TWIRL BRIDE BLOGGER || HOW TO BEAT THE LAST MINUTE JITTERS

TWIRL BRIDE BLOGGER || EMILY RHOADS (ALMOST EMILY HALL!!)

Hello Friends! I know its been a little while since I wrote about my wedding planning and bridal life but that’s because I was wedding planning! It is so crazy how fast our engagement has flown by and how what felt so far away is now only 7 days away. It really just hit me yesterday how soon our wedding is and man oh man am I excited! I know that our wedding day is going to go by so SO fast that I am making it a point to soak up these last few days as a fiancée. 

This whole time I’ve been wondering why everyone gets so stressed when planning their wedding, but in this last month I totally get it. Now we are getting down to the nitty gritty of finalizing everything from the guest count aka tracking down all those people who never slipped that RSVP card back in the mail to figuring out how much beer and wine to buy to scheduling those last minute appointments and finally making sure everyone is going to be where they need to be when they need to be there. It’s a lot of stuff. And because of that a lot of wine has been drank in the process, oops! But at the end of the night next Saturday we will still be married even if some people don’t show up or our grandparents are a little late for pictures or if heaven forbid it rains. Y’all seriously pray that it does not rain next Saturday.

Austin and I have tried to cut out some time for ourselves to relax and enjoy these final days as an engaged couple. We let ourselves enjoy a few quiet days at the lake for Memorial Day. We go for evening walks and try to talk about our plans for after wedding day, like what’s still on our travel bucket list or pick out our favorite houses in the neighborhood. I think we are both a little more excited about being married and building our life together than we are about the actual wedding. 

I had no idea what to expect in this last few weeks so here are some tips for all you brides for handling the craziness that is the month before your wedding!

1. Set those “RSVP by” dates a little earlier than you think you will need, because there is nothing more stressful than trying to contact those sixty people who didn’t RSVP in a few days before the numbers need to be back to all of your vendors.
2. Speaking of RSVP card, if you aren’t giving every guest a plus one, put ‘__ of 1 guest is/isn’t attending’ trust me, I didn’t do that and I wish I had.
3. Enjoy your parties and showers to their fullest. Put the phone down, stop checking your email, guest counts and details can wait a day or two and it wont be the end of the world, I promise!
4. Go to the county clerk’s office as early in the morning as you can and you’ll get in and out of there faster than it took to find a parking space. We got our marriage license yesterday, YAY!!
5. Take some time to relax and get your skin photo ready at the same time. I love put on a facemask and take a few minutes to relax and read or watch a movie while it does its thing.
6. Don’t stress if you didn’t hit your fitness goal or attain your dream wedding body. Your groom thinks you are the most beautiful woman in the world and you are going to rock that dress!
7. Drink lots and lots of water. Your skin will thank you, your body will thank you. That’s just a good life tip. 
8. Talk about anything but the wedding for an hour with your fiancé daily. Talk about dogs, food, movies, sports, or whatever it doesn’t really matter but I promise he will appreciate it! 
9. Make an itinerary for all of the really important people in the wedding such as parents, grandparents and the bridal party so everyone knows where are supposed to be and hopefully it will keep you from answering the same questions over and over again.
10. Last but not least, take a deep breath and remember you and your honey will be married no matter what happens!

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To our sweet Em,

We cannot WAIT to celebrate this much anticipated wedding day next week!! We've seen you as a "bride" so many times over the last 4/5 years but when we see you as a real bride... there won't be a dry eye to be found.

What a joy it's been to witness your relationship with Austin develop and grow over the years. There is so much to celebrate next weekend and celebrate we will!!

Can't wait until the "just married" sign marks the beginning of your new season of life next Saturday! Yay!!

