Addressing the Envelopes

First, we had to have a committee meeting about which font to use. Michael is super picky about fonts, we got complaints about the the save the dates being hard to read and I wanted something girly. Color was easy because the envelopes are brown so we went with green. After that I exported my guest list into a spreadsheet. Mike and I butted heads over how formal we should be. He was big on just writing first names and last names. I didn't want to be super formal, but I thought titles classed it up a bit. I won on that one (more or less). Then it took me hours and generous Googling to remember my Mail Merging skills.

It was at this point that, armed with 44 envelopes worth of documents, I enlisted Mike's help to test printing. For those of you who don't remember I would like to remind you now that I bought a new printer over the summer when we had issues with another wedding related project. It's not even 6mo old yet. He said "Ok, print the first one" (after checking all the settings). What followed were some very disturbing clunking noises akin to the Dad's battle with the furnace in A Christmas Story.

My heart sank, as there's no replacing the printer now and on principle it irritates me that it would be having issues so soon. Grrrr! Mike worked on it for hours and when it started acting normal again the alignment was all wrong so we gave up for a while. I'm worried I'll be hand addressing them again. When I tried to print a regular document the clunking started again.

If it was just an alignment issue we'd just switch to clear labels to move the printing along, but with the printer being so erratic who knows?

When I search DIY hand address wedding invitations every single hit says print the address lightly on the envelope and then trace it by hand. Nice, guys. If I could print I wouldn't be addressing by hand.

False Alarm

So, when I woke up this morning there was already a message on my phone.

"This is Dick with Sunken Garden's Bar Services. It's important that you give me a call back..."

At first I thought it was no big deal. He was probably verifying my caterer or something. I called and left him a message, but as the day wore on, no response. I started to worry that something really bad might have happened.

I tried him again a littlle while a go, it went like this:
Hi, thanks for calling me back. You're weddings on the 21st right?
(Freaking out that he knows my name and wedding date off the top of his head.)Yes.
Who's your caterer?
I tell him
Well, we have a problem...(he's obviously reading something). We can't do your liquor...are you having a bar?
No, we're not
Oh, ok. Phew! We have a party of 400 booked at (another venue) the same night.
Well, I guess everything's alright then. Thanks for getting back to me so fast.
No problem.

So in the end it's a good thing we're not doing a bar because we would have been sunk. I wonder what event has 400 people on a Wedsday? Our venue is city owned so you can't bring your own booze and our caterer isn't licensed to serve alcohol outside their resturant so most people use the venue's bar service, but aparently so do a few other city owned venues. Anyway, I'm so relieved there's no major issues (fingers crossed).

Post Christmas Wedding FREAK OUT

I'd love to tell you I'm as together as I wish I was, but prevents it. The occasional melt down has to happen. Especially, post holiday stress when I've had all I can stand of quality time with the kids and it's another week before school starts again. This time Mike went to Target and spent money on something we didn't need and I...well I wasn't very nice about it.

I sent him out today (the day after Christmas) for toilet paper, Coke and batteries. He came home with some sort of photo electric sensor smoke detector. Now, understand we have a functioning smoke detector which is essential, especially with kids in the house. He just wanted a fancier one. This one he claims will not go off when we cook. What Ever. He also brought me a very expensive new pillow. We have at least 10 pillows right now. This one is foam he tells me hastily tearing it from the packaging before I can return it.

In the same trip he also brought home fast food which for budget reasons we said we wouldn't do anymore. On top of which everyone else had already eaten lunch and as a former minimum wage employee I try not to frequent places when salaried workers are off with pay. I was pissed off. We just went over budget on Christmas, borrowing money from our wedding account which we've yet to put back. Rent is due shortly and the first of the vendor balances are creeping up in February. I'm concerning skipping the observance of my birthday (for anyone who knows me, you understand how serious this is). All that and he has the nerve to buy me an expensive pillow I don't need?!?

