Pom-pom Production Line

If you've been following along, you'll know that I have a lot of yarn pom-poms to make for our wedding toss. We're talking 300-500 little balls of yarn. And, since I'm not completely insane, I recently enlisted a team of yarn wrapping and trimming divas by bribing them shamelessly with the promise of wine and snacks. Meet my crew:

Bridesmaid Emily enjoying a sample of the white sparkling wine we'll be serving at the reception -- in one of the champagne flutes I've acquired for my bridal party. See her wrapping the yarn around her fingers? She's following the direction on this super easy tutorial for Bella Dia.

Stephanie who sweetly picked up yarn for perhaps the first time to help me with this daunting wedding project. She's a self-proclaimed non-crafter, but she did a great job. Here she's starting to trim the spiky ball of yarn you get after you've wrapped the yarn and cut the edges.

And wedding invitation goddess, Laura. Who is designing all my wedding stationary and left her gorgeous little boy at home for a day to be a part of my sweatshop. Check out her design work at http://www.lauramcdougall.com/. Her pom-pom is almost done in this picture.

And, what kind of progress did we make you ask? Well, we made exactly 100 pom-poms in just under three hours.  I'm keeping them in a large gift bag I got at our first bridal shower. Maybe I should put them in something smaller so they look more substantial, huh? I've continued to make more on my own, so now you can't see the bottom of the bag anymore. That's progress, right?

So, do you see my vision? Can you see these purple and tan and black poofs gently flying through the air as we walk down the aisle as husband and wife? I can!

Come pretend centerpieces with me

Well, it's all coming together . . . but you'll have to trust me on that. As I mentioned in my previous post, I've been gathering vintage vases and pedestal candy dishes for my centerpieces for months now--and these are the only elements of my centerpieces that I actually have in my possession right now. 

To help me visualize what our tables will look like at the wedding reception, I decided to make a centerpiece mock-up in my basement. Want to see? Well, let me walk you through my vision. 

First off, you'll need to suspend your disbelief and pretend a bit with me: 

• See the blue square of tissue paper in the pics below? Imagine that is a 12"x12"square mirror.

• Those white cones are the exact size of glass votive holders with long-burning ivory candles. See them twinkling in the mirror's reflection? (I should get them in the mail Tuesday!)

• The flowers in the vases won't be fakes from Michael's; they're fresh tulips 2 dark purple and 1 ivory.

• And the flowers in the candy dishes aren't really popped off heads of fake tulips; each dish holds one big white peony.

• Oh, and the table isn't covered in a wrinkly plastic table cloth; it's a light gold/brown "cafe"-colored linen table cloth I've rented.

So, you see, it's all coming together (in my head). I can't wait to see it all "in the flesh." Bridesmaids and wedding party, these are the centerpieces we'll be putting together Friday and Saturday before the wedding. How many? Depends on my RSVPs, but I'm guess about 20 tables. Fun, right?

Your thoughts? Anything you'd change?

Groom's cake brainstorm!

In the midst of wedding planning, the “groom's cake” has been a fuzzy detail I've been of two minds about. First off, I decided a while back we’d have the groom’s cake at the rehearsal dinner, since we’re already having plenty of cake options at the wedding reception. (Subject of a new post, I promise.)

Then there’s the fact that this would be an addition to our wedding budget and another pick up and/or delivery to arrange – something I’m really trying to avoid as we enter "crunch time."

AND the reality that Erik’s not that much of a cake person. So Nintendo or guitar shaped cakes like these

-- while cute -- would likely not be fully appreciated by the man of the hour.

So, here’s the solution I’m stealing from another bride. I’m going to make a couple batches of the vegan oatmeal dark chocolate cookies Erik now loves. (They're fabulous, if I do say so myself, made with oat flour, brown sugar and walnut butter, they're very unprocessed, but still soft and delicious.) And arrange them as such:

Very cute! This way it will be a tiered dessert that he’ll really like and we’ll really not to have spend much money on. Serve them with milk and we have an instant crowd pleaser, right? I’m hoping I can make these a couple weeks ahead of time and pop them in the freezer. How well does cookie dough keep in freezer?? What about freezing already baked cookies? Is this a no-no?

