And Nothing Else Matters...

Well today is the day. It's around 6:00 AM and I am lounging on the couch of an awesome suite while my two sweet, beautiful maids of honor catch up on some sleep. It's hard to describe how I am feeling right now. Excited and nervous, yet serenely calm. Oh and a bit tired and groggy after last night's boozefest festivities.

Seven years ago today Mr. Coyote sat me down and told me that he liked liked me. It may not have always been an easy ride, but I can honestly say that there is no one else in the world I'd rather share the driver's seat with. Mr Coyote and I have never had a "song" per say, but as classic rock and metal fans the words to Metallica's Nothing Else Matters always resonated strongly with us. Those lyrics have never rung more clearly than they do on this beautiful June morning and I would just like to share a snippet of them with you:

"Never opened myself this way 
Life is ours, we live it our way 
All these words I don't just say. 

Trust I seek and I find in you 
Every day for us, something new 
Open mind for a different view 
And nothing else matters."

Today Mr. Coyote and I will stand in front of our family and friends and declare our commitment to each other. And nothing else matters. No matter what happens, no matter what kind of chaos we encounter, (and let's be honest... There will be chaos!) I am going to do my very best to embrace it. Because today I am marrying my best friend and nothing else matters.

To the Hive: I can't quite express what these last six months have meant to me. Thank you so much for welcoming me into your community, sharing your stories with me and letting me share my stories with you. Each and every one of you (whether on the blog or on the boards) have been an inspiration to me and I know that our day is going to be amazing because of your wonderful advice and support.

See you on the flip side!

XOXO,

Miss Coyote

Being Responsive

Well ladies (and gents!), I think it's time for a good ol' RSVP breakdown. We surprisingly did not have to chase down too many RSVPs, but we did have some last minute changes. And now with just a few days left til the wedding, I'm calling it. Without further ado... Here's the Coyote RSVP breakdown:

We invited 205 guests and the breakdown looked a little something like this:

Yes you read that right. Almost 80% of our invited guests are either directly related to me or close family friends. Yikes. (I have a really big family you guys.) Once the RSVPs starting rolling in we noticed that we were getting a lot of declines, but we didn't really add up the numbers until I had stalked all of my guests and left threatening messages their answering machine everyone had responded.

So who's coming to the wedding?

This makes our final head count 124 (or 126 if you include Mr. Coyote and me). I realized that we had a high decline rate, but didn't quite realize how high until I looked at this:

Although it was kind of shocking to see a 40% decline rate, Mr. Coyote and I are actually really happy about our final number. After we sent out the invitations we both started to think about how overwhelmed we would be with such a large number of guests. (If we went with the standard 20% decline rate we would have around 165 guests.) To us, 124 seems like a much more manageable number and I think it will allow us to really spend time with all of our guests.

There are two things I learned from this little exercise. This first is that our friends are either really excited for our wedding or just can't say no to a good party. (I'm leaning toward the latter.) 

And the second thing is that you should never expect 20% of your guests to decline. I've witnessed weddings with a 50% decline rate and I've witnessed weddings with a 5% decline rate. Sure, it's fun to guess and play around with how many people *might* show up, but at the end of the day, only you know your guests!

What did your accept/decline rate look like? Did you learn anything from your responses?

Surprise!

Miss Coyote is not one for surprises. In fact, in the months leading up to Christmas and my birthday I am known to follow Mr. Coyote around the apartment chanting, "So what'd ya get me? So what'd ya get me?!" (The man is a saint for putting up with me, seriously.)

This is his "get-this-girl-off-of-me" face.

