Wedding Feature

I decided that I think more about posting then I actually do. After the wedding I have been not wanting to do anything, except hang out. But I feel that my creative juices and energy is once again flowing. To my amazing surprise our wedding was featured on the Wedding Chicks website.

It was nice to see all that hard work up on a "real" (as opposed to my "fake" blog). It gave me a little hope that maybe I could give some ideas to other brides who were in the same position as me. And now again, I feel the inspiration. Getting married is a totally awesome, and somewhat horrid experience. The process can be a crazy, stressful, "mess". It does not help it when the prices are jacked up because you are having more than a party, you are have a WEDDING! To me these were the same thing. I believe now that really all you need to create an awesome wedding is a little love, and a few good ideas. My goal in the next week is to do my own write up of the wedding, and all the crafts that went into it. Maybe I can give at least one bride a good idea.

For now though, I am off to drink champagne, while watching my husband and my best friend dork out while play a James Bond game from the 90's. Life is good.

**The adorable cupcake figures from our cupcakes were purchased from http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=348"> samyii's etsy shop. She has some super cute and affordable bride and grooms up now too!

the perfect ending

The wedding is long over. Everything went beyond perfect, which is pretty amazing. Not at all what I expected. Now we are trying to get back to life as normal, or as a married couple. Organizing photos, and guest books, figuring what we are going to do with all the pieces that are left over from our big day. I guess you could say I am taking my time getting back into this mode of things. I am so happy that its all over, said and done with. What a day!

I spent the last 6 months crafting this wedding to "perfection" all the while comparing it to all these other weddings I have seen. Always thinking that ours will be not even compare. But really when it was all said and done, our wedding was awesome. I must say that I am pretty impressed by my wedding planning skills, considering I have never even been in a wedding. The design aspect came out just like I had imagined and it was damn cute if I do say so myself. We created something that was so us. I do not think that is easy to do, and I still revel in the fact that we created this ourselves. And now we have the rest of our lives ahead of us. This picture by our amazing photographers Lori and Keith at http://www.loriandersonphoto.com/">Lori Anderson Photography

sums up the feelings of the day.

Buttoniers

I threw together an idea and here is the outcome. Surpisingly these were easy to make. This is one of five so hopefully they get more cute with each creation. Thanks to tia for perusing michaels for half an hour with me!

5,4,3,2,1....

with the wedding a mere 5 weeks away, i would say that "i am getting into it" and "getting over it". there is still so much that needs to be done, i am so lucky that i am the sort of girl that does not care about things like napkins. i will say now that i know what i know i would have done everything differently. but all i can do is work with what we have made and make it awesome for us and our friends and family.

currently i am listening and re listening to the playlist of songs that we may be playing for the ceremony. i think when i choose them, i will keep them to myself and let it be surprise. the hardest is choosing the song i will walk to, maybe i will just run!

to throw or not to throw?

so i have been working on the order of events for the party (yes, i am calling it a party), we are not doing a lot of traditional things other than the first dance. there will be no garter tossing, because there simply will be no garter. but i am playing with the idea of the tossing of the bouquet. i think it might be something fun to do, but i also think it could be the opposite. so i decided i am going to do a poll, to toss the bouquet or not to toss? let me know your thoughts.

Jars jars and more jars!

So I am still on my mission for jars. So far I have started a pretty good collection. I am collecting food jars now too. It's all about reusing what is already available. I think that the miss match look is going to be adorable once the sun starts going down and the candles get lit. I can't wait to see it!! If you have any extra jar around, let me know and I will take them off you hands and give them a new life, that does not involve the landfill.

make it work

Part of my not updating the blog is because I have recently been making these invitations happen. After a lot of effort we realized that the screen printing them ourselves was not going to happen. Though at that point we could not and would not scrap our original idea, especially because we already had everything for them, including our layout. So with a little bit of magic they are born. As Tim Gun say's we made it work.

With a little bit of printing, stamping, cutting, embossing, and exacto knife-ing these are each one of a kind. The fronts are covered with scrap paper and our silhouettes are embossed. The inside is stamped and printed. The silhouettes on the front of the invites and the back of the inserts were exacto knifed from photos, one of them being an adorable photo from our engagement session. For the front I had the silhouette made into a stamp, those will be repurposed for the wedding. Anyhow the point is done, and our friends and family will have them in their mailboxes soon. I do not have to stamp or emboss or glue any more invitations! This girl could not be happier.

shower and polaroids and fun

The wedding is coming together. The bridal shower is already past! It happened yesterday, it was good times to be had by all. My friends and family are awesome, and it made me realize that this is really going to happen! We will make it happen one way or other ;) There is still so much to do, but the invitations are done and almost ready to be mailed! Yah!

a matter of color

Finally I have finished all the paper flowers for my bouquet. Initially I had wanted to put butterflies in it, and well, sometimes a vision does not look as great in real life. So now I have all these paper flowers that so much time and effort went into, but I feel that I really need more color then they have to offer. I love pops of color, I need a pop. These butterflies offer just that. I am thinking possibly a butterfly bouquet !? Too many crafty ideas can make a person crazy. It makes me wonder how some people get anything done.

colors and a want ad

I have changed the wedding colors, slightly. I could not get over the fact that the purple and the mustard reminded me of the lakers. I really like the blue though, I think its going to look stellar.

