Man at work

When I'm wedding-blogging, a lot of the time I hear a Brady Bunch-esque "Meredith, Meredith, Meredith!" going off in my head -- I know I'm talking my butt off about me.  But you know something? I'm one of the dang luckiest ladies around. Because as much as I talk about me, me, me, I have a fiance who's actively involved in wedding planning.
I haven't talked about what Johnny's been contributing as much as I should because, in part, I didn't know just how much that was until this weekend. It all kind of came clear to me on Saturday night while we were over at the Outlaws' house, the second night we stayed over, visiting. Johnny pulled me aside in the bedroom with his Mom's laptop.
"I thought we could work on our registry," he said.
I'd been going round and round trying to figure out this registry business for a few weeks by now. First I just wanted to have no registry and accept cash gifts without actively asking outright for cash because that would be super-rude. Then Mom convinced me we had to do some sort of traditional registry because a lot of our older family members would find it rude of us to not include at least a few traditional options. Then I started learning about honeymoon registries and wanted to do that. I'd made us a joint Amazon account and signed up for an Amazon registry, which allows you to select items from their site as well as to add things from elsewhere on the internet using a "Universal Registy" button you can put on your browser.
In the three weeks since I'd created the registry, I'd put a total of seven items on it -- a family bible and some other marriage books (you see where my priorities lie).
At first, Johnny had been as baffled as I was about what to do, but on Saturday, he took charge. We realized we could use some sheets and started from there. When he took the laptop into the living room and we sat together in the dark watching a movie with his family, I drifted off to sleep noticing that he was adding more items -- getting past the "we don't have room for stuff" mental block that had kept me feeling ambivalent about adding anything for fear that those items would be unneccessary and too hard to store.
When we went to bed, he showed me the things he'd added -- an awesome moderately-priced knife set, a window fan, a rice cooker, good pillows, "man food" cookbooks -- all things that we can use right where we are, in Mom's house, as well as whenever we have a house of our own. It was clear from his selections how much he'd thought about what we could really use.
That really opened my eyes to how Johnny approaches wedding planning, and planning of any sort. I'm a blabbermouth - I talk through all my steps, over and over again, working them out verbally. He mulls over things in his head until he has a clear direction, then he takes that direction thoughtfully, purposefully. That purposefulness gives all the projects he works on a stable and solid feeling that I love and respect.

What else has Johnny been working on?

• He figured out the main "dish" of our wedding -- biscuits! Biscuits are perfectly country, can be sweet or savoury, and his Mom has already agreed to help us make them in mass quantities. The first time I met Johnny's family was in October 2009, when he invited me to come make apple butter with them. I didn't know at the time that Johnny himself was the driving force behind this mission - he paid for the apples, gathered the firewood, poked and prodded his folks into helping out with their efforts and expertise. He'd love to have more homemade apple butter at the wedding, along with some jams and country ham and other biscuit-fillings. He's also given me directions to go with other food ideas: flavored sweet tea, a S'more bar, different types of cakes.
• He researched a ton of hotels in Charleston and has found all kinds of options of things for us to do, see, eat, and experience while we're there. Dinner boat tour of Charleston Harbor? Yes sir!
• Not only did he research honeymoon stuff -- he figured out how to turn the Amazon registry into a hybrid of traditional and honeymoon registries! Now we can have the best of both worlds!

Beyond the tangible decisions, Johnny has been extremely supportive of me so far and has really helped me be sane. He likes to tease me about some of the froofy detail stuff, but he makes me feel great when he does stuff like compliment my fabric flowers while talking with his Mom and tell me he's proud of me for how I've been saving and budgeting. His attitude reminds me of why we're doing all this in the first place -- it makes all the froofy details fade away like the don't-matter-in-the-long-run things they are and I see so clearly that I'm blessed to love and be loved by him and to get to spend my life doing that.

The polls are open and a secret is revealed...

