Bouquets with earrings on the side... and a new slight obsession with hydrangeas...

Just to follow up, I got them last week. They were (are?) really pretty, but one of the big butterflies on my bouquet got pretty annihilated in shipping, which sucks. Another smaller butterfly on one of the bridesmaidy bouquets got tweaked too, but I think I can salvage it with tape.

I'd take a picture, but after seeing the two busted up butterflies, I didn't want to risk handling the bouquets too much, so I (panickedly) put them into two boxes (with tons of help from Mike) so they'd all be apart and not touching each other and put them up on the top shelf in my closet for safe keeping.

I don't think they'll be that fragile on the day, but they do tend to get snagged together and that's where the risk is in me handling them...

On the upside, with the two strands of butterflies, there are plenty to choose from if we have to replace some of the bouquet ones for whatever reason. Just need to borrow a hot glue gun from somewhere.

I'm kind of glad I got the fake flowers, honestly. Reading on the internet about real flowers and the hassle involved to get them cheaply just feels like a stress I don't need, snagglies aside.

Also, I've developed a new found affection for hydrangeas that I never knew I could have... And thus the lust for these hydrangea earrings was born:

Source: etsy.com via Prin on Pinterest

They're perfect in a thousand different ways, but here are three:

1. They're hydrangeas. Silvery whitey ones.
2. The topaz in the middle goes with the topaz in my engagement ring.
3. The pins (or whatever they're called) are 18k gold.

See, I've been wearing the same small hoop earrings since I was four. My dad got them for me after my ma dropped me off with freshly pierced and crazy infected ears (she did it without consulting him about it too). So he went out and got me these that I was told eons ago were 22k gold, but somehow I'm not sure they'd have held up this long being 22k. But still, they're very gold and I haven't had any ear infections since, except maybe for rare times when I'd take these out and put in other earrings for some lame reason. Being that the earrings above have 18k gold pins, I can wear them without worrying about infections and whatnot.

And really, the design is pretty awesome with the way it's looped so the hydrangeas move?

Magical.

Out of my price range considering all the money we've spent lately, but still, magical.

But even if I don't get them, I can still wear my hoop earrings as my "something really old". :D

(But, like, I feel like I will get them. Because I'm bratty that way, I guess. And things I seem to want for more than a few days I tend to end up obsessing about. So...)

And also, maybe, if there's money left in the budget, we could get some real hydrangeas for decorative purposes from Costco since I saw that they've got some in bulk.

Guess who came today?!!

They're even more perfect in real life. I'm so happy with them. I nearly cried when I opened the box up today when it came in the mail. She did an amazing job.

Lookit the feathering on the arm? So much detail. <3

Yey!

If you want to peruse her etsy shop for your own kokeshi dolls, here's the link.

Eeeeeeeee!!!

So then I was in the car with Mike and I was all, "Michael! We're really getting married?!" and he was all, "Yeah!"

:D

Online RSVP

After messing with Wordpress and Wordpress plugins (apparently, there's a difference between wordpress.com and wordpress.org and it is impossible to use plugins on the former and impossible to join the underworld of the latter if you aren't code-savvy, so forget it) until I nearly went insane, my bridesmaid Maxine, who is ever adept at everything bridesmaidey (and at everything else too!), found an article suggesting we use Google documents instead...

And it works!

To any future brideys looking for a free online RSVP form that you can totally customize, in your gmail (you should have gmail by now, right?), click on "Documents" at the top (or wherever they put it when they change it- I think under the rollover gmail thingy at the top left), and then hit "CREATE". When that menu drops down, you click "Form" and you create your form. I used the code it generated to embed mine in a blogger blog just by pasting it into a post in "html" mode instead of the "compose" mode. 

It was all pretty magical in the end. I'd post a link to my RSVP page, but I don't want scragglers who find this blog to invite themselves. :D If this blog still gets hits later on, after I'm done tallying results, then I'll come back and post it here.

