Inspiration Board

I figured after all of your comments and questions about my wedding colors and scheme, I should probably share something to illuminate my vision at this point! You've most likely already guessed at what it will look like, since you've seen so many of my details already, but it would be considerate of me to put it all in one place, right? Right.

One of the difficulties in having a long engagement (especially when you over think everything like me!) is having waaaay too much time to make decisions and then second-guess them and then think some more and then make new choices and then...well, you get the point.

The two constants throughout this process have been:

1. My dress

2. Deep purple.

That's about it.

The original colors I picked were eggplant and forest green. Then I started to worry that the color combination would be too un-chic (which I now think was silly -- I really believe at this point that any color combo can be fresh and chic if you do it right). So I changed our colors to purple and champagne. Weeks later, I realized that these were the colors of my Mom's wedding to my Stepdad in 2005. Oops. Then I decided that, since I'm such a huge polka dot aficionado, they had to be incorporated somehow. So now we've landed for good on deep purples with black and white polka dot accents. Today, I think it's gorgeous. Ask my fiance, and he'll tell you that I often second-guess even this color choice!

Given that we're both in showbiz, I also knew that I wanted it to be dramatic, but still romantic and elegant. But the polka dots give the whole thing a bit of "levity," because I didn't want the elegance to be stuffy. We also want little shout-outs to Theatre and New York City to be a part of everything, of course.

I've worried a lot about the whole thing becoming a cohesive whole, but I think my vision is coming together (you've seen a lot of my details at this point, so tell me if it's not!). I've made a really simple and small inspiration board because I've discovered that, despite my LOVE for beautiful inspiration boards, I'm not as good at putting them together as one might think :)

(Photo credit here, here, here, and Etsy seller bluemusestudio)

So whaddya think? Have you worried about having too many elements to incorporate into your wedding day vision? Have you second-guessed any of your decisions?

Adventures of Young-ish Bride, the First in a Series

One of the biggest reasons I wanted to blog for WeddingBee was because I see so many Bees on the boards writing about all the really tough issues they're facing as young-ish brides. I say "young-ish" because I've always been kind've old for my age, but know that I still have parts of my maturity that correspond perfectly with the date on my birth certificate. Many of the other bloggers here are in their mid-20's, which is still not ancient by any stretch, but I think brides who are in their early 20's face a unique set of challenges that I haven't seen talked about much on the blog. So here I am, hoping to ease the young-ish brides' concerns and to let you all know that you're not alone and you're definitely not crazy!

At least we're not that young, right?

(Photo Credit)

I am 22 (although I'm turning the big 2-3 on July 11!), but have the added luck and difficulty of looking like I'm about 16, as you might have noticed from some of my pics. One of the hardest parts of being a young-ish bride that I've encountered is the general negativity I get from people I don't know or barely know when they find out that I'm engaged. About a third of the time, people are enthusiastic and supportive, and the rest of the time, the conversation goes something like this:

New Person I'm Meeting: So what did you do this weekend?

Miss Star: Well, I had an audition and then my fiance and I had a picnic in the park and then --

New Person: --Wait, you have a fiance? You're engaged??

Miss Star: Yep, guilty as charged.

New Person: Holy cow, how old are you?

Miss Star: 22, going on 23...

New Person: Wow, you're SO young. I got married at {insert age here} and it was so {insert unpleasant adjective here}

It got so bad that after about 6 months of being engaged, I would tell people I didn't know very well about my "boyfriend," for fear of having someone else play Debbie Downer on my wedding parade. A few months into that, though, and I realized that I shouldn't have to feel ashamed and went back to standing my ground and talking about my fiance. Now my response to "how old are you??" is "old enough to know bad manners!" It might be a little harsh, but I got so tired of having people I barely knew bringing me down!

One of the most frustrating parts of this is also one of the best parts for my Mr. Star. When he talks about his fiancee and his engagement, he never EVER gets queries about his age! I was so shocked when he told me that a few months ago, because he's only a year older than I am! I'm really glad that people don't bug him about it and make him feel bad. But the idea that it's totally okay for a man to get married young, while a woman marrying young-ish must be desperate and impetuous, really irks me!

I was one of those girls in high school who was bitter at the male race and planned to grow old as a loving cat lady, so the idea that I'm marrying my college sweetheart out of naivete just doesn't fit. I didn't try to get married young, I just found the love of my life when I found him! I know there are other Bees for whom that's true, too! 

