Flowers in jars and bottles - yes!

Look! Someone else did flowers in jars and bottles! And I think she might have stolen my groom - well, maybe just his name. Check out Wendy and Scott's beautiful wedding at Martha Stewart's site. They do have really pretty jars and bottles. I might need to work on my collection. I have my eye on my friends' bottle of maple syrup liqueur I saw last night. They have been expressly instructed to give me the bottle when they're done. :)

Photog woes

I'm having a hard time with photographers. I originally thought I'd want someone I knew personally that had shot a lot of stuff for newspapers. However, I looked at some people's work that I was familiar with and decided that there wasn't enough "pretty." Then, I found this great photographer who was inexpensive and would give me a cd with all my images right away - unusual for wedding photographers. This is apparently a big deal in wedding photography - the photographer also makes money on making prints and albums and holds your photos hostage while they rake in more and more money. A friend of mine won't have rights to her own wedding photos for 10 years. Ten. Years. So I found a real gem, right? Well, this great photographer specializes in bright sunny photos and doesn't do as well in low-light, outdoor situations. She said she isn't experienced enough with flash and that flash tends to make people look like they're in a cave in these situations. So bummed. But I do appreciate her honesty. So, then I check out her recommendation of a colleague, and that photographer is way expensive and is one that makes you order prints from her. I didn't bother to find out how long she holds your photos hostage. And most recently, a friend recommended a photographer she considered for her own wedding - sounds great, but she's not available. :( Every photographer on the Knot seems to really into these black and white shots with only certain parts in color and other cheesy gimmicks like that. I do have a couple of friends of friends to check out...

So effing gross

My mom called me a few months ago to tell me about this. Fish pedicures. She thought it would be funny to suggest we do this because koi (the fish) make me want to throw up.



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This "service" is a pedicure where little fish (carp that are related to koi, but are more like minnow-sized) eat... that's right... eat your dead foot skin. Like the title says, so effing gross. It's only available in Alexandria, VA, my mother happily pointed out. She lives not far from Alexandria. Here's a post about it.




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This is NOT what I'll be doing the morning of my wedding.

DIY Invitations... well, not me personally, but...

Our wedding invitations will be DIY - but not I'm not the Y in the DIY, though I'll help all I can. I'm very excited to say that our lovely, incredible, super awesome niece Ashley will be making our invitations for our wedding! She's an art student at RISD and apparently, it's all the rage to have a 21 year old relative at RISD who will make your wedding invitations and stuff (see this post on WeddingBee). Here's one of her paintings that we might incorporate into the invitations:



Sco and I LOVE all her work. And we love her! So that works out nicely. :)

So, now I have to get my act together and figure out what they'll say and what elements I want to incorporate. I did find a helpful post on WeddingBee. (Can you tell I spend WAY too much time on WeddingBee?) I think we can do it! Whoo hoo!

Polaroid fun!

Nothing really to do with weddings... Do you miss Polaroids? Apparently, a lot of people do. I remember being allowed to play with my dad's Polaroid camera at a very young age. So, yeah, I kind of miss it. Someone on Wedding Bee posted a new thing from Polaroid - you can take any digital image and turn it into a sort-of Polaroid. I kind of miss the instant, hold-in-your-hand photos. Here's one of me and lil sis in Tanzania all Polaroid style. Weird coloring and dark corners and everything!

Burgers. That's right. Burgers.

I might have mentioned this before, but I want this wedding to be very casual. I picture a family picnic/barbecue. Sco's fine with that as long as it's also "brilliant" as he likes to say. The "brilliant picnic" concept is slowly evolving. I've relinquished the idea of picnic blankets instead of chairs for the reception. My sister brought up that I'll have to have chairs anyway for the ceremony and the reception will be in the same location. She pointed out that it's a little weird to have the ceremony without chairs and that for the reception, "there will be old people there! Do you think that old people want to sit on friggin' blankets?!?" Thank you, dear sister.
So, food. I'm still hung up on hamburgers. I like them. A lot. I'll have veggie options and maybe some chicken, too. I've found a few examples (like this one on Style Me Pretty) of burgers and fries done brilliantly, so I think it can be done by us, too.

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Excrutiating

I did it. I started a bridal registry. I went to the gym on Saturday, and feeling all energized, went to Bed Bath and Beyond (heretofore referred to as B3 because the name is so effing long). I didn't take Sco with me because he was working very hard all weekend. Everyone seemed very excited when I said I wanted to start a bridal registry (I talked to about 4 people while waiting a couple minutes for the "specialist" to come to the front.) "Oh, fun stuff!" was said a couple of times. Yeah, well, it wasn't that fun for me. The girl was very nice. She seemed nervous and even said that she gets nervous and to please bear with her. I think she was trained to give you the hard sell on all kinds of stuff like china and curtains and stuff, but luckily, I think she was too nice to push too hard. She really wanted to give me a tour of the store and take me through each section, scanning things along the way. I think I was too nice to push too hard to make it go faster. I wasn't prepared to pick out china or sheets or towels or even a toaster. Plus, Sco and I are both over 30 - we don't need that much stuff. I just beeped a couple of things, but it took 2 hours. I now have 20 items on my registry. I hadn't eaten, I was tired and this was how I was spending my Saturday night. Beeping things in my sweaty gym clothes. I called Sco on the way home and said, "Well. It's done. I went through the torture so you that you don't have to because I love you." Now, we can hopefully just go in, grab a scanner and scan without an escort. Or better yet, do it online from home.

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This might be it...

Happy new year!!
So... this might be the dress... It's from J.Crew - on sale! Woohoo! It's much simpler than the options I was considering initially. I might still stick a big fabric flower on it somewhere, but it's pretty awesome as is. I would have posted pictures of me in it, but they didn't turn out that well...

Front:


and the back:


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