flowers sorted out, maybe

Thanks to time browsing on the internet, I think I solved my bouquet dilemma. Originally the plan had been to make bouquets with silk flowers. See, I love flowers. I love to see them growing, and I love to have vases of them in my home to brighten it up. I love plants too. But somehow I just wasn’t loving any bouquet idea aside from ones that weren’t going to easily work for our wedding/budget. Partially, I think, because everything just seemed too boring and expected, or on the flip side too foreign looking for what I wanted. Hard to please. But while browsing for instructions on how to make butterflies, I found some pictures and instructions for DIY organza flowers. And these organza flowers exactly capture the kind of look I’m going for. That ethereal, otherworldly look:



Not only do they have “the look” but they’re also ridiculously easy to make, and after doing some quick internet browsing, also look like they’ll be really inexpensive to make. So I can probably make them just by using some of my weekly spending money. I’m not sure yet how I’m going to make them into bouquets, but I’m looking forward to playing around with different ideas.

I’m getting David to email the priest about marriage prep so hopefully we’ll be doing that soon. I’m really looking forward to it. After almost six years together I think it’s time for a tune up, to break us out of any bad habits we’ve fallen into. So I am hoping it’s a little more on the thinking-questions side, and less on the “this is how you share a bathroom” side. Ye gods!

back on track

I feel myself beginning to plan for the wedding again. It’s only been a month or so where I haven’t wanted to think much about it. You can chalk it up to the stress of moving and settling in and all the ten million little insecurities that come with this. So today I forced myself to sit down and tally up the wedding budget of absolute “must haves”. You know, the things that are actually required in order to get married, instead of the things wanted in order to have a nice wedding. It’s at the point where we need to see if we can actually do this next year even if we save nothing between now and then. And the verdict is...YES!

I’ve made my bare-bones budget. Things that we need, or would be really disappointed not to have, for our wedding. You know, a priest, marriage license (I realise we don’t “need” it, but I think the priest won’t let us get married without it!), rings, photographer, etc. We’re over what we have, but not in an unmanageable way. Then I made my list of things I’d like to have, but don’t need. And these are things that, at least to some extent, I’ll probably end up having by buying them myself at some point. But we’ll see.

One thing I’m mulling over is whether or not I want to carry a bouquet. I’m not really into the whole bouquet idea. My favourite one is actually a cluster of paper butterflies, no flowers at all. That said, I can’t figure out what else to carry, or what else to have my merry maids carry, or if it is necessary aesthetically to have anyone carry anything at all. We’ve already nixed boutonnieres & corsages. Mum and I had talked about doing something with Holland roses and ferns, or one large flower each...but...unsure. Maybe I will have everyone hold a Marian icon! Or rosary! Fortunately this decision can be put off.

We’re having to rethink our invite designs. My original plan was to have velum and mulberry paper. This could still fly, except now we’re thinking of having our invites printed in Canada to save on the international postage. And if we have them printed in Canada, we’re going to go with an image & text design, instead of a textured paper design. I have an idea of what I want, and David thinks he knows someone who can design it for us, so this just might work. The first priority, however, is to do the STDs...

Which is the final bit of news, I suppose. David got the all-clear for our date, and having compiled this last bit of budget the wedding looks set to go. So I’ve decided to try to have my STDs ready to go out by Decemberish. They’ll get lost in the Christmas mail rush I’m sure, but I know some people need to book their vacations in January.

And now I feel like I have a whole bunch of wedding work to do again!
***
Later: MY DRESS HAS ARRIVED!!!! My parents are heading down island tomorrow to pick it up! Joy!!!

One gone, one to go.

David is off to England today. More specifically, he's off to San Francisco right now, and then off to Heathrow a little later. Based on his estimations, I expect him to be in Cambridge by 09:30PST tomorrow morning, which I believe will be 17:30 for him. He's expecting an uncomfortable evening, as most of the shops shall be closed and he won't have any bedding or things like that. I'm hoping that he can find a shop to buy these small necessities easily enough.

Although we've been apart for much of September it hasn't felt like it since we've talked on the phone daily. So it's now that I'm grumbly about long distance and low communication. I know I shouldn't complain—it's only a few weeks apart and then we're together again—but I never like it. That said, part of me is very glad that I'll be arriving after when our place is hopefully a little more set up! I'm coming down with a cold anyway, so it's just as well that I'm not traveling.

