's only Wednesday!]

- "M" -

We got this dainty little tissue pack to tie on my dad's wedding gift at the rehearsal dinner!

[The sad part is, they will probably be depleted on Saturday before we even start our march down the aisle!!]

Hehe. Love ya, Dad! 

- More {DIY} Candied Pecans -

One last batch!  [Love how my mom wakes up and automatically dresses in our wedding colors!]

- Bubble Wrapping -

Vases, frames, mirrors, and everything else "breakable" are bubble-wrapped, packed, and ready to rock and roll! 

[6 days......yikes!]

- Tying Loose Ends -

Thanks to Aunt Margy for helping us tie up loose ends to lots of unfinished projects! Programs, wedding wands, and gift bag filling kept us busy for several hours! :)

Thanks, lady! Love ya! 

- Hotel Gift Bags -

Today, we filled the hotel gift bags with all of our favorite things! [We'll be dropping them off at the hotels on Thursday so anyone with early check-in will still have a chance to get their goodies.]

Check out these posts to see how the bags came together:

• Chocolate-covered pretzels
• Candied pecans
• Chocolate spoons
• Schlafly beers
• Door hangs

My very favorite part of the gift bags: "her favorite" and "his favorite."

Thanks, Margy, for your help! Thanks, friends, for booking hotel rooms so this project could keep us so busy! ;) 

- {DIY} Glitter Gourds - Part II -

...And they're finished! [CLICK HERE to see how they started.]

- P's and G's -

I love the way our parents' and grandparents' wedding picture frames turned out! I made little display cards today with their names, anniversary dates, and churches.

The frames will be displayed on a fireplace mantle at the reception [and hopefully in some sort of creative collage in our house afterwards]. So excited! 

[Even more than the frames, I love how my mom and aunt are so diligently working on wedding wands in the background!]

- Bridesmaid Gifts -

Bridesmaid gifts are wrapped and packed! 

- {DIY} Wine Glasses -

[Can't tell who all these are for without spoiling the surprise, but] I love these flower glasses!  Dad painted them Friday night...

...and I personalized them!

So excited to wrap them and give them away! 

- Unwrapping and Shining -

With the wedding one week away, we invited some of the family over to help finish up our "to-do" list! Happy Friday night to them... ;) While one table of people was stuffing programs, the other was unwrapping lots and lots of candles and shining lots and lots of mirrors. 

[After a few beers, Uncle Matt thought unwrapping the candles with his teeth would be easier than using a knife!]

Thanks Matt, Lisa, Larry, Pat, and Blake! 

[We have the most helpful wonderful family!]

- {DIY} Door Hangs -

One more thing to stuff in your hotel gift bags! 

[I think we'll be hanging an extra large one of these on the honeymoon suite doorknob!]

- {DIY} Programs -

Letting a stranger create the wedding programs = absolutely unfathomable to a Type A bride.

So what was the solution? 

...DIY, of course! ;) 

After these were perfected and printed, we rallied up some family members to help assemble the pages and tie the ribbons on the outside. (Definitely glad to delegate out this part of the work!)

Thanks to George Press for printing. Thanks to Pat and Larry for spending their Friday night stuffing!

- {DIY} Bathroom Basket -

"To our favorite ladies: Whether your skin feels dry or your hair out of place, you're not feeling so fresh or whatever the case; we've put together a basket to help you along. ...Now hurry back out before you miss the next song!"

The women's bathroom is all stocked up for you, ladies! 

- Work Shower -

A big thanks goes out to the wonderful labor and delivery staff for throwing me a shower at work this week! 

Our 4am party was complete with a huge spread of food, a Cosmo magazine full of everyone's "best advice," and the greatest friends and co-workers a girl could ever ask for!

The cutest cupcakes from Barbie!

I love my nurses!!! So lucky! :)

- Happy Halloween -

This groom is creative AND romantic! ;) 

At this time in 12 days, we'll be standing at the altar getting ready to say, "I do!"

Happy Halloween from the [soon-to-be] Flemings! 

- Hotel Parking -

A couple options for parking:

1) The hotel charges a one time fee of $10-15 per day.

However, if you plan to park your car one time after the church and then ride the shuttle to the reception, 

2) The Stadium East parking garage only charges $5. [It it $5 in and out every time, so make sure you will not be leaving!] This parking garage is across the street from the Drury and Millennium, so it's just as convenient [and safe, we were assured] as the hotel parking garages.

- P's and G's Weddings -

We love these pictures from our parents' and grandparents' weddings!  

Mark and Resa Stieren
February 2, 1985
St. Raymond Catholic Church (Raymond, IL)

Ron and Ann Fleming
September 29, 1973
Church of the Ascension (Mt. Olive, IL)

Carl and Martha Beeler 
June 5, 1954
St. Maurice Catholic Church (Morrisonville, IL)

Jim and Penny Stieren
June 27, 1959
St. Mary's Catholic Church (Farmersville, IL)

George and Beverly Dragovich
June 24, 1950
Church of the Ascension (Mt. Olive, IL)

Dean and Viola Fleming
October 12, 1946
First United Methodist Church (Staunton, IL)

So excited to display these at our reception hall! :)

- Housekeeping Items -

As the wedding is only two weeks and some change away (YIKES!), we wanted to mention a few housekeeping items:

-- The hotel blocks have now been released. If you are still hoping to get a room, the Drury has agreed to give you our group rate should a room in the hotel open up.  Last we checked, the Millennium still had plenty of vacancy.

