we be married!

HEY GUYS, GUESS WHAT?

I'm married. Pretty cool, huh?

The wedding was amazing. Greg and I both agree that there wasn't a single thing we would've changed. The weather was perfect, the vendors all went above and beyond, our families totally rocked it on the helpful front. I do have time for some recaps today but I think it would be a better idea if I tried to clean up my house a little bit. Do something other than sit around with the hubs and eat leftover cake.

But here's a little taste of the awesome:
(pic from Mike Harries. You're excited now, aren't you?)

Oh, and go vote. I don't care if it's for Obama or McCain...okay, no, obviously I care. I would like if you would vote for Obama. But if everyone I know goes out and votes and McCain still wins, then I will respect that decision. Just make a decision. It's important, okay?

WE'RE GETTING MARRIED TODAY!

oh, so THIS is that excitement everyone is talking about. i kinda like it!

see ya on the flip side!

MUST DO: wedding week edition

My mom came into town yesterday, bringing with her several huge boxes of pumpkins, my dress, and a new shot of wedding adrenaline. Missy the wonder cousin comes in today, and she is confident that, without her four sons and her husband around, she can achieve pretty much anything. Greg has stayed up until three or four a.m. the last few nights cleaning our house and making it ready for guests, and I've been trying trying trying to finish as many projects as I can. Posts will be light, or non-existent, but I will try to check in at some point before I get hitched.

MUST DO:
-finish my veil
-make a ring pillow
-gut and carve pumpkins
-buy mums
-call the people about our rehearsal dinner food
-make a cd for our dj
-make programs
-print pictures of ourselves for the "guest book" table
-finish the shit for the "guest book" table
-figure out ceremony decorations (nope, haven't done this yet. i am a wedding rockstar)
-make the memory charm for my bouquet
-decide what's holding what for the candy buffet
-make reservations for our wedding night and our tiny honeymoon (still haven't done that either! hahahah)
-make a wedding package to send to greg's grandmas who won't be able to make it to the wedding
-make sticks for the masks

WOULD LIKE TO DO
-make costume ribbons
-cover the chalk for the guest book table with felt or something so people don't get chalky fingers
-finish the thank you gift I'm making
-find some sort of token of appreciation for the parents
-sleep

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.

my day, shitshitshit edition

So first, a quick update: We actually have everyone BOOKED. That is so, so comforting. Last minute, true, but oh so comforting.
But that's not what this post is about.
If you don't like my "shitshitshitshit" posts, just skip this one. It's mostly just me freaking out.

Today we went to drop off our rather large security deposit at our reception venue and work out the final details. We actually sat down to meet with the lady in the ballroom where we'll be having the reception, allowing me a few glances to re-establish myself with the space--I haven't been there since Jen and John's wedding like three years ago (Greg did all the venue booking, because he's a CATCH). After all the usual questions and such, she informed us that next weekend was going to be a busy one at the Scoular...there were events Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, AND Saturday.
Usually when vendors tell me about other people's events I listen with friendly interest, but this did not make me happy.
Mainly because having an event on Thursday means we can't decorate early.
It was so perfect, when we thought we could decorate on Thursday. We could take our time, fix anything that didn't look quite as we had envisioned. Most importantly, I wouldn't have to fucking deal with it on my wedding day. I could maybe sleep in (if my body allowed such a thing...it rarely does) take my time on my hair and makeup. Now we have to not only set ours up on Friday, but deal with them cleaning up the mess of the night before. She said the earliest we could come in is at 930, but if we came in at 1130 they could guarantee that everything would be ready.
Welllll, 930 means getting up early, but 11 means a vein pops in my head if anything, anything goes wrong. SO 930 it is then. Rock and roll.
This was coupled with a string of RSVP issues (I said no more RSVPs, but I'm letting many slip in because they're people who really ought to be there. The ones that make my eye twitch are either the people we don't know super well, or the people who, one week before the wedding, all of the sudden want to bring two friends, or a family of five that might stop by. Twitch. Twitchtwitchtwitch.)
So I was...stressed.
I was also expecting a package today from my cousin, who did our flowers. Two other packages came (some masks and a BIG HUGE PRESENT, HOORAY) and then the mailman range my doorbell.
We'd already gotten our regular mail so I was sure these were the flowers. But when I opened the door, it was just a man. A concerned looking man.
"We have some packages for you, but one of them looks as though it might have been damaged. You might want to check it out, see if anything inside is broken. If it is, just bring it back to the post office and we'll have you fill out the forms to be compensated."
And then he goes to the truck and he brings me two boxes...and "looks as though" and "might have been damaged" were UNDERSTATEMENTS. One of the boxes looks like it's been attacked by dogs, and one with the top completely collapsed until it looks like it was bent in half. I look at the shipping label and sure enough, these are my flowers. I think my heart actually stopped.
This was my day. HOWEVER, next I will tell you about how I opened the boxes, and everything was fine, and the flowers are beautiful. And how that fixes everything in the world.
Or, um, I can tell you that right now, and then just post pictures of my flowers. That works too.