I'm really hoping to write several more posts about the issues that young-ish brides are facing, so please comment and tell me about your experiences and what you'd like to hear about!

Table numbering (verb):

Table numbering (verb): The uniquely bridal attempt at making something totally utilitarian into another excuse to craft something unnecessarily complex and beautiful.

Awhile back, I was totally inspired by Mrs. Eggplant's DIY photo table numbers post. For some time, I had been thinking about making our table numbers have something to do with our theatrical theme, like maybe naming them after plays we've each been in or such. I also wanted them to carry the polka dot motif that we've got going on, as well. But then I wanted to do photo table numbers after seeing the awesomeness of Mr. and Mrs. Eggplant. How to reconcile, how to reconcile...

This is what I came up with:

Pretty cute, right? It really was super easy, too.

We both dressed up for the photo-taking occasion, I wore my fave little black dress and he wore a dress shirt and pants. We asked Blonde Bridesmaid to come over and help us out by taking pictures of us in the park. I took Mrs. Eggplant's wise advice to buy one posterboard and not try to write each table number on it, but rather photoshop the words on later. So Mr. Star and I basically goofed off in the park for half an hour, while Blonde Bridesmaid photographed the whole thing.

Because I'm a cheapo and don't actually have Photoshop on my Mac, I decided to take the easy route out: Go edit and print the pictures out at Duane Reade (or CVS/Walgreens, for you non-NYC'ers!). The DIY photo machine there was plenty sophisticated enough for the quick edits I needed to do. I simply cropped the pictures, made them black and white, lightened a few of them that were too dark up, and added text across the white posterboard for each one. Pretty soon, I had 10 printed pictures for 30 cents each! Not bad.

Then I put them in silver frames that I bought from Jack's 99cent Store (NYC dollar store that has saved my wedding life!) and hot glued (you knew that was coming) one of the same little polka dotted bows that I made for the bouts onto the top of each frame. That $8 of polka dot ribbon that I bought from Ebay has really come in handy! Oh, and don't worry, the pictures aren't fuzzy at all, it's just a photographer error :)

For any theatre junkies who are keeping track, the plays we chose were:

• Oedipus
  
• Stop, Kiss
  
• All My Sons
  
• Les Mis
  
• Macbeth
  
• Into the Woods
  
• Cyrano
  
• Agamemnon
  
• Camille (More significance of this one will come later!)
  
• Rumors
  

We tried to mix up the genres of plays and musicals, modern plays with the classics. We've performed in about half of them between the two of us, and the other half are ones we've read or seen and fell in love with.

What has inspired you for your table numbers?

Urban Engagement Pics!

I thought I'd take the chance to share a few more of our E-pics with you all. We wanted them to be very city and very us. Because our photographer is Sassy Bridesmaid's best friend, we were pretty sure that he'd do a great job of capturing who we are, but were still a little nervous about using our first "friendor."

John of John Martin Photography did an absolutely amazing job. We were so glad because we treated our E-pics as a trial run for the wedding. I think it's really smart to use your wedding photographer before the wedding so you can get a sense of how he or she shoots first. It definitely calmed my nerves, knowing that we love his work!

So, without further adieu, here they are:

This one is one of my faves because I look so joyful and Mr. Star looks so goofy :)

I love this next one because it's so New York and it looks like someone unseen is just sitting and watching our relationship unfold.

This is another of my absolute faves because that look that Mr. Star is giving me is all love and I look like I'm just basking in it. That's his "you're amazing and I never want to look at anyone else as long as I live" look. If he looks at me like that when I walk down the aisle, I'm golden.

Love the city setting and how pretty my dress looks!

I love that we look like a snuggly team in this pic...

This screams "Sex and the City" to me:

And finally...

What do you think? What was important to you to capture in your E-pics?

Shoe Stalking

You've already had the chance to read about the wedding shoes I found and rejected here. Now for the happy ending:

A couple of months ago, blonde bridesmaid and I had the great fortune of stumbling upon one of the best reasons to love living in New York: wholesale shoe showrooms. Let me explain.

