The Vision Became Reality

Well, here it is...the day after My First Daughter's Wedding!

This month has flown by. I am much too tired to post much, other than to say that in spite of some big trials and challenges in the week and days leading up to the wedding, everything turned out wonderfully well.

Throughout this year, the plans have been playing like a movie in my head (of course spurred on and inspired by my daughter's desires and wishes for the wedding.) I can honestly say that everything turned out very close to, if not exactly as we had envisioned it. All the research, planning, and hard work are definitely worth it. And it so amazing to watch it all happen pretty much as you had hoped for.

It was a giant effort for everyone involved to pull off the meaningful, beautiful ceremony and great party for approximately 170 people that happened yesterday. Thanks also to God, who smiled on us! He knew all along that my daughter and her groom were destined for eachother, and all the rest was just window dressing! Weddings are a joyous occasion for family and friends to celebrate the union of two people and the beginning of a new family, and they are a picture of God's plans for us. (And it is documented that the Lord Himself attended at least one wedding, so they must be very important to Him!)

I know I am biased, but I think my daughter was the most beautiful, classic bride I have ever seen! Her dress, veil, hair, and makeup were stunning. Even the flirty little hairclip I made for her at the last minute to wear at the reception turned out remarkably well.

I felt comfortable the whole day -- my MOB dress was like a second skin -- it was so worth the time it took to hunt it down, and have it fitted by our excellent seamstress, Penny! (Well, my shoes did pinch a little after a few hours, I must admit...)

The groom, maids and the groomsmen looked absolutely marvelous. (And yes, even the FOB in his spiffy new suit.) The floral pieces -- what can I say? Blue hydrangeas are my new favorite flower and will now always remind me of my daughter's wedding!

To that I might add, wedding planners and coordinators are worth every penny you can scrape together to hire one. My daughter and I would have had a very difficult time pulling this even off without Denise's help, and definitely would not have been able to enjoy the day as we did, unencumbered by the details! And she did the beautifal flowers too --a double blessing!

We will have to wait a bit for the wedding photos to be available..have also been checking to see if anyone posts anything I can "borrow" on Facebook. Meanwhile, since the dress has now been seen by our wedding guests, I can now post one of my daughter's formal portraits:


Will post pictures of the ceremony and reception and more details later..I am glad its over, am looking forward to some rest, but now am wondering what to do with my time now that all this is behind us?

Putting it All Together (Our D-I-Y Projects)

The long Easter weekend brought my daughter and I some extra days off from school and work to devote to our craft projects for the wedding. The Do-It-Yourself (D-I-Y) websites and magazines like Martha Stewart Weddings promised overall cost savings, and individualized customization of your wedding designs. Coming up with ideas for designs is super-fun for me, but actually creating the art is beyond my comfort zone. So for me, the easier the better!

Besides the display stand for our cake balls (taking the place of the groom's cake), for which we had painstakingly shopped for the materials several weeks prior, I had also hit upon some easy cost-saving favor ideas. When I conveyed my ideas to my daughter and the relatively low cost of doing them, she was highly enthusiastic and gave me free reign to go for it!

She wanted to have bubbles as a favor for the guests to use at Send-Off time when she and her groom depart the reception. She had already ordered white and light blue bubble tubes with a heart design on one end from TheKnot.com's "Wedding Shop". They arrived shortly, and while cute, I thought they needed a little extra something to make them extra special.

To dress them up a little, I ordered labels from http://www.123print.com/ and had them printed with the phrase "Love is In the Air" --(Get it?---bubbles in the air?) Can't take full credit -- I had seen this idea online. These labels also carried the couple's first names and the wedding date. I also thought tying light blue ribbons would be a nice added frill. My "prototype" came out really well!



So, the Maid of Honor (my younger daughter) was also home from college for Easter, and she and I took care of applying the labels to the first 2 of 5 boxes of bubbles right away. I applied the labels to 2 more boxes of bubbles in later days myself, when I happened to be sitting around watching TV. One box to go (with less than 3 weeks left before the wedding.) Now I am second-guessing the ribbon. How long will it take to tie 200 little bows like this, and is it really worth it?!

My other idea was to supply take-home boxes for guests to pack up leftover wedding cake and cake balls into. After a long Internet search with price comparisons of different container options, I settled upon pint-sized Chinese take-out boxes as the best bang for our buck. I ordered them from PaperMart: http://www.papermart.com/Product%20Pages/Product.aspx?GroupID=16206&SubGroupID=16207#16207..

To my happy surprise, the boxes arrived pre-assembled, except for the top flap! The cupcakes might be a bit snug in them, but I think they will work and they will definitely be ideal for leftover cake balls. The only problem was they were just plain white, and again I thought a little something could be added to make them personalized. The answer -- more labels with the couple's names and wedding date! What can I say -- labels are cheap, they are easy, and they definitely personalize! For these labels, the vendor I chose was: http://www.orientaltrading.com/

The Maid of Honor and I knocked out putting labels on all 150 takeout boxes the first night she was home for Easter Break, while settled on the couch watching a movie. I think they look fine, considering the guests will likely get these smudged with icing and cake oils, and probably will not keep them anyway.