The inconsistency of what he says and how he behaves really confuses me sometimes. We didn't get each other gifts this Christmas to help save for the wedding. So, why on Earth would he buy something I neither want nor need? All the the other stuff he bought is annoying, but I can't really be mad about a smoke detector and food.

I yelled at him. I threw his words back in his face and reminded him how much money we owe ourselves (aka wedding account). I even cried a little and asked him what would happen if we couldn't pay everyone? I guess we'd do without and eat some deposits. The show would go on, but it's still a crappy thought.

Bottom line there's 85 days and counting it's all getting a little too real. I feel unprepared which I HATE and broke which is stressful. I think I'll feel better if I really believed Mike and I were on the same page with the budget. Maybe we'll get there now that it's sooooo much closer. I also think I'll be much calmer once these invitations go out. I think it'll give me a sense of acceptance.

Bride Check In

I'm fine. Healing well and the screws don't have to come out for a while, click here for a whole post about it.

Still feeling a little overwhelmed by the eminent holidays and immediate quick approaching wedding combination. I suppose that's the down side to being a spring bride. Lovely weather lousy timing financially. I suppose every season has it's issues. We're gearing up for a weekend full of holiday events, the last week of school for Isaac and I'm going a little stir crazy not being able to run around as much as I want (or drive).

I'm sorry for getting a little mopey and distracted lately. I promise tomorrow's post will be more fun...

Another Bump in the Road

We've hit another snag in my recovery. They happen, but it's harder to be patient when you have a wedding looming. I may need (gulp) another surgery. To pull the pin holding my bone together out. It would be minor as far as surgeries go and recovery would be quick, but I have no idea what it would mean for my time line. If the issue continues to cause me pain I don't know if it could be postponed until after the wedding. It's all very up in the air just now.

I'm frustrated because the whole point of having hip surgery last month was so I wouldn't be in pain at my wedding. I'm really worried even without considering another surgery in the near future that this issue will slow down or stop physical therapy which means my cushion of time between being recovered and my wedding will dwindle or disappear.

Like I said it too soon to know for sure, but the wedding is mostly paid for, invitations have been printed, people have made travel arrangements and so on. There's no stopping it now and I wouldn't want to. Especially not for this nonsense. I should know what the deal is later today. Fingers crossed this bride doesn't fall apart completely before the wedding.

The Not So Bridal Moments

It's looking like I will be have pre-wedding hip surgery. Sigh. I had a post waiting about picking invitations and one in the works about our other cake tasting, but today I don't feel like pretending anyone but me cares about planning my wedding.

Today I'm more plain old girl than bride-to-be. I am hallowed out by all the reality today. Just like the kidney infection reminding me that the reality of illness and immunity could even effect me GASP! on my wedding day. Today, was another dose of "You're still you even in a white dress surrounded by all your friends and family." The bride title doesn't make you bullet proof. If anything it paints a target on you sometimes.

I'm sure I can push ahead and survive one more procedure and recovery. I'm sure that I can not survive in the state I'm in. I'm sure I'll be grateful in the long run that my wedding and (cross your fingers) honeymoon won't be hindered by severe hip pain. I'm just sad to have to be a survivor again. To put Mike and the kids through it again. The uncertainty and the time line being so short, it's hard. Pray, for the right answers in a timely manner.

Anything can and often does happen. Your wedding being on the horizon is not a pause button on the relentless onslaught on challenges in life. It's one more set of things to do in your "spare time." I wish I knew I was dealing with the best case scenario. That dress deserves a sturdy gait maybe even a little spring in the step.

One step at a time, one foot in front of the other. Geez, pre-wedding hip surgery just wasn't on the knot's time line, folks. So, order invitations, have surgery and then final dress fitting or something like that.

Crafting Calendars: Part One: The Snags.

One of the first craft ideas in my DIY Bride Crafty Countdown book is a calendar for bridesmaids. I loved the idea. I love calendars and lists! I'd been planning an evening get together with my girls and wanted to make them each a calendar and contact sheets to take home. An organized wedding party is at least a slightly less stressed wedding party.

