First Dance: Natural or Choreographed

Mr. Newport and I are both horrible dancers. Mr. Newport doesn't like to dance, and even though I love to, I'm just no good. But we are really good swayers.

Swaying at our senior commencement ball

Awhile back we considered doing dance classes, and by we, I mean Sister Newport and I thought it would be fun to take dance lessons before her wedding last year with our grooms to be. Neither of the guys were crazy about the idea, but were more open to doing it if we all did it together. But, as always things got in the way and we never did schedule those classes.

A month before Sister Newport's wedding, we went to cousin Newport A's wedding. He and his wife did take dance lessons and it was the most adorable first dance I had ever seen. It really made me want to take lessons.

Mr. Newport was still hesitant. Although we both loved cousin Newport's dance, Mr. Newport doesn't like the idea of choreographing ours, he thinks it will be more fun to make it up as we go. He plans to do a few dips and spins, but doesn't want me to know when they are going to happen. He thinks I'll have more fun and let loose if we just let the dance unfold.

I don't like surprises, but I'm going to let our first dance be Mr. Newport's thing and let him take the lead. He's excited about this (or just really doesn't want to take lessons), so I'll have to trust him and have fun in the moment.

Will your first dance be choreographed or are you going to just see what happens on the dance floor?

Choosing the Wedding Bands

Mr. Newport just ordered our wedding bands! We went to pick them out last weekend, but had to wait for a quote on the rings. My choice was easy. I knew I wanted a band that matched my engagement ring. There were two options in the store, one was too thick, the other two thin. The associate looked up my ring, since we bought it in the same location and found out that the exact match is no longer in stock, and it just happend to be right in between the size of the other two. So I ordered the one that is hopefully just right.

Mr. Newport's choice was also pretty easy. He walked up to the counter, found a style he liked and tried a few on, then picked the two he liked best. We got a quote for the two and then made his decision. Super easy.

The one thing we were both surprised about during the process was cost. Prior to our band shopping experience I had no clue how much a metal choice can impact the cost of a ring. Sure I know platinum is pricier than silver, but I didn't really know about the metals in between. Common ones include silver, yellow gold, white gold, platinum, palladium, tungsten, tungsten carbide, and titanium.

I didn't really have a choice in my band's metal, as I knew I wanted a matching set and that includes metal. I've heard different metals wear differently, so I wanted my wedding band metal to be the same as the engagement ring. When we first put together our wedding budget, I did some online research on my matching wedding band and budgeted a little over that amount in case anything changed over the next year (remember we had a long engagement).

Mr. Newport was dead set on not spending a lot of money on his ring. BILS found a ring, I believe it is tungsten carbide, at T.J. Maxx for about $26.00 and purchased it for his wedding band. Mr. Newport thought this was great and decided he wanted to do the same. Problem- he has a larger finger, which wasn't as easy to find. I figured it would be tough to find a deal like this, so I budgeted a bit more for Mr. Newport. Also, in case he changed his mind about his metal choice. We came up with dollar amounts and put it in the budget.

Like many of our wedding plans, other than the big things, we put this off until the checklist told us we should really be doing it. We went to the closest Descenza's and looked at wedding bands. I tried on mine and asked for a quote. Mr. Newport tried on his and asked for a qoute for two rings, but asked to get quotes for different metals.

A few days later I got a call. My ring ended up being about 2/3 of the price I had budgeted! My ring is palladium and the rings I saw online must have been platinum. I had no idea a metal could vary the price this greatly. I'm super happy Mr. Newport opted for a more practical metal. This savings is definitely helping at a much needed time.

This also worked out great, because Mr. Newport opted to go with white gold as opposed to his original idea of going with tungsten carbide. He was surprised at the cost of the white gold ring, because in the store the price tag was much greater- again I'm assuming this must have been based on a platinum ring or other costlier metal. We hadn't budgeted enough for the white gold, but after the savings from my ring, we were able to get both of our top choice rings with a bit of money to spare.

Our rings should be in within 6 weeks, I'll post photos once we get them.

Did metal type have an impact on your decision? Were you surprised by the difference in metals prices?

Boston Tea Party

A few weeks ago, the Newport Girls and Newport Mom threw a beautiful shower at the Sherborn Inn in Sherborn, MA. The Newport Girls and Newport Mom filled the shower with a lot of my favorite things; friends, family, tea, chocolate, diy products, and beautiful flowers. The room was filled with yellow details. Everything from the linens, the candy bar, the cake, the paper products, the flowers, some of the guests attire and even most of the gifts. Yellow just makes me smile, and I couldn't stop smiling the entire time.

All of the flowers were arranged by Newport Mom, she also did the flowers at Sister Newport's shower. I think she should go into business. Sister Newport did all the paper products including invitations, table cards, escort cards, and menu cards. She had a friend help with the calligraphy. She found cute teapot and tea cup stamps on etsy, that I may need to borrow in the future!

personal photo

Aside from everything being gorgeous, they also included some of my favorite foods. They created a traditional tea menu of scones, finger sandwiches, and delicious desserts, including chocolate mousse cups! I was so busy, I didn't have a chance to drink a cup of tea.

After taking in all the details, I spent some time with the bridesmaids and Mr. Newport and got to take some really fun photos. One of the coolest things they did was hire our wedding photographer, David Bibeault, to take photos of the shower! It was a pretty cool surprise. I'm already in love with his work, but after seeing the shower photos, I love his work even more!

