a flower for my hair

i got my hair clip from brasspaperclip in the mail yesterday & it's fabulous! it's really even better than its picture.



also, if you are considering purchasing something from her, do it! she is so great to work with and got the clip to me incredibly fast. i purchase it friday & received it monday. i can't wait to wear it!

creating a little piece of art

now, that everyone has received his/her invitation, i can talk about them!

my beautiful friend and maid of honor, amanda, is a wonderfully talented artist who deals with a lot of different medias, including printmaking. when i started thinking about invitations, i realized how special it would be if they were small pieces of art designed and created by a great artist and my best friend. they would mean much more to me than if we had just found some online and ordered them from a stranger. lucky for us, amanda agreed and was kind enough to give up a few days of her time to make them.

amanda decided that screenprinting was the best option. screenprinting is a printmaking technique that creates a sharp-edged image using a stencil. the first thing you have to do is get paper. it comes in huge sheets that you then have to rip down to the size you want your paper to be.





something i found in the art building that i found amusing given the huge task at hand...


next you have to have a design which we didn't have going into it. i searched through magazines and books while amanda ripped the paper. then manda sketched and played around with ideas. at the end of day 1 we had paper the size we wanted but no final design.

we finally decided on a design we loved. next manda had to transfer it to the special red transparent paper that is used to create the screen or stencil. each color you want on your print has to be a different screen, so we did several. next, you need to chose your colors & in our case, we had to mix them which took some trial and error. we decided on a color for the background and started that run.

to actually print, you attach your screen to a sort of arm that lets you raise and lower it. you put your piece of paper on the table and line it up with the stencil on your screen. you pull paint across the screen which is called flooding the screen, lower the screen flat to the table, and then pull the paint across again. that final pull is when the paint actually goes onto the paper. this is done to each piece of paper individually & we did 120 prints...with 6 different colors...that's a lot of flooding...



after each run, you have to let the prints dry before you can start the next. here they are drying.


combine the paper ripping, designing, paint mixing, and drying time with the fact that each invite has to be touched 6 times meant a lot of time was spent in the print shop. we were there for 4 days. the final day, we were there for over 12 hours. but it was all worth it when we saw the final product.


we put a backing on the invites once they were finished. although the recipient doesn't realize it, almost every backing was different along with each print being slightly different.


i LOVE how they turned out. i love them all together with the backing and the envelope. i love that each one is individual and is a piece of art. i love that amanda loved me and danny enough to give up an entire weekend to create these. hope you love them too. :)

"mine is this big"

i just got back from an awesome weekend! my friends took me to the beach for my bachlorette party. we went down thursday after work and unfortunately had to come back on sunday (boo!). my picture-taking only involved taking one picture of each of the girls & that's it.


amanda spent all of thursday in the car in order to spend the weekend with me. i hear she builds killer sand castles.


yam spent her beach time tucked safely underneath an umbrella borrowed from the lam family.

natasha flew from chicago to the great state of alabama to spend the weekend. she was definitely our most dedicated tanner.


stef finally got to wear her super cute red shirt from anthropology on the trip, and she made me some very yummy cookies.


jeri drove us all down to the beach and back...12 hours of driving. in return she got some well-deserved child-free time sitting on the beach.

i also managed to snap these two pictures of our sleepers...


this trip was so much fun. these girls really are my closest friends, and it meant so much to me that they were willing to travel long distances and miss work and class in order to spend the weekend with me. they really made me feel loved, and i love them too.

thanks for a fabulous weekend, girls....maybe a beach trip should become an annual thing...yes?

updates

it's getting close! 33 days until the party. can you believe it?! it's kind of strange. 52 confirmed guests so far. there has been lots of wedding to-do fun this past week to catch you up on.

cake! we met with stephanie of sugar baker's on wednesday to eat some cake and make some decisions. just as a reminder, you can see our inspiration cake here. she had lots of cake flavors and homemade buttercream and fruit fillings...yum! choosing what the layers would be was the first time in all of wedding planning that i have seen danny make a decision within seconds and feel strongly about the results, so i didn't argue...chocolate cake with cappaccinno chocolate buttercream icing, red velvet with a cream cheese/buttercream hybrid icing, and yellow cake with chocolate buttercream...and now my mouth is watering.

dress! friday evening i had a second fitting with allison at allison anne bridal alterations, and my mom was able to come! it was the first time she had seen me in the dress & it was the first time i had seen the dress actually fit (please ignore my face)...

it's not quite ready to be picked up, so i have another fitting next monday. if everything is perfect then, i can take it home with me...scary! (i am still without shoes though, so if anyone sees any fabulous shoes with a 1.5-2 inch heel, please let me know! i need earrings too, so be on the look out for some gorgeous chandelier earrings too...)

suits! saturday we went back to mens warehouse to shop for suits for my dad and brother. the same salesman who helped us with the groomsmen's suits was there, so i felt like we should work with him again, right? he didn't remember us! i said, "yeah, we were in a few weeks ago & bought suits." nothing. then he thought he remembered us & he had us confused with someone else! oh well. he did help us find a suit for my dad, a suit for kevin, and a tie for dad. then mom and i found a tie for kevin and danny's dad at stein mart. success! i'm loving how they all go together without being matchy-matchy. here are the ties so you can see:

left to right: groomsmen, danny's dad, danny, dad, and kevin

hair! saturday afternoon i had a hair trial with marnie at perfections, a salon in madison. someone on theknot messageboards recommended her, so i gave her a call. she sounded super nice on the phone & i was not disappointed when i met her in person. she has a great personality. the purpose of this appointment was for us to meet each other & for her to get used to working with my hair, so the hair itself isn't finished & wouldn't look exactly like this on the wedding day.




as it is, i want to change a few things. i want to do fewer loops & i'm trying to decide whether it should be lower or not? like mrs. toucan's hair below. thoughts?


i decided that i definitely want something in my hair. i found this one from brasspaperclip (same shop where i bought the flower girl basket) that i love & will look perfect with my dress, don't you think?

thanks ginger!

the veil decision is a big accessory decision for a bride. birdcage? long? fingertip? none? plain? lacey? so many choices!

my sister wore a fingertip veil at her wedding. i struggled with what i wanted to do in the veil area. did i even want to wear one? should i wear hers? although it's good luck to wear the veil of a happily married woman, i decided that i wanted to wear a different veil than my sister's. i had fallen in love with the cathedral length veils...


(melisa jill photography)


(pootiekin's knot bio)

so, after i decided on the kind of veil, i started searching online. you can spend a LOT on a viel, and i didn't want to...and i'm pretty sure i succeeded. i found a cathedral length, cut-edge veil on ebay from ginger4wedding for a whole $18.44, including shipping. i don't have a picture of me in the veil, but here it is in the seller's picture.



i can't wait to see everything together :D

what if