Maura

Quote: Originally Posted by TammyB Maura, I really like the second one. thanks tammy! i thought it really captured the spirit of their shoot. they were so playful & loving the whole time and barely even cared we were there snapping away haha - jaymie has such a great laugh, i was really thrilled to capture it!

For all you voyeurs here are Jaime's teasers from me! Enjoy!

For all you voyeurs here are Jaime's teasers from me! Enjoy!

Rounding out the bunch, here are my teaser photos for Jaymie & Ales! These guys really are so in love - and they were such a pleasure to work with because they are so playful! Enjoy!

Oops! Forgot to post these here for all of you to see! Hope you guys like them.

Quote: Originally Posted by jaymielee OMG!!!!! I JUST NOW noticed these on here! (I need to look around this forum more often!!) I didn't even know you posted any girl!! hahaha..... They are AWESOME!!!! You did a GREAT JOB Tammy!!!! I can't wait to see some more from you girls! Ales and I had a blast with all 3 of you.... I can't wait to see the cranberry pink highlights in my hair! At least all fingernails were in tact for this shoot! haha! ;-) jaymie, i am happy to report that the cranberry juice came out of my jeans and my sock. consider yourselves lucky haha. and yes, im going to have to agree with the other ladies here... if i dont see you posting more often (especially a photo of your dress ASAP) i may have to blackmail you with some of your photos, which I am currently editing... happy birthday girl

Hi gals, count me in if there are enough ladies interested. I had so much fun shooting the last group, I'd totally do it again!

Quote: Originally Posted by nibsmom Oh, Abbie good point! Crikey, in my excitement I could have given it away! LOL! I totally had to forbid him from accessing the forum...so he wouldn't find anything! He wanted to look at some pictures on here once I think. He's pretty good about it though - he doesn't want to ruin his surprise! Hi Nina! You don't need to worry about saving them to your desktop... each of us is going to email you your teaser pics in a decent resolution so there is no chance of slip ups of him seeing anything he isn't supposed to I haven't gotten to editing your engagement session yet because I am still editing the budoir photos. But hopefully I should have your teasers (and everyone's!) to you all this weekend for both sessions. I will obviously send them in two separate emails so there is no chance of mixing them up or seeing them in the same email. The budoir photos look amazing so far, I am so excited to show you girls the proofs when they're done!

Quote: Originally Posted by zethers LOL!! Two more great reviews. Thank you ladies for responding. I went ahead and booked DJ Ricardo, extra savings in money will go to Photograpy!! Thanks again!! you did realize my review was for mijares and NOT for ricardo, right? because you said two more great reviews, but kerry and i were talking about two different people...

Quote: Originally Posted by stelladiver Hey Jess & Maura, Can you guys please let me know how much Arturo quoted you? And Bride 1212, thanks for the info on Adan! sorry i dont have that info anymore, i deleted it long ago when i decided not to have a live guitarist. anyway, jessalyn got married in 2007 and doesnt visit here much anymore, so her quote probably wouldnt be accurate anymore either.

We also chose between DJ Ricardo & DJ Mijares, but ended up going with DJ Mijares because he was less expensive and we knew we were going to ask him to stay later than we booked him depending on how late our after party went. I can honestly 110% recommend DJ Mijares (his real name is Adan Mijares). He is very professional, was there super early to set up. He met with both me & my husband before our wedding day and was very attentive. We were totally comfortable with him in both English & Spanish. My husband had some playlists for our cocktail hour, dinner & reception, and DJ Mijares did a great job supplementing in between or stretching it out when my husband didn't provide enough music selections. He was very sensitive to our "do not play" list - he did not play a single one, even though some of our guests requested it. We really truly loved him - and all our guests were dancing all night long. He did a really awesome job. We originally booked him I think for 5 hours, but he ended up staying until almost 3 am to DJ at our after party. He was totally cool & flexible about staying as late as we wanted. Also, he was a great emcee - the flow was very natural. We didn't discuss in advance when we'd do the special dances or the cake cutting, but he did a great job communicating with the Westin staff about when the cake would arrive and such, so there were absolutely no glitches. He also played the music during my ceremony - and it went off perfectly. Just the right volume during parts when we had music in the ceremony, the mics were perfect too, not too loud and not too quiet. Honestly I could not have asked for a better DJ! He sometimes is slightly slow returning emails, but he is super-friendly and very competent in person. You will not be disappointed if you choose him!

if you get in a situation where prices are only available in pesos (which shouldnt happen, but in case you have trouble communicating that you want to know prices in USD) it's generally safe to divide the number of pesos by 10. that will roughly give you an idea of how much you are spending in USD. right now there are actually about 13 pesos to 1 USD.

your idea that you're proposing to have a secret ceremony in the morning and then the regular big hoopla with all the guests in the evening is exactly what my husband & i did, and it worked out perfectly. we only invited our parents and a few close relatives to the secret ceremony at church. none of our guests were any the wiser! (plus we had a legal ceremony in the US too, so i actually got 3 weddings hahaha)

Quote: Originally Posted by ~*petals*~ I def. agree with Maura. But it's still crazy to hear the details coming out on this! the only things that i think are crazy are 1) how big his balls really are to be saying the things he was quoted as saying, and 2) that he was stupid enough to have those convos in his office & over phone lines when he knew he was under federal investigation for months & months i was listening to a chicago talk radio show earlier today and busted out laughing when they said on november 4th, guv was already scheming with advisers how to make a buck off of obama being elected. he really is a major idiot. all of the other statewide elected office-holders have called for him to resign or "step aside" today, which really mean the same thing, its just semantics. if he doesnt resign, there are already state reps & senators who plan to begin impeachment proceedings.

