Lets be honest....we're all just in this for the food.

    I for one have been to far too many weddings where you eat your typical chicken & rice or steak and potatoes....now don't get me wrong that food is good but I knew I wanted something more fun and delicious at my wedding. Originally Todd & I wanted to hire different food trucks that people could pick from because for one, truck food is typically unusual & so bomb, and we just like to have our options. We are totally that couple that goes to a restaurant and orders the 2 entrees we like most on the menu just to split them go halfsies on it. Little did we know that food trucks are SO expensive! Their prices are crazy and they don't even include place settings! We were a little disheartened and weren't sure which route to go. So I decided to suck it up and call a caterer at Ambassador Catering that I had used a couple times in the past for a few weddings I had done. She has great food and included linens, china, serving staff, etc...which is all things we definitely needed to cover considering our wedding is at our friends house and not your typical venue that usually provides all of that for you, so i knew it would be a win either way. Sarah and I had set a date to meet in march, however, that just happened to be the day I ended up in the hospital from my pulmonary embolisms...but she was super understanding and even came to the hospital to meet with me there! I told her my original vision of the food trucks and asked if she had different menu options so together we all came up with a sweet little menu. We are going to have three different food stations: 

The first is a "build-your-own" pasta station - this will included different noodles, sauces, and toppings to create your own pasta served with bread rolls and salad. And what kind of pasta bar would be complete without Todd's absolute favorite dish...Mac N Cheese. 

Secondly we are having a street taco station - this will have carne asada and chicken tacos with toppings and salsa served with beans and rice to accompany it. 

And lastly, a french dip sandwich station - this will have hand carved sandwiches to dip in a delicious au jus sauce complete with my favorite...a mashed potato bar! You can load up your mashed potatoes with all your favorite toppings! 

I can't tell you how pleased I am with our caterer! She is so well priced & so wonderful to work with! I can't wait to see how all this food turns out! I am going to end up in a food coma by the end of our wedding. You all better come hungry! 

There's no turning back now!

     I personally believe that a wedding invite (or any invite for that matter) can tell you a lot about what the event is going to be like. With that in mind I knew I wanted ours to be crafty, fun, and unusual! I also wanted something that was special to us. If you can remember our Save The Dates we had made them to look like concert tickets. So when I saw a picture of these record wedding invites I knew I had to have them! They fit my vision perfectly!! Only problem was I had no idea how I was going to pull it off... With much research I found a couple on Etsy who designs the template for these record invites, the only problem was they had removed the listing and were not creating them anymore. But I decided I was going to private message them and beg them to do it for me anyways....& they did! I gave them the picture we wanted to use and the colors and they took it from there! I found on ebay a listing for 100 old 45 records for dirt cheap so I ordered those. I still needed about 80 more so I was a little worried I wasn't going to be able to find them or would have to pay a lot of money for them. BUT as I was cleaning out Todd's garage I found the rest of the 45's I needed!...who's really surprised?? (; ...everything was falling into place. As I have told you before our good friend Rafi, who is one of the funniest people you will ever meet, owns his own printing shop. So once the invites were designed I took them to him and he printed the templates for us, now all we had to do was cut them out and assemble them! 

Now even for a crafter like me, That was easier said than done...Luckily I had a bunch of beautiful ladies who offered to help me! The first day my mom, my aunt Deb, my soon-to-be sister in law Debbie, and my cousin Hailey all helped me cut out every single one of the invites. And let me tell you, cutting out those circles was not an easy task at all! I could not be more thankful for those girls that day because I don't think there was enough time in the world for me to finish those by myself! 

A few days later my pretty friends Maria and Emma came over with my mom to help me fold and glue them all together. We had to glue the covers to make them into sleeves & also glue the new Todd & Amanda record label over the original ones. What would've taken me weeks to finish these ladies helped me finish in just 2 days! I could not be more thankful for them all! 

We were super nervous to take them to the post office to find out how much it was going to cost us to send them but it ended up being reasonable. When we got to the post office they started showing us stamps that had butterflies on them and clowns that were pretty awful, but then the sales associate pulled out some different music artist ones! We ended up with Janis Joplin, Johnny Cash, & Jimi Hendrix! 
It could not have been a better match for our invites. It took me forever to address those babies but I think all in all it was well worth it. They came out pretty rad don't you think?? 

Be on the look out for them!

The alcohol....because no good story ever started with a salad.

Since our wedding is being held at our friends house we had to figure out the drink situation on our own....Of course we are going to have your standard wine and beer selections but I also wanted to have a couple signature drinks there as well to mix it up a bit. 