Xoxo, Your Twirl Girls

TWIRL BRIDE BLOGGER || FROM TWIRL GIRL TO TWIRL BRIDE

TWIRL BRIDE BLOGGER || EMILY RHOADS - FROM TWIRL GIRL TO TWIRL BRIDE

Friends! We are so excited about this post from Emily today!! It's such a tricky situation when you have worked in the bridal world before you're a bride-to-be yourself. You either know EXACTLY what you want or you have completely no idea. Today Emily is going to take you all through the process she went through as she finally went from being a Twirl Girl to Twirl Bride!! Enjoy!

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“How on earth did you pick your dress?!”

“I bet you already knew exactly what you wanted since you see dresses all the time.”

These are two sentences I hear almost everyday while I’m chatting with brides during their appointment. Both are somewhat of true, but picking out my gown was one of the hardest and the easiest decision I have had to make. I’ve been around these dresses for years and have tried on SO many for fun and styled shoots that I have lost track. This helped me learn over time what styles looked best on my body type. I guess you could say this gave me a leg up on this wedding dress shopping thing. But the bad thing about seeing so many dresses is that I get to see SO MANY BEAUTIFUL dresses. Every dress at the store may not be exactly what I wanted for my gown but there is detail in every dress that I adore. So how did I narrow down the selection of 175 dresses down to just one?

I decided to approach picking my dress like every other bride with a real appointment surrounded by the people I love and opinions that matter most to me. I scheduled my appointment about eight months before our wedding date to insure that it would come in time for alterations (We are not lying when we tell ya that those babies take four to five months to come in!). I came with my mom, sister (a Meant To Be Bride), sister-in-law (a Twirl Bride), mema, and best friend. I knew their opinions mattered to me the most and if I had too many I would never be able to decide for myself. Ty and Liz were there of course, as well as many of the other gals from Twirl. All in all, there were a lot of eyes on me waiting for me to decide. It was a little overwhelming for this gal who doesn’t love being in the lime light. If you’re like me and don’t love being the center of attention, then I recommend taking a moment for yourself in the fitting room. Make sure you have your opinion figured out about the dress before you show your group; I know how easily I can be swayed by the opinions of the ones I love. I had Ty helping me in the fitting room and I remember telling her which ones I liked, which ones I didn’t see as my dress and the one that I loved, having her on my side when I went out to show my family made me feel more confident that if I couldn’t voice my opinion about the dress clearly to my group that I had someone else there who could.

Now how did I know when I found THE dress? Like I said earlier they are all beautiful dresses, but I knew coming in some of the details I wanted and features of mine I wanted to highlight and which ones didn’t need to be the star of the show that day. I love my shoulders and collar bones (is that weird?) so I wanted to make sure my dress highlighted that so I knew strapless, off-the-shoulder, or thin straps were the types of necklines I wanted to try on. I’m also really tall and my fiancé is really tall, so I wanted my dress to flatter my length rather than weigh me down.  I love lace and simple classic materials so I made sure my selections had at least one of those fabrics. From there I was able to gather a good selection of dresses to try on, I narrowed it down enough to make it manageable but I also left some room to be open minded and try things I wouldn’t necessarily have picked out for myself. I tried on 7, maybe 8, dresses when I put on the one I knew I wanted to get married in. It had those detail elements that I wanted but didn’t match anything perfectly on my Pinterest board. I was surprised by how much I loved it! I had “the moment” when I could see Austin waiting for me at the end of the aisle and I would be wearing that exact dress. Everyone experiences that moment differently, for some it's tears of joy, giddy laughter, screaming and clapping with excitement, or its just a sense of peace that it’s the right one for you.

My beautiful dress is now at the seamstress to be taken in here and there, to have pieces sewn on, and maybe a few buttons moved. That’s right, not even a bridal consultant’s dress fits perfectly right out of the UPS box. But that means I will have a one of a kind dress that will fit no one else but me, it will be one of its kind!

PS- I got to meet the designer of my dress a couple of years ago during a trunk show! Those are the only facts you get for now. ;)

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Y'all, having one of our very own become one of our brides is truly the sweetest!! We can't wait for you all to see Em in her GORGEOUS wedding dress! It's unlike anything she's worn before and it is so perfectly "Em". We love you, Emily!!

