wedding clothes

All photos by Nicole Allen

One of the biggest expenses for many weddings is the bride's dress. In fact, the average bride spends $1505 on her dress, according to the Bridal Association of America. It seems silly to me to spend that much money on something to wear exactly once. I thought my best options were to wear a non-wedding dress, or to buy a used wedding dress. Just like the real diamond, I wanted the real princessy/white dress experience, so that left the used option.

Digression on the topic of being "princessy": Today I was dragging Sebastian through Target, unshowered, hair uncombed, wearing my black clog sandals that I've had forever and this funky knee-lengthish black cotton tank dress with black embroidery, a diagonal zigzaggy hemline and lacing up the bodice. A little girl, probably two years old, walked by, pointed at me with wide eyes and said, "Look! It's a princess!" I laughed out loud, and so did her mom.

Anyway, back to wedding clothes...Everything gets a bridal markup, I guess, because dresses I found at thrift stores were still $90 and up. Craigslist was even worse -- people wanted hundreds of dollars for dresses that were pretty hideous even in 1981 when they were brand new. I was bitching about this to some of my coworker/friends, and one of them offered to lend me her dress.

This was before Will and I were officially engaged, but I was too excited at the prospect to wait, so we stopped by her house right before my birthday dinner (Waffle House, the kids were too hungry for the wait at the restaurant I chose first) and everyone sat in the car while I ran in and tried it on. Might not be the most romantic wedding dress story ever, but as it turns out, Tara and I are just the same size, and I absolutely loved her dress. Here we are together at the reception. Yes, we were doing the dance commonly known as "the shopping cart":

So. Dress problem solved. Can't get cheaper (or greener) than that, and this was seriously the dress I would have chosen if I had walked into a bridal shop to buy the dress of my dreams.

As it turned out, the dress thing was much, much, much easier than figuring out what Will would wear. He knew that I wasn't a bridezilla kind of bride, but I think the first time he realized that our wedding was about US and not about WEDDING was when I suggested that he wear this shirt:In case the image is too small, yes, there are guitars! And yes, it does say "Rock & Roll Religion!" To make a very long story short, we looked at probably hundreds of shirt options, and I told him I thought he should wear whatever he would love and be comfortable in. He really struggled, though, because many of the shirts he loved seemed like they would only look good untucked, with jeans, and he worried that people would think that he didn't know how to dress for his own wedding, or that he wasn't taking the occasion seriously. It wouldn't have bothered me if he had gone untucked with jeans, but we decided that he wouldn't be comfortable unless he felt more dressed up.

In the end, he chose a new bright blue button-down shirt and black pants that he already owned. I found a guitar tie on etsy, and he looked great!Instead of the traditional "wedding party," we had an adult flower girl (my sister) and ring bearer (Will's brother) and our kids stood up with us.

I told my sister to wear any black dress she wanted. She was silly and emailed me beforehand with a pic of the one she chose, all worried that it wasn't what I wanted. Of course, she was gorgeous!I told Will's brother to wear jeans and any button-down shirt he wanted. He was silly and came over beforehand with shirt options, all worried that they wouldn't be what I wanted. Of course, he looked great!

With a little help from my internet friends I found the perfect black sundress for Will's daughter. You obviously can't see them in this picture, but she also wore the cutest black suede mary janes that I got for $3 at the thrift store.

I put white clay flowers in her hair to match the ones in mine.

And that just left the boyz...I found them Hawaaiian shirts with guitars that totally matched Will's tie, and they wore those untucked with jeans.

I think it worked out beautifully -- they were way more comfortable than they would have been in formal outfits, they looked great, and all of the kids have worn their wedding clothes several times since the wedding.

GOOOOOOOOOO....

TEAM!!!!!!!

On Offbeat Bride I saw this woman who had the sweetest little shrug over her dress, and I started thinking about how nice it would be to have a shrug to keep my shoulders warm, not necessarily for the ceremony, but beforehand.

My lovely sister-in-law, Heather, saw that on my list of stuff to do on this blog, and offered to try to make me one. She said try, because at the time she was nine months pregnant, and we were just about 3 weeks away from the wedding, and she had never made a shrug before. We went shopping for yarn on a Tuesday, and two days later, this little bundle showed up:

Amazingly, Heather finished the shrug in time anyway! Thanks, Heather!
You can see it pretty well in this picture (on the left is my dad, who played flute during the ceremony and went with the black/jeans thing, and my mom, who has much better fashion sense than I do)

And I had to include this picture, not only because it shows off the shrug, but also because I have no idea what the hell was going on when Nicole took it, but it makes me laugh so hard every time I see it! I also bought a dress for $25 on sale so I would have something to change into at the reception. I picked it because it was cheap and comfy and would match Will's shirt and my shrug, and was also something that I would wear again. I didn't change until the very end of the reception, but it was nice to have, especially since we were riding our bikes away at the end of the night and I didn't want to wreck Tara's dress.

choices

(Stay with me here, I swear that I'll get to the Saturday morning fun in the next post.)

I've written before about the fact that I originally thought we could get married for $1000 and Will said there was no way. I still believe it would have been possible. And I'm sure it would have been quite nice. It just wouldn't have been the wedding that we really wanted.