Mr. Newport is a good sport. :)
The Newport Girl's created a faux-to booth, which is quite popular with the Newport family. We had one at Sister Newport's shower, too!I love the vintage effects Dave created on some of these. It looks like a vintage-y tea party!I could show a ton more photos, since we did a bit of a photo shoot and there were a ton of fun candid shots, but I'll get back to details in the next post! But I had to end it with this adorable shot of Newport Flower Girl. She loves talking on the phone and it looks like this phone call was important.
Our photographer has been in the business for quite some time and said shooting a bridal shower was a first for him. I think he did a pretty awesome job!

Have you ever been to a shower with a photographer? Would you hire one for your own or for a friend who loves photos?

All photos by our amazing wedding photographer, David Bibeault, unless noted otherwise

Nautical Inspiration

If you can't already tell, I'm slightly obsessed with all things nautical. Especially nautical weddings. The coolest one I have ever seen was found on the Armorology blog, photographed by WeddingbeePRO, Amelia Lyon.

I'm in love with every detail of this wedding, I love the navy and white color scheme with pops of aqua.

And of course, I love the Starfish accents.

Every detail is incredible, but I especially love the postcards they had made.

Heather from Armorology worked with Courtney Scowby of Brightly Designed to create all of the paper elements for the wedding, including vintage style post cards which sat atop each plate. The back side allowed for all guests to leave the couple a message, which Kaite's mom offered to mail to them throughout their first year of marriage and on anniversaries. The front side featured various engagement pictures (also by Amelia Lyon) as well as several love and beach quotes such as, "If you want to know how much I love you, count the waves." I would love to do something similar to these instead of a guestbook at our wedding.

My second favorite element? The photo booth! I love photo booths, as you may have noticed! All of the amazing photo booth shots were taken by The Digital Orange.

See more of this wedding here and here.

Have you found a wedding that just completely inspired you?

Say it With Cookies

I just purchased these awesome cookie cutters at Williams Sonoma in June. I saw them on the site awhile back, but they sold out, but they recently became available again! It's kind of like embossing, but for cookies! If you've been following along, you may know how much I love embossing, examples here, here, here, and here!

The set includes three cutters, seven premade words (Welcome, Happy, Birthday, Holidays, Thank You, From, I Love You), three sets of alphabet letters (plus extras of vowels and other commonly used letters).

I have big plans for this set and it has something to do with our guests, but since some of our guests read the blog, you'll have to wait until after the wedding to see what we are doing with these!

Have you found any cool new gadgets you plan to use during your wedding planning?

Gifts for the Groom

On our way to the New Jersey shower Mr. Newport kept referring to all of the presents as "yours", meaning me. "I don't have to open presents, their all for you". Which is kind of true since it is a bridal shower, but I figured they are both of ours because they are building our home together and we both picked them out. Well he still didn't buy it and called them "your gifts".

So even though he referred to all the gifts as mine, he said he bets at least one person at the shower would give him his own gift. Since it's his family, I figured some of the gifts would be geared towards him, but never saw a gift presented just to the groom.

So it was pretty funny when we walked in and his childhood friend, whose pretty much like family handed him a blue bag just for him. He opened it up and it was a photo of the two of them on his father's boat when they were little. It was really cute and it made Mr. Newport's day.

I've never even thought to get the groom a gift, but I think I might do this in the future. It made Mr. Starfish pretty happy!

Did your groom get any gifts just for him at the bridal shower? Would you give a gift to just the groom?

100 Day Challenge

One of the best thing about bridesmaids is the support. With now less than 100 days to go to the wedding, I need a lot of it, especially in the fitness area. I am not a huge lover of the gym or working out. I actually hate the gym. I went once in college and didn't go back. I tried again after our engagement, but only lasted a few months. I prefer group exercising like hiking with friends, or in highschool getting together with friends for some Tae-Bo with Billy Blanks.

Source

So for someone who hates the gym, and is super busy it's hard to find the motivation to get in shape. Maybe not for other brides, but for me it is. So Bridesmaid E started a fitness challenge awhile back. We each logged our hours and we could see how much everyone was working out. It worked for awhile, but we all stopped submitting our time.

So as the wedding is swiftly approaching Bridesmaid E decided to rev it up. She came up with the 100 Day Challenge. It's a bit more motivating because their is more at stake.

Here are the rules, note there are 5 participants:

There are almost 100 days before Miss Newport's wedding!! So, to rev up our fitness challenge (and finally offer some prizes for the winners), the last 100 days will be a challenge to log 100 hours. If you do 100+ hours of exercise between now and the wedding, you will be a ‘winner’ and, if not, you will be a ‘loser’!

If there are 5 winners, then we can all go out for celebratory drinks, and the one with the most hours gets treated by everyone else.
If there are 4 winners and 1 loser, the loser treats the winners to a round of drinks (maximum $50)
If there are 3 winners and 2 losers, the losers treat the winners to dinner (maximum cost of $50 for each of the losers, so $100 total)
If there are 2 winners and 3 losers, the losers treat for dinner and a round of drinks
If there is only one winner, the winner gets treated to dinner and drinks! Also, the losers all pitch in $5 for the winner to buy a health food cookbook.

Every Monday, I will collect the minutes for the previous week (so, the previous Monday through Sunday). Every day you are late giving me the minutes, you get deducted one hour!! You can send minutes by email, text, facebook, BBM, phone call, whatever is easiest. If you remember to send them in, and want to send a reminder to everyone else, that will be helpful… I will try to send a reminder to everyone on Mondays.

We will have to average 7 hours, or 420 minutes every week to get to 100 hours, so good luck everyone! If anyone wants to plan a hike or some other multi-hour exercising trip, let me know!!
And there it is.... my motivation for the last 100 days!

What's motivating you to get fit for the big day?