My saving GRACE

I know it's kind of strange that the one thing I am most relying on is my email - but it is awesome! I use Gmail - a free email from Google.

It has everything you might ever need associated with your email - a calendar, a google look-up bar for your email - folders - and my most recent discovery, a tasks list! That's right, your very own electronic list maker!

I stumbled upon this element about 2 months ago and it has been invaluable for wedding planning! Because I log onto my email at different computers, it's been easy to keep track of. I don't have any more loose papers in my purse that I inevitably misplace.

Currently my tasks list looks a little something like this:
If you can't make out the list - it's only showing 1/2 my list and it includes:

• Parent's thank you cards
• Call Stefan about schedule
• buy bridesmaids gift
• post canvas bags online to sell
• pack origami paper
• write letter to Nolan
• pick out photos for guest book wall
• leave a rent check for Jackie
• print guest book inserts
• get wedding photo blurbs from family

There is more to the list, but it's an ongoing list and well, it's too long to write!

The list allows you to check a task off and move it to the bottom or delete from the list once you've accomplished it. That way if you need to revise a task it's still there to be unchecked if need be.

There you go, my current saving grace!

Button Bouts!

This Labor Day weekend, in fact most weekends this year I've occupied most of my time with wedding related projects! Yesterday I officially checked off boutonnieres!!!!

I wasn't sure how to start, but I think they turned out pretty fine! I bought many supplies... too many really! They might show up on the FOR SALE label soon! But it was fun to experiment and watch them evolved after 9 were made!

I chose to make them so it would be one less thing to worry about when we're in Reno the week before the wedding. We aren't hiring a florist - as much as I love flowers, I can't find a good enough reason to hire one to create the few flower items we're having. Ric, Nolan's sis is growing flowers to use for our bouquets, she owns Chickie Baby Bloom, fresh cut flowers and produce, operating out of Fallon, Nevada. Center pieces will include pumpkins and potted flowers. They'll be truly homemade and I can't wait to see them.

So the bouts...
Nolan and I walked through a few antique shops and thrift stores on Friday to find a few items for the wedding and I got to thinking about the boutonnieres. What if, instead of silk flowers, they had buttons? About 5 weeks ago I had attempted this project and came up with...

The first version

It was an attempt to look like the one from this post.

I couldn't quite recreate it, that one was full of whimsy and romance, this one looks harsh and NOT RIGHT...

So, I did my own thing. I picked up some really awesome buttons from an antique shop, floral wire, floral tape, ribbon, brown tool, and pheasant feathers from Joann's and we were in business!

My purchases:

9 of them took me the end of Win a Date with Tad Hamilton, watching/playing 3 hours of Wii Mini Golf with Nolan, and another hour of TV, there might have been a BBQ break in there to celebrate the holiday!

Voila! May I introduce our button bouts!

The bout against Nolan's suit




Each one has a different combination of buttons, leafs, feathers, tool; they all include the same ribbon around the stem and plaid decorative ribbon. I can't wait to see them on the men. Now just how do I transport them to Reno?

They'll be complementing these ties:

Some Manly Help

I've been pretty appreciative lately!

Nolan pitched in with some much needed tasks that I can't seem to accomplish. I know he really enjoys using our stamp, so I made sure most of his tasks included the things he likes. We (mainly him) stamped coasters and a few other items. Nolan also collects coasters so I thought he'd really get a kick out of our very own wedding coasters and the incorporation of a little something "NOLAN" at the wedding.

The coasters were easy on the wallet and easy to produce!
I purchased waterproof ink (2 colors for $10), 1080 3.5 inch, blank, square coasters from American Coaster Company for $35 (including shipping) and mixed in some good ol' elbow grease from Nolan! They were a simple but fun addition to the wedding weekend. We'll include them at the bar during the rehearsal dinner, at the reception, and at the after party. We might even have a few left over to bring back home for our Chicago celebration we're planning in November!

Red, yellow, and brown ink. (The brown wasn't water proof, so we'll see how that goes.)

Nolan's fake grin! Happy to be finished!

Nolan stamped less than half that were mailed to us, so we're going to sell the rest of the blank coasters to hopefully make some money back on them! Anyone need 600+ blank coasters? Hmmm? Could be fun!

Making a LARGE dent in the Checklist

Today, Saturday the 15th of August, I am finally DONE with our invitations!


I can't believe the relief I feel at this moment, my little babies are out in the world!
It's been a LONG process. I designed our invitations on Adobe Illustrator, printed them using both Kinkos and our home printer, and finally constructed them! The HOURS seemed endless only a few weeks ago. If I were to estimate, I would say I put in a good 60-70 hours on them!

