...i heart fabric...

Finally, some wedding photos...

So, J & I got married on Sept 16th, 2007 and I'm finally posting some pictures of the wedding. I kept putting if off as there were 2000 photos to go through! Here are a few of our fabulous evening wedding on the Skansonia Ferry Boat that is parked on north Lake Union, Seattle. 

"I Do!"

Our friend Scott (who performed the ceremony), The Bride & Groom...

The cakes...

There are more pics on my Flickr page and I'm adding more of the band and the dancing soon. It was an amazing evening, so exciting and romantic. Our friend's The Dusty 45's swung the night away and everyone danced after a lovely buffet. The Skansonia is the perfect location for a vintage inspired wedding and they take care of almost everything for you! All you have to do is show up, that is my kind of wedding :)

Plans, Plans, Plans...

So, I havn't been writing much about the wedding plans as I sort of want to save a lot of it to show after the day. I have gone a bit Martha with a few projects because I really felt like I needed to make something for the wedding for it to be real :) For people who are handy and crafty, you will know what I mean.

Cake Toppers: I've made the cake topper, but I'm only going to post my inspiration pictures here for now. The upper left hand topper is by Denise Sharp, the bottom left is by Ann Wood and the bottom right is by Ashley Carter. We are having a cake stand that holds 4-5 cakes instead of one big wedding cake. The Wholefoods here is Seattle do beautiful cakes that are only around $24 each. I also want one of the levels to be a cake topper with cupcakes around it. It will be a variety of cuteness and fun!

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.                                                . Favors: This idea from Martha Stewart magazine is how we are going to be displaying our black and white favors. I've made the banner from big white tags, sticker letters & ribbon bought at JoAnn's.

The little favor boxes look something like this only with dots. Plus more ribbon & little charms from JoAnn's.

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The Invites: They went out a while ago, but I havn't had a chance to write about them. I wanted to wait until our guests received them anyway. I was looking online at different and beautiful invites when I came across the perfect one. It was totally different from what I had in mind, but was perfect for us. Here is a picture of the invite proof.

It's a 3 fold white card with a super cute vintage photo of a couple dancing with lampshades on their heads. I found them on www.invitationlane.com under 'Something Different'. The price was great and you got a lot of extras like little tissue squares and inside envelopes. We also ordered the matching rsvp cards.

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The Dress: So, my dress is almost done. I had my final fitting and they have a few more tweeks to do, but it is looking amazing! I'm going to put a picture of the sketch for it here and post pictures from the wedding later. I've ordered red salsa shoes from a dance shoe website which makes the shoes super comfortable and so cute!

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The Hair: This is a tiny picture of what I'm planning for my hair. I want it to be down in a 50's style with wave and a clip. I'm still debating a little hat. I have my hair & make-up trial at the Derby Salon on Sept 4th. So exciting as I never get to primp :) All is pretty much going to plan, we have a few more things to pick up (booze, cake, license) but full steam ahead to Mrs. now!

Blossoms...

I walked down to Ballard today for my appointment with the flourist at Ballard Blossom to pick out my bouquet flowers for the wedding. I'm going with all red roses, gerber daisies and a few other gorgeous red flowers. Similar to this bouquet that I found on brides.com. It will be a tight, low bouquet with a white and black ribbon trim (found on sale at Joann's). My bouquet will have some white flowers with a red stripe through them as well. My sisters maid of honor bouquet will be all red. 

After I left the flourist and on my way to Joann's to look at ribbons I noticed that the camera shop next door to Ballard Blossoms had some new scrapbooking supplies. I went in to discover the biggest supply of the most wonderful printed papers by American Crafts . I'm so excited about this new find! Joann's seemed to be the only place to find any groovy card making supplies, but anyone who lives in Ballard knows that the tiny Joann's there has a very sad little collection of paper. If you are looking for some gorgeous printed paper for cardmaking or scrapping I would recommend checking out Ballard Camera on market street. Here are a few pictures of the great prints you can find there:

A lot of the papers are double sided, so great for cardmaking!

Vintage Wedding Dress...

