I never knew time could fly so fast, until we started planning our DIY wedding last year. We had a ton of wedding projects to complete and a home projects too since we wanted to have a cocktail reception in our backyard (read more about them here). My weeknights & weekends were consumed with wedding excel spreadsheets, dress fittings, food tasting, planting flowers and weeding our backyard. One of my best friends during the wedding planning was a mini book called The Bride's Mini 411, Checklist, Calenders & Contacts which fit perfectly in my purse when I didn't want to carry my Wedding Binder around. The book was a gift from my maid of honor.

Before I knew the morning of the Wedding had arrived, and it was a busy yet fun one! My mom, sister and my maid of Honor arrived bright and early to my house to finish up one last important detail flowers! Our wedding flowers were a DIY project, that morning we made: 4 bouquets, 3 boutonnieres, 8 centerpieces. I love how my bouquet turned out a mix of white hydrangeas and roses. My bridesmaids had lilac hydrangeas and roses, our flower girl had a pretty bouquet of baby's breath.

In addition to making our wedding invitations, I also made our wedding programs. Each program was wrapped in chocolate ribbon band.

After finishing up the last minute details at my house we all headed to the Hyatt Hotel to get ready, which is almost directly across the street from the ceremony Rose Garden. I stressed the morning of the wedding but felt better once I was at the hotel & getting my wedding pre-pampering. I went to a bunch of bridal shops and had some maybes, but found THE dress at Alfred Angelo. I knew it was the one when my girlfriends cried. Instead of a bright white dress, I went with a cream that flattered my skin tone and went with a champagne ribbon for a shade of contrast. I signed up for their emails and got the dress on sale.

Instead of simple white wedding shoes, I wanted a punch of color and shoes that I would have fun wearing again on a swanky dinner date with Mr. CLH. I found the shoes at Nordstroms, the store didn't have me size in stock but found them at store in Chicago they only pair left in my size in all of the Nordstroms. Love that Nordstroms shipped them to me for free.

Here's a picture of my maid of Honor and I walking across the street to the Old Rose Garden Capitol Park

The Internet was one of my best friends during wedding planning, I found a simple drop veil made with a pencil edge. I bought my veil from obridal.com they make custom veils that are really affordable and pretty. The whole day felt surreal, but began to feel 'real' when my dad and I rounded the corner to begin walking down the aisle.

Tomorrow concludes our mini wedding recap vows and cocktail reception details. If you missed part one of Wedding Recap please click here. I hope you've our wedding so far. What's your favorite wedding memory of your big day, before saying your vows?

Hi everyone, yesterday my husband and I celebrated our one year anniversary. It has easily got to be one of the best years ever, so easy & fun. So far I'm liking married life! I thought it would be fun to do a little mini recap of our wedding and a little bit more about me, him and our son. Before I get into all the fun of planning Wedding, I wanted to share our story. I met my now husband when we were teenagers 16 to be exact. We fell in love at a young age and had our son at a young age when we 20. My husband Hasani, you know him better as Mr. CLH was just month shy of his 20th birthday. The stress of being a young couple with a baby was very hard on our relationship and we actually ended our relationship just before Tabari was one years old.

Anyone who's had a child (children) knows how hard it can be to raise a child while maintaining a relationship is a lot of work especially when you young! We co-parented our son for seven long years and lived our own lives, until one day in February 2007 we had a conversation about past hurts and misunderstanding and US. We decided to give our relationship another chance! For the next year and half we grew closer and bonded as a family, moved with each other, went on vacations and started looking for a home to buy and of course I fell deeply in love with him, more so then I ever could have imagined when we were young.

We got engaged the day after Thanksgiving 2008, and quickly set a wedding date 9/19/09. Yes, we only gave our selves 10 months to plan our big day) Now back to all things planning & prepping

We decided to have a small intimate wedding of 50 with our close family and friends. And of course are wedding was a DIY affair on a budget, just like our fixing up our 1950's rancher has been! We decided to have a garden wedding ceremony and have a cocktail reception at our home and keep the whole day special and low key & fun! Along with wedding DIY projects we had plenty of home DIY projects to tackle around the house to make our home reception ready. We painted our house, installed a sprinkler system and rolled sod out added a ton of curb appeal all before our big day! Here's a engagement picture of Hasani & I right in front ceremony spot at Old Rose Garden Capitol Park.

We wanted our Save the Dates to be fun and reflect our personalty ( and make people smile) My sister Shannon acted as a photographer, and we took our pictures at a local school on the playground (my nephews school!)

Another paper project I couldn't wait to tackle for our big day was our wedding invitations. Since I love hydrangeas and those are my wedding flowers, I wanted to include them in our invitations. I contacted an Etsy graphic designer had her custom make me a graphic Hydrangea flowers and a sweet little butterfly. I was able to turn this graphic and turn into invitations, Reception Cards, Rsvp Cards and our Thank You cards. Which save a lot of money!

Here the invitations, I used Publisher to create the wedding invitation suite and printed them at home on our HP Printer. Instead of sending the invitations off with regular old stamps, I used ___ stamps from our local Post Office. Its little touches like these that make me smile. I also lined envelopes (including the RSVP) with lavender paper. Since we were doing a small quantity of invitations, I purchased the envelopes from Paper Source, where I also bought envelope liners - they I still use. I'll share our wedding invitations in Part Three :)

You all know how much I love Craigslist, right? Well not only is it a good place to find a steal on furniture its also where I found our wedding Photographer! Yep, CL has a whole section of business ads, I looked under the 'Services' section under 'Creative' and searched for a photographer. I talked with a few photographers saw their websites and still wasn't sure, until I came across DMG Photography and we met with Darwin Garza and instantly clicked. I knew right away he & his wife would be able to capture our special day in the mix we wanted, portrait and photojournalist style. If your in the Northern California area ( SF Bay Area though Sacramento ) and looking for amazing team of photographers to capture your day or event please visit thier wedsite http://www.dmgphoto.com/

Here a few pictures from our engagment session with Darwin taken around the City we call home.