To No A-veil

This is one bride who will not be wearing a veil at her wedding. And let me tell you, don't try telling that to any of the nice ladies who work at wedding dress shops, b/c they will look at you as if you have TWO HEADS. I was actually politely forced into trying on a veil on my first wedding dress shopping trip. But seeing as I found the dress of my dreams on that day, I guess the forced veil wearing can be overlooked.

While I do think veils can be quite beautiful, I'm not quite comfortable with some of the ideas that they represent. Keeping the bride all covered up and pure until her husband first lays eyes on her at the altar? Nope. I'm just not going for that. (As a side note, to all of you brides who are wearing veils, I am not attempting to place any sort of judgment on you. Like I said, veils are beautiful, and there are lots of other symbolism for the veil than what I just mentioned here.) In any case, I have made my decision that I will not be wearing one of these:

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or these:

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or these:

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Despite the fact that they all are gorgeous.

But I still do think that my head is gonna need a little extra somethin' somethin' for my wedding day. Headbands and feather fascinators are gorgeous...

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But I think that in my case, a hair flower might just do the trick. (Remember? Garden wedding? Flower? Yeah. It totally works.)

Perhaps a live flower:

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...or in orange, to go with our wedding colors:

Orange mini calla lilies -- According to our florist, these flowers will stand up to the heat all day, and they won't wilt, so they make for some excellent hair flowers.
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But recently I've started to lean towards a fabric flower, so that I don't have to worry at all about anything wilting throughout the day. Like maybe one of these:

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...or these:

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...or these:

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So how about you? What will you be wearing on your head for your wedding day?

No Longer a Michael's Virgin

Today the Architect and I went out for a quick shopping trip to cash in on some of the gift certificates that we received over the holidays. While we were out, we decided to stop by our local Michael's to see what all the hype was about.

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Let's just say it was affordable crafting heaven over there. I scoped out several items that I will definitely be using in some upcoming wedding projects, including one very elusive item that I really wanted for our favors but thought I would never track down. I'll tell you more about that soon, I promise.

We ended up walking out of the store with only a single item in tow... although I'm sure we will be back for more soon. For only $8.35 I am now the proud owner of this lovely...

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corner punch!!

And I am now resisting the urge to round the corners of every single spare piece of paper that I have sitting around our apartment. Hopefully I don't get bored b/c right now it looks like I will probably be rounding the corners of at least 70 wedding invitations, reply cards, and map enclosures over the coming months.

And now a question: What single crafting supply has been the most useful to you on your trip to the altar?

The Final Installment of the Dress Saga

I told you last time about how I finally purchased the dress of my dreams. However, the dress story has one more twist that I have to share.

A happy bride-to-be walking out of Yolanda's (where I bought my dress!)
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Just a few weeks after I purchased my dress I received a strange phone call from my mom. Actually, I was napping when she called (yes, I'm an adult who loves to nap!), so I didn't pick up the phone. But when I woke up from my nap I checked my messages, and heard my mom say something along these lines:

"You need to call me back immediately. Don't worry, nobody has died, but you absolutely need to call me back."

I'm glad she told me that nobody had died, b/c the tone in her voice was foreboding. I called my mom back immediately, and this was when she told me that she was watching the news, and the #1 news story was that Yolanda's (remember, the shop where I bought my dress?) was going out of business.

Closing? Seriously? But I had just put a 50% deposit down on my dress. I had heard all sorts of horror stories from other brides online, complaining that their wedding venues or caterers had gone out of business before their weddings, and they had lost their deposits. Plus they had needed to start their vendor searches again from scratch. But I had just found my dream dress. That was supposed to be my dress. How could the store be going out of business? Would I get my dress? Would I get my money back? I did what any normal(?) bride would do and started freaking. out.

My mom and I both tried to get in touch with the dress shop, but it didn't make matters any better that pretty much every single bride in the entire city of Boston was also trying to call Yolanda's at the same time -- trying to figure out what was going to happen to their beloved dresses. I wanted to know what was going to happen to my dress too, but I couldn't get through to the store. The phone lines were completely jammed. In the meantime, I was receiving emails from pretty much everyone who knew that I had bought my dress from Yolanda's saying "Did you hear that Yolanda's is going out of business??". Umm, yeah. Got the memo. Thanks.

My mom kept calling the dress shop, and after an hour or so she finally got through. And finally we got some good news. Yolanda would be sending a letter to everyone who had recently ordered a dress from her shop. The dresses would all be delivered as promised, but to another dress shop in downtown Boston. Also, while Yolanda's would be closing, Yolanda would still be reachable at her same phone number, for as long as we needed her.

Big. Sigh. Of. Relief. Crisis averted. ...and as you know, my dress came in over the holidays, as promised :-)

Did any of you have any similar drama associated with your wedding planning? Did any of your vendors (gasp!) go out of business in this dismal economy?

The Dress!!

Ok internet. Who wants a little peeky peek at my wedding dress?

Yeah, ummm, this is your cue to GO AWAY ARCHITECT! For the rest of you, please click below to see pictures of wedding dress loveliness.

Oh Brother Where Art Thou?