We talked about doing a very private ceremony, with either just us and the kids or just us and our immediate families. We could definitely have done that for under $1000. But, while I would have loved an intimate wedding in some ways, I think I would ended up feeling cheated of the wedding of my girlhood dreams (even if those dreams were planted in my head by the evil WIC!)

We also seriously considered having the ceremony and reception at our house. If we had done that and had a potluck reception we probably could have pulled off a $1000 wedding. We ended up nixing the home wedding plan for two reasons.

The first is that we decided that either we had to have a small, intimate ceremony, or we had to invite everyone. We both have big families, and we both have many friends. There would not have been room for everyone in our backyard or our living room.

The second is that Will wouldn't have been able to relax if we had a home wedding. He would have been freaking out about wanting everything to be perfect and nice and clean, and the weeks leading up to the wedding would have been super stressful for both of us. It didn't seem worth it.

When we decided to invite everyone, we also decided to try to avoid the #1 complaint that I heard from people after they got married: that the whole thing went by too quickly and they never got to spend enough time with the guests at their wedding.

So we got the brilliant idea of hosting a party that lasted all weekend.

Which brings me to the point of this post...

The thing that really and truly killed the $1000 budget was the scavenger hunt. Yes, you read that right. Kickball wasn't enough, we had to throw a scavenger hunt in the mix, too.

yes, I am a teacher for a reason

It's because I like to organize things, and I like to boss people around. It's funny how much those traits came out in the wedding process. In the weeks before the wedding, I went a little crazy with the list-making. I posted some of my to-do lists here on the blog, but those were not the only lists I made.

I had a spreadsheet with all of the guests, whether they were kids or adults, and which of the wedding events they were attending. Since there were 5 separate events that weekend, keeping track of this was no mean feat! (The funny thing is that I had guests call me on Thursday and Friday and say, "Which things am I coming to?" and I would go to my spreadsheet and tell them what they had RSVPed for.)

I also had a "Wedding Plan" spreadsheet where I kept track of everything that had to be done between the time guests arrived on Wednesday night and the time we left for our honeymoon on Monday morning. This included the boring stuff like dropping the dog off at the kennel and loading the used dishes and wine glasses into the rental cases, as well as fun stuff like getting family photos taken. It had columns for the day, the time, what needed to be done, who needed to do it, and a "needed" column, for what needed to be taken. For example, this column reminded me that we needed water bottles, sunscreen, phones, and camera for the scavenger hunt.

I used the minute detail of the Wedding Plan spreadsheet to make lists for everyone who had a part to play in the weekend. Guests who were just guests didn't get one, but friends who were helping in any capacity and family members each got their own personalized list. It's true that this took a ton of time and people laughed at me for doing it (my dad even mentioned his list when he was making his toast at the reception) but I can tell you that this was probably the most important thing I did to make sure that the weekend was a success. I can say unequivocally that the few things that didn't go smoothly got screwed up when people deviated from their lists.

This personalized list thing wasn't invented by me. When my friend Erin found out that I was getting married, she emailed me a bunch of her wedding plans and the text of her ceremony. I found this immensely helpful, and the most helpful part was seeing the lists that she gave to the members of her wedding party (yeah, she's a teacher, too!) They were similar to my lists, except totally different, since her wedding was totally different from ours.

I've read a ton of wedding blogs, but I've never seen anyone write about making lists for people with a part to play, and so I'm including samples here. Just passing along Erin's fabulous idea...prolly boring if you're not planning a wedding, but invaluable if you are.

Here are a couple of representative examples...

This was my dad's list:
FRIDAY, JUNE 5
3:30 – Rehearsal at Unity Church
5:30 – Barbeque at Spring Creek Park – have fun, eat yummy food (or not, it’s up to you!)
He is notorious for refusing to eat anything prepared by people who aren't my mom
Play kickball if you want

SATURDAY, JUNE 6

9:15 – Meet at Library Park for scavenger hunt

11:30ish – Lunch at Coops

3:00 – Meet at oval for family photos

6:30 or 7ish – Meet at Unity

7:30 – Play flute and try not to cry at the ceremony

Right after the ceremony – Get people started folding and stashing rental chairs (church chairs can stay out for the reception).

Make a toast after Seppie does

After that – Par-tay!!!!

Around 9:30-10ish, help Sierra and Gina get our kids back to our house

SUNDAY, JUNE 7

11:00 – (optional) Brunch at Seppie and Will’s

And my sister's list:

FRIDAY, JUNE 5

5:30 or whenever you make it (‘sokay if you don’t get there, I know you’ve gotta work) Barbeque at Spring Creek Park – have fun, eat yummy food, play kickball

SATURDAY, JUNE 6

9:15 – Meet at Library Park for scavenger hunt

11:30ish – Lunch at Coop’s

1:30/2:00ish – Go to Seppie’s house to get ready and help Seppie and Sarah get ready (I’m going to need you and J to help me with my hair)

3:00 – Meet at oval for family photos

6:30 – Meet back at Unity, make sure everything is set up and ready to go, help Will’s brothers greet people as they arrive, generally make people feel welcome

7:30 – Be our flower girl

Right after the ceremony, our kids will go down the aisle with us as the recessional song plays. Hang out with them on the playground while Will and I walk the labyrinth and everybody else folds chairs and/or heads into the reception hall.