This was meant to be a fun Friday evening de-stress kind of project to ease me into the bigger and better wedding projects to come. Unfortunately the craft gods were not smiling on me for this one. Maybe the word processing/printer gods were the ones not smiling...either way someone had their undies in a bunch. This project is supposed to take an hour, mine took about 8hrs spread over two days. Don't misunderstand it was a lovely project and I'm glad I did it they come out great. I just thought the amount of to-do was comical in the end.

The book recommends using Microsoft Office to make the calendars. I didn't have that so I was using a free download, word processing program I got from the internet. Hitch number one: I had to find and download a calendar template. Hitch number two: It only worked in their spread sheet program. Spreadsheets don't often allow for cute, have you noticed? I made a month in the spreadsheet program copied it and pasted into a document. It was time consuming and (Surprise!)not so pretty in the end.

Then I upgraded to Microsoft Office. This made life easier for a while because the calendar template was built in. Hitch three: Getting the pages to print correctly. The pages are 4x9 so I wanted two pages to print on each sheet. Mike and I racked our brains and wasted paper. We never got it right with Word and had to switch to Publisher. That's right girlies I started from scratch three separate times so excuse the typos because I'm not re-typing squat.

Before I made my second attempt in Microsoft Office we were having printer issues. Hitch number three: we needed ink. I volunteered to run out for some, but Mike insisted on cleaning the printer first and broke it. You'd think after doing IT for so long that wouldn't happen. Then again maybe he just told me it was broken to get a new one...hmm... Hitch number four: broken printer. I ended up buying a new one because we're going to be doing a lot of printing. Not just silly crafts, but lots of other stuff for the wedding and my family's onslaught of birthdays.

After all was said and done we had everything we needed to get these done, but I was too tired to try until the next day. See my next post for instructions and pictures of the finished product.

Wrong Again...

I know you're all tired of hearing about the Save the Dates, but it's my blog and thus I vent. Before I get into it (forgive me if I've told you this already) I want to share something that made me laugh. We ordered 10 magnets as a test to make sure they were right before we bought the rest. I made a note on my calendar on the day they were supposed to arrive. On the message boards Save the Dates are commonly abbreviated STDs. Well, I wrote "STD test" on my calendar! I realized what it said laughed until I cried and then scratched it out and wrote "test magnets." Whoops! When I posted my little funny on a message board a mother of another bride responded that she had thoughtlessly sent an email saying "the rhinestones and tassels have shipped." After she sent it she realized it sounded like they were outfitting strippers rather than making table number and place cards. Hee, hee.

So, I paid rush shipping on the magnets and they came in as promised today. I was still kind of glowy from my meeting yesterday, but the magnets burst my bubble. They were still cut off on the bottom! The frame around the image has the important info on it so this is a huge deal. I was so frustrated!

I asked Mike to fix it and order more since I want them to go out next week. He shook his head and said something to the effect of "we've got plenty of time." I lost it. I insisted it was life or death that they go out next week. It is in reality crucial that we send them soon, but we probably have a window of two-ish weeks or so before we're in trouble. The other thing was I wanted to get them out and get the reactions to some of my unconventional choices over with. The longer we wait the longer I imagine the back lash. The anticipation is almost more stressful than the reaction will be. Mike said he would take a look at why the bottom was cut of this weekend, but I was pretty upset by then.

I told him we should scrap the whole thing. I told him I'd just do a simple one (like I wanted to from the beginning) and be down with it. After I calmed down we realized the we had enough for the out of towners for the most part. I'd just cut and assemble them anyway. I'd send them to people flying in with a note explaining what the cut off part said.

Simple enough? Well, 8.5 out of the 10 were destroyed in the cutting process. Good thing they weren't right. I have one and a half usable (but cut off) finished save the date. Sigh, we ordered 40 more after Mike "fixed the problem" and then realized exactly where we went wrong. Vista Print lists their large magnets as being 5.59 x 4.33, but the actual size is 5.47 X 4.21 (because of the bleed). This explained our cut off image and why my cutter keeps cutting my magnet poetry wrong. Whoops!

