Monday, December 29, 2008

Invitiations

Warning! LOTS OF IMAGES!!!!:

So here are my lovely invitations.... All in all it took a good two months to get 80 of these done. Let's start at the beginning: This is the envelope. Green, store bought, with a beautiful brown inked hand stamp of a tree. Each envelope was hand addressed by my self (I have pretty damn good handwriting and I was not about to hire some calligrapher!) the main address sitting right under the tree and the return address on the back flap. The stamps, not shown here...ended up being a little brown and orange chair and I wanna say a dragonfly but my memory is already fading....maybe it was Frank Sinatra...I remember there being some debate at the Post Office over this...anyway....

This is the inner lining of the envelope. I took multiple found images from a botanical book and pasted them together and then photocopied enough to paste inside the store bought envelopes....
This is what the invatation looked like when pulled out of the envelope...a little bundle tied by yarn...
I printed in brown ink the invite in traditional language on vellum....
Which was then sewed with a sewing machine onto handmade paper I made. I ground the cotton, dyed the cotton , added leaves from Patrick's maple tree and pulled the paper....then I carved out of wood these three little flowers which I then handprinted onto the paper using a very old press in green oil based ink, (woodcut print)....
For the direction cards I bought a cheap book on flowers, with the botanical drawings. I tore out the pages of the book and sewed them to green card stock....
On the opposite side of the card stock I printed the direction s to the wedding in brown ink....On the left over yellow paper I made, I printed an RSVP card which I stamped with a dandelion image that I then added embossing power to...heated it up...and the dandelion was embossed (raised). On a little seperate piece of paper I added the places where Patrick and I were registered...REI, Crate and Barrel and Target....and of course added a self addressed and stamped envelope...


TaDa!

Saturday, December 27, 2008

Location

We originally wanted to get married in front of our favorite waterfall in the forest...Little Zigzag. But after hiking there many times we realize my grandmother would have to be carried in and there would only be room for thirty people...and its really hard to narrow down your family and friends into only thirty people.
So we ended up getting married out in the countryside in the back yard of a 1890's farm house. The house was the same color yellow I had chosen for our palette and it would force us to have a small wedding which I so wanted. We ended up with about 120 invites but I think only 100 of that showed up.
This was one of those issues I had to fight about. My parents wanted to invite their friends, my mother wanted to invite all of my distant relatives, ones who I don't even know their name. We wanted everyone there to have some real connection to us. People that truly loved us. I think it was the best decision. I could not imagine a large wedding, it would be quite overwhelming.


We had the whole place to ourselves. We got ready that day in the house. The caterer's used the kitchen. We could party as late as we wanted. We could be as loud as we wanted. My uncle even parked his motor home on the property and stayed the night. My cousin slept in one of the empty rooms. It was wonderful.

This is the view standing from where we got married towards the back of the house.
This is the view from the house...look at all those chairs...when they were finally all up I was amazed at how beautiful they looked. We rented them from a local company along with the tables, table clothes, a dance floor and a little stage. They delivered them on Friday morning, the wedding was Saturday evening and they picked them up Sunday. It was so easy.

Thursday, December 25, 2008

Color theme

One of the first things to do when planning a wedding is to get your color palette down. I went to the local paint store and picked up a bunch of samples in three colors I liked. Two main colors and one accent. I picked up a few of them so I could put some in my wedding journal (a nice way to keep all your information straight and to show someone EXACTLY what you mean by "ruffles"), always had some in my purse and gave them to my bridesmaids for reference. That way everything that I bought or decided on I could match up to the colors. If I had to many different shades of the same color it was likely to look horrible.

This was one of the main colors. A bright yet not highlighter bright yellow. Soft yet saturated.
The second main color was what I like to call "Garden Green." Spring like, not too dark.

And the accent color was good old chocolate brown. This way I could through it in if need be, because you can find chocolate brown everywhere.

So pick out your colors first and find samples. That way all the decisions you have to make will come a lot easier.

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Table Arrangements

I wanted everything in our wedding to be about us. I got lots of gruff from family members for some of our decisions but I stood strong and eventually everyone gave in. And at times it really sucked, but when you believe in something, I think it is even more important to do it. Now this came up on many issues so this won't be the first time I mention it.
Table arrangements was one of these instances.
We got married in the backyard of a 1890's farm house out in the countryside of Oregon. There was plenty of beautiful flowers and trees on the property. I did not want to decorate that much and over do things. But I did want something for the tables. This lovely lemon arrangement went on the food table. Simply made with lemons skewered together, add some flowers and and place on a silver tray.
We wanted as much of our wedding to be handmade, done by ourselves or by friends, and nothing cliche or cheesy. I really wanted to do something with old jars because the woman who lives on the farm has a canning house and she told me that the property used to have lots of fruit and vegetables that her and her family would can throughout the year. Plus my husband will drink out of a jar over a glass any day. So I came up with these:


I bought $1 pizza pans at the Dollar Tree, hot glued one jar in the center and four around it. Mostly mason jars but some others we had (pickle jars were great for variety). And I collected moss from our families backyards or a little here and there when we went on hikes. Then I hot glued the moss to the pans (most types of moss stay green even when dry). I covered the bottom of the jar with rice and added a little water because the jars get hot with the lit candle inside. I then placed a big candle in the center jar and smaller candles in the outer jars. One of these went on each of our twelve tables. It was wonderful! The jar/candle lit backyard was more beautiful than I could have imagined.