The Bride did not get off free. She had her crafting hat on for that Easter weekend, too. She and I set about decorating the heavy corrugated cardboard cake ball tree. And yes, as I feared, we had to make another trip to Hobby Lobby to buy more ribbon and materials, after we determined that a) some of the ribbon was too sheer for the edges of the tiers, (it did not hide the cardboard that well) and b) for appearance sake, we would need to cover the supporting columns as well as the tiers themselves, and c) we did not purchase enough yardage of ribbon to begin with, either for this project or the larger square cupcake tree. Another $50 in materials was chalked up to the cake display budget. And we had not even ordered the "topper" yet for this University of Florida Gator-themed cake ball display.

Well, after much trial and error, we got it accomplished -- here is the final product, (just imagine a Gator figurine on top amidst the orange and blue ribbon, and cake balls lying on the tiers!) At least now my daughter has some experience under her belt for decorating the large square cupcake display, which will hopefully hold 250 cupcakes. However, she will be doing that with the help of the groom's Mom and grandmothers. I pray that they have more crafting skills than I do, and although it was kind of fun, I am pretty glad I'm about done with D-I-Y.

Is it all worth it? Well, there is a certain satisfaction in knowing that your hands personally contributed to making the wedding (hopefully) more special and beautiful. As far as cost savings -- well, honestly for a busy Bride who is a full time student and her Mom who has a full time job, I'm not so sure that the cuts to our bottom line will be worth the extra time and effort it took, especially since we don't particularly enjoy crafting that much to begin with. And the materials often can put a pinch in your wallet, unless you are able to order in bulk. (The ribbons and trim for the cupcake tiers turned out to be fairly expensive, yet the Chinese takout boxes and labels were quite reasonable because I ordered so many of them.) It all depends on each individual bride's circumstances, her vision for the wedding, and how much friends and family will be able to help out, I suppose.


Now, about tying those little bows on the bubble tubes, ... should I, or shouldn't I...?

UPDATE - JUNE 24

Here is a photo collage of the finished cake stands, (now that the wedding is over, they can now be "unveiled"!) Everyone seemed to really like the cupcake instead of cake idea, and especially raved about the cakeballs. Guests commented on how unusual, but nicely done, the displays were! (Even my hubby admitted they turned out much nicer than he thought they would!) And by the way, we should not have added on the extra 50 cupcakes to our original order...just about all the Chinese takeout boxes were used for leftover cupcakes. The cakeballs on the other hand, were devoured...not much left but crumbs of them!

Bridal Shower #2: The Church Ladies

As the title implies, the second bridal shower for my daughter was hosted by some of my church friends. We are not really that old -- actually we are middle aged (40s to 50s); but we figure that to my daughter and her friends, we were those "little old ladies".

Around the Christmas holidays last year, two friends in my Bible Study class approached me saying they were so excited about having an upcoming wedding in the works. Many of the women in our class  have kids in their teens or early twenties, and have been through other family milestones together through the past 8 or so years, like getting driver's licenses, graduating from high school, selecting a college, etc. So, it only came naturally that this is the next step for us.. and my daughter is the first of the crop to get married!

My daughter was so honored that they wanted to do this, but first we had to overcome a little point of wedding etiquette. (See my earlier blog entry, "Will the Wedding Police Come After Me?") We knew that we would not be able to invite all the people in my class to the wedding, and Modern Wedding Etiquette says this is a big no-no. But after consulting with some bridal etiquette people and the hostesses to get their opinion on the matter, we decided that for several reasons this was "An Exception" that everyone was OK with, so the plans proceeded. As it turned out, not only the two original ladies, but several ladies in the class had a hand in helping with planning and organizing the shower.

The late March day came with brilliant sun, but a stiff breeze. This proved to be a bit of a challenge since the shower was planned poolside in the awesome, yet comfortable outdoor living space of one of the class members. The huge covered patio area is complete with a huge stone fireplace, and even a chandelier. This friend is a gardener, and her yard was spectacular with blooming flowers and tastefully arranged shrubs. She had also created a giant grapevine wreath in the wedding colors, with all sorts of kitchen gadgets tied to it, which was a focal point of the decorations on the fireplace. Two of my daughters' bridesmaids were there to lend her support, but mostly it was just us "church ladies!". (That's the maids and me with the bride in the picture below!)

This was planned as a kitchen/recipe shower, and each guess had a recipe card included with their invitation, with the instructions to share a favorite recipe with the bride by bringing it to the shower. Then at the shower the hostesses had a cool recipe book for the bride -- a binder with pages with plastic inserts for inserting the recipe cards into.

The munchies were beautifully presented and colored in the blue and ivory color theme of my daughter's wedding, and tasted just as awesome as they looked! (My friend Janet should go into business selling her cupcakes - they are to die for!)

We played only a few games, (not near as many as we did as the bridesmaid's shower) and the ladies kept apologizing for putting my daughter through them. ..Although in reality she and her maids really like them! One by one, the winners of the games found an excuse to give their prize (which was a kitchen themed gadget or accesory) to the bride, as is the old custom for Southern Bridal Showers, I believe.

