flowers: ACHIEVED! and GORGEOUS!

You know what cheers up your day and stops pre-wedding freakouts in their tracks? Getting a big ol' box full of beautiful flowers in the mail!
These were done by my amazing, new favorite cousin Missy. Missy is a super person. She did the flowers for both her sisters' weddings, and when my mom suggested that maybe she could do it for ours too, man, was I ever sold. Oh, and she's also flying in on Sunday to help me with all the last minute wedding barf I'm gonna have to do. Bonus: she and my mom are like besties. So we'll have a lot of fun together.
I sent her a big box a few months ago with my mock up bouquet in it, some inspiration sheets, and some extra ribbon. If you don't remember what my bouquet used to look like, here's a reminder:
And here it is, fleshed out (sorry about the shitty lighting...it's been a rainy ugly mess around here the last few days)
She added more feathers and put in some of those spikey dijon-colored flowers to tie it in with the bridesmaids bouquets, the bouquets which make me cry sometimes because I JUST LOVE THEM SO MUCH
During the same trip where I made my bouquet, we found these...weird...floral sticks at Hobby Lobby, and we thought they'd make pretty arm bouquets for the girls. Here's the inspiration picture:
(pretty, but doesn't go with our color scheme)
And here are all my attempts to properly capture their lovliness, having no one at home to help me:
I suppose if you look in the top picture it gives an okay idea about what they look like whole. My photography skills were just not working their magic yesterday.
The boys bouts were a little more difficult, since I didn't really have any inspiration. I sent her this inspiration page (I made one of these for all the flowers, but this one needed the most explanation since there was no explanation)
Basically, I like bouts with a non-flower element somewhere on them. I thought since I had feathers in my bouquet, they could tie into the bouts somewhere too, or maybe sticks, because of the girls. I was very vague and non-committal to my bout vision, thank god Missy is talented or who KNOWS what we could've ended up with.
Bout box.
The standard bout. Simple flower with twirly stick thingy and a few feathers. When Missy comes she wants to wrap the stems in ribbon to make them a little more cohesive.
Here is Greg's bout. It is fancier since he is the most important. It's about the same as the others, it just has two flowers and another kind of feather.

The corsages are still up in the air, since Missy wanted to actually see my mom's dress first, so we'll be making those next week. After my totally upsetting day yesterday, this box totally picked me up.

UPDATE: also, this appears to be the talent family...my mom just called and another one of my cousins, Luke, and his (now wife!*) Paige used to freelance as reception decorators down in Texas. Sooooo we are exploiting that tie as well.


*they eloped to Vegas, the sneaky butts. Or, more likely, the genius butts.

photographers: achieved!

or, alternately: FINALLY, JESUS.

So...you've probably been wondering about photographers. After all, the photog is very very high on the list of things you acquire in wedding planning. I'm pretty sure the order is such:
1. find a fiance
2. find a venue
3. find a photographer.

After all, the pictures are all you really have to show all the hard work you have done after the day is over. And good photographers are in high demand, so you gotta get this shit nailed down.
So we should've had these guys booked last December or so.
Am I just that lazy that I haven't mentioned our photographer before now?
Wish I could say that was the case.
Cover poor Martha's ears, because her poor brain might explode:
We signed a contract with our photographers.
TODAY.
Yes, sixteen days before the wedding.


This wedding brought to you by procrastination.


We decided to go with these guys a long time ago--like, in June--but through a lot of procrastination and misunderstandings we didn't have an actual contract. We were considering two other candidates, who I would also like to mention because they are both spectacular, and even if they didn't work for us, they could work for someone else.
Becky Novacek is currently getting some internet press for her pics of the somewhat famous wedding (by wedding blog standards) of Princess Lasertron.
Aren't they gorgeous?

I love love love her pictures. I think one of the only reasons we ruled her out was because she doesn't have a partner, and it was kinda important to us to have a team. Teams allow for multiple shoots and multiple angles.

Amelia Peterson was in one of my classes last semester, and she actually contacted us about our wedding. She works with her friend C.Lynne. They either work as double photographers or sometimes Amelia works as a videographer (check out the videos, very cute).

