Wedding Week: Hooray We're Finally Married!

Thanks so much for joining me for wedding week!  I hope you enjoyed it - I know I love sharing pieces of our special day :)

I don't know about you, but if I had to do it all again I would just elope.  In a heartbeat! I'm going to comer right out and say it - I hate wedding planning. Don't get me wrong I loved having all my family and friends there to celebrate with me, but putting a wedding together is HARD! I'm not a huge fan of deciding what everyone is going to eat, I don't really care what anyone wears, and I'll let you in on a little secret - my decorating is random at best, so trying to figure all that out was a nightmare.

I have a question for all you married ladies out there.  One of the very best moments of my life was when we were driving away from the church, knowing that I was officially done with wedding planning.  Was it the same for you?

These pictures pretty much capture what after the wedding freedom felt like for me - this is us right after we pulled up at my parents' house, before we jetted off to Ft. Worth for the night.  And this dress is waaaaay more comfortable than the wedding gown!  Another kind of after the wedding freedom I guess!

Apparently Laura was happy too :)

Wedding Week: Wedding Day Survival Kit

When I got married my good friend Tracy put together this handy and adorable wedding day survival kit for me!

 Taking a look at all the goodies packed inside at the shower

Seriously, everything I could think to need was packed in here - from extra deoderant, to tylenol.  Even a mini bottle of tequila!  I didn't end up needing that one...

Plus it was all decorated super cute!  With a little time and a little thought this would be a great gift for any brides in your life.  I can pretty much guarantee yours won't be as cute as mine though ;)

Mine has already been passed on to my sister.  Neither of us needed much of what was in there but it was sure nice to know it was on hand for emergencies!!! (Like cherry juice on the flower girl dress 5 minutes before the wedding is supposed to start!)

Thanks Tracy!!

Wedding Week: Library Shower Guest Book

This post really ought to be one of my "Focus on the crafts of others" posts, but since I already had the "Wedding Week" headline, it felt like a little much... 

Anyways, here's a quick little post about a fun craft one of our friends/coworkers whipped up for our shower!  If you don't know, both Stephen and I are library employees.  He works in the glamorous music library - I started out there as a student worker, but now I'm a real staff member, and I'm down in the dingy, falling-apart basement (It's not all as bad as that - at least I can see out the window into the garden from my desk). About a month before our wedding both of our departments got together and threw us an awesome summer/beach themed shower!  It was a lot of fun! 

One of my favorite things at the shower was the guest book.

Most of you have probably never checked out a score from our music library, but this is what they look like.  I spent many years as a student worker sewing the loose scores into these gray covers so I was particularly tickled that the guest book was done up as a score, with it's own call number label, and reserve tape.  I can't remember for sure, but I think there is a strip of tattle tape in there too...

I'm not sure about the opinions of the other student workers in the music library, but I loved sewing scores.  It was probably my number one favorite duty during my student worker time.  Just goes to show you I'm a crafter at heart!  If you recall, I used the same technique to make my wedding programs.

Thanks library friends for the awesome guestbook and the awesome shower!

Wordless Wednesday Wedding Week: Cute flower girls edition

*Photos by the wonderful Nicole Berrett

Wedding Week: Belgian Lace Wedding Veil

Since I settle for nothing less than the best, I decided it was a good idea to fly to Brussels to shop for my wedding veil.  After all, no expenses should be spared for my big day.  Ok, the real deal is I got to go to Brussels for free since I'd just been canned (well technically "laid off") from my job, and my mom and my aunt were going anyways, so they invited me to come along. Regardless, I did get my wedding veil from Belgium!

Lace making demonstration in the lace shop - holy moly!  How do they do it!

Granted, this is not a craft I made myself, but since the veil was handcrafted, and it is beautiful, I felt it deserved a place on the blog!

Modeling my future wedding veil - looks great with the pink sweater doesn't it??

