inspiration board

Sparkler Love

These photos make me want sprinklers at our wedding sooo bad. What a super cute sendoff!

Best Tool Ever!

I recently made the best purchase ever. As you all know, I'm making paper flower garlands. My plan for said garlands is to create an entire wall of tissue paper flower goodness that will hang behind the head table. While I love how this project will turn out, it's a bit of a pain in the ass to do. Britney helped me fold about 80 of these the other night during SVU... I love her. In order to make the flowers I have to cut down each sheet into 12 smaller squares. You then put four squares together to make a flower. Considering I need to cover a 15x8ft section of wall, this equals a lot of tissue paper cutting. I've been working with scissors and its tedious and slow BUT enter the best purchase EVER:
THE ROTARY CUTTER AND SELF HEALING MAT!!!!!
















This tool has seriously made my life a million times easier. I cut all this in one hour while watching SVU!



For $14.99 this is a lifesaver.

I think I've found a direction to go with the bridemaids outfits. I definitely want all of the girls to wear black dresses, all different but similar in length/material. I'm seriously considering going to dresses with straps/sleeves since it will be winter and a little chilly. I know I want them all to wear cute heels, but I don't know if I want them to match. I am definitely leaning towards black dresses with gold accents/shoes. If I go with gold heels I think that they would almost have to be the same in order to get all the same color.




I'm also kind of in love with this dress and this dress. I don't know if they would really work for the wedding but maybe i'll just get one for myself?

Wedding Date Update

Alright. Here's the official not ever changing unless the world implodes, set in stone, enforced by Jake wedding date - December 11, 2010.

We did decide on March at first, as mostly a compromise. It made sense in my head, but the more I thought about a March wedding the more it didn't make sense in my heart. In case you all are wondering, here's how we ended up at this date.

We originally planned on getting married in August 2011 before we were even engaged. The plan was to get married when Jake was done with school and his licensing exam. As we moved closer to engagement and marriage, I realized that waiting another two years to get married just wasn't going to make me happy. Luckily Jake loves me and wants to marry me whenever so we moved to date to May 2011 so at least he was done with school.

May didn't exactly work because of the multitude of graduations and proms within the family that would almost definitely conflict with our chosen date and make life stressful.

We still felt that it was important to at least put off the wedding until Jake was comfortable fitting it in with his school obligations, so we knew we didn't want to get married in the summer or 2010. We tossed around the idea of a Christmas wedding as well as a random month wedding sometime between Dec and May. At the time Dec seemed like it would present way too many complications and settled on March because if I did decide to go back to school I would at least be on break. March 19 was just the compromised, sensible day so we went with it.

I've been thinking about it a lot, trying to decide what I really wanted for the wedding. My first choice would be a nice summer wedding, semi-outdoors, and smallish. That went out the window very quickly - summer of 2011 was too far out and summer 2010 seemed to too soon. To be honest, the only other wedding vision I kept coming back to was this white, winter wedding with a candle lit ceremony and lots of soft pretty touches. This, unfortunately didn't seem to fit with March.

After lots of thought, stress and deliberation I have decided to go with December. Jake told me the other day to just decide what I wanted and to do it, and just make it work no matter what. So here we are. I will be having white winter wedding with candle light and soft touches.

Also, this wedding date is now unmovable. Jake has assured me that he will not let me change it, and so it is now set in stone. I will begin working on our Save the Dates now and once they are done... no changing my mind!

So we've now started re-thinking about the wedding date. We are still toying with December 2010. We're thinking it would most likely need to be either December 11th or 18th (both saturdays) in order to have time to do a honeymoon, Christmas, and family Christmas stuff. Not sure if we could fit it all in though? If its not in December it is going to still be March 19th. I'm just afraid that if we move it to December we would run out of time to do both family's Christmas stuff as well as the wedding and honeymoon.
Any thoughts from the loyal readers?

Falling in love... again

So I was at the thrift store today and totally fell in love with milk glass!!!
I bought three vases for .50cents each!! At that price falling in love is even easier.

Here's some inspiration wedding pics with milk glass...

Tissue Paper Garlands

I found this idea online for tissue paper flowers, and thought it would be really pretty to make garlands from.
I have this vision of having an entire hanging wall of these flowers to make a really pretty, soft, and cheap! backdrop for the head table. I mocked one up in the apartment and I'm really happy with how it came out. I don't know if the photo does it justice, but here it is...



I'm also excited because I figure I can do this project way early and just store the flowers. i figured out that if I cut them and bundle them flat I can finish the majority of the work it takes to make these way in advance and just store them and finish fluffing them up closer to the wedding.