I made a simple webpage last night with enough functionality for embedding videos and a poll to pull together the info for the bridesfolk in the wedding party to vote, and the votes are coming in! I put up pictures of some choices (I gave seven -- and I'd be totally cool with anyone who wanted something outside that particular set, but I wanted to give them something to go on), listed their prices and color choices, and embedded a poll that goes straight to a Google docs spreadsheet. So far, about half the votes are in, and I'm loving the results -- no one has picked the same dress, the color choices are evenly split, and everyone seems down with the idea of picking what they want and not having to match. Hooray!

After some hemming and hawing around, I finally made the decision to go ahead and tell them about sekrit part of their outfit I'm buying for them:

With the shindig being in October, I wanted the bridesfolk to have something to wrap up in (and a little bit of color to wear during the ceremony). And what do you know... there's a handy Youtube tutorial video for just about everything in the world:

I'm backin' up, backin' up...

I've been trying to figure out how to describe this wedding-shindig to people. The farther I go down the rabbit hole of planning, the more ground I have to cover when it comes to talking wedding with curious inquirers. Like my in-laws/outlaws, who I'll be playing Donkey Kong with this weekend, or my bosslady, or one of my favorite kooky old-lady patrons who always asks for books with sex in them.
Knowing that I'll probably end up talking planning a little bit this weekend, I've been backin' up, backin' up, backin' up in my thought process to try to put words around what I envision this wedding to be like. (I say "I" specifically because J's vision is "We get married. Yay! The End!" and I'm the one who does all the crazy details.)

• Familiar things with history and family have a big presence. Johnny's family church will be our ceremony and reception site, both our families plan to contribute with help, food, and decor, and we've envisioned this to be more like two big family reunions happening at once from the start. That's why we're not capping our guest list - there's always room for family, and we wouldn't feel right turning any of our relatives away who wanted to come. Our list of friends who could come isn't so big that we'll have to cut there.
• We both see God as a "third partner" in our marriage and see marriage as a spiritual commitment as well as a legal one, and the ceremony will be a Protestant one, in a Protestant church. This is a journey we're taking that's intimately connected to that part of our lives, maybe more than to any other part of our lives.
• My approach to coordinating things like attire and decor is like my Dad's approach to projects: "I know what I like, what I think looks good. How can I think outside the box to do something like this without going broke?" Oddly enough, it seems like this isn't as easy to understand for some folks I know as I would have expected -- I've had people seem to think I'm crazy for a) getting inspired by ideas that would probably be out of my price range to begin with (mostly family members) and b) trying to replicate those ideas in any way other than the Wedding Industrial Complex professional vendor way (a friend who is not too fond of anything DIY). Learning how to talk about planning with both these types of people has been a challenge, but I would say it's been a fun one, too.
• The look I'm going for in the design elements of wedding-stuff has warm tones and neutrals and is casual. I like using the word "rustic" - it combines the country/homemade/casual elements together in a way I like, and when I use it with other wedding-brain people, they know what I mean. I'm looking for ways to use color, texture, and materials to make people feel warm, welcome, at home -- that's more the feel we want than trying to set a tone of "let's party" or "we're celebrating high-life style." (I also purposefully chose the colors I chose so they'd go with the church, not clash with it, and that was a hard decision to make, as someone who adores purple.).
• This "warm and welcoming" feeling is something I want to bring in for everybody involved in the wedding -- I'm doing everything I can to take effort and stress off the other people involved, including our families and our wedding party. What we want is to celebrate with the people we love - that's the important part, and what they wear and how they can contribute (with projects, with money on their attire, etc) takes a backseat to just having them there with us.
• I like incorporating handmade elements as much as possible because I like making them! All "DIY saves money" debates aside, I choose my DIY projects based on what I think the effort I put in will add to the time leading up to the day, the day itself, and our memories of it. There are various arguments for each handmade piece I'm making, but that one applies across the board.
• Most of our guests are local and related to half of the other guests, and while we don't want people to go 'round hungry, we're planning a "snack and mingle" reception so we can have more flexibility with the guest list numbers, space, and seating (along with most of the foods we plan on making being less expensive and easier to prepare!).

That's all I can think of at the moment... being able to sum up where I'm coming from makes talking about the details a lot easier and puts them in context that helps other folks understand where my crazy bride-brain is. (My daddy taught me good!)

So many guestbook options...