Monday, December 22, 2008

The Dress

Let's get on to the dress. Certainly a very important part of getting married for any woman out there. We all want to look good. Especially when standing in front of almost everyone you know. And having a thousand pictures taken of you to be shown for generations to come. Finding a dress for me was quite easy. I vowed not to try on any thousand(s) dollar dresses. I could not justify to myself why I would need to spend that much money on dress for one day.
I ended up at David's Bridal. My step-mother and I went in really just to look and I ended up getting a dress that day. To tell you the truth the whole trying on dresses adventure is exhausting. It's a lot of work to get in and out of those things! Well, these ended up being the top three:
This dress with the bow had to be my favorite. It was all beads and I loved the halter top neck. I think I looked damn good in it too. In the beginning I was dead set on not getting a strapless number because looking in magazines etc. they all seemed to be strapless. There were a few problems with this dress though. #1 : It was very heavy, with all those beads and lace...I couldn't see myself dancing in it. And since we were having an outside wedding I thought I might get really hot (which was true, our wedding day was one of the hottest days all year, like 103 or something!) #2 : It needed alterations, which equals more time dealing with the David Bridal people, more money and in my mind more stress. #3: Some of the beads were coming off and so they would either need to be fixed or I would need to have them find me another dress. #4 : It was over my price limit.
This dress was also in the top three. I thought it made my natural curves look hot! The price was right in the $400 range. Problem #1: It had a sparkly thing with fake diamonds on the boob area (which my step-mother called a boob jewel!). I am not a fan of diamonds (especially fake ones) which I will explain more later. #2 : Taking a closer look I realized that the sheer fabric was only on the front part of the dress , not the back. So there was this big seam that went down both sides of the dress and made it look cheap.This dress here is the winner! My face doesn't look very happy but that's because my step-mother doesn't know how to use a camera and I was quite concerned. It fit perfectly, yippee! No alterations I just had them add a bustle on the back. Nice little train. Light, not too heavy. Beautiful details around the waist band. I felt very comfortable in it. And including the bustle and special under ware it was exactly $500! And it was all done in one trip.

Now this is of course not my dream dream dress. That would be something that would have cost over $5000. No way. But it works. I felt sexy and beautiful and really that's all that matters.





Friday, December 19, 2008

Let us start the wedding madness...

So, I have quite a few loved ones recently engaged....and I am getting the "what did you do for your wedding" questions. So let me show you all the lovely things we did for our wedding. I wanted to post all this stuff at the time but I did not feel I needed to start a blog just for wedding stuff, plus I was consumed with reading the Weddingbee....
Let us start with the budget. These are good things to make, especially if you are poor and not quite sure how much money you will have...also, it's good to keep track of...because if you start to spend so much money you could make a down payment on a house, take a step back..... and MAKE A DOWN PAYMENT ON A HOUSE! Your wedding will be amazing and wonderful beyond your dreams, no matter what the price...but it is one day. ONE. Help yourself out now so you are not struggling the first year of marriage....
Budget: Ours originally was $3,000. My father graciously gave us $5,000 and in the end of it all we spent about $6,225. (I say ABOUT because it was probably $6,356 or some random number like that but you get the point.)
Also this is just what we spent. Our friends and family gave us beautiful gifts and parties that all added to the wedding. The rehearsal dinner was amazing and put on by Patrick's father and step-mother, my beautiful bridal showers (by Kelsey and by Mary-Alice) and my bachelorette (again Kelsey) and Patrick's two bachelor parties (by Nathan and Jim).

The Budget:
Location: $1,000
Food: $2,500
Dress: $500
Groom's Attire: $200
Cake: $200
Gifts: $25
Rentals: $1000
Decorations: $150
Invites: $150
Flowers: $150
Photography: $500

Total (about): $6,225

Tada!

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Patrick and Samson Tunnel Waterfall Eagle Creek

My boys, my family. I am finally out of school for break. I have so much work to do though! Thesis seems to be looming around the corner. I have photos to take, models to hire, medicine cabinets to conquer, and a big paper to write. But before I start all the madness again, I will pause for Christmas and the fam and we will take ourselves up a mountainside to camp in the snowy snowy forest. We'll sit in a carved out log full of hot springs water, and drink mulled wine from a thermos. Jeez, I can't wait to be out in the middle of nowhere! This is the fam on our honeymoon backpacking trip through Eagle Creek. Look at all that green, I'm sure its covered in white by now.

Favorites: Linford and Karin (Over the Rhine)





Over the Rhine (OtR) is by far my most favorite band. When people ask me to describe their sound I never can. Patrick says its "Midwestern jazz," I would say it's more "western jazz rock with a lot of soulful singing/lyrics and some hymnal influence." I know, that almost covers everything right? Oh well, you just have to hear it. My most favorite song (so far) would have to be "Changes Come." And my goal in life is to have every album they have ever produced in vinyl. So far...due to being um, POOR!..... I have none.

Favorites: Robert and Shauna Parkeharrison




















I love these photographers and dream of creating images this good. Check them out at parkeharrison.com. They have three wonderful slide shows on their website.

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Why Blog?

So I have been debating creating my own blog for awhile....and the reason I did not start sooner is because I kept asking myself WHY?
I don't usually like to jump on the bandwagon...especially one that so many people are on. I also have a hard time filling in boxes that say "profile" or "about me." I find there is so much more to say then fits in those boxes....and yet that became a reason to have a blog. So I could be more creative, say more.

I also know that someday I will need to create a website for my business. To sell my work. But I recently had a shop owner tell me that she "didn't want to compete with the Internet" if she sold my work in her store...and I can understand that. So in a delay to the inevitable "artist website" I will create my free blog....we will see from there...so....here we go!

PS: It will probably help me from not talking my husbands ear off too!