I began designing the invites in May, having a final design chosen in June with a little help from Mom, Nolan and a few bridesmaids. I was excited to have a chosen design to play off of. Kinkos was dead on 7/4 for some reason and I was able to get a LOT of work done that weekend with everyone out of town. Kinkos also cut the invites down, so that was wonderful and cut my hours considerably. They only charge $1.50 per cut, so I highly recomend having them do it! If only they rounded corners too! I rounded 800 corners between the invites and RSVP cards! When Kerrie visited we accomplished a little bit more and finally had a completely constructed invite by the time Nolan went to his bachelor weekend, 7/18. Nolan was a huge help creating the invitations, he helped with stamping and cutting! :)

I constructed them with a few deadlines in mind. I had to get some done in order for Nolan to take to his bachelor party and a few more to hand out at my shower and bachelorette party; a total of 37 invitations that we didn't have to mail! A savings of over $22, completely worth the late nights scrambling to get them done. I really had the best intentions to complete them the week I returned from Reno, 8/3, but it just didn't happen. I had other things going on and well, it wasn't a priority. Our RSVP date is 9/5, so this week really was my last possible week to get them out to our guests. Our blue box on the corner is currently holding my little gems!

Without further ado... may I introduce our INVITATIONS! We made 102.

I'll take you through as they would be received.
The envelope with our final address label (it went through a lot of plain versions).
As you open the invitation, you'd see our stamp, the best $26 Nolan and I ever spent! It includes Kirch, Nolan's last name, both mine and his first initial and the tree that we'll be married under. See my post about our venue here.
As you open the envelope:

You are NOT mistaken, those are envelope liners! They were made from Hallmark wrapping paper, that I was in love with! It just fit! I was more than excited when Nolan volunteered to cut and paste them into our envelops too! He's so helpful! One roll made about 40 liners, we used 2 rolls, deciding that his boys wouldn't care about our hard work, so they didn't end up with lined envelopes! This was such a huge thing for me, it only cost $4 a roll and made a gigantic impact in my opinion!
The contents taken out: Again our tree appears on the actual invitation. Embroidery thread kept the content together so nothing was missed or left behind in the envelope. I was originally going to do one or two colors but when I got to the thread aisle, I was overwhelmed and excited to incorporate a few colors. Half of the invites had our red color and half orange, but all with the neutrals. I personally love the orange color! I went through 5 groups of the 4 colors. The circle says: "Kindly reply by September 5, 2009." I originally thought it would be neat to have each person's name on the circles, but that became pretty daunting task and I decided to do our RSVP date instead.

The contents from the back:

The contents include a RSVP post card and travel info with directions. If the guests were invited to the rehearsal, I included a 3x4 card with the pertinent info, time, date, and location.
The RSVP card:

I was inspired by a Martha Stewart idea early on. This RSVP post card was one of the first decisions we made. I couldn't be more pleased with how it turned out. Of course now it's just exciting to be receiving them all back. In a future post I will display how creative some of our guests have been; think stickers, drawings, magazine-clipping-collages!
The travel info:
I got this idea from weddingbee.com. Mrs. Joey inspired me to learn more about Lake Tahoe and include some hidden treasures, great restaurants, places for drinks, hotels, events, beaches, facts, and all sorts of activities!
Early on, about 5 months ago, I sent out an email to avid Tahoe goers and got their input for the 50 things, other items were based on my input and the internet's! It was fun to put together, but a pain to print. Kinkos printed the color side and I printed the other side to save some money. I didn't end up printing enough to include in all invitations, so if I knew for sure some recipients were NOT going to make it, I excluded it from their invitation.

The entire invitation suite:

With this Ring...

Well, I feel pretty excited at the moment.

UPS delivered a fun package today! Inside a sporty little ring for the Mister! I will take some photos but I couldn't wait to share my excitement!

His ring is from Superior Wedding Rings. We ordered a tungsten metal ring because of the indestructible aspect they boast about! I figured if Nolan wanted to wear it on the boat it would last much longer if it's made strong!

I emailed their manager to see if we could order a size 11.25 (the only options were full and half sizes online), and the manager told me to write it in the comments and if I wanted free shipping to use the code: 3232! I know right, FANTASTIC. I saved myself $12! Yahoo! I decided to use that toward an inscription! The inside says, "It began with a rain check!" (A story for another time!)

