Wedding-palooza: cakes!

I have a huge sweet tooth, so cake is always one of my favorite parts of weddings. 

Our were done by Finale by Glenna and they could not have been more beautiful or more delicious! My mom and I met with them several times before making our final decision and they were always nice and had great input. We were so pleased with the final product!

The groom's cake was Cubs themed cheesecake--adorable! I didn't actually eat any of it in all the craziness, but I heard it was yummy :)

The scalloped cake plates are from Pier One and I still use them today.

I think we found the three tiered cake stand at Michaels (similar here).

We ate the top tier of one of the cakes last night to celebrate our anniversary :) It kept really well in the freezer and I used this post as a guide to thaw it out.
The flavor, almond poppyseed, was out-of-this-world. I forgot how much I loved that cake! I'm overall a huge fan of almond extract, so I see this loaf in my near future.

One year ago today

One year ago today we embarked on the crazy journey of marriage, and what an amazing year it has been! I couldn't be happier to be doing life with my best friend and main squeeze.

I take you

to be my lawfully wedded husband,

to have and to hold

for better, for worse

for richer, for poorer

in sickness and in health

until death do us part.

I will love you and honor you all the days of my life.

Love,

Mrs. Alexander

Wedding palooza: our invite suite

After all the hype about wedding-palooza and organized blogging...silence. I know. I have a good reason. Our computer got a nasty virus last week that put a halt to blogging (or anything on that computer). Originally, we thought we'd take it to Best Buy or somewhere to get it fixed (I did NOT want to lose all the pictures I have stored on this computer), but I spoke with an IT guy at work and he gave me a few options to fix it myself--for free!! And guess what?? It worked! I'll share the resources he gave me at a later date.

Anyway, back to wedding-palooza!

I absolutely love our invitation suite. I generally like paper goods, so I knew I wanted something special and different for our invitations. 

After looking at hundreds of invitations suites on several different websites, we decided on the Modern Calligraphy set by Julie Hanan. I could not have been more pleased with the final product, and Julie was great to work with. She has tons of options for customization and the materials she uses are beautiful.

The only thing I would have changed in hindsight is the font on the address labels. It's a bit hard to read and I think there may have been some delivery confusion because of it.

Overall, we love our invitations. I saved one for a shadowbox on our wall so I can look at it all the time!

Wedding-palooza: the pre-game girls // guys

Hello, October!! Hello, fall. Hello, boots and sweaters. Hello, birthday. Hello, 1 year anniversary!! And hello, wedding-palooza on the blog!
Introductions all around, yall! It's that time of year again, and I'm so excited to share some moments from our wedding. How was that one year ago?? Looking through the pictures, it feels like yesterday... if yesterday was absolutely perfect.

Let's jump on in! 

{the girls}

The morning with the girls was so much fun! We loved getting pampered at Evia Spa and the set up was perfect for our group. They have a long bar area and we brought in food and set up shop for the day. Most of my bridesmaids didn't know each other, so it was fun for everyone to hang out and chat in between hair and makeup. 

Seriously, these girls are awesome.

For their gifts, I ordered these cute monogrammed totes (seen above on the left). They are a great deal for the price and I still use mine fairly often. 

{the guys}

We had such a fun group of guys! Many of them traveled from out of town to be in our wedding (one even came from Brazil--thanks, Maurillio!) and we were so thankful to call them friends and family.

The guys started the day off with a round of golf and then got ready together at the country club before heading to the venue.

We ordered eggplant skinny ties for the guys and I had the backs monogrammed at a local embroidery shop.

We had a great time getting ready together :) and the fun has just begun!