I have secrets!

I bought the presents for my parents, my MOH, & my husband-to-be and I just want to give them to them and talk about it!!!

But I can't!! And it's killing me!

I had to wrap them up so that I'd stop messing with them... or have Mr. SB accidentally find them. Although, they were hidden in my big pile o' wedding crafts.. and area he stays far far away from.

None are super-stellar awesome gifts, but each took though and searching and I hope they enjoy.

The gifts, patiently waiting in the garage!

Next to last paper crafts...

Yes, I've blogged about this ad nauseum, but the programs are getting completed this weekend! I tried to make Mr. SB help last night and he kindly reminded me that he works 3-11pm Friday and Saturday nights which would be PERfect crafting sessions. Thanks, honey.

Anyway, the format is the same, but the two programs (for the two ceremonies) are slightly different. A cool accident happened... I ran out of the patterened paper that I wanted to use for the belly band, but then I realized if I did one set of programs with patterned and the other with solid green belly bands, you could easily tell them apart. Nice. :) (*Gotta take joy where you can find it!)

The idea was to mimic the invites.. and I think we achieved that.

Burned out photo. Oops.

Up close of how I used the monogram I designed, way back when.

Inside, duh

I have this thing... I am totally and utterly paranoid about letting the printer run without me sitting right next to it, cheering it on. I realize this is crazy, esp after as many trial runs as I do. So this evening after two.straight.hours. test printing, and printing in small annoying batches, I pushed "Print 10" (*I need 40, but 10 at a time is a big step for me.) and went to get dressed to work out.

And then! The printer gods reminded me why I'm so afraid of them.

It cut off our names!!!!!!!!!!! It did NOT look like this on the ones printed prior, I checked!

Here's my patch up. I don't love it, but I'm deep breathing and keeping them. Well, except the one I messed up and threw away.

Any tips for satiating the printer gods??

Shout out to the Dollar Store

I just wanted to give props to my favorite wedding shopping store. Sure Michael's is great, and we love our registry stores, but hello!! Dollar Store. You've been a life (& budget) saver.


A few things I've gotten there:

• Floral wire - and lots of it.
  
• Mini hot glue gun sticks - yeah. They even had MINI ones.
  
• Tissue paper
• Wrapping paper
• Items for the bathroom baskets
• A bathroom basket
• Picture frames for bathroom basket poems

Our little (snobby) town doesn't have stores like Target or Wal-Mart, but we do have one of these. And hooray for that.

Do you have any favorite hidden gems?

Single file line every one!

I've been stressing about the walking-down-the-aisle order for some time.

Why would I worry about something like that? Well...

• We won't have grandparents in attendance.
• Mr. SB's mom doesn't have a date or a male relative.
  
• We don't really have traditional ushers.
• My mom is having three brothers in attendance and doesn't want to pick just one as an escort. And all three would look ridiculous.
  
• Our wedding party is super small.

So... right. All of the postings of "this is how you do it" don't really apply. I think our way of "doing it" will be as follows.

• Mr. SB walks his mom. (Not typical. I know.)
• My mom + ringbearer (My little brother.)
• Best Man (He can't be standing alone at the front is Mr. SB is walking in with his mom as part of the processional)
• Maid of Honor
• Bride + dad

Really and truly, I'd love suggestions. This just doesn't seem quite right still...

Tag punch, woohoo!

I'm stuck at home today waiting for a furniture delivery (yay!) and was stoked to finallyyyyyyyyyy get my tag punch in the mail!

So stoked, I even took a picture of the box. I'm that cool.

What does one do with an awesome tag punch??


Make tags!! Of course!

Escort cards (on the table during cocktail hour to tell you what table to sit at). Attached to the wine charms. With a note that those are in fact wine charms and you are to use and keep them. :)

Seat assignments (on the ubiquitous poms at your seat). Yeah, I'll be the one attaching the tags to the poms. I'm pretty sure Mr. SB's head'll explode if I ask him to do one more thing w/ the poms.

Initially, I wrote them like I did for the lime pom... and you can't see it at all. But I think writing it on the side, like the "Dad" one looks fine. And the caterers have asked that we have assigned seating to make meal delivery easier. Cool.

I also had a mini-panic attack that I should print (like with a printer) and not hand write the names. Then I realized how hard that would be to line up and totally got over it.

Any other ideas on how I can use my awesome tag punch??

Back to the hair flower idea...

So a while back, I was really inspired to make myself a hair flower. After the failure of that idea, I picked out the sparkly clip I'll be wearing.

At my hair trial, the stylist asked what I had bought for my MOH to put in her hair (a low side bun). Which is nothing. So feeling a little bad... I ventured back to hair flower land.

Here's what we got...

Flower One. Pretty, delicate. But... huge.

Flower two. Better size, but not as pretty.

Side by side of 1 & 2.

I didn't have any other flower petals to work with.. the ruffly ones were too big and the smaller ones were lower quality. So what's a girl to do? Brainstorm!

Flower three. Better!

I had to cut apart 1 & 2 to make three, but here are the comparisons. I'm pretty happy w/ how it turned out. We'll see how it looks in her hair.

Man it feels good to conquer a project that previously conquered me!!

Any input to make it look better? More pearls? or feathers?

Not-so-great hair day

I had my hair trial today. I was really excited about it.. bc I had a pretty clear vision of what I wanted my hair to look like. (Remember Stephanie? Well, that.) And I really really like the woman that does my hair... so off I go on this rainy day.

Results: (*Click any picture to make it bigger)

That goofy smile? Yeah, that's bc this dumb shot took like 5 tries!

Look at that focus!

I took, no lie, three(!?) shots of my ear/door before figuring out the mirror/back-of-head technique.

The right side, with pretty hair clip.
And toothpaste. Yuck! :)

The plain side & back view.

To be honest... Overall, I'm not thrilled.

The changes I asked for were:

• Less hair up, more down
• More "twisting" of the hair on the sides so there's some interest
• Not so tight on the sides so my ears are more covered (I kind of did that already)
• And I'm getting a cut in two weeks to add some layers/highlights that'll help too

What I DID like, is that it's super comfortable. The hair is out of my face, but still "down" like Mr. SB likes. I like the shape of the front/top. And it seems to be holding up well. Oh! And it looked great with the veil.

I'm a little nervous that I'm not having another trial... but I think (and hope and cross my fingers that) she really understood the changes I was after.

Ok, time for input! What else should I ask for?