Hopefully, we'll do better with the next 40...

Gatherer Instincts Meets Wedding Planning

My brain is abuzz with all the possibilities, but my rational side is screaming about the time ticking by. What have you gotten done? Well, sorry to disappoint, but girls are hard wired to be gatherers. I needed to have tangible objects to make me feel in control and the beginnings of preparedness. All the green ones are clicky to show you pictures in new tabs.

Wedding purchases so far:

1. Alfred Angelo Gown-Goodwill-$70-4 years ago
2. Pattern for Flower girl dresses by Simplicity-Goodwill-.50-June 2011
3. Second Hand Dress for Reception-Goodwill-$30-June 2011
4. Lantern-Ikea-$4-June 2011

Hand-Me-Downs
Assorted flower girl baskets, ring pillows, cake server set, bridal book, magazines. I even had one of my amazing friends offer me her wedding dress to cut and alter as I pleased as long as I return some of the fabric to her. I have amazing friends.

Stuff I tried to buy, but the universe denied me:

1. Fairy cake topper-$30-Online Wedding Place-OUT OF STOCK (until Sept)
2. Corset-?-?-Haven't found the one, but not for lack of looking
3. Bridal Headband- Etsy-$N/A + $6 shipping (unless I buy two items)-Indecision/lack of confidence

Decisions Made:

1. Venue-It's unanimous!-Sunken Gardens
2. Theme/Colors-Midsummer Night's Dream/Enchanted forest, Emerald and ivory with accents of lavender
3. Flower Girl Dress Inspiration-Now if only fabric/color were so easy
4. Officiant-It's going to be a beautiful ceremony
5. Wedding Party-You guys are amazing!
6. Bridesmaid Dresses!-This one was all me, much to groomzilla's chagrin. He's been the color police insisting certain shades of green (like emerald and sage) will clash and "ruin everything!"
7. Caterer-Another Unanimous Easy Pick-I'll post all about it when they're booked.
8. Florist-Friend of the family and absolute wonder woman. I can't wait to work with her.

If I made a list of what was left to do I'd probably throw up. Our date remains in limbo, sadly. Once that mess is resolved we'll have date, venue and caterer resloved in one masterful stroke. Do you see how dramatic being in limbo makes me? This has to end. Our cake maker is waiting to see if her husband's job relocates him in the next month before we're good to go, fingers crossed for staying put. We have a second choice for cake, but really doesn't every bride want their first choice as much as possible? I'm also waiting for word from my day of coordinator who I've begin to think of as my unofficial right hand even before she's excepted the job.

I've also begun pondering kid wrangling, vows, photography/videography, Mike's attire, the groomsmen attire, bridal accessories, flowers and music. All the details and logistics come and go in my eager-to-be-selfish-for-even-a-second mom brain.

We did sit down as a couple for 4ish hours over the weekend and work on our kick ass save the dates. They still need tweaking, but we're darn close to a prototype (and me hand cutting 40 sets of magnets). Have you ever noticed that when you tackle a project in photo shop you always go in thinking the images and editing are going to be tricky, but then we just add the text. Yeah, right. Deciding which font out of countless billions that are download ready (or in our case multiple fonts) and then the exact right shade and hue of the exact right color. The size and storke. The placement and semantics. Anyway, we'll get there and I expect to post about it by week's end.

Retail Therapy

I went "wedding shopping" today and came home empty handed. I was feeling kind of down about life in general and still not having a date. I thought going shopping (even if it was just a fact finding mission) would cheer me up. I invited my mom to go see what we could find at the mall.

First, I found this cute little dress. However, they did not have it in my size and it was on sale so it's doubtful I'd be able to get my size. I thought, "Hmmm...I could handle this as a reception dress." So, I tried it on to see if it would fit.