In the meantime, here's a screenshot of the first page of the survey I created as it appears on the blog I created for it:

See?!?! It turned out awesome. If they hit "yes", they're brought to a page where they enter what they want to eat, if they have allergies or whatever and if they need help finding accommodation. The last question on that page is whether or not there will be other guests, and depending on the answer, you either get brought to further pages to give more information or to the last page (a "no" answer always brings you to the last page). On the last page, I left a big text box in case anybody (including the nays) wanted to say something.

You can choose the background of your survey too, although options are a little bit limited. And all the results are sent to a google spreadsheet and they even produce handy little pie charts for each question aside from the text ones. So yey.

It lets you have text box replies (short or long), drop down menus, multiple choice, check box choices and probably others too, but I didn't really need the rest, so I can't go into detail about them or anything. You also choose which questions are required and which bring you to a different page (if necessary). It really was awesome to use and the finished product is better than anything else I could have asked for. Free!

Done and done. Now all I need to do is get the invites finished and we're set.

YEY!

RSVP...

I still haven't posted about the rings... I intend to... It's just a long story, so I'm lethargic about it. :D

Meanwhile, what if instead of RSVPs, we do some sort of website questionnaire? It'd be drop down menus, like:

Attending/not:
If you pick attending, then these show up:
Number of people attending:
Food preference for each (beef, salmon, vegan): (this one probably has to be a different format to accommodate several different answers)
Help needed with accommodations (yes, no):
Comments/allergies:

Except I don't know how to do that. So... Um... I found html code online for a contact form, but I'd kind of prefer if it had the options too, not just a comment space.

Any ideas?

Cake toppers (final)...

YEY! My cake toppers are officially done and bought. She did the eyes so perfectly. I love them. <3

YEY!!


ETA: If you should happen to want your own customized kokeshi dolls, this is the store where I got mine. She's pretty amazing and was great to work with too.

Cake toppers... :D

Eeeeeeeeee! She sent me the pre-varnished wedding toppers. I feel like a bit of an ass, but I asked her to change Mike's eyes to grey-blue and make mine slightly darker.

But do you see the bouquet?!! (They probably click bigger...)

Ah! I'm so happy with them.

Eeeee!

(I'm all vowels right now. :D)

Bouquets - follow up...

The bouquets will hit the mail tomorrow. She accidentally did an extra boutonniere, which I guess is ok because if my bro (who I haven't really asked yet) does the ceremony, he can wear one too.

So yeah.

Done and done.

Wedding favors...

(Still trying to catch everything on the blog up to where we are right now...)

I'm a little on the fence about wedding favors. Most of the time, the bride and groom seem to spend wads of cash personalizing some sort of trinket and at the end of it, within a week, none of the guests still has it or even remembers what it was. T got personalized m&ms, which was cool (even if Littles ended up eating mine, lol), but since my entourage is so diet inflexible, I figured food wasn't a good option for us.

I shopped online, and everything seemed either tacky or ridiculously expensive. Like, really, spending $500 on wedding favors seemed like such a waste, especially considering the things I was finding.

And then I stumbled upon these magnets:

As one person on my facebook put it, "But... you're not cat people." Indeed.

Indeed.

But most people we know are cat people. And those who aren't cat people are cat-with-mustache people. Or cat-with-monocle people. And those who are none of those... well... you can't please everybody.

And so far, even the people who have ridiculed our choice of favor, when asked if they'd keep their mustache kitty magnet, replied that yes, in fact, they would definitely keep it.

I figure they'll be like Christmas ornaments. Ornaments are rarely personalized and rarely even all that directly personal (it's all about the stars, the Jesus, the snowmen, the Santas and the angels), but you always remember where you got them.

So there you go. All that's left is ironing out the kinks in the shipping because apparently, magnets qualify as "dangerous goods" and have rules about them. It wouldn't matter so much if we weren't buying so many.

Oh, and since they're so cheap, we figured we'd also donate a lump sum to a rescue here to balance it out.

So yey.

Bouquets...

