Saturday, December 27, 2008

beautiful day

Yesterday, Lindy and Carrie accompanied me to buy my wedding dress (yep!). I didn't really need their help picking/purchasing the dress, but I did want them to see it. More than that, though, I wanted them to try on bridesmaid dresses. Mom has wanted to make them from Day 1, but we figured that if we found something off the rack that fit everyone, why go to that trouble? Unfortunately, since Carrie is six feet tall (believe it), everything that looking amazing on petite Lindy made Carrie look like she was wearing her clothes from junior high school. We didn't take many pictures, but here are a few:We all really wanted this dress to look great, because the style is so fabulous but.... obviously it was not a winner. Plus, in this color Carrie kind of looks like an ear of corn.

Lindy needed to see how the dress looked next to a tux before she made a decision. Winner! (but not in brown, obviously)

However, the dress was too short for Carrie and the store does not make it in a "long," so we came home and started combing through patterns. Thank you Vogue! We'll fit the girls for the center dress and hem it at the knee.

The next job, of course, was to find fabric. Mom and I headed into San Francisco this morning to shop at Britex. I was in fabric heaven!


We ended up with a gorgeous silk dupioni in eggplant (the picture does not do it justice). So much prettier than the brushed cotton dress from the bridal store.


Plus something pretty for me too:


While in the city, we walked through the Flower Mart, since we are going to do our own flowers too and stopped in Fantastico, where I found all kinds of tacky bridal accessories:

Bachelorette on the loose!


Tomorrow we are going to visit the Seymour Marine Discovery Center at Long Marine Laboratory in Santa Cruz and will then have to visit the Holbrook Palmer Park in Atherton and make the big venue decison. I'm exhausted just thinking about it!

invites and STDs

We have been getting so much accomplished! I have always sort of turned up my nose regarding wedding planning because it seemed so frivolous and unneccessary, but I've actually been having a lot of fun.

Let's talk stationary. I think it's pretty ridiculous to pay 100s of dollars for paper, so I have known from the beginning that I would be designing and printing my own invitation suite. My mom recieved a gorgeous new printer for Christmas, so we have been itching to do some fun printing. When I came home from Sacramento, my mom and I went into Michaels looking for a fern or orchid stamp to use as a general motif to guide our design process and came out with DIY wedding stationary kits - everything we need for invites, response cards, and save the dates for under $50! We are using the Anna Griffin Wedding Studio Invitation Kit in green:We have also ordered two beautiful stamps from Stampin' Up and ink pads in kiwi to adorn the stationary:

Today I have been working on designing the save the dates (have you noticed how on all the wedding blogs, they shorten "save the dates" to "STDs?" Maybe it's just because I work with hormonally-driven teenagers, but that just really makes me uncomfortable...). I was originally going to just do a basic text save the date with the stamp as decoration, but then I started getting creative. Here is the leading design this evening:

After we print them, we will then circle the number 25 by hand in ink.

Next up, bridesmaid dresses!

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

clever rhymes

Jessica sent me the sweetest engagement gift today!


I know what Mom and I will be doing when I get home on Saturday.

Other wedding books that I might be sort of interested in, just in case you were thinking of buying me a wedding-related Christmas gift (seriously? When did I become so interested in weddings?):


And I'm buying this for Brian. :)

engagement time!

With the busy-ness and excitement that the last few weeks of school brings, I sort of forgot about this blog. Oops.

Oh yeah, and I got engaged.

For real.

Over Thanksgiving holiday, Brian and I visited both sets of parents. He asked my dad for permission to marry me. My dad cried. Not once, not twice, but three times. It was adorable. When we went to Santa Cruz to hang with the Ellis family, Brian took me down to the beach. We walked past a dead seal (very romantic!), he recited a haiku he wrote for me (yep), then got down on one knee (I said, "Seriously? Do you have to do that?") and gave me my ring. It was not terribly surprising, since, you know, I was there when we bought the ring and when he talked to Pops. What was surprising? Alex and Erica hiding behind an umbrella taking pictures of the whole proposal!


We then got an impromptu photo shoot. Here are but a sampling of the 250 pictures Alex took (most of which feature at least one of us with our eyes all squinty, or me doing my ridiculous open mouth-closed eye laugh. Look out, wedding photogs, you've got a difficult couple on your hands...):


Consider this blog officially back in action, especially since Brian has limited patience for wedding-talk, since he just started a new job. And since it's only taken me.... 3 weeks to blog about the actual engagement, I'm sure this will just be a hot-bed of wedding planning updates!

Sunday, November 16, 2008

back in the day

So. Things have progressed a little faster than anticipated.

May I present to you

(drumroll please...)


MY RING!


Long story incredibly short:

Yesterday morning Brian and I walked to breakfast and over too many cups of coffee decided that when we finished grading we would go to the mall to look at rings so he would have an idea of what I liked and we could see what certain rings would look like on my tiny fingers.

We got there. We tried this one on. We both fell in love with it. I now have an engagement ring!

That I'm not allowed to wear.

Brian wants to officially ask my dad and then still wants to plan a proposal that is more special than, "Do you like this one? OK, I'll buy it."

Things just got a whole lot more interesting.

Monday, November 10, 2008

dress you up


a perfect circle

I am a modern girl, and I require a modern ring (well, I don't really require anything, to be honest). Two designs I've been considering (Brian is being very patient with me).




picture perfect

I WANT A PHOTOBOOTH!


I've seen a lot of DIY photobooths, which would be a far less expensive (but still totally awesome) alternative. I really like the idea of a Polaroid photobooth, but Polaroid cameras and film are hard to come by... I'll keep thinking...

SO CUTE with the picture frames! Mini white boards would be fun too.
via Flickr

party!

While we would ideally like to have our "party" at the home of either his parents or my own, neither house would really allow for the type of gathering that we are thinking of having. I mentioned Nestldown in a previous post, but that's a bit of a fantasy. Here are a few other ideas off the top of my head:

(It has a red barn and a bocce ball court!)





strike a pose

PosePrints.com allows you to create customized stationary in minutes with look-alike "poses." I made this one for fun:


I like the idea of sending a single save-the-date type postcard as the entire wedding invitation, with all of the RSVP, driving directions, lodging, and registry info online. PosePrints cards are $2 each, but since we only plan to have maybe 50 people attend the wedding, it might be a relatively inexpensive stationary idea.

greeeeen

I love this entire board from Kathryn at Snippet & Ink


I think regardless of the season, green will be the main color in my design palette, in one shade or another. I like green, purple, and brown for fall, winter, and spring weddings and green, yellow, and cream for summer.

CHUPPA!

We are not Jewish, but I have always wanted a chuppa at my wedding:


The chuppa represents two things:
  1. the home that the couple will build together - the "home" lacks furniture as a reminder that home is made up of the people within it, not the possessions
  2. openness and hospitality
Beautiful!

goosegrease

Custom Cake Toppers

favor me

Cuuuuuuute


Enduring Oak 12-pack
via Seeds of Life

brrr

Summer is nice, but I am also taken with the idea of a winter wedding. These details might help seal the deal:

Coffee and Bittersweet Chocolate Mousse

Beautiful green and brown accents
via Martha Stewart Weddings


Pinecone Hurricane Vases
via Martha Stewart Weddings

Mini Mac and Cheese Hors d'Oeuvers
(maybe
lobster mac and cheese?)
via Martha Stewart Weddings