Thank you for sharing this fun part of your wedding planning journey with us. Xoxo!

TWIRL BRIDE BLOGGER || HELLO, EMILY!

TWIRL BRIDE BLOGGER || HELLO, EMILY!

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Happy Friday, friends! How much did you love seeing the real weddings of two of our former bride bloggers -- Allison & Mary?! We loved getting to share their magical days with you after getting to walk with them through their wedding planning processes together.

We are thrilled to announce who are our newest Twirl Bride Blogger is & we think you all will be so excited about this one!! It's our very own Twirl Girl, Emily Rhoads!! Eeeeeeeek!! How fun?! We think Em's experience will all of this will be so interesting as she is someone who works in the bridal industry and is now experiencing first hand for herself what she's been celebrating for others for so many years. We love this sweet girl & cannot wait for her to become MRS. HALL in June!! For the next several months Emily is going to be sharing about her wedding planning experiences that will hopefully inspire & encourage you along your own. So without further adieu, let's give a warm Twirl Family welcome to our sweet EMILY!! 

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Well hello there friends! As many of you know or remember, I’m a consultant here at Twirl and I am a Twirl Girl down to my very core. For the last four and half years I have been apart of Twirl in some way. I started as an intern in the Fall of 2013 during my very first semester of college. Why Ty decided to take a fresh nineteen year old on to her team I will never know but I am forever grateful that she did! Well fast-forward four years, and now I am now a college grad and I‘m a BRIDE! What?! It still doesn’t feel real some days when I look down to see that pretty sparkly thing on my left hand. So who is this handsome fella that stole my heart? His name is Austin and I fell in love with him the moment I met him. That love at first sight thing is real folks!

Austin and I met in February 2014 at an event at the Christian Student Fellowship on UK’s campus. I was sitting with one of my sorority sisters and low and behold this tall dark and handsome guy in a red plaid button-down walked over to us. He chatted with my friend for a minute and then turned to me to introduce himself, and y’all I can’t remember if words actually came out of my mouth or if I just stared at him in disbelief. He invited both of us to go to Applebee’s with him and his roommate for 25 cent wings and let me tell you, I have never been more excited about going to Applebee’s in my whole life! After that night, we quickly became close friends in a tightly knit group of people, but I always had the biggest crush on him and all of my friends knew, which means I’m sure he did too. For two years, yes I said two years; I waited for anything to happen between us. And then right at midnight on New Years Eve 2015/2016, all my dreams, hopes, and prayers came true when Austin nervously revealed his feelings for me and I wept because the waiting for that moment was well worth it.

Our love story may not be like everyone else’s just because of how close we were before we were officially dating. I’m pretty sure our first “date” was dinner at Chipotle and going to see the Revenant, we share a mutual love for Leo and burrito bowls. We had met each other’s parents and siblings well before we were in a relationship, which lead to them not being surprised at all once it finally happened. I had actually gone on a lake trip with his family and had movie nights and pool days with his older sister. I think it was pretty obvious to everyone that Austin and I were always something more than just friends even if we didn’t know it at the time.

We have been engaged since September 29th! I can’t believe it’s almost been five months; people weren’t kidding when they said your engagement will fly by. Austin popped the question right in front of the fountains at Triangle Park while strolling through downtown after dinner. My favorite part of that night was when we were by Triangle Park, he stopped and said, “Well this is a good spot.” And I was thinking a “good spot for what?” and in the middle of that thought he whips a ring box out of his back pocket and goes down on one knee. I started crying and then giggling because as a few cars drove past us they were yelling “CONGRATS” and “YOU BETTER SAY YES” out of their windows, which reminded us that we were in the middle of downtown surrounded by strangers. 

We are so excited to be starting our journey as husband and wife on June 9th, and honestly being his wife is the most exciting part of this whole wedding thing! I can’t wait to share my experiences as a bride and newlywed with all of you. 

Until next time friends,

Emily

Photography by Grace Ann Pumpelly