Wedding Tuesdays – The Inaugural Edition

As a fan of alliteration, I readily admit that “Wedding Tuesdays” just doesn’t cut it when there’s an obvious opportunity to have “Wedding Wednesdays.” Be that as it may, my Wednesdays are booked trying to learn how to roll a kayak. So, I did the next best thing.

What is a Wedding Tuesday, you ask? It’s what will keep me on track to get stuff accomplished for our wedding in October. Yesterday was the inaugural meeting and it turned out to be the bridesmaids and me meeting up at our local wine shop to discuss plans. They are all very confused about what, exactly, is going to happen during our laid-back, outdoor, barbecue wedding. So, we discussed decorations, outfits, timelines and things like that. Eventually, the groom and the recent groom joined us and we ended up just chit-chatting, but it was a nice and relaxing night.

That’s the only relaxing that will be done during Wedding Tuesdays, though. In the future, my mom and I will meet at her house and get down to business making sure all the DIY projects are finished. Anyone else is welcome to help come, but no one is required. I’m a bit nervous that I’m about the only DIY-oriented one of the bunch, but I figure there’s a time for everyone to learn, right?

This week, I’m trying to complete the homework I assigned myself to have completed before the next Wedding Tuesday…scope out and, hopefully, book a site for the rehearsal dinner. Since our wedding is one of the busiest times for out-of-town guests to the area, we need to get on this early! My other homework is to plan out a timeline for all of the projects. If I don’t, I know me and my procrastinating ways, and I’ll let things slide until the last minute.

Wedding Season Has Begun!

You didn’t think ours was the only wedding going on, did you? Of course not! This one was my lovely bestest friend ever (of which there are three). I’m so happy for her and her husband.

Wasn’t their wedding site beautiful? That’s me in the blue dress with the crazy curls on my head.

We’re looking forward to the weddings of two of The Fiance’s siblings, a wedding we can’t make it to this weekend, and probably some more along the way.

Vintage Dress Plans

So, the wedding planning has been put on hold until after my best friend’s marriage at the end of May. I am so excited to see her become a Mrs. and be a part of the celebration. I only hope that I don’t trip and fall walking down the aisle. That is always my greatest fear whenever  I have to appear in front of anyone.

One thing that I did accomplish, though, was to choose a dress. You’ll remember that there were quite a few different options that I was considering. I went back to the idea I originally had, right after our engagement. I’m going to make my dress. Really. I can do it, I promise.

Can you tell that people have been skeptical about this plan?

I couldn’t decide which pattern I liked best, so I ordered these three:

Once I got my hands on the patterns, it was easy to decide. There’s just something more glamourous about the 2902 pattern. Maybe it’s the gloves in the artistic rendering, maybe it’s that it looks to be made of satin. Whatever it is, that will be my wedding dress.

My mom and I went to our local Hancock Fabrics to see what the selection was for fabric. Being that this is prom season, they had an abundance of fancy apparel fabric. What’s better? It was on sale! We deliberated over the rustle of taffeta, the dull satin, the heavy brocades and eventually settled on a shiny, ivory satin with a white hang-free lining. Since I’ll be making this view of the dress, we considered using a different color for the yoke and hem detail. However, we weren’t happy with the selection of green satins (naturally, it would be green!) so I’ll make those from the same ivory satin as the dress.

I’m so excited about this project! I’m really excited that my mom thought it wise to practice with a muslin. When I told her I already had plenty of muslin to make a test run, she said, “What if it’s good enough to wear, though? You’ll never wear a dress made out of muslin.” So, we headed over to the cotton area and decided on some of the Tutti-Fruitti collection to make a test dress. Of course, it was on sale, too!

After I finish the dress project, I’ll have two dresses to wear – one for the ceremony and one for the honeymoon! I may also end up putting those other patterns I bought to good use and make some honeymoon sundresses from them. I kind of like the idea of tooling around on the beach in a sweet vintage dress.

Photo Experimentation

I fear that I’m horribly doomed to take boring photos. I really should take a class, of some sort, but I’m not sure that good photograph composition is something you can learn or if it’s just one of those natural gifts…like spelling. However, I have fun with it, and I have fun playing around in Photoshop. Yesterday, I found out that The Pioneer Woman released a second set of Photoshop Actions. These actions are used to make quick, all-in-one adjustments to photos. They are very customizable and I’ve been playing around with them, this morning. The Fiance thinks that actions, in general, are ridiculous. Ten times out of ten, he prefers the straight out of the camera image. Sometimes I agree, sometimes I think a photo can look nice with a different effect or needs to be trued up to what the eye saw and what the camera captured. I offer the following as evidence.

This picture of our monster dog, Guinness, is just fine as it is straight out of the camera. The composition is pretty bland – subject centered, etc., but it’s okay.

For the edit, I used PW’s “Warmer” action. See, this is where I think I suck at photography. Before I ran this action, I never really even though about the warmth of the SOOC shot. But, look at the difference! I also cropped in a few different ways and wasn’t happy with any of them. Here’s what I ended up with, though. I was going for vertical thirds.

See the difference in color? Maybe not, but I see it. I see the need for more learning in my future!

Pretty Papers!

One of the things that I have most looked forward to in all of the wedding planning is the paper products that go along with it. I’m a lover of paper products and office supplies. I’m a geek like that. So is my mom and so is my sister. We loved “Back to School” time because it meant perusing the office supply stores and aisles at the local discount retailer. I still love new pens and papers and have lots of favorite types.

When I started looking at invitations and what I now know are called “suites” I was a little overwhelmed. There are so many different paper options, printing options and pricing options. While letterpress is beautiful and linen papers are elegant, they are also vastly out of my price range. All of the invitation purveyors that I found, online, really had beautiful designs and I loved the idea of five pieces of coordinating paper being sent out to my potential guests, but I didn’t like the price tags that I kept seeing that went along with it.

I thought that my only other choice was to DIY my invitations. I worried that my Photoshop design skills (because I haven’t even really tried to use the other programs in the Adobe suite) would appear elementary and that my home printer would crap out at the eleventh hour. Local print shops were a crapshoot, to me. I could either choose from the old school Lexington printers that would probably be priced more for the Thoroughbred Industry than the backyard wedding industry or I could choose the local Kinko’s. There wasn’t a lot in between.

In a normal old day of browsing the WeddingBee posts, I happened upon a Bee that was discussing Printable Press, an online invitation design company. You pay a design fee, get high resolution PDF files and then the printing is up to you. On the Printable Press website, there are helpful instructions for printing your files at home. Thankfully, they will format your designs specifically for the online printer of your choice, as well. As I was looking through the designs, I worried about not finding one to fit our casual, fun, party vibe. I should not have feared! There is truly something for every style on the site, and custom design is also an option!

I picked out five of my favorites and asked The Fiance which one he liked best. Miracle of all miracles, we agreed on a favorite! In fact, as soon as we each looked at it, we knew. The others would have had to be PRETTY DARN SPECIAL to oust it from its pedestal.

The ordering process was as effortless as can be. This could have been attributable to my newfound non-chalantness (is that a word?) regarding all things wedding. However, I think it’s probably most due to the fact that Printable Press has GREAT customer service in their artists/designers/business owners. I loved the whole process and felt that Kimi totally got the vibe I was looking for. She was great to work with, from answering my questions to delivering the full-res files WAY earlier than I expected!

The next step is to print the invitation and the reception card. I’ll use OvernightPrints.com, which I’ve used before and been pleased with (more on that, later, in these totally out-of-order wedding posts!).

In the meantime, though, can you guess which design we went for at Printable Press?