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Jan3

Flowers

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So now that 2011 is underway I need to look into some things I have been neglecting. According to my weddingwire check list I have 7 things off my to-do list that are officially “over-do.”

So the first order of business seems to be finding a florist. In order to do that I need to first decide exactly what I want as far as flowers are concerned, then I can set about meeting with
florists. So here is my list in order of priority:
1) I need a bouquet.
I’m not super picky about this but I’m leaning towards bouquets of just one flower. I think Lily of the Valley bouquets are very beautiful and so are Calla Lilies.

2) I need boutonnieres and corsages for the parents and grand-parents of the Bride and Groom.
Chris has opted out of wearing a boutonniere and so he and his groomsmen will wear pocket squares. That leaves us with 6 women and 5 men who needs flowers.
I especially like this top boutonniere but it is orchids so I suspect that I will go in a different direction because of cost.
3) I need flowers for the flower girls.
I haven’t talked to the church yet about scattering flower petals on the aisle so it’s possible the flower girls will just be carrying flowers. Regardless that one thing I really want them each to have are flower garlands for their hair. My favorite of the group is the last one but I also really like this first one, I would want the accent flowers changed to something yellow but I just love those big daisies!

4) I need flowers for my bridesmaids, decorations for the church, and decorations for the reception hall.
These may seem to be of strangely low importance but there’s a reason for that.
For the bridesmaids I want each of the to carry a single yellow rose. I think that will be beautiful and dramatic against their silver dresses and yellow shoes. So the reason this is of low importance is that if push comes to shove I can pick up 6 roses at the grocery store on the way to the church.
The church is decorated in red with all the walls being wooden. As such I don’t want any yellow flowers in the space and I don’t think lots of white flowers would work especially well either. What I do think would be beautiful is greenery. So I will be exploring my options for potted trees, potted grass, ivy, etc. with which to decorate the church. I probably won’t go through a florist for this one which is why it’s of low priority.
The reception hall will be decorated with lemons, ivy, and candles so once again I won’t be using a florist for this.
Here’s an example of a single yellow flower against the bridesmaid dresses. The light is bad and it isn’t a rose but you can get an idea of the effect.
So now that I seem to know pretty much what I want I need to find a couple florists to actually sit down and talk to about these things. Then from there I just need to book the ceremony musicians, invitations, and cake to be caught up on my to-do list. Whew.
Dec31

2011

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For a long time I knew 2011 would be the year I graduated college. Now I know it to be the year that we will get married, start jobs (even if mine is at McDonalds, still waiting on one!), start our home together, and live independent post-grad lives. I’m beyond excited for the year to come but it seems a little surreal to enter into the year when so much will happen.

Chris and I have been a couple for 3 New Years, but this will be our 2nd spent on opposite sides of the Atlantic. I’m not superstitious but I wish we were starting out the year together. Instead of pouting though, I’ve just chosen to realize that this is the year in which we will start all our years together, and be happy with that.
Happy New Year!

Dec3

Struggling over details that don't need to be decided for months…

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I’ve found that certain aspects of wedding planning are more fun than others, tiny details can be consuming, and surprising things can cause dissent.

Chris for the most part begs to be left out of the wedding planning, but occasionally I’ll make my mind up about something, let him know, and then find out that he’s passionately against whatever I’ve selected.
One of the things I’ve always wanted as my processional song is the theme from Beauty and the Beast. I think I’ll always think it’s the most beautiful piano song ever, but as the time draws near I find it a little too cruel to have Chris referred to as a beast on his wedding day. I really think if not for the title it would be a perfect wedding processional though.
So my second choice is a classic much loved by many many brides. Pachelbel’s Canon in D is second in internet searches to Wagner’s Bridal Chorus, but in my experience is the number 1 go to processional song. I think it’s completely beautiful and it makes me want to cry a little every time I hear it. To me it’s pretty much perfect. Well, Chris hates it. HATES it. Since he plays the viola he has apparently played this song one too many times.
So what does he suggest? Prelude in C is nice and exactly the sort of thing I think we should play during the seating of the guests or maybe even the seating of the parents and grand-parents. For the bridal procession, however, I think it’s a little boring. Canon in D swells so nicely so everyone knows exactly when the bride is going to walk in, Prelude in C just doesn’t do that.
I certainly don’t want the music that announces me at my wedding to make Chris want to roll his eyes, but we’ve heard all the typical processional choices and can’t agree on one! We don’t have the option to stray too much from tradition as our church does not allow pop, secular, or pre-recorded music. What a to-do.
At least I know for sure what song I want for the recessional! It’s dynamic enough to last through the recession of the entire bridal party, the families, and the guests and it makes me really happy! I’m a little concerned that it may raise red flags as to the afore-mentioned pop/secular music category but I’m hoping it won’t be a problem.
Nov11

