Category Archives: My Wedding

Getting Perfect Wedding Day Hair

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This is a sponsored post. All opinions are mine.

Ever since I was a child, I had a very specific vision of how I wanted to look on my wedding day. I’ve always had a love for beauty and fashion, so my dream was to basically look like wedding day Barbie with long, glamorous, platinum blonde hair! So once I was an adult and the big day was approaching for real, getting the right hair was a big priority for me. I’ve been going to my hairdresser Nicci Carannante since 2007, and we have a special synergy and friendship. She has a remarkable talent for understanding what I want and giving me hair that looks the way I want long after I leave the salon. We began planning my “Wedding hair” about 2 years before the wedding, when my hair was dyed hot pink. We began slowly bleaching my hair out from pink to platinum, taking our time so that it wouldn’t be damaged, and eventually ending up with the perfect shade of platinum blonde.

In addition to doing the hair for my wedding, Nicci was also our officiant, so she styled my hair right before the wedding – then headed up to the altar to perform the ceremony! Jai actually built her a custom hairdresser’s table that also doubled as her podium during the wedding. She worked carefully to created the glammed up, flowing style that I wanted, complete with tiara and cathedral length veil. Moments before the wedding, we went over how the ceremony would go, and discussed how to handle my veil. I was adamant that I wanted the veil to be over my face as I walked down the aisle, but in all the busyness of our DIY wedding, hadn’t rehearsed having Jai lift the veil and we didn’t want it to throw him off or pull my hair out of place. I decided that when I walked up to the altar, I wanted Nicci to lift my veil so that it would look perfect. We had planned for her opening statements to mention that she was my hairdresser, and she explained this to the audience after lifting up my veil to present me to Jai, and it was a very special moment.

Perfect wedding day hair looks different to every bride. There’s a million different ways to get the style you want: For me, getting the right look involved a few years of planning, growing my hair out, and dying it repeatedly. For some brides, hair extensions or wigs can be another way to achieve that dream look. If that’s an option you’re considering for your own wedding, then you may want to look up Divatress, an online retailer that sells wigs for women in every style you can imagine. No matter what you envision yourself looking like on your big day, there’s an option available to suit your taste – because you deserve to feel like a diva on your wedding day!

How to Choose Your Wedding Getaway Car

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Our wedding getaway car

Photo by Jason Hill Photography


Sponsored post.

There are oh-so-many details to think about when planning your wedding; it’s so unlike any party or event that I’ve ever planned before! There are so many aspects and traditions to consider that you wouldn’t normally think about in any other situation. One of the logistics you’ll have to consider is transportation: How will you and your groom arrive at the venue, and what will you make your “Getaway” in after the ceremony is over?

Bride & Groom

Photo by Jason Hill Photography

We were very fortunate that Best Man Nathan offered his beautiful, fully restored 1961 Lincoln Continental for us to use as our getaway car for our August wedding. Not only was it a load of fun to spin around town in, but it made such a fun conversation piece during the wedding – the guests clamored around to look at it, and our photographer loved shooting it – the car made a perfect backdrop for what would become some of our favorite wedding photos! Fun fact: This is also the same car that Maroon 5 used in their famous wedding-crashing video for “Sugar” – how perfect is that?!

Ready to drive off into the sunset!

Photo by Jason Hill Photography

Now, when it came to the nuts and bolts of packing and transporting the many, many, many boxes of items for our 100% DIY wedding, practicality reigned supreme as we made use of our good old Chevy truck to haul everything out of the venue. Hint: If you’re doing a DIY wedding, a truck is pretty much a necessity in my opinion! By having a “Fun” getaway car for the ceremony combined with a “Practical” truck for moving everything around, we covered all our bases. And we had fun decorating our truck too!

Just Married!

The best advice for making sure everything runs as smoothly as possible at your wedding is to really visualize everything. Where are you driving to the venue from? Will you go with your groom, or separately? What are you transporting to the venue? Who is helping you? How do you want to make your “Big getaway” at the end? Are you into vintage cars like us, or have you always dreamed of rolling up to the chapel in a stretch limo or hummer? Thinking this through and having a plan will help you out a lot during the big day.

You can best prepare for the big day by doing a little research on the type of vehicles you’re thinking about using during the wedding. Cars.com is a great resource for information on every type of vehicle, from luxury, make-a-statement cars like Rolls-Royce to practical work horses such as a Ford F-150. The website gives you detailed information about popular vehicles, taking you inside and out to point out selling points and practical limitations. For example, if you thought a zippy little sports car might be cute for your grand entrance, a read through of Cars.com might point out that the interior would be too compact to comfortably fit your wedding dress – like I said, there are so many details with a wedding that you don’t usually have to consider! So whether you’re pondering what getaway car to go with, or shopping for your first vehicle together as newlyweds, Cars.com has you covered.

