Catch-Up Post!

Hello blog readers! (All 5 or so of you :P) I have so so much I need to post on here, but I haven't gotten around to it.

Since I posted last, we FINISHED the bouquets (!!), began the invites, tried a centerpiece idea, tried on the dresses that finally came in (mine, my mom's, Tara's), and visited a bakery!

And now it's less than 3 months until the big day! I've been wanting to post pictures, but all my spare time has gone to wedding crafts. :)

I'll have to add pictures to this post later, but for now, I'll just fill you in on all that happened!

The bouquets are BEAUTIFUL (in my own, not so humble opinion :P). The flowers are perfect and the crystal spikes look great. We wrapped the handles in two colors of ribbon and added a letter charm to each so the bridesmaids and CoMOHs know which is theirs. I've been dying to show them off.

The invites are really starting to come together. We got ivory granite resume paper (it's watermarked, but you can't tell) and matching envelopes. Tara, my CoMOH and sister, is taking a calligraphy class at school, so she's hand-addressing all the envelopes. We printed all the inserts and I stamped each one with a swirly border (That's over 400 pieces of paper stamped so far!). We're (and by "we", I mostly mean my mom and Tara... I got kicked off this job pretty early on!) currently working on starching and ironing rectangles of the aqua crepe-back satin and using spray adhesive to attach them to the invite paper. Then my mom is using my rotary cutter to slice off the excess fabric. It's quite a process! I'll be posting in-progess pix soon.

For centerpieces, I was thinking I wanted a potted plant. So we went to English Gardens and picked out a "spike" plant. It looks roughly like this:

We were then planning on adding some tall ivory spikes (it's hard to explain) on some tables, and pearls on wire spikes on others. However, the spike plant we bought didn't get watered for a few days while we were in Kansas, and now it's very sad and brown. :( So we're still trying to figure out options... do we keep the plants inside? Do we buy them right before the wedding? Do we come up with an entirely new idea? So it's been interesting. I definitely want something very different though.

It was so exciting to try on MY wedding dress! I took pictures, so perhaps later I'll post some links so you can see. :) It fit perfectly, it just needs a tiny bit of hemming in the front. And a bustle, of course. My mom's dress fits her perfectly too! Hers needs quite a lot of hemming and some straps added. We went to go see Tara's dress today and it ALSO fits perfectly and needs just a little hemming! It looks so fantastic and she looks so skinny in it! It was hard to tell how it would look when the girls tried on the samples, since the sample sizes were far too big, but I love it so much in the correct size!

Anthony and I visited a couple bakeries today. We finally nixed the decorating-it-ourselves idea... it was just a bit too crazy and there's so much else to do. I think we're going to order from Party Cakes in Berkley. I'm going over there tomorrow to pick up a "drive-by tasting" order, which apparently allows me to sample 6 different kinds of cake and two types of frosting! After going to the bakery, Anthony and I looked at over 2,000 wedding cake pictures on the knot.com and picked our favorites. It turns out that he really doesn't like some of my favorite elements! Oh well, haha. I combined some of our favorite ideas into a VERY rough mock-up... which I will now post, even though it's not very pretty haha.

Here's a (tiny) picture of the elements that I tried to combine....

That's all for now - I'll try to add another post with pictures later! <3

Cake Insanity

Some of you may be aware that I've been toying with the idea of making and decorating my own wedding cake. I know, it sounds *insane,* but hey, so does making 120 coffee filter roses, right? But don't worry, I've never planned on actually baking the cake... just making a fake one and decorating it!

So I was at Michaels recently (oh how I love that store!) and I came across something fantastic: the Cricut Cake. Naturally it costs more than a wedding cake, BUT I believe I can buy the thin fondant sheets that work with it and use a exacto to cut my own designs. I don't see why not!

Here's something Minette Rushing - Sugar Seminars made with the Cricut Cake:

I'm reasonably sure that I can cut shapes out myself... it won't be as quick, or as possibly intricate, as using the cricut, but it won't be as expensive either! I would at least like to cut out our monogram that I've been using on everything and put that on there.

There's still a lot of experimentation to be done! :) <3

Invites & Roses!

In the last few days, there has been a LOT of wedding progress! We bought (almost) all the needed supplies for the invitations - including postage and not including envelopes (strange, I know, but we didn't buy envelopes yet haha) they come out to $1.88 each. Not bad for a pocketfold with 3-4 inserts and a crepe-back satin outside with sheer ribbon closure! :D I've found out through this process that I'm extremely picky when it comes to invites and there aren't too many I like. But I think I'll love mine! We ordered the aqua satin last night, so hopefully by next week I'll be making invites! I'm definitely planning on having an invite-constructing party once I figure out what steps need to be done... anyone want to come and help? :P It's based on the tutorial in this book.

