Wrapping Up 2013

Tomorrow is the first day of 2014. Isn't that crazy?! I know every year seems to fly by but 2013 really felt like a whirlwind. Maybe it's because so much has happened this past year. Planing a wedding, getting married, going on a honeymoon, moving in to a new house and working a part-time job, while owning a small business, can really be a lot for a girl-- In a positive way of course!

Nostalgia, Mini Road Trips & Aaron Carter

Why hello, Monday. Although I appreciate your bright sunlight and chilly fall weather, you've come way to soon. After a weekend full of nostalgia and mini road trips, I wasn't quite ready to wake up.

A Quarter of a Century...

Twenty-five.

Why does that seem like such a substantial age to be turning? Maybe because I can finally rent a car. Maybe because it's the age that I always visualized my life at when I was younger. Or maybe, just maybe, it's because 25 is a quarter of a century.

Moving, A Full Time Job

Moving might as well be a full time job. With all of the insurance quotes, organizing, paint colors, packing, furniture buying and delivery scheduling; who has time for anything else?! Luckily, NoLo always seems to provide us with a late-summer break from weddings so closing on our new house is happening at the perfect time.

Original Wedding: Jovana & Matt at The Top of the Hay

Jovana & Matt's relationship started, as many chick flicks do, in the middle of a restaurant. The royal restaurant to be exact!

Original Wedding: Marissa & Victor at Glen Echo Park

After meeting through Marissa's blog and traveling to multiple countries together, Victor and Marissa were married on May 26th in a beautiful outdoor ceremony.

If you've never heard of Glen Echo Park, you should do yourself a favor and check it out! It's a hidden gem smack dab in the middle of Maryland, Virginia and D.C. What used to be a premier amusement park in the early 1900s is now home to numerous art studios, classes and dance programs. The best part-- The original, now-restored, carousel still remains!

The old bumper car pavilion also remains and served as the wedding venue that Marissa and Victor used for their reception! The entire park still has that old-time charm and it is such a unique venue for any event. With their paper lanterns, kazoo favors and balloon ceremony decorations, it was the perfect setting for Marissa and Victor to tie the knot! Guests had so much fun getting pictures taken at the photo booth and riding the carousel during cocktail hour. Everyone even picked up their kazoos to carry out a family tradition at the end of the night, playing along to songs with the Mother of the Bride and Best Man.

Marissa & Victor-- It was a pleasure to coordinate your wedding day. We wish you both the very best in your new life together!

Venue: Glen Echo Park

Coordinator: NoLo Weddings & Events

Caterer: Main Events

Photo Booth: Onomonomedia

An Amazing D.C. View - The Hay Adams

This post has one reason and one reason only-- To share with you the AMAZING view from the wedding venue at The Hay Adams in Washington, D.C. Over the weekend, I had the pleasure of coordinating a wedding at the Top of the Hay and let me tell you, this is one of the best views in D.C. If you are looking for a venue with panoramic views, you'll want to check them out!

Enjoy-- And please excuse the poor-quality iPhone photo. There will be plenty more photos when I post the wedding in the coming weeks, but this will do for now (I just couldn't wait!).

Happy Monday :)

Original Wedding: Stacey & Eric

One thing I absolutely love about weddings is detail. Whether the details be fun, creative, romantic, artsy, it doesn't matter. I love them all. In my opinion it's really the small things that pull together wedding decor and carry through a theme.

Stacey & Eric were one of those couples that did a wonderful job incorporating their theme into both the ceremony and reception. So, needless to say, I was SO excited when their wedding came on May 18th. They are such a fun couple and their "great catch" theme was perfect for them! The ceremony was absolutely stunning and the reception was both elegant and entertaining with a candy bar, dessert buffet, freshly baked cookies and a photo booth. The best part about the reception was that Eric had surprised Stacey with the photo booth and candy bar ice sculpture, when their budget allowed it at the last minute. The look on her face when she found out about the photo booth was priceless!

