Weddzilla : Aisle Runner Time

I almost forgot about this detail!

Mason Jar Centerpieces

My mother in law, Donna went with me on my first wedding-related DIY shopping trip back in August/September. We went to Hobby Lobby because I was so overwhelmed by where to start planning that I couldn't come up with anything! SO not like me (I'm lucky my mom and my future second mom are both crafty)!
We were focusing on table decorations first. I knew I didn't want flowers on the table necessarily, nor anything else that impedes conversation due to size.
Luckily Donna asked the Million Dollar Question: "What do you like?"
I answered simply, "Mason Jars."
"Let's do jar centerpieces then."
"Okay!"
They're short enough to talk over, easy to find and afford, and you can customize the bizingo out of them. How would we choose to customize them, though?
Donna said she had experience glass painting so we went to the book section and found a book on hand painted glasses.

We liked the look of one design on stemless wine glasses.

She thought we could swap out the flowers in the design with sunflowers to make it match. We also thought a candle would be nice inside to bounce off the glass later in the evening and double as lighting! She added a ribbon around the threads and it was perfect.

When we went to the venue to look around and eventually book it, the venue coordinator, Kari, shared with us that she had centerpiece accessories. They ended up being perfect for our jars. Kari has table mirrors and clear pebbles to use on the tables! For no charge! YEE!!!
Over the last 6 months Donna has bought everything to make the centerpieces and ended up painting a case of Mason jars+ and also painting tiny sunflowers on a truckload of blue pebbles.

They look so amazing.
I can't wait to see how amazing they all look together on the tables!

Slice of Family

Non-wedding story here. Hilarious + picture heavy.

Colored Wedding Dress Crinolines + Part 1: DIY Colored Crinoline

via

My favorite thing to see on wedding blogs (besides chuppahs!) is a bride with a colored crinoline. Some brides are women who wanted a colored dress but for whatever reason ended up with a white one. The colored crinoline is a way to wear a pop of the color in a fun way.
I originally wanted a yellow / green dress. Yellow is just my color!

via

We all know I ended up with a (most beautiful) ivory dress so I immediately wanted to adopt this detail into my own style for the Day. Problem is... finding these is no easy task!
When searching you are faced with 3 options: Have a short dress, pay the price or buy a white one to dye! Having a short dress is by far the easiest option. There's no shortage of pettiskirts and square dancing petticoats the perfect length! Here's one superb website I found. 

Swank Underpinnings

Good old etsy has a few shops that cater to the colored-crinoline bride. The prices aren't too* bad but $0 is my budget, sooo...! One excellent shop is Swank Underpinnings. They range between $35 to $225 (custom orders!). They make them in all lengths, which is really not easy to find. Some of her custom stuff--swoon!
Loca Loves Pirate has some cutie pastel babies, too. They're even full length!

So what's a budget-spent bride to do?! It involved massive preparation research, scissors, and blind faith. A couple weekends ago when I was making our invitations, I asked my mom to enlist in helping me cut my crinoline out of my dress. With scissors. She surprisingly did not look at me like I was too crazy, but we both felt aprehensive about the whole thing. If I had thought about it much more, I wouldn't have done it.

Steps

1. Put on your dress.
2. Have a helper pull up the top layer(s) so that you can only see the crinoline layer.
3. Make a guide snip at waist-height where you'll be cutting accross the crinoline.
4. Take off the dress.
5. Lay out the dress on the bed and pull all the layers up over the top of the dress, making sure the only layer exposed is the crinoline layer.
6. Just like with cutoff shorts, find your guide snip. Now read: DO NOT CUT THROUGH BOTH LAYERS. ONE LAYER AT A TIME ONLY.
7. Just like with cut off shorts, cut in a straight line across the front.
8. Flip the dress over. You'll see why you don't cut through both layers.
9. The back of a wedding dress is almost always where it zips, laces, yada yadas... and there will be a panel back there you don't want to cut that separates the dress closure from your bare skin. So taking care to cut AROUND that part, Cut straight across the back, around the panel and back straight across to finish.
10. Pull out your crinoline, hang your dress back up and committ yourself. Not to your fiance(e)... To an asylum. You're officially NUTS for doing this DIY.

