Get out of my house!!

Finally those invites are done (all but maybe ten or so...) and out of the house.

In fact, today I got a phone call from one of my aunts in Texas just to let me know she got hers and it was, to use her word 'awesome'. ;)

Here's a bit of the process:
We started out with our invite we printed at kinkos and wrapped it with a 2.5" strip of moss green card stock. It had a really nice linen-y texture to it which made it seem much fancier than the regular smooth. (And it cost the same so of course, we went with textured).


The insanely perfect ribbon we found at hobby lobby in a CLEARANCE BUCKET. (All hail the clearance bucket!) It was actually a yarn (how?) so its a reeealllly long piece and it only cost us a $1.50. Woot! We shot the works and grabbed two.

Word of advice, and this may be obvious to the rest of the world but Tanner had to tell me to do it, if you're doing the paper w/ribbon wrap around a card cut slices for the ribbon to thread through your card stock so it stays in the center and doesn't slide up and down. Never occurred to me but what genius.

Then we moved on to our wax seals...

We used a glue gun format wax and it really wasn't brittle at all. Regular wax will break in the mail, but this was nice and pliable.

Then we stamped them with the brass F. I love that little F. Remember to let that little thing sit in cool water (and shake it all off before you use it!) or you'll end up with a bloppy impression. Not so good.

Here they are! Our little army of invites!

Mind you, this is without the RSVPs & other inserts added behind the belly band, but I wanted to get a shot of the little babies when they were fresh. I'm so proud of them. They were so much work! But thankfully my fella did at least half of it! Bless him.
And now we're officially inviting people to our wedding!! I'm so excited!

Rats.

Well we blew our chances with 41 cent stamps on the invites. My fella took a dummy invite to the PO and it turns out the wax seal makes it too lumpy & they won't fit through "the slot" whatever that is.

So now we're stuck with those pastel heart wedding stamps. They're ok and they'll get the invitations where they need to be... but we were both really looking forward to using the Marvel Comics ones. But I'll live, they're still going on the RSVP's. ;)

Tonight we're putting our invitations together. It's an all out invitation blitz. I have my station: right in front of the computer addressing envelopes. And my unbelievably helpful Tanner will be at our far-too-small kitchen table folding our belly bands. As soon as I get a few put together I'll take a photo and show you all a finished product. (Please forgive my lack of photography! My time is being devoured by the guest list monster.)

Edit: Here is a hastily taken teaser photo of poor quality... It's our first invite (so excuse any goofiness please!) I got excited and wanted to share. :)

Man, that flash really shows off that unwanted glossiness. :/
Oh well, better pictures later. Back to work!

Every girl's crazy 'bout a sharp dressed man

When I say 'Brown Tuxedo' what comes to mind?
I'm finding out that for many people it's this:

Which is not exactly the look we are going for.

My Hubs is not a flashy guy, he is however excited about getting to get all dressed up for our nuptials. In fact, I remember in High School (we were best buds) he was excited about graduation because he'd get to wear a suit. And he searched high and low for the perfect tie. So for him, this wedding is another chance to look sharp. He's excited again, I can tell. He's even mentioned to me that when we're standing there getting married I'll stand out in white but all the guys blend together in black tuxes.

His solution- brown tuxes. If they've all got to match he says then let them match in brown, at least its different. Also, because our wedding will be outdoors with earthy fall colors (and because there won't be a stitch of black on anything) brown would be more fitting. I agree and you know, I think it's a great idea. Here's the one he's picked out:

Photo courtesy of jimsformalwear.com

See? Sexy.

Anyhow we took a look at it in person and It's actually a very nice tuxedo. He tried it on and all I can say is ladies, look forward to seeing your man in a tux. ;)

This does create a bit of a problem for our little ring bearer. His tux would be the same price as the men's tuxes. I can't ask her to spend $150 on a tiny tuxedo for one day, especially given the fact that he's a little boy and the wedding is outdoors... So our little man will probably end up in this suit:

Close match, eh? Not bad at all. She found this suit herself (motivated by the tux rental price) at boyssuitsandtuxedos.com for about half the price of the rental - and he can keep it. His mother shall not fear dirt nor feeding the child. The fact that it's not the same cut (and that the brown might not be *exactly* the same) doesn't bother me one bit because after a matching vest, tie & boutonniere nobody will be able to tell the difference.