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.

too late now

Princess Lasertron posted some Halloween etsy picks and thus introduced me to artisanmaskers.

Dammit. Where were these last month when I was researching for our masks? I LOVE THESE. Maybe I will have to remake mine to look a little more like these...maybe. I'll post some of our mask making adventures um...when I have time. I'm gonna go work on a cake stand now. Later!

cake, part two: cupcakes achieved....?

Originally, the plan of attack for our cupcakes was the downtown coffee house called Aromas. They have delicious cake, they're close to our venue, and we went to a wedding in February that had their cupcakes and they were awesome. And huuuuuuge. One Aromas' cupcake can easily feed two people, which gives the added advantage of not ordering as many cupcakes. They were also the cheapest option, tied with Cupcake Island, who also has delicious cupcakes but isn't as close to our venue and their cupcakes aren't quite as big.
So let's go with Aroma's. Cupcakes achieved. Or so we thought.
Well, no, actually. It turns out that Aroma's (the coffee house) wants to sell Aroma's (the bakery). And if you buy a bakery, the last thing you'd want to do is have to fulfill some silly order that they made before they belonged to you. So all the talks we had had with these people regarding pricing and delivery and flavors...gone. They can't do our cupcakes. And this blow came...last week.
Needless to say I was FREAKING OUT. We had chosen this bakery because they were the cheapest, best option. Was I going to have to drop half a g on shitty cupcakes? Would anyone still be available for our date? I went back to Hastings last weekend and I spent a lot of time with my mom trying to work out if we could conceivably make our own cupcakes. We could, but it would give me an ulcer or two. Probably some panic attacks, too. So what to do?


Well, you get in a boat, and you point that boat towards Cupcake Island.
This is Ed and his business partner Shirley (Edit: Not his wife. Thanks Mike!). These are their cupcakes. They own Cupcake Island, quite possibly the cutest cupcake shop ever. They saved our asses. They are my new favorites.
We went to Cupcake Island last night. They arranged a meeting for us even though they would've usually been closed at that time. We also had cake samples. We banged out a contract right then and there, no backing out, no "maybe's." Their cake really is superior to Aroma's, the cupcakes are just a little smaller, so we ordered more than we were originally planning.
We also ended up ordering an actual cake. We had been considering a small cake to display our rad cake toppers from Paul Pape Designs (BTW Paul: I will email you dress pictures tonight...probably) and also because I like the idea of cutting an actual cake. This cake probably won't be sliced up at the reception unless it looks like they're still ravenous after dinner, candy and cake. It'll be something along the lines of this:
Only without the bands of frosting. Just like a mini wedding cake. To showcase the topper.
The conversation was interesting, because he asked what we wanted on the cake and I said, frosting. He asked if we wanted ribbons, or flowers, or frosting flowers. I said no, cake should just be cake. With frosting. No fondant, ever. He convinced me to put a little extra frosting froo on it. Some ivory bands or something, I don't remember. But as I said in my last cake post, I think just frosting is pretty. No froo, please. Just delicious, delicious cake.