I ordered his ring on 8/4 and it was delivered today, 8/11! Check and check!

Thanks Superior Wedding Rings!

DIY overload

So, I am in the thick of it.

I am in the middle of:
Invitations that include
- Formal Invite
- RSVP post card
- Decorative thread to combine the pieces
- Travel Guide
- Directions
- Rehearsal Invite if appropriate

Programs
haven't started producing them, but designing them is taking forever! Ahh

Thank You Cards
Designing these too! Ahh! I want them done by my shower, so I can send them out in the following weeks! Eeek!

Guest Book Inserts
Our guest book is a photo album with room for personalized notes, poems, haikus, etc!

All this stationary is by yours truly and it's making me feel like a CRAZY PERSON!


Anyway, I apologize for the nuttiness, I just needed to express my anxiety about all of this happening at once! Advice: If you can spread out the insanity, DO IT!

Also, visit: www.Wordle.net. I am trying to use this concept for our programs, our vows will be copied and pasted into the design!


Check ours out with the small portion of my vows I've written!


">


I love it! Yeah!

Wedding Style

I really want a relaxed wedding. I envision somewhere comfortable, where the kids would be encouraged to kick off their shoes, play and dance. (Something I hoped for the adults to do also!)

I am finding that my relaxed wedding has a ton of moving parts still and it's crazy trying to align them! To help wrangle in the creature known as a TO DO LIST, I've created a checklist with most "due dates" around our paydays! Besides keeping us on track, this has helped tremendously with our budget as well! I haven't felt like we are broke due to the wedding which is nice and it will be even more pleasant after September when we're not throwing money toward the wedding!

Back to the topic - style. I wanted a casual affair; an outside event with friends and family mingling and laughing! I get goosebumps thinking about it. Yet, it was still hard to envision a day wedding and reception. (Do many people get down and dance at a day wedding?- something to discuss in another post.) For me a day affair just yelled casual and it was the only way we were going to make our park wedding work due to the park's hours, closing at sun down and all. I want it to look chic and fun, I don't want it look second hand bought... even though some of it is!

So with our venue booked, we started to make our wedding puzzle pieces fit. I chose the bridesmaids’ dress color almost immediately - brown. I love the chic fall colors and knew that it would be easy to build upon. Everything seems to take on a life of its own when you’re building a wedding style. As you introduce other people into the mix they help you out so much but slowly it starts to become their style too, which I love. A wedding should be a family and friend affair, after all they reflect who you and your man are! I wanted the style of my girls to stand out, they should feel as good as me on that day, therefore they chose their own style in brown silk taffeta.

So with the brown dresses decided upon I began making other decisions.
I chose ties.
All different, but all the colors of our wedding! I am really excited to see them on.

I bought linen napkins for the table decor.
All 180 are one of 30 colors and patterns. I found many at World Market and Crate and Barrel, all on sale and most I convinced the managers to give me a discount because I was helping to clear out their sale section which had napkins that most wouldn't buy because they weren't part of a set. This along with the pumpkins will be our punches of color among the ivory tablecloths and ivory umbrellas.

I am giving my girls the option to choose their own accessories. I gave them each a fall color to use for their accessories. Slowly I am seeing my vision come to life. Jackie bought her shoes this weekend, a pair of fall yellow pumps that are fantastic. Rachel O. has talked about an orange flower for her dress and Kerrie a red wooden necklace. All of these things are getting me a little giddy!


So with all these parts that are within a general theme but aren't alike, do you think it will come together and look okay? I have to admit, I am a little nervous.

As I ask this question I am planning on making boutonnieres. And as I thought I'd do with all the other items, originally they were going to be different, and now I think I am pulling in the creative reins to keep them the same. Here is a photo of what I hope to achieve!

Licensed to Wed

This past weekend was filled with a lot of wedding accomplishments!

Not only did my older brother propose, but Nolan and I went to our Cook County building to received our marriage license! Another check on the never ending checklist!

Yes that is right, September 26th will be our wedding celebration but we'll actually be married at the end of August in Chicago. We decided this was best for a few reasons, Nolan's job takes him away for weeks at a time and we didn't know if we'd have sufficient time to get our license and official in California before the wedding, it was cheaper here ($40 vs. $70), his parents, sister and my mom all had civil ceremonies and it just felt appropriate for us too, and we're trying to avoid more hassle while we're in Nevada, as we're only there together for less than a week prior to the wedding!

We will always consider 9/26 our wedding date, as it was chosen first and the Cook County marriage is just a formality. We'll celebrate our anniversary on that September day as well.