Blonde bridesmaid was out on Long Island one day, when she (of course, knowing her) made a stop off at the enormous DSW shoe store. Knowing that the hunt for my perfect ivory wedding heels was on, she swung by the dress shoes section and happened to encounter THE PERFECT SHOES. Literally, these shoes look like my dress designer (to be revealed soon!) made them himself just to complement my wedding gown. I know I haven't shown you my gown yet, so keep these shoes in mind for when you get to see the dress -- they're absolutely breathtakingly perfect.

So she finds these perfect shoes, but the biggest size they have left is a 5 1/2 and I wear a 7. Damn. I checked on the website, still only tiny ones there, too. I called all three DSW stores in the city and nothing. I finally took to scouring the internet for any reference to "Caparros" shoes and couldn't find the exact pair anywhere, but did find a bare-bones website that vaguely references their warehouse in L.A., their showroom in N.Y., and the fact that Caparros shoes are sold at Lord & Taylor (which is right around the corner from my apartment). After striking out again at Lord & Taylor, blonde bridesmaid and I decided to venture into the unknown of the shoe showroom.

We had to search to find the building up on 57th street and then were told that the showroom was on the 10th floor by a security guard who definitely didn't believe we belonged there. The elevator opened onto a 10th floor filled with offices of well-known brands like DKNY and such, and we contemplated turning back because, indeed, it didn't look like we belonged there. But we bravely ventured forth into the Caparros showroom! When we rounded the corner, there it was: a BEAUTIFUL room filled with huge windows and shelves and shelves of beautiful shoes. It was like a more spacious and light-filled version of this:

(Photo credit)

There were two people inside working, a man in an office and a shoe designer named Mo, who immediately greeted us and seemed puzzled at us being there. As soon as I got through my story, they both beamed and immediately offered to help. The man got to work on the computer trying to find the specific style number and Mo showed us around the showroom and let us look at the newest season's ivory shoes. She was delighted at how much we loved all the shoes in the room and eager to hear our opinions on each of her designs (keep in mind there were about 200 shoes in there!). Soon after, the man came out and told us that DSW would be getting a new shipment of my shoes on June 1st, so I should stalk their website for about two weeks starting on the 1st and I would be able to get them! What great news! After we spent about half an hour talking to Mo about her designs, they both wished us well and Mo gave me her card in case I wasn't able to get them in June.

Come June 1st, I scoured the DSW website 3 times a day. By June 7th, I was starting to get discouraged, but by the morning of the 9th, there they were! A few clicks and they were on their way to my apartment! After three months of stalking and lurking, I finally got to see them in person. They're still available in all sizes on the DSW website, for anyone who's interested. You can buy them here.

(Photo credit by me)

Every time I look at these, my heart skips a beat because of how well the beading matches my gown. And they were only $60 with shipping!! 

Have you spent way too much time obsessing over one detail to get it perfect?

Shoe Quandary

When looking for my perfect wedding shoes, I had a few criteria that I was pretty firm on:

1. Ivory, to match my dress, of course
2. Heel can't be taller than 2.5"
3. Pointy toes because they make my legs look less stumpy
4. Less than $175
5. Some sort of interesting detail because I love shoes and don't want them to be boring!

Apparently, having five bullet points that you're not really willing to budge on makes shoe shopping ridiculously hard. Yeah, I'm picky...

In my everyday life, I almost always turn to Zappos to solve my shoes crises. They have almost everything and their shipping and return policy can't be beat. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find what I was looking for in wedding shoes on Zappos. The closest I came was a pair of Stuart Weitzmans that fit 4 out of 5 of my needs, but the shoes weren't particularly interesting on their own. I tossed around the idea of buying them:

(Photo credit)

To give 'em some razzle-dazzle, I would have bought some crystal brooches from M&J Trimming like these:

(Photo credit)

Attaching them to the front of those shoes would have made for some pretty beautiful shoes, but I wasn't sure if I wanted to spend $150 on shoes that I wasn't in love with. I thought I could do better.

These shoes were gorgeous:

(Photo credit)

They were a bit out of my price range, though, and I don't have a bow motif going on in my attire and wasn't sure that I wanted to introduce one at this late stage in the game.

My google searches were all turning up similarly unsuccessful results, so I turned to sites like Ebay and Etsy.

Etsy yielded beautiful results like these shoes being sold by GossamerWingsStudio:

(Photo credit)

These are incredible, but they don't really match my dress (Someone from the Hive should get them, though!! Tell me if you do!).

Ebay didn't do me much good either, since I wasn't finding anything I hadn't already seen from googling.

