Hey guys and gals, here is our wedding website and Save the Date video links. On the website you can find accommodation info, registry info and you can learn about us and the wedding party! There is also an online guest book and RSVP capability so definitely play around with it!
I called our venue today to check when the final amount of payment was due and he said:
"Sixty days before your wedding date...Oh, I guess that's today."
Holy Crap.
While I have gotten all of the major stuff booked, there is still a LOT left. Instead of shrinking, my to-do list has been growing. List items have been reproducing like bunnies. Though at this point, I think that I may prefer the 50 bunnies instead...They're so soft...
My mom and I have done a lot of DIY shit for this wedding including:
my dress and veil (not done yet)
the bridesmaids' gifts, headpieces and sashes
all the favors
the flower girl basket & ring bearer pillow
the invitations! (all of them)
And yet, suicidally, we still have plans to make more stuff including tags for the favors, place cards for those getting a reserved seat, and a few centerpiece items. Also, I decided that I hated all of the flower girl dresses I saw online. They were either too froofy, or poofy, or stripperish or white. If you check out my Pinterest board you will see how many styles I thought about. In the end, my mom committed to making that too (as well as a dress for her doll). This is the style I picked but in a plum color with a green sash and flower.
And also, we have to make more bubble solution. See, we thought we were being all thrifty by buying them for 70% off but it seems that 2/3 of the tubes are dried out and sticky and the other 1/3 are not 100% full. But, that's not a big deal b/c the cost of the bubbles has always been the tubes anyway seeing how bubble solution is, like, soap and water. Here's a page full o' 3-ingredient recipes. I would call this page Bubbleopolis. In addition to that, we have to do this to all the bubbles:
I don't know why this picture is sideways. The one I uploaded was straight, I tell ya! (that's what she said.)
and the list goes on...
I would like to talk more about my thoughts and the progress of my wedding, but honestly all I can say is that it's exhausting and expensive and overwhelming. The Knot isn't really helping with planning things...what I need is someone like Tony Stark's Jarvis (that's going to paint me as a huge nerd). As you can see from my 1 post a month, blogging about your wedding planning is actually kind of impossible to do DURING the wedding planning. It's not that I don't have anything to talk about but that I just don't have time to blog and when I do have time (like now) I have so much to write about that nothing really flows easily. And also, posts take a long time to write and probably no one cares enough to get through them.
So in the interest in brevity I'll just say "holy crap I'm stressed out!" And hope that I post more than once a month.
P.S. Don't watch What Boys Like. Terrible, vulgar, man-humor involving bloody road kill, nipple piercings, unrealistic skin stretching, raunchy strippers, death by sex and accidental bestiality.
WARNING: stupidly long post with gratuitous amounts of teen fan-girl crush photos. Read at own risk.
If you've been following me, even peripherally, on Facebook then you will know that I have a completely unreasonable, uncontrollable crush on this guy:
Peeta Mellark from the Hunger Games a.k.a. Josh Hutcherson
And while this doesn't really make sense since I'm an almost-married woman and way close to 30 while he isn't even 20 yet, I would like to point out that teen-Lyndsie would probably be writing fan-fiction about him right now. It's been a while since I've even considered fan-fictionizing about someone and my big question is: why now, all of a sudden? To answer this question, I thought it would be worthwhile to look at the history of my past mega-crushes. In reading this post, please remember that I was young once (very young) and stupid (incredibly stupid) so please don't laugh.
First crush: tween years
The first guy I remember seeing in a movie and thinking "wow, he could be my boyfriend" was Erik von Detten who played Andy "Brink" Brinker from the TV Disney Movie Brink.
I think I was about 12 or so when this happened. It was a such a horrible, horrible movie about a surfer from CA moving to CO and learning to snowboard. While he's doing this, he meets a girl (duh) who's a skiier so this rivalry arises between the Sharks and the Jets skiiers and snowboarders. And some stuff happens. He's only a couple years older than me which means that he was also still a baby in this movie, yet somehow I find him cute. I mean, look at his mused, surfer hair and that adorable vacant expression how could a tween girl NOT love him?