Best Friday Morning EVER

Amazing things happened this morning!
1. I woke up to FLOWERS and DOUGHNUTS. Jake snuck out early this morning while I was still sleeping and I woke up to this:

Ignore the bite... I got hungry before I thought to take a photo :)

2. I found this amazing photography thanks to Kristian. Go check it out!
http://www.jessica-valle.com/

Union

Found this on weddingbee and fell in love with it:

Union by Robert Fulghum
You have known each other from the first glance of acquaintance to this point of commitment. At some point, you decided to marry. From that moment of yes, to this moment of yes, indeed, you have been making commitments in an informal way. All of those conversations that were held in a car, or over a meal, or during long walks – all those conversations that began with, “When we’re married”, and continued with “I will” and “you will” and “we will” – all those late night talks that included “someday” and “somehow” and “maybe” – and all those promises that are unspoken matters of the heart. All these common things, and more, are the real process of a wedding.
The symbolic vows that you are about to make are a way of saying to one another, “You know all those things that we’ve promised, and hoped, and dreamed – well, I meant it all, every word.”Look at one another and remember this moment in time. Before this moment you have been many things to one another – acquaintance, friend, companion, lover, dancing partner, even teacher, for you have learned much from one another these past few years. Shortly you shall say a few words that will take you across a threshold of life, and things between you will never quite be the same.
For after today you shall say to the world –
This is my husband. This is my wife.

Bridesmaids Dresses

I really don't like the look of totally matching bridesmaids dresses, but for all you doubters out there, here's a little inspiration that proves it can still be amazing...

New Sofa

So it has been a big week in the Rx household. We acquired a kitchen "island" and a new sofa. The old dining room chairs broke and in the process of finding new ones I discovered bar stools and then decided I needed more counter space... thus leading to the "need" of an island. I'm still deciding if I like it.

A new sofa was also added to the family this week. We've been talking about getting a new one for a while. Guinness, multiple college parties, and several years have caused some damage to good old big red. The fabric had become threadbare and the center support beam was broken, making the couch a sinkhole to sit in. Anne and Mary went to Ikea today (!!!!!!) so I got to tag along and found a new couch! I think its pretty yummy.





R.I.P. Big Red

Wedding Industry Meanies

So it has been several times now that I've run into some super snotty characters in the wedding business. It makes me wonder how these people make money if they insist on being totally inflexible and not working with/being polite to brides. I have received some very curt emails in response to pricing requests for venues - along the lines of: we won't book you this early, you can't afford us, pricing is only available after 'consultation' etc." I guess its more the way it's said rather than what is said.

David's Bridal did this as well. They acted totally uppity about needing an appointment when all I wanted to do was LOOK at dresses. I wasn't trying to monopolize some sales girl for hours, I just wanted to LOOK.

Today's episode/run in with the wedding industry really pissed me off though. Me and Jake were enjoying a nice lunch at the north market and I remember the store, On Paper in the short north.



I've tried to look in several times but it always seems to be closed. I convinced Jake to wander in there with me and I actually got really excited. They had some really nice paper and products in really awesome colors, and I started thinking I would actually like to buy from there. In the very back of the store they had all these books of invite suites and some chairs and a table. So we picked up a book and started flipping through it. A few minutes later this sales girl walks back and asks how we are doing etc. I said you know that we were just looking/trying to get ideas of what we liked. I got the feeling maybe we weren't supposed to be there so I asked if it was ok to just flip through stuff. This girl assured me and Jake that we were fine and just ask her if we had any questions. Nice, right?

Enter in super bitch sales girl. So we're sitting there, nicely, politely, not bothering anyone, when this other woman comes back and starts reprimanding us for not having an appointment. She's telling me that she prefers us to only look by appointment so someone can "guide us in the right direction". Umm... what direction? Do you know what I want? Am I even allowed to look and get an idea? So anyways I said you know the other girl said it was fine, so we didn't know. AND SHE GOES "well, that's not exactly what I heard but..." Why would I lie about this!?!?! So after a several minute scolding she disappeared into the back and we quickly ran out.

I just can't figure this out. Here we are, browsing your selection, maybe wanting to buy something, not bothering anyone, and yet you treat us like crap? Is this how the wedding industry is? Is this seriously how this place does business. We both walked out of there feeling really crappy and unhappy about wedding stuff in general and that store in particular.

Boo :(

Stages of Wedding Planning

I just found this post and thought I would share. It is so accurate its scary. I definitely think I'm bouncing back and fourth between stages 5-7. It makes me happy to know I am not alone!

First Post/Color Schemes?

Choosing colors for the wedding has been more difficult than I anticipated. I’ve been having a bride identity crisis lately. There are so many options out there. Am I a preppy, urban, old fashioned, traditional, rustic, modern, vintage, classic, unique, edgy, nautical, or feminine? What’s “me”? Since I couldn’t really pinpoint any sort of “vibe” in particular I decided to just focus on colors that I was drawn to. I love the modern but classic look of black and white weddings but I also love the garden, nature feminine vibe of vibrant yellows and greens, so I’ve decided to scrape the typical duel color scheme and use all four! For some eye candy, here’s some inspirational photos to drool over:

After a trip to JoAnn fabrics I came up with my won recreation of this color pallet:

Any thoughts?