Tuxedos!

Let's talk men for a second. On our wedding day I want to be beautiful but I want fiance to be just as handsome as ever too! When he dresses up he sure does look gorgeous y'all! It's only natural that I want him to have some extra special attention and to LOOK extra special on our big day.


In the beginning I was really set on having grey suits because I liked the modern vibe they give especially paired with orange and whites. After talking with fiance I found that he really wanted to look like James Bond, tuxedo, extra fabulous, shaken not stirred. HAHA. OK sorry for that joke. I naturally gave in, because hey, what woman doesn't love James Bond and because I wanted him to have what HE wanted for the wedding too!


Well the boy has been so busy at work the past year since he became head pro, that he's lost a decent amount of weight and is now a 30 waist. Not to mention his whole physique is on the smaller side. We pretty much knew renting was out of the question because of this and because you can't alter what's pre-made.


We began hunting for suits and tuxedo's for the past couple months. We found some good suit options that we could dress up like a tuxedo so that seemed the route we were going to go... UNTIL, I WON 6 FREE tuxedo rentals from the new Vera Wang Black label at Men's Warehouse.

These are probably the next best thing coming out of Men's Warehouse in terms of rentals, and pretty new since they were available for rent after April 16th. So therefore all the men are taken care of! Except we're not sure about Fiance. We are still looking into the option of buying for him so we can make sure he looks extra amazing for the wedding. One of the blogs I follow, Em for Marvelous, talked about her experience with her fiance and how they bought a tuxedo by Tommy Hilfiger from Macy's. I checked into this and found fiance some wonderful options. Currently this Kenneth Cole baby is on order for delivery!



What do y'all think?! I can't wait to see this tuxedo on fiance! If it doesn't work, we still have Vera. I'm just happy to have some affordable options and I'm so thankful to have won the Vera Wang contest so we can outfit the groomsmen and dad's for free!! YIPPIE!

Well, that's all for now, happy weekend!

xoxo,

a.

Let's eat cake!

Fiance and I had an eventful week last week but it was a fantastic week for us!

• booked the honeymoon!
• meet with makeup artist
• ordered save the dates
• mailed the save the dates
• revealed our wedding website 
• went CAKE tasting!

 We went cake tasting y'all! So fun. Something I've wanted to do forever but became a little less excited about it because fiance does NOT have a sweet tooth and that is so not fun for me. :( But I took him to the tasting with me and we both had a good time. 

We met with a wonderful lady named Cinda, from Cinda's Creative Cakes. She bakes out of her house and does an amazzzzing job!! She hand makes sugar flowers and I am all the rage over these silly little flowers because they are stunning and I know hard to make! I found Ms. Cinda at the North Hills Wedding Show back in February. We tasted some cake, gushed over the sugar flower cakes, and continued to walk around because I don't have a huge budget for a cake. Later they did a Q&A to win prizes and this little lady won a FREE grooms cake! HECK YEAH! I secretly wanted to do a grooms cake anyway so one less thing to pay for! (PS. Enter EVERYTHING as a bride, you never know what you may win!)

This is what fiance and I have in mind for his grooms cake. Strutting wolf with a golf bag in honor of his career at the golf course! So cute! I just want to hug Tuffy!

BUT the real reason we were there was to talk wedding cakes. We tried two different flavors, dark chocolate with raspberry filling with buttercream frosting and sweet potato cake with cream cheese frosting. Which one do you think we liked more?! If you guessed sweet potato, you're right! It's not too sweet with the right amount of flavor, the taste of fall to me! (It tastes like pumpkin and I love pumpkin anything!) Since we're not narrowing down flavors yet though, I'll show you a few of my favorite cake designs! I'm wanting round, and two to three tiers most likely.

 I definitely like the rather simple cakes. I like the stripes but I also like the simple butter cream "betty crocker" style with some flowers, real or sugar! I think my favorite cake though is the second from the bottom! LOVE that one! I also like the last for the option of doing sanding sugar, it gives the cake some three dimensional character! All of these are possibilities but definitely leaning towards the all white with the sugar flowers! 

What do y'all think?!

xoxo,
a.

Honeymoonin'

Since we last spoke about honeymoons, I was very distraught about the situation. I didn't know what we really wanted to do and the travel agents didn't end up being much help. They did offer that Europe would be rather cold, which I knew, and that it could be rainy and put the mood in an awkward place, etc. I was aware but I guess it started to hit me that it might not be the best time to go. Also the fact that I just want to relax!