I was almost resigned to buying cheap kitten heels like these ones:

(Photo credit)

I was figuring that I would just have to dye them and try to embellish them myself, when my shoe quandary took a turn for the more complicated! Stay tuned for more shoe drama :)

Boutonniere Love How-To

I was so pleased with the response to my boutonniere post -- mostly relieved that everyone seemed to think they were a classy alternative to fresh flowers from a florist!

I got several requests for a DIY tutorial and so I figured that I'd do my best to oblige, despite my initial reluctance because, to be honest, they were mostly trial-and-error! Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of the process, since I didn't know I'd be blogging about them at the time, but I've tried to be as specific as I can be in my descriptions. And honestly, if I was able to pull this off, anyone can!

To start off, I'll recap my supplies list:

• Purple satin ribbon 3/8"
  
• Guinea feathers (I ended up using 12)
  
• Miniature silk camellias, about 1" across (18)
  
• Black beaded rose
  
• Silver pin backings
  

Also some things I already had in my supplies:

• Purple cardstock
  
• Polka dot satin ribbon 3/8" (from another wedding project to be posted soon!)
  
• Hot glue and gun
  
• Tacky glue
  
• Scissors, of course
  
• Thread or string

To start off, I should probably warn you all that I am the Queen of Hotglue. If something isn't working, I just bust out my hotglue and there isn't much that I can't do! I hope you all share my hotglue love, if not my hotglue blisters. I've included a close-up picture of one of the boutonnieres for reference:

First off, I set about arranging the flowers. I cut all the stems to be separate and removed the leaves. After that, I basically just pushed the flowers around until I could see all three and I thought they looked nice together. My plan was to just hotglue them together at this point and then wrap the ribbon around. This, however, was where I ran into my first snafu: the flower stems were so thin and so plastic that they melted when I tried to hotglue them together.

So instead, I tied the three stems together with thread and used tacky glue to anchor the stems to a little piece of cardstock I cut out that was oval-shaped and about 2" long and 1/2" wide. This way, I was able to create something to hotglue to, which was important to me because (besides the fact that I love hotglue!) hotglue dries much more quickly than tacky glue, making it easier to create aesthetically-pleasing arrangements!

Next up, I wrapped the ribbon around the stems/cardstock. I started by using hotglue to attach the end of the ribbon to the top of the cardstock and wrapped as carefully as I could all the way down the stems and back up, using glue every few wraps as I went (I think two layers of wrapping looks cleaner). NOTE: At this point, I did not cut the other end of the ribbon; I just hotglued it at the top again and left the other end hanging still.

Then I wanted to attach the feathers. Guinea feathers often have a lot of fuzzy grayness at the bottom and I thought that made my bouts messier looking, so I used my cut off all the fuzzy part first. Then I hotglued two of feather shafts and one of the leaves to the back of the ribbon-wrapped cardstock. This is why I didn't cut the end of the ribbon: because at this point, I wrapped the ribbon around the bouts a few more times to cover the feather shafts and leaf stem, and then hotglued the end down in the back and snipped the extra off.

I was planning on leaving them as-is at that point, but they still looked like they needed a little something. So I used a bit of leftover polka dot ribbon from our table number project (post coming soon!) to make little bows. I just tied a piece of ribbon that was about 10" long in the same way that I would tie my shoelaces and if you just wiggle the last loop a bit before you tighten the bow all the way, you can get both loops to have the polka dots facing out! For Mr. Star's bout, I simply hotglued the beaded rose in front of the feathers to give it a little added pizazz :)

Let me know if you still have questions! Like I said, it was mostly trial-and-error, patience, and hotglue!

The Timing Is Right: Seeing This As I Work On Our Invites

My Mom sent me this amusing link to a really clever wedding invite set this morning: 

Had Me Laughing As I Go Into Overtime On My Own Invites

Hope you get the kick out of it that I did :)

Passport: Check

Despite my (okay, I'll admit it) nearly constant nagging over the past four or five months, Mr. Star has finally just sent in his passport application. Yay! We're actually going to get to go on our honeymoon together!

I've had a passport for awhile now; I got mine so that my best friend and I could go on a whirlwind tour of France one summer during college. My honey, however, has never left the country aside for one middle school weekend trip to Canada. So our honeymoon is going to blow his mind!