After that – Par-tay!

SUNDAY, JUNE 7

11:00 – Brunch (bring something yummy if you want)

2:00 (optional) – Poker game

My friend Danita's list included:

5:30 – Be the point girl for final set-up/decoration at Unity – we will not be there, but Liz, Will F., and Justin will be there, as well as Laura (the caterer). We’ll come up with a more detailed list when we decorate on Friday, but these are my preliminary thoughts about what needs to be done:

Set up chairs, set out jars, turn on twinkle lights, re-set up outdoor speakers (Justin will mostly do this), hang backdrop, check everything inside, light candles, set up food and drinks

Anyway, you get the idea.

Lists = good.

mason jar wedding

Aside from the paper flower arch, the main diy decoration for our wedding was mason jar candleholders. The backyard of our church is surrounded by low walls. Follow a break in the foliage behind where our guests sat, and there is a stone labyrinth. Inspired by mason jar posts on pretty much every wedding blog I read, I decided to put candles in jars on all those walls and around the labyrinth.

I've read about people spending $3.50 or more for just one jar, and since I wanted around 200 jars, that would have cost more than the dessert catering or the scavenger hunt. I wasn't willing to give up food or fun for mason-jar prettiness, but I wasn't willing to give up on the idea, either.

I sent an email to everyone I work with, asking them to save pasta sauce jars for me (we've got free curbside recycling here, and people are used to rinsing their glass jars and throwing them in the recycling bin, so I wasn't asking them to do anything extra except bring them to school.) I also asked our friends and in-town family to save jars for us, and they started slowly piling up.

Over the course of about a month and a half, we had collected around 100 jars. My friend Danita loaned me another 25 or 30 (it is not easy to get the wax out afterward, so I don't recommend borrowing jars for this purpose.) Then my amazing cousin Melina saw me post about jars on facebook, and she offered to ship a bunch of them from Albuquerque. I didn't think it would be worth it, until she reminded me that she works for a large national shipping company. Apparently, she collected jars from all of her friends as well, and about 40 more jars arrived the day before the wedding! Wow!

When we moved into this house, we found a bag of sand, and I decided to put a little of the sand into the bottom of each jar before putting the candles in. I had the candles made locally with soy wax. Cache la Poudre Candleworks gave me a much better deal than I found anywhere except the dollar store. Hmmm...dollar store candles made out of who-knows-what by little children or underpaid adults in China and shipped halfway around the world, or local soy candles made to my specifications by someone I know...no contest!

It was still light out during the ceremony, but as it got darker and darker the candles got more and more dramatic. I came outside to cool off for a few minutes during the reception, and the yard seemed so magical it literally took my breath away. I almost wish that we'd planned to have the whole reception outside, not just the ceremony (though some people did hang out outside, the food and music were inside.) But I guess it's just as well we didn't, since the sprinklers turned on before the party was totally over!

If we had more time, I would have wired up jars to hang from trees or from the gazebo, and if we had more money I would have bought some shepherd's hooks to hang the jars from, creating sort of a path out to the labyrinth. As it was, we planned our wedding in only three months on a pretty tight budget, so I'm glad we were able to pull off the mason jar thing at all.

DIY PITA paper wedding flowers* part 3

*subtitle: All's well that ends well.


You can read part 1 here and part 2 here.

On Friday, the tulle-covered wire got squeezed into my car, and the flowers went over to the church in the back of Will's car. The whole afternoon was devoted to decorating the church and rehearsing for the ceremony, and we were lucky enough to have a whole team of people helping out.

While I was running around being the virgo elementary-school teacher that I am (read: picky and bossy) my mom and aunt Meghan and uncle John took over the arch-making job. They spent about three hours wiring and gluing and getting the arch to look like something I wouldn't hate.

I am seriously grateful to them. This was a sucky job, and I was not up for finishing it, even if I had the time, which I didn't. And, while Karl Lagerfeld still kicked our asses in the giant paper flower arena, at least I'm not a murderer. I was actually pretty happy with the final result:

However, after the wedding, I felt like this is one of the few things I would do differently if I had to do it all over. It was definitely one of the more expensive parts of our wedding (giant pieces of paper are not cheap!) and it was definitely the least green part (paper is made of trees!) and it was by far the most time consuming part (around 100 hours total!) And it wasn't really necessary -- our ceremony would still have been special and beautiful if it had been framed by the gazebo alone instead of by the arch attached to the gazebo.

If you're thinking of doing something similar, honestly, I would encourage you to think again. It's probably not worth it.

And yet...Writing this up (and, yeah, reading my mom's comment on part two) made me realize that the stupid flower arch is an integral part of what I'll always remember about getting married. If nothing else, it proves that a lot of people love me enough to put in a lot of time doing not-fun stuff just to satisfy a crazy fantasy of mine.