The second part of the DIY is dying and the third is adding an elastic waistband so you can wear it under your dress. Stay tuned for parts 2 and 3!
In the meantime, there is a whole SECTION of Offbeat Bride that features just weddings with colored-crinoline brides. Enjoy!

Beautiful Wedding Shoes

I wish to share with you why these shoes are the most beautiful wedding shoes (to me) ever. When Shawn & I picked out our shoes, we were going for barefoot. I'm not wearing mine until after the wedding, but the reception will be at a restaurant and you hafta wear shoes there!!! Sandals was the next best thing to barefoot. Especially hippie sandals.
We saw Shawn's sandals at a store called Euphoria in Lincoln, NE when we went to Lincoln on our first ring shopping trip... I'll have to write about that also. Shawn has EcoDragon sandals which are made of sustainably harvested hemp fiber. They last FOREVAR and you can recycle them at the end of their use.
He liked them but it wasn't until the week after when he divulged to me "I want to wear those sandals at our wedding. But they're so expensive." I told him, "Shawn. If you want those sandals for your wedding, you're getting them! I can have a hundreds-of-dollars wedding dress, you can have those damn sandals! ... I'll buy them myself!!!"
So we planned a trip back to Lincoln to try on dresses at the BEST SALON EVAR called Ellyne's and we also went back to Euphoria and bought those sandals! I was more excited about that than my dress experience in Lincoln. Let's not write about that, by the way...

We found my sandals when we went to Kansas City, MO to ask Shawn's friend Sprague (who is tattoo/graffitti artist Manic!) to be in our wedding. We were in West Port near downtown and the Plaza when we went into a little store called Beautiful Day. It looked happy from the outside so we had to  go in. I found my shoes and got that gut feeling of "That's IT!" until I looked in my wallet. I only had like half the money for my shoes. I told Shawn and Sprague heard, too, so we all pitched in. We all 3 bought my wedding shoes. So the way they were acquired is beautiful.
Last Wednesday I took them out to look at them with Shawn's sandals to swoon over how perfect they are together and I examined mine particularly well. On the bag they come in, it says "UTOPIAN Rope Sandals. Handmade by Tom." I wanted to know who Tom was to tell him how wonderful the shoes are and that I love them so much they're going to be my wedding shoes. I looked up UTOPIAN rope sandles on 'teh googles' and found out from Wiki that these shoes are beautiful how they're made, too.
Tom and his community, East Wind, make these sandles along with nut butters and tahini. All the income is pooled for the community to cover medical expenses and each member is given food, clothing, shelter, education and personal money. They believe in equality, social democracy and nonviolence. Each member contributes man hours and lives together, voting on every decision made by the community. So East Wind in Tecumseh, MO is responsible for the creation of my wedding shoes.

Can you say Beautiful?

Weddzilla!

All about the >unsuccessful dress shopping today!!! It's kind of funny now...

Daisies and Sunflowers!!! I need your help!