Before the trip, I was about ready to say "no thanks, I'm going without a veil."  All the ones we'd seen and tried on were just... bleh!  I didn't want something that looks like I could have thrown it together with about $10 worth of tulle and other supplies that I picked up at jo-ann's (especially when they were charging 10 times as much for it!)  My mom had the idea that when we were on our Belgium trip we could look for lace veils.  Great plan!  It was easy to fall in love with them!  (BTW - All photos from here forward were taken by Nicole Berrett, except the one of my sister)  During my bridal and wedding photo sessions, Nicole made sure to get some shots to high light the veil.

This style of lace is called "princess lace" it was a big oval that we folded over at the top and sewed to a hair comb which we just stuck into my bun, see?

Hey - I guess that I did do a little crafting on this one after all!  Except my mom actually sewed it on.  The idea was to attach it in a way that the next bride to use it could easily unattach the comb and style the veil as she chose, which my sister did for her wedding in February:

Sorry for the dark picture, but see how she wore it shorter than I did?

Now the veil has been tucked away again, waiting for the next bride to come along and make all her other bride friends jealous!  Wanna wear it yourself?  I've got a single brother ;)

Now for some more veil shots of beautiful beautiful me! During both of my photo sessions with Nicole we had designated veil-holder-outers.  Don't be fooled, I'm pretty sure there wasn't a lick of wind in the air either day.

Look how sweet we are!  Plenty of room for two in this veil!

And just for the heck of it - ain't I a sultry vixen?

Wedding Week: Wedding countdown calendar!

In honor of my and my husband's first anniversary on Sunday,  I chose this week to high light some of the crafts we did leading up to the big day!  To start, I made a wedding countdown calendar to help us keep track of how long was left till our wedding day!

It's made of plain old construction paper and some red gingham print ribbon.  It was super simple and super cute!  I think it went about 1 or 2 months out. I cut the ribbon long enough to hang it on the cabinet.  Jump to the last photo to get an idea of what I'm talking about.  Each day had the date and the number of days left written on it, and each day we got to tear off a page.  Fun!!  Unfortunately any before pictures I have are missing somewhere in the depths of the computer.  However I do have some action shots!

Here I am pulling off Day 43. 

This was sometime in June, June 6th I think... It was also the day of Holly's wedding which is why I'm looking so gorgeous.  I know I don't look it yet, but that's because the light is bad and my hair isn't dry yet.  Don't believe me about how beautiful I ended up?

Tada!  Told you :)

Here's me, suspiciously pulling off June 13th.  Perhaps I'm rethinking the engagement?  Nah!  Probably just rethinking the photo op.

Stephen and I pulling off the final day - this was when we came home after the rehearsal dinner.  Our final hours as singletons!

Zero days left! Hooray hooray hooray!!

Big B: My very first stamp

I think stamp carving is so cool.  I love it!  I learned about it from my old boss, Sha, because he carves stamps for letterboxing (a fun hobby!  Look it up!).  A long long time ago, back in my Plano days, I bought Stephen a Speedball stamp carving kit since he was getting interested in letterboxing.  Well that darn kit sat around in his room for months and months and months.  I guess he just wasn't interested in the crafty side of letterboxing.   I haven't bought him a surprise since*.

As you may know, I married this non-crafty guy this past July.  We decided to print the programs ourselves to save some cash.  We didn't want to just hand everyone a folded piece of paper, so we decided to do a card stock cover sewn to a piece of pretty computer paper with the order of service printed on it.  We wanted to put something on the cover of the program but couldn't put the card stock through the printer so a nice stamp seemed like a good idea, and we wanted a big B (for bunnies, butane, and broccoli).  We searched around and couldn't find any big enough or good looking enough. Lucky for me that stamp carving kit was still sitting around!  We found a font we liked on the computer, sized it just right and transferred the image onto the pink stamp carving material! FYI, stamp carving is really pretty easy, especially for basic shapes.  It's just tracing!

Anyways, the stamp came out great, and I love how our programs turned out! I will just pretend that everyone oooh-ed and aahhh-ed over them at the wedding.  Check out a few photos of our program assembly.

Hammering nail holes into the program pieces.

I learned this technique sewing scores when I was a student worker at the library.

Who knew I'd use my mad skilz again!

Stephen is a happy helper!

And the finished product!  B-utiful!

*Not true