Man, if I could've known what he'd look like 15 years later.....
Is it too harsh to say he looks kind of like a sex offender?
Same surfer hair that was only really cute for a very short period in the late '90s, same vacant expression + 15 years. Now he looks SOOOOO sleazy that I'm almost afraid of posting his photo here. Hide your children. What the *!&(#*# was I thinking?! Yikes.....
Ultimate Hot Guy: teen years
Fortunately he only stuck around long enough to make it into one of my stories before he was replaced by a real-life guy crush and one that has held my "ultimate hot guy status" pretty much exclusively since. I have no picture as this was a real-life guy and I never talked to him to profess my undying love for him. However, let me tantalize you with a description of him from my novella Love in the Time of Zombies:
"The man...I have been contemplating him since last night. He just stands there, on the platform, dark and brooding. (...) He stands about six feet tall and wears his long blond hair in a braid. A black fedora tops off his outfit of a suit jacket and jeans. He seems to be packing at least a few guns, the shotgun I noticed earlier and a couple of handguns, for good measure. A long knife also hangs off his belt, unsheathed. Maybe he thinks it makes him look menacing? Occasionally he turns to look around at the crowd, as if searching for someone, and occasionally he fires – the gunshots reflecting in his mirrored sunglasses. "
Let me set the scene: It's 1999, I'm in my second semester of freshman year at Boulder High, and I'm kneeling at my bottom locker trying to fight through the legs of the sophmores and juniors to get my books. When I stand up and turn to walk down the hall I see him: Tall (in my memory he had to be like 6'5''), long blonde hair (down to his waist or even his ass), pale skin, dressed in black, goth dude - flipping his hair in slow-mo (seriously this memory is kind of like a porn) as he swings his (black) backpack over one shoulder. I remember just standing there as people pushed past me. Later I come to learn that his name is August and he is a senior (I think), but that he has a girlfriend. Well goddammit. That was pretty much the end of that. I think I did end up hanging out with the same group of people as he did, but as he was a senior and I was at first way too shy and then later way too distracted/oblivious to talk to or notice him, I never got to know him even as a friend. I don't even know if it really was the guy named August but there you have it.
Even today, the male main characters I write about have part of him in them and I save most of the bad-assery and womanly talents for these guys. He first appeared on paper in my Sparks novella as a fire wizard guy and then later in Love in the Time of Zombies (working title) as the main dude with the giant gun and the fedora. He also became the leader of my fictional band Senz'Ale, and took part in various other ridiculous roles. I never even drew him for fear that my (lack of) skill wouldn't do him justice. The weird thing is that this guy was not my type as long hair on guys usually makes me twitch (probably b/c guys can't do hair) but apparently in Lyndsie fantasy-land it's as nice as girls'.
The Dry Spell: Early College
After that there wasn't much in the way of fantasy guys for a while. I think I was hoping to find a real guy who was like he was from fantasy. In early collge, there was this wizard-in-training guy named Warren from one of Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth novels (I think) but those books started sucking horribly so I abandoned them with little remorse.
Sophisticated Guy Crush: Late College/Grad School
Then in late college I found Simon from Firefly. I literally could not watch the show without sighing tiny little teen-girl sighs.
Simon in the first episode of Firefly
He was so proper and cute and kind of British without the accent that I just wanted to squeeze him. And as the series goes along, he gets a little rougher and a little more scruffy and that just makes me love him all the more.
And holy god doctor, where the hell did you get those biceps?
Of course it helped his case a lot that he was totally into Kaylee, who's just frickin adorable.
You can tell that I still think he was a pretty good choice.
