stocking the bar before we walk down the aisle

a few weeks ago, our friends were sweet enough to throw us a shower. well, officially, it was not called a shower in order to prevent a freak-out by the boys...it was deemed a pre-wedding throwdown which went over much better.

the theme of the throwdown was stocking the bar which if the great friends and food weren't enough makes for a very fun party! stef made the invitations. so cute! complete with a little poem.



the spread...




rachel who provied the location for the party


josh, rachel's husband, & an excellent stirrer.


stef taking pictures of her own.


audra and patrick working on their mad lib.


dave who is incapable of looking normal in any picture i take.


the lovely jeri who made a very yummy salad for the party.


cake!


we played a "how well do you know your fiance?" game...danny and i were not good at it (uh oh!), but i won! i got the most questions right. go me!




and the result: a filled to capacity home bar...


i still haven't sent thank yous for this party (i'm a slacker, i know), but i can't thank our friends enough for throwing this party for us. they went to a lot of trouble and planning to make it happen, and it makes us feel so loved. it was so much fun to have so many of our friends in a room together. it gets me that much more excited about the wedding and seeing all our guests. weddings result in so much fun!

i know...i know...

it has been a while sine i've posted anything. i have been a blog slacker. there are so many last minute things to remember and do that any free time i have isn't really free time b/c i'm thinking of all those things. i can't believe the wedding is a week away - 1 week. it's so crazy. i can't believe it's here, but i am so excited!

my parents came down for a few days last weekend (danny was off gallivanting with his friends in canada - slacker) to help me with wedding stuff. my mom and i had lunch with cheryl on saturday to see how many things i had totally forgotten about, and i am very happy to say that nothing was a shock, unlike some of my previous lunches with cheryl. our big project for the weekend was table runners. i had bought some random pieces of fabric and had no idea if i had enough for all the tables or what i was going to do if we didn't. turned out that i had exactly, exactly how much fabric we needed. mom worked on those while i started on a couple other projects, and they turned out wonderful! i couldn't have done it without my mom. she was such a huge help.

mom also brought me my something borrowed and what could be considered my something old (i'm pretty sure i'm going to have multiples) - a beautiful antique beaded evening bag that belongs to my grandma and a handkerchief that belonged to my grandpa who passed away. i realize it's just a handkerchief, but it means so much to me to have something of his with me on my wedding day.

i'll share some other accomplishments with photos in upcoming posts, but i'm not going to promise dates, just in case.

things we have left to do:
pick up favors
pick up danny's suit
pick up mums
material for chuppah
earrings for the bride
programs
scrapbook guestbook
compile must-take photo list (any requests?)

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

dog not included

two days ago, a white box with black letters arrived on our doorstep...our first wedding gift! danny asked if we needed to wait until the wedding to open it, but i told him it was okay if we opened it now. :) what was inside this magical box that came from crate and barrel? a muffin pan, cake pan, and cast iron skillet. we've never had nice kitchenware before, so it's very exciting! danny's response was to, of course, ask when i would putting these new items to use...

here is scarlett hanging out with the new stuff. you can see the excitement on her face.


(thanks leah & dan!)

joey wins a prize!

if you remember, we are planning on having a polaroid guestbook. one possible issue has been the fact that polaroid killed the polaroid film format this year. i had seen film for sale online and in store, but i hadn't seen any cameras in store & the ones online were kind of pricey for me. this afternoon i decided to post on our company classifieds just to see if anyone still owned one that i could have or borrow. a few minutes after posting, joey from marcom called; marcom has 10 polaroid cameras! 10! no more worries on that front! i do, of course, owe joey a prize since she totally hooked me up, so i'll have to come up with something good. now, i better hurry and buy film before it's all gone!