I played with a bunch of different kinds of drinks but in the end we chose two that we thought were different yet would still appeal to a lot of people. The first signature cocktail is a Vodka Raspberry Lemonade & the second drink is a Blood Orange Margarita! Here is what we put in them: 

Raspberry Vodka Lemonade: 

Raspberry Vodka

Lemonade

Chambord

Lemon Sour 

& a splash of Soda

With a sugar rim                                                                                                

Blood Orange Margarita:

100% Agave Tequila 

Passion Fruit 

Pomegranate 

Blood Orange 

Lime 

With a tellicherry rim 

They are both delicious!! Todd keeps coming up with these crazy names for the drinks but they are all too funny we can't decide what we want to call them yet...I guess you'll have to wait for the wedding to see what we chose to name them! 

crafting heaven

This past week our sweet friend Kathy opened up her home to us so we could have a sign painting day for the wedding! My mom, Aunt Deb, Cindy and I all drove down to newport & met up with our awesome little artist friends Kathy & Kelly. They are both so talented, so I was quite excited to work with them. 

One of my bridesmaids, Cindy, had a whole bunch of wood in her garage left over from her hubby's job so she offered that up for us to use! It worked out perfect! Everything came together so nice and it was cheap//fun//and easy to make! Even Kathy's son Bennet was in town from New York (he works as an artist there) & decided he would join in on the fun as well!

  The day turned out to be lovely and we had so much fun creating the signs for the wedding. They turned out so cute! Heres a sneak peek at some of them.... 

I can't wait to use them at the wedding!  

Also a few days later my wonderful fiancé got me my first CRICUT machine! Talk about crafting heaven!!! Trust me when I say I will be putting that baby to good use this next month! More blog posts to follow on that! 

Save the date!

This past week we sent out our Save The Dates!! If you know Todd & I you know that we go to more concerts than a band. Music is something that we absolutely love and is a huge part of our relationship. Its something we will always enjoy doing together. So we decided to incorporate that into our wedding a bit. Our photographer Christa is also a super talented graphic designer. I told her that we wanted to make our save the dates into concert tickets. I sent her a few ideas and this is what she came up with! I could not be more stoked on them!

 Our friends Rafi & Kat own a printing company in Covina and they did all our printing for us. They did such a wonderful job! We are so thankful for them!! You can check out their website here.

Todd & I also put our website up and we are extremely happy with it! It has all the info on our wedding, tells you about our wedding party, and more! Go check it out when you have the chance!

www.toddandmandy.com

Its all becoming so real! Only 172 days left! 

Mother's Day Brunch

It has been a little while since I last posted! I'm definitely not the same since I had the episode with my PE's but I am recovering. I am easily exhausted and have been spending most my energy cleaning Todd's garage. I will have to make a post about that soon (; ....but I am very happy to say that it is almost done! So now I can focus what little energy I have on the wedding/blogging again but first I wanted to share our mother's day weekend with you!

This past weekend my family & I put together a little mothers day brunch for my mom & aunt. It turned out so wonderful! 

I spent the day before mothers day in palm springs so I made a trip to the flower mart out there so I could make arrangements to serve as gifts and as centerpieces. 

The flower mart didn't have a huge selection like I'm used to but I thought they came out pretty nice considering. I used calla lilies, roses, hydrangeas, and daises. Even though we are on a budget I still wanted it to feel nice as if we had went out so I made flower place cards for everyone.   

This is how the table setting came out! It was so cute!

 We all pitched in and made a different food item for a brunch buffet. We had a waffle station, french toast casserole, bacon, fruit, potatoes but I think one of the favorites was these breakfast bread bowls. Everyone took a bread bowl and put in whatever fillings they wanted (spinach, tomatoes, bacon, cheese, etc..). Then we topped them with an egg and baked them. They were delicious! 

For their gift we all decided to pitch in and bought a family photo session with my wedding photographer Christa on June 1st. We are so excited and can't wait to see how they all come out! 

It was a wonderful brunch and I think my mom and aunt were very happy with it. Hope you all enjoyed spoiling your moms on mothers day as well! 

weekend getaway

This past week was a pretty rough one for me...Something terrible happened in EVERY single one of my favorite shows!! (which the number of shows that I watch is more than i'd like to admit)...The Good Wife killed off my love Will Gardener...on New Girl my favorite couple Nick & Jess broke up... the list really goes on...so to say the least I was emotionally drained and needed a break so we decided to take a mini vacation to Santa Barbara for the weekend! 

With all joking aside, as trying as my television week was, Todd & I really went to SB to take our engagement pictures! We decided to have them done at La Casa de Maria in Montecito. It is a place that is so dear to my heart. My family and I have attended a family retreat there every single year for almost my entire life! There isn't a summer I can remember that doesn't include talent shows, hand motions, and family affirmations, even though there are some I'd like to forget ;) It is a place of community, peace, love & faith that has molded me into the person I am today & has given my family a bond that we may never have had otherwise. Todd started attending family retreat a few years ago & fell in love with it as well. This place is a symbol of everything I want my new little family to be so what better place to have our pictures taken? Not to mention the grounds are absolutely stunning, there is no prettier place in the world to me. 
Our wonderful photographer Christa Suppe was so sweet to make the trip out with her husband for the day to take our pictures! As awkward as we felt the whole time we were taking pictures, we were nervous about how they would turn out...well Christa must really know what she is doing cause they turned out great! We love them! She is so amazing! Here are some of our favorites from the shoot this weekend: 

If you want to check out more of her work you can view here website at jae-photo.com. We cannot wait for her to capture our wedding day!