With This Ring, I Thee Wed

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This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Jewelers Mutual Insurance for IZEA. All opinions are 100% mine.

As I write this, I am exactly one week away from my wedding! It’s hard to believe that the day that has been in the works for so long and dreamed about since I was a child is just 7 days away. Wedding planning is a true whirlwind, so it’s important to steal a moment away from spreadsheets and to-do lists to remember why you’re getting married in the first place! So this morning, I am reminiscing about the day that we got engaged.

We consider New Year’s Day to be our “anniversary”, since it was after a friend’s NYE party that Jai and I realized we were a perfect match. Because of this, Jai knew that he wanted to propose over New Year’s. The year that we got engaged, we were spending New Year’s Eve together at home – just the two of us relaxing, enjoying dinner and talking about our future. Jai then told me that I should play a round of World of Warcraft with him, so I logged on to my computer.

When I got into the game, Jai had created his own customized quest with personal messages to me. My character was led to a treasure chest and when I clicked on it, it revealed a ring and the message: Will you marry me? I stood up from the computer and hugged him in real life while crying happy tears!

The next morning, we went over to his grandma’s house to tell her the happy news. We made conversation while she and her daughter were taking the Christmas tree down, and then casually said, “Oh, by the way, we got engaged last night.” Jai timed this for when they had put the Christmas ornaments down so that they wouldn’t drop them in their excitement as they screamed and jumped up!

Back in the 1980s, Grandma used to run a jewelry store, and still had some nice rings in her safe deposit box at the time of our engagement that were leftover from her shop. So after she hugged us, she said, “I have some rings if you’d like to look at them…oh, you probably want to buy your own, though.” I said that I would very much like to see her beautiful rings, and the words had barely left my mouth before Grandma was putting on her coat and excitedly hurrying out the door to the bank to bring some rings over for me to look at!

Jai had wanted to pick out the ring with me so that I could get exactly what I would like (this is pretty common these days! Learn what brides-to-be want in an engagement ring). As we looked at Grandma’s rings, my eye was drawn to a beautiful 14k platinum diamond ring. It was stunning and fit my style perfectly – it was the one! We took the ring to a local jeweler to have it re-sized, and after we got back, Jai surprised me before a dinner party I was throwing by putting on a nice suit and taking me outside to propose a second time with the ring. And that’s how this whole wedding adventure began!

Getting some henna art to show off my ring hand after we got engaged!

I’ve learned so much about weddings during our engagement, especially since we’re doing it DIY and I am serving as my own wedding planner. There are so many details to think about! For our wedding bands, Jai and I are both wearing heirloom rings from our respective grandparents. From getting the rings sized to finding out about spacers and how to properly clean them, I’ve learned quite a bit about jewelry in the last few months!

Since our rings are so meaningful to us, it’s very important that we keep them safe during the chaos of the wedding day, so I’ve been taking a crash course on Jewelry Insurance 101. Jewelers Mutual has a lot of great advice for keeping your rings safe to give peace of mind during a sometimes-stressful time. Since they specialize in jewelry insurance, they are the experts in protecting these symbols of your love. Whether you just got engaged or are celebrating a milestone anniversary, you can Get a free jewelry insurance quote online in minutes and scratch one more item off your to-do list!

What’s your proposal story? Did you get ring insurance after you got engaged? I’d love to hear about it in the comments!

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Our Wedding Was Featured in The Wall Street Journal!

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Our wedding made front page news! The Wall Street Journal interviewed Jai and I for an article on eclipse weddings that ran both online and on the front page of Wednesday’s WSJ. Click here to read the piece and pick it up on newsstands today!


Wedding Livestream on 8/21 at 9:00 AM PST

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Because our loved ones are spread across the world, Jai and I are harnessing the miracle of modern technology to share the moment live with those who are unable to attend in person! Our wedding will begin streaming live on YouTube on August 21st at 9:00 AM PST thanks to our videographer, William Ensign of Entangled Productions. Just bookmark this link and come back on the big day to see us tie the knot!

Save The Date: August 21st, 2017!

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I’m so excited to share a wedding planning update: Jai and I have our date set for August 21st, 2017. We picked this day to coincide with the Total Solar Eclipse that is happening that morning, and will be viewing the eclipse with our guests as part of the wedding ceremony. It’s going to be a once-in-a-lifetime moment, and I’ll be sharing all the planning details with you right here!