Inky Livie: Wedding Invitations

There are so many different types of wedding invitations out there that no matter what we chose it would have been the right choice, but we still felt overwhelmed. Once again, Etsy saved the day! We found adorable invitations from Inky Livie that totally fit with our wedding theme, and are casual enough that we are comfortable using them for the vow renewal. The weight of the trifold cards is substantial and the printing is spotless, plus Asa was great at communicating through Etsy conversations.  They were printed on 30% recycled material paper from Waste Not Paper, so that helps us to limit our environmental impact as we celebrate. Check it out!

I love the little foxes!

We decided to let all of our guests choose a song to be played at the reception:

Instead of numbering our tables, we are naming them after our favorite campgrounds:

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JJCraftworks: Custom Wedding Jewelry

I thought finding jewelry for my wedding would be easy. I thought I would see exactly what I wanted and purchase it. I thought that my style and taste was common. I was wrong.

Thank goodness for Etsy! I decided to requisition custom jewelry from JJCraftworks. I knew that I wanted my necklace and earrings to have some green to complement my shoes, and I wanted five pearls to represent our five years of marriage (just like the five stones in my new wedding ring). I also wanted something that would tie in to our nature theme, but I wasn't quite sure what that would be.

I communicated all of this to Jenn and she sketched up some ideas.

I decided that I liked the "leaf link" design best, and chose the pearl color I wanted.  Jenn asked me questions all along the way and kept me in the loop during her creation process.  In the end I was provided with exactly what I wanted!  My advice to brides looking for the perfect jewelry is to explore Etsy, find a shop that sells jewelry in a style that you like, and start a conversation with the owner.  More often than not I have found that Etsy sellers jump at the chance to make a custom piece, and it never hurts to ask!

PS: Have I said yet how much I love my new camera?!

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Rustic Blend: Birch Bark Frames

In keeping with our rustic Adirondack theme we didn't want to forget about the table numbers.  Many couples create table numbers that match the look of their invitations or escort cards, but we wanted to do something different.  I found an amazing shop on Etsy called Rustic Blend that makes birch bark photo frames - and the best part is that the owner lives in the Adirondacks!  This is just perfect for us, because not only are we able to keep with our visual theme, we are able to keep with our environmental theme by purchasing from a local craftsman!

I started a conversation with the owner, Faith, through Etsy and we came to the agreement that she could make us ten frames that all look slightly different but are the same size and made of the same materials.  We intend to use most of them for table identification, two will have information about favors and escort cards, and the rest will have photos from our "I Love You" photo shoot.  I say table identification instead of table numbers because we are actually going to name each of our tables after a favorite campground.

I love these frames!  They are high quality, sturdy, and beautiful.  Each frame holds a 4 x 6 photograph.  They came with little dowels to be used as stands, and can rest vertically or horizontally based on our needs.  

Faith even gave us a cute little ornament with our initials on it! ♥

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Tuxedo or Suit?

When deciding on menswear for the wedding, it is important to keep in mind a few things:

1. Formality - How formal is your wedding?  If you want to keep things traditional, then a tuxedo is the way to go.  If you are trying to keep it more casual, then perhaps a suit is the better option.
2. Overall Look - What is the look you are trying to achieve?  How do you want the men to appear in photographs?
3. Price of Renting versus Buying - Renting a tuxedo is not super expensive, but it's a significant cost.  Would you rather spend the extra money and own a suit that could be worn again in the future?

When considering all of those variables, and factoring in the fact that it is only Ryan and my father who need matching attire, we decided that suits were the best option for our wedding.  We looked at some pictures online and liked the appearance of a vest and suit pants, with the jacket taken off.  We also considered colors, and thought that brown would be our first choice, and gray our second choice.

Having made those decisions, we chose two stores to look at - the first was Macy's and the second was Men's Wearhouse.  I have to say, I didn't think that choosing the menswear would be equal to or more stressful than choosing my wedding dress, but it was - and it was a lot less fun.