Will always says that our wedding looked like a wedding in a movie -- the colors were so vivid and the whites were so bright and the weather was so perfect and everything was decorated so beautifully -- and the arch was a big part of that. It really did frame our ceremony.

So....Maybe I would do it again, even knowing what I know now.... But probably not.

DIY PITA paper wedding flowers* part 2

*subtitle: Trust me, kids. You do not want to try this at home!

You can find flower-making pictures here, PART 1 here and and PART 3 here.

I had originally planned to use a hot glue gun to attach the flowers to a white sheet, which we could then hang as the backdrop for the ceremony. At the party, we discussed lots of different options and finally came to the conclusion that it might be better to try to attach them to chicken wire. We thought that if they were packed densely enough, the wire wouldn't show.

I had exactly a week between the last day of school and the first day of wedding festivities, so I put off assembling the backdrop until then. Then I was so busy wrapping up other loose ends that I didn't get to it until Wednesday night. My sweetie and the kids were all sleeping, but I had to wait for relatives to arrive from the airport. While I waited, I unrolled the chicken wire and cut it to the size we had planned. Sounds simple, but it wasn't, since the wire kept wanting to roll up and scratch me, and because I had to cut one long skinny piece into three shorter pieces and then wire them together to make one long wide piece. By this time, even our newly-arrived guests were in bed, but I was so excited to see how the finished product would look that I climbed up on the counter and took down all the boxes of flowers from the top of the cabinet. I began to set them out on top of the chicken wire. Then, the excitement faded. Instead of "oooooh, cool!" in my mind, I was like, "oh, crap!" You'll notice that there are no pictures of this part. That's because I was too worried to take pictures.

It looked like I had decided that chicken wire was really pretty, and it would be even prettier if I randomly scattered some white paper flower polka dots in a few spots. Those flowers that had seemed so huge and numerous and overwhelming did not even begin to cover the backdrop.

It was midnight, and I had no idea what to do, so I decided to pull a Scarlett. No, I didn't make the backdrop out of curtains. I just put it all out of the way and told myself that I would figure it out in the morning.
The next day, I had my mom come over, and I set up the whole thing all over again so that she could tell me what to do. She looked at it dubiously and said, "But there were so many flowers! How could this be all of them??" Remember, this was already Thursday, and we had to have everything ready for decorating by Friday afternoon.

We talked about making a tall skinny column or a short wide valance-like-thingy instead of a whole backdrop, but mostly just stood there and stared at it for awhile. Then my mom decided that what we really needed was tulle, to hide some of the chicken wire and make it look more...more...you know...bridey...or something. So we headed for the fabric store where we bought yards and yards of white tulle, and we called our friend Eleanor, who is a genius with making something fabulous out of nothing. Oh, and in the meantime, my friend Gayle had come by and offered to make some more roses after reading about my panic on facebook.

Eleanor left work to come help us try to figure out what the hell to do (she was also at the births of both of my children, so there is a precedent for her dropping whatever she's doing to come help me figure out what the hell to do.) Will helped us hang the gigantic, unwieldy piece of chicken wire on the biggest blank wall in our house -- it happens to be in our bedroom -- and we started experimenting with draping the tulle in various ways to cover the chicken wire, and placing the flowers in different ways to make the sparseness seem purposeful.

I hated it. Hated it. Hated it. No, really, I hated it. Everything we tried. Hated. It looked ugly and tacky and cheap and like what I would have thought was perfect for a wedding when I was five. Actually, it looked like what I would have thought was perfect for a wedding if I had ever been five and completely lacking in taste. Even the magical Eleanor, and my mom the fiber-and-paper-artist couldn't find a way to arrange it that I didn't hate. You'll notice that there are no pictures of this part. That's because I hated it too much to take pictures.

At this point, I was ready to give up on the fucking paper flowers. I was sad about it, because the flowers themselves were beautiful, and we had spent soooooo much time on them already, but I felt like there was no way we could make it work.

I had visions of people showing up at our wedding and saying, "Oh, Seppie must think that that chicken wire is really pretty, and that tulle is reallyreallyreally pretty and fancy and that white paper flower polka dots make everything superfancy and wedding-y. Seppie sure does love chicken wire and tulle!" And then they would go home and talk about what a mistake it is to DIY anything related to wedding decor.

Eleanor had to rush back to work just as Will and my sister's wife, Gina, came in to see how things were going. They tried their best to talk me out of calling off the project completely. The four of us brainstormed ideas until we finally came up with the inspiration to cut the chicken wire into an arch, instead of using it as a full backdrop. This meant that instead of a 5' x 8' solid space, we only had to cover a 1'x16' arch, cutting 24 square feet of flowers off the total we needed. That seemed more do-able, especially when I ran over to Gayle's to pick up the extra roses and found that she had made six huge ones all by herself over the course of the afternoon.

Will and I had planned all along that we would have a date on Thursday night, since that was going to be our last chance to breathe and chillax together before things really got rolling on Friday. It was great to get away, and I felt so much better after eating and having a little quiet time with my sweetie, but this meant that we didn't get back to work on the arch until after 8:00 p.m. This time, the crew consisted of me, my mom, my sister Sierra, and Gina. We all got a little slap-happy, and some of them got a little tipsy. You'll notice that there are no pictures of this part. That's to protect the parties involved.

