Hot dang! Things got pretty hectic for a while.Will and I are all moved in to our new apartment with our room mates and things are going pretty well. We've been super busy getting everything unpacked, in order, and we've been making some positive changes to our lifestyle along the way. We've been making good use of the gym thats free to all residents here. All the better for my wedding dress!

I ordered and recieved the wedding invites. I spent a good few weeks frantically hunting for the list of addresses I have, but I've found them now.....and lost my stamps. Blahh! They'll turn up soon, hopefully. 

The wedding date is offically set for the 29th of September 2012! We really wanted to have the 13th, as its Will's birthday, but it wasn't available. 

Thats all for now! 

Busy busy!

I've had a lot to do lately other than planning the wedding. I'm moving to a nicer apartment with Will and some friends and I'm job hunting again! It's put a damper on wedding planning, but I didn't forget. I'm mostly concerned with designing my wedding invites when I have the time.

Thats all! Toodles!

Update!

Heck yeah! Progress is being made!

My badass MOH sister got down to the venue that I wanted to see. Not only did she take pictures and measurements of EVERYTHING like I asked, but she also went ahead and got the paperwork and some other details I hadn't even thought of! She's even going to make the reservation. I'm so glad I picked her for MOH. She's always been good at getting shit done. Plus she has years of experience putting up with me, lol. Though of all the things we could forget, we forgot to get measurements of the room! Its an easy fix, though. I'm going to call them up and ask. 

Now that I have a good idea of what the place looks like, its time to assemble my crack team of bridesmaids and start talking color schemes. 

These are the venue's colors we'll have to work with.

Fortunately, Will's favorite colors are gray and blue. Gray is already in the scheme, and a nice navy blue is easy to work in to it. I'm thinking of some colors that can be easily found in most of the needed supplies, but will still be suitable and lovely together.

I know that I really want to have a deep purple in the scheme, also. It would look rich without being overpowering when combined with the blue and/or the gray. I could go on and on and on....but I'll save the artistic color chatter for my talented bridesmaids.

 One of my BM's pointed out how wonderful the light blue looked with the cream color and it made me just love this one even more!

it would be the lesser accent color of the two.

I really enjoy that green with the purple. It would be the lesser accent color of the two.

Those are the schemes I have in mind so far. I had an awesome, autumntastic one with a beautiful terra cotta orange along with the green....but I want that purple so bad that I just can't use it. I really hate purple and orange together. 

I believe I've settled on the 'My beloved monster and me' theme. What threw me onto that side of the fence was the idea of making the cake toppers a monster version of Will and I. Too damn cute! I'll definitely be involving some elements from the 'crafty' theme, though. While the paper covered table idea would probably look bad if I did it with every table, I think that if I have a kids table, they would friggin' love it. Plus the yarn poofs would be great if I stuck little eyes on them to suit the theme. I'm definitely going to keep the soda bar idea too.

Soda bar reminds me, I'm not sure how good of an idea it is, but I think I'll make the reception a BYOB kind of thing. Will and I are on a thread thin budget and I don't think everybody attending will be wanting to drink. Plus, if people bring their own alcohol for themselves, they won't accidentally get too drunk. What I'm afraid of is, what if people drink and don't have a designated driver or an alternative way to get home without driving themself? Do I give them the numbers and rates for area taxis? If they've come from a far way, a taxi could be expensive and they'd have to come back to get their car somehow....is this even my issue if they know ahead of time that I won't let them drive if they had anything to drink? Hmm...I guess I'll talk it over with some of my family and friends.

I'm going to be working on the invites today. I found  a good, inexpensive website that lets me make highly customized stuff. Drawing up the invite design is my goal for today along with making a final decision on the color scheme so I can use it in said design.

Thats all for now, hooligans. I'll leave you with this cute little doodle of some random little monsters. :)

dresses and stress

There hasn't been much for me to do since the day before yesterday that involves the decorations and location for the wedding. I don't want to begin the save-the-dates or invites until I know for sure that we'll be able to get a venue for that day. I can't start the decorations until I know what colors are at the venue. I basically feel like theres nothing I can do until Will and I know where we'll be having the event. Its very frustrating, but I know I'm just being crazy. Its only been what....5 days since we got engaged? And its 8 months until september? I'm like a  race car stuck behind the slowest elderly drivers who are stuck behind a parade thats being held up by a massive sinkhole full of lava. I can't just let myself barrel ahead. The results would be hilar-....disasterous. I have plenty of time to get everything done and together, but I'm so excited that I just want to do EVERYTHING all at once.

To keep me feeling a bit productive on the wedding front, I decided to dig around the internet for good places to get a dress. Aside from the adventure of finding every dress option I can, there's the side-quest of finding all the ugliest, most crap-awful dresses the internet has to offer. This site, in my opinion, has some pretty crazy ones. I got some laughs from it. However, this site seems fan-friggin-tastic! The shipping and handling is a bit pricey, but they have a large variety of VERY customizable dresses! You can choose the colors you want, the length, you can add or take away sleeves, and best of all, you can get the dresses customized to your measurements instead of a sizing chart! Ok...that actually wasn't the best part. the best part is that they'll do all that for FREE. Insane!!! I think that's where I'll be getting my dress when the time comes..

The stressful part of getting a dress is the fact that I'm in the 'plus size' range. I know that I'm not the model of either perfect health or super obesity, but it sucks when you see a plus size model who is really just a normal, average weight woman. It makes me feel like the big toe of all the little pigs. At least I know I eat better than a lot of the world and healthier than most Americans. Its one thing about my body I can be thankful for. I'm very well nourished. Like a houseplant. 