The original plan for flowers was to get $200 worth of bulk flowers and make bouquets myself using a video guide I found online. I intended to get pink spray roses and/or white vendela roses, but neither of those seems to be sold in bulk here in Canada, so I asked a bunch of places online if they'd ship to Canada and I actually never got any responses from any of them (I forgot that till just now).

Anyhoo, after deciding that maybe Costco was my best bet, even if they only have generic white roses here in Canada (or blue hydrangeas, which I would have figured out how to use if I had to), it dawned on me that I could try my friend T's idea for her own wedding and I started cruising etsy for fake flowers. If I can get a bouquet I like, it would save the hassle of dealing with fresh flowers, I thought. 

To be honest, I didn't think I would find anything I liked. I found some bouquets I wasn't sure of and I favorited them and asked a few vendors how flexible they were with arranging things and stuff.... It would be hard to match a bouquet with my dress, especially when my dress changes colors... 

And then, by chance, off on a tangent, I found this:

At this store. And I've made probably about seventy or something (rough estimate) colorful origami butterflies for the wedding and I saw this and I had to have it. Something about how intricate and delicate the butterflies are.... 

There's something about butterflies for our wedding... I'm not usually a butterfly person- I mean, they're pretty, but I'm a penguin person through and through. But somehow, the symbolism of them and the lightness of them both seem to fit what I intend for this wedding (and Mike agrees).

So anyway, I perused her shop...

And I found my bouquet...

Another picture I stole from the etsy ad:

And another:

Last one, with Mike's boutonniere:

It was the middle of the night and it was all I could do not to just buy it immediately. Of course, as with everything else about this wedding, I needed a second opinion to make sure I'm not crazy (I don't know why I'm so adamant about that for this particular endeavor).

Morning came and T was the first one awake and she approved, and by then, I'd messaged the lady who made it to ask if she could make four others, but with three butterflies instead of all the ones mine has (because I have to be special, see?). I also asked if she could make the three other boutonnieres with hydrangeas only because Mike has to be special too (he's only got three groomsmen). She said she could. And I was filled with glee. I bought the string of butterflies and my bouquet as a deposit and today, she sent me pictures of the near-finished products to make sure I was happy with it all.

And I totally am!

YEY!

Here are the pics she sent (they do click bigger)...

The boutonnieres:

She asked if Mike wanted her to add some hydrangeas to his butterfly since next to them, it seemed so small, but Mike likes his butterfly as is, so that's how it will stay.

The prototype bridesmaids' bouquet.

Yey? Yey, I say.

The bridesmaids are supposed to wear white (I conceded that they would wear a bit of black since the guys will just be black and white, but no other colors unless they're sure they'll match my dress, which is difficult to match, but I guess blue would be ok? But I digress...), so hopefully this will provide enough texture that it'll still be set apart from their person and not blend. 

So yey! She's supposed to finish them today (which she doesn't have to because we still have tons of time). 

I think I totally do have to splurge on a textile storage box though. I'm overly prepared and between the dress sitting in a garment bag and these coming soon...? I have to make sure everything makes it to the wedding in August...

Anyway, so that's the bouquets. :D

ETA: Oh, right, and in the process of ordering all that, she said she had an extra string of butterflies too, so I'm getting that one also. Two strings of white butterflies. Two. Ok, that is all. :D

Cake topper...

I intended on posting everything in quasi-order that it happened, even if it's a lot of catch up, but this just happened and so I have to blog it. :D

Here's the process:

After being dissatisfied with the regular toppers, a few months ago, I sent Mike an email with suggestions. It went like this:

Mike.
Me.

Mike.
Me.

Us.
Us again.

Mike.
Me.

Us again.

Aliens.
More aliens.

And today, I revisited the idea and looked on etsy again. He wanted to be Puss in Boots, but there were no comparable female kitties, so that didn't work out.

And then we figured it out. He's summery and I'm wintry, so I asked the store person if she could make a pair with the groomy from this one and the bridey from this one. And she said yes.

So yey.

ETA: I'll post them when I get them, obviously... or when she sends me a picture of the finished product. :D

My wedding dress...

