Pain in the you-know-what

Well, we're now less than two months out and I have to say, we're down to a less-than-fun to-do list.

I've been doing things like getting the event insurance our venue requires (I used WedSafe, if anyone's interested!) and making sure all of our groomsmen actually made it into Men's Wearhouse to get measured for their tuxes.

Every time I turn around, I feel like we need more paperwork done or more legwork ironed out, and I'm getting burned out on the tasks that aren't any fun. 

 (Photo Credit)

I feel like this lady

When we were in the early stages of planning, I got to do things like try on dresses and look for beautiful inspiration pictures and that part was a lot more fun. I feel like most of the wedding tasks left to do are headaches that need to be dealt with or things that I'm just plain not that interested in (coordinating rental delivery times with freight elevator availability, anyone?).

Does anyone else feel (or did you feel) this way at wedding crunch time? What did you to to counteract it?

Bombs Away!

So we mailed out our 80 invitations this week. It was quite the relief because pretty much every piece of those things was handcrafted by yours truly. This was by far my most ambitious wedding DIY project. I'll post later with pictures of them and some tips on what I learned, but for now, I'll give you some pictures that tell the story of our mailing saga.

We had quite the drama over what would be the correct postage for these puppies. I delegated to Mr. Star the arduous task of taking a finished invitation to the post office (which is ALWAYS crowded in New York, despite the fact that there are about 5 within a few blocks!) and getting it weighed to find out how much it would cost to mail them.

He went to one postal worker who told him it would be nearly $2 to mail each invitation and while this seemed high to him, he didn't know how much I was expecting to spend and went ahead and bought $160 worth of postage.

When he came home and told me what had happened, I freaked. Hoping to have spent somewhere in the $60-$70 range and knowing that USPS would be unlikely to give us our money back, I was distraught. Mr. Star quickly went to another nearby post office and was given a much better .61 cent quote by two different postal workers who both thought that the original guy was crazy.

To make a long story (and about 8 visits to the post office and 5 phone calls to the USPS complaint line by Mr. Star), we did end up getting our money back and were given the correct stamps. It did end up delaying us getting our invitations out by about a week, though, which may not seem like such a big deal to anyone else, but to me it definitely was. I had just seriously busted my butt to get all the calligraphy done quickly and then had my finished invitations sitting around my kitchen for a week -- it was frustrating.

So that might be why Mr. Star looks so happy and relieved to be carrying the box of invites to the post office:

Isn't he cute?

I felt a little sad because I was handing the pride and joy of my wedding paper crafting over to the postal workers whom I know will not treat my invitations in the manner I would like. I told Mr. Star that after all that work there should be trumpets or something. At which point, he proceeded to make loud trumpet noises as I walked down the crowded sidewalk. This is my reaction to that:

But in the end, we were both more than a little happy to have them in the mail and on the way!

My message to you is this: please, please, PLEASE have your invitations weighed and priced at more than one post office if you think there's anything wonky about the quote they give you.

What invitation mailing snafus have you run into?

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?

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!

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)

76 Trombones Led the Big Parade

You've already read about our Loft Location Drama. And how I had worked hard to find a ceremony site that was within walking distance of our original reception site at the Soho Loft because I didn't want to have to deal with trying to transport guests between neighborhoods in NYC. So we booked the Kraine Theatre for the ceremony. Then we had to move our reception to a different location and were so thrilled to have it at the Midtown Loft! One problem: how to make sure everyone gets between the ceremony and reception without getting lost or having to spend any money?

We could have hired some black cars for the transport, but that seemed kind've boring. I wanted the wedding to be very "New York," in addition to dramatic, so I thought it would be fun to have everyone take the subway. We have a lot of out-of-towners, though, and I was fraid that they would get lost or be annoyed that they had to figure out the subway for themselves. Solution: WEDDING PARADE!

I was researching online and apparently it's a pretty common tradition for brides and grooms in New Orleans to parade with their guests between the ceremony site and the reception site, like so:

Flickr Credit

I think a wedding parade through the streets of New York will be so much fun and such a memorable part of our day! Our photographer will be coming with us and we hope he'll capture some amazing pictures throughout the parade and the subway ride!

So I'm proud of us for turning what was a wedding snafu into an exciting part of our day!

How have you turned a wedding planning disappointment into a wedding day positive?

Here Comes the Actress...

So after writing all about our reception location drama, you might be wondering where our oh-so-special ceremony site is and why we didn't just opt to have both the ceremony and the reception at our gorgeous loft. Well, there's a very good rationale behind that: we're pretty much in love with the idea of our ceremony site, which just so happens to be a THEATER! I mean, does it get more perfect for us than that?

A lot of people have given me strange looks when I tell them that we're getting married in a theater, but everyone who knows us immediately nods and says, "how perfect for you guys!" We have a couple of reasons behind our decision to A. Not have the ceremony in a church and B. Not have it at the loft.

• For one, both Dan and I were Theatre Majors in college, which is how we met. We've both grown up onstage and I know that I feel most comfortable and right in the world when I'm on a stage performing. So where better to have such a momentous occasion in our lives take place?


• We also picked a theater because neither of us are religious and luckily for us, all of our parents are totally cool with us wanting to make our wedding about us and our marriage, as opposed to about ours or anyone else's religious beliefs. More power to those of you who want a religious ceremony, it's just not us. Theaters originally started out as places of spirituality in Ancient Greece and we feel similarly about their importance today, so it's perfect!


• Also, how many places can you think of where there are already seats that don't need to be rented, set up, or taken down? There's even an aisle down the middle already!

There was only one trouble: I had a terrible time finding a small theater that would allow us to rent the space for just one night! Most theaters want to rent the place out by the week, which makes sense if you're staging a production and need the rehearsal and tech time, but out budget just didn't allow for that luxury. Even the theaters that did allow one night rentals didn't want to rent to us on a Saturday night because that would make it really difficult for them to rent the rest of the weekend out, which I understand. So we finally made the tough call to have the wedding on a Sunday night, thereby being able to work around the theater's Sunday matinee. We chose Columbus Day weekend, since my Dad and Stepmom got married on the Sunday night of that weekend last year and it didn't seem to bother their guests any. Let's just hope we have the same luck!

I searched long and hard for a theater that was the right size and within walking distance of The Soho Loft, our original reception location before all the drama went down with that. I finally found exactly what we were looking for in The Kraine Theatre, pictured above. It's a converted brownstone in the East Village that seats 99 and was willing to let us have Sunday night for just a couple of hundred dollars!

Things were going perfectly. Until our reception location fell through. But don't worry, there's a happy ending ahead!

What wedding scares have you had?

(Photo Credit)