I've been seeing so many creative and awesome options for guestbooks lately that I have visions of metallic pens and beautiful paper dancing in my head.
Well, maybe I'm not that crazy. But I am seeing lots of cool ideas.
My original guestbook idea involved something I saw at the bridal show I wing-woman-ed at in South Carolina: a tree. It was in a photographer's booth -- I have no idea who the photographer was, but I remember turning to see this gorgeous tree covered in orange flowers and matted photographs of a happy couple. Right then, I thought it would be super-cool to use a tree not only for a photo display, but also as a guestbook -- guests could hang shaped paper tags with their names and wishes on them on the tree (later, I learned about "wish trees" and that plenty of folks had thought of this already). My cell phone camera picture doesn't capture what I remember and instead gives it more of a "overhead flourescent grainy" feel...

Actually, I'm not as super-thrilled with this particular tree now as I was at the time. At the time, it blew my mind, man. And early on in the wedding-planning process, I learned about various types of trees appearing at weddings (craftificus MarthaStewartis) - everything from topiaries to things like the one above that aren't really "trees" at all. But that path... that path led me to fall in love with manzanita.
What is manzanita, you ask? It's a small, hearty, dense evergreen shrub that has plenty of decorative use. Especially at weddings, where brides tend to cover it in tinsel and crystals and unicorn hair and whatnot and make it look like your guests could spend time between the ceremony and reception making Tsahaylu with it.

Weddings on Pandora...

You can see these have a little more of a tree-ish look to them than the curly branches used for the tree I saw. However, the one I saw has the advantage of being much easier to put together -- manzanita has to be set in a sturdy base with some plaster of paris in order to stand up.

If I were set on a tree, I'd probably go with the manzanita just because I think they look prettier. But I'm not even so sure now that I'm set on a tree. For the number of guests we might end up having, there would be a lot of signed tags covering the tree, and I'm not sure if the product would be worth the effort. What would we do with all the tags later? Put them in a book? A jar? That would take up a lot of space, and wouldn't be too easy to look through. That's why I'm starting to lean toward more compact ideas, like books or things to hang on a wall.

Another option I love are guestbooks that double as photo albums -- either with pictures of your guests or with pictures of the couple. I've been getting Shutterfly coupons lately, and I love some of the Shutterfly albums out there that are used like this.

From Shutterfly

Or I could go with a totally different kind of tree - a 2D kind, with leaves made out of fingerprints. Bleu de toi on Etsy sells some great ones.

From Emmaline Bride

Johnny saw a signable photo mat in Michaels one day when we were there, and he really liked that idea. I like it, too -- plus there are lots of options of what to put behind the frame. A blown-up version of your invite? Big ol' wedding picture? You could even combine that with the fingerprint tree...

This one from Luster Studios looks classy.

Lots of options -- so many ones that I like! Still not sure which one I'm leaning toward. If Johnny doesn't have a particular favorite, I have a feeling it will come down to the Money + Time Investment equation. Since he's mentioned that he likes the pictureframe idea, I'm tempted to surprise him with that! We'll see...

Honeymoon: Charleston!

It took Johnny and I a while to figure out where we wanted to honeymoon. We're still don't have things set in stone yet, so this post may be a little bit premature -- I'm sure we'll be firming up some parts of the plan and discarding other parts (oh geez. I used a librarian word.). But we are pretty sure that Charleston is the destination.
Johnny wanted to go somewhere where we could get to a beach that would be warm-ish but not hot in October and somewhere we wouldn't have to get on an airplane to get to -- I wanted to go somewhere beach-ish as well that also had stuff to do. We ended up looking at destinations along the South-East coast, from Ocean City, Maryland down to Savannah, Georgia, and ended up picking Charleston because it's got both beach and city. Johnny's been there before, but I haven't, and we're both excited to be planning our first trip with each other alone.
So far, we've mostly been looking at hotels -- we thought for a while about staying out of the city, somewhere on the beach, but the more we looked at things, the more we wanted to stay in the city and travel out to the beach. From there, we went from narrowing our search based on houses and villas to rent toward hotels - you can stay a whole lot closer to stuff in a hotel, and there are some really nice ones in Charleston. The one that's our top-runner right now is the Harbourview Inn, which has got some great ratings and has a great location (not to mention awesome-looking rooms).