So that led us to Mexico being a great choice because it was a little less money than going to the Caribbean and because you get great service and wonderful hotel rooms. The one thing that seemed to lack was the beach though. I decided to keep looking and had been using some sites like Luxury Link, Jetsetter and Vacationist for inspiration. Luxury Link led me to a beautiful resort in Antigua called Cocobay Resort.


Cocobay has it all, literally. It's all-inclusive, right on the ocean, a welcome bottle of sparkling wine, bouquet of fresh flowers, snorkel gear, kayaks, and most importantly alcohol! (I heard the rum punch is awesome!) And after extensive research on Tripadvisor, the travelers bible, I decided that I really liked the resort. 


The selling point was that it was less expensive than the Riviera Maya, we could go for an extra night, (8 nights to be exact), and we would even have some leftover funds for a private champagne sunset sail!! The most exciting about this all is that the flights went down $100 bucks this weekend, so we maybe booking tonight or tomorrow! EEK!!! So exciting!! What a relief this feels like. Here are some photos of Cocobay Resort!

Not too shabby huh?! I recommend checking out Luxury Link if you're looking for an amazing vacation. They have some awesome deals on some of the top hotels in the world.

Wish you were here,

xoxo,

a. 

update!!!! it's BOOKED! we're going to antigua!!!!!!! yahoooo!!!! cocobay here we come!  

Time for some reveals!

Good morning my love, and happy Thursday! It's a particularly happy Thursday for us because fiance and I just got done from visiting the post office, stamping some cute postcards, and giving them to the mailman! I wonder what they possibly could be...


I'm so excited to get these in the mail already! We ordered these bad boys on Sunday night and I received them yesterday afternoon, which happened to be my day off, so I hopped over to Target and got some nice pens and started addressing! Luckily I already had everyone's addresses and was able to get them all done and out this morning. It's possible some of you may see these puppies in your mailbox tomorrow!

I was really nervous about them but they came out rather nice. I'm a teensy bit disappointed with the quality of the photos, but I can't complain since they're only a dollar each basically. I LOVE the back of them, so I'd scarifice some photo quality to have some cute personality on the back of the postcard. All the other vendors didn't have cute options for the backs of their cards.

Speaking of the back of the card, I'm pleased to finally announce and share our amazing wedding website! I've literally worked on this thing since right after we got engaged. Even though it was a pre-made layout I think it fits our personalities and I'm happy with the finished product! (Don't forget to turn your sound on for a special touch! ;) ) WOO HOO! So ladies and gents, here it is:

www.mywedding.com/nickandamandadillman

I can't wait to hear what everyone thinks of everything! I'm so excited to finally share everything with you!!
xoxo, a.

Save-the-dates, ORDERED!

Happy Monday everyone! It's an exciting Monday, because last night fiance and I clicked order on 104 Save-the-Dates! I don't think we'll end up sending out that exact number but a few to have just in-case. BUT OH MY GOD Y'ALL! That means this is legit, and that means I cannot wait to receive them in 5-7 business days and then to walk my little self to the post office, get some stamps and say see ya! The majority of people will end up receiving them the next day probably! WHOA. I can't wait to be on people's refrigerators!

I ended up using Pear Tree Greetings where the cards equaled about a $1.00 each, so not too shabby and I scored a 15% off coupon so that pretty much covered tax, so it wasn't too much of a splurge. We ended up going with the postcard that looks like this:

I'm excited because we had some really cute photos to use and I could change the colors and the fonts and pretty much include everything I wanted to include. I really liked that although the "SAVE THE DATE" remained gray, I could utilize that and it's a color I wanted. So everything worked out pretty perfectly. I keep freaking out that I haven't seen the proof because you had two options for the back, and I went with the "WE'RE GETTING MARRIED" instead of the "PERFECT MATCH", but now I can't remember if I made that official or not. Geez.

Anyways, exciting times. I also found a makeup artist in town that I saw on a video on Southern Weddings blog and I thought her work was great! I emailed her and her rates are good considering she comes to you, so we are meeting up on Wednesday morning to chat and meet each other! Her website is called Onlokion Makeup and she's based out of Raleigh! Woo! Check out this spread she did for the Cary Magazine.

That's all for now, Happy Monday!

xoxo,
a.