At any rate, despite the fact that we were working our fingers to the bone, measuring and cutting wire and wrapping tulle and stitching it onto the wire and laying out flowers, we had fun. While we worked, we also created the shot list for the family formals. Nothing like multi-tasking in the final 48 hours before the wedding! We finally went to bed around 1:00am, with the arch cut, the tulle sewn on, but none of the flowers attached.

Coming soon on Party of Six: The final installment of the paper flower saga (with pictures!)

DIY PITA paper wedding flowers* part 1

*subtitle: if someone had written this post before I got it in my head to imitate Karl Lagerfeld, it would have saved me a ton of time...

You can find part 2 here and part 3 here.

Remember all those giant paper flowers? How they were so giant and were so many of them after my non-bridal-shower party? The deal is that I had totally loved the look of the Chanel spring fashion show when I saw this picture on folding trees:and I decided that it would be super cool to try to approximate it for a sort of backdrop at our wedding. Karl Lagerfeld designed this show, and he has some serious minions to do the dirty work, but I was doing it on a much smaller scale. I don't have minions, but I do have friends, so instead of a bridal shower, I had a flower-making party.

Before the party, I spent quite a bit of time online trying to find paper flower tutorials. It's pretty easy to find instructions for making tissue-paper flowers. It's harder to find instructions for more elegant paper flowers. These are the ones I found worthy of bookmarking but didn't actually use:

Rosie has a video tutorial for making simple-looking flowers with construction paper and other kids' craft supplies
If you're going for more of an origami look, with fewer rounded edges and less cutting, oriland is the place to go (especially once you feel the energy and magic!)
Beautiful, colorful rice paper flowers seem pretty easy to make.
This rose looks more complicated than the ones we did, but you can download the template from the same place I got my daisy template.
Here's a photograph that I found inspirational but frustrating, since there are no instructions and I couldn't find a pattern anywhere on the web.
OMgosh, these "flirty" flowers are beautiful, but they really are NOT simple, even with step by step instructions and photographs. I knew that I could never teach people how to do them in just a few minutes.
If you want to extend the paper flower idea to your cake, craftstylish can show you how.
I tried making paper roses from this flikr tutorial (look at the slide show, and it shows you step by step) but mine came out looking lame and like they were made by a kindergartner, not elegant and sophisticated like hers did.
Folding trees has a kusudama tutorial to make a pretty flower ball. I actually think it would have been fun to make these huge and use them instead of poufs or paper lanterns, but it would take way longer.
The author of this tutorial calls them butterfly kusudama, but I think these just look like daffodils. I didn't try them, but they look much harder than the kusudama in the link above.
I made a prototype of this one from Martha Stewart before the party. I didn't think it was realistic enough to fit in with the others on the backdrop, but I thought about making some to hang in the reception hall, along with the poufs.
I also thought about making some paper bouquets from a tutorial I found at diy wedding on craftstylish:
In the end, the backdrop flowers and poufs were all we could handle -- no time for extras!

I settled on three styles:

daisy magnolia and rose

The instructions for the daisy are from the Canon website. Weird, I know, but I guess they'll do anything to get you to use more printer ink. They tell you to print out pages in color, then cut and glue. Instead, I printed the pages in grayscale, enlarged each part of the pattern, then we used the enlarged copy as a template to cut the pieces out of white paper. We didn't bother with the stem or calyx.

A friend of my mom sent us one giant magnolia, plus a kit with pattern and paper for another. We used that pattern to make the rest of the magnolias.

Here are the directions I used for the roses. She uses a 6-sided flower punch, but that obviously wasn't going to be big enough, so I cut the biggest 6 sided flower shape that I could from an 81/2 X 11 piece of paper and used that. This made a rose that was about four or five inches in diameter. The ladies at the party enlarged it even further, to make roses that were closer to a foot wide.

Counting me, I think there were 14 of us working on the flowers. A few people stayed for just a little while, and a few stayed for several hours, but it probably averaged out to 14 crafty women working for 2-3 hours each. You may remember that I was so excited at the results -- it seemed like my whole house was taken over by giant paper flowers.

Coming up on Party of Six...Assembling the backdrop.

i'm a lucky, lucky girl

I've got such good friends and family. Today looked like this:

And this:And this: (Actually, that's a thank-you card that Heather gave me a couple of weeks ago, but doesn't it look so cute with the little prezzy from Cat? sorry the pic isn't cropped better...)

And I didn't get a picture of the ladies, or the champagne,
'cuz I was too busy cutting and gluing and talking, but the end result was this:And this:And this:And this:Yup, that's my whole couch covered with giant paper flowers. And the stove, too:

Oh, and also the banister:

We're not done yet, but the

Martha-Stewart-meets-Karl-Lagerfeld-meets-recycled-
meets-Seppie-and-Will vibe is coming along...

latest list

When we first got engaged (I say that like it happened so long ago!) every book that I read said that you really need a wedding notebook. Apparently the first thing you are supposed to do when planning a wedding is buy a planning thing. Presumably, it should be pretty and wedding-y, which means it's probably expensive. Thing is, I'm a teacher. I've got notebooks everywhere, it's just that most of them are castoffs from former students. Read: not pretty and not wedding-y. But free is good, and reusing is good, so I picked the best of the bunch, and here's what I ended up with. I also chose this one because I thought I would put something pretty and wedding-y in the sleeve, but that obviously didn't happen. I've been too busy fixating on other stuff to fixate on making the notebook pretty.