Harbourview Inn, Charleston

There's a ton of stuff that I'm excited to see in Charleston. Some of it's the basic Charleston-y goodness, like the old plantations, Market Street, the South Carolina Aquarium, and the ghost tours. But then there's Charleston Tea Plantation, which has factory and field tours... and the Moon Pie General Store.
Tea + Moon Pies = A++ Honeymoon.

"Building a Better Marriage"

I think my favorite pre-wedding-related experience so far doesn't have anything to do with the "stuff" that goes with weddings -- it's been the seminar we attended this weekend at HCC.
Heaton Christian Church is the wonderful church family Johnny grew up in, and it's been my pleasure to get to know the folks there as I've grown in my faith since attending with him. I think my favorite thing about HCC is that the church members really do make people feel welcome -- even though there are strong family roots that have been part of the church's history, I love that members' attitudes and the type of messages preached there by Jason are focused on the wide reach of Jesus' love. I think part of that comes from the fact that it's a non-denominational church -- this is my first experience attending a church over a long period of time that isn't a Baptist church, and it's been a very different experience than my childhood church experiences. I won't go into a long talk about my spiritual past here, but I do want to express my gratitude to the church family that's welcomed me in.
This weekend, Jim and Glenda Buckley, parents of one of the church members, presented a two-day seminar on "Building a Better Marriage" -- a course they've expanded into a whole curriculum at their home church in California and that they've taught overseas in Eastern Europe and in other areas. About fifteen couples from the church attended. Johnny and I were the only engaged couple, but we really didn't feel out of place. I brought red velvet cheesecake brownies to the Saturday evening session, when we were introduced to the Buckleys and went over the topics they planned to talk about.

The seminar was split into five topics, which the Buckleys had identified from their own pastoral conversations with couples as the five biggest challenges in marriages (five topics also identified as challenges by psychologists and counselors): money, communication, children, sex, and life's struggles and sorrows. We covered money in the Saturday night session, communication and children during the Sunday School hour the next morning, and sex and life's struggles on Sunday afternoon.
I took notes on the handout packet we were given, and a lot of things stuck with me that the Buckleys talked about. I haven't really "gelled" my thoughts into a cohesive big-picture statement, but I came away with a lot of little nuggets of memorable things that spoke to me. A lot of these bits and bobs came from books and research that the Buckleys quoted, and I wasn't quick on the draw enough to write down the citations (which stinks, because they mentioned a lot of books I'd love to read!) so forgive my lack of sources... and a lot of things they said are gender generalizations, which I don't always believe are true, but if I'm mentioning them here, it's because they're true for me and J at least :) Some of this is stuff that I've heard said other ways before, but discussing them in seminar format made them stick!

• Waffle brain vs. spaghetti brain -- men's brains are like waffles, compartmentalized, and women tend to have thoughts that cross and intertwine. Which explains why J is a lot better about zoning out while doing any one thing in particular (and won't hear what I say unless I know I have his attention), and why something totally unrelated to what I'm actually upset about can set that upset off.
• One of those waffle boxes for guys can be a "nothing box." When Johnny says he's thinking about nothing, he really isn't thinking about anything. Me on the other hand... I'm totally thinking about something but don't want to talk about it when I say "nothing."
• We talked about different personality types when it comes to money. Johnny is a spender, and I'm a saver/security-seeker -- fortunately, we've known this about each other since shortly after we started dating, and we've already been talking about this a lot. The most interesting thing I got out of this part is realizing that I'm not just a saver -- I tend to save and spend with a mindset of seeking security. I don't tend to spend a lot of money on unplanned things unless I have some sort of monetary security buffer in place.
• One of the most memorable things I took away from the sessions wasn't a particular piece of information -- it was the experience of watching a committed couple of forty years talk about the struggles they've gone through together. Particularly, they each talked about the loss of a child through a stillbirth and the experience of losing a grandchild only hours after he was born -- they mentioned that 80% of couples who lose a child get divorced, but the other 20% of couples become much, much closer than before. Seeing that closeness between two partners who have made it through such a horrible experience with each other and with God was unbelievably inspiring -- Johnny said afterward that that was the most meaningful part of the seminar to him, too.
• That whole sex section? Yeah... guess what I didn't know: men don't exactly have a sex "drive" so much as a sex "need" -- as in, pretty much every 72 hours, their bodies physically need that kind of release. As simple as that sounds, it puts my understanding of men and how they think about intimacy in a whole different light, and that's food for thought for me for the future.

