We are getting CLOSE people!!

Another month has zoomed on by, and everything feels really real. Maybe because we actually invited everyone… no backing out now!

This month was pretty emotionally exhausting. Planning a Covid wedding means ensuring safety for our guests, which means requiring vaccinations for everyone. This hasn’t been the smoothest experience. Most of our guests are on the pro-vaccine side and totally understand, but it hasn’t been that way for everyone, which has caused a lot of tears and a lot of stress.

On the happier side of things, we bought our wedding rings this month, which was super exciting! We also had our final engagement shoot with our wedding photographer (Miss @summer_rrae).

We felt a ton of love this month, as well as a lot of heartache. Planning a wedding is exhausting. It’s incredibly hard on both John and myself. It also comes with soooo much incredible love. The love I feel for John truly deepens every month, and I cannot wait until I’m standing in front of him, saying my vows.

June.

This month I didn’t stick to any sort of plan or schedule. At this point, I’m getting done whatever I can possibly think of!

• Buy/ Pick Up Wedding Rings
• Engagement Shoot in SLC
• Design Signage
• Misc

Wedding Rings

It took me a long time to figure out what type of band I wanted to pair with the stunning Emerald Cut ring John bought me in Paris nearly 2 years ago. When we got to Palm Springs, John took me to several jewelry shops to look at different ring options. I tried on some vintage diamonds, some new, and finally we found Ozell Jewelers in Palm Desert.

This father/son duo had a ton of knowledge about what ring would best suit my diamond. They offered to design a custom band that would fit my ring perfectly, and I couldn’t resist. I said goodbye to my ring for a couple weeks, and walked out a lot lighter (sans ring and lots of $$$).

John also tried on a couple rings, which he had been resistant to do (perhaps because it would only take .2 seconds to decide on his forever ring). He picked a beautiful gold band, and they ordered that for him as well.

This past weekend, we went to pick them up, and WOW. I am ecstatic. They designed the perfect band to go with my ring, and now I can’t seem to take it off! John is also in love with his, and I gotta say, I LOVE seeing him with a ring on!

We’re wearing our rings for the remainder of our trip in Palm Springs, and then will safely store them away until the wedding (although it’s going to be hard to take them off!).

Final Engagement Shoot

Ok, yes, we have had 5 engagement shoots. But isn’t every photoshoot you have during your engagement an engagement shoot?

Let’s walk through them:

#1: The day we got engaged. We had a photographer in Milos, Greece and just happened to get engaged that day (go John!).

#2: Our official ‘Save the Date’ shoot in Yosemite. Here I learned how much I LOVE shooting photos with John! Photos by Jamie Vang.

#3: We won a free shoot in Big Sur, CA! We took the dogs with us to this one and had a blast. Photos by Kevin Benoit.

#4: We had a $500 credit with a photographer, Zina Dichoso, down in LA, so had a blast shooting in Santa Monica with her!

#5: Our shoot with Summer.

We wanted to shoot with our wedding photographer prior to the wedding, and an engagement shoot was included in our price, so we thought why not? We flew out to Salt Lake City where she’s based, and had the best time shooting with her. Summer is exceptional in every way- she made us feel soooo comfortable and good about ourselves. She was a ton of fun to be around, so the whole shoot was a blast. And the photos? My god. The photos. They are so, so good.

I love how wonderfully unique each set of photos is. I will cherish these for a lifetime (and HOW good are our wedding photos going to be?!)

Signage

Who knew that designing our signage would be so time consuming? Not I.

I feel extremely lucky to have my Uncle Will helping out with our signs! Will is a Graphic Designer and has been extremely helpful in getting everything together. I spent a solid 3 hours writing everything that will go onto our signs, and finding design inspo. John and I are also going to build our own sign stand from PVC pipes and spray paint- I’m excited to have a little DIY project before the wedding!

This is my main inspo for our signs:

Once everyone RSVPs, we’ll create our seating chart and finalize all signage to send off to Kinkos!

Miscellaneous

Gathering RSVP’s has been a struggle. I’ve truly never felt more like a Bridezilla than at this moment (it took almost a month to get our first RSVP from John’s side, so I was obviously panicked for a month).

I heard that people would wait until the last moment to RSVP, but I had no idea how impactful this would be for me. This has been the least enjoyable part of wedding planning thus far. At this point, we’re still waiting for almost 100 RSVP’s, but as they slowly come in, I feel better and better. (PS- If you’re reading this and haven’t RSVPed, please visit our wedding website and do so!).

In other news, I’ve been planning more for the Pool Party and I’m soooo excited about it! Our pool party rehearsal dinner event is open to out of towners and family, and it’s going to be such a great way to get to chat with our guests before the craziness of the wedding day. I ordered a bunch of pool floaties as well as some lawn games for that, so we are READY! At least one of the days is fully planned, right?!

I also spent a ton of time on Shutterfly this month. I ordered custom thank you cards to send to our fabulous guests, as well as a special gift for my hubby, and special gifts for all of our guests (i.e. our favors!!). I’m so excited to get home and see them all!

Overall, I am feeling very tired and very excited. I want to keep things as real as possible on here, documenting what it’s actually like to plan a wedding during Covid. And TBH, it’s been extremely difficult. It’s really hard managing guests, bridesmaids, and vaccinations. It’s hard collecting RSVPs when guests don’t know if they’ll be able to travel by September. It’s been hard managing my emotions. It’s been a straight up roller coaster, and this month was definitely the hardest month so far.

However, I am ridiculously excited as well. I can’t wait to see all of our family and friends again! I can’t wait to celebrate the intense love that John and I have for each other. I can’t wait to party with all of our favorite people. And I’m most excited to come out of this with a husband!

Until next month my loves <3

Stay tuned, and we sure to watch my Instagram to see various wedding updates during the month!

Xoxo,

Hannah