The End: Adulthood
Adulthood is the time where teen-girl fantasy men come to die. At this point you are "all grown up" with a career, a car payment, a co-habiter and in a lot of cases, a husband. Somehow sleep and laundry become higher priority than pining and brooding for hours on your computer over a chat box with a guy who claims he role-plays Simon Tam or some other fantastical Romeo. However, inside every woman, a teenage voice is struggling to be heard and that part of us somehow still wishes we were single and in high school, before the corruption and the betrayal and heartbreak. I don't understand this as romance in high school and that uncertainty really sucked for me, but there you have it. Maybe we all wish we could go back because we know the phase won't last forever, but the thought of being that free again has a silver lining. And as long as we're even slightly aware of pop-culture, we will find some adorable face that will make us secretly *squee*.
A year or so ago, I had a passing crush interest on Vincent Nigel-Murray, the cutie British intern on the TV Show Bones with a head full of detailed but useless facts.
How is that face not the cutest?
He became increasingly cuter as the alternate-reality, fedora-wearing DJ in the season 4 last episode "The End in the Beginning".
Stills just don't do him justice, you need to have him with the face and the mannerisms and the adorable accent all rolled into one.
Now, this will be a spoiler so if you're like me and haven't gotten to season 6 of the Bones DVDs your parents gave you for Christmas then you may want to skip this next paragraph. In searching for pictures and cute videos of him, I found out on the Bones Wiki that he dies at the end of season 6 by being shot in the aorta (yes they're that specific). How sad is that? I think that made my crush on him just a little bigger....Anyway...
Vincent Nigel-Murray was the last one before this new Peeta Mellark phase.
Whether he's trying to be the 16yo from the movie or the 19yo he is in real life,
he's just way too ripped for comfort.
While writing this post I've noticed a something rather interesting. It seems that in general my crushes have been on the characters rather than the actors themselves with the exception of August and Erik Von Detten (and truly, since I only ever knew him in that one movie, I guess you can say that my crush was really on "Brink" and not Erik). For me, you have to have more than just a pretty face (if that's all it took I would have pre-Brangelina Brad, Johnny Depp, Jude Law and a score of other cutie-patootie actors on this list), you have to have a personality. Simon Tam was smart, driven, earnest and fiercely protective of his sister while being a bumbling, slightly-offensive, clueless idiot in the "love" field. Nigel Murray was smart, slightly oblivious to the world, ironic and off-beat.
Then there's Peeta...oh Peeta...you were such a nice guy throughout all three Hunger Games books even when you lost your leg and Katniss was a total bitch to you, jerked on your heartstrings, repeatedly left you for Gale, tried to kill you, refused to kill you...You were nice to everyone in the books, including Gale, and you were completely selfless but not in any sniveling, whining or self-deprecating way. You refused to be beaten down even when you should've totally just given in to sweet, sweet death. And you also saved Katniss from killing herself and ending her own miserable life (intentionally or un- ) more time times than I can count. Suzanne Collins has, in fact, created the ultimate man crush.
And damn you, Josh Hutcherson, you played Peeta to a T with your carefree smile and the complete ease at which you slipped into the character from the book. This was the combination for the perfect storm and it is wreaking havoc on grown women and teen-girls everywhere. Curse you! This is a time when I'm supposed to be slipping more into adulthood and the land of monogamous, fulfilling, mutually beneficial relationships that involve house shopping, family activities and meal-planning. Maybe I know, that in my final months as a widely-known single girl, that I'm allowed only one more fan-girl following. And I believe that I have chosen well.
(And seriously, internet, stop with the fuckin' bread references. I'm certain that 99% of you making these jokes haven't read the book. You just don't get it. Srsly. It's annoying.).
Ok, now that I've gotten that out, and posted way to many pictures for a healthy monogamous relationship, I will stop now. Toodles.
Even though we are having an indoor wedding, Math and I decided that we want a garden theme. It's not really so much that we don't like the outdoors but we would rather sit in the shade and read a book than go backpacking. So for our wedding, we want all kinds of garden-y things that we can't really get on the plains of Colorado very easily: stuff like vines, fruit, leaves, deciduous trees, etc.