Well, the church ladies shower was well done and very enjoyable, and my daughter was so impressed with the ladies' handiwork, both in the decorating and the food. She genuinely seemed to enjoy herself. And the ladies seemed to appreciate that she was a really good sport about it!

Bridal Shower #1 - Bridesmaids Rule!

Last month we started "Shower Season". There were two bridal showers for my daughter in our town - one the traditional Bridesmaid-hosted one, and the other was thrown by some of my church friends (or, as it became known as, "The Old Lady Shower.")

The Bridesmaid shower came first, and I did not know what to expect since few of these girls had ever even been to a bridal shower before, so they were clueless what to do. My younger daughter, being the MOH learned from her web searches that she was supposed to spear-head the project. She cornered me one day about 6 weeks before the planned day with a panic-stricken look and begged me to help her plan it.

At first I really thought I was going to have to pull a major MWE (Modern Wedding Etiquette) No-No and basically plan and execute my own daughter's bridal shower. But as it turned out, I basically just gave my younger daughter a nudge in the right direction. I let her know it was time to send the invitations out, and time to plan the shower, and I just sort of gave her the highlights of most of the showers I had been to: Send out the invitations, then at the shower you visit, eat, maybe play some games, and open gifts!

I encouraged her to contact the other bridesmaids for a planning session. This was a bit out of her comfort zone, since the other bridesmaids were her sister's friends and a few years older than her. But she dutifully made the first contact and mostly through texts and Facebook messages they decided how to divide and conquer. My younger daughter was put in charge of the invitations.

Since she is a Freshman in college and in the Performing Arts (with auditions, voice and dance lessons solidly booking her schedule) she asked if I would scout some invitations out for her, then she would send them out. The issue was, we were cutting it close to the shower date...we had to get those things in the mail FAST!

No problem, I thought. Back in my day, invitations came in little cellophane wrapped packages that you purchased in any grocery store or Walmart. They had fill-in-the blank lines where you put in the details of when, where, and who to RSVP to. I soon found out, once again with the changing times came a new breed of invitations. Those little fill in the blank notes are becoming very scarce--few stores carry them anymore. Custom-printed invitations are what's expected now, evidently.

Complicating this was that the MOH didn't want to give just a generic bridal shower -- she wanted a Theme to work with. Again, Mom did some web surfing, and we came up with an "Around the House" shower theme. Basically, you assign each guest a room, and the gift that guest brings should be used in that room. I found some adorable Around the House themed invitations online - but again, other than a verse explaining what type of shower it was, they were all blank and ready to be custom printed. Unfortunately we had run out of time to order any.

My younger daughter said friends had told her of a nice wedding supply store near her college campus in Oklahoma City, so she ran out on a Saturday morning to check them out -- again I told her to buy "fill in the blank" ones if she could find any that would work. We must have texted back and forth 20 times that morning -- with her sending me photo texts of what she was finding. Well, she found some cute Around the House invitations all right - but you guessed it, they were totally blank. Well, she said...one of her friends loves to hand-print things, and she had volunteered to help with the invitations. I was skeptical, but she went ahead and bought the cards. Believe it or not, her friend hand-printed 20 invitations that day. They actually came out really cute!

The other bridesmaids are all local here in town and all know eachother so they met a few times for planning sessions. I kept in touch with them through Facebook, asking if they needed any help, but they took care of everything! The only thing they asked me to supply was a floral centerpiece, which I was happy to take care of.

Everything looked so pretty when we arrived at the shower, which was held in the family home of one of the bridesmaids. One of them had made a white apron for my daughter to wear which had "Bride" on it in bejeweled studs. The munchies were so good, and everything was so pretty and color-coordinated!

In spite of my reading that shower games were basically passe' now and nobody liked them but old ladies, one of the bridesmaids had planned quite a few little games for us. Well, the guests (other than me and the bridesmaid's mom who owned the home) were all 20-somethings and they really got a hoot out of the games! There were prizes plenty for the winners of the games, and all sorts of favors as well. Nobody went home empty-handed! For being bridal shower Newbies, these young ladies really outdid themselves! I will write soon about the second "Old Ladies" shower!

All the Little Details

So now the big stuff is out of the way, and we are down to all the little details! For the bridal showers, which started last month, it suddenly became urgent that some sort of Guest Book would be needed, either individual ones for each shower or a large combined one. I located a nice spiral-bound guest book (which our wedding coordinator recommended) at Hallmark. It has plenty of pages for each shower as well as documenting the wedding attendees as well. Since it is a ring-bound binder, the guest signature pages can be removed from this book, so if needs be, some pages can be at the ceremony site and the rest of the book can be at the reception venue, or vice versa. Someone will just have to remember (eventually) to gather the pages from one site and combine with the others in the main book. (If someone forgot to bring a hard-bound guest book from the church to the reception ballroom, that would be bad...!)

With a fancy guest book comes the need for a fancy pen, so I bought 2 gold pen sets (with bases) from Party City. Except I may exchange them for silver ones, since the trim on the guest book cover photo is actually silver, and the cocktail napkins may have silver imprinting too!