On Hitting the Thrifting Jackpot and Being Conceited

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A couple of weekends ago I convinced 2 of my bridesmaids to go to the Roanoke flea market with me to expand my thrift store radius. (You can really only visit the thrift stores in a small town so often.) After going through the entire flea market we had pretty much despaired. Everything was priced as “antiques” and mere candle holders were going for $5-6. As the other girls were looking at some records I wandered down a side path I was pretty sure I had taken before and came upon a nice old lady stocking an entire bookshelf of glass knick-nacks. I asked her about the prices and at $0.50 a piece it was exactly what I was looking for! I ended up with almost everything shown in the below picture plus two crystal vases for centerpieces all for $25! Both the lady selling and I came out very happy from that transaction.

But we weren’t done! We had just enough time to hit up a nearby Goodwill and that proved to be awesome too! I filled in the rest of the picture shown above and scored some nice vases for centerpieces. The kicker here though was this beautiful jar shown below. It’s just screaming to be filled with hershey kisses and put smack dab in the middle of a candy bar! It also came with… fake lemons! If I were looking for fake lemons I would never have found them, but here they were! Just asking to be kept on display and used to judge how a vase will hold up as a centerpiece!So that’s how I hit the thrifting-jackpot. So how am I conceited you ask? Well one of the things on my wedding thrift store “to-hunt” list is lots and lots of picture frames. This one below was originally silver with blue trim and a hideous painting of a house in it. At first I thought I’d just ignore the blue trim but today I decided that it just wouldn’t work for the wedding and needed to be put to use right away. So I painted it black (with acrylic paint + nail polish) and inserted my favorite from our engagement pictures.
So that’s not so bad right? Well then I went on to create a shrine…

There is one picture of just Chris up there, perhaps cancelled out by the full length mirror also displayed in this picture. I apparently have some deep seated urge to constantly be looking at myself. But embracing this I do plan to do lots of framing after the wedding.* I really like having lots of pictures around and it’s not something we had much at my house growing up. We had pictures for sure, but not pictures of each family member lining the stair case or anything like that. With this discovery that I can paint frames I plan to use many of the excess frames I collect for the wedding to display Chris and I’s wedding pictures and gradually change out most of them for future-baby pictures. I have visions of bright red frames with black and white pictures in them. We’ll see how that turns out!
*”After the wedding” is something I say a lot these days, along with “after graduation.”
Oct27

Flame on!

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If you ask me the number one most dramatic decoration is a candle, actually a bunch of candles. I think they completely transform a room and scream elegance and romance. I’ve already written about my search for glass candle holders (by the way I’m no longer looking for silver ones, although I could probably find a place for any that happen to turn up!) and that search has been fairly successful so far. I’ve found that just about every goodwill, salvation army, and other thrift store in the area is well stocked in glass candle holders and I’ve stocked up on about 70 so far. For less (sometimes way less) than $0.50 a piece it’s also really rewarding to walk up to a counter with a basket full of things and watch it ring it at $8.00.

Today I ordered the candles to go with said candle holders. I ordered a lot of candles! 1004 to be exact. Here’s the breakdown:
-12 non-wedding decorations
-500 tealights
-144 tapers
-48 3×3 in pillars
-12 3×9 in pillars
-288 white votives
This is actually something I’m really excited about and I can’t wait for my candles to arrive!

There are two mantles at the reception site that are definitely going to have to look like this! Minus the Christmas wreath…
Oct15

Save-the-Date!