But, we are pretty excited for our civil ceremony too. We found out last month that we could hold our civil ceremony in the Chicago Cultural Center on certain Saturdays. When we paid for our license, we made an appointment to be wed there. It is a gorgeous, historic building with elaborate tile and glass work! The old Cook County Library is adorned with author's names and quotes on the walls, much like the Library of Congress if you've ever been there in DC. The building is also home to a Louis Comfort Tiffany art glass dome. The Tiffany dome spans 38 feet in diameter, that is more than 1,000 square feet of Tiffany designed glass. It contains approximately 30,000 pieces of glass in 243 sections within an ornate cast iron frame. The body of the dome has a “fish scale” pattern. The center, called the oculus, shows the signs of the zodiac. The interior stained glass dome originally was protected by an exterior translucent glass dome, which allowed much-needed natural light into what was then the library’s general delivery room. The lower portion of the room is covered with white marble and glistening mosaics, also designed by Tiffany.























We invited Nolan's sister and cousin to come celebrate with us along with my little brother. It should be a fun family affair! I can't wait!

Sole Searching

1st, I must admit, this title is not mine... I purposefully stole it from Miss Bruschetta on Weddingbee.com. I thought it was so fitting for my post.

2nd, I found a pair of shoes I most likely will be walking down the aisle in!

I searched High and low last Saturday and came up with only one real contender. Today I spent my day with wedding on the brain.

I went to fabulous Macy's today to accomplish two things; have a make up trial (I will share more later) and find a pair of wedding shoes. I need a pair for my next dress fitting. I want to get the alterations moving along and shoes will do just that. I need shoes to get a proper bustle.

Well, are you ready to see the shoes?

I can't hear you!!!!!

Okay, okay, chill out...

Meet Naturalizer's Swirl!




I am most in love with their vintage meets 2009 style. The pair I purchased from Macy's today are tan. I am afraid that they might compete with the dress a bit. But luckily for me as I was searching Naturlizer's website they offer a bone color in these beautiful shoes that was not at our dear Macy's. So I contacted Naturlizer shop downtown and they have a bone color in my size!!!! I am going to ask Jackie to purchase them on Monday since they aren't open on Sundays. She doesn't know it yet... :) I will most likely keep the tan pair until after my fitting on 5/16 to make sure the pair I ultimately decide on works perfectly. Below I show both bone and tan.

I am ecstatic about finding these shoes, one more check on my to do list!!!!

Please see Swirl in bone:


























VS Tan:

You say, "To Do List" I say, "*&^%$*!"

Wedding Planning can be overwhelming.

I might just leave this post at that, but then you'd all be screaming about wanting more and well, I just can't deal with that today. So I will give you a little bit more on the ever so mighty, "TO DO LIST."

Let me preface this post with a little back ground. I love lists, I like making them and I LOVE scratching items off as they are accomplished. So it wasn't a big surprise that I have an excel spreadsheet for my Wedding To Do List 100 items long, literally 100 items long. The items are as easy as "Call Mom to ask her about the pearl earrings" to as complicated as "Create Invitation Design." The LIST has four columns, What-Who-When-Done. These four columns have made my life easier and the wedding planning more organized and manageable. The "WHO" column is populated with mostly my name, some "Nolan and Camille," but 80% is just ME.

While Nolan is off gallivanting on the tow boat I try and accomplish some of these items. This last Saturday I tried to check off "Find Wedding Shoes." For all of you who love shoe shopping, maybe you can help me find mine. I need a size 9 1/2 ivory or bronze wedge with no more than 2" heel.

**Crickets**

Oh, tell me about it. I have browsed most websites to find some pretty ugly shoes. So I thought I would have more success in the tangible world where I could walk in and out with a pair of wedding shoe gems. That just wasn't the case this Saturday. Maybe you ask, "Were you prepared?" Why, yes, I felt prepared to walk into several stores, try on some hot shoes, without looking at the price tag. I even had a list of stores I was going to hit, made up from a couple of Chicago Magazine articles on Best Cheap Stores/ Best Vintage Shops.

Alas, I found only one contender. Meet HEATHERSHAW, an Aldo shoe.
She is close to what I'd like minus the wedge. I am only looking for the wedge for the ceremony. Reason being, we are having it in park grass, and no I don't really want to be barefoot.

So, the search continues for my wedding shoe gems! It will be an adventure but I vow to keep all my faithful readers up to speed on the entire shoe shopping experience!