Foreground-Set Fore-/Hind-sight Advice

I'm literally losing my mind. I'd say it's funny or lol but I'm having a seriously hard time right now at the last stages of planning the wedding. It's like I'm having cold feet about everything but Shawn_bunnay. I think this was brought about when I listed all our DIY projects and counted them yesterday. It made me feel... it gave me the sensation of sinking. What's more sad: most of the projects are done and I still feel like this.
Everyday I take my role in the blogging community very seriously. I'm not a professional... yet(Omaha brides are my favorite!), but I think it all starts with conducting yourself in a professional way with everything you do. To me this means returning the favor of compliments and growing the collection of blogs that I read into a well-rounded-topics-including-random community. So everyday on great blogs like Style Me Pretty, Hello Gorgeous, lovely little details and Grey Likes Weddings, I see wedding after wedding of gorgeous gowns, high-end venues and mind-blowing photography. This leads me to naturally compare our wedding to those weddings, and the problem is right there. Each wedding is very different, just like the people they are for. You cannot compare people so why would you compare weddings, the epitome of a personal celebration, to anyone else's?! I'm crazy for even going there, I now know that!
I just started thinking about how we planned: in a budget. We didn't plan by what we liked. I didn't want a $10,000+, artistically documented, couture gown, and Pantone-coordinated wedding planned by a design firm (That combination sounds like something I'd like to see, though!)
I wanted a $0, handmade, outside-y, heartfelt and candidly captured wedding that would have people driving home in their cars saying, "They really love each other."

And I think we have created that.

SHAWN+HILL JO

Sure our venue is the most affordable in town, but it's a higher-end restaurant; no bad wedding food for us! Plus our guests won't have to go anywhere else once they're there. It's a one-stop-shop celebration, which was #1 for me.
No, my photographer isn't "professional," but she's only such in the sense she currently doesn't have an office. She describes her business as "accidental" because she's really a nurse. The demand for her photography services at weddings is the only reason she's still doing her business. She's currently doing a wedding in Spain!!! Looking at her photos, I see that she thinks in pictures when she's looking at real-life. Who wouldn't want a photographer who can do that?!
Yes, I'm making our cake. I have tasted and tried every single cake I have ever seen and I won't apologize or backtrack when I say "My cakes are rockin'-- visually and taste-wise..." I haven't been beaten so far. Ask Shawn's friends...

35 DIY projects including design aspects of styling (people + spaces+events), graphic design, pastry design, textile design (including embroidery, hand-dying, pattern making, sewing and crocheting) is INSANE but people, this is what handmade wedding in under a year looks like. It is insane. Anyone who DIY's their wedding without a full year is nuts as well. I've been here to know!
Looks like I have some foreground advice set in the hindsight mind, but I hope that this helps anyone not to compare their wedding to anyone else's and simply love it in conjunction to the other weddings you see simply for what it is.

It's a celebration of the start of a marriage.

New Weddzilla!

All about the rehearsal dinner and  its decor!

What do you think of this safari-style dress for the dinner? I think I might wear it!!!

Invitations!

Invitations are done! Woo hoo! I went down to my parent's house on Saturday and assembled them all! It was quite the job but here's the final product...

They're all different because they're so handmade! 

I had two major meltdowns during the invitation process. When Shawn's Mom and I went to get them printed, I told them please do not cut them because I bought a paper cutter and I wanted to get to use it up! Plus I don't expect anyone but myself to cut each page and that's what I planned to do in order to make sure they're centered. Well the place cut the paper and ended up wasting 6 sheets of handmade specialty paper, which totaled 24 invitations that couldn't be made. I mean, they looked bad. I called and they credited Donna so we got our printing for free essentially.

Second Meltdown was the main design I had worked out didn't work out! I ordered a paper punch in the shape of a butterfly to stamp out where our names are now and write them on the blue behind it. The punch doesn't let you slide any kind of length of paper past it so you can only make confetti with it or put butterflies on the bottom of your paper or upside down anywhere else. Bah!

So this is what we could do and this is how they turned out! I think I love them!

Decoration Inventory

Head Table Butterflies from Michael's

I have spent a lot of time and money buying decorations for the wedding. I started with the things I knew we would need and as details became more specific, I began to purchase more and more!
I have never spent this much before in my life on any one thing and that's kind of scary! I'm sure I'll never spend this much on anything(event-wise) again! I think the decoration total has far surpassed the gown total. Our basement apartment is full of blue spools of ribbon, boxes full of paper lanterns, rehearsal dinner supplies and TONS of fake flora and fauna that is spewing everywhere.
The first things we bought was a thick roll of ivory tulle, brown glitter butterfly clips for the head table and our thank you notes(yay, us!).
Next I bought my Flowerpeople's hair accessores supplies and also my garter supplies, which contributes to the first two rolls of blue ribbon I found myself beginning to collect. That was also my first(not to be remotely the last) elastic rodeo. It went well!
 