(They capture the most amazing pictures of children--a big draw since there will be many many little ones at this shindig)

Really, Amelia's team was very close to being our photographers. Their prices are incredibly reasonable and they seem to have a lot of fun with their pictures. Also, I like Amelia. She's sweet.

But once we really looked at the pictures in the Justin Limoges portfolios...it was too late. My heart was gone.
These are all pictures from Vince and Sarah, our friends who got married in February.
Before.After.


One of the most amazing getting ready pictures I've ever seen. And this one actually took my breath away:It really captures the anticipation of the moment.

Perhaps I'm biased but this one is ADORABLE:
And this one is just extra funny if you know Vince and Sarah.


Fish eye!
This, this right here, this is why it was essential that we have two photographers:
How amazing is that?
Justin and his partner Luke really have a lot of fun with weddings, and our meeting today really got me excited. In the short half hour we met we discussed pictures, bush men, and the possibility of one of them wearing my dress and riding a bicycle. You know, the usual.
I love them, I love their pictures. I can not WAIT for them to shoot our wedding.

invite breakdown

So, if you were sent an invite in the mail you probably already have seen all this stuff but humor me, okay? Maybe you'll learn something?

--Oh, and if you didn't get an invite in the mail, or you can't come, stay tuned for a special way we want you to be involved in the wedding...coming soon!--

So first we designed the invites...our main inspiration were vintage vaudeville and circus posters...something that conveyed an event that was fun but, at the same time, totally epic.

image source

image source

We made a mock up with the fonts we had on hand just to decide positioning, ratios, spacing, etc., then we downloaded probably a hundred or so fonts and then just got to playing, and this is what we came up with. (All the design was done in Photoshop...I know it's not as clean as other programs but it's what I know)
We printed the reception information on the back to cut down on paper waste

There was much debate about the reception information. Could we dictate the kind of costumes people wear? We're not requiring costumes for the reception, but I also didn't want people dressed like slutty nurses or grotesque monsters. I wouldn't really want that at any Halloween party I would throw, let alone my wedding. I think we found a nice (and very "us") way to say what needed to be said, and also imply that maybe you should save it for the reception...at least, if you're an adult.

Putting the registry information on there is a MAJOR no-no etiquette wise, and I understand why that rule exists. Yeah, it's kind of tacky. However, for really casual invitations, I don't think it's quite as bad. We received an invitation to a wedding last winter that had a little note on the back "the couple is registered at target but they also really enjoy shopping at world market and whole foods." We ended up getting them something from Target, but it was kind of nice to know another option and I did actually consider going to whole foods and making them like a huge basket of cheeses or something. Also, since most of our guests are from out of town, they don't know that every couple that gets married in Omaha is registered at Target. It seems so obvious to us, but I didn't want there to be confusion.
And, well, I am really tacky and I broke etiquette all over the place. So...meh.

We also wanted to include a map with the reception information both for out of town guests (pretty much all of our families) and for in town guests that have maybe never been to the Scoular before. It also let them know how close they would be to their hotel, in case they were worried about long commutes. Greg made up the grid of streets (including the hotel's logo, nice touch Greg!) and I used pictures of the venues to make paintings that guests can refer to if they're confused about which building is which (they're not very clearly marked).

Here's a close up of the painting of our ceremony venue...I recreated the building in the most basic shapes possible to make it easy to print and easy to read on a small invitation.
Once the invite design was finished we had it printed on plain kraft paper at Kinkos (classy wedding over here!) and they cut it for us as well at no charge.

This is where the "pain in the ass" part of invitations began happening.

Unfortunately the image was a little smaller than half a sheet of paper, leaving an awkward little blank edge on the side. We went back through and re-cut about a quarter of an inch off each invite (total pain in the ass #1).
Neither of us has very pretty handwriting, so we typed our addresses in a pretty font and printed it onto white labels. But I bought the wrong size and we had to go back and buy new ones (total pain in the ass #2) which they couldn't print on at Kinkos (total pain in the ass #3) so we had to drive all the way out to Walmart in the middle of the night to buy new ink for our own printer to print them ourselves (total pains in the ass #4 and #5).
To fancy up the labels a little bit we bought a corner punch that both tied them into the oldish timey theme of our invites and made them look a little less like...you know...labels. Unfortunately (there's that word again) the corners had to be square to fit in the embosser/puncher and the labels' corners were rounded. So we cut the sides off the labels and punched them (pain in the ass #6)
Here's how the labels turned out...click the picture to really see the embossing (it's subtle, but very pretty in person)