Stacey & Eric-- Thank you so much for allowing NoLo to be a part of your big day. We wish you nothing but the best in your new lives together!

Venue: Martin's Valley Mansion

Coordinator: NoLo Weddings & Events

Catering: Martin's Valley Mansion

Bug Spray Alternative

Raise your hand if you hate being covered in bug bites. Now raise your other hand if you hate the smell of traditional bug spray. Ditto!

Now that we are headed into warmer weather, couples and their guests are bound to be battling with bugs at outdoor weddings. That's the bad news. The good news is that Victoria's Secret's "Amber Romance" scent works as a bug repellent!

There seems to be mixed reviews (if you Google) on how well the scent really works but having just gotten married myself, I'm a fan! Josh and I had an outdoor ceremony, followed by a rustic, barn reception and I didn't have one bug bite when everything was said and done. I also included one of the body sprays in each of my bridesmaids' gift bags and not a single one of them complained of bugs either. So although I can't say it's 100% guaranteed to work for everyone, it definitely worked for us!

I know one thing is for sure, I was much happier to smell like "Amber Romance" on my wedding day than bug spray!

I also brought it along on our honeymoon, to the very humid Dominican Republic, and didn't have any problems with bugs!

Rainbow Birthday Cake

Ok! So I'm not always the best at creative food-related projects. I tried those piñata cookies from Pinterest once-- Didn't quite work out. It might have had something to do with the fact that I tried to turn a cookie made with a sheep cookie-cutter into a donkey. But that's besides the point.

This little creative endeavor I am SO proud of! Back in March it was Eryn's (You know Eryn, she's the fabulous designer that I've mentioned before! Feel free to check her stuff out here!) birthday and I wanted to make her something fabulous to celebrate. I saw a picture of a crazy colorful birthday cake and about fainted-- It was perfect!

Now I'm not going to lie, this takes a lot of time and a lot of patience for someone who is not a skilled cake decorator (me), but it was so worth it! Here's my step-by-step instructions if you want to make your own :)

You'll need:

• 2 boxes of cake mix
• 4 containers of icing (3 have to be vanilla)
• Food coloring
• 6 sandwich-sized plastic bags or icing bags
• Star decorating tip (any size, depends on how large you wants the stars)

1. Bake 2 (2-layer) cakes, any cakes, per the instructions. You'll want to have 4 layers total when you are finished. Of course you can use less to make a smaller cake but 4 (8 inch) layers will give you the size above. I chose to mix it up and used both chocolate and funfetti!
   
   
   
   
   
2. After the cakes are done cooling, level them. You can do this using a knife (which never works out well for me) or this fun leveling tool. This will make them sit flat when you stack them and you will have cake pieces to snack on!
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
3. Stack the 4 layers, putting icing in between each as you go. Do your best to make sure the cake edges are even with each other. If you have any small holes from the cake sticking to the pan, don't worry-- Just patch them up with icing!
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
4. Use the vanilla icing and food coloring to mix whichever colors you want for the stars. You will need about 1/2 of a standard sized icing container for each color. I used the neon food coloring that you can find in the baking isle to get the 6 bright colors!
   
   
   
   
   
5. When finished mixing, put your icing into the icing bags with the star tip. You will probably need to refrigerate the bags for about 20 minutes to stiffen the icing a little.
   
   
6. Start icing with the first 2 colors! I chose to do 2 colors at a time, to prevent having to rotate between all 6 bags at once (and I only had 2 star tips of the same size). I simply started with one star of each color next to one another and left an adequate space to fill in the other 4 colors between each of the sets.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
7. Repeat with all colors.
   
   
   
   
   
8. After using all of the colors, go back and fill in any spaces with a random color. You'll especially need to do this on top. I way underestimated how many of each color to put on the top of the cake the first time around. Filling in spaces will also make the cake color look random, as opposed to a pattern.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
9. Cut & enjoy!

Happy Friday :)