Wedding Wednesday: Odds & Ends

I know it's far in advance for all of this, but I told you HERE about how crazy our summer is going to be, so I wanted to get as many of the little wedding odds and ends out of the way early so that I don't have to think or worry about them. So.....

I knew I wanted to do a unity candle during our ceremony because I love what it represents and I think it's beautiful. What I knew I didn't want was a huge hideous candle that I just stuff in a drawer and never look at again. So, I wanted to find a candle or candle alternative so that we have something we can display or use forever. When I stumbled upon this unity candle from www.beforetheidos.com I knew it was the one!

I love that it's a candle so we can still go through the action of actually lighting a unity candle, but it's different and it's beautiful. The thing I love most about it is I'll use it again. I plan on using it as a vase after the wedding for all the flowers I am sure my husband will buy me. :) I was super excited to see that it's even prettier in real life. I'm pretty pumped about it, if you can't tell.


I am SO excited about my garter. I didn't even really want a garter because I thought it was just kind of a waste of money, I mean what the heck am I going to do with this thing after the wedding? But then I came across this website: www.sewuniquegarters.com and found this University of Minnesota garter!!!!

If you remember from past posts, I am HUGE Gopher football fan and J actually proposed on the 50 yard-line of TCF Bank Stadium.

I took it as a sign that I needed a garter! This site has a TON of different garters and they're really reasonable! I got my garter and a toss garter for only $32.00!


Champagne flutes is something I actually had a hard time with. I wanted something unique but not ugly (so many of those wedding toasting flutes are just gaudy). So, I searched high and low both in stores and online and finally came across these:

Obviously I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the black stem! They are really beautiful in person, this picture does not do it a justice. Instead of doing both of our names I did "Mrs. F____" on one and "Mr. F____" on the other! I love them!


In all of wedding planning the thing I think I care the absolute least about is the cake serving set. J and I aren't big dessert people and really don't ever have cakes. Of course, once we have kids we'll have birthday cakes but it seemed stupid to spend a fortune on a cake serving set we will maybe use once or twice a year. So, I looked for something inexpensive, simple and classic. Once again I turned to www.beforetheidos.com and found this great cake serving set. I had the server engraved with Kristin & Jason. November 5, 2011." I really like it and more importantly I'm glad it's done with.

I had been eying this cake topper since I started working at Mary Kay's Bridal and finally bit the bullet and bought it. It's perfect....it's black and white, it's simple, it's elegant, it's cute and I love it.

Finally, our guest book! I knew I didn't want the traditional guest book, I know for a fact I will never look through a book with nothing but signatures. I thought of a couple "outside of the box" ideas and just didn't really love anything. THEN, once I saw my engagement pictures I knew what I wanted to do. While I would love to print and frame every single engagement picture, it's just not possible (could you imagine if I have 175 framed pictures of me and Jason in our tiny little townhouse?) I decided that a photo album/guest book was the perfect option for us. I used blurb.com to customize my own guest book! It was pretty awesome! Plus, the paper quality is much higher than Shutterfly.com (sorry shutterfly, I still love you). Here's the cover and one of the pages:

It feels great to check these little things off the list! Just a few more things I won't have to worry about come crunch time!