We bought beautiful dark purple envelopes from the Eames Furniture collection on envelope mall, since all the orange options we scoped out were either too bright, too small, or too expensive...and, I mean, Eames furniture! Makes envelopes! Weird!
The envelopes have a very long pointed closure called a "euro flap" that makes them all classy stuff. The glue on this fancy classy flap doesn't extend all the way down to the end of the point. Which means they don't close all the way like normal envelopes. Meaning we went out at four in the morning to find appropriate seals (pain in the ass #7) but luckily there were very pretty ones that went with our palette.

We stayed up all night stuffing these babies, but despite the seven (or more, I may have forgotten them) pains in the ass...they're gorgeous. We love them. Everyone who has seen them has loved them. They're very "us."


Oh, and they cost about twenty five cents per invite. Sha. Bam.

Sometimes I love this wedding stuff.

ACHIEVED!: Invitations

Or, "snail mail: quite quick, actually"

So after an all nighter of printing invites,buying labels, stuffing envelopes, buying DIFFERENT labels, going to Wal-Mart at midnight to buy ink, going to Kinko's at 4 a.m. to buy seals, individually cutting and stamping each label and reprinting all the labels I inevitably ruined through my own spelling mistakes....invitations are OUT.

They were out on Saturday morning, actually, but I have been sleeping off the aforementioned all nighter. And tomorrow (promises promises) I will show what they looked like and how we made them because I think they are pretty damn spectacular.

I just wanted to make a quick post to say

1.) HOLY COW WE HAVE RSVPs TO THIS WEDDING ALREADY (AHHHHHHH!)

and

2) if you are a guest of the Hallowedding and you are now reading this blog because I (or my mother or whoever) sent you this way after you got your invitation...um, hi? Welcome. Apologies in advance for the inevitable profanity.


Now if you'll excuse me I have a very early show tomorrow with about twenty Iowan preschoolers. I need my rest.



(RSVPs you guys!! It is SO ON.)

FOOOOOOOOD

Food is very, very important to Greg and me. We love to cook, we love going out to eat, our TiVo is full of food network shows...we care about food.



Our love of food makes it extra tragic that one of the most appalling areas of this wedding planning business is catering. I haven't planned or attended many weddings in other cities, but in Omaha, there is one caterer who dominates the scene and it is...not pleasant. I will not name the catering company because I don't want nasty emails, and also there are many people who had to use this company for one reason or another and I think they have suffered enough. I will just refer to them as the Big Bad Catering Company. Many fabulous venues in the metro area have exclusive catering contracts with the BBCC, which is the main reason we passed on many venues that had initially appealed to us. A look at their menus reveals tired old dishes that are VERY expensive and (experience has taught me) don't taste very good. They're not terrible, per se, but if I'm eating something that cost my host $30+ a plate I expect something pretty damn spectacular. Call me picky. I just think that when you're charging that much for a chicken breast you could afford to spare some salt.



Anyway, we wanted to avoid the BBCC at any cost, which is one of the main reasons we went with the Scoular, because they gave us a choice of many caterers and price ranges. In addition to our culinary preferences and budget issues, we wanted a somewhat...unconvential menu. We wanted a menu that was comfortable, casual and fun, much like our wedding. Also, we knew people would be eating in costume and I think prime rib might be a little messy for fairy princesses.



So we wanted soup and sandwiches. Fancy soup and sandwiches, but still.



We looked at the list Scoular gave us, eliminated anyone whose menus started ridiculously high or whose websites discouraged menu tampering, and emailed a few candidates.



Catering Creations emailed us back almost immediately, and their enthusiasm has persisted throughout the process. Before our first meeting we perused their sample menus and pulled out some soup and salad choices that sounded appealing with our sandwiches. However, when we sat down with Jeff, the head chef, he said:

"Okay, I know you guys said you wanted the wild mushroom and creamy onion soups, and I can make those for you and they'll be very good, but if you're doing a Halloween wedding you have to have a roasted pumpkin soup. You just...you have to."

And that, friends, is when I decided that Jeff was my favorite.