I've also officially finished painting all the big white/pink roses, which means that all flowers for the bouquets are DONE! I also made the wire bead spikes (easily the most expensive - but easiest/quickest thus far- part of the project. I made all of them while watching a single movie) and got the ribbon. So now all that remains is actually putting them together! The one thing I still need to figure out is how to cover up all the stems/wires. I keep looking at this picture (Bouquet made by alinaswedding on craftster) with extreme jealousy:

Isn't it beautiful! Her coffee filter roses are gorgeous and the pine covers up all the ugly wires.... I just can't figure out how I can do the same thing, but in a summer-wedding way. *sigh* I'll figure it out eventually, I suppose. Hopefully in the next week or so - I'm anxious to finally be done with them!

I still have to paint the yellow roses for the AST table and make mini and super mini roses for corsages. I may also do roses for the bouts... I'm not sure though. My current boutonnière inspiration is this (made by the ever-amazing sweets4ever on craftster):

I'm planning on doing mine slightly differently, with more of a loop at the bottom and no ribbon bow, but the same concept with the wires and beads. And blue instead of red, of course. I'm going to use many of the same beads I used on the bead wires for the bouquets:

(The ones on the left, not the right... the ones on the right are for my bouquet :) ) So we'll see how it goes. My mom already showed my brother (a groomsman) the prototype I threw together and so far he's not a fan. But we'll see once I actually put a real one together. I just need to get another 24 gauge spool of wire (I'm on my third spool now!)

My mom, Co-MOH, and I also went to our reception venue to ask more questions and finalize a few things... one of the BEST things we learned is a way to finally solve our seating issues! We had been struggling with a head table since Anthony's Dad is his best man, but we didn't want him sitting separately from Anthony's Mom and brother (who is also more or less a groomsman... it's a little complicated). There was also the matter of the groomswoman and more bridesmaids than grooms...people.... in any case, it's been a struggle. But no more! Evidently we can have a sweetheart table on a stage for me & Anthony (which I've been wanting - yay!!) and what's called a "captain's table," which is a long rectangular table for the bridal party and parents and grandparents. The captain's table won't be raised like the sweetheart table; it'll be on the floor in front of our table. So I'm very excited. We're still figuring out *exactly* who will sit at the captain's table and where, but I think we've got it pretty ironed out.

I'm very excited. Less than 110 days now! <3

At Last: Wedding Progress!

FINALLY done with all the full-size roses! Well, actually, I'm done constructing them; I still have 40 or more to paint and curl. But THEN I'll be done! I also have to make at least 11 more mini-roses. And then endless beading work and the actual putting together of the bouquets, and then the corsages and boutonnieres.... but hey, at least I don't have to cut out or put together any more big roses!! YAY!

I also walked around English Gardens getting centerpiece inspiration the other day... I'm pretty sure I'll be able to find something I'm happy with.

So, just wanted to be happy about my roses. If I feel motivated, I may post some dress pictures later. :) Oh! We also figured out some things about my veil... turns out you can bustle a cathedral length veil and it looks beautiful. I can't find any pictures online, but I think we'll definitely try it... It might get a little heavy though, so perhaps at some point I'll take it off (maybe after all the photo ops- first dance, cake cutting, etc) <3

What Happened to April?!

Whenever I'm asked how wedding plans are coming, I keep telling people we're almost done... but I keep thinking that can't possibly be right! We have our ceremony site, reception site, DJ, all the dresses are ordered, tuxes picked out.... oh and we have a photographer now! I'm so excited. So we're working on bouquets, invitations, and the veil.... I keep checking my theknot and onewed checklists to make sure I'm not somehow missing something. It turns out wedding planning is somehow much easier than everyone makes it sound.


We're working on getting hair and makeup appointments set for the wedding day. It sounds like we're all going to take over Salon Georgette for a few hours. Should be very fun!

....I wrote the above in April, but I never finished the post! I actually don't think I posted anything at all in April.... I've been a bad blogging bride! Really, though, I was so busy with finishing the semester that hardly any wedding planning has been taking place at all.