Quote: Originally Posted by Yari Wowzer, so crazy. So this is the second IL governor in a row to get arrested. blago is one of MANY IL govs to get indicted. its no surprise - his administration has been corrupt since day 1. the governor just previous to him is currently serving time in fed prison for corruption also. before them, there were also other illinois govs who have been indicted or convicted & spent time in prison. the best coverage on this will be from the chicago tribune, the local paper, which has been elbow deep in investigating him for quite some time. the only reason this guy won his reelection last time was because the republican who ran against him was the crazy former state treasurer who was a woman nobody liked. again, cannot say im surprised at all that he was arrested - i think everyone in chicago will agree we all knew it was going to happen, it was just a matter of when. feel free to ask me questions since i am local & have experience in the past covering this as a journalist.

Quote: Originally Posted by Abbie because i will celebrate ANYTHING, 26 is the last year of your mid-20's so you can celebrate being in your mid-20's instead of your late 20's heehee omg dont remind me! my husband reminded me over the weekend that i am no longer his young wife because anything over 25 is "getting old!" LOL

thanks girls!!!!!! no special plans today - just superbusy at work, i have to grade final exams for the college class i teach, & hopefully some relaxing tonight & watching house, which is one of my fave shows! i've gotten tons of phone calls at work already today & my facebook page has been assaulted by all my bdw friends wishing my a happy bday i'm sure some of my "real" friends are wondering who all of you are LOL. i had like 15 messages from you girls before i even got to work at 9 this morning! we celebrated my bday over this past weekend - went out for a really fancy dinner so just keeping today low key. 26 isnt that big of a deal anyway thanks again for all your bday wishes!!!!! xoxo love you all!

Quote: Originally Posted by Jenn3878 I ordered and received a stamp from Papersource that says GRACIAS to use for wedding stuff! Here's the link to their site: gracias - Paper Source i have this stamp and its awesome! i made our thank you cards with it. i embossed them. just FYI cheri, its "muchas gracias" not muchos

morgan, one of the free sites i like is ShabbyPrincess :: Free Scrapbooking Kits, Digital Scrapbooking, Computer Scrapbooking, Digi scrapbooking, Kits, Elements i also really like www.designerdigitals.com, but you have to pay for most of those.

Hey girls, I am starting to digital scrapbook a few things for gifts and am looking for a deep solid red paper. I figured somebody around here does digital scrapbooking and could lead me to some good places to get background papers for free or really cheaply. Often I find that I will like one paper out of a download pack of like 6-8 papers, and it costs $8.99, which I'm not willing to pay each and everytime I find one paper I like. Where do you like to get your digital scrapbooking downloads from? Does anybody have a red or deep red paper they'd be willing to share with me? TIA!

i did my TTD without my DH - there is no way in hell my DH would have ever gone for doing it with me, and if i somehow would've managed to con him into it, he would've been so unhappy the entire time and wouldnt have been very cooperative. unlike my DH, i love having my photo taken & am very willing to cooperate with a photographer. my dad used to be a professional photographer when i was growing up, so i am quite accustomed to being a photographer's guinea pig. i have so many wonderful photos of me growing up thanks to being my dad's little test model. doing my TTD alone was such a wonderful & pleasant experience. i really had fun with it and have some really beautiful bridal portraits to show for it. unfortunately i am still working on putting together a slideshow for you girls, but i have been really busy with work & havent had much time to dedicate to it. but here are a couple that i have uploaded into my photobucket account so you can see that you dont need a groom for beautiful TTD photos. i used a local photographer about 4 weeks after our wedding in cabo.

how cute helen!!

Happy Birthday Carly!!! have a fantastic day!

Quote: Originally Posted by jrodsgirl I actually just went to one of these hosted by my FSIL and FMIL. There were 15 ladies total. We had to bring a dozen cookies for each person and one to share for the night. I had to make 16 dozen (1 to share, 1 for me, and the other 14 were for everyone else). Everyone seemed to have a lot of fun. Each kind of cookie was tracked by FSIL and FMIL so that there were no duplicates. Hope that helps! this is how i do it. except if there are over 12 people coming, i ask that they bring enough for each person to taste test 2 cookies from the share batch. so sometimes that means bringing 3 doz for sharing. also, dont forget to have everybody bring printouts of their recipes! if you tell everybody to make their recipe the same size (i usually ask people to do half of an 8.5x11 piece of computer paper), you can have a hole puncher & some ribbon to string them all into a little booklet, and the hostess provides a little booklet cover that has their name & the holiday cookie exchange date. make sure you tell each participant to also put their name on their own recipe cards so people know where they came from, as well as label what the cookies are for each little sack you give away to other guests. the way i do that is i go buy holiday cellophane bags from target or a party store & then just close them up with ribbon & make return address size labels on the computer that have my name & the kind of cookie. you should track what each guest plans to make so there are no dulipcates, and yes we also have the rule about no choc chip cookies or store-bought items. now that my closest gfs are so far flung, we do an elfster style cookie exchange where you only get one person you have to send cookies to, but you send 3-4 different kinds. i've been wanting to host a cookie exchange for my friends here, but i've just been too busy lately with work to organize & send out invitations, so maybe next year. have fun!!!

you should probably start calling if you want to find out if people are coming - not sending back a reply card on time does not always mean they are not coming. we sent out just over 300 invitations and only about 20% of them RSVPd without us having to call them first to ask if they were coming. tons of people who didnt send back reply cards still came to our wedding, so thank goodness my MIL called them all beforehand when they didnt send back a card.