So here is our menu. Those of you who are coming to the wedding, look forward to it. Those of you who will not be coming to the wedding...um...you can dream.



Pre-game (Dips):
White Bean, Parmesan, Roasted Garlic with Sundried Tomatoes (I have tasted this one in person and boy howdy was it delicious)
Tomato, Basil, Artichoke and Olive Tapenade
Fresh Guacamole & Hearty Salsa
All Dips Served with Fresh Tortilla Chips



(these will be left out and replenished through most of the dancing time as well for snackers and late comers. I love me some guacamole, I really do.)



Soups and Salads:


Roasted Pumpkin Soup with Dark Pumpernickel Croutons
Cream of Wild Mushroom Soup
(Both made with veggie stock to appease our vegetarian friends)


Roasted Sweet Potato Salad with Chile-Lime Vinaigrette

Classic Caesar Salad with Parmesan Croutons



SANDWICHES!


Smoked Beef Sandwich on Foccacia Bread with Caramelized Onions & Arugula with Red Pepper Feta Spread
Blackened Chicken Salad with Blue Cheese, Golden Raisins, with Alfalfa Sprouts and Avocados Served on Ciabatta Bread





Doesn't that sound AMAZING?



And super bonus--they also catered Nick and Erika's wedding in August, giving us the opportunity to see them in action and it was spectacular. The service was great, the set up was clean and pretty, and the food was super tasty.



So we got the menu we wanted, with the price we wanted, with people who actually seem happy to be serving us. Count our catering amongst the victories over the big nasty wedding industry!

flower girl dresses: always adorable

It is so much easier to find a flower girl dress than a wedding dress. One, toddlers look adorable in pretty much everything. I mean, how could this girl NOT be cute?
And two, let's be honest, it's a lot easier to find a dress that fits a little stick like Keira than a big lumpy mess of curves like yours truly. Not that I'm complaining--but still, fittings are a lot less complicated when your measurements are the same from your shoulders to your knees.

And, as with most things, my pre-conceived notions about what I wanted her dress to be were wrong. This is why we try stuff on people. To learn that we are wrong.

Originally I wanted Keira to wear a tutu. I thought a huge orange and purple tutu with a little cardigan would be so cute and very Halloween-tastic. And I'm not wrong about girls in tutus being adorable. It's a well document fact.
From etsy seller Kennedy and Friends Co.

Of course, I just planned to make my own tutu because if you know how to sew they are ridiculously easy. I just needed to get my hands on our adorable flower girl, Greg's neice Keira, and get some measurements. Then I decided it might be a good idea before I make the thing to try a tutu on her to make sure I got the proportions right, because she is a leggy little kid for a two year old. So today when we needed to babysit for a few hours I just did my babysitting at the mall, and specifically in the toddler section of Von Maur and boy, did I learn a few things.

Keira does NOT like tutus.

I think it had something to do with it being hard to walk. She put it on and just refused to move. And with really young flower girls, it's pretty hard to get them to do the job anyway without adding complete disdain for their outfit. So I realized tutus would be out (it was cute though, wasn't it, while it lasted?)

So we started looking at more traditional flower girl dresses. They were cute (everything is cute! All tiny dresses are cute!) but nothing really popped. They were also much more expensive than their colored counterparts...probably because they could be used for weddings and are therefor marked up beyond reason. Huzzah for the wedding industry! That's okay though because I like the brown versions better anyway. They have the maximum re-wearable factor and will sweetly match her dad (who is a groomsman).
I really loved the shape of this one on her, and she loved the bow, but I'm hesitant to introduce pink into our color scheme.
POLKA DOTS YOU GUYS. I love polka dots, I really do. It also has a lot of white in it and with a little white cardigan I think it will be super wedding appropriate. (Piggie will hopefully not be present)

So...what happened to DIY project #357, making the flower girl dress? I had discovered the style and color that worked best for her, I could easily go buy a pattern and whip one up in no time. Well, taking the tiny one to a store to try on dresses taught me that children are fickle, and no matter how cute of an outfit I plan, there is a high possibility she will refuse to wear it. I'm willing to have her refuse a $20 dress. (Yeah, I know! Twenty bucks! Awesome) I am very unwilling to go through the hassle of making a garment and having it tossed away...I don't accept that from grown up actresses I costume and I won't be pleased with it on the most stressful day of my life. So I went the easy way out. I bought a dress. If she decides to wear her Halloween costume instead, meh, who cares, right?