Our attention has also turned to wedding favors. My daughter is not big on spending big bucks here! (And a M.O.B. friend of mine who has married off 2 daughters told me that in her experience, these were not taken home by the guests, anyway!)

My daughter decided she would like to have the guests blow bubbles for the couple's sendoff, and she opted for the slender 'bubble tubes' rather than the little bottles. She ordered white and light blue tubes in keeping with her colors from the on-line store of The Knot...(Her go-to website for everything, it seems!) They arrived promptly, but we found that the light blue color they touted was actually more of an aqua green. So, I am focused now on "disguising" that somehow. I have ordered some pretty "Copenhagen blue" satin ribbon to tie on them, and I am considering making customized labels with the bride and groom's names, the date, and the saying "Love is In the Air." We feel we may have some leftover cupcakes and cake balls after the dessert time at the reception, so we decided it would be a nice touch to send home the leftovers with the guests who would like some, as an added favor. I then began researching suitable boxes to contain these treats. I found that although the little individual cupcake boxes which are made for this purpose are abosolutely adorable, they are also pricey. Since we are not offering these favors to all guests, only those who are still present at the reception near its finish and would like to have "take home treats", I figured these boxes would not be on display, and may even be stashed under a table until needed. The guests may get icing and cake residue on them, so they will probably just throw them away after they enjoy the treats. So they needed to be functional, rather than fancy. After many web comparison searches of favor box pricing among vendors, I decided upon 1 pint white Chinese takeout boxes with wire handles, and I ordered them from Papermart. http://www.papermart.com/Product%20Pages/Product.aspx?GroupID=16206&SubGroupID=16207#16207. They can be partially assembled ahead of time, I figured, and stored within eachother in a stack. Because Papermart offers them at such a reasonable price, I ordered 150 of them to be on the safe side, figuring we would use them for both leftover cupcakes and cake balls.

Now, I am still considering "prettying" the takeout boxes up a bit with a label or something -- but again, I don't want to spend too much on this fluff because they will not be on display and the guests will likely not keep them. It is unbelievable how expensive the pretty colored custom labels with the couples' names and the date can be! I refuse to pay 50 cents to a dollar a piece per sticker! So, I haven't committed yet, but am considering ordering inexpensive generic wedding stickers from Oriental Trading Company. They may not be the best quality, but they will make the takeout boxes a bit more special.

I also bought a "card box" for the reception. This is an item I was unfamiliar with until I started watching some of the wedding shows on TV. My hubby thinks this is a silly splurge, but it just seems like a nice idea to me - to gather all the wedding cards (and perhaps enclosed checks, cash, or gift cards) into one pretty enclosed container. And my daughter can use it later for wedding keepsakes, I figured. Here's a photo of the one I purchased from Party City, with my daughter's approval:

Will the Wedding Police Come After Me?

Through the course of planning for my daughter's wedding, I have learned more than I ever wanted to know about today's prevailing American wedding etiquette. Or should I say, some people's (or region of the country, or age group's) idea of wedding etiquette. At first I was highly intimidated and sought to follow down to the letter all the "rules" as I read them on the Internet on The Knot or Brides.com, or in the wedding planning advice books I was using (such as the Emily Post guide for the Mother of the Bride.)

But I eventually learned, that believe it or not, every bride's situation is different (as is her family.) And I have discovered that hard and fast rules for brides in some regions of the country are not so important in other regions. (Obviously there are differences, too, in wedding customs of different countries and faith groups, but I am just focusing here on the current prevailing American wedding etiquette.)

The major American bridal magazines are published, as most magazines are, in New York or Chicago. Their staffers are mostly 20 to 30-somethings. Obviously, there is also a great concentration of the American population living in Northern regions of this country. So my humble opinion is that the regional customs of the younger generation of the Northern part of the U.S. are what's most commonly portrayed in America as Modern Wedding Etiquette. (or MWE as I will call it from now on!)

The MWE ideas seem rather inflexible. What the young, hip, Northeast Media complex dictates is RIGHT, and everyone else must be WRONG. I currently live and am a native of Texas, with a Southern family tradition on both mine and my husband's side, so consequently many of our planning ideas have come into conflict with MWE. Because I have lived (happily I might add) in both the North and the South, perhaps I have a unique perspective and understanding of both "cultures." I have been fascinated to observe and analyze some of these differences.

What types of things am I talking about? For one example, it seems the idea of getting married in a church is turning into mostly a Southern thing. Other parts of the country seem to be opting for the all-in-one public venue. (Actually, now that I've been exposed to some of the logistics of wedding planning, I can definitely see the advantages of that!) I think some of the secular wedding trend may also reflect the influence of the younger generation -- they just don't have the church ties as in previous generations.

The serving of alcohol at weddings is a prime example of the cultural difference. In the Northeast, there had better be plenty of it, and no Cash Bar, either, thank you very much! In the South, a number of Protestant families still frown upon alcohol being served at the reception at all. (My husband and I are not total teetotalers, but my daugher and her fiance opted for a dry reception of their own accord and we respect that.)