The thing is I am both incredibly gullible and incredibly oblivious to what's going on around me so it's very easy to catch me off guard and make something like this happen:

That, my friends, is the face of complete and utter mortification. Last week my darling colleagues conspired against me and planned a surprise wedding shower in the office. The biggest offender was Bridesmaid C (yes, I am lucky enough to work with one of my bridesmaids!). In fact, while I wandered (obliviously) into the room BM C caught the whole thing on film:

Yikes. Although I will say that it was worth being completely flustered because I was later bestowed with the world's most epic wedding card:

I am a huge Giants fan (and definitely the biggest fan at my company) so I went a bit crazy when the Giants won the Superbowl (again!!). In fact, I spent most of February parading around the office screaming, "Suck it Brady!" to anyone within earshot. Ahem. No offense to any Patriot fans out there, of course. ;) Our graphic designer was impressed by my, er, enthusiasm and created the single most hilarious card I have ever seen. Every time I look at it I start cracking up and I almost want to find a way to frame it and display it at the reception.

Have you had any pleasant (or even not-so-pleasant!) surprises from friends and family while wedding planning?

Craft Wars

Our venue required that we drop everything off to them (favors, menus, programs, etc) the week before the wedding, which turned out to be both a blessing and a curse.

The blessing was everything needed to be out of my hands on Sunday, which means there will be no last minute DIYs five hours before the wedding. The curse was, well, everything needed to be out of my hands on Sunday. And I wasn't ready.

So Saturday morning Mr. Coyote and I packed the car up with multiple unfinished projects and made the three hour drive upstate to my parents' house. Momma Coyote and I finished packaging up the favors:

While Mr. Coyote got intimate with our paper cutter and sliced up 150 of these bad boys:

I also put together a guestbook sign to be placed with our photo album guestbook:

Oh and (because I am completely insane) I managed to squeak out one last project before starting on the dreaded seating chart. Remember my obsession with chair signs? Well I knew that due to the curved chairs and chair covers our venue provides it would be difficult to hang something from the back of my chair so a chair sign wasn't going to cut it. I thought about mimicking Miss Wizard's frames, but unfortunately I put this project on the back burner for so long that I didn't quite have time to tackle wooden letters. Instead I stole some inspiration from her project and went for a simplified version:

If I'd had more time I would have loved to jazz it up with some pretty patterned paper, but I think I did a pretty good job considering the time constraints. We're having a small floral arrangement on our table as well so hopefully it will bring some color to the table because right now the signs are looking a little sad and pathetic all by their lonesome. Either way, I got my cute little "Mr." and "Mrs." signs for our sweetheart table, so I'm a happy camper.

Let me tell ya, I was ready for a nap after all the driving and last minute crafting, but we still had a seating chart to tackle! That's where the real fun began...

What wedding  projects are you working on right now?

It's the Final Countdown

Well it's that time folks.

Screenshot via The Weather Channel

My wedding day has finally appeared on the 10-day forecast. I'm feeling sort of apathetic about the weather at this point because as the daughter of a meteorology enthusiast (a nice way of saying my father is a crazy person who tracks and chases snowstorms in his free time) I know that it is impossible to predict the weather this far in advance.

The other reason is because, in the grand scheme of things, the weather on our wedding day doesn't really matter. I'm not having an outdoor ceremony or reception and because the ceremony is taking place at Franklin Plaza no one will need to travel to a different reception venue. Now this was no accident my friends. Mother Nature has never been kind to me and I refuse to give her the satisfaction of toying with my emotions on one of the biggest days of my life.

So why am I still stalking the 10-day forecast? Well, I put together a list of times where I will be outside and it looks a little something like this:

• Walking across the street from the hotel to the venue before the ceremony begins.
• Taking a few portraits outside after the ceremony.
• Walking across the street from the venue to the hotel after the reception.

I really won't be outside very much, but I am starting to wonder if I should invest in an adorable umbrella a la Mrs. Turkey:

Image via Mrs. Turkey on Weddingbee

Okay, the reality is there is a very slim chance that it will rain during my 30 second walks between the hotel and the venue and honestly even if it does, I'm pretty sure my storm chaser of a father has a few golf umbrellas to spare so it's totally unnecessary. But come on you guys.... It's SO cute!

Any other remaining June brides stalking the weather forecast? How are you preparing for the weather?

Face Paint

I am not having a hair or makeup trial.