-- Please plan for city traffic on wedding day! Especially with the bridge construction, St. Louis weekend traffic is always unpredictable.  Hopefully traffic will cooperate and you will be able to beat the wedding party down the aisle! ;) 

-- We have reserved free parking in the Laclede parking garage on the corner of Grand and Laclede. The garage is a block away from the church, so also save time to park and walk.  Meter parking is also available on Lindell Blvd. [Make sure your meter has enough time, though, because the cops love to write tickets on this street.]

-- As much as we would love to dismiss row by row after the ceremony, it is not feasible with the time limitations we have before the next Mass starts. The reception doors open at 5:45 pm, so we will begin our receiving line at the reception hall at this time. 

-- For any Catholics in the bunch who will be looking for a Saturday vigil Mass to attend between our ceremony and reception, please CLICK HERE. 

-- In between the ceremony and reception, we encourage you to check in to your hotel rooms.  We are providing a shuttle from Jed's Transportation to continuously loop back and forth between the hotel and reception all night. The first shuttle will depart from the front door of the Drury at 5:30 pm.

Feel free to contact us with any questions! We are so excited that you can be a part of our special day and are looking forward to celebrating with you! :)

[17 days to go!]

- Pampered By Britney -

She makes my hair pretty for the wedding, and I sit in her chair and drink margaritas...

...Sweet deal!

A million thanks to [ex-Madison County Fair Queen and newlywed!] Britney for always fixing my hair exactly the way I like it!  I'm so happy we kept up this friendship from the pageant days, but even happier that I have the world's best hairstylist! :)

- {DIY} Chocolate Spoons -

More goodies are finished for the hotel gift bags! Mom dipped the spoons and I decorated them...

Quote of the night: "Do you think people know how to use a chocolate spoon or should we include instructions?!"

But seriously, do they? :/

- {DIY} Chocolate Pretzels -

In the middle of the Cardinal cheering and the pecan packing, we decorated our white chocolate-covered pretzels! 

These hotel gift bags are gonna be rockin' with all of our favorite things! 

- {DIY} Candied Pecans - Part II -

Addendum to the previous post:

*ahem*

While men may not be quiiite so stellar at multi-tasking, I have to give our boys some credit for their help earlier this week with the hotel gift bag project.

Lesson learned: Let them operate the heavy-duty machinery, and they're good to go!

Thanks, guys! 

- {DIY} Candied Pecans -

Everyone knows women are stellar multi-taskers, and Resa and I were no exception tonight! We used half of our energy to cheer on our St. Louis Cardinals and the other half to bag candied pecans for our hotel guests.

Before the bagging started, we stamped a special message on each card...

[I wish I could take credit for baking the pecans, but that was ALL my sweet momma earlier this week!]

Cardinals clinch the series: 1 day!

I marry my best friend: 20 days!!!  

- {DIY} Boutineers -

Groom, groomsmen, mothers of bride/groom, fathers of bride/groom, grandparents, musicians, lectors, program attendants, and wedding hosts: you officially have finished boutineers!

We [and by we, I actually mean my dad] used today to wrap flowers and put final touches on everyone's boutineers/corsages/wrist bands.

They are gorgeous! I love the purple feathers on the groomsmen's boutineers.

Thank you in advance to whoever gets stuck pinning all of these on wedding day! [Hopefully you won't LITERALLY be getting stuck! ;)]

- {DIY} Party Favors -

The past few weeks have been busy busy busy with finishing up our DIY-projects; one project we wrapped up was the party favors. Each plate at the reception will get a silver-tied baggie of these chocolate nuggets!

Brian and I spent [you don't even want to know how many] hours working on the favors one night, and only 75 were finished when we were ready to throw in the towel.  Tons of thanks to my grandparents, aunt, and cousins for creating an awesome assembly line  this week to finish off the rest!

[Squeeze in for a picture!  I promise they weren't forced to work this closely all day!]

- Table Runners -

We are in LOVE with these gorgeous shimmery table runners, but man did they come wadded up and wrinkled!  30 minutes and 13 runners later, I was SO over the ironing board...

...So Grandma to the rescue! :)

 

Perfecting the hanging technique was Grandpa's job. We don't want those bad boys to acquire one more wrinkle before November 10!

With her 42 and my 13, the reception hall should be set to go. Thanks, Grandma and Grandpa!  [Sorry you got the grunt work.]

- {DIY} Wedding Wands -

Wedding wands are almost finished! Thanks to my sweet aunts and grandma for helping in the assembly line this week. 

The wands will be taking the place of bubbles, rice, and rose petals [or anything else you were hoping to throw at us!]. Get ready to wave them loud and proud!  

[One month to go!]