I think the dancing ban was the first to go in the Bible Belt. What was frowned upon in Baptist circles in the South even 20 years ago, is now widely accepted at wedding receptions (just not on church property!) My daughter is getting married in a Baptist church, but then we are moving to a hotel ballroom so that she can have the DJ and dancing she requested.

I think the traditional church basement reception of cake, punch and mixed nuts may be almost a thing of the past too, except perhaps in some small towns with not many other options for a reception venue. (A church hall might be the biggest building in town!) Again, the youth culture is coming in to play here, too -- that kind of reception could honestly be pretty boring!

Another example of MWE involves the wedding invitations. Most wedding advice I've seen says it is not appropriate to put Gift Registry information anywhere on the printed materials. Even for Bridal Showers, it not considered polite to put that information on the invite itself, although they grudgingly give the OK to have a SEPARATE sheet of paper inserted with that info on it. Hello?!!...isn't that the purpose of a Bridal Shower, to "shower the couple with gifts?" And why waste another sheet of paper (and the tree it came from?) I just don't get that at all. Personally, we had no problem in just listing right on the shower invitation where the couple is registered.

Well, the Wedding Police say, the proper thing to do is for guests to just ask the bride's mother where the couple is registered! Well, in our case nearly 2/3 of the guests are college students in another town who don't know me from Adam. That rule, I think, is from bygone days when a bride gets married in the same town the family has lived in for generations, and everyone knows everybody. What we opted for is to list the couple's wedding website (powered by http://www.theknot.com/) on an insert to the wedding invitation packet. From there, those of her generation can find out what the registries are. Those of my generation who are not computer-savvy (and who likely are relatives or family friends) will likely ask me or the groom's mother. (Naturally, I have read some opinions from some MWE purists that listing the website is viewed as a sneaky, back-handed way to give out the registry info in the invitation and it is frowned upon too. I say to that, "Take a Chill Pill!")

And then there is MWE's opinion on the Bridal Shower guest list. The Grand-Daddy Rule of them all is what I have come to call THE RULE! "It is terribly rude to invite someone to a bridal shower who is not also invited to the wedding!" OMG - I cannot believe the heated arguments and soapbox speeches some people have gone into about THE RULE on the wedding websites and message boards. Lets just say the majority of people are quite passionate about THE RULE! The gyst of the rule is this: If someone goes to the trouble and expense of buying a bridal shower gift, they should be rewarded with a wedding reception invite. Or to put it another way, they look on it as "I'm not good enough to get invited to your wedding and reception, but you still want me to buy you a shower gift? No Way!" Currently the only "acceptable" exception to THE RULE that most everyone agrees on is the Office Shower.

We had to cross this bridge in our own experience -- some of my friends from church graciously offered to give a shower for my daughter, so the question arose -- do I follow THE RULE and invite everyone who attends the shower to the wedding? This would be almost impossible, given our miniscule number of guest slots left over after the couple's friends and our families were invited! And since the wedding is not being held at our church or even in the same town, what is the likelihood that these people would even come to the wedding if they were invited?

So I started to analyze, where does THE RULE come from in the first place? In my opinion, the opposing views on THE RULE can be divided straight down the North/South line, and also reflects the younger generation's "What's in it for me?" attitude.

In my mind, what a typical Northern wedding looks like is a fairly large affair in a nice public venue, features an open bar, with usually a sit-down dinner or at least a nice buffet meal, and a band or DJ for dancing. A wedding invitation in the North is understandably a coveted thing -- it's a "free" night out including drinks, a nice meal and entertainment!

Conversely, up until recently, as I alluded to earlier, the typical Southern wedding reception was a more no-frills, cozy, intimate affair in the church basement or someone's home or backyard, with minimum refreshments served, and certainly no alcohol or dancing involved. There was usually an open invitation extended to all the "church family". So, in the South, the Bridal Shower was something given by the older church ladies for the bride; and it was understood that anyone in the church is welcome to come. If they don't get an invite to the wedding, it was no big deal --because the wedding reception itself was not that big a deal either. The church ladies just enjoyed coming to the shower for the fun and fellowship of being with other women, and to start the young couple off right with things needed for their new household. (Besides, sometimes the munchies were even better at the shower!)

When I mentioned my concerns about THE RULE to the church shower hostesses, who were also from the South and from my generation, they seemed to have no problem with the idea that not all of them would get wedding invites, and they thought my concern was kind of silly. But when I asked some of my Northern friends' opinions, they advised me not to go through with it. They wondered if we could just squeeze a few more people on the wedding guest list, or just somehow limit the shower guest list to invited wedding guests only? Or could we maybe host an after-wedding party for the couple at our church, to which the shower guests would be invited?

You see what I mean? It just boils down to a cultural and generational thing, going by what has been their experience with weddings in the past. We opted to go ahead with the "open" shower guest list, but I did give a heads up to the hostesses that not all guests would be invited to the wedding, and if they were OK with that and the guests were OK with that, well then, let's have us a Shower! We had a fine turnout. My daughter had a great time. The wedding invitations had already gone out before the bridal shower invitations did, so I figured if anyone had a problem with THE RULE they would just opt to stay home, and that was fine, too.