Our honeymoon will be in...wait for it...GREECE! Yes, Greece! We're terribly excited about it. Not only does it go with our general wedding theme of drama, since Greece is the birthplace of theatre, but it's also supposed to have incredible sights and delicious food. Plus, my mom bought me a subscription to Rosetta Stone online for Greek about a month ago, so I've been learning the language and can't wait to use it! Granted, my Greek is still pretty limited, but considering how different it is from English and how quickly the program is teaching me, I'm pretty impressed!

One of the things I have loved most about this whole wedding process is the perfectly legitimate excuses that it has given me to learn completely new skills. I've started learning Greek for the honeymoon. I learned calligraphy to address my envelopes. I learned how to sew a birdcage veil. And the list goes on. I love to learn new things, and since I graduated college, I feel like the excuses to take time out of a crazy life and spend money on the tools to learn crazy, random new skills have diminished. Enter: my wedding!

So, I've ended this post on a completely different note than I started it on, but I am wondering if anyone else out there has loved learning new wedding skills! What have YOU learned?

Little Sister, Little Princess

Every flowergirl is adorable. But not every bride is lucky enough to have a flowergirl who is the love of her life.

That's right, the mister knows that my two little sisters mean the world to me. And does it get any cuter than my little sister in that poufy pink dress? I don't think so. Hers will be in lavender, but you get my point.

And my baby sister (who's just about to turn 1) also got a gorgeous little dress, but she will too young to walk her own way down the aisle even by the time the wedding comes around.

My beautiful flowergirl had the whole bridal salon at Macy's oohing and aahing over how beautiful she was. The only snafu? The dress my mom and I loved was not her favorite. She loved one that was all tulle and while it was very cute, it was totally not what we were looking for. She kept saying, "I don't like this one, Sissy! I want my Cinderella dress."

My genius mom offered to buy her a tulle dress to play with off of Ebay (for $10!) if she would wear the one I picked to the wedding. What a good mommy!

Have any of you had opinionated flowergirls? How do you know your littlest bridal party members?

(Photo credit by yours truly)

Veil Va-Va-Voom: Part One

Me at M&J Trimming

I was not originally considering wearing a birdcage veil! I always thought they were gorgeous and so chic, but didn't think I would be the bride to pull one off.

I happened to try one on at a bridal salon one day while I was looking for something else (shoes to solve my shoe crisis, I think it was!). I posted the picture on my Facebook and immediately had several comments about how amazing it was and how well it synched with my style. I took a second look and agreed that I actually loved it! The only thing I didn't love was the $200 price tag on the one I tried on. So I decided to make my own. For less than $30 and an afternoon spent crafting with Blonde Bridesmaid, we were able to create this:

What do you think? Don't mind the terrible photography skills I'm rockin'! It was a lot of work to get the look right with the netting, but totally do-able if you have the patience. And I really think you need a helper to make it less frustrating! People have been really impressed to hear that I made my own veil, but it's one of those things where the impressive to difficulty ratio is high.

Have you made any of your really crucial wedding-day attire pieces?

Stay tuned for Part Two. You knew I wasn't going to settle for just one veil, right?

(Photo Credits: Blonde Bridesmaid, Myself)

The Best Wedding Decision I Ever Made

When we first started planning, my mom was insistent that we get a wedding planner. As someone who has been married twice (once without a planner and once with!), she said it was the best money she ever spent to have someone running the day.

Well, I was pretty positive that our budget wouldn't allow for a wedding planner, so I set about doing all the work myself. I was totally fine with it, although I slowly began to realize that, even though I've been willing to work long and hard on all the little wedding details thus far, I had no idea how everything was going to get taken care of on the actual day. Both of our families live out-of-state, so they haven't been involved in the day-to-day planning and I didn't know who to ask to run things.

One day, while scanning the WeddingBee classifieds, I saw an offer for a free Day of Coordinator in NYC. I immediately emailed, but had already been beat to the punch by other Bees! Luckily, Danielle was willing to offer me a substantial discount on her services, since she's still getting started. I had a great meeting with her at Starbucks and I realized that there's no way I could've pulled everything together on our big day without her help. I'm a very organized person, but she had all of these detail questions that I couldn't answer because I hadn't even thought of them yet!

Add in the fact that I tend to be a little high-strung, and without a DOC, you've got a recipe for disaster!

Are you getting help on the day of the wedding or are you bravely going it alone?