Cute right? Cuter if it fit a little better.
Here's a close-up of the top:

This is the detail below the hem:

Maybe a little too low key for the reception, but it would have been good for the rehearsal dinner or something. Anyway, it didn't fit quite right. I sadly left it behind.

I soldiered on with my mom looking for anything she could wear, the maids could wear or I could wear. I looked in all the department stores, Victoria's Secret and Hot Topic. I was thinking if I found a corset/bustier I could wear it as the top of the reception dress with the tulle skirt from the thrift store wedding dress. It would be pretty and already fit. Apparently, there's slim pickings in my size. I found a beautiful option at VS, but the smallest size it came in was a C and I haven't been a C cup since I weaned Riley.

At JcPenny's they had one option, you heard me uno. It was kind of pretty, but again a size too big. It looked like this:

Nothing spectacular, but pretty. It was too big, which is a real self esteem killer. If your trying to shop as a means of cheering yourself up don't try on underwear that's to big, it has the opposite effect.

In hindsight neither were exactly what I was looking for. It's just a bummer when I'm already sad and I get a reminder that world isn't built for little people. Onward and upward, mom and I are hitting the racks at a boutique tomorrow to see about a dress for her and investigate bridesmaid options.

Ready, Set, Stall...

Today we attempted to get the fabric for a test dress from the flower girl pattern and supplies for our interactive, magnetic save the dates. I had been fretting over the mechanics of the save the date so long I hadn't even considered what they would actually say. It occurred to me last night I didn't need the right words because Shakespeare's would do nicely. Enchanted fairy forest wedding inspired by Midsummer Night's Dream should include a word from The Bard here and there.

While we were prowling the overcrowded aisles of Joann's discussing things like what color brads to use, etc the air conditioner came on. I remember that is was loud and then very dramatically the power went out. They sent us to the front of the store and then encouraged us in no uncertain terms to leave our stuff and get the heck out. Jerks.

I came home empty handed. I decided instead to work on t-shirts for the wedding party. I'll post pictures when they're done. I considered painting champagne flutes for the wedding, but Mike explained how complicated a process it was and I opted to buy some on Etsy. Something like these:

I'm thinking pretty champagne flutes for the maids and beer mugs with initials for the men. Something like this:

I want everyone in the wedding party to have some kind of glass with their name on it to take home. I may do a good old, custom Etsy order.

As for the shirts I can't finish them until we decide our Bests and Of Honors, so I'm just getting a start on them. I'm designing them and having them silk screened. I also want to do some fun kids cups for the kids table. I think we have ten-ish kids on the guest list. If anyone has a suggestion for those, let me know. I'm thinking something with lids and straws since they'll be dressed up.

Also, I've decided not to buy the metal lanterns and distress them, but to press on looking for rustic wooden ones. The metal ones are more budget friendly, but after copious internet research I'm not happy with the unpredictable nature of distressed metal. I'm thinking I'd like two lanterns (four if it's a great deal). I'd love help finding those too (if anyone's still reading).

More crafty stuff, dress updates and vender discussion to come as soon as the date drama is resolved, I promise.

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Aisle

As you may have noticed we got engaged in December of 2009 and it is currently May 2011 and we're not married yet. In fact we don't even have a wedding date yet. Life just kept relentlessly, well...happening.

We knew we would get married before the official proposal, but first the economy went south and then SURPRISE! I was pregnant. It was a difficult pregnancy and I spent most of it on bed rest (and in the end delivered 6weeks early). I didn't bounce back from pregnancy very well and when Riley was 8months old I had spinal fusion surgery. It's a procedure where they insert a rod into your spine to keep it straight. Fun stuff. It was an absolutely horrific ordeal and requires 2years for full recovery. Once I was well on my way to my old self, minus the debilitating back pain, it was time to leave the house our family of four had out grown. So, now we're settled and my thoughts have returned to the big day.

The show must go on...