If anyone can assist with helping me I need to obtain/locate the following items:

---Vintage Books (I am looking in to library sales, but I only found one occurring in the next month)

---Used Mason Jars (any color, but clear would be ideal, they need to be able to hold a tea light candle)

---Table cloths (went to the flea market with no luck. I am looking for color, no white ones)

If you have any leads, or any ideas let me know. Your assistance is much appreciated :)

dresses

growing up i have never been matchy, matchy. according to my mother, she did not even know if i knew how to match. so the bridesmaid dress thing is super hard for me to grasp. also its hard to express the fact that i do not really mind what you wear to be in the wedding, as long as it fits into the "color scheme" (yup i have one!) and its cute. i think my friends are secretly matchy matchy. its so much easier to be a guy in this situation. I do however adore this picture, simple backyard wedding, darling dresses on the bridal party. no matter what everyone wears, its going to be awesome. . .
image from http://brokensaucer.blogspot.com/ broken saucer blog

i heart paper

so things are getting done, i am just too busy to post about it. i put inserts in the envelopes using old magazines, its kind of random but i think its a cute touch. i also finished the first part of the place cards, needless to say i am way over embossing at the moment. the invitations are starting to come together, i am super excited about them. for now here is a shot of some of my lovely envelopes.

thank you cards (sneak peak)

Call me crazy! But I just finished the thank you cards for the wedding. Well for after the wedding. They came out cute, a little embossing can go a long way (thanks for your help Tia). I even stamped our return addresses on the envelopes! Another thing to cross off the to do list. It sure feels good to do that.

the champion cupcake

Yesterdays cupcake tasting extravaganza was so delightful! We tasted cupcakes from Long Beach to LA and we found "the place". The cupcakes are moist, light and flavorful, the frosting melts in your mouth. We tried the pretentious and the mediocre and we found the gem we were looking for. Yah for Miss Priss cupcakes!! I will provide a more detailed rundown of the other places we visited in my next post. I just wanted to share the news.

photos are fun!

After a weekend of depressing and agonizing wedding dress shopping. (yes wedding dresses are much more hideous in real life than on the computer screen). We booked our photographer (Lori Anderson Photo) and got our engagement photos back! yah! I am excited to have something accomplished.

I am beginning to wonder though, what is wrong with me? Wedding planning is not the most exciting thing I have ever done, and shopping for that little white dress? I would much rather be shopping for any other dress. Like the cute mustard one I bought today at anthroplogie.

garland and banners

I am currently super obsessed with the idea of garland and banners. Home made, of course. I have a word doc. full of pictures and ideas. Where do you start, and where do you edit!?Image and how to found on

Once Wed

center pieces, go!

over the weekend i went to a plant sale in fullerton. i bought a handful of succulents, and some of them came in really cute, vintage looking pots. these are part one of the centerpiece project. i am thinking about mixing them with old, vintage looking books, and somehow working records into the mix. i just do not want to overdo anything. i want to keep it simple. the book idea is perfect though, because when i make the garland, banner things i have i mind, i am thinking about using old dictionaries and books.
i think its hard for me to keep to one central theme. the ideal theme is vintage meets modern. i being the one whose into vintage, matt into modern. i just want to make sure that it represents both of us, hence the records for matt (even though they are not really modern, unless you are a hipster and like records because its cool to like records).

the sunday wedding

we (matt, sandy and me) are taking a trip to palm springs in like half an hour. we are going to the sunday wedding put on by flashdance. check out the website, they are group of super talented, creative people. cant wait to tell you all about it!

the dress search

i want this dress!!! i found it on rock'n roll bride. i have looked at a ton of online sites for dresses and i have not even seen one that i would want to wear, or spend my money on. there are really a lot of frightening wedding dresses out there. oh how i can wait to start my search.

goals

i think one thing that one has to keep in mind while planning is what they want the whole wedding to be or feel like, and to not get overwhelmed by what is expected. and that is not easy. we want a wedding that we built, with little pieces of our personalities combined to make one great, memorable party with a fun/cutesy vibe. a wedding is a celebration of love. (that sounds very hippy-ish, but i am pretty sure its true). its not about how much money you spend, or what designer made your dress ect, ect, ect. speaking of what a wedding is, i think this invitation is too cute, from evapaul
on etsy. we are currently playing with the idea of making an invitation that looks like a concert poster. i am supposing we are going to make another attempt at screen printing. but these could be plan b!

visiting the location

some think i made a crazy choice by picking a location that i had never been to. the choice was made both from frustration and because i knew that it did not really matter where we got married. we were going to make it great no matter what. i really wanted to get married at the ace hotel in palm springs, that place is awesome, but i also do not want to be broke after this. after all, it is just one day. so we opted to move the wedding almost a year sooner and pick a smaller more affordable venue.
we chose the newland barn in huntington beach. m's step sister had her reception there and he had gone, so at least he had been there. em and i paid the location a visit last week. its cute, its next door to a trader joes, that is kind of weird, but i can deal with it, and if we run out of something we can walk on over and pick it up! the one thing that i realized when i saw the location though, is that i have soooo much work to do! and the thought of actually walking down an isle (also known as a 3 foot gap between chairs) seems unreal to me. maybe i should have opted for vegas after all!
they have a gazebo on location, but there is no way i am getting married in front of a gazebo, that is so not me, so i an choosing the spot across from the gazebo, in front of the little water tower looking thing. what do you think? i think that its the right move.

save the date postcards

the making of our save the date post cards was trying. we went for the postcard option to save on paper. we took a screen printing class at bluerooster art supply in l.a. which equipped us with basic screen printing knowledge. though through lots of trial and error and we made them, and to my surprise they came out great!

we are getting married!

we are getting married in five months! this is our way of documenting the making of our big day. maybe this way we will remember to enjoy it, and to have fun with it, instead of stressing over to do lists, expectations, and ridiculously priced wedding gowns! (i know matt is really stressed about finding a dress).
(the lovely picture above was taken by

lori anderson