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?