My take on this now is that MWE is slowly evolving into what it should be -- a more fluid set of "guidelines" rather than hard and fast rules. I am breaking some of the rules of MWE, and have even broken THE RULE, but I have relaxed because the Wedding Police are NOT going to come after me! The important thing is -- what works best for the couple, their situation, and what works best for their families who are along for the ride!

Time for DIY!

DIY = "Do It Yourself". When it comes to home-made, hand-crafted items, I am definitely no Martha Stewart. This is definitely out of my comfort zone, and I think my daughter is in the same boat. I had not planned on us doing a lot of D-I-Y projects for this wedding, but plans just sometimes take a turn in ways you don't expect.

My frugal daughter had already decided that to her groom and her, who are not big cake fans, modern wedding cakes (although beautiful) are an overpriced addition to the wedding reception. They decided to go with cupcakes, only to subsequently find out our small-town baker does not supply her own cupcake display stands and that we would need to supply these. And we are not talking the little wire cupcake racks that hold maybe 12. We are talking a stand that will hold 200-300 cupcakes. Our venue people did not seem to have anything that would work, nor did the local party rental places. Cha-Ching!!! There goes our savings to the bottom line of the cake budget.

After a quick Internet search, we found that glass or even heavy-duty plastic cupcake display stands are quite pricey. So, despite the Father of the Bride's misgivings that they look too "cheap", we have decided to use disposable, heavy duty cardboard cupcake stands, or "trees" for both our reception cupcake and cake ball displays. (The cake balls are being graciously made for us by a friend of my daughter's as a wedding gift to the couple, and they will be taking the place of the traditional southern "groom's cake" at the reception.) I ordered a large square tree (for the cupcakes) and a small round tree (for the cake balls) online from ttp://www.cupcaketree.com/. They arrived very quickly--and they arrived unassembled. The idea is then to custom decorate them any way you like. There are decorating how-tos on the website.

There were also instructions included in the cartons for assembling these trees, but I am so challenged in areas like that, that I was intimidated from the onset! Thankfully my D is a bit better spatially and can probably figure that part out. Here is a photo of the unfinished square tree, (guaranteed to hold up to 300 cupcakes!) to give you an idea of what we are going to be working with:


My daughter also informed me that her future Mother-In-Law  is going to help her decorate the main display - which is for the cupcakes, but she will do the cake ball display at home with my help, since that is taking the place of the groom's cake and she wants him to be surprised. I was a bit disappointed at first, but it will be a nice "Bonding Opportunity" for my daughter and her future M-I-L, (and a later conversation I had with the MOG revealed that his grandmothers LOVE to do crafts and couldn't wait to help!)

At least I was invited to help her select the materials to be used. (Actually, that's the part I enjoy--I would rather design things than actually carry the design out!) So on a Thursday afternoon as she came home for her Spring Break from college, I took an afternoon off from work to devote to this project. (Thinking we would do both the material selection AND the project itself.) Ha! Ha!

Well, this was an interesting shopping expedition, to say the least. We headed out to the craft store, and of course we were too impatient to look at the how-to's that www.cupcaketree.com provides on their website, so we had nothing pre-planned as far as what items we would use for decorating. We just sort of winged it! It would have been helpful to have an idea beforehand how many yards of ribbon, etc. we would need to purchase to cover all the tiers! As it turns out, I think we may have understimated, so we may get the extreme pleasure of trying to track all the stuff down again at some future time to purchase more of it!

Anyway, the bride and I got our exercise that day traipsing all over Hobby Lobby several times over (for those not familiar -- it is a huge big-box craft store). She decided to use her general wedding color scheme, light blue and white/ivory for the main large cupcake tree, alternating the tiers with some pretty light blue crystal beading, and white lacy ribbon. I suppose it will be glued on to the edges of the tiers somehow. We are going to leave the actual tiers alone and just use the white cardboard -- the cupcakes will be nestled in paper containers anyway. We hit upon the idea of using doilies to pretty the tiers up a bit before putting the cupcakes on them. (But that turned out to be another big goof -- I proudly found her some beautiful round white paper doilies which we purchased, only to remember later after we got home that the stand for the cupcake tree is square! Duh!!)

For the cake balls, and the smaller round cupcake tree, she chose more masculine style ribbon trim in the colors of the University of Florida Gators, (which is her groom's favorite team) -- royal blue and orange. She wanted the tiers themselves to be a chocolate brown color. For the top tier, we are thinking of ordering a team nick-nack.

What threw us for a loop is how to do the chocolate brown tiers. We vaguely rememberd seeing on the decorating how-to page on the manufacturer's website that some people just use spray-paint. So we were going in that direction, until I asked my daughter if the cake balls would be in any sort of paper wrappers. She said they would not, and the Hobby Lobby employee who opened the locked spray-paint cabinet agreed with me that its probably not a good idea to lay the cakeballs directly on top of spray paint!