Whew. Glad I got that off my chest.

I recently booked a hair and makeup artist, but due to the long distance and scheduling conflicts I was unable to schedule a trial before the wedding day. I'm actually okay with this, especially because it felt very strange to spend money getting all dolled up with nowhere to go.

Plus, I'm not looking for anything intricate or complicated when it comes to hair and makeup. I know I shared some wedding day hair inspiration photos with you already and I've decided that I would like to keep my hair down. It has reached lengths of epic proportions:

It just keeps growing.. And growing.. And growing.. But my hair does hold a curl pretty well so I would love to just have some nice, loose curls for the day:

Photo by: GPT Photography on Bridal Musings via Lover.ly

My makeup has been a bit more difficult. I don't wear makeup... Ever. In fact, on the rare occasion (three to four times a year) that I do put makeup on, Mr. Coyote always asks me what's wrong with my face, to which I fondly reply, "What's wrong with YOUR face?!" 

The truth is, I have a fear of makeup. I don't know how to apply it and every time I put the teeniest bit of mascara on I'm convinced I look like Mimi:

Image via Villain Wiki / Anyone remember this show? Anyone??

Really, I just want to look like myself. I tried searching for inspiration photos, but kept coming up empty-handed. Instead all I've managed to find is a single photo of myself where I actually liked how my face looked and hopefully my makeup artist will be able to recreate something similar for the wedding. In the meantime I've been browsing her online gallery and plan to snag a few photos on her site that I like.

Is anybody here surprised that I chose this photo?!

Are you foregoing a hair and/or makeup trial? Did you have difficulty finding inspiration?

On (Not) Being Cohesive

Eclectic – Adjective: Deriving ideas, style or taste from a broad and diverse range of sources.

Although we are having a fairly traditional wedding I have still been sneaking in some personal touches here and there. And now that a large number of those touches are coming together I’m starting to notice that they don’t always jive. For instance, we like wine, but we also like coffee. Our cake toppers are Charlie Brown and Lucy, but our toasting glasses are dragons. And I haven't written a post about it yet (whoops!), but my bouquet will have both bees and some cute coyote charms I found.

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to themed weddings – especially since Miss Potion gave us her awesome breakdown of how she and Mr. Potion chose theirs – and I started to wonder if I was a bad bride for not having one. When people ask me what my wedding vision is (one of my most hated wedding questions by the way), I usually respond with, “Our vision is to get through the day with the least amount of things going wrong as possible.”

And while I’m being tongue-in-cheek with my answer, it’s the truth. But sometimes I am paralyzed with fear that our wedding day is going to look like a big ol’ smorgasbord of “Things The Coyotes Think Are Cool” because we chose not to have cohesive theme like “birds” or “carnival” or even just some key words like “beach” or “pumpkins” to describe our wedding and bring everything together. But then I think, is that what we really wanted to bring to our wedding? Seashells on our invitations and our tables and our cake?

The truth is Mr. Coyote and I are kind of eclectic. He likes biking and video games and wine. I like hiking and reading and coffee. And our life reflects both our mutual and diverse interests. Why shouldn’t our wedding reflect the same aspects of our relationship? And so, our theme will be a compilation of our favorite things on one of our favorite days. We basically want to say to our guests: “Welcome to the Coyote wedding. We are so happy you are here with us today, now please enjoy a few of our favorite things.” 

Are there any other theme-less brides out there? Are you worried about how it’s all going to tie together?

The Perfect Blend

Ah yes, my obnoxious hunt for favors. Aren't you tired of hearing about this? Well, I promise this is my last post about them! After Mr. Coyote and I decided on coffee favors I hunted high and low for cute little packaged favors that wouldn't break the bank. I was just about to give up hope when I turned to Etsy. Oh, Etsy… I cannot sing your praises enough. It is here that I found David and Julie of Idea Chic. They sell a myriad of party favors and stationary, but what really caught my eye was their "Love is Brewing" coffee and tea favors. 