They also told me to divide the notebook into sections, so I did. I made it into all the sections they said, but I haven't actually used all of them. And the ones I have used have mostly just been a place to jot down random ideas and inspiration so I don't forget it. The sections I've actually written in are: What/When; Decorations; Music; Photos; Ceremony/Vows. Oh, and it's important that the notebook has pockets!

What/When is by far the most important section. It's got our lists of stuff to do, stuff to bring to all the of the wedding events, schedules, who is helping. I'm so jealous of people who put it all on an excel spreadsheet (and I really want to change everything over to be as cool as them) but for now it's all just lists. The list of stuff to do is divided into sections, covering smaller and smaller blocks of time. Gotta say, that has been really helpful in making something overwhelming seem not so overwhelming.

We're now just under a month out from the wedding (!!!) and here's the list of stuff that is supposed to get done before May 23, at which time we'll switch over to another list. Anything with a * has been started but not finished yet:

Finish inviting people (Will is done with this, I just have a couple of people that I haven't been in touch with recently, don't expect to come to the wedding, but I do want them to know that we're getting married)
Figure out who is helping with what, make separate list, and make sure they know*
Figure out who else can help at the reception
Get Will vest
Update wedding registry*
Collect pasta sauce jars*
Get candles for jars
Figure out ribbon for bouts
Figure out/get light strings for indoors
Get more light strings for outdoors
Figure out/get all tablecloths
Make napkins*
Plan flower making party (try out flowers, get paper, thank you notes)*
Chalkboards for photobooth, with signage
Make Martha Stewart poufs? (leaning against this, but leaving it on the list until I make a final decision)
Snag wedding bands* (moved to different list, since they aren't ready yet!)
Confirm where out of town peeps are staying*
Figure out/order wine
Get shoes/hair accessories
Tell each other how much we love each other every single day*
Do something to work on our relationship every single day*
Seppie get foundation garments* (moved this to another list)
Seppie get/make shrug (and one for the girl?) -- wasn't sure about this one, having doubts about matching Will's shirt, and about spending more $, but Heather offered to knit me one(!) We're not sure if it will be done before the wedding -- she did JUST HAVE A BABY! Third cutest baby ever! -- but I'm crossing it off the list
Seppie figure out dress for reception -- I might use the $ I would have spent on a shrug to get a new dress, but I might just wear one I've already got
Get big frame/more backdrops (?)/get together costumes for photobooth
Pay for scavenger hunt
Makeup consultation
Trial run for hair
Email Lynn our ceremony plans
How are we doing ceremony program it if not printed? Figure it out and do it
Get marriage license
Work on IPOD reception playlist; back up music and the rest of hard drive
Finalize plans for music and microphone during the ceremony
Make more honeymoon plans
Work out wedding day timing and details and draw up a schedule (who goes where when and why)
Call or email everyone with a part to play with critical info related to rehearsal and wedding (dates, times, directions, duties)
Get a head start on thank you notes if we can/work on special thank you for people who help*
Go on a scouting trip with Nicole/ create “must-take” photo list
Finalize vows
Come up with a vegan dessert plan
Figure out shoes for the girl
Talk to grandparents
Go to bed at 9:00 every single night*
Do yoga or run or ride my bike to work every single day*

hmmm...

Something I hadn't considered:

The bouquet.

Well, I had considered it, in the sense that I know what I want for my bouquet, and I have actually even practiced making it (well, not with the flowers I want, but with some other flowers that Will brought home one day, chosen by his lovely daughter.)

But I hadn't considered it, in the sense that I will be walking down the aisle accompanied by my two lovely sons.

Lots of books and articles counsel against this. They say that the symbolism of being "given away" by your children is bound to lead them to feel like you're abandoning them, or choosing your new spouse over them. And I think that could be true if I were doing something like the traditional father-daughter dealio, where they walk me down the aisle, then give me a hug and Will a handshake and go sit down. That would actually be pretty horrifying.

Instead, Will's kids will be with him, and mine are going to walk with me, and then all six of us will stay together for the ceremony. The symbolism has nothing to do with giving me away, and everything to do with the fact that even though Will and I are the ones getting married, the boyz and I are a package deal.

However, that brings us back to the bouquet. If I'm holding hands with two kids, I won't really be able to hold a bouquet. We could walk arm in arm, which would leave my hands free, but I'm not sure I want to do that; it seems a little cheesy and not really like something we would do in real life. It would sure be cheaper not to have a bouquet, but it's one of those wedding things that I've always pictured a certain way, so I'm not sure I'm ready to give it up.