We ended up finding some heavy duty posterboard in a chocolate brown color that my daughter will have to cut out and glue to the tiers. I'm still a little concerned that we are going to have butter and oil stains on the brown posterboard. Since this stand is going to be round, I thought about using the round doilies I bought by mistake, but since they are white that kind of defeats her chocolate brown idea. I guess we will cross that bridge when we get to it -- perhaps I can look for some sort of butcher paper or colored foil to lay down under the cake balls to stay with the color scheme.

Getting all these materials turned out to be fairly time-consuming, and we did not get to this project that weekend or even during her Spring Break after all. We had too much else going on (like her first Bridal Shower and getting the wedding invitations finalized). So, it was postponed to another weekend that she planned to be home.

And the costs? Well lets just say the materials cost more than I thought they would. Hobby Lobby is wonderful because it is a one-stop shop and has just about all you would need. But you may also pay a premium for that convenience.

What to take away from this? Well, first off, do the math! Is your idea really a cost-cutting measure, or in the long run, would it pay off to let the experts do their thing (in both extra costs of display/decor, and time?) And if you do decide to go the D-I-Y route, if D-I-Y is not normally your thing -- definitely do your homework and have a plan before heading out to the craft store! Find out all the materials and quantities you will be needing ahead of time, and consult the experts -- those who are comfortable with D-I-Y projects can give you some pointers, and lead you to the best vendors and resources for your particular project.

To be continued...Pictures of the final product(s) will come eventually!

The Crowning Glory

Today was a fun day. My d is in town for Spring Break, and I took the afternoon off from work to go with her to take care of some wedding-related errands.

Although she found her dress early on in the process, she had never settled on a veil. We knew from trying on the Maggie Sottero Monalisa Royal ballgown at Bridal Co. in Denton, http://www.bridalco.com/, that a cathedral length veil just looked stunning. But at the time, the store's inventory of veils was down, so she did not commit to one. They promised that as Wedding Season progressed, they would get more veils in stock.

Part of the deal with buying her dress there was a "store credit" which turned out to be somewhere around $150. (This is what the store offers as a buying incentive, since the maker of the dress does not allow discounts.)

So, 7 months or so after purchasing the dress there, we returned to Bridal Co. today to look for the veil again. The first ivory, cathedral length veil she walked up to turned out to be the one! It is so unusual...it has scalloped edges with delicate crystal beading on it, and actual teardrop style crystals hanging off the edges at intervals on the veil. I have never seen anything like this veil before, and it will look awesome with the Monalisa Royale. Just the right amount of bling to accent the dress, without it being so much that it does not get lost in the elaborate train beading of the dress. (The picture to the left is not the actual veil -- but it is similar...imagine something like this in cathedral length!) We actually had a few bucks left over on the credit after selecting the veil, and she picked up a little clutch handbag with some beading to go with the dress, as well!

Our next errand did not go so quickly or so easily -- we had to go to Hobby Lobby to select the items to decorate our cupcake tree displays with. More on that later...

Meet the Vendors!

So, its a Friday night and I am bored. (No "Four Weddings" on TV tonight and must wait for the 10:00 showing of "Say Yes to the Dress". Am I wedding-obsessed, or what?)

It is now less than 3 months before the wedding. Lots of things checked off our list, lots of the little bitty details yet to take care of. My D said to me recently that these little details are stressing her out, and wedding planning seems like a full-time job nowadays. But, she is on the home stretch of her college career, doesn't have classes on M-W-F, and her fiance is out of town working an internship job, so I say, let her do her "Thang"! I am interested and involved of course, but the more she is willing and able to do herself, so much the better! Repeat again here ...it is not my wedding...!

Flowers are now arranged -- we are using our weekend-of wedding coordinator, Denise Harlan, to also do the flowers. Don't know how that will work out -- since she will be busy setting up centerpieces, etc. at the reception how much will she really be helping with day-of wedding coordination? Well, she says she will have an assistant, so fingers crossed, it will all work out! But we keep adding more flowers all the time...cake topper, second bridal bouquet for the bridal portraits, etc. (more on that later.) To top it all off, we found out that any emails I sent the lady were going to her Spam email box. No wonder we would not hear back from her for weeks after we emailed her! To her defense, whenever I call her on the phone, she always calls back within a few hours, and is very gracious and assuring.

Wondering who we are using? Here's a link. http://weddingeventconsultant.com/ She is actually listed on the Knot.com as a preferred provider - so I guess we did good!!

In lieu of a wedding cake, we are doing cupcakes. My daughter first considered a personal friend of her groom's from New Braunfels, Texas who is trying to break into the cupcake business. (And is that ever a big business right now!) But, my daughter decided that due to ease of transport, it would be best to obtain the cupcakes from the more-established Patsy's Bakery of West, Texas. (a neighbor of Waco.) http://www.patsysbakeshop.com/ Being a small-town baker, Patsy will make, deliver, and set up the cupcakes, but she does not have any sort of cupcake stand in her inventory, at least not for a wedding this big. So, after doing some Internet research on cupcake cake stands, and initially having sticker shock at the price of most of them, we found this website: http://www.cupcaketree.com/ where there are affordable, customizable, corrugated cardboard cupcake stands.

