Sco's ring

I am in love with Sco's ring - not as much as I'm in love with him, but the ring is awesome.

We found this Japanese artist living in Brooklyn who makes these rings and other jewelry on NOTCOT.org, a wonderful blog of art and design that Sco looks at just about every day. Her name is Sakurako Shimizu.

Sakurako takes a voice recording and then laser cuts a hole through metal in the shape of the sound wave form generated by the sound recording program. She makes necklaces of giggles, bracelets of bell chimes, and wedding bands of a spouse saying "I do" or something else.

Giggle Necklace

I Do Wedding Bands

We recorded my voice saying "I love you" and sent it in an email to Sakurako. We met with her in Brooklyn to discuss the ring and which metal she should use. She is so sweet. Apparently, we're the first people for whom she's made jewelry that she's actually met. She bought us brunch, too. :) We were smitten with her (Sco's cringing at the use of that word, I'm sure) and her jewelry, but I only just learned that she's socially responsible, too! She only uses 100% recycled gold and precious metals from Hoover and Strong. And her prices are very reasonable. I just loved the whole experience.

Our rings together on a funky flower

Eco-wah?

Have I told you about our plates? When my caterer said he might not have the staff to use real dishes, he suggested disposable plates. I said I wanted to have a "green" wedding. He said, "No problem. We can get green plastic plates." Yeah... not what I meant. We started thinking of eco-friendly, disposable options (though it did occur to me to ask people to bring their own plates.) We looked into bamboo plates since bamboo (a grass) is much easier to replace than trees, but it didn't seem to be all that biodegradable. Styrofoam was obviously not an option. Plastic didn't seem very good either. Enter Verterra.


Their plates are pretty, made from renewable resources, chemical free, and are fairly traded.


After collecting fallen leaves that would normally be burned, Verterra applies steam, heat and pressure to transform the leaves into durable products that will naturally compost in 2 months.

VerTerra products are made in South Asia, where employees receive fair wages in safe working conditions and are provided access to health care.

Fire!

My hanging jar lanterns with candles have been approved! I met with the grounds keeper at the site today expecting him to take one look at my sample lantern and go, "You want to put THAT in MY trees?!? Fire in a jar held up by twine?!" Instead, he said, "Oh, that? That's no problem. I'll even have my guys hang those up for you." SWEET!!



Sco and I tested them out recently and they look gorgeous!! I jumped around all giddy then and today. I'm glad there's more giddiness than screaming and pulling my hair out. Over all, there has been little in the way of panic during this whole wedding planning process.

Happy! :)

OOT! OOT!

I know. OOT is a stupid acronym. Out of Town. As in bags - little gift bags for guests coming in from out of town left in their hotel rooms. I really like the idea. (The acronym, not so much.) It's just a little something to make out-of-towners feel welcome after a long trip. After a great post by Miss Peep Toe at WeddingBee, I drove around to three Targets and called my mom to go to her Target in Virginia to get these bags. They're perfect! Eco-friendly, reusable bags - for a dollar. And in pink and green! Now, I have to find stuff to put in them. A bunch of apples won't really do.

And they're off!

Invitations! Invitations! They're mailed!! Well, some of them. On the day that they arrived, I showed them to Sco and he suddenly remembered that he wanted to invite 7 or 8 more people. I had not ordered many extra invitations, so I kind of flipped out and said that those people were getting black and white photocopies of our invitations. Actually, I think we'll be ok, but some people may actually get color photocopies... Sorry. These, of course, will be sent to the people who don't really care about that kind of stuff.

Image side


The invitations really came out beautifully. And no RSVP card! Ha! Convention be damned! Responses can be sent via email, phone call, or through our wedding website. It saves paper, postage, energy, and my sanity. Very eco-friendly and Squid-friendly. Of course, there are some people on the guest list, particularly the ones nearing 100 years old who might not be that into RSVPing on the WWW. I'm going to whip up a special response card just for them. And there are still some people I need addresses for! I'm such a slacker.

Text side



There's also an accommodation insert with a map of the wedding site on the other side. That's the whole thing. Simple. :)

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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