I didn't make it down to Victoria to see David off because I spent the weekend in Vancouver. We decided that it was more important for me to spend time with family than running down island to say a quick goodbye. While in Vancouver, one of my friends suggested a photo challenge that I am going to try to do. She said that I should take one photo a day while in England and then write about it. While I don't think I'll manage to post daily, I think I'll definitely try this photoblog idea as a way of capturing life over there. This blog is going to be going in a slightly different direction anyway, more of our lives and not just wedding, because I think living in England is a little more interesting than living in Toronto, and my mum actually reads this blog!

As for wedding updates, I think the big wedding things are all done. Some of the smaller things are coming together—I've pretty much picked the bouquet flowers (Holland roses or something similar), thanks to Tara we've found a place for dancing at our reception venue, and I finally sat down and came up with the beginnings of an inspiration board (also thanks to Tara). David and I have been window shopping rings, particularly as my engagement ring is going to be hard to fit. I bought a sh*tload of ribbon at Michaels, and so now I'm coming up with ways of incorporating it into the wedding.

One really special thing that I can cross off my list is my wedding hairpiece. Ever since I found them on Etsy, I thought that wearing a beaded hairvine would suit my perfectly. It's got all the lovely organicness of nature in form, but all the subtle elegance of shiny things in details. What makes it special is that my Aunt the Amazing Jewellery Designer has agreed to make it for me. We went to Michaels to pick colours and go over ideas, and then two hours later she'd already done a small mockup (in fall colours) for me to try...and I LOVE IT. It's perfect! So I'm really, really, really excited to see what she makes for my wedding. And one of my uncles has agreed to be our MC, which is also really special. We're trying to get family and friends involved in this and so I'm really happy that people from two families have already agreed to contribute in those ways.

So here I am, missing David but grateful for each day I'm home. I'm spending my days running errands and shuffling around things in boxes, doing some wedding planning, visiting friends and family, and waiting to leave.

***

Here are some examples of hair vines. I'm definitely not a big tiara type of girl, and I wanted something a little more nature-infused than a rhinestone headband or even a metalwork circlet. These ones are by Chic Allure on Etsy.com:

dress shopping trip

I’m sitting on the ferry on the way back from a very wonderful and relaxing vacation in BC. I’m looking forward to life becoming a little more relaxing again—I know that there will be stress, as that is part of life, but I think that the pressure and stress from this last year will slowly disappear. I don’t remember being this stressed all the time in Edmonton, which I think is because I could take breaks there without worrying that I had work to do. But, we’ll see.

One important part of the trip was organizing wedding stuff, of course. I already wrote a little on here about the fun day I had going around Port Alberni to find a reception venue and talk to the church. Two days later my mum and I headed down to Victoria to go wedding dress shopping. It was a really great trip, and actually one of my favourite things that I did on vacation.

My mum is essentially adored/idolized by many of the girls/women who know her, so I always have people telling me nice things about one on one time with her. I mention this because mum and I figured on our trip that this was the first time just the two of us have really spent any time together! There is always someone else around, usually John, Dad, or David. So first of all it was really nice to just have that time away to talk about both life and the wedding.

Our first stop was at Michael’s in Nanaimo, in order to get ideas for the wedding flowers. We made up some very bare mock-ups, and those coupled with some pictures and the aid of Sue will hopefully make something beautiful. We then went to Victoria where we picked up David’s mum and showed up half an hour late for a dress appointment (I forgot the time and then we were late on top of that!).

That was my favourite appointment. It was one on one and the lady was incredibly helpful with telling me what kind of dresses would work best with my body type, although of course she let me try on what I wanted, but she was seriously perfect. So I tried on six dresses, and then put my favourite back on while we talked over details like headpieces, bridesmaid options, colours, and alterations. Mum and Jen really liked her as well and we were all quite impressed.

The three of us left all liking the same dress a lot, but we decided to go to two more salons on Friday just to make sure. So Friday morning we met my cousin Tara and went to a fancy salon downtown, where the service was not nearly as good and the dresses were more expensive and nothing quite hit the mark. It was becoming quickly obvious to me that I had found The Dress the day before, and although I liked a couple of the dresses it wasn’t the same. But the store did have dresses in my size, so it was good to see what they’d look like when they fit properly.

