Afterthoughts: To DOC or not to DOC?

Two days before our wedding, I had a bit of a freak-out. No, it wasn’t about whether I wanted to get married or not. It was about whether I had gotten myself in over my head when it came to wedding décor. Ultimately, I was afraid that I wasn’t going to be able to enjoy the weekend because I was too busy setting up and then taking it all down. I think other brides who DIY a lot of things might relate to my fears a little bit. There’s definitely an up side to hiring professionals to do everything on your big day – you don’t exhaust yourself before your party even begins!

We want this...not that...

(photos  stolen from friends of me dancing and me trying not to fall asleep as the end of the night)

Great balls of CHIFFON!

There is a gap of time in wedding planning if you decide on an engagement of longer than 1 year. This gap is called “The Idle Bride Vortex”. Oh yes, it is a real thing. How many brides have said, “Oh, all my vendors are booked. There’s really nothing to do before I order the save the dates and invitations!” Answer: Most of them. Now, how many of those brides are super involved DIYers? Based on my well-educated assessment, about 33.333%. That’s right, 33.333% of all brides are susceptible to being sucked into the “The Idle Bride Vortex”. Luckily, my friend Sarah is immune to having idle hands so I can see she clearly is going to make it through wedding planning without having any “silly-overly-thought-out, but-not–well-executed” wedding project.  

I, however, was sucked into that very vortex.

A bride's brain in the idle  bride vortex.

In current news: Vendor searching was almost the death of this Michigan bride...

I have some FANTASTIC news. I am done searching for vendors!
Venue – Check! Includes food so DOUBLE check! Plus, they work with fabric/chair people so all I had to do was tell them want I wanted…. TRIPLE check!
Officiant – Check!
Dress place – Check!
Photography – Check!
Bakery – Tasty check!
Flowers – Check! AND, under budget. Double point bonus for me.
DJ – Check!
Hair/makeup – Check!

Before I found all my vendors I felt like this:

My favorite adopted neice, Lucy, and I with not so happy faces...

Now I feel like this:

Pure joy!!! Lisa and Matt, your baby is fabulous.

I am congratulating myself with a glass of red wine as we speak.

However, getting to this day was not an easy one…

The other week I almost decided to forget about having a “super awesome” wedding and just send out some invitations and call it a day. It seems so much simpler to say “I do” and then eat some cake that you got at the grocery store that morning. Who really needs fancy flowers or the best DJ in town? In the end, you’re married no matter what.

Why was I feeling like this? Well, I found it very frustrating to try and find all the vendors for the right price. I love DIY projects, but I definately found that vendor searching made me anxious and/or frustrated. I absolutely hate trying to figure out whether I think someone is worth the price that they are charging. I hate bartering. (I hate to stereotype, but Wes should never let me go buy a car by myself, haha.) I hate trying to determine if someone is trustworthy. And, when you think you might have found some wonderful people to work with… BAM…you get the news that they are already booked for your wedding day. I can live with not having the best DJ in town, but it feels terrible to start the search all over and go through the process of accessing the quality of someone else. Note to all June brides: it is not too early to look for vendors! EVER! Tell your fiance I said so. On top of it all, it feels so rude to say, "You're great, but we decided to go with someone else".

Then, I realized why I love planning the wedding (i.e. customized with tons of details and hands-on projects). I realized that, while I may be the only person who truly cares about having handmade invitations, I get to share the time making things like that with my family and friends. Living in NJ, I don't get to see all of you that often. For instance, finding bridesmaids dresses gave me the perfect excuse to pester my friends and go to Michigan to hang out with them. I get to call my maid of honor anytime I want because she agreed to be my maid of honor. My mom, Wes’s mom and I all spent a wonderful week together bonding over wine and wedding inspiration photos. Wes realized that when I ask him to do a wedding project with me, what it really means is that we are going to spend some extra time with each other doing something other than watching TV. I love spending that time with people and I love that I can type up all my thoughts and share them with whoever does care about my experience making 200 fabric flowers that day. And, all the effort I spent on finding great vendors is leading up to one terrific party. We will get to share at least 6 priceless, PRICELESS, hours with family and friends from all over the country. So, the personalized super awesome wedding is back on!

Thank you to everyone for being a part of this experience and a part in our lives (mushy, I know, but weddings are supposed to about mushy love stuff, right?).

Lavender and amethyst and grape, oh my.