Here in our household we have spent the last couple of weeks waiting for a big box to arrive in the mail. ...and it finally arrived on Thursday. What was inside that box, you ask?

This amazing contraption:


A printer!! Specifically, the Brother HL-4070CDW. Yes, the Architect and I have been a bit slow to jump on the bandwagon, but we finally decided to purchase a home printer. And oh if you could only imagine the plans we have in store for this guy. Invitations, wedding programs, escort cards and so much more. It's gonna be a DIY bonanza. (Ok, and maybe it will be useful for other things relating to the Architect's work and whatnot.)

Have you made any major purchases to help you with your wedding DIY projects?

Chuppah-Wha?

While we are definitely planning a secular wedding ceremony, the Architect and I are still planning on giving a little shout-out to our heritage throughout our wedding. In particular, we (or more precisely, I) would like to honor my Jewish heritage. My parents chose not to raise me with any particular religious upbringing -- and I come from a family with both Catholic and Jewish backgrounds. However, I have always felt a strong tie to the Jewish culture. My family cooks brisket, eats challah, I try (and often fail) to eat no leavened foods for 8 days every Passover, and we celebrate Hanukkah along with Christmas. I even begged my mom to send me to Hebrew school when I was a kid, while all of the other Jewish kids in my neighborhood wanted nothing more than to get out of their Hebrew school responsibilities. I know. I'm a weird one. So I feel that it's important to add some Jewish aspects into our wedding ceremony. We will definitely be breaking a glass. We will also have a chuppah.

A what-ah? You ask.

A chuppah.

Remember the scene in "Meet the Parents" where Owen Wilson is carefully carving a wedding altar, and he shows it to Ben Stiller's character, stating that "your people might call it a chuppah"? Yeah. One of those.

I've read a variety of different explanations of the meaning behind the chuppah. This one is my favorite so far:

"The chuppah is supposed to represent the new home the couple is creating together. The lack of walls in the structure is meant to symbolize the welcoming of everyone into the home as well as the tradition of Tzedakah, or charity." -- Miss Trail Mix on Weddingbee

Here are some of my favorite examples of chuppahs:

This is pretty much the craziest, most awesome, most creative chuppah that I have EVER seen. I have absolutely NO idea how they constructed it. Our chuppah is certainly going to be a bit more modest than this one.
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This one is from my friend C's wedding. They used driftwood to build a chuppah for their beach-side wedding.

...with flowers
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Birch chuppah -- I think we're going to go with something like this.
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In addition to having a chuppah, and breaking a glass at the end of the ceremony, I was really hoping to dance the hora at our wedding and have our guests raise the Architect and me up in chairs as they dance. Unfortunately, the Architect is totally not sold on this idea. He thinks that our guests will drop him. (I think he's crazy, since he's not too heavy.)

See? Nobody dropping the groom!
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Oh well, you win some, you lose some. That's all for this installment of Jewish wedding traditions. Now we just need to figure out how to incorporate the Architect's cultural and (non-)religious upbringing into our wedding as well.

Are you trying to include traditions to represent your culture or religion while planning your wedding? What specific traditions will you be including?

To Bake a Cake

Now don't you go thinking for even a second that I am the type of bride who will be baking her own cake. I am totally amazed by the brides who pull that off... and I'm more than a little bit envious of these very talented women. But, me? Bake a wedding cake? Not gonna happen. Unless our guests want to eat something that looks like this:

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...and might just taste worse than it looks.

(On a side note, for those who are actually interested in baking and decorating their own cakes, check out the work of Miss Hamster on Weddingbee. She made her own fondant. Seriously. And it looks Ah-May-Zing.)

I however will be going the good ole' traditional route and hiring someone to bake my wedding cake. More expensive? Ok, yes. But (hopefully) guaranteed to taste and look great.

Before calling up bakers, the Architect and I sat down and had a little pow-wow to discuss what sort of cake (and potentially other desserts) we wanted at our wedding. We both LOVE cake, so it was easy for us to decide that we wanted a traditional wedding cake. We also decided that we wanted a second dessert choice -- something that screamed "wedding in Maine". So of course we decided to go with blueberry pie. ...or more aptly, a blueberry crumble with streusel topping, since this is a favorite dessert of the Architect's.

Blueberry crumble. Yum. Am I making you hungry yet?
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Next I got to work on finding inspiration photos for cake designs. Like with every other aspect of our wedding, we're going for designs that scream simple-yet-elegant, and traditional-with-a-modern-twist. Here are some of the ones that I particularly liked:

Simple. Pretty. And it incorporates our wedding colors!
*This image, and all of the other cakes below are from theknot

Marzipan fruits. Yum.

Hmmm... uneven tiers are a thought. ...and I'm loving the use of our wedding colors here!

This cake, and the rest below are not in our wedding colors, but could be easily altered to include a bright pop of orange.

White buttercream and chocolate sticks. Really, how can you go wrong?

I'm loving the asymmetrical ribbon of chocolate that swirls around this one.

Square tiers = modern?

Yum, yum, and yum. Please don't tell me you're not hungry after seeing all of these cakes.

Any guesses on which one we decided to go with? And just for kicks, which one is your favorite?