Let me tell you a story...

There once was a girl, let's call her "Jen" and she met a boy, let's call him "Mike." They met freshman year of high school. He had a crush, she was not that interested at the time. Four years later, he had finally won her over and they started dating. Nearly 5 years after that, he popped the question. 1 year, 3 months after that, Jen STILL wasn't done planning the wedding and felt very behind...

ACK! Jen is a SLACKER.

It's not like I haven't had time! Here's the thing... I haven't been dreaming about my perfect wedding my whole life. I was pretty ambivalent about actually getting married at all. And then, when I got the ring, I became MADLY obsessed with weddings (hence the wedding blog). There are so many cute little details and cool things that you can use to make your wedding wonderful and unique and have a great time with all your guests. The details are the best part and I've been putting off actually having to make decisions.

Every time I see a great idea, I want to add it to the wedding. Now that it's crunch time (T-3 months), it is not the time for that! It is the time to finish up all my DIY stuff that hasn't been done because I just now decided I want to do it!

Now I must say that I have booked all the appropriate vendors and most things are running smoothly in that department. My problem is all the little things I love!

A recap of some (only SOME!) of the cool wedding things discovered that I'm trying to incorporate...

We are placing jars similar to this with candles in them outside along the wall in the garden for cocktail hour and leading up the stairs to the garden. The garden for cocktail hour is right outside the ballroom so we figure people might want to sit out there for a break in the evening. We are encouraging this by having the bar out there and filling the garden with lights!

marthastewart.com/weddings

The following 3 pictures are from amazon.com. Cavallini makes the most beautiful postcards and coordinating stamps and stickers. I'm incorporating these stamps into my escort cards and I used Cavallini decoupage paper to make my card box (also incorporating scraps of paper from the programs we made (post pending on those). I was going to use the postcards as table markers but we decided to use our own photos instead.

I really want a lemonade stand! We are trying to figure out the logistics of this... and maybe tinting the lemonade blue or green?


Favor boxes for the candy buffet! I currently have 144 of the blue ones sitting in a corner of my house!

ebay.com

And the candy buffet itself! I think this one is really cute (and it's the right colors!)

the knot.com

And we are considering using river rocks like this to line the aisle... not sure about the logistics of this either!

pcast.com

Anyone else have these kinds of concerns? The overwhelmingness of little details put off until 3 months before?

Accidental theme #2 - Wine Corks/Bottles

I was surfing around the Martha Stewart site one day and discovered some place cards with wine cork bases. My first thoughts were: Wow that looks cool! and We like wine! (I know, articulate, right?) I was basically sold on the idea.

You just cut a slit in the cork and slide in a place card. We have done some experimentation and an exacto knife seems to work best but you can cut through cork with a kitchen knife too.

My cards won't have the embellishment around the edge but will be stamped instead:

Photo courtesy of Martha Stewart

We actually bought the corks at an ebay auction for "200 wine corks" because I'm doubting fiance and I can drink 100 or so bottles of wine before May 31. We could try! But then we might be alcoholics.

I had also been trying to figure out some table number holders but nothing seemed to work (I even just bought some boring ones which I am now returning) until I came across this after searching weddingbee for ideas.

Photo courtesy of Weddingbee

We will have a wine bottle table number holder next to our centerpieces (ignore the bottles with the flowers in them in the pic above) and for a uniform look, we are ordering cobalt blue wine bottles from a bottling company to coordinate with our wedding colors!

Photo courtesy of ebay.com

Weird how sometimes it all comes together. I plan to do a mockup when everything arrives so stay tuned!

Accidental theme #1 - River Rocks (red mostly)

It has officially been 5 months since my first post. I have to say that after I started this blog I debated about whether or not I wanted to continue. I have officially decided to dedicate myself to it. So here goes...

Our wedding has always been sort of eclectic - I'm not comfortable with the whole matchy-matchy thing where everything is the same color and all the favors and cards and things are designed similarly and all have the same pattern or stamp on it. I just don't think I'm that organized! Plus I don't want to worry whether my computer screen is making the blue table runner less "turquoise" and more "tiffany blue" ... I'm into minimizing the stress. Mixing shades and decorations is my way of keeping the non-matching-ness from being noticeable.

Well, our wedding has remained uniquely "us" but themes have begun to emerge! It's like they were just there and I didn't even notice.

First of all, red rocks/river rocks.

We are getting married in Sedona which looks mostly like this:

source: sedonaredrockweddings.com

And we are getting married next to a creek - hence the advancement of the river rock theme.

I originally had the idea of using these unique martini glasses from crate and barrel to create centerpieces for cocktail tables:

source: crateandbarrel.com

The idea was to copy this idea from illuminations.com without spending a ton of extra money. The clio martini glasses above were the martini glasses we were registring for anyway. (We literally removed them from our registry and ordered them).

source: illuminations.com

Ignore the beading and the pink... the original photo on the website was a white floating candle with lavender in the bowl underneath. We were going to use lavender but our colors are blue and green with a little yellow - no purple there. We are all for using different shades of blue and green but I don't like the idea of using different colors at this point.

Now we are going to use red rock pebbles in the bottom bowls (carefully so they don't scratch our glasses too badly!) Ours are actually tumbled so they have smooth edges.

source: istockphoto.com

We actually tumbled river rocks at Jo-ann and bought out the stock of the store we went to - it still might not be enough!

This also led to the guest book table decor...Now I can't find the pic that inspired my idea for the guest book table but picture tall glass cylinders of various heights with floating candles and these red rock pebbles in the bottom and spilling out onto the table. Hope it looks cool!

Further advancement of the river rock theme may include lining the aisle with river rocks. We are not however, sure of how we will accomplish this without completely busting our budget!