Both of the salons I went to allowed me to take pictures, and after comparing those and how I felt in the dresses I’d made my decision by the time I got back to the car. I drove with Tara, and mum and Jen drove in mum’s car and they picked the same dress as well. They are both quite impressed that the dress comes with both a purse and a shawl in the price, and kept commenting on it (I find this hilarious—it is such a motherish thing to be impressed with).

So, The Dress. Neither of the places I went to had any of the dresses I’d picked. The dress I’m getting combines elements of them, but it does not really look like either of my favourites. I stepped away from chiffon, which felt too much like curtains, and am going with taffeta and lace. Strangely enough, it is very similar to a dress that I had a dream about, and which I had assumed was my subconscious revealing my dream dress to me. Go subconscious! I won’t be putting pictures up of the dress, because I don’t want David accidently seeing it AND I want must people to see it new on my wedding day. So ya’ll can wait and wonder. I will say that it is corseted and I don’t have to wear anything under it—that was a big selling point with me. Here’s to being braless on my wedding day! Woohoo!!!

Styles aside, most importantly I feel like an absolute princess when I wear it. I kind of like I did when I was a little girl playing dress up and imagining I had a princess dress, and feel the same way I did watching Cinderella or Belle in the ball scenes in the Disney movies. I love it! It also is so incredibly ME, with beautiful little details and all that. Love it! So that is that. I’ll be ordering the dress when I’m home in September, and I’m really looking forward to trying it on again then (if she still has it there) and having that total LOVE moment.
Other things learned on this trip—I have very nice shoulders (according to one salewoman) and I am also the perfect height for wedding dresses (5’9”) and thus my dress won’t need alterations. Yay!

One thing I insisted on with the dresses I really liked was that I see them with a veil (thank you, Say Yes to the Dress). And this naturally led into discussions of veils and me wondering what to do. The only veil I tried on that I liked came with a $200 price tag, which is a bit excessive. The plan all along had been to fix up mum’s veil and wear that, but she is getting more and more certain that it is going to be trashy after 30 years of poor storage, so we’ve been going over options. She had made her own, but was telling me the problems with that. I guess she was complaining about veil prices to her friend, because the next thing I know her friend offered me HER veil, if I wanted it, to do what I want with (the headpiece being some giant flower thing from the 80s)...

So we took the veil home to look at it. It was perfectly pressed in a sealed box, and looking into the box I didn’t think I’d like it—it’s pretty but looked dated. But we pulled out and it turned out to be PERFECT. We can easily remove the flowered headpiece and the veil itself—love! It has the same lace idea that I wanted—just a few flowers along the edging, and to top it all of it is a cathedral length veil, meaning it is really fucking long, which is what I wanted. It also, unlike the mantillas I looked at, has the second piece to cover my face, like I wanted. So now all I need to buy is a head piece, and the place where I’m getting my dress sells those too and they are fairly reasonable.

So aside from needing to pay for all this those aspects of the wedding are pretty much settled. It’s starting to feel a lot more real now, and I’m quite excited!

invites and colours

Wedding plans are coming together, when I force myself to think positive and be excited about it. I've been under so much stress this year that I'm having a really hard time feeling excited about anything unknown/uncertain, and the wedding keeps being pushed off to after x, y, and z in my thoughts. But that doesn't stop me from looking for ideas.

I've had numerous offers for help with diy stuff, which I appreciate but which distance makes it hard to utilize. I've been wondering how to do our invitations. I have ideas, but as usual things that I am attracted to aesthetically don't necessarily feel like me completely, just an aspect of me. One thing that I find underutilized in the invitations I've seen is the use of paper types/digital printing. Because of my background (I guess I can call it that now) in printing, I've been exposed to a variety of paper types and ideas, and I think one thing that will make our invites stand out from the crowd is the use of printing/paper in the diy realm. I wanted to avoid the scrapbook or stamp look because it is too popular. Buying a fancy invite kit is beyond our pricerange, and I considered creating ones that really brought digital printing to the forefront but did not want to put the effort into graphic design, nor do I think that full colour invites will be that cost effective. I'd considered buying parchment cardstock and drawing on there, but parchment was really my first foray into stationary and I feel that my knowledge of paper options has grown since then.

