Landed and Running (er, kind of)

I slept last night for almost 11 hours. It started with falling asleep on the floor and then moving to the unmade bed and then having Z make the bed around me and over me and then sleeping half the night in incorrect clothing and I finally brushing my teeth at 7am.

Deliiightful.

Step 1: sleep a lot.
Step 2: reintroduce ideas like "exercise" and "diet"
Step 3: CLEAN for the love of God CLEAN
Step 4: open presents, letters and enact a thank you letter writing campaign.

Most Romantic Room Ever (via The Wedding Chicks)

I also love the grooms shirt and tie combo. See, you can do whatever you want at a wedding. Lynne and Gavin have great taste in a way I do not have taste. Lovely.

Photography: Gavin Casey
Via: The Wedding Chicks

Attacking tasks: finished and unfinished

One of the challenges of doing your own wedding is staying organized. When it's just me organizing me, that's one thing, but as soon as you bring in willing hands, you (I) want to make sure I have things for them to actually do. I hate showing up at something ready to help and then have there be nothing to do.

It's such a delicate game though b/c on the one hand, I want to do as much as *I* can do before people start arriving Thursday. But on the other hand there are several different types of things I'm currently doing and some can't be done once it gets down to the wire. Here are the various tasks:

1. Designing. At some point, I'm still figuring shit out. Does this fabric work like it works in my brain? Will glue hold this together? What changes do I need to make? How would I prep this for mass production? What kind of instructions should go along with it.

Crepe Paper Medallions (via Once Wed)

This is why archives are so fantastic! This is a OnceWed tutorial from 2008 found again via How About the Orange. Awesome!

Check out the Crepe Paper Poms as well through the How About the Orange link. So cute!

(I think it would be cool to make these, put them in a box and send them to bridal party and mothers post wedding. Instead of a name it would just say, "Congratulations!"  And it would be for having survived the wedding. :)
Blog trail: How About the Orange, Once Wed

Mix and Match Bridesmaids (via Style Me Pretty)

Good morning! Phew! The real countdown began two days ago. GAH!!!

To ease my brain I'm looking at pretty. Here's a great mix and match set of white bridesmaid dresses. Love it!

The bride and groom, Melissa and Danny, clearly have a great sense of style. The other pictures at SMP are great.

Photography: Ahsley O'dell
Via: Style Me Pretty

Final Week: starts tomorrow!!

So back out at August 24th I more or less made a list of the things I wanted to do or have come next week. I thought I'd check back in to see where I was on that list. What stayed. What went.

Flags- not as many as I had planned originally but good enough
Programs- in the final copy edits as I type
Bouquets/boutonnieres- the latter finished, the former, not yet sure. Women may not have much of anything in their hands. Hell, right now *I* don't really have a bouquet!
Tables- flowers, decorations, etc- If the wedding was tomorrow, we'd have these finished.

Altar Type (via Snippet and Ink)

Graphical type is awesome anywhere. I love this idea from the Faux Wedding designed by Grey Likes Weddings and photographed by Bonnie Tsang. I think you could do something something similar by painting painter's paper and then stamping big letters on it. It'd take some time and by the end of it all, may have been worth the price of just buying the signage, but still, sometimes the process is the fun part.

Via: Snippet and Ink

Fruit! (via Style Me Pretty)

I love it when people incorporate something other than flowers into their centerpieces. The centerpieces (and table decor in general) of Beatriz and Dwayne's wedding is a great example of having flowers and something non-flower.

Also, apparently, the bride designed the entire wedding. Wow. Really really lovely.

Photography: Kellie Kano Photography
Via: Style Me Pretty

You know it's time to stop for the night when...(part II)

When you face plant your thumb into a pile of really hot glued while standing 6 feet up a latter entangled in a mess of brittle tree branches being attacked by mosquitos. Put a band aid on your now turning white future blister and go home. Sorry other hand.

Letters! (Via Ramon Lenherr and Florian Brunner)

I love letters. Big. Three Dimensional Letters. This is the very cool work of Ramon Lenherr and Florian Brunner.

Via Oh Joy , Typography Served

You know it's time to stop for the night when...

you spatter small blood droplets across your cutting matte. Sorry finger/fingernail.

 Aaaaand scene.

Triple. Hurray

Tonight feels oddly victorious.
Z finished a solid first draft of our ceremony.
I started the work on our altar decorations.
I have a concept that I think will work for our guest book. (Fifteenth time's the charm!)
I have paper for our favor tags.
The fabric came for the test decorations for our pre and post ceremony festivities.
Tomorrow starts with a trip to the gym and a day of figuring out our programs. We're a hop, skip and a jump from major progress on that front as well. And then there's a long night ahead of me at my parents' gluing felt leaves to a tree with Mom and tracking down more pink fabric for our tables and maybe finishing a first attempt at our altar.
Yay yay yay!

Let the Games Begin

Last night I sat in bed and I could feel my pupils enlarging with anxiety. Anxiety over what? I'm not really sure. It's Roving anxiety. I can feel it looking around, searching for something to latch onto.  Should it be the number of people at each of our 60" tables? Sure was about 30 minutes ago! Should it be where we put those 14 tables? Sure is right now.

I can feel my mind just trawling over all the little details that make up a wedding and assessing each one for it's anxiety viability. My dress, my shoes, how I'm theoretically doing this or that, the 10,000 things I wanted to do but won't for lack of time. It's a fantastic little game and I have a feeling it will grow in intensity right up until Aug 13th.

Oh yay.

Owl Bag (via Paper Crave)

Adorable. Is there enough time to make 100 in two weeks of these with different types of owls? Just joking, but this owl creation by Denise Sharp. Wow. Just add a bow and a heart and it's the valentines bag I'm going to be using for the next decade. Love!

Tutorial at her site.

Blog Trail: Denise Sharp, Paper Crave