On my second trip out Wedding Dress shopping I found this most fabulous Red 1950's cocktail dress. If it was white, it would be my wedding dress. I thought about wearing red, but I just kind of have my heart set on white. When else do you get a chance to get up in a fancy white dress. I had gone to my appointment at I Do Bridal on 45th in Wallingford, which is a lovely shop with very nice dresses and extremely fun and nice employees. I found a couple of ideas, but nothing that really grabbed me as 1950's. There was one tea length dress, but was really too encrusted in beads. I'm not such a beady person. So, after my appointment walked over to the Ave in the U-District and went to a few shops, one of them was the fab Redlight. That was where I found my dream red taffeta dress that fit like a dream! I took the dress downtown to Cicada, but will need to go back with it tomorrow and meet with the designer. I'm going to take this and some of my photos of 50's dresses and see what we can come up with. Fun!

Savin' the date...

The cards are just about finished and are being sent out in the next few days!

I made up and gave out around 24 at the engagement party, which is a great way to save on postage & envelopes for your local friends and family. I made the cards by printing them out to look like polaroid pictures with the message on the back and encased them in glassine envelopes from ebay. Finished off the glassine package with a little bow that I pierced with a heart stay tack from Jo-ann fabrics. The mailing envelopes took a while to find as I either wanted black or some kind of black and white patterned. I found these great envelopes at Crane & Co in Pacific Place. I had to buy the card and envelope pack of 20 to get them, but will probably use the left over cards for thank you notes later.

Stamps right now are very limited, I just chose the standard purple dove and I had to go to two post offices to find them. Otherwise, I had a choice of Ronald Reagan or vegetables. In may the post office comes out with Star Wars stamps, I'm seriously concidering those for the invitations. :)

Dressy Details...

Our flower girl Ruby has her dress! It looks just like this one, only without the puff on the sleeve. We found it last night at the Nordstrom Rack in Alderwood, the one in downtown Seattle doesn't have a children's department any more. It is the perfect dress and only $30. The same dress was over $100 at the evil David's bridal. I also bought her a red sparkle knit shrug with a black fur collar and little white shoes all for under $60. You just can't beat the Rack!

                                        On Monday, my day off for dress shopping, I found my sister's maid of honor dress at the Nordstrom in downtown Seattle. On the third floor there is a department that I always go to when I need a maid of honor dress for myself and have always found the perfect dress, in silk for around $100. I have yet to find my dress and will probably go to Cicada bridal and have them make one to my design. I want a 50's inspired tea length dress which is a bit difficult to find as most shops carry the full length strapless numbers. I went into the gorgeous Luly Yang downtown on 4th and had a marvelous time looking at the most amazing dresses. They are amazingly nice there and very helpful, highly recommended if you have a bit of a higher budget.

Here are my inspirational pictures for the dress that I envision:

Bride Nightmare

that is David's Bridal. Now, before I get a universal, "I told you so!" I thought I would just pop in to see what's what there. We were up at the Alderwood Mall a couple of weekends ago to look for Jason's wedding ring, which we found after looking at hundreds of rings. Some people in the jewelry shops are very nice, but have such a small selection for men and some people in other shops don't even acknowledge you when you walk in, those shops we just walk right back out of. Anyway, we found his lovely ring at the Shane co, they were super nice and helpful as well as having a huge selection. He chose a white gold ring that had been handtooled with yellow gold detail on the outside, very elegant.

So, back to the bridal nightmare, I have been on the David's Bridal website which is very nice and fun. You can put together a snapshot of your whole wedding party dressed to party (see mine below):

ok, it doesn't really look like us, but you get the idea. We are having a black & white wedding with red accents and flowers. I thought I would go in and see this one dress that I was interested in. As soon as I walked into that awful place I was accosted by a very large, young person for not having an appointment. I told her that I would just like to have a look at one dress that I had seen online. She proceeded to inform me that those dresses only go up to a size 16, being a size 10 I told her that shouldn't be a problem. She looked me up and down and let me know that I was probably a size 16 and might fit into that dress, but I have to make an appointment. Well, as you can imagine I stormed out of there and was nearly in tears. Jason did his best to calm me down, but I will NOT be buying my dress from the wedding supermarket.

Happiness is also...

Being a Bride to be! Jason and I got engaged on my birthday, March 3rd :D We were on the Oregon Coast to celebrate my birthday and after a huge dinner and opening presents, under a full moon my honey popped the question! I, of course, blubbed like a baby whle he put the most beautiful vintage ring on my finger. He had searched antique shops for months to find the perfect 1939 platinum ring to match my personality. Love that man :)

 

I will be posting fun plans here on my blog leading up to the wedding on September 16th. We have made reservations on the Skansonia ferry for the ceremony and reception. It is such a relief to have the venue sorted out, because you can't start making plans until that is found. They are amazing, they take care of so much. We pretty much just have to show up :)