To get this effect, we are making our centerpieces out of garden statues, watering cans, bird cages, flower pots, and similar items. Math and I have had some fun shopping for these items BUT...
My mom is kinda out of control when it comes to her thrift store shopping. Ever since we decided to do our centerpieces from thrift stores, She keeps calling me and sending me pictures of centerpiece stuff she's picked up while killing time before dance class or an appointment or whatever. This is only a fraction of the collection we've amassed.
The awesome thing about our florist us that she will take all our stuff in advance, bring it to the venue and set it all up for us! That is a huge undertaking since I'm sure it's going to be heavy! But she is also going to accent them all with flowers. I'm soooo excited to see them!!
Above is an excerpt from the collection of poems by Charles Baudelaire called Les Fleurs du Mal or The Flowers of Evil(click the title for more from that poem and others). And truly, wedding flowers are evil. They are beautiful and evil and, really, ensconced in greed, folly and possibly depravity...though probably not mortal sin. The florists (Satan) lull you into believing that you need $500 or $800 or $2000 worth of flowers and turn your will power and feisty DIY-ittude into a mere payday.
An interesting thing about me is that it is relativelyvery easy to separate me from my money. Annnnd I'm kinda lazy. I knew that if I met with a florist, she'd give me exactly what I wanted (see previous post) at a price. It happened with the caterer and I knew it would happen again. This is why I was reluctant to book florist consultations...I was trying to avoid florists!
My original plan was to DIY those flowers into submission. I did a bunch of research and found via the phone that I could have a florist do my flowers for (at lowest) $600 or I could do it myself for about $100. However...my mom convinced me that it would be way too much effort and stress to do it myself and that I should just check with some florists (she probably wanted to prove to me that it wouldn't be as much as $600). Well I showed her...
Wax Flowers
The price to do just the personal flowers (1 bride bouquet, 9 BrMs' bouqets, 13 bouttoniers, 5 corsages) would be ~$785.00. Which is about what I was expecting. I knew she was putting some mini calla lilies (which are like $5-$10 per stem) into my bouquet, and I also knew that, contrary to popular belief, wax flowers are not cheap (but are very cute!). Here is a rough estimate of the itemized list:
- My bouquet: $150
- Bridesmaids' bouquets: $30-40 ea.
- Groom's bouttoniere: $7-$15
- Bouttonieres: $6.50 each
- Wrist corsages: $18
- Pin corsages: $15
Spider Mum (from the Chrysanthemum Family)
I also did like the florist a lot, she hates baby's breath (like me) and she is energetic and talkative and very personable. I feel comfortable trusting her. Another cool thing that she said she'd do, is accent our statuary/planter/nest centerpieces with flowers and purple fruit (eggplants, plums). This is extra-cool b/c she even said that she would take all our decor, make the fresh flower accompaniments and set it up for us. HOLY CHRIST, REALLY? That in itself might be worth the added expense of having her make the centerpieces. She EVEN said that she would not include extra delivery or set up charges for that (she's gonna be toting around at lest 2-3 boxes of statuary, so I gotta give the lady a round of applause for that assertion).
Some centerpiece statuary we have!
So.....I was sold. I mean, isn't it better to get someone with expertise anyway? And, c'mon, flowers need to be done the day or so before the wedding and what bride will have time to do all that?! Not me, baby, I plan to go to the spa with my girlies, eat lots of food and drink (moderately) until 10AM on the big day. By July 13, I'm going to be DONE (mentally as well as physically) with wedding DIYs and "have-to-do's".
Purple irises - The one flower I've wanted in my bouquets since last March!
*Unfortunately*.....I'm going to now have to go to other florists and get a price comparison to prove to the Parents that really this is about the price of flowers, before I can give the original lady the go ahead. *Sigh* it seems that everyone thinks that when you get engaged it's like you were bitten by a radioactive love bug and can now turn into the Super Marriage-Planner of DOOM!