Image via Idea Chic on Etsy

These guys are so freakin' nice it hurts. When I was waffling back and forth, they sent me a sample. When I couldn't properly describe the ribbon color they told me that I could send them a swatch and they would match it for me. And when I wasn't sure about the wording they let me customize it to my liking. They even told me I could order the favors preassembled or assemble them myself to save on costs. They were in constant communication with me and never once made me doubt choosing them to help create our wedding favors.

I chose to order the favors unassembled because I am a cheapskate, but they provided me with step-by-step instructions and answered my ten billion questions almost immediately. To say that I was impressed is an understatement. As soon as the box arrived I got to packaging. First I shoveled the coffee into the tins:

My apartment still smells like I just walked into a Starbucks. Yummmmm.

Then I used glue dots to secure the ribbon and tag and viola! The cutest stinkin' coffee favor I have ever seen!

But the story doesn't end here! Remember the Italian confetti? Well thankfully Momma Coyote handled this part of the favors and stuffed small silver organza bags with five pieces of confetti. Why five pieces? Well, I'm glad you asked! Each piece of candy signifies a wish for the bride and groom: health, wealth, happiness, fertility and longevity. 

I may or may not have sampled some of these while assembling, y'know to make sure no one died of botulism (gotta take one for the team sometimes). Apologies to any Coyote guests who receive a bag with four, or possibly only three, candies. Just remember, I'm doing this for YOUR safety. 

While I finished assembling the coffee tins I lured two of my minions bridesmaids over with promises of pizza and wine to help finish the rest of the favor "package". The coffee tin and confetti were placed into a clear bag and tied with curling ribbon:

Oh and I slipped our photo share cards in the back of the bag:

What's that? I didn't tell you how I solved my photo share card dilemma? I got myself a Vistaprint groupon and reordered the damn things for like $2 that's how.

Hey, look at that! That top card is actually legible now!

And then I bought this shirt because I'm awesome:

The Future Mrs. Coyote (except y'know, with my real soon-to-be last name)

Thank you Vistaprint! Any other brides out there have a love affair with Etsy and/or Vistaprint?

Dancing with my Daddy

Last Christmas my father surprised my mother with a gift certificate to a local dance studio for some private dance lessons. Now I know none of you here know Poppa Coyote, but just believe me when I say that this is HUGE! The man does not dance. Oh sure, we have some friends and family members who just love to drag him on the dance floor, but after a few moments of awkwardly flailing around he skulks back to his seat to find his beer. Poppa Coyote is always a good sport, but when it comes to dancing he tolerates it, at best.

As his daughter's wedding approached however, Poppa Coyote realized that he would be expected to do a little bit more than hop out onto the dance floor for his obligatory 30-second shuffle and so he sought out a professional dance instructor. Surprisingly I think my father is actually enjoying the lessons because he recently called me up and asked if I would be interested in taking a lesson with him in preparation for our father-daughter dance. I have to say I was a bit shocked, but I wasn't about to say no, so last Saturday we headed over to the studio for our first (and only!) dance lesson. Our instructor was fantastic and taught us a nice, slow hesitated waltz that goes perfectly with our father-daughter song, I Loved Her First. I will admit we were both a bit stiff and awkward at the beginning, but by the end of the lesson we started to relax and were able to chat a bit in between counting steps. We even threw in a few twirls!

Poppa Coyote took our lesson a little bit more seriously than I did and even brought the video camera so we could review it and practice from home (Remember what I said about him always having the video camera out?! I wasn't kidding!). While my dad counted steps and sternly looked into the distance I followed his lead and then promptly cracked up every time one of us missed a step.

Oh and I wore my wedding shoes which was smart. I figured spinning around in them for an hour and a half was a good way to break them in and boy was I right! Even though my feet were a bit tired after all that steppin' my feet survived free of blisters or cuts so I'm considering it a success. (Although I'm definitely glad I have my back up flippy floppies just in case.)