It was fun and insightful to listen to the Buckleys, but another great part of the experience was being one couple out of the number of couples that I've met at the church (including a number of Johnny's older relatives) and feeling like we're not the only ones who are or will be dealing with these challenges, feeling like we're in a good company of people we know. There's a feeling of support that comes with that, and it makes me feel closer to the church family and helps me understand the larger functions of church family in general.

First thoughts about The Dress

The question that eeeeevery body asks -- "have you bought your dress yet?" -- has finally started blipping on my radar. Maybe it's because some folks think that I'm waiting way too long to start looking. Maybe it's because I've been watching a ton of Say Yes To The Dress while I make flowers. Either way, I'm starting to feel really pumped about looking for a dress, and that's a good feeling.

It's an especially good feeling because I was worried at first that I wouldn't like anything. Most of those worries came from my idea that I would look as if I were wearing a tablecloth no matter what. But after a little online and tv research, I've finally seen that yes, some designers make gowns that look pretty awesome on women of my shape and size, and yes, the come in enough styles that I can contemplate choices. Hooray!

After my awesome experience at Alfred Angelo as a bridesmaid, I had my heart set on going back to their flagship store in Knoxville to find a bridal gown. But I got a copy of their catalog and looked at their selections online and... well... nothing really got me excited.* I still can't figure out why. They all started looking alike to me after a while, but you'd think that would hold true for all dresses.

I suspect it's because they don't have a lot of gowns that feature things that I feel go with the vibe of this shindig. Laid back, rustic, etc. -- big ol' ballgowns made of silk just aren't quite doing it for me. I still think they're gorgeous to look at, but I would feel a little weird in one at our homey afternoon deal.

But having watched a buttload of SYTTD, I also know how much designer gowns cost (as opposed to the "chain" AA gowns), and I'd rather make my own dress out of Bounty paper towels than spend that much money on something I wear for a few hours when I could be spending it on our honeymoon (I need to do a post on that topic, too!).
The obvious answer: David's Bridal.
Now, I don't get why DB gets such a bad rap from brides, unless they're expecting it to be something it's not. When I've asked this question on various places around the wedding-web, I've been told that you don't get the same service you get at a small salon, that the nature of the corporate beast compared to the mom-and-pop salon means that there's more chance for orders to go awry and whatnot, and that you might get glass "crystals" on your dress instead of Swarovski ones. Does this bother me? Nope. As long as I can find a saleslady to help me find the dresses I'd like to look at, I'm set!
And what are some of those dresses I'd like to look at?
I easily find a lot more things that look like something I'd like to try on on the DB website than I do on the AA one. I narrowed my top picks down to five. Guess what they mostly have in common?

(Style 9WG9859, Style 9E9351, Style 9WG9830, Style 9V9743, and Style 9PK3281. All pictures courtesy of David's Bridal)

All these dresses are made of flowy material (chiffon and/or organza), cut in flowly lines (A-line or Empire), and have a sweetheart neckline -- except that last one, which is awesome and not one I'd have expected to be interested in. But! These are all on people who aren't me. I want to see them on me. So... I'll be making a trip to David's Bridal in the near future. Hooray!

Which one is your favorite so far?

Picture perfect

Another thing checked off the list -- I booked our photographer today!
Granted, we've known who we wanted since she took our fantastic engagement pictures, like the one that greeted me on her slideshow when I opened up her web page earlier today:

This wonderful lady is Stacy Duncan of Stacy Duncan Photography (whom I also know as Spawn the Faerie from the high school production of A Midsummer Night's Dream we both faeried around in). I'm thrilled to know that we'll have beautiful memories of our wedding day in the great pictures she takes!
(Also, check out her gallery of adorable kids photos.... so.... cute... eeeeee....)