And he'll be a little guy in a suit, who doesn't love that?

So now we've got to get my man fitted & find a nice vest/tie combo. Which makes me happy because I'll get to see some more of him in the tux ;)

The Look of Love

My major inspiriation...

I want so badly to be able to achieve this sort of warm glow at my reception. The photo on the top is so close to what I have in mind that if you took out those tables you'd pretty much have it. The lanterns & twinkle lights are spot on.
The photo on the bottom is so romantic. Again, those lights and the autumny feel are just perfect.

I don't know who this little girl is but I love the pathway behind her. That's something i'm going to shoot for. Perhaps on the path from the barn to the bonfire and surrounding the garden. Lovely.

Replace those beautiful flowers with some beautiful autumn leaves (courtousey of my new Mother in Law who will be bringing them with her from West Virginia) and you've pretty much got my centerpieces. I'm thinking dark brown tablecloths instead of white so that the leaves will really pop. By the way, said tablecloths won't be cloth at all, but instead paper. I know it sounds strange but it was *so* much cheaper than renting and I think they're actually quite nice! Also there's none of the hassle that comes with renting, and if anything gets on them it's no big deal.

Instead of getting married under an arch of some sort (which isn't really my style) I've decided we're going to string up some flower heads (fake I'm certain, but who will notice?) and hang them like these in the photo behind us as our backdrop. Our wedding will be held in the garden so these beauties will be hanging from the trees. So romantic. I think we'll add some ribbon in there too just to give it weight.

Isn't that the coolest thing?! I'm going to figure out how to make these in bulk. I found this little sweetie on etsy.com (a wonderful site for homemade works of art) for sale by maryink and realized my ideas actually were possible! Yay! I'd been wanting to somehow put an autumn scene on a votive using ink & tissue paper and now that I know it's been done I just need to get to an art supply store!

*The* Cake

Behold... divine inspiration:

My wonderful aunt has offered to make our cake, (free!! bless her soul) and we have given her these photos as inspiration. I love the earthy feel of the one on the right. (I want to stick my finger in that icing.) But Hubs said that looks homemade, which broke my heart because that's part of why I love it! He, on the other hand, loves the clean lines of the one on the left... So we're hoping for a blend of the two. She'll take the icing and leaves from the cake on the left and the mix of autumn goodies from the one on the right to create our perfect cake. Sounds delicious to me. And she's a brilliant cake maker, the woman is an artist (I believe she's going to use fondant and an airbrush to create those leaves. So cool!) So I know our cake is going to be beautiful. I can't wait to see it!

Invites!

Yay!!
We picked up the invitations today! They're (as much as I hate to say it) not exactly what I had in mind. The invite is way too glossy but that's ok because I'm my own worst critic and Hubs loves them.

First let me show you our inspiration:

This is an invitation by Oblation Papers that we saw in the latest issue of Weddings InStyle. The one in the magazine was actually in shades of green, and Hubs liked it so much he took a photo of it with his camera phone so I could work from it at home.

So using that layout and then adding what I wanted our invitations to have we came up with this...

I designed them using Photoshop and we had them printed at a Kinkos in Mobile, AL (such a drive!) by the sweetest guy ever. If you're ever in there and Antwon helps you out, tell him we said Hi. :)
I gotta say, the color of the RSVP's paper doesn't really knock my socks off. The flecks are far too blue for me. But it was either that or stark white, and I wanted some texture so I went with it. And I'm learning to roll with the punches so there they ya go. Also there is a tree that you can barely see behind the words on the invite, it blends in with the background a bit now. But, if you know its there you can see it! Oh well.
Printing our own invites and RSVPs came to about $200 for 125 sets. Which ain't bad. Now all I have to do is make the belly bands out of some delicious card stock, find a coordinating ribbon and order the wax seal stuff. I'm thinking of getting this glue gun-able wax from NostalgicImpressions.com because ordinary sealing wax breaks when it goes through the mail, and this should be much more durable. Also its offered in an array of beautiful colors. The 'granite pearl' does things to me.
Then when all that is said and done Hubs and I will assemble our brains out. Hopefully my total (including the invites and without stamps) will be less than $250. Hopefully. I may nix the ribbon if it starts to get pricey.
Stamps is going to hurt, those things are expensive when you have to buy potentially 250 of them. So to ease our pain we're going to get the Marvel Superhero & possibly Star Wars editions.