I loved it so much that I came home and asked Mr. Coyote if he would be interested in sneaking in a lesson the week before our wedding. To my surprise he jumped at the opportunity! Seriously you woulda thought I was proposing to him or something -- the guy was so pumped he barely let me finish my sentence. And so, I will be returning to the dance studio in a few weeks with Mr. Coyote in tow.

Are you taking dance lessons for your wedding? 

Favors Revisited

A few weeks ago I talked a bit about choosing our wedding favors and the expectations that needed to be met. I was determined to have a non-useless favor, but I also wanted it to pass Momma Coyote's approval. When I stumbled upon these Martha Stewart favors I was pretty sure we found a winner:

Image via Martha Stewart Weddings

Momma Coyote approved, Mr. Coyote approved and there were high fives all around. I started researching how to make them myself because purchasing prepackaged bottles was quite pricey. Then Momma Coyote sent me this link and I honed in specifically on this sentence:

"The threat of botulism contaminating your homemade oils is very real and should not be ignored."

Yikes. The point is to thank our guests, not poison them. The only way I felt comfortable giving these out to our guests was if they were prepackaged, but a quick search proved that purchasing almost 200 mini bottles of prepackaged olive oil would be way out of our budget so we quickly shelved the idea and went back to the drawing board. As I continued my hunt for favors I kept finding myself drawn to this inspiration photo:

Photo by: Katrina Louise on Wedding Chicks via Lover.ly

Even though the packaging is a bit casual for our wedding the idea of using coffee as a wedding favor stuck with me. It's no secret that Mr. Coyote and I are huge coffee addicts. Our first real date after he told me he liked me was at a local coffee shop and whenever we run errands on the weekend we always make it a point to end our day by swinging by a nearby Starbucks. It just seemed like the perfect choice. 

But how to execute it?! The burlap bags above are definitely adorable, but just not our style. These are nice and the silver packaging highlights our accent color, but Momma Coyote said it reminded her too much of those single serve packets you get in a hotel. Definitely not personal. And I have to agree.

Image via FavorFavor

I am crazy about these Starbucks favors, but at $10 a pop it was just too much (but you can bet your butt if we had a smaller guest list I'd be all over these!). 

Image via Favors by Lisa

It took a little more searching and brainstorming until we finally found a solution so stay tuned because the favor drama is far from over. ;-)

Did anybody else spend way too much time trying to decide on wedding favors?

What Really Grinds My Gears

You know what really grinds my gears? 

Image via Family Guy Wikia

Facebook. Well, social media in general, but mostly Facebook. Sure, sure, sure, I have a Facebook account... And a Twitter account... And a blog on a popular wedding website, but I enjoy having the ability to choose what is and is not posted about me on such sites. What really grinds my gears is the fact that other people can throw up a photo of me and suddenly the whole world knows exactly where I am and what I'm doing. 

Unless you received an invitation in the mail or read this blog the Coyote wedding might as well not exist. Mr. Coyote and I are very private people and we keep most of the details about our personal lives (including our wedding) off the interwebs. Oh sure I tell the hive every stinking little wedding planning detail here, but it's semi-anonymous and I can hide behind this cute little coyote avatar. When those who are not invited ask questions about my wedding the most they will get out of me is that it's "this summer". My Facebook updates are minimal and usually consist of photos of my cat:

I actually really enjoy using social media sites (as long as I am in control of what is being posted). There is just something very disconcerting about not having control over content of myself that is published on the net. Especially when it comes to such intimate and private moments as a wedding ceremony or a first dance. Now I don't have a problem with people posting pictures of our wedding on Facebook or even tagging us in them, but I do have a problem with photos of Mr. Coyote and I floating around Facebook just mere minutes after we are pronounced husband and wife. I can't put my finger on exactly why it bothers me, but it just seems so... intrusive to me. We carefully selected our guest list and now strangers all over the web (and "mutual friends" who were not invited for one reason or another) are peering into our wedding almost in real-time and without our consent.

I understand that we are in an age when technology and social media are just the way of the world (I myself am guilty of rolling out of bed in the morning and scrolling through twitter updates) but is nothing sacred anymore?