Ideas? Suggestions?

wedding readings

This whole thing about choosing a wedding reading reminds me how much I love poetry, and how much Will doesn't. I knew that going in, and honestly, it was one of my biggest hesitations about getting serious with him -- I never pictured myself freely choosing to spend my life with someone who isn't great with words and doesn't enjoy language the way I do. Most of the time it doesn't matter the way I thought it would, but it's really hard to come up with readings that we both like. Today I forced him to go through the list we had narrowed down last time, and we did pick one, but he was like, "We still have time to find something better, right?"

He would be happy if we could use some ACDC lyrics:

...For those about to rock, we salute you
For those about to rock, we salute you

We rock at dawn on the front line
Like a bolt right out of the blue
The sky's alight with the guitar bite
Heads will roll and rock tonight...

On and on like that for several verses. We've got a family joke that rusty nails are a "great toy for a little boy!" That's how I feel about using something this for our wedding reading. In other words, No.

But here are some more readings that I do like that we're not using...

I heart Rumi:

from The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks

When I am with you, we stay up all night.

When you're not here, I can't go to sleep.

Praise God for these two insomnias!
And the difference between them.

The minute I heard my first love story
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was.

Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.
They're in each other all along.

We are the mirror as well as the face in it.
We are tasting the taste this minute
of eternity. We are pain
and what cures pain, both. We are
the sweet cold water and the jar that pours.

I want to hold you close like a lute, so we can cry out with loving.

You would rather throw stones at a mirror?
I am your mirror, and here are the stones.

This one isn't really romantic, but it sure is true!

Miss Manners: While exclusionary interest in one other human being, which is what we call courtship, is all very exciting in the stages of discovery, there is not enough substance in it for a lifetime, no matter how fascinating the people or passionate the romance. The world, on the other hand, is chock full of interesting and curious things. The point of the courtship — marriage — is to secure someone with whom you wish to go hand in hand through this source of entertainment, each making discoveries, and then sharing some and merely reporting others. Anyone who tries to compete with the entire world, demanding to be someone's sole source of interest and attention, is asking to be classified as a bore. "Why don't you ever want to talk to me?" will probably never start a satisfactory marital conversation. "Guess what?" will probably never fail."

This one almost made the cut (and it probably would have been the one I chose), but Will liked the other one of our top two better:

Crusoe by George Bilgere
When you’ve been away from it long enough
You begin to forget the country
Of couples, with all its customs
And mysterious ways. Those two
Over there, for instance: late thirties,
Attractive and well-dressed, reading
At the table, drinking some complicated
Coffee drink. They haven’t spoken
Or even looked at each other in thirty minutes
But the big toe of her right foot, naked
In its sandal, sometimes grazes
The naked ankle bone of his left foot,
The faintest signal, a line thrown
Between two vessels as they cruise
Through this hour, this vacation, this life,
Through the thick novels they’re reading,
Her toe saying to his ankle,
Here’s to the whole improbable story
Of our meeting, of our life together
And the oceanic richness
Of our mingled narrative
With its complex past, with its hurts
And secret jokes, its dark closets
And delightful sexual quirks,
Its occasional doldrums, its vast
Future we have already peopled
With children. How safe we are
Compared to that man sitting across the room,
Marooned with his drink
And yellow notebook, trying to write
A way off his little island.

I wonder if Dante will use something like this one when he gets married...

The Present by Michael Donaghy

For the present there is just one moon,
though every level pond gives back another.

But the bright disc shining in the black lagoon,
perceived by astrophysicist and lover,

is milliseconds old. And even that light's seven minutes older than its source.

And the stars we think we see on moonless nights
are long extinguished. And, of course,

this very moment, as you read this line,
is literally gone before you know it.

Forget the here-and-now. We have no time
but this device of wantonness and wit.

Make me this present then: your hand in mine,
And we'll live out our lives in it.

This one is so true, but we're optimistic that eventually we'll have fewer things left half undone

The lyrics from The Two Of Us by The Mr T Experience:

Now there are two of us, instead of only one,
two times as many things get left half undone.
We're twice as half-asleep when the new day has begun
and maybe twice as on the run,
Two lives are semi-rough
with half the rent and twice the stuff.
There are two of us, and that should be enough.
Look at everybody.
Everybody's always
falling apart or breaking up.
But the two of us never will be one of those,
and I should know– I have had a run of those
Our love's not guaranteed,
but there are two of us,
I think that's all we need.

This one is silly, and it's not the whole thing, it's really long and I'm just including my favorite parts (if you google, you can get the full text)

