a message in a bottle.

now that all of my future bridesmaids have received their “message in a bottle,”  i can share with you how i asked my best friends to be my beloved b-maids!  since all of my bffs live in three different states on the mainland — and i live on an island in the pacific ocean — i knew i wasn’t going to be able to ask them in person.  so i found it very fitting to ask them via a message in a bottle seeing as i’m across the sea.  (nevermind the fact that i did see two of them in person a few weeks ago on my sponatenous trip to LA, but by that time, i had already thought of this master plan of mine and really wanted to ask each of my friends the same way!).  i printed out a little poem i made up on brown paper lunch sacks, tied them with some twine (from olive manna), filled the tiny bottles (from third shift) with sand, made each girl a special card telling them why i love them so dang much, and shipped ’em off.  and thankfully, they all said yes!  i had a lot of fun making them and am so excited to have my amazing friends stand next to me on our special day.

one year.

today marks jayAdore’s ONE YEAR anniversary!  what the heck?  i honestly can’t believe it has been one whole year since i started blogging!  a part of me feels like so much has happened in the past year and the other part of me feels like i started this thing a month ago.  bizarre.

anyways, lately i have been thinking A LOT (and i mean a lot) about my future and my passions in life.  i have such HUGE dreams that i want to pursue and i have this notebook with all of my goals i want to attain by the time i am 30.  this blog is a big part of it, too.  i kind of feel like i’m in a “blog mid-life crisis” right now because i feel like it needs a little bit more direction.  i am so random when it comes to when and what i post and i would love to be more consistent and blog about cooler things than copying celebrity’s outfits (although that is kinda fun too!).   i also want to do more design features because it’s something i really LOVE and the main reason i started this blog!  i’m scheming up ideas and i’m really excited for what’s to come!  to those of you who read my little corner of the interwebs, thank you so very much!  it really does mean a lot.  stay tuned! xx

summer is [almost] here.

first things first — how awesome is that mango tree that is in my backyard??  i’m pretty excited to reap the benefits of those babies, namely in the form of mango smoothies.  YUM.  i’m ridiculously excited that summer is fast approaching (even though it feels like summer in hawaii 90% of the year) because work gets a little bit more mellow (or at least i hope it will) and the days are longer and sunnier.  i’m especially looking forward to spending the weekends at the beach, riding our bikes to nearby eateries for dinner, and having friends over for barbecues at my place!

side story: see that bike in the picture above?  we call her melon.  reis bought that for me when i graduated from college and hand painted the whole thing in my favorite colors!  i moved to hawaii two weeks after graduation and he surprised me with it so we could go exploring together!  he’s not the most romantic of guys so i was super impressed and thought it was the cutest thing in the world.

i heart sleeping in + naps.

this photo sums up my saturday morning.  i slept in, got up and did some work, went back to sleep until 2, and then went out for a late lunch with reis.  it was really amazing.  the rest of the weekend i was wildly productive with random projects i’ve been working on (i’m a little too obsessed with checking things off my list), i started working on the jayAdores site design 2.0 (i’m really excited about this one), and we started planning our honeymoon (i’m really reallllyyy excited about this one!).  all in all, i feel super refreshed today and i think my r & r on saturday is really helping me hate this monday much less than i normally despise this day of the week!

wedding dress shopping at monique lhuillier & lovely.

photo credit: the style eater

oh my goodness.  dress shopping at monique lhuillier was a DREAM. COME. TRUE.  i’ve been a long-time admirer/obsessor of her dresses and to be able to actually try on monique’s (we’re obvs on a first name basis now) dresses was unreal.  it was our first appointment of the morning and the whole experience felt like it was out of a movie (i swear i’m not being dramatic).  the boutique itself is incredibly beautiful.  her dresses are absolutely gorgeous.  AND my stylist/fitter was the sweetest thing ever.  she made the whole experience so enjoyable and i highly recommend asking for rachel if any of you in the LA area have a fitting at ML.

lovely was also on my MUST-GO-TO list after i saw it being featured on a few wedding blogs.  this place is absolute bridal boutique perfection.  their bathroom was even the cutest thing ever.  i had another really sweet stylist named whitney and we even got to meet the adorable sarah seven who was there for her trunk show!

i tried on so many gorgeous dresses that day (and the next day) but didn’t find the ONE.  i loved different parts of each dress and had this perfect visual in my head…but i honestly had no idea i would be so picky.  by the end of the weekend i decided to design my own dress!  something i never ever thought i would do, but something i am now totally excited about!  my mom is going to sew it which makes it even more special and i cannot wait to see my sketches come to life and have a completely custom wedding dress.

36 hours in LA.

ive been wanting to go to LA for a weekend to go wedding dress shopping with my mom.  i feel like you only try on wedding dresses once in your life and it’s a pretty special thing that i wanted to do with her by my side.  late last week, my parents spontaneously booked me a flight out to LA for the weekend (they are too good to me, thanks mom & dad!).  that gave me two days to book appointments all over los angeles at several bridal shops.  It proved to be the MOST perfect weekend for dress shopping because it was the Monique Lhuillier trunk show (my all time favorite wedding dress designer!!) AND the Sarah Seven trunk show at Lovely (the CUTEST bridal boutique ever)!   two of my best friends dropped all of their plans for the day and came with my mom and me for some really sweet girl time and dress trying on.  i’m a zombie this week after such a jam-packed, exciting weekend + flying back and forth across the Pacific literally within 36 hours, but it was so so worth it!  [more to come this week re: wedding dresses!]

i also instagrammed a lot while we traipsed across LA…for more weekend pics, see my insta feed @jayadores!