In both stores, as soon as we crossed the threshold salesmen were attacking us from all sides.  Ryan really just wanted to look around a little bit and get his thoughts together before asking for help, but they wouldn't let this happen.  We didn't even see anything that we liked at Macy's, because they only had one vested suit and it was the totally wrong fit for both Ryan and my father, so we spent a very short time there.

Hoping that Men's Wearhouse would give us a different sales experience, we went over there with high spirits, but were greeted with the same thing.  When describing the look we wanted to the salesman, he was very discouraging and basically tried to tell us that "three-piece suits aren't really being made any more," even though I know that can't be true.  Even though they are not as popular, we all knew that they are still being made, and he should have just showed us what he had.  Instead, he showed us the "only two" vest separates that they had in the store, neither of which were what we were looking for.

At this point, we felt that the image we had in our minds wasn't going to work, and we needed some time to rethink what we wanted to do - alone... without a salesman breathing down our necks.  Unfortunately, this wasn't going to happen.  We explained to the salesman that we wanted a little time to just look around and think and that we would come get him when we were ready for help again, and he left us alone for a few minutes, but very shortly after a second salesman came over to see if we needed help.  We politely declined, but in the amount of time it took us to turn around the original salesman was back again!

My father suggested that he and Ryan just try on a few things, and maybe the act of trying on suits would spark an idea.  Once again my dad has proven that fathers really do know best!  Great advice, Dad!  We couldn't find a lot of brown suits that didn't look like potty colors, so we decided instead that a dark gray pinstripe would be nice.  While pulling jackets off the rack for Ryan to try on, lo and behold, the salesman found a few gray pinstripe three-piece suits with vests!  If he had just let us look at his stock of vested suits to begin with, the whole process would have been a lot easier!  It even turned out that the first vested suit Ryan tried on was perfect and exactly what we were looking for, and they had it in sizes to fit both men!

Success!

Thankfully, picking out the rest of the ensemble was much easier than finding the suit itself.  The salesman, Ryan, my colorblind father, and I pieced together a shirt and tie combination that is going to look amazing.  We decided against a clean white dress shirt, since Ryan intends on wearing only the vest without the jacket, and if he stands next to me in my ivory dress wearing a bleached white shirt, I am going to look like dirty teeth.  Instead, we chose an ecru color, which will make my dress seem brighter.  They have quite a lot of ties to choose from at Men's Wearhouse, and we were easily able to choose a tie that complimented both the suit and shirt, and also had sublte touches of green to compliment my shoes and our wedding colors.

Although we had to deal with some pushy and not-always-helpful salesman today, Ryan and I both like Men's Wearhouse a lot.  This is actually the third suit he has bought from that store, and they always have a really great selection of shirts and ties to fit his needs.  The prices are great as well - today he got a deal that allowed him to buy a second suit for $100, which worked out great since we needed two suits.  It didn't matter that one was for my dad and one was for Ryan, as long as they were paid for together.  Overall we are very happy with the purchase and I look forward to seeing two of the three men I love most in the whole world look amazing on our wedding day!  

(I'm sure my brother will look amazing, too!)

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This blog is called: I Heart Mimi Phillips

This evening our wedding officiant, Mimi Phillips, came over for a visit so we could discuss the progress we've made on our wedding ceremony.  Wow, she's amazing!  I don't think we could have found a sweeter more understanding person to marry us {again} if we'd looked for two more years.  She remembered us on a such a personal level from only one meeting, and even wanted to know how our wine turned out - which we told her we were going to make several months ago.

Back in October when we met Mimi for the first time she loaned us a book called The Wedding Ceremony Planner and we've been reading through it for a couple of months.  Aside from the fact that the author lives in the town next over from where Ryan grew up, I love this book because it breaks down every little part of the ceremony and has worksheets in the back (which appeals to the teacher in me).  We picked out all the different wording that we wanted for the parts of the ceremony and wrote down our favorites on a photocopy of one of the worksheets.  We even found a tree planting ritual in the book, which is absolutely perfect for us, and we are really excited to include this in our ceremony.

