Project Wedding Decor

Being the thrifty crafty girl I am, I decided to do my wedding decorations myself. It helps that it's at my house and mostly outdoors, that gives the setting and feeling and a lot of decor without having to get flowers and things. Having i an open house-y reception with finger foods instead of a sit down meal means no tablecloths or centerpieces. So, my challenge is to make all of my decorations using some tissue paper and crepe paper from Dollar Tree, a few packs of cupcake holders from Walmart, and two scrapbook paper stacks I got half off at Joann. Let the DIYing begin!

Dear Ikea,

I NEED these. Honest I do. via

As a long time Ikea customer, I thank you for providing quality, stylish products at an affordable price. Items from Ikea can be found in my bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, and living room; as well as my plans for my future dream home. My fiancé and I often go to Ikea and talk about what furniture we will fill our house with some day. In fact, I even plan on using Ikea pieces as part of our wedding decor, such as Kardemumma pots and Blomster candlesticks.

However, there is one product in particular which I have been wanting for some time, but sadly now that my big day has come, I found that they have been discontinued. The Färm vases which I used to admire and long for every time that I went to Ikea are no longer available. Upon making this discovery, I immediately searched online to see if I could find these beautiful vases through another source, and I was shocked at what I found. No where on Amazon, eBay, or Craigslist was a single seller offering Färm vases. Yet a google search did show an extreme demand for them. Search results led me to hundreds of desperate customers searching for this exact product, especially brides-to-be each hoping to find 50 or more vases to complete their wedding decor. One particularly poignent example can be found at this popular wedding site, in which several brides arrange to ship a single set of much sought after Färm vases back and forth across the country every few weeks so that each can make these splendid products a part of their most important days.

I understand that business can be difficult, and I trust that trained experts made the decision to discontinue the Färm vases. But even with my small knowledge of economics, it seems to me that the demand far exceeds the supply. I don't know what the reasons were for discontinuing this product, but I do know that if it were in any way possible to start producing Färm vases once more, not only would it make thousands of customers extremely grateful, but I also believe we would be willing to pay whatever price is necessary to make it profitable to continue providing this magnificent product. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Kelli Wiswell

Sure it's a bit melodramatic, but my English teacher always told me that an emotional appeal is a very useful rhetorical device. via

Pearls

Jackie O, fashion icon and wife of President JFK was known for always wearing a strand of pearls, beautiful, simple, and elegant. But guess what, after she died, they discovered that those pearls she was so well known for were fake! How cool is that?

Just look at all those beautiful pearls. I just might die and go to June Cleaver heaven.

Well, I want to be just like her. I bought four packs of glass pearls for about $10 and started stringing away.

So many sizes and colors, how can a girl choose?

I've made six bracelets already, and I still have quite a few beads left. I just need to decide now exactly which styles I like and what I want. I might take a couple of them apart that I don't like as much to make even more bracelets or a necklace or two.

I ran out of ideas before I ran out of beads.

But that pearl necklace. I'm in love! I don't think I'll ever ever take it off. Ever.

Colors

The first step in planning a wedding is deciding on the colors. You can't really start making decorations or picking out dresses if you don't know what color they need to be. My favorite colors are pink orange and yellow, and Brian's favorite color is blue, but I had no idea what shades we liked best or would go together. To help us decide, I thought I'd get some paint chips.

66 paint chips to be exact.

Now, I don't have a drivers' license yet, let alone a car or free time, so I have to take advantage of the times I go out and use them to the fullest. My sister and I had been shopping all day and only had a few minutes to get back to preschool to pick up Dean, when I suddenly remembered I wanted to stop by Home Depot. I literally ran in and ran out (and ran all over the store trying to find the paint chips, because it wasn't set up like the Home Depot I was used to). I didn't have time to carefully sort through and find the ones I liked, so I just grabbed every pink, orange, yellow, or blue chip I saw.

113 colors. Hopefully we can find four we like.

To make them a little more manageable (and to make them fit in my notebook) I cut all the colors into 113 half inch squares (remember when I warned you I'm a little bit crazy?).

It looks like I'm doing a 3rd grade mosaic art project. Is anyone else in the world this intense about picking wedding colors? Probably not.

Now time to narrow down. A lot of colors were almost exactly the same, and some I just didn't like.

64 made the cut. That's almost down to half, getting closer.

Then I arranged them into color schemes to see how they actually looked together. Originally I loved the bright colors with the sea-foam green, but I started leaning towards more of a vintage-y pastel or darker since it's a fall wedding, not spring.

Notice the one that's circled isn't any of my starred favorites.

But of course the final pick was determined by what we could get. And these were the colors of skinny ties available. I'm sure we could get skinny ties in any color imaginable, but how could I pass up $2 ties with free shipping? We got all 14 ties for the wedding party for less than my shoes (and my shoes were pretty cheap).