"Free time? Sure I have lots! Family? Fiance? Don't worry, they all know that I'm out using my powers for good! Or at least for not-evil."
I can't wait until all the stuff is booked! Then I can clear up my calendar and actually have some time for ...*gasp*... dinner parties and me-parties and exercise!
I want my bouquet to be something like this:
crazy and complicated (with feathers)!
I've decided to make A LOT of stuff for the wedding, partially to save money and partially to make stuff that's exactly what I want. Because you see...While it's possible to get the "perfect wedding" with no more effort than dialing some numbers on your phone, you will have to pay out the ass for such a luxury. Sure, lots of companies customize stuff to your tastes, but a non-mass produced item will take more time and supplies (no fault of the craftsmen and women, I'm sure they do great work it's just..) Well, my time isn't worth that much, so being a DIY bride is a great answer. Plus, I can choose how I get my supplies and I can do so at the very lowest cost possible.
(**For those who are not blog-a-holics like me, DIY means "Do It Yourself")
The finished headpieces. Unfortunately, the purple doesn't show up so well
on the black background. The flower girl headband is there too.
Over the weekend Mom and I started on our Mega Wedding Crafts. (It's "mega" because we need 9 BrMs' headpieces, 9 BrMs' necklaces, 9 BrMs' sashes, my veil, ring pillow, flower basket, head thing for the flower girl, decorations, signs, maps, invites.....and the list goes on). However, if we can have a few weekends like this last one, we will get it all done in no time!
The first thing we worked on were the BrM's headpieces. It probably cost around $20 for all the materials and we didn't even use up everything. I did burn myself a couple of times with hot glue melted at the "nuclear" setting, but as they say: "No pain, no wedding." Do people say that? Well, if they don't, they should!
The Burn. I had a worse on on the corner tip of my right index finger
that hurt a lot more but didn't photograph well.
What you'll need per headpiece:
1 Barette Colored feathers Small "Silk" Leaves & Roses Any Color Felt Hot Glue Gun
1). Cut an oval out of the felt that roughly matches your barette. I used the shape of a Goody "ouchless" barette from the super market ( $3.99 for 2). However, for most of the others I ended up using another kind that was more rectangular, b/c they were cheaper and worked just as well.
2. Glue gun all over the felt (sounds dirty ,doesn't it?) and place the feathers in a circle trying to cover the whole felt. Don't worry if you can't get it all b/c the rest of the stuff you add will ensure the felt is covered. Do this with all colors desired, adding glue as needed (but careful! It gets hot! Remember my pain). Make sure to have the "curve" of the feather all pointing the same way otherwise it doesn't seem to lie flat.
My mom got the feathers from a fly-fishing store for ~$3/pkg (x3 colors for me: purple, green, gray), but you can get them at a craft store as well.
3). For leaves and flowers, you can find them at your local Craft Store (wedding section) for $4-$10/pkg which gives you a lot. Also, look for coupons because I know places like Michael's and JoAnn fabrics have them frequently. Use a wire cutter to cut the stems off the leaves and flowers. Sometimes they're sold in bunches with paper holding the stems together, so you have to rip them apart first. I glued two different colors of leaves together for added depth, but 1 color is good too. Add leaves in a triangle in the center of your feather circle.
4). At this point I kind of cheated because Mom knows how to tie flies so she took some pheasant feather strings and tied them together with the other feathers to give it an added layer of color and texture. However, you could probably add more small feathers for the same effect.
5). Glue roses in the center of the leaves. Make sure to use some glue to stick the flowers to each other for stability.
6). Wait for them to be pretty dry then glue onto the barrette. Once they are all the way dry, bend the leaves up a bit for a more 3D look that makes your flowers look not so "out there".
The finished green one
These can be worn off to the side or in the back, I may let the girls decide. I'm probably also going to put a little bit of colored birdcage netting on a hair comb to turn it into a '50s-style "hat", though I don't really know how that will work yet.
We got our first registry gift recently! Unfortunately, I bought it for us. You see, this is the weird thing about registries....