Then I found the butterfly decorations of my dreams! I work for a novelty company but not the one these came from! I couldn't find these anywhere and they're absolutely perfect. They each have a twist-tie backing so they can go everywhere and anywhere in our venue! They're going to be "flying" around all over! I also got these wooden ladybugs (and they are from where I work!) for the Flowerpeople's hair accessories and I also will scatter these around like the butterflies so they look like they're crawling around comfortably enjoying the wedding, too!
I found another company (sorry, work!) that I purchased ALL of my sunflowers from. I could not find a better price on silk sunflower stems so I ordered extra just incase! Now I have a box full of sunflower goodness that it's hard to keep the cats out of! The box is a great craft-project-bags holder, too!
On my 234th time back to Michael's I found the big Flowerpeople's Gerber daisy stems to make flower wands for them to carry for $1 each. Score!
I also acquired another roll of blue ribbon (Jumbo size!) and all my invitation supplies: my paper cutter, my tracing paper pads, sunflower sticker seals, brown pens, an adhesive Butterfly border from Martha that matched our wedding album(!!!!) and some brown pigment pens for incidental writing on the invites.
I did have to buy my paper punch for the invites separately on Amazon, though!
Last week I needed more yellow ribbon before starting my Flowerpeople's hair accessories so being in the ribbon aisle at MICHAELS AGAIN, I purchased another jumbo roll of the blue ribbon so I think our ribbon purchases are over. 150 yards of bows ought to do it?
I just did several orders to my place of work so they're currently getting make-up sales for my wedding supplies. I'm getting our flutes, our lanterns, the aisle-runner(a DIY project coming soon!), the ladybugs, the gifts for our Flowerpeople, our serving set, more rolls of tulle, Dec-Ons sugar ladybugs(for the cake because the wooden ones aren't for food), our photobooth cameras and our wedding bubbles. I ordered our rehearsal dinner supplies from them months ago because some of it was discontinued and I just needed it. It helped spacing out the purchases to make them manageable in $20, $50 and $100 chunks.

Oriental Trading Lanterns

 
Now given the scope of the decoration purchases, you may understand how much we have purchased. You may also get an idea of how much that may be. Let me just say, that if we were paying regular rent to an apartment, maybe a third of this would have been purchased. So it is safe to say that thanks to Shawn's Grandpa who is letting us stay in the basement at the rate of $All the food, cooking & dishes + Shawn's Handiwork. So a big thanks for the possibility of decorations to Grandpa! His willingness to help us and sense of family has made our wedding beautiful.

Fresh out of the Oven!

All about how we're making our cake here!!!

Oriental Trading "Your Big Day $500 Gift Card Giveaway"

Oriental Trading Company Celebrates Brides with "Your Big Day $500 Gift Card Giveaway"

"At Oriental Trading Company, we realize that one of the most anticipated events in a woman’s life is her wedding day. We also understand that each bride and their wedding are unique," said Sam Taylor, CEO of Oriental Trading Company. "With guaranteed lowest prices, and the quality and breadth of product in our wedding line, we make it easy for brides to get more out of their budget and still achieve a wedding that is uniquely their own."

From now through September 12, 2011, brides can visit orientaltrading.com/bigday and register weekly to win a $500 Gift Card. Winners are posted each week. Seven lucky brides from seven different states have already cashed in on this valuable opportunity.

Oriental Trading Company’s exclusive and unique wedding product has been featured in publications such as Martha Stewart Weddings, Brides, Bridal Guide, The Knot, and is used by wedding planners and celebrities such as Tori Spelling in her upcoming series sTORIbook Weddings on the Oxygen network. "Wedding planning is stressful no matter the size of the budget," says Tori Spelling, actress, producer, wedding planner, and mother of two. "However, Oriental Trading Company provides an incredible selection of exclusive items covering every aspect of the event – including every type of theme my brides can imagine. Their product is all value-priced and shipped right to my doorstep. Oriental Trading has been a wonderful, convenient resource for me."