I told Keira she looked pretty and she said "Yeah." I told her I liked the dress and she said " 'kay." I told her we were going to get it and she said "Nooooo! Too big!"

Of course she was right. Silly us. Thanks Keira.
She likes it, I swear. She told me so. That face is really damn adorable, though.

(BTW, People talk alot about how the sizing system for wedding dresses is bust, but have you seen the sizes on toddler wear? We had to decide between "24 months" and "2T"...what's the difference? That's the same amount of time! It's the white/ivory/creme debate all over again)

I may get a little fancy and make her a purple and orange petticoat to go under it, but at the moment I am fine with just letting this one go.

REGISTRY!

(before I begin, let me explain yesterday's hiatus in: How the Internet Conspires Against Me
My yesterday: "Oh yeah! I'll post every day! What a great idea! In fact, let's go out an do wedding stuff this morning so we can talk about it with the internets later!...Wait, what's this? The internet isn't working? All day long? No internet at all? Well...damn.")

So I wasn't able to post yesterday which is really too bad because we did a HUGE to-do: the registry.

I have a crush on the club wedd bird logo. It's adorable.

At the moment we are only planning to register at Target. I was a little worried for our relatives, few of whom live near a target or are online-shopping savvy, but I figure they can just be told some of the things on the registry and find them for us in other stores--the bake wear, for example. I don't care what BRAND of cookie sheet I get, but damn do I need new cookie sheets. Also, they'll be able to go off the registry fairly easily since they are mostly old married folks and this isn't their first time at the rodeo, you know?

We're also considering doing a small online registry with CB2 for people who want to get us something "different" while still getting something straight from a registry. They have a great selection of modern stuff that is DIRT CHEAP. Which appeals to that part of my heart that is still an undergrad--i.e. all of it.
The CB2 "Yum Plate" (also available in Mmmm and Ooooo!) only $2.95

But currently, we just have the Target registry, and it is not lacking in amazingness. A brief preview:


Some stuff is stuff we need, but since Greg and I have been living in sin for almost four years, we have a lot of home essentials. We really had to consider what we already have. Some of it desperately needs upgrading, like our cookies sheets and our foreman grill and those TONGS THAT DRIVE ME F'ING NUTS. Sigh. But some stuff just needs to be expanded, like our collection of guest-worthy silverwear and plates. We're not into fine china, but we do occasionally entertain and those plastic dorm dishes won't cut it. We have nice settings for four. The dishes we currently have are these:
from my dad for my last birthday. We thought about adding another set of the same, but then we decided instead to just get more plates and bowls in a very similar pattern, only round. Our nice flatware is from my mom for Xmas:
We just needed more regular silverware (where are all my forks? Seriously. If we go one day without doing dishes there are no forks and hardly any spoons.) So we're signed up for this simple but very effective looking set...and now that I'm thinking about our spoon situation, maybe we'll add another one...
Of course every good registry has some things on it that the groom will enjoy as well:And either Rock Band I or II and a drum kit will join the ranks as soon as the reviews of the newer version are out.

We were also told to register for some bigger ticket items for group gifts and the incredibly generous. Of course I knew what I wanted...my finger was itching to shoot it as soon as we got the scanner gun, and it felt so good to put it on the list...maybe we'll get it or maybe not, but if someone DOES get it for us they will get the supreme pleasure of watching me pee my pants:
Yes, the red Kitchen Aid stand mixer is on every registry ever but I don't care. I could beat some serious egg whites with this baby.

Now, let me just say that yes, there are bigger things that need to be done before the registry. Very big things. But setting up a registry is 1) free, 2) fun, and 3) means other people don't have to wait for me to do it anymore (mainly those wily bridal shower planning bridesmaids)
And sometimes, in all this vendor paying paper ordering stresstastic mess of planning, you need to do something where they give you a gun and say "shoot what you want and maybe people will buy it for you." That relieves a LOT of stress.

Oh, and if you look at our registry please forgive me. A lot of the items don't have pictures online, and there will probably be much editing in the following weeks.