The first of Han’s (our photographer) photos are up on flickr here!  Enjoy, and keep a look out for the rest.

Now is the time to book your hotel room for the trip south! We’ve reserved rooms at the Hampton Inn, the Bucaneer Inn, and the Inlet Inn.  All three of these hotels will give you special rates through August, but if you’re planning on staying somewhere else, you should book your rooms soon as the coast can get pretty busy that time of year.

If you’re planning on flying to the area, now is also the time to book your flights.  For more information on the best ways to travel to Beaufort, visit the section of our site called “The Wedding Weekend.”  There you’ll find information on hotels, inns, b&bs, airports, and more.  

As always, if you have any questions or need advice on the best way to travel to the area, don’t hesitate to email us at erosemond@gmail.com!

Things are really starting to fall into place with our wedding planning!

We’ve met with the caterer, Beaufort Grocery. They’ll be serving up authentic southern barbeque with some traditional and modern sides (think mango cole slaw and candied pecans!).

Our florist, Petal Pushers, is hard at work crafting a sunflower and hydrangea centric look, and our photographer, Hanni D will be arriving fresh from NOLA with his new wide-angle lens!

As for our ever elegant attire, tuxes have been picked (prepare yourself for paisley!), shoes have been selected, and we’ve even scheduled haircuts for a few weeks before!

Things are really coming together, and as the wedding jumps closer, we’re getting more and more excited. We can’t wait to celebrate with everyone!

Photos, that is.

This past weekend Dan & I traveled to Durham for the bridal shower.  In true Ya-Ya fashion, there were no boys allowed and plenty of sangria.  It was an incredible, amazing, heartwarming shower and I could not have asked for anything more.  Lauren, Mary, Gen, and Megan did a inspiring job, and Aunt Diane was a gracious and wonderful host.  I just hope that when they get married I can come up with games as clever!

As photos from the day are starting to filter out (I didn’t take any, so I’m stealing from others), I’m putting them in a set on our flickr account.  You can check it out here.  If you have pictures, let me know and I’ll (ask Dan to) open the set up so you can upload them directly!

After 5 hours on my feet and over 300 runs of the Vandercook Letterpress machine, I am proud to say that our wedding invitations are printed!

After a bit of a printing snafoo, I ended up printing our invitations myself.  I rented space at Pyramid Atlantic Art Center in Silver Spring, Maryland and was assisted by their letterpress assistant Moira.  It’d been a few years since I printed anything so she helped refreshed my memory, and I owe her a huge thank you because if it weren’t for her help and their facilities y’all might be receiving invitations from Kinko’s.

The invitations (which should be arriving in mailboxes near you mid-July) are two parts.  There is the physical invitation itself, and the reply card, which is double sided.  The reply card willl also be perforated, so you can simply tear it out of the packet and stick it back in the mail as a postcard.  After you suggest a song for the reception, of course.

Above is a photo of the Vandercook we used to print everything yesterday.  Taken quickly from my phone before we started running prints.  It was a full day, but so worth it because the invitations look beautiful.  I’m so glad that we persisted after the bottom fell out on our original plan.  I was inches away from succumbing to my massive panic attack, but Dan kept me logical and we came up with a plan that was better- and left me with tons of DIY cred!  Now we have our work cut out for us perforating, trimming, hole punching, and bow-tying.

-Elena

So by now y’all should have received our invitations in the mail!

You will have noticed that we formatted the RSVP card so that you can be involved in the reception!  Dan and I are going to be organizing the music ourselves for the reception, so we thought we’d give you the opportunity to put in your two cents.  On the back of the RSVP card there is a spot to suggest a song, so that you can make sure we know how much you want to macarena!

Our RSVP cards are also postcards, so all you have to do is tear them out and stick in the mail!  We can’t wait to hear what you want to break it down to at the wedding!

Congratulations!  By now you’ve rsvp’ed, and perhaps even suggested your favorite song (if you have more suggestions, email elena@dan-and-elena.com)!

The next step (if you haven’t already) is to make your traveling plans.  Book a hotel room, a flight, rent a car, get your oil changed for the drive, you know, prepare.  Part of your preparation should be letting us welcome you.  We’ll be dropping off welcome packets to the rooms of our guests with a schedule, some information about activities in Carteret County, and a handy map.  We’d love to drop one off for you!

If you’re staying at one of the three locations we’ve blocked rooms- the Inlet Inn, the Hampton Inn, and the Bucaneer Inn, we’ll know you’re there.  However, if you’re staying someplace else, be sure to email the location to elena@dan-and-elena.com so that we can make sure you get all the information you need.  We had a teensy snafu with the email thus far, so if you’ve already emailed us your location, humor us and send it again?

See you next month!

Dan and I will be well on our way to many anniversaries this September 26th, but Beauforth North Carolina has 300 years on us!  The weekend of the 25th, Beaufort will be celebrating it’s 300th birthday!

While we’ll be taking up part of your weekend, we hope that you will also take advantage of some of the fun celebratory things happening in Beaufort that weekend.  See their schedule at www.beaufortbythesea300.org

Okay, so we’re not hoping for rain.  We’re not crazy.  But we’re prepared for it.  In the event that next Saturday is a rainy day, never fear, we have a plan.  We’ll slap some sides on the tent and wear our rainboots.

As I’m sure y’all know, weather is erratic, especially on the coast.  So when you’re packing next week, don’t forget your rain slickers, umbrellas, and rain boots.  We hope you won’t need them, but let’s all be prepared, just in case.

And you know what they say, rain on your wedding day is good luck!

Hey Friends & Family! So we’ve created a Flickr group where you can upload and share your photos from our wedding!

If you’re already on Flickr, just upload your photos to your photostream, visit this page and add them to the group!

If you’re not on Flickr, it’s free, so sign up and follow the instructions above.

We can’t wait to see your pictures, thank you so much for making our big day a blast! Love, Elena & Dan

p.s., if anyone has a video of Reid & Ryan dancing, send us an email (elena@dan-and-elena.com), we’d love to have it!