Brides can find over 2,500 wedding essentials to choose from on orientaltrading.com including How-To Videos, Do-It-Yourself Décor and Favors, success stories from other brides, a dedicated Facebook community page, and Party Central – a new, unique feature to help plan rehearsal dinners, luncheons, and even send customized online invitations and announcements.

Oriental Trading Company remains the largest direct merchant of value-priced wedding products, party supplies, and total-solution event-planning resources in the nation.}

Go here to enter!!!

Brides receive $500 Gift Cards weekly through September 12, 2011!

This is OTC's press release for the competition...

Something Old - DIY #5

My something old is Shawn's Grandma's hanky. It's beautiful: all white with white floral embroidery and delicate edges. I wanted to embroider our monogram and our wedding date on it. I used all white thread and a tiny needle so the size of the needle didn't make holes in the frail fabric.

I stretched the hanky over an embroidery hoop and lightly penciled my work onto the fabric. I covered my pencil marks with white satin stitch and then handwashed it in lukewarm, lightly soapy water. I layed it flat to dry on a white washcloth, and Last month at this time we had the weekend where we found Shawn's suit, my something borrowed and my something old. 

MASON JAR GLORY!

Captured in real time. This has not been edited.

I only rotated it clockwise. The glory was simply captured for all of those who know not the glory of the mason jar. Now: plans for said jar.
This beauty will be a "Buttons for the Bride" jar at the guestbook table and then moved to the bar area so if any family members who previously gifted or had wished to gift the HiLLjO buttons, there is ample opportunity to drop 'em in the jar at the wedding.
Christmas of 2009 my mom wrote and called friends and members of our family to put buttons in a jar for me since I collect them... and the only thing I love more than a jar is a jar of buttons. So for a few months, my family members and friends scoured drawers and pockets for plastic baggies of extra buttons or any loose strays. The result was the container you see here on top of the washer/dryer since the jar they were originally in broke. Now we have a new jar and hopefully more buttons for the bride!

Marriage Certificate - UPDATE

There's the whole layout with the corner!

This will be made into 4 more copies before the original is done! Stay tuned...

Flowerpeople Hair Accessories

So awhile ago I made some flower girl + junior b-maid (= flowerpeople) hair accessories. I posted them here and I realized they weren't quite finished. They definitely needed some ladybugs so I got some tiny wooden ladybugs from my work.

They were the perfect size to embellish these little hairdo pieces!

Add a hot glue burn and...

The dark side of DIY the Knot will never tell you about..

now they are finished. At what cost, though?! WHAT COST?!

Weddzilla

This is a good one, too!!! I think I'm getting better at writing about more serious wedding stuff!

I have been looking for this kind of Weddzilla for a while.

Operation Layla

If you haven't heard of this brave woman and the beautiful people who are helping her and rallying support, please go read Layla's story and feel free to contribute at either donation site.

Jars of Love

Jars of Love - Jacin of Lovely Little Details

Operation Layla

Operation Layla - The Original Donation and Information Site

A lookback: the Dresses that almost were.

Besides the dresses I have now, I could not have pictured myself in a regular white wedding gown. When I started my quest for a dress in August of 2010, I spied the Vera Wang magic that was Didi: an apple green hand-painted sweetie of a ballgown.

Then in September the announcement of Vera's Spring 2011 line sucked the breath out of my lungs at the sight of Felicity. A gunmetal-lilac ball gown with a tucked skirt and an embellished bodice that would entrance an infant. Either one of these dresses was the One... If I had a couture dress budget!!!