We found that, although this took a good chunk of time to do, it was really easy and very worth it.  Thankfully, Ryan and I agreed almost unanimously on which wording was the best for us; however, we are still having trouble finding the right vows.  We didn't really feel like any of the vows in this book fit our personalities, and we can't seem to find what we are looking for on the internet.

This is where Mimi comes in.  She came over to our house and we all sat down together to look at what Ryan and I had been working on over the last several months.  Mimi looked at our worksheet and copies from the book and then dove right in reading aloud the ceremony as we had planned it thus far.  It was really nice to hear her read it aloud, since she will be the one reading it on the day of our ceremony, and it gave us a chance to edit as we went when we heard something that didn't seem right.  Our next step, now that the three of us have combed through the wording, is for Mimi to type everything up and let us look at it, and then work together on finding or creating the vows that are perfect for us.  She plans to practice reading our ceremony a few times and let us know how long it takes her to read.  We are concerned about length, because it will be a July afternoon and could be very hot.

After we looked through the ceremony plans, Mimi stayed for a little while to chat.  We talked about what we have planned so far, looked at pictures of the ceremony site, and ogled over our new wedding rings.  This was especially important because we also had the opportunity to talk to Mimi about our lives on a more personal level and discuss things unrelated to the wedding.  She helped us brainstorm some ideas for things we are having trouble with, and counseled us a little bit on how to deal with Ryan's divorced parents during the ceremony and reception.  This was really important to us, because there are some things that we are going to need some outside perspective in figuring out how to handle, and she has probably seen just about every situation out there at this point in her officiating career!

Mimi is such a great person that we even recommended her to our close friends Erin and Mike, who are getting married in August.  It may seem weird to some people, but I think it would be really cute for us to have the same officiant, and I know that we would really like to see Mimi again after our ceremony!

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Guest Blogging and The Environment

Earlier this week I was asked by Milena of There Is Always Room if I would like to be a guest blogger!  As a professional organizer, this month her blog focuses on wedding planning.  She was interested in my ideas about not using any live flowers (or flowers at all, for that matter) in our upcoming wedding.  I was very honored to be asked to do this and I hope everyone will take some time to visit Milena's blog!

http://indiebliss.com/terrarium-centerpieces/

Reflecting on my post about not using flowers, I started to wonder if people actually knew the environmental costs of cutting live flowers for use as decoration.  There are a variety of sources explaining the environmental and social costs of the cut flower industry, and when researching one has to be careful to make sure the source is reliable.  A site that I particularly like is a blog called Reduce Footprints.  They published an article in December 2008 explaining the negative impacts of cutting flowers, and also offers some ways to keep flowers around in a more environmentally conscious manner.  Please take some time to learn more about the environmental impacts of the actions you take!

I've read the following environmentally conscious books and I highly recommend reading them (or watching the movie for the first one if you don't like to read... which hurts me to say, because I am English teacher):

  

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Etsy Treasury

Maybe I am behind the times, but I just discovered Etsy Treasury, and I love it!  Treasuries are listings of 16 items that a person has chosen to group together for a specific reason, such as items of the same color, theme, or search word (and sometimes for no reason at all).  An individual can create as many treasuries as she wants and then choose to share them with the public or keep them private.

I had a lot of fun playing around with it and I decided for my first treasury I would find items that reminded me of a woodland romance (just for fun).  This is what I came up with:

Then I thought - why not create a treasury of items that I love from Etsy which fit my wedding theme?  So I did!  I chose many of the items that I have already purchased for the wedding from Etsy sellers, and I chose a few others that fit the theme and I loved.  I wanted to embed the treasury into my blog, but Etsy does not have an embed code for treasuries, so they suggested that I add all of the items to my favorites list and share what is called an Etsy Mini. Have fun and create one yourself! I'd love to see what other people come up with!

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