But now, with Anthony off doing army training for the next three weeks and classes over, it's time to get back into the wedding planning! First thing on the list: My Wedding Dress! At 5 today I have an appointment to go try on my dress... SO excited! I even have my shoes, so we can figure out if any hemming work needs to be done. (Of course, with the bottom of my dress being as gorgeous as it is, hemming isn't really the right word... it needs to be "taken up," I suppose?

So we've got less than 4 months to go now... I think my countdown at One Wed said 118 days or something insane like that today. Wow! My goal is to finish all the roses and hopefully whole bouquets by the time Anthony gets back... we'll see! We're also busy working on invites... I'm planning on a pocketfold invite with a fabric outside, so my mom and I have been ordering swatches of fabric so we can get started on that.

Today I spent quite a bit of time trying to find creative, unique, non-floral centerpieces that I loved. I saw a few interesting things (I'll try to post links later) but I think I've merged a couple ideas into something I'm really excited about. I'm going to shop around Ikea & a garden store and then I'll post some updates... Ever have the feeling if you share too much about something you're excited about, you won't like the idea as much anymore? I'll keep this one to myself for now and we'll see what happens.

I was hoping that Anthony and I could get our engagement pictures done soon, but I missed the boat on that one, since now he's gone for most of May! I feel like I've been terrible at communicating with our photographer (Sorry Amy!!)... every time she e-mails me it takes me weeks to respond since I talk it over with Anthony and then we try to figure things out... ugh. But hopefully I'll get something set up for when he's home. We still need to decide on exactly what we're wearing! For half he'll wear his uniform (swoon!) and I have a dress, but I also want pictures in jeans and something more casual... we'll have to figure it out!

It feels great to be excited about wedding stuff again! Not that I wasn't excited before, but I just had so much on my plate that wedding stuff had to be pushed to the side. But now it's all wedding all the time! <3

Edited to add: Apparently this post is now under the day I started writing it, instead of today, May 1st! Oh well!

Five Months!

Wow, it feels like it was about 4 seconds ago that I was writing my Six Months Left post! Makes me wonder how quickly the rest of the time will fly by....

So I think my wedding-shoe-quest is over! I ordered my top two choices online and they came in this past week. These ones were beautiful, but much too tall (and not the right color, really) and these ones turned out be perfect! They're the right color, gorgeous, fun... and I don't tower over dear fiance in them!

I've officially switched wedding websites. I didn't really enjoy theknot.com. It was pretty fun meeting up with all the "knotties" in the area, but it wasn't worth the awful message board there. I love message boards and meeting other people online in the same situation as I am, but some of the ladies (not even the right word for some of them) on the knot were plain rude. No thank you! In addition, the message boards had irritating movie things playing at the top and there was no good way to see answers to posts you made...ugh. Ok, end rant.

I'm now on One Wed... everyone there is SO friendly and nice and it's so easy to use. The only drawbacks are it doesn't have a built-in budgeter and guest manager. But that's fine, I can always use those elsewhere. So here is our new wedding website!
http://www.onewed.com/site/tatewedding

After Three Stores, it Becomes a Quest.

We went to go check out Anthony's wedding ring today! We ordered it in his size and it came in a few days ago. We were hoping to finish paying for it and take it home today, but (a) it turns out that with the comfort fit, a size 7.5 fits better than an 8 and (b) we're actually less-than-perfectly-happy with the 6mm now that we've seen it actually in his size. So we're having them order in the 7.5 and we'll see. Maybe we'll keep looking. The great thing about Helzberg is that if we decide we don't like it once we see it in his size, they'll refund everything I've paid so far. We found that other stores weren't quite as flexible. The ring manufacturer, Triton, makes the same ring in a 7mm and 8mm, so maybe we'll see if the store can order in one of those.

I've one to several stores now looking for the perfect wedding shoes... epic failure so far. All I ask is that they're the right color (preferably the color of the bridesmaid dresses, at the very least dark blue), they don't make me too tall (Anthony's only 4 inches taller than I am; I can't be taller than the groom on my wedding day!) but aren't too flat (You just walk differently in heels, you know?), and are comfortable to wear for 10 hours straight. Is that really so much to ask? :P Oh, and I won't pay more than $50 for them. The perfect shoes are out there, I'm sure, I just need to look around more. I could get ivory dress shoes, but I just love the look I've seen with the cute colored heels.... must have! I figure the search for my dress was incredibly easy, so it's no big deal that the search for the shoes isn't. <3

Edited to add: Top Shoes So Far: Shoe 1 Shoe 2 Shoe 3 (love these last ones, but I'm unsure about the 4.5 inch heel....)