I looked into getting a replica made of either one, or getting a custom white and yellow version of Didi made, but as you can see here, by November it worked itself out.
I have no regrets, I have the dress I love and I can't wait to wear it. I can't wait to wear my vintage second dress, too!
I still want to mention the dresses because they are the most beautiful dresses I've ever seen besides my wedding gown(s)! I think I would have gone with the Didi. I would sleep in it at night.

Which one do you like?
What's more: Would you ever wear a colored wedding dress?

Fresh Weddzilla!!!

I have a pretty nice if I say so myself post goin' on over heeeeeere!!!

Headpiece Revelation!!!

IT HAPPENED!!! It got made! I found the perfect foliage to finish it and I don't even have good instructions because it was kind of a "if this works, great; if not, back to flower-in-the-hair plan" thing. So with an organic creation process, all I have is lots of pictures. :o)

Touch of crochet with a tie to allow for voluminous and wavy hair!!!

 

I think it will compliment my Rehearsal Dinner dress turned 2nd wedding dress.

Hope you like!

PS: Did I mention that today is the 3 month mark!? YIKES! I did get the invitation paper cut last night though, ready to go to printer's!!!

2nd Wedding Dress / Reception Dress

I have come to a point in planning where the budget is thin, as things are getting wrapped up. Most of my DIY projects are in motion currently or they are completed, and the one I was purposely neglecting was the one that cost the most: the second dress.
A lot of women do a reception dress or a second wedding dress. The bride who inspired my decision about a second dress, I read about here.

 We are doing pictures beforehand and I don't want anyone, especially Shawn to see me in my wedding dress before I am walking towards him ready to seal the deal. I was going to copy Vera Wang's purple dress I had liked and make it party-dress length.
Now time is crunching and so is budget and I don't have $100+ to go and buy a dress I don't really need. I have decided to wear my beautiful vintage Gunne Sax Dress I found as my wedding dress for before-photos. It will go well with my headpiece (more to come on that soon!) and I really love it. Like I said, if I didn't have a dress already, that'd be the one.

I actually feel better about this decision and my decision to wear another dress I really love that will match the theme of our rehearsal dinner as well!

Weddzilla Alert

Go see the new goods hmmmere.

Crochet, Ribbon and Button Hair Accessories - DIY Tutorial #3

These weekend was DIY central yet again. Here are the supplies for the little girls' hair accessories strewn out for visual purposes! Yarn, hot glue (soon-to-be-evil) and a multitude of my buttons, among other things.

I  made a headband, a bobby pin and a french barrette. Each little accessory has a piece of the greenery on my headpiece to match . I currently have some tiny lady bugs on order to add to these guys and the pieces to be made later this week/weekends to come.

 

This time, a page break will be necessary! If you'd like to read more, click on!

Day-Fresh Weddzilla

Check out my post here!!!

100 Days to Go! WOW!

Bunny Wedding
bluedogrose @storybird.com

Time is really flying now and I realized that if I own the supplies for a project, it must be completed. Now.

So onto the rushing DIY tide, everyone. It's going to be appearing so frequently you won't know what to do.
For today's DIY I want to share with you my plans for it first. At the venue, we are having a guest book table (duh) set up with our matted photo, a centerpiece, our big potted Saguaro and a couple of sock bunnies. That's right not sock monkeys, sock bunnies.

You see, I make sock monkeys and sell them on etsy and Shawn & I have our own; but for our bunny-themed wedding we need some sock bunnies, mmk? I don't share a pattern for my monkeys because of two reasons: 1) I make them different each time and 2) I share a lot, but some things are proprietary to even the HiLLjO.
There are a ton of free patterns out there like this one that work wonderfully.
For Shawn's bunny, I stuffed and sewed bunny feet instead of regular feet and I made long ears. I also pre-sewed the bunny profile before stuffing the main body sock. Here's a teaser of him without his eyes and outfit.

 Next up on the DIY Docket: Jr. Bridesmaids & Flower Girl accessories: Flip flops, hair accessories and flower baskets.