Weddingbee

{photo by Marianne Todd}

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All was quiet on the wedding front for a few days. I went down to Natchez a week and a half before the wedding to do last minute vendor checks. I stopped by the florist to make sure that things were on track and to see if she (finally) had our final estimate prepared. It was Mother’s Day, so she was super busy, but she said that she would get that estimate to me first thing on Monday. I asked her if she thought that we would be on budget and she all but assured me we would fine.

Monday came and went and there was no final estimate. Tuesday. Wednesday. I was getting nervous so I started calling. A lot. She was either out on a delivery or just plain out. Eventually my parents got in on the calling and between four different phones we finally managed to speak with her. She faxed the estimate to us and Mama Donut and I nearly fell on the floor. It was over double the number we had discussed. And that was just for personal flowers - never mind the flowers and containers for the centerpieces that we were ordering through her, but I had designed and we were putting together ourselves. It took a few panick filled days of some fast rethinking and reworking, but in the end we trimmed the budget to a far more acceptable number.

Then came the random things that were worrisome and time consuming but easily solvable. My little snuggle puppy, who thinks he is a German Shepard but is, in reality, a Miniature Schnauzer, picked a fight with an actual big dog. He lost and was wounded in the battle. The result was a serious infection and a trip to the doggie hospital. Shortly thereafter, Mama Donut’s car decided to die. It became clear after numerous trips to the auto shop that we were going to have to rent a car for the wedding trip down to Natchez.

And that’s just the days BEFORE the wedding. Just wait until I tell you about the day of…
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Once we’d finally settled on readings and such, we had to make sure that we had people to read them. Rather than obligating someone to make a trip they might not be able to afford, we waited until most of the RSVP’s were in to ask both our attending guests if they would do us the honor of being readers or ushers. Thankfully, they all happily agreed.

The what and the who taken care of, the next project was to tackle was the format. A Catholic ceremony is a pretty interactive service. Because many of our guests are not religious and many more are not Catholic, we felt that we needed to include as much as we could of the service in the program. For us that meant entire readings and prayers. Being relatively new to anything computer other than the internet, I now bow down before those of you (and I am sure that there are many) who have mastered all the little nifty little tricks of Word. I have not and so as punishment for being slow to catch up on the 21st century I spent four hours today doing numerous revisions of something that had already taken me a really long time to do. Ah, such is life.

In the end I figured it out. Mostly. I think. I have to say that I am rather proud. I hope that we’ve managed to infuse our service with our couple-ality. We’ve endeavored to keep it reverent and hopeful, both a prayer for our new life together as well as a prayer for something beyond us.

Do you have a theme in mind for your ceremony?
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Shoes number two and three are actually the same shoe, just in different colors. I think the gold goes better with the dress. My girls think silver is a better choice. I’ll let you decide. Either way Nine West’s Accolia is one seriously sexy shoe.

And finally we have Shameless from Chinese Laundry in an almost too bridal for a bridesmaid ivory.

Now, the girls’ dresses are from Dessy After Six. They are light green silk with an ivory chiffon overly. The chiffon softens the green and gives the dress a kind of dreamy vintage etherealness that is exactly what I was going for. I think it’s a perfect for our high noon spring wedding.

Jack’s is an absolute must for local and visiting masters of the universe both business and political. He’s made suits for everyone from princes to presidential candidates. The best part? Jack does amazing work and his prices start totally reasonably.

{The Man himself making sure that Mr. Donut’s
handmade shirt is to his liking.}

All in all Mr. Donut went home with 12 handmade shirts and 6 suits - 5 suits for work and 1 very special super nice suit for special occasions like getting married.

Is your groom having a suit custom made?

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I went through my letter box the other day and, as I was reading these special letters from a man who passed away so many years ago, I noticed the date on one - May 25, 1994. This year, on May 24 I will become someone’s wife. And even though I was a high school graduate then, I will on that day graduate to the next part of my life, making this letter just as relevant today as it was then and even more special.

It reads:

” My Dear:
Congratulations to my graduate! You are off to a great start. Keep it that way by giving everything your best…and when in doubt always do the right thing.

Much Love,
Granddaddy ”
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Snug in their box.

Ready to go. (Almost.)

Sayonara, my babies. I will see you in a few weeks.

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Eventually I gave in and bought a calligraphy set complete with 6 nibs so that I could play around and see which size I liked best. I finally settled on the fine nib and I was super excited to get to work on addressing my invitations. I wanted to get some practice in first, though, just to be sure that I’d settled on a style I could actually accomplish before tearing into my limited supply of envelopes.

After about 10 pages worth of “practicing” this fancy writing, two things became very clear. One, I needed A LOT more practice and two, it was going to take FOREVER. A swirl would look pretty good, but then a loop would be all wrong. The grand and graceful part just wasn’t happening. Girly, though, that seemed a possibility, and even cute looked like it was making an appearance, so I just went with it.

The next task was figuring out how to write in a straight line. The idea of drawing lines in pencil and then going back and erasing them was just too much for me. I liked the idea of the card stock printed with heavy lines and it turned out that I could just see the template through my envelopes. The issue to solve was the whole centering question, so I did a little searching and found a wonderful How To on this very subject from The Bride of Rochester. The answer was why center, when you can stagger! Problem solved!

My Template

{The top is for the outer envelope, the bottom
is for the inner envelope.}

Since we mailed them from Singapore, I had to forgo the pretty present box idea. I don’t even want to think what the postage on that would’ve been. After perusing the stamp selection at our local SingPost, we decided to go with wildlife. At first I wasn’t so crazy about the idea of birds and fishes being on the invites, but then it struck me “Hey, they’re in pairs!” So then I made up this very Winnie the Pooh like song in my head, and every time I stamped an envelope I sang to myself “Deux birds of a feather, two fishes swim together.” And much like Pooh, that’s about as far as I got. Here’s a little close up of my little happy pairs…

Because it was airmail, I had to stick that nasty little sticker on the front, too. I’m glad the lady at the post office was nice enough to let me do it myself, otherwise who knows where it might’ve ended up on my envelopes.

And here they are, the finished product…

Done! YEAH!
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The Invitation

These are “Jane” invitations from My Gatsby. The paper is ecru linen (a kind of ivory with texture that isn’t showing up well here at all). I chose the Bickham Script font because it’s classic and easy to read. The paper band is indeed from Paper Studio. I thought that the colors would be a little softer, like in the inspiration photo above, but I love the gold metallic paper that outlines the flowers. They were kind enough to cut the bands for me AND ship them to the other side of the world, so that rocked my world. I tied a little pink sheer ribbon around the band a la an obi and voila!

The R.S.V.P

Pretty straightforward. I ordered Louis Comfort Tiffany “Magnolias and Irises” stamp off the USPS site and 6 days later it was in my mailbox to put on the return envelopes. I love that stamp for two reasons: 1) It’s magnolias and Mississippi is the Magnolia State. A little lame and a lot cheesy, but then I’m kinda known for one or the other and sometimes both all at once. 2) Mr. Donut’s dad and stepmom work with stained glass. And it’s very pretty. And it screams “Spring!” OK, that’s 4 reasons.

The Info Insert Booklet

OK, this was definitely the hardest part of the project. I am not good at math and because of that there was very little measuring involved here. For this I took the trial and error approach. I made about a million mock ups before finding one that I was reasonably happy with, and then guesstimated the measurements with what turned out to be pretty good success. Considering this is my very first project of this nature every, I like the way they turned out.Next up: Calligraphy.

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Laura is absolutely one of my wedding heros, her work is that exquisite.
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