Weekend plans
Oh goodness it’s almost the weekend and I’m awfully excited. This weekend, we don’t have a lot of plans which means I’m extra happy. It doesn’t mean we’ll be hanging out and relaxing though. This weekend will be full of wedding planning mostly. We’re going to design our invitations for one which I’ve been dying to do. I have an idea in mind and we’ve got a few key elements to put them together.
It’s hard not to tell you all about them right now, but once they’ve gone out I’ll have tons of photos I promise (and there might be some clues in this post). They’re going to have a Victorian theme (mixed somewhat with handmade, if that’s possible). I have to say, it’s hard to balance the dark creepiness of the Victorian era that Shawn and I love with the sweet romantic feeling of a wedding. While we both love skulls and medical instruments and such, they’re not something you’d exactly want to see on a wedding invite. I think we’re going to do a good job of making it all work though. I can’t wait to get started. Right now I’m super inspired by this video of invitations being made.
We still have about a million other plans to work on for the wedding, so hopefully we’ll be able to make a dent this weekend. We have about 2 1/2 months left! We still haven’t picked a caterer yet. We found a cool hotel for our out of town guests to stay at only to have them tell us a week later that they were totally booked. I can’t even tell you how many times family members have asked me why we don’t have a registry yet. (We do now, by the way, as of last night.)
We still have official engagement photos to take, even though we’ve been engaged now for awhile, I’m not passing up this opportunity to take some awesome photos of me and Shawn. We have decorations to think of and wardrobes to finalize. Not to mention a super secret project I’m working on for our guests that is taking me a ridiculous amount of time. Not that I mind a bit. I love it, in fact.
Besides that I’ll be cooking up some holiday treats and doing some decorating…maybe even getting a tree. I think our first batch of holiday cookies will be made this weekend plus whatever else I can come up with. I am hopefully going to start testing some holiday recipes. What are your favorite holiday foods?
Also, in case you hadn’t heard, Earth Balance is holding a recipe contest where 8 lucky winners will get a $400 gift certificate to Whole Foods and a years supply of Earth Balance. How cool is that? From a girl who uses more Earth Balance than a normal person should, I totally want to win this. I’ll have to think of something really awesome to make.
Vintage Postcard Save the Dates
The first thing on our big to do list of wedding planning was making our save the dates. Shawn and I both really liked the idea of using vintage post cards. We went to the infamous Pasadena Rose Bowl Flea Market and bought up a bunch.
It was super fun to browse through the booths and find cards we liked. I really liked reading the ones with original writing on the back. People sure did talk about their sick relatives a lot back in the day.
The best part about getting the postcards at the flea market, rather than ordering online and just getting a lot of unknown cards, we were able to hand pick each one. We chose ones that were all from California and if possible, from Los Angeles.
We hand stamped each postcard with a stamp set our friends had given us. I can’t tell you how handy that stamp set is. It’s really just a box full of individual letters so we’ve used it for our return addresses, postcards for our movie screening, cupcake boxes, you name it.
We also chose one of the photos that Shawn took of us to send along to personalize each announcement.
We hand addressed all the envelopes with some help from my mom and sent them out!
I think they look rather sweet and definitely capture that vintage feeling that will be present throughout our wedding. Next up…invitations!
p.s. we didn’t really send one to the president…but wouldn’t it be cool if we did?
Making my wedding dress
With less than four months till our wedding, I’ve been in a state of complete indecision about my dress. It’s kind of a big deal. The dress I mean.
The problem is that I know exactly what I want and it’s not like anything I could buy. I kept searching for something that would maybe distract me from my idea but to no avail.
I just wanted to make it myself so it would look how I imagined, but I had some serious doubts that I could construct a dress without a pattern. While I’m quite adept at sewing, I’ve never learned proper construction. Nor do I have a dress form.
Luckily, I was introduced to a lovely seamstress who is going to take on the task of making my dream dress.
We’ve even picked out the fabric. I love all the combination of all the different laces. The hardest part was choosing the fabric that goes underneath all these laces. We found a gorgeous one, but of course it was silk so I had to pick something else.
It would be cool to say I got these at some fancy fabric store, or special ordered them from France, but they’re just from Joann’s. I probably shouldn’t admit that. It doesn’t matter though, they’re lovely and inexpensive and the dress is going to be awesome.
So these are the humble beginnings of my dress. Just some fabric and sketches and measurements and ideas. I’m so excited. I’m going to my first fitting in just a few weeks. It will just be a rough muslin thing but I can’t wait.
Now I just have to pick out some shoes.
romance
One of the fun things Shawn and I have gotten to do so far for our wedding is take photos for our save the dates. They aren’t exactly our engagement photos, only because we have some more we are planning to take, but they’re definitely in that territory.
We took a bunch but I wanted to share a handful of my favorites.
We wanted them to have a classic vintage feeling, and I think we definitely achieved that. We took them in various spots around Los Angeles, over a few hours one afternoon.
I had to include one funny one (although my face is quite a bit more ridiculous than Shawn’s).
Tomorrow is the day we show Brainwashed Love for the first time. So excited and nervous. Wish us luck!
Oh and in case you were wondering, all photos are by my dearest Studiodrome.
Anticipation
There are so many things coming up so quickly I can hardly believe it. Just 12 days till the first screening of Brainwashed Love. I’m terrified and excited. Only a few people have seen the film at this point so it will be crazy to show it to all the people who worked on it and supported us along the way. I hope people like it as much as we do.
That also means that it’s only 12 days till October. The best month ever. I’m looking forward to watching tons of horror movies and indulging in lots of treat making. Halloween movie marathon part 3 anyone? Not to mention the annual creation fest that is making a costume, which is always a production in itself.
Also in five short, busy months, Shawn and I will be getting married. Holy crap. Even though there is a lot to plan and put together, I’m really excited. For one thing it’s giving me a good excuse to be extra crafty (as if I need an excuse). I’m making a lot of things already as gifts and decorations. I can’t wait to share all the details, but for the moment they’ll have to stay under wraps.
My biggest dilemma at the moment is what dress to wear. Let me tell you, trying to figure out what to wear for our wedding and what I’m going to be for Halloween is sort of turning my brain into a pretzel. Or maybe a tree. Hence these crazy late night photos. I got the above dress from my grandmother and still have yet to decide whether I want to use it as the dress. It has a lot of elements that I really like but I don’t know if I can alter it into exactly what I want.
I’ve been looking into finding a vintage dress but it’s difficult to find something that has all the uniqueness of vintage dress but also fits me; stylistically and physically. For example, I love this dress below but there’s no way I could fit into it’s tiny waist.
For the most part I really despise the majority of modern dresses out there. If I never see another strapless dress again, it will be too soon. I can’t believe how alike wedding dresses all are, and how insanely expensive they are on top of it. Although, I have to admit, I am kind of in love with the ruffles on this one from J Crew.
And of course, part of me wants to make my own dress. Perhaps that is the masochistic part of myself. Hopefully I’ll have things figured out sooner than later as a wedding dress is not exactly something you want to leave till the last moment.