Anyways, here's some of the dresses I like off of okaydress.com. I'd have them changed to tea length or knee length (tea length is below the knee but above the calves) and I'd change the colors to match whatever color scheme I brew up. I'd also probably find myself a nice little shrug of some sort.

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Wedding Theme Ideas

When I first started thinking of wedding themes and decor, I wanted a nostalgic, quirky theme. All kinds of charming details like signs with weather-worn paint, mason jars for drinking glasses, crazy straws, paper flowers...All that lovely stuff. I started looking all over the internet for decor ideas and found them everywhere.

 EVERYWHERE.

Apparently, weddings and receptions with that theme are the big thing right now. It was a little disappointing. As hipster-tastic as it sounds, I don't want a mainstream style wedding. I want something memorable and unique to Will and I. Yeah, the wedding itself would be memorable because its our wedding for goodness sake (OUR wedding. our WEDDING. I'm still getting happy stomach butterflies just thinking about it!), but I want to look back and know that I had a wedding like no other I've heard of before.

With that in mind, these are my new ideas! I swear, I think of the best damn things when I'm half asleep. Good thing I had my laptop in front of me or I probably would have forgotten.

My Beloved Monster and Me

This theme is based off of a song thats kinda one of Will and I's cutesy couple songs.

Apparently, it was on one of the Shrek movies.....but I don't care. I liked it before I knew that :P

I was thinking of making cute paper-mache monsters holding up table numbers for the centerpieces. Cute like these. 

Stripes would be one of the theme accents. Like cute stripey socks and stockings. 

They're just too cute! 

 I think I would make some monster masks on sticks, too. They'd be a fun prop for photos and a cute favor if I made enough of them.

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Victorian Retro

Ok, so I still like the idea of a vintage wedding.....but I also want to indulge my gross, girly love of lace (I'm secretly very fancy). 

First on the list, classy hats!! (you're welcome, Jimmy, lol)

 Also, tiny hats.  :D I don't know who this girl is, by the way.

I wish the dog was wearing his hat.

Also, I was thinking of making fake vinyl records and painting them with victorian wallpaper patterns. (I'm pretty sure my Dad would be upset if I used real vinyl records. I would be too, hahaha)

Hideously gorgeous!

I'll probably thrift myself some old fashioned jewelry and stuff. I really like this bouquet idea. I also like the idea of having root beer floats and/or a glass bottle soda bar. 

Also, you know those lacy doily paper place mats?.......Yeah. (deal with it, fool!!)

Another also: balloons.

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Crafty 

There's a lot of cute DIY projects out there that I've come across in my hikes around the internet. Most of them seem like they would go well if used with other DIY looking stuff....but would make anything else look tacky.

One idea is paper covered tables and some type of crayon centerpiece so people can draw on the tables. When the party is over, I can go around and cut out all of the stuff people drew and keep it in a scrapbook or something. I have a lot of artistic people invited to my wedding. Children too. I think paper table covers would keep them from getting too bored.

I also found a few tutorials on making yarn pompom garland.

They're super easy to make and easy to coordinate to any color scheme. I'd probably string them on fishing line so they look more like they're just hanging there.

Once again, balloons. I'd fill them with helium and tie various lengths of fishing line to them so that I could have  origami lucky stars dangling sweetly above everybody.

I'll probably also do some type of decor involving painted bottlecaps. I have a big ziplock bag of them that Will snagged for me when he worked at Cebar's. I've had them for aaaaaaages.

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Those are my ideas so far :) in order from my most favorite to my least favorite (though I'm still really fond of my least favorite)

No matter what my theme ends up being, some things are going to be there even if they're out of place. Like crazy straws. I friggin' LOVE crazy straws! They're so unreasonable to own because they taste like soap forever after you wash them, but they'd be perfect as something disposable for a party. Also, like I said, paper stars. They're easy to customize and make. 

Do you have any project ideas for these themes? Any suggestions? post a comment and tell me! :D

Important Details So Far

There's trillions of little half formed, wayward, and crazy ideas going through my head for this wedding. I've been trying to get some of them to stick together into a more coherent mess with some slow success. The rate I'm attempting to plan everything out at would lead some to believe this wedding is happening in a week, but luckily, thats not the case :). I am indeed fairly stressed by the crazy weight of all the things I must do in order to make this super spectacular, but the sheer joy and excitement makes it extremely tolerable.

These are the details that are set in stone so far:

My dear ol' Dad is in charge of the music.

My awesome stepmom, Laura, is making the cake.

Will's Dad will be making our rings out of deer antler (how cool is that?).

Will and Laura will be in charge of the food.

My sister, Anne, is the Maid of Honor and will be helping with a bit of running around and general stuff

I'm making the 'flowers', centerpieces, and general decor myself and possibly with the help of the more local bridesmaids; Katie T, Katie L, Amanda, and Rita.

The wedding/reception will be taking place somewhere in northeast Ohio so that our families can make it.

The wedding will be in September. Hopefully on the 13th because its Will's birthday, but it may be a bit later depending on where we find good reservations.

Speaking of reservations, Anne will be running out to Conneaut this week to get pictures of the Conneaut Arts Center's main hall gallery.. It has high potential as a venue for us. Affordable, lake view (so I've heard), art everywhere, its own tables and chairs, a kitchen to store food, and enough space.


Either Will's brother, Jeff, or our friend Jimmy (or maybe both) are going to be the photographers.

Thats what we know so far! As for all the other stuff, I'll be posting.