I Like You by Sandol Stoddard Warburg
I like you and I know why.
I like you because you are a good person to like...
We have good ideas
When I say something funny, you laugh
I think I'm funny and you think I'm funny too
Hah-hah!
...You know how to be silly
That's why I like you
Boy are you ever silly
I never met anybody sillier than me till I met you
I like you because you know when it's time to stop being silly
Maybe day after tomorrow
Maybe never
Too late, it's a quarter past silly
If I pretend I am drowning, you pretend you are saving me...
HOORAY...
And I like you because if we go away together
And if we are in Grand Central Station
And if I get lost
Then you are the one that is yelling for me...
I like you because if I am mad at you
Then you are mad at me too
It's awful when the other person isn't
They are so nice and hoo-hoo you could just about punch them in the nose...
If you find two four-leaf clovers, you give me one
If I find four, I give you two
If we only find three, we keep on looking
Sometimes we have good luck, and sometimes we don't
On the 4th of July I like you because it's the 4th of July
On the fifth of July, I like you too
If you and I had some drums and some horns and some horses
If we had some hats and some flags and some fire engines
We could be a HOLIDAY
We could be a CELEBRATION
We could be a WHOLE PARADE
See what I mean?
Even if it was the 999th of July
Even if it was August
Even if it was way down at the bottom of November
Even if it was no place particular in January
I would go on choosing you
And you would go on choosing me
Over and over again
That's how it would happen every time
I don't know why
I guess I don't know why I really like you
Why do I like you
I guess I just like you
I guess I just like you because I like you.

This one isn't wedding-y at all, but I love the first stanza especially:

Grammar by Tony Hoagland
Maxine, back from a weekend with her boyfriend,
smiles like a big cat and says
that she's a conjugated verb.
She's been doing the direct object
with a second person pronoun named Phil,
and when she walks into the room,
everybody turns:

some kind of light is coming from her head.
Even the geraniums look curious,
and the bees, if they were here, would buzz
suspiciously around her hair,looking
for the door in her corona.
We're all attracted to the perfume
of fermenting joy.

we've all tried to start a fire,
and one day maybe it will blaze up on its own.
In the meantime, she is the one today among us
most able to bear the idea of her own beauty
and when we see it, what we do is natural:
we take our burned hands
out of our pockets,
and clap.

no wonder i haven't been keeping up

on dishes and laundry! A week ago, I made myself a list of all the stuff I have to do between now and the wedding. I'm a procrastinator, so I broke it up into sections to give myself lots of deadlines. The list is so long that it sorta makes me understand why people plan weddings so far in advance, but I think three months is perfect for me.

Otherwise I'd have obsessed about wedding planning like this for a couple of years, without ever accomplishing much, and I would still end up doing exactly what I'm doing now, which is rushing to get it all done at the last minute. That's what I meant when I told Will that I just wanted to get it over with instead of waiting until next summer or something. Plus, I'm totally in love with him and excited to have a husband. Plus there's that whole health care thing.

Anyway, here's what I've done in the last 6 days:
follow up with the scavenger hunt guy
talk to S about M helping at the reception
follow up with L about helping
send my dad the link with sheet music (he's playing flute at our ceremony)
figure out shirt for Will and buy it
order shirts for 2 boys
order dress for 1 girl
book the park for the rehearsal dinner bbq
update website with accomodation info
figure out where we're spending the night on our honeymoon
update wedding registry
confirm flowers with farmer lady
email everyone at work to save jars
start collecting jars
reserve kennel for the dog
get fabric for napkins
plan date and tell my mom who to invite to flowermaking party
work on figuring out ceremony readings
find out about marriage license rules
figure out tripod for diy photobooth
get backdrops for diy photobooth
finalize ring order/finish paying for rings
make and test four different sangria recipes

Whew! See what I mean about housework going by the wayside? It would be different if I weren't working full time and we didn't have 4 kids! We spent half the weekend playing laser tag and mini golf and riding go carts and entertaining extended family. Oh, and I'm training for two races, too (got in an 8.4 mile run over the weekend...)

Here's what still needs to be done before May 6:
finish inviting people
figure out who is helping with what, make separate list, and make sure they know what to do
talk to D about helping
figure out who else can help at the reception
get Will vest/tie
figure out what the boys are wearing for pants and ties, buy if necessary new jeans for one of them
buy shirt for Dante
talk to Will's brother about role in the wedding
figure out how to serve ice cream
order flowers for Seppie’s (and girl's?) hair
mail deposit check to honeymoon place
update wedding registry
collect pasta sauce jars
get candles for jars
figure out ribbon for bouquets
figure out/get light strings for indoors
get more light strings for outdoors
figure out how to serve drinks/kid drinks
figure out/get all tablecloths
make napkins
get ready for flower making party (try out flowers, get paper, thank you notes)
chalkboards for photobooth, with signage
make Martha Stewart poufs?
choose readings, figure out who is doing readings – talk to them
work on vows
figure out how everyone is getting to the wedding/getting home
drunk shuttle?
confirm where out of town peeps are staying
figure out/order wine
get shoes/hair accessories
work on ceremony program
tell each other how much we love each other every single day
do something to work on our relationship every single day
figure out guest book
make sure wedding outfits fit
seppie get foundation garments
seppie get/make shrug (and one for the girl?)
get big frame/more backdrops (?)/costumes for diy photobooth

Oh, and did I mention that I have an all day meeting tomorrow, and I haven't written sub plans yet? Or that we're having a nerf gun slumber party at our house on Friday night? With eight 11-year-old boys? And a dinner party on Saturday night? Or that I'm running a 10k race first thing Sunday morning? Or that it's the end of the school year and I have to have my classroom completely cleaned out and packed away on the last day, since it's being used over the summer and we're getting married the week after school gets out? Oy. Blogging is a great form of procrastination...