The colors we decided on were kind of an average of my other favorites, I love them!

What should I blog about?

I just realized I haven't blogged yet today, but I didn't have any ideas, so I asked Brian what I should blog about, and he said him, so here goes. Sometimes I like to pretend that this blog is big and famous and interesting, and not just my own personal diary of sorts, so I try to stay somewhat impersonal. Sure I talk about what I'm doing, but not much about what I'm thinking or feeling. Well you know, even those big famous bloggers talk about their personal lives, and I love to read about them, so maybe someone will like to hear about me. Especially since all my followers actually do know me personally.

Well, in case anyone doesn't know, Brian is my fiance. But I guess I haven't even mentioned him except when we first started dating and when he proposed. I love him to pieces and can't wait to spend forever and ever with him, but I'm still not one for all this mushy gushy talk-about-my-feelings stuff, so I'll just let you check him out for himself at his blog and vlog. Especially this one, that he proposed to me with!

One Week Gone

Is it just me, or are summer's insane? I always hear people talking about how relaxing summer is, how they have so musch free time to just play and do whatever they want. My summers are NOT like that. Summer is always the busiest time for me. Not that I have a lot of homework or work (no way could I ever have a summer job), just that I'm always going somewhere or doing something. I never have a minute to just relax by the pool, in fact I'm rarely in one state for more than two weeks at a time. And on top of all that, there's no routine, so I don't have the benefit of getting into a groove and knowing how to fit everything in.

My big wedding notebook. I swear I'm not a bridezilla, I just know what I want.

So when everyone tells me that six months is so long for an engagement (being Mormon, the average engagement is about two months) or that October is so far away, I'm just thinking, "are you crazy, I don't know how I'm going to get it all done!" It doesn't help that I'm planning on doing everything—making my dress, 17 dresses for the wedding party, the food, the cake, the decorations, and the list goes on and on. I came to California to have time to focus on this and only this, right? and yet somehow the time slips away. My mom and I figured that over the entire summer, we'll only actually have about five weeks to plan, and guess what, one is already gone! How did that happen? Can anyone tell me? The wedding may be four months away, but I only have four weeks of actual planning time left.

Wedding planning central.

So. Now? It's crunch time. Majorly. Cue crazy obsessive compulsive bride. I've always been very organized (even if I'm not always neat and tidy). It helps me think and not get so overwhelmed when I have a million things to do. I guess I got it from my mom, she always has at least five of those spiral-bound notebooks you get at back to school sales for 10 cents. She writes her to-do lists, menus, sketches, whatever she needs. But sometimes that's even more confusing to me, how do you find what your looking for in all those pages. Which is why I'm also pretty techy like my dad. I mean, I have a MacBook, an iPod touch (for the to-do list functions, I don't even have any music on it), and an iPad. But sometimes, once I've gotten everything all figured out with all the technology, that handy dandy notebook is more tangible, and a better keepsake than a bunch of Numbers documents.

My to-do list. Only written in my notebook after perfected in a Numbers spreadsheet, of course.

The first step was a to-do list. There are so many that you can find online, but my wedding is not nearly as elaborate as some (wedding planner—my mom, reception venue—my house, ceremony venue—the temple, calligrapher—you're kidding, right?). Also, as previously mentioned, I don't have much time. Most wedding checklists start over a year before the wedding. But, after lots of combining and deleting and rearranging and revising, I have my to do list. Now to start doing!

Wisconsin

I finally have the time to write about my fantabulous trip to Wisconsin. It's such a cute, fun, and super friendly place. I could definitely live there someday! Here's a bit of what we did:

Saw a gazillion adorable farms all over as we drove from one place to another.

Visited Epic, the company my brother-in-law works for. The campus is, well, EPIC. This is just the tiniest taste of all the random and super cool stuff they have. Each building has a theme, and they absolutely decorate to the fullest.

Played lots of games with JT.

Hung out with Haylee. This girl is just the cutest, she cracks me up with all her faces.

Played in the snow. Because you know, rainy Utah wasn't Springy enough for my first Spring Break, so I decided to go to snowy Wisconsin for my second.

Went to the zoo. One of the best zoos I've been to, and it was free! All the animals were awake and active, I had at least as much fun as the kids.

Visited the trolls.

Decided to move to Mount Horeb and start my bakery right away. I can see it now, just change the "rt" to an "n" and 19 to 20. And look at this great space for lease, it's right next door to a wedding dress shop, it would be the perfect place to sell wedding cakes, right?

CHEESE! Enough said.

Celebrated Haylee's 2nd birthday.

And Easter.

And tried desperately to get a picture of me with the kids. Not happening. They like me, I promise, they just don't like sitting still.