(Stacy/Spawn is the fourth from the left. I'm the last one on the right (forgive the faerie drag eye makeup...). Note Oberon, third from the left, also known as our groomsman Josh.)

Epiphany!

I don't know how apparent it was in my plethora of words yesterday how on the fence I am about bridesmaids dresses. I mean, I thought I had this thing in the bag... but now I've been second-guessing myself over it. And when I start to second-guess myself, I do what I always do -- read crap-tons of stuff on the internet to see which way it sways me. And now I'm back to my original stance of "let the ladies pick whatever they want" -- but with a twist.
Just in case they end up reading this, I'm not going to put the surprise part here because I want it to be a surprise -- but it would be their bridesmaid's gift, would add color to their outfits, and (I think) is pretty awesome. Plus, gifting them this particular gift steers me away from looking for two-color dresses and back toward basic browns. Like this one from David's Bridal. Or, really, any cafe/latte/other coffee flavored dress they want to wear. Huzzah! It puts to rest my worries about how much my ladies are having to shell out because they can adjust it to whatever price point they'd like, and my surprise will unify the look, be seasonally appropriate, and add a pop of color that'll look nice. Woo! Pumped!

David's Bridal

Choices of choices

Something that I'd been pretty settled on when I first started getting my ducks lined up with planning was that I wanted to let my bridesmaids pick their own dress. At the time, I was leaning more toward "pick your own dress" in the loosest sense, showing them what color/s I'd like the dress to be and letting them run free. Having talked with most of the girls about that option since then, a couple of them are weighing in that they'd like a little more direction. I struggle with picking out dresses "for" them -- there's just something in the idea of asking someone to purchase a particular dress, one particular dress, that rubs up against my firm stance of "your wedding party members are not yours to command -- they're the folks you want to honor."

At first, I thought "how does it honor someone to tell them what to wear? Where is the trust and love for them as an individual and respect for their taste in that?" But I've started seeing the issue in a more deconstructed manner after being more immersed in brideworld and bridesmaidworld recently. There's a difference between asking your girls to wear a dress (or a dress from a set of larger choices) and asking them to a) wear this dress, b) wear these shoes, c) pay someone else to do your hair and makeup the way you want it done, d) (at extremes) have other alterations to their image done, such as getting their hair cut a certain way or tanning. I've seen brides ask their ladies to do that whole range of things... and it makes me sad that the far end of that spectrum is considered "acceptable" in some circles for a bride to ask her friends to do.

That being said, I'm starting to reconsider my total hands-off approach from the requests of some of my bridesmaids. I can see how it would be less stressful to not have to figure out where to find a dress and worry about whether it will "go" on your own. But I still don't want to put them through a whole series of style hoops to jump through. Those style hoops cost money and would strip my awesome ladies of a lot of the individuality that I love about them. So, I'm thinking that the best middle ground is to choose a set of dresses for them to choose from and ask them to pick the one they like best -- not "vote on the one for everyone to wear" but "wear the one you like."

Having had some not-toooo-great bridesmaids dress shopping experiences myself, I was surprised and thrilled with my experience at the Alfred Angelo flagship store in Knoxville, TN. The best part? They had samples that actually fit me! And all their sizes are the same price for each dress -- no markups for larger girls. Which is awesome. They're one of the more affordable chains, and they have colors that I love (I would go with David's Bridal because of location and prices, but they have a hole in their color selections riiiiiight where I would choose). I love some of the two-color dresses from Alfred Angelo:



Alfred Angelo #7063




Alfred Angelo #7056

 

Alfred Angelo #7044

I love the idea of using a neutral for a base color and using the brighter colors for accents. I've actually tried on all three of these dresses, and all three worked really well with my body's size and shape (my personal favorite is the one with the three-tiered bottom -- I would wear that one again, pretty much no matter what color it was. It's just a great dress.).

I've also been keeping my eye on online clothing sellers that have large selections of vintage-y dresses, like ModCloth and Anthropologie. The looks of a lot of their stuff would fit perfectly with the kind of low-key ceremony we're planning, but their ranges of sizes aren't as wide as we'll need -- but just in case the girls get brave and want to find their own dresses, I'm keeping my eyes open for things to suggest to them.