We'll be having vanilla, chocolate, and pumpkin spice cupcakes. The wedding cake will be red velvet. We went over all the flavor options (so many! all sounding wicked good) and Greg mentioned that he liked their mocha flavored cupcakes. I thought they sounded good, but I didn't know if they'd have the wide appeal (especially to the little kids) and also...um..chocolate was cheaper. The chocolate was also one of the samples he gave us, and it was delicious. So chocolate it was.
As we were walking out, though, Ed said "Oh, you guys said you liked our mocha cupcakes?"
And we said "Yeah, they're awesome, just not for our wedding, I guess"
And then he went to the fridge. I thought, awesome! Free cupcake!
But he didn't give us a free cupcake. He gave us A DOZEN FREE CUPCAKES. Mocha ones. With cream cheese frosting. And chocolate chips.
I ate four. Then I sent them to Greg's work so I would be able to fit into my dress.

Did I mention Ed is my favorite?

New Wedding Order

Here are the facts.

We are getting married THREE WEEKS FROM TODAY.

We only just yesterday finalized our catering. Our original cake bakery backed out, but we got a new one...YESTERDAY. Our photographers, while incredibly talented, are even worse procrastinators than I am, so we still don't have a contract or a promise of services. We have no d.j. We only have a vague sense of music for the ceremony as well.

We are getting married THREE WEEKS FROM TODAY.

October is also the month that RESPECT2 (my touring acting job) is most busy, and also I have been working pretty much every day at the mall. Which is why, even though I had a HUGE wedding weekend, you got no posts this week, because I was at work from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. three days in a row...wait, that's a lie, Wednesday was 5 a.m. to 9 p.m.

We are getting married THREE WEEKS FROM TODAY.

SO, what does this mean for you? You are getting like four posts today. Then, who knows? Also, I am dropping all attempts to even try to keep this blog profanity free. There will also probably be lots of expressive text, like bold type and lots and lots of exclamation points.

Cuz I got SHIT to DO, people.

IN THREE WEEKS!

Thank you for sharing this with us. Shit is about to get real.

cake, part one: a history

Let's talk about cake.
of course this cake is from Martha Stewart.

This is going to take awhile because I don't know if we've ever touched on cake and the Hallowedding. Which is weird, because dudes, do brides ever love cake. Why shouldn't we? They're so pretty. And big. And you get to find a pretty cake topper. And sometimes, inside this pretty, big thing, under the cake topper, there might actually be cake!
Unlike most of those "little details" that brides slave over and then nobody will ever notice ("oh, were all the straws at your bar in your wedding colors?...okay") everybody WILL look at the cake. Because it sits out at the reception all through dinner, then everyone gathers around and watches you cut it, and then they eat it. They have to notice the damn thing. So a lot of thought goes into most wedding cakes.
Here is the thought that went into my wedding cake: I HATE FONDANT.
source
For those of you not knee deep in the wedding industry, or not all that schooled in cake, fondant is a frosting paste that goes over the cake to give it that smooth surface, as pictured above. You can also use fondant to make beautiful lace, or pretty flowers, or wacky shapes. It is a staple to fancy pantsy cakes...and it tastes terrible. I have heard stories of marshmalllow fondant existing and not being the worst stuff ever, but it just...it bothers me. So no fondant. No fancy cake. Just cake, please, with frosting I can eat.

I think there's just something really pretty about plain frosting. So simple and pure and imperfect. Maybe it's because I bake, and plain frosting makes a cake look more hand made. Maybe it's because inside of me there's a fat kid who just really loves frosting. Who knows.

But aside from fondant, there is just all this shit you have to consider. Because if you have a cake, you have to cut it, and then sometimes there are cutting fees. You can also opt to have the big round pretty cake and then have super secret sheet cakes in the back. How many flavors of cake do you want? How many fillings? Do you want those little roses? What kind of frosting, if you're not using fondant, and are you suuuuuuure you don't want fondant because it's really, really pretty.

Thank God for cupcakes.
Look at 'em. There aren't any fancy flowers or marshmallow paste. There's just frosting, and that frosting is beautiful. With cupcakes, there is no cutting, no forks, plates aren't even all that necessary. They also fit in a lot better with the whole sandwich/soup vibe. Also, you can still have the beautiful set up that you have with a real cake, thanks to the handy invention of the cupcake stand
A DIY'd version from this blog.
So it was pretty much a no brainer: cupcakes for ever, cupcakes for days. So we went out in search of a baker to make us a couple hundred cupcakes.

And that, friends, is when the fondant hit the fan.

Coming soon, part 2: WHERE THE FUCK ARE MY FUCKING CUPCAKES?