I may need to pick up a small cake stand to achieve this tiered look (which I’ve been avoiding cause they won’t fit our wedding cakes), but that shouldn’t be too hard. I never thought I'd be baking anything for our wedding, but I think I can handle the 40 people or so on our rehearsal list. Did you bake for your wedding? If so, do you have any tips for me?

Photo sources: guitar, Nintedo, and the cookies from Mrs. Mouse at http://www.weddingbee.com/.

How to Make a Veil

Have you seen the price of veils these days?! I don't know about you, but, frankly, I felt insulted when anyone assumed I'd actually pay over $100 (the sale price, no less!) for a few yards of fabric I was only planning to wear for 60 minutes at the most. Thus, the journey of making my own veil began...

The first thing I did was to do my research, i.e., surf the web. I needed to look at photos to decide what kind of veil I wanted and find DIY tutorials for making your own veil -- which of course I found on blogs written by other brides in my same situation. Apparently, I'm not the only one offended by high-priced "bridal" accessories. Here's the tutorial that helped us the most.*

After I decided on the basics -- An ivory two-tier veil with some kind of edge beading, I went shopping with my crafty bridesmaid Emily C. It didn't take long for us to find what we needed at Hobby Lobby. Here's a snap shot of our receipt:

4 yards of shimmery ivory tulle ------------------ $5.50

Silver and gold seed beads and beading needles --------------------- $3.75

Ivory ribbon, thread and hair combs --------------------- $5.40

For a grand total of $14.65 in supplies! Yea, savings!

K, so I think I've set the scene. Here are a few pictures of the work in progress:

First, step is to measure and cut. The great thing about making your own veil is that you can make it as long as you want. We designed my veil to make sure that the first and second tier highlighted rather than hid the details on the back of my dress. Here's my tulle folded in half and laid out on my living room floor.

How did we get those curved edges? Trial and error. We tied a piece of yarn to a marker (genius tip from Emily C.) and drew an arch on a piece of cardboard until we had a good template for our curve. 

After we had our veil cut, it was time to start beading. We decided to finish all of the edges with seed beads in a silver-gold-silver pattern with a space in between each grouping, like this: 

When we finished the beading, we gathered the fabric where the two tiers divide, sewed stitches through the fabric, pulled the string to gather it together, sewed the string to the comb and then wrapped the comb in pretty ivory ribbon.

Here's a picture of the veil, with beaded edging. See how it shimmers? Want to see it on? You'll have to wait until my hair trial in April. I will tell you that I brought it to my last dress fitting and it matches perfectly!

Did you make your own veil or DIY another "bridal" accessory for your big day? Were you happy with the results?

*Note: I may sound very confident about this process after the fact, but Emily can tell you I was fairly nervous to jump right in. In fact, a friend actually gave me a few yards of tulle she'd used as decore in her wedding so I could make a "practice" veil and walk through the tutorial with some room to make mistakes and learn the best way to go about things. This gave me a lot more confidence when it came to making the "real" veil. I highly recommend it.

The line between "vintage" and "antique"

I’m torn! Part of me wants to buy things like this wooden bowling pin and scatter them throughout the wedding reception. But, this kind of leans more towards antique/kitch instead of vintage old Hollywood. So, I've been avoiding my favorite antique or "junk" store in Iowa City: Artifacts. Yet, they continue to tempt me with Facebook posts. Blast!

And I love it! Thus, I've decided that although I can't justify adding more antiques to my wedding budget, I will use items I already have. This week, I've done an inventory of vintage/antique (yes, now I'm using them interchangeably) items we have laying around the house. 