Funny how I don't have any qualms at all about saying "hey, groomsmen dudes, everybody go on a suit-renting adventure!" Mostly that's because I know that Johnny wants everybody suited up and... well... they're not fashionistas or the kind of folks to express themselves mainly through their clothing.

Bloomin' in the snow

For the past week, I've been looking out the window to this every morning:

So it's been a great thing that my materials for making the fabric flowers arrived on Monday! We slid down to the post office and I dived right in... and so far, I have about 15 flowers to show for it. It doesn't sound like a lot, but I'm a slow worker when it comes to craft stuff, and I gotta say... I think they're going to be totally worth the work. Johnny and Mom have both been impressed so far, which has gone a long way to erase any doubts of "oh my gosh, can I actually make them look good?" that have crept up so far.

I've been working on white peonies and sparkly pink things that were supposed to be roses but look more like fluffy carnations. I have some other patterns and methods in mind for the two shades of taupe fabric that I still haven't tried yet, but here's what I've made with the first two.

"Peonies" (sorta):

First, I made a pattern (check out my awesome bedspread, btw).

Next, I doubled my white fabric over until I had four layers, and traced around the pattern.

Then I cut 'em out until I had a big stack of these beauties.

Now it's time to play with fire! I singed the edges of the fabric to keep it from unraveling (which is why all the fabrics I'm using are poly blends or straight-up synthetic -- cotton and linen don't play well with fire. Plus, the singed edge gives it a little depth, which I like.

Then you end up with a lot of these.

Stack four of 'em together and throw in a couple of stitches to keep the shape the way you want it, and you get...

(Apologies for skipping to the end on this one... I was watching a lot of Bones while stitching these together and got too wrapped up with the Gormogon vault stuff to remember to take pics.)

Roses/Carnations/Rosenations/"flowers":

First, cut a loooooong strip (about 3" wide) from the end of your fabric (probably about 45" in length - trim the edges off, if there's selvage on the ends):

Then wrap the fabric around your fingers like so, and pin it together.

Cut a rounded petal shape into one edge of your fabric roll.

Aaaaaand it's time to burninate! Toast the strip around all edges (i.e. straight side and curvy side -- and this fabric melts super-fast).

Start rolling up your strip and stitching it together at the bottom, arranging the petals and holding them in place with your fingers as you go to achieve the shape you desire. (This is the hard part -- I tried running a basting stitch along the bottom and just rolling it up, but that didn't really work with this particular type of fabric. And, thus, my fingers and hands are super-hurty from holding petals in place, but it's worth it).

(Yeah, it looks like a sparkly pink wad right now, buuuut...)

Ta-da! You have yourself a pink sparkly flower of some sort. They don't look exactly how I thought they'd look, but I still really like them -- I was worried that they'd be overpoweringly sparkly, but I think they'll look great with the plain linen and muslin looks of my others.

I'm pretty happy with my work so far, and I love seeing the pile of flowers in my Giant Tupperware Box 'O Wedding growing bigger every day. I'll give more step-by-steps of the other flower designs I come up with and of the process of attaching the blooms to the wire stems. Woo!

Ideas for a card box

By the time our wedding rolls around, most of our wedding guests will have figured out that we're not registering for much. Sure, someday I'd like to have a cherry red KitchenAid stand mixer... would reeeeeally like to have a stand mixer. But October 22 will not be that day. See, we kinda have to have a place to live first.
Our next big project, after saving for the wedding and honeymoon, will be to start saving up the downpayment for a house. It's going to be rough and will take a while, and both our families know this. We're not outright asking for money as a wedding gift, but I strongly suspect that if people decide to gift us, they're going to do so with money.
I didn't know about card boxes until I saw someone's DIY one the other day -- but it made something in my brain go "ding!" It makes total sense for us to have a card box shaped like a house.
I'm getting my ideas together for making one. I think I'm just going to paint a box with a slit in it, then make a false front shaped and painted like a house. We'll see what I can come up with. But! If I had $80 to blow on something as... well... not very useful in the long run as a card box, I would buy this one:



By DoorCountryWoodworks

 Not only is it a fully-color-customizable card box -- it converts into a freakin' awesome birdhouse after your wedding is over. So dang cool. Oh well -- I don't have anywhere to store a birdhouse, anyway, and it makes great inspiration :)

What to make with these?