Our (hopefully) new bedding set! (Crate and Barrel) - Need 1, Have 0
Wait, let me start with some back story. When Math and I got engaged we were all " Oh...we don't need much. maybe we'll just register for a nice set of dishes and a few thing we need (like a pizza cutter and cookie sheet). Maybe a food processor." We picked Crate and Barrel and Bed, Bath and Beyond as our registry places of choice since they're pretty wide spread.
The Agave Bowls
One day in June of 2011, I was walking through C&B, not even intending to shop, when I saw The Agave serving Bowl and mini bowls. It was love...perfect color, artsy shape and food safe! I was just going to buy it outright, but there was one teeny problem: It was $70 and the minis were $35 each. Well shoot. Then I thought "Hey! I'm getting married, I'll just start my registry!" I knew it was super early, but I checked with the clerk and they confirmed that there were thousands in the warehouses so it was likely to last for the next 13 months. So I decided to chance it and I went home and straightaway started a registry online.
Little did I know that this would unleash a monster. After registering for a few things at C&B online, Math and I were shopping (well I was shopping, he was walking!) downtown Boulder in around September, and we decided to go into Peppercorn which is an independent kitchen and bed supply store that has cutesy things as well as high-end functional kitchenware. Well...they had some cute stuff and I hadn't registered in a store so I wanted to try. Two hours later, more or less, I came out with a Peppercorn registry and a FREE gift that included some cooking utensils and chocolate.
Our dishes set. So lovely!! (Crate and Barrel) Need -12, Have - 0
WOW!! That was fun, so next it was off to C&B for my in-store registry process and free gift (small rectangular vase). Then in the subsequent 5 months I had a registry at those two places plus Bed, Bath and Beyond, Sur La Table and Macy's (Sadly, no more free gifts, though I haven't yet gone into Macy's physically...so who knows?). We also now had around 200+ items on our registries, from the large ($399 food processor) to the small ($3.99 garbage disposal cleaning capsules). We are also registered for some of the same things on two or more registries (currently just pots and possibly also knives) just in case some of our guests are more Macy's or BB&B shoppers.
I put so much stuff on for 3 reasons: 1) It's really annoying if a couple isn't registered for much at one store thus making it a PITA for last minute shoppers to actually buy a gift in the store. 2) let's face it, there is so much cute/useful stuff that you would totally buy if you had infinite money that would replace your worn/crappy stuff! 3) You get into this mentality that it wouldn't hurt to have extras of some things (slotted spoons) and that you should be allowed to have nicer stuff (fancy serving spoons instead of the plastic ones) now that you're entering into "real adulthood". And bonus #4) You find all the things that you would really "like to have" but can't bring yourself to buy (note the $399 food processor listed above. That sexy beast).
The Sexy Food Processor - I'm registered for it at Sur La Table, but I think you can get it other places too!
Which leads me to how I got my first registry gift. I noticed in one of my compulsive registry checks that The Bowl was now in "Limited Quantities" and probably would not last till the wedding. Luck was with me in some respect as it was now only $30 instead of $70. Since it was the reason I started the blasted registry so dang early, my (il)logical brain told me that I HAD to have it and wouldn't stop thinkring about it till it was mine. One of my BrMs did suggest that I tell someone to buy it for me but I found this a little awkward. So I told her and waited 2-3 weeks and when it was still on the registry as "Need - 1, Have - 0" I decided to buy it outright. And I did.
I know it was a pretty rediculous move and I don't need a giant green glass bowl but registries make you greedy. You go "pretend shopping" with real item and get attached. And really, it's TOO easy to buy stuff when you're not actually spending money. Nevermind that you don't actually GET the gift...it's effectively yours. You're entitled to it. You must have it, because, don't you already have it anyways? It's kind of like the feeling you'd get if someone just came into your kitchen, took all your plates, and walked out.
In conclusion, registries = basal consumeristic greed but also = fun!!