This is mostly a gripe and I have come to terms with the fact that there is no solution (you know, aside from banning cell phones and hiring a TSA agent to give everyone pat downs before their enter our venue). Sure, we could ask our guests to refrain from posting photos of us until after the wedding, but I have yet to find a tactful way to make such a request. And it's sad to say, but I know that certain friends and family members would not respect our wishes for privacy even if we did make some sort of announcement.

Instead, I'm trying to look on the bright side. Professional photos often takes months to come in so hopefully Mr. Coyote and I will be able to scroll through some guest photos while we're on the way to airport. I guess that would be cool. (I'm really trying to be okay with this you guys, I swear.)

Does anyone else think about how social media will affect the privacy and intimacy of their wedding? Or do I just need a reality check? ;-)

Get with the Program!

Remember how I said I wanted simple programs? I lied. I kind of got a little program happy and instead of a small, simple sheet like this:

Photo by: The McCartneys Photography on Wedding Chicks via Lover.ly

I ended up with a big ol' booklet program. I made a list of all the information I wanted to include in the program and realized that in order to keep it to one sheet of paper I was going to have to shorten it A LOT. I didn't really want to take anything out so I just ran with it... 

Okay, so what went into the program?

First there's the cover that welcomes our guests to our wedding ceremony. You'll notice that my monogram made yet another appearance here. I fought with the cover for a bit and ended up with a few different designs:

Some covers that didn't make the cut.

Until I finally settled on something I really loved:

The first page is just a little quote I found.

Sidenote: I searched high and low for a few appropriate quotes to include in our program that weren't too long or too mushy-gushy (aka not us). This was one of the few that made me giggle every time I read it.

"Love is when you break a cookie in half, but you let the other person have the bigger piece."

When you open the booklet you've got the full meat of the program.

The left hand side lists the order of events and right hand side introduces the wedding party (sorry for all of the blanking out, gotta keep my VIPs private!).

On the back page I included a little note about our wine box ceremony. Our officiant will explain it in greater detail during the ceremony, but it's a unique tradition - especially in my family where the unity candle is the norm - and we thought it would be nice to share some information about it. We also included a small thank you to our guests for sharing this day with us and our parents for their support along the way.

Finally, I managed to find one last quote that didn't make us want to vomit and slapped it on the back. The program itself is just two 8.5x11 pieces of paper folded in half and bound with some white thread:

I already had all the paper in my possession as well as the white thread to bind the pages together, so all this really cost me was some printer ink and just a wee bit of my sanity when it came to the design and assembly. ;) And there you have it!  My simple-yet-not-so-simple programs.

Are you designing your own wedding programs? What kind of information are you including?

Wedding Program Inspiration

Getting real creative with my blog posts titles, eh? ;-)

I love wedding programs. I know that sounds like such a weird thing to say, but it's true. I love being able to follow along during the ceremony and learn about who is involved in the wedding. Although I will admit that they are definitely a superfluous expense (like welcome bags or bathroom baskets), I absolutely want them for our wedding ceremony. The problem is there are way too many great options out there and I am easily overwhelmed by all the inspiration. Seriously brides!! Stop making such cute paper products because you are making me want them ALL!

Mrs. Elephant's Passport programs are seriously way impressive:

 Image via Mrs. Elephant on Weddingbee

These cootie catcher programs are hands down the most adorable thing I've seen in a long time:

Image via Daisy Gal on the Weddingbee DIY boards

Mrs. Mink impressed me with her gorgeous fan programs:

Image via Mrs. Mink on Weddingbee

These fabric covered programs are so unique and absolutely beautiful:

 Image via Ruby Lane Moments on Etsy

But at the end of the day we spent a boatload on our invitations  and I decided I wanted something simpler (but still informative!) for our wedding programs. I came up with a few different ideas and we finally have the final version nailed down. Stay tuned!

Are you having wedding programs? Where did you find your inspiration?