Amanda’s Antics – The Tattooed Bride Journal

Remember the Facebook competition where I got you wonderful readers to choose the next tattooed bride blogger? Well your voting did not go amiss! Today I get to introduce you (properly) to Amanda – Marry Me Ink’s bride-to-be.

I’m excited that Amanda will be writing her monthly wedding related antics for you all to journey through with her! Therefore – I’m going to hand over to the beautiful Amanda straight away!

Hello everyone! My name is Amanda Reyna and from now until October 18^th I will be wowing you with my dream wedding ideas! Hopefully I’ll be executing on some of those ideas too ;). I’m 24 years old and come from a rather large family. My parents have been split up since I was about 3 so I do not remember them being together. I have one sister with my mom and 3 brothers with my dad. I love my family more than anything and in my spare time I like hanging out with them and helping run our non-profit called Zac’s Friendship House. ZFH is something my dad and stepmom started after my little brother Zac passed away last year. ZFH keeps me pretty busy but I love it. My most recent tattoo is one just for Zac. Love you buddy. Wish you were here to share this experience with our family but I know you are with us in spirit every day.

I have been out in the “real world” for about a year now. I graduated from Florida Gulf Coast University in December of 2012 with a degree in Communications, concentrating in public relations. I also have minors in advertising and marketing. Shortly after graduating I started working for an IT research and advisory company in Fort Myers, FL and just absolutely love it. I am a very competitive and goal-oriented individual who is driven by results. I really have found a great place that challenges me and lets me be myself all while have fun. That’s me at work. At home on the other hand…I can sort of be all over the place lol. I’m extremely organized with most things, but others like my closet, directions, laundry, remembering name…eh, not so much. I’m hoping wedding planning is one of the areas I can stay organized with. If not, oh well it will still be a fun ride. Glad you have all decided to join me on my journey!

My fiancé Jared and I met while working together at Best Buy back in 2008. We were both in relationships at the time and nothing happened right away. We became really good friends for a couple years and then one day everything just changed. Long story short in 2010 our friendship turned into more and on Christmas Eve of 2013 he proposed!

Shortly after I got engaged I knew what I had to do. Go straight to my Pinterest dream wedding board of course! I’m so glad I was a “typical girl” and pinned all of my favorite things before they were even relevant. I really do not know what brides did before that magical website. Here is my board for a better idea of my dream wedding. One of the ideas I pinned that I knew I had to execute early was how to ask our bridal party to join. I love DIY, crafts and making unique gifts. I knew I wanted to make my bridesmaids something special. Jared on the other hand I knew would really just want a funny way to ask his guys. Keeping those both in mind, I think we found something that worked.

For my girls I wanted to be able to include as much details of the big day as I had. So I saw the idea of creating a bridesmaids box filled with all of my hearts desires and knew it was what I was going to do. I found this example to be the most beneficial.

Of course these were just ideas and I had to somehow make it my own. I started by purchasing unfinished cigar boxes from Joann’s. I LOVE that store. Nothing but craft supplies, discounts and coupons aplenty.

Included in the box I created was:

4 cards that showed info about dresses, other maids, their role and details of wedding
Inspiration pictures of my color palette and dress ideas
Fabric samples of the color palette
Fireball whiskey shot- and evidence it was taken
Samples of flowers to be used
Glitter everywhere because who doesn’t love glitter?!

Below is how I decided to decorate the outside. The boxes come in a natural wood finish so whatever you decide to do should work out fine.

On to asking the guys…This seemed to be a little more of a challenge. Jared didn’t want anything sappy or lame and some of the ideas I was telling him apparently were. I remembered pinning something I thought he would like and figured it was worth a shot.

Now unless you were in college recently this picture may make no sense to you. So before you think we wanted to give the guys terrible Smirnoff I would like to explain to you what the term “icing” means. Icing is defined as making someone get down on one knee and consume an entire ice, at anytime, anywhere. The goal of the game is the embarrassment and pain of chugging a terrible drink on one knee.

The Simple Rules of Gameplay:

Rule 1: A player hides an “ice” for another person to come across. If that unlucky person sees or feels the bottle/can they must get down on one knee and consume it unless they can produce an Ice Block (see below.)

Rule 2: You cannot refuse an ice. If you do not get down on one knee and chug the entire ice you will be excommunicated from the game.

Rule 3: If excommunicated from the game to return you must be re-initiated to the game by accepting the ruling of the last two people you have iced. If you have not Iced at least two people you can never return.

This game brings back some crazy memories of college and Jared was completely on board with doing this to his friends/family. Being the instigator I am knew we had to record it! With a little of adjustment I think we came up with a hilarious way to ask his guys! Since we got engaged around Christmas we told them we had a small gift for them. Inside the gift was the hidden drink 😉