In June, my wonderful to-be mother-in-law (MIL) is coming to Michigan with me so that we can go with my super awesome mom and get some wedding stuff done. I don’t go to Michigan very often so it is going to be a bit of a wedding marathon. My goals are to show my MIL the venue, book a photographer, get my first dress fitting done, have my gorgeous maid of honor try on a few (ok, a lot) of bridesmaid dresses, book the florist, pick out linens and try some CAKE. Yum.

I started to book appointments and realized very quickly that I was going to have to be able to share my wedding vision with strangers in a quick and simple way so that they can help me have that beautiful day I picture in my head. I told the wonderful ladies at Waldenwoods (our venue) that I wanted the guest table linens to be white and the sweetheart table, cake table, guestbook tables to have purple table linens. My wedding colors are gray and “various” purples. I thought I was being clever by saying that I wanted a mix of a lot of different purple touches everywhere because then it wouldn’t matter if everything didn’t match exactly. The flowers are going to, then, bring together all the different shades. Reasonably, the ladies at Waldenwoods thought I should narrow down what kind of linen (satin, taffeta, etc.) and type of purple (muted, bright, pale, etc.) I was looking for so that that Lorrie from Special Occasions didn’t have to bring over a thousand examples.

I was a bit overwhelmed by this… I am not sure why. I think it is because I actually had to start making decisions. After talking to Wes about my anxiety, I decided to pick out a few different purples that I definitely want represented on 6.22.12 so that when I pick out linens, neck ties and décor, it will be cohesive. You can buy color swatches online to give to your vendors for $10 a pop. Boo. OR, you can go to Home Depot and steal paint swatches. I proceeded to steal about 25 paint swatches while looking over my shoulder hoping that that paint department manager wasn’t looking at me funny. Here’s my stash:

Here’s the kicker. Here’s how much my guy loves me… Wes also thought of this brilliant idea and stole not a few purple swatches like I did, but EVERY SINGLE PURPLE and GRAY paint swatch in our local hardware store. A lady working at Home Depot did give Wes a weird look on his way out so he nervously said to her, “Wife is making us paint the house again.” Hahahahahahaha. He was so pleased with himself that he promptly dropped this pile on my lap when he got home:

Then, he was severely disappointed to learn that I also had gotten paint swatches. His effort was awesome, though, and I love him so much for it. Gold star, hunny. I am very lucky to have someone that cares about reducing my anxiety over wedding planning.

The countdown commences soon

Hello! There’s been some time in between my posts mostly because I have been busy. Super busy. But also, because there was nothing happening that was wedding related. That is soon to change. I thought having a nice and long engagement would allow me to have all the time in the world to get things done. However, the reality is that it is too soon to do most of the stuff and my groom is not notorious for planning way in advanced anyway.

It is going to be May in a few days which means that soon it will be a year until our wedding. I know a year sounds like a long time, but when the wedding is going to be in another state from which I live and because I work all the time, I have to be very strategic about when I can meet with vendors and get dress fittings and what not. In addition, I am going to be in Finland from August to the end of September studying in another lab so I lose that precious time. Even though my feelings are mixed about it, I am excited to go to Europe again.

So, I sat down the other day to make the calendar. It was a great idea if I do say so myself because the groom will know exactly when I am allowed to bug him about certain details. (Note: I am exaggerating…Wes has been great with planning. It is just hard for him to match my wild passion for table linens and hair pieces. Haha.) Also, I feel like I less apt to forget to make something or check on something with this almighty calendar.

Why should I be so worried about forgetting something, you ask? Well. Because I am crazy. I feel this drive to match all those super cute weddings out there without having to take out a second mortgage. I want to have my wedding featured somewhere because it was an awesome wedding for a fraction of the price! Therefore, I am making a lot of things myself. Since getting engaged March of 2010, I have researched what I want to do and the cheapest way to do it all. Here’s a list (likely incomplete) of all the things I hope to DIY:

Invitations

Save the dates

Menus

Programs

Table numbers

Seating chart

Dress rehearsal invites

From Project Wedding

Fabric flower pomanders, I had to throw pic of these in here ….aren’t they cute?

I stole this idea from this blog

Hair flowers

Half of the centerpieces

Signs

Guestbook

Initials for our bride and groom chairs

Possibly some ribbon wands… I will explain later

Out of town guest bags

My mom talked me out of making:

All the centerpieces and bouquets

My own cakes and cupcakes

I do have to say that I know that one of my bridesmaids who got married a few years ago accomplished a lot of these things while in college and in medical school. We’ll see.

I might not get most of these things done. No matter what, it is going a good day. J