We've got a Latte Love!: the day before the big day

It's official--recaps have begun!

This is kind of pathetic....yesterday was our 10 month-a-versary! But I'm really excited to share this journey with so many old and new friends [most of whom I haven't met in real life!]

Thank you for your support, encouragement, and inspiration!

The day before the Big Day was really exciting, but we had lots of work to do. I sent E off with his boys in the morning, and my whole possy headed to Aunt Jet's to begin!

We arrived to a kitchen full of buckets of beautiful flowers. I couldn't wait to get started putting these beauties together!

There were 7 of us and everyone split up and got right to work, while enjoying breakfast goodies from my Grammy "B", and mimosas.

I've dubbed all my bridesmaids with coffee related nicknames (in keeping with my blog name) to maintain their relative anonymity.

Vanilla Bean aka Caitlin just started a Newlywed blog which you should all check out and say Hi!

The Midwest Mrs. She traveled in from MI, so she missed the first part of the wedding activities on Thursday.

Also, my baby sister, Caramel was taking a summer class and MIA in these pictures as well.

Aunt Jet and Toffee got started sorting flowers for each of the bridesmaid bouquets into buckets and vases

I grabbed a mimosa and took my tired self to the office to get crackin' on the programs!

Grammy and Mocha get to work assembling programs!

Mama Latte

We all worked like busy little bees all morning. Finally it was time to put the bouquets together!

After all the gathering and sorting, bunching and plucking, I grabbed the rubber-banded stems for each bouquet and tightly wound floral tape to hold them together. This isn't easy!

then we wrapped the stems in satin ribbon (white for me, chocolate brown for bridesmaids), and secured them with pearl pins.

I left the stems extra long to keep the bouquets in water without getting the satin wet.

We took all the 'left overs' and put them together in these vases for the pedastals in front of church. I had originally wanted all tulips, but the tulips were tiny.

And I think this arrangement turned out beautifully!

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For those interested, here are the flower deets. We purchased flowers for all the decorations, bouquets and bouts from the local grocery store (ordered 12 days in advance).

Gerber daisies

Button mums

Football mums

Tulips

Peonies

Roses

Tea roses

Hydrangea

Hypericum berries

Alstromeria (white flower with brown tiger stripes in center)

Baby's breath

We used the baby's breath for church decor, and the hydrangeas for the centerpieces as well as in the bouquets.

The bouts were tea roses with hypericum berries and the bouquets included a few of everything except baby's breath.

At the end of the day, I was too overwhelmed to try to make the bouts ourselves, so my aunt had a florist acquaintance of hers put them together for us for a couple dollars a piece!

In total we spent about $650 on all the flowers, supplies, and labor (We could have cut this budget by $75+, but i was insistent on having out-of-season peonies and tulips!)

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I had found out a week before the wedding that our venue had planned an event that evening before our wedding--when we were planning to set up! At the point I booked the venue, there was no venue coordinator, so I hadn't even thought to ask the venue to help set up all the decor. A week before the wedding I was introduced to the brand-new wedding coordinator (new to both the venue and to coordinating) Instead of spending the afternoon setting up, we dropped off a truck load of things and tried to share as many verbal instructions as possible for the venue to set up on Friday morning. I was disappointed and frustrated, but didn't have time think about it!

(Later I acknowledged the positive side about this unexpected scenario: it freed up two hours of our time on Thursday, which really made a big difference for my stress level!)

Then all the ladies (including FMIL and a few aunts) headed over to the nail salon.

After a fun hour of primping and chatting, we rushed home to get ready for the rehearsal!