Miss Cinnamon Bun posted about her love for Papertrey Ink products on Weddingbee this morning, and I think I'm quickly following her in her enthusiasm. She featured their mason jar stamp set, which matches nicely with their mason jar paper-cutting dies.

All pictures courtesy of Papertrey Ink

And... did I mention that one of my Mom's co-workers has already offered to let me borrow her Cricut for wedding crafts? I am one lucky crafting dog! Now... I just have to figure out what to make with them, before I actually buy them. Swags for the tables? Inserts to go in the invites? Guestbook papers for guests to write on? The possibilites - they are endless.

Oh, Amazon, how I love thee.

I'm posting to keep the head rush of making my first big wedding-related purchase from making me spazz out at the circ desk.
I think I've mentioned before that I've been hankering to get started on my fabric flowers while it's still winter, while I have snow days to work on some of my more time-consuming projects. But -- it's hard to make something without the stuff to do it, and it's kind of hard for me to just waltz out and buy fabric. The nearest fabric store is in Johnson City, and I'd been itching for weeks to make a trip to Hancock's. This weekend, I had a chance to run in while on the way to dinner with my future-outlaws-family. I burst through the doors thinking I was going to find everything I needed right then -- but nope. Maybe it was just that I felt rushed, but I didn't see anything that really matched what I had in my mind, and I've made it a cardinal rule for myself not to put money into something that I don't know for certain that I'll want and use. So, I decided to wait.
I was contemplating other places to buy fabric when Mom asked me if I'd looked online. Why no, I hadn't... and so, I did.
After about an hour of surfing fabric websites and not feeling entirely sure where to plunk down my cash (though at least I was finding options of stuff that looked just like what I needed), I started wondering if I could buy fabric through Amazon. And guess what? You can!

I found a pretty good selection of synthetics and blends in colors that fit (to keep the edges of the petals from fraying, you have to toast the edges over a candle flame, and that doesn't really work unless the fabric is at least half synthetic), and the prices were great. I went ahead and ordered fabric for all the bouquets and the reception centerpieces, along with some felt for making felt flowers for the reception as well. I bought most of the extras, too -- some more needles since Mom's are all rusty, thread, cloth-covered florists' wire, glue sticks for the glue gun.
For $111 (including shipping), I think I've got most of the flowers taken care of (which is pretty good for seven bouquets, seven boutonnieres, and reception flowers!). There are a few odds and ends that I'm going to buy in-person at stores, such as buttons to go with some of the flowers (which I plan to buy at a local independent craft store that has just what I want) and ribbon (Amazon's ribbon selection was teh suck for me, but that's okay). I'll probably end up ordering wheat to go in the bouts/maybe in the bouquets/in the centerpieces when I order manzanita branches for the picture tree. And Mom has a ton of lace she'll let me use, which is fantastic.
So! Project Flowers is on the way. I also got some great encouragement about it over the weekend from Joy, one of my bridesmaids, who said she liked the idea of not killing flowers so they can be pretty just for one day. A woman after my own heart... and the fact that she said that helped J wrap his brain around it being an acceptable flouting of tradition :)
For my own reference, I started a list of what supplies I've bought and what I still need. My DIY project list has morphed some more, but I'll save another post on that for when I'm pretty sure it's set.
In the meantime, here's an idea of what I look forward to making:

Weddingbee's Mrs. Locket's DIY Fabric Flowers Series:

• Ditching The Florist...
• Vintage Fabric Flowers - Bouquets In Progress
• How Does Your Garden Sew? Part I: Garden Roses
• How Does Your Garden Sew? Part II: Attaching The Stems
• Bridal Bouquet In Bloom
• Lockets In Love: Pretty Little Details (Part I) -- with professional pics of Mrs. Locket's finished (gorgeous) handiwork