One paper I really like is vellum. Vellum nowadays is not HIDE, but a translucent, almost plasticy feeling, thin paper. What I love about it is the way black writing seems to glow off the page on it. I'm not sure how well, if it all, it will run off inkjet, but printing black on one side at a print shop if need be won't set us back too much. The other day I was browsing in Staples for ideas, and I found something that just screams ME, at least at the moment. It was indian cotton paper with pressed flowers in it as the backing, the text part written on vellum, and the whole thing held together by a ribbon. It resembles this:
http://www.daintree.ie/shopping_admin/product_details/boards.cgi?board=111009035&category=wedding&colour=

I'm think of doing some variation on this. If I can buy the papers myself it will hopefully save some money, although the indian cotton paper gets pricey. I *think* mum and I are going to stop at Michaels on our way to or from Victoria to look at wedding stuffs. We're going to see about putting together a flower mock-up.

I think we've settled on the colours for the wedding: a lightish blue (somewhere between periwinkle, serenity, and cornflower depending on how you seen colours) and yellow accents (like flowers). It should be bright and fun and summery.

That's it for now!

random thoughts connected by wedding

I am heading home for a vacation on Saturday. I’m really looking forward to it. I know I’ve mentioned this numerous times, but!!! Having lived away from home has really made me closer to my family, more appreciative of seeing them because there is no longer that idea of them always being there. And my extended family on mum’s side is so close that I really miss being away from everyone, and see them a lot less.

David was very thoughtful and made sure that he proposed to me when we were home for Christmas so that I could share it with my family before leaving. But we only had a day or two to be excited about it, so I’m really looking forward to having a longer time to enjoy it with them. It’s also nice having a proper ring now that I can show off.

My dress shopping trip has its members adding up and it’s subsequently taking me out of my comfort zone but in a way that I’m really excited about. I’m not someone who is comfortable with people seeing me “as is”--I think one of the reasons that the internet is a chosen means of communication for me is because I can constantly edit and ’perfect’ what I’m saying. I know that on my wedding day I am going to be too full of joy in the face of the one who knows the real me (and loves her) to be anything but that person. My whole vision is just focused on making my vows to David before God.

Anyway, dress shopping. So the original plan was to go shopping with my mum, because it seemed to me like this is the sort of thing mothers and daughters should do together (and I think my mum is almost happier for me than I am). But then through various thought processes and people being around, I now have an entourage of my mum, David’s mum, and [probably] two of my bridesmaids. (Julia & Tara). Which is CRAZY, at least as far as I’m concerned, because I’m someone who does not do girly things like this at all, ever. I’m learning to change, to become a softer person, but it is still weird to me. I’m actually disappointed that Madeleine and Sarah won’t be there.

Having bridesmaids is weird. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do with them, actually. We each live in a different city, which makes working on wedding DIY stuff hard to orchestrate. My original plan of slave-driving my MoH won’t work as well now that I’ll be living thousands of miles away from her.

Hmmm… internet research tells me that my bridesmaids are to be my MoH’s bitches. This could be fun, except I think Madeleine is too kind to exploit anyone. It also tells me that they have to help decorate. THAT is good news--they have much more flair than I do. Ah internet, where would I be without you!
***
One thing I’ve been mulling over in regards to the wedding ceremony is the problem of communion. We’re having a Catholic mass, of course, which means that we will have communion…which is only open to practicing Catholics. This leaves about 75% of our guests out of receiving it. I’m thinking of putting a special invitation at the front of the wedding program to invite our guests to come up and receive a blessing on our special day. I’m also hoping I can convince the priest to phrase this nicely before the ceremony… I don’t want people to feel left out, and although I realize that a blessing may not be the same for my Christian family as receiving communion would, I hoping people get behind the idea. The question really is about how I can inspire everyone to see this as a beautiful way of participating in our ceremony, instead of seeing it as something they are being left out of.
***
Finally, we are probably going to do silk flowers and make them ourselves. I’m going to go over ideas with Sue when I’m home, because she offered to help. These are ones I like:

I like the size of this one. I don`t want anything massive.

This one I love for the colour explosion.

It is so bright and cheerful, I love it. And it got me thinking about doing something with sunflowers.

Simple but bright.

This is maybe more traditional. It might be too large for my tastes...