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Huzzah!
With 260 days until the day, I have mailed the save-the-dates! They are officially no longer in my grubby paws and I am very excited about that!
Save-the-dates serve a multitude of purposes:
1) Inform people when the wedding is, and if they’ll be invited. Now not everyone who will be invited got a save-the-date but all the big players (close family and friends) did.
2) Point people towards the wedding website (www.jessicaandchristopher.net), where they can learn about the hotel booking choices and be kept up-to date leading up to the wedding.
3) Serve as a trial run for the invitations themselves. This way if I have an address for someone who hasn’t lived there in 10 years we’ll hopefully find out now and not when we send out the invitations and have deadlines for the RSVPs.
So as far as #3 goes, what did I learn from these save-the-dates?
For starters I learned that silver ink is not acceptable for return address stamps. You may look at this picture and think that these are simply the backs of my envelopes. They are in actuality the backs of my envelops with freshly stamped return addresses on each and everyone. I probably should have stopped after the first couple were obviously too light but you could read them at certain angles before they dried, so I kept right on rolling.

Here’s a close-up. You can see that it’s definitely there but probably not clear enough for the post-office to return anything if need be.

So this frustrated me but after going to 3 stores in Blacksburg I was able to find some black ink and:

I think this works better! Also, since I stamped right over the barely-there silver address there’s an overlay effect and it’s kind of sparkly.

The other thing I learned from the save-the-date process is that it takes a very, very long time. I should probably start my invitations right now.

Sep20

Update

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I’m supposed to be writing a paper but decided to take a quick break to bring ya’ll up-to-date on the wedding planning process.

Done
-Booked venues
-Booked caterer
-Booked band
-Booked photographer
-Booked videographer
-Booked hair and makeup
In-progress
-Save-the-Dates, I’m about 1/3 of the way through addressing them all and after that I’m just waiting on pictures to come in.
-Collecting items for centerpieces
-Mine and my bridesmaid’s dresses, this is my Mom’s project so I can’t take any credit for it. But they are definitely coming along.
-Website, this is mostly done I just need Chris to get it up and running.
-Hotel blocks, I’ve gotten bids from several hotels and I have one under contract and another I still need to decide on.
-Order shoes! The silly shoes I want are out-of-stock and I have no idea if they’ll be coming back!
To-Do

-Find and book a florist
-Design invitations
-Start looking into rehearsal dinner things
Sure there are some things not on the list, but these are some big ones!

Want to see some of my finds from thrift shopping the other day? After posting about the things I needed I made a casual trip to our local YMCA thrift store and definitely hit the mother load.

The actual center pieces will have better ivy, this ivy was growing in Chris’s yard and was hard to work with in addition to having very small leaves. I’m also hoping to put all of this on top of a mirror to really play up the light from the candles reflecting off the vase and mirror. The real tough decision about all this is whether to have silver or white overlays on the table. There will definitely be floor length white table cloths, but do we want to double up on the white for the overlays or go silver? Initially I was worried that the silver would be too dark.
My total tally from the thrift store was: 3 centerpiece vases, 8 candle stick holders (for tall and short candles), 5 candy bar vases, 1 small silver picture frame, and 1 large silver picture frame. The overall damage? $12.

Sep16

Wanted!

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Today I made this sign and hung it on our refrigerator. What is it? Basically it is a list of all (some) of the things I would like to collect before the wedding. I’m hoping to save money and be environmentally friendly by getting all of these used at garage sales, flea markets, and thrift stores. So what are these things? Basically they are all items I need to make the reception centerpieces! Once I start collecting a few of the basic pieces I’ll do a mock-up and post some pictures. But for now here are some clues as to what the picture frames will be used for:
So if you happen to find yourself at a thrift store or garage sale and happen to notice one of these items go ahead and snag it for us! We’ll pay you back and we’ll be that much closer to collecting everything we need!
Sep5

For the love of shoes

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I know it’s not totally true that everyone with 2 x chromosomes is in love with shoes (my brother is proof that it’s not an exclusively female passion at any rate,) but it is definitely a gender roll I fall into. I’m not terrible about it, I can usually control the urge but I definitely appreciate a beautiful shoe. (Wait until you see the one’s I got for our engagement pictures!) So pretty early on my wedding vision involved pictures like these:
Specifically I’m yearning for yellow shoes for the bridesmaids and myself. This is an absolute pain. Finding cute yellow shoes: no problem. Finding two pairs from the same company in the same color to give my girls a heel height option: no problem. Getting said company to actual ship said shoes: big problem.
Stay tuned.