Here's what I've come up with so far:

1) A vintage suitcase to store our photo booth props. This is currently in our bedroom closet and has a collection of teddy bears and other stuffed animals.

2) A vintage looking chest or two for cards at the gift table. (Please excuse the dust.) The one on the left Erik uses to store his random guitar stuff, guitar strap, extra picks, etc. The pretty floral one hold photos back from the day before digital cameras.

3) A vintage looking hat box for the photo tickets (once I cut a slot in the top). I currently have this on my night stand to give my reading lamp more height.

4) And a doily or two made by my family members. I might be able to incorporate on a table.

5) I also have this old valise, although I'm not sure what I'll use it for. Any ideas?

And, of course, I have all the vases and centerpieces I've been collecting (featured in this post). I've got a couple more antique items up my sleeve as well. So, you be the judge. Do these items fit well enough with our Old Hollywood theme? Or should I just throw up my hands, call our theme "vintage," and use them all?

100 days!

According to my weddingwire countdown, our wedding is 100 days away -- today. So, tomorrow we'll be down into the double digits!! Oh, my!

Well, as the day get's closer, I've been working to update our wedding website.To clarify: We  I have both a wedding blog (as you well know if you're reading this) and a wedding website. I'll admit there is some cross-over, but here's how they differ.

This blog, admittedly, is more about the "girly" details of the planning process. It's also info I thought area brides and acquaintances might be interested in. Thus, it has relevant info for non-wedding guests. More for my facebook friends and such.

The wedding website, however, is mainly logistical information for guests. We included it on our Save-the-Dates and will include it in our formal invitations. The site includes the hotel room block details, a map for our ceremony/reception venue and other area attractions, information about our gift registries, and -- as of this week -- a completely unnecessary update on the current weather in our wedding location. Gotta love new apps! ;)

Besides the obvious benefit of having all of the necessary details in one place, the wedding website is also saving us money. We don't have to print all of this information in our invitations (although we will still include the bare bones for our less-tech savvy guests). This means we'll save on both printing and postage costs which can really add up when you're sending 110 or so invites!

Anyway, if you're interested in seeing the difference between our my blog and my website, or actually need any of this information, feel free to check it out at www.weddingwire.com/erikandsara.

Do you like wedding websites, or would you rather have all of the info included in the envelope with your invitation?

(Why is Erik's name first you ask? Because I didn't like typing the two "a"s of SaraandErik together.)

Registering for Memories

Erik and I decided to do something a little unconventional for our honeymoon. We lived in Florida for a couple years, and I went to Puerto Rico once for work, so we were done with the beach scene. Not crazy about the idea of crowds on a cruise ship, and can't afford a European vacation.

So where are we going? Sedona, Arizona.

Specifically, we're flying into Pheonix, AZ the Tuesday after our wedding and driving to the town of Sedona to stay at L'auberge de Sedona -- an 11-acre luxury resort in the heart of red rock country. Want to see pictures? Okay!

Here's the main lodge where our room will be:

A picture of our room:

The resort's restaurant along Oak Creek:

Our trip will be 7 days and 6 nights. While we're there, we'll take advantage of their award-winning restaurant, go on jeep tours of the area, shop in the local art galleries, indulge in some spa treatments, take a hike in the natural beauty and maybe visit a winery or two. 

And the part that excites me the most is that our guests can help us build our trip through our honeymoon registry! From our registry site, guests can actually gift us these honeymoon experiences, just like they'd purchase any other gift for us online. Check out the screen shot below:

It's really very easy. They even have a phone number people can call if they're nervous about entering their credit card information online. While Erik and I both found items to put on our other registries, this is really the one we hope guests focus on. I know from the position of a guest, I'd much prefer gifting something like this instead of my usual standby. (I confess -- we've been relying on cash and/or gift cards for the majority of our married friends.)

Anyone ever purchased a wedding gift through a honeymoon registry? I'd love to know how it worked from the guest's perspective.