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