A personal friend and wedding invitee of my daughter and her fiance offered to make cake balls as a wedding gift. So, that is what we are offering in lieu of a Groom's Cake. Another smaller stand was ordered from cupcaketree.com to display these. Due to these cake offerings and the Ice Cream Sundae bar which we are also going to feature as part of the wedding reception, we figure there may be some leftover cupcakes and cake balls, so we are looking at ordering some cute litte boxes to put these in, to offer as take-home favors for late-staying reception guests!

My daughter ordered the invitations this week from a young gal in Waco (a Baylor Grad!) Jordan Browning, who is a wedding consultant and also offers wedding invitations and other wedding-related merchandise. Her business is called "Ever After": http://www.weddingseverafter.com/

The Invite stationery suite will carry through the blue and off-white color theme (although we had to go with gold lettering as the off-white offering.) Viewing again photos of our reception venue, with its gold and blue carpet, I think this will work out just fine! The stationery will arrive around Spring Break time, hopefully, so...guess what we will be doing in mid March?

The Wedding Portrait venue has been reserved. I am excited about this...The Earle Harrison House and Pape Gardens, a historic home and adjoining gardens in Waco. Here is a link to the venue: http://www.earleharrison.com/ They say the gardens will be in full bloom in mid-April, which is when the portrait session is booked for. My daughter specifically asked me to travel down to Waco for this event. (Yay!) She will need someone to help her get dressed. The wedding day photographers, Chapel Hill Photography of Waco, will be shooting the bridal portraits as well.
http://www.chapelhillphoto.com/

Speaking of dresses -- my dress arrived at David's Bridal about a week ago! I was worried that the color of it would be too electric blue -- I worried in vain. The color is perfect! Can't wait to get it altered by the same lady from my building at work, who is doing my daughter's wedding dress alterations- Penny Schnitzius of Lewisville, Texas! (972) 436-0485.

Shower season is coming up... more on that coming up soon!

"The Devil is in the Details"

This old phrase has come to my mind lately. Looking back on the past few months, it is so true.

I guess when I planned my own wedding I must have been young and foolish, or had stars in my eyes, because back then I sure didn’t seem to notice or fret too much about all that was involved in the process. (Of course, my wedding guest list was about a third of what my daughter's is.) And this time around, I have become so aware (and worried way too much over) the many wedding etiquette rules that are so easily broken!

I believe some of this is due to a cultural shift. My wedding was in the 70’s. I did not have a large extended family, and we were not socialites, so not having much to compare with, I think I just planned a wedding that worked for me and my groom’s situation at the time. My DH and I were upper twenty-somethings who had careers and had been living independently for some time. My mother had no interest in helping to plan my wedding, so there were very few conflicts in that regard. (Ironically, the one thing that sticks out in my mind about my mom in the planning stages was the difficulty she had in chosing her attire for the wedding! What goes around, comes around?)

I remember consulting some Bridal magazines for my own wedding planning, but that was about it. This was before the Great American Wedding Industry truly hit its stride. There was no Internet like today, where anything you want to know about weddings is just a Google away. There were no online Forums where people are anxious to give their two cents on whether something is proper or not, no David Tutera on TV to set the impossibly high bar for The Perfect Dream Wedding!

Reading back over my recent epic posts about choosing the Mother of the Bride dress, I am almost embarrassed. I don’t really regret recording all that happened as part of my journey of being a MOB for the first time. Hopefully it was somewhat amusing and entertaining to the reader. But, I acknowledge how trivial it was in the grand scheme of things.

My analysis has led me to believe I obsessed over finding my dress because it was the one thing about my daughter's wedding that was for the most part, in my control. The other parts of this process I have had to relinquish control, admittedly sometimes begrudgingly, to the couple whose lives will be forever changed on May 21, 2011.

How many times do I have to keep reminding myself, it is THEIR day. Their wishes are what counts here. They are the ones who need to shine, and rightfully so! And who cares if we don’t follow proper etiquette to the T – once again, we need to plan a day that works for our families, a celebration where everyone truly enjoys themselves! We want happy memories, not a bride and her mom who are frazzled and fretful.

I am also reminded that there is One who is ultimately in control, and orchestrating every step we are taking. He is the one who brought this couple together, and He is the one this couple acknowledges as being the strong Cord who will keep them united. (Knowing that about them brings me much joy!) We have to keep our eyes focused on Him, and remind ourselves that the important thing is to let His love and blessings shine through in this joyous occasion of bringing two people together as one. If we do that, the day will be successful.

After all, what is a wedding but a representation of Christ as the Bridegroom, and His unconditional love for His Bride, the Church? It is so exciting to think of the wedding reception as a foreshadowing of a Great Banquet we will one day enjoy with our loved ones and with our Lord at His table.

So yes, I confess that all too often in the last few months, the Devil has been in the details, because I have allowed the wedding details to take my focus off of what (and who) is really important in this blessed occasion!

For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. ... Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it… For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Ephesians 5: 23-25, 31-32 (KJV)