So I found and bought my dress already.

After Mike's* mom made me try on this giant beige and tan Elizabethan dress she'd found at a secondhand store, I was in a state of panic for about three days (I'm not kidding). Seeing myself in that dress was a really, really terrifying experience and it made me doubt my ability to be a bride at all. It just didn't feel like me, you know? So fricken scary.

Anyway, I blogged about that experience here, if you want to read it. It was pretty bad.

After that, I decided to buckle down and find a dress I could see myself in. I thought about a long, flowy empire waist dress. Or a corset dress. Or some pretty plain white dresses which were A-line, but nowhere near as full-skirted as that big beige beast.

In the end, I decided if I was going to avoid panicking, my best option would be a tea length dress. No full skirts for me.

So this is the dress I fell in love with, as it appeared on the internet:

For my particular body type and complexion, the shape of the dress and the pink color as shown were perfect. (I just don't look healthy in white... ever.)

I'd originally found it in an ebay store and I have to say, the lady from the ebay store was pretty awesome to work with. I had asked her if she could make it in a tea length and she said she could (so yey). I measured myself and sent her my measurements and in the end, in order to avoid any potential for regret, I got two dresses. I got the tea length one and the full length one. I paid less than two hundred dollars for each, so I figured it was worth the extra expense to make sure I had the length I wanted when the time came to actually put the thing on (in case I got brave over the next eleven months).

I guess I knew but didn't really want to admit that I was buying a knock-off. I knew others in that store were knock-offs, but they were far more intricate than this one (and I'd seen a few of them on other designers' sites). It was only when I started to panic about the dress I'd ordered not turning out right that a friend of mine helped me google properly so I could I find the real dress, which is here and which, to my surprise, wasn't all that expensive either (as far as wedding dresses go). 

Needless to say, the dress didn't come out exactly as in the picture, but I actually like the dress I got better because the textured parts are a satin-type ribbony material rather than the tulle that is in the picture. The color also ended up a richer pink, which was good because if there was any sort of yellowy tint to it as there is in the original picture, it would make me look ill.

It took about five or six weeks to make (to my dimensions) and she made it without the giant bow (at my insistence). To ship it, she'd turned them both inside out and managed to fold them in such a way that they ended up this amazingly rigid, football-sized package.

When I opened up the package, I wasn't sure if the dresses were awesome or horrible. They were just exactly on that fine line. One thing was sure though, the tulle flowers that she added on for some reason I don't understand had to come off. They were unnecessary, especially since the material underneath was so intricate and perfect.

It took me two days and some massive headaches (literally, not in the figurative "so much trouble" way), but I managed to use my iron to get all thirty-two hot-glued tulle flowers off my two dresses. 

This is the post-victory photo:

The material changes color depending on the light, which is cool because one time, while I was prancing about the house in it around dusk, the blue light from the window made my dress look nearly silver. It was pretty magical.

In natural light, this is what it looks like (the tea length is on the left and the full skirt is on the right):

And when I took the full skirt dress out of its football ball and put that sucker on, it was magical. I didn't panic at all. It was comfortable and crinkly and different and unlike anything any other bride I know has ever worn. 

I do have to get it altered a bit, which I have already arranged for a couple of months before the wedding (my chosen seamstress didn't want to do it right away in case I get preggers or something), because somehow, I got my waist wrong and so it's a bit loose on the part around the ribs that is supposed to be cinched. But still, as is, it's totally wearable, but I'd just prefer for the weight of it to be more distributed and not to sit on my hips the whole time. But the length is perfect**, the cut is perfect and the color is perfect too. 

So yeah, the dress is bought and the alterations are booked.

*I figured since his name isn't all that unique, I may as well use it, no? Finally? No?

**I made her make the dress hit the floor with me barefoot because I'm far too panicky in heels to wear them on my wedding day. I think I'll actually wear these since they almost match anyway. Hehe. And if Mike wears these with his suit, I'd be ok with that too-but only in black. :D