You can't take it with you (or at least not all of it)

I would like to say that I'm above material concerns but I have to tell you that downsizing has been giving me some major headaches. Our new place is smaller, for reasons that I'll explain when I have more time, but basically, $$ + location - actually, that explains it fairly well.

I have to convince myself to give up some things and while the excess furniture is heading straight to Craigslist and the more random bits and pieces are going to the thrift store, there are some things that give me bigger pangs.

{dyed napkins}

I've been hoarding our wedding napkins because I can't quite bear to give them up. Not so much because they are from our wedding but because they are really nice cotton napkins and they're pretty and we hand dyed those suckers and what if I needed to throw a really, really big party? Yes, that means I have had over 100 lovingly washed and pressed napkins in my closet for the last two years. Several dozen have made it into circulation in our house, but try as I might, I can't justify holding onto the rest of them anymore.

{pink napkin pocket folded - photo from our wonderful wedding photog, melissa of happy confetti}

UPDATE - All the napkins are sold, thanks guys! So if you happen to be in the napkin market, I'm letting these go. I'm selling them in sets of four (choose between blue sorry, all gone!, pink or yellow sorry, all gone!) for $20, domestic shipping* is included. These are not fine linen napkins! They are heavy duty, thick cotton that absorbs really well and will hold up over time, even with daily use. No two napkins are exactly the same, since we hand dyed them. You can see the tutorial on how we made them along with some pictures of them in action right here, if you're curious.

{wedding napkins}

Because they are dyed in a stripey pattern, they will look completely different if you fold them differently. You can play around with them to see where you like the stripes.

{napkins hanging}

Nothing fussy as far as care instructions go. I just wash ours with the rest of our laundry, which means warm water and tumble dry on high. I don't like to iron everyday napkins so I give them a good snap to shake them out as I transfer them from the laundry to the dryer and then fold them while they're still hot to minimize wrinkling. I'll tuck a little card with care instructions in each set, in case you'd like to give them as gifts.

If you're interested, send me an email at rachel.heartoflight@gmail.com and let me know what color you'd like so I can set it up. I have these all wrapped up and tucked aside in their own box and I'll be keeping them close and shipping them out as I get requests, so they'll arrive quickly. I just want them to go to good homes.

Let's not even talk about my cake stands. Or my enormous supply of stationary. Or the Gocco + assorted inks. I have decision fatigue.

* International readers, you know I love you! It's just that with the craziness of the move I don't have time to jump through the customs declaration hoops at the post office. I'm so sorry! If you'd really love a set and you're willing to wait another week, email me and we'll work something out.

Wedding weekend!

I love it when people I love get married, partly because they frequently have awesome friends and really good parties. We were up in Oakland over the long weekend to see two of our favorite people get married and the whole weekend was packed with good stuff but I only took pictures of flowers. Sorry. Rest assured it involved multiple bars, competitive three legged racing, a mid-ceremony improv performance, catering from Mission Chinese and 3 am post-wedding karaoke (not all on the same day).

K + W asked us if we'd be up for doing their flowers and I jumped at the chance. I am in no way a professional florist but I can fake it as long as the expectations are reasonable. They gave us a color scheme and requested that the flowers be alive and that was it. Done. D and I hit up the San Francisco flower mart early Saturday morning and loaded the entire trunk of our car with flowers and then turned our (ludicrously tiny) hotel room into an assembly area. We used every surface in the room, including the bed.*  I was in heaven. D was, if not exactly in heaven, an enthusiastic accomplice.

{hotel room florist}

{flowers in the elevator! - bouquets}

{bouts!}

{table arrangements, boxed}

{table setting}

{small arrangement}

{cake!}

I couldn't have done it without the expert advice I got from dear Kristin. She is the sweetest. Thanks, lady!

I'd never made personal flowers before so I was nervous about the bouquets but I'm happy with how they turned out. I realize you can't see them very well because I took all the flower photos in the elevator on our way to the car. Whoops. I'm not sure how professional florists get them so perfectly round. I watched at least ten YouTube videos and still couldn't figure it out. Practice, I guess.

Boutonnieres are so fun to make that we had to set a timer and cut ourselves off so we'd have time to shower before the wedding. D started contemplating a small side business taking orders from high school prom-goers.

K + W - we love you! (Also, please consider moving back to LA because we miss our Top Chef nights)

P.S. If anyone knows what these crazy flowers are, please let me know. They're my new favorite. UPDATE - they're helichrysum! Thank you!

{unknown flowers}

* We laid down sheets of newspaper to protect the bed while we worked and I bagged all our floral waste and took it down to the dumpster myself. Using the room as a make shift floral shop is one thing, expecting the maid to clean up all that greenery would have made me feel like a complete asshole. 

Minor wedding rambles

After a year, the wedding really starts to recede in the distance. The edges get fuzzy in the best possible way. The parts that matter still matter (having dear friends fly out to be part of our ceremony, getting the sweetest notes and well wishes and hugs, the feeling of that weekend) but the other parts stop seeming so important.

I don't want to go on and on about this because it inflates these issues and honestly, I'm over them. But I'm throwing this out there just in case any of it applies to anyone who is in the throes of planning. This is looong but I decided it was better than inundating you with tiny posts all week and forcing some of you to be annoyed for multiple days.

Almost every little niggling thing that bothered me on the wedding day can be summed up this way: Not trusting my gut. No one's fault but my own. If you know yourself pretty well, and something feels right to you, do it. Please.

+ I wish I hadn't bothered hiding before the ceremony. We had our "cocktail hour" before the wedding. We opened the bar at 6 pm so that guests could trickle in until 6:45 pm and find their seats before the ceremony. So civilized.

I originally wanted to be out mingling, but I let myself be convinced by everyone that it would be super anti-climatic if people saw the bride before the ceremony. I started to doubt myself. So I hid in a back room and waited, anxiously. I wasn't alone, of course, but I could not relax. Just like I knew I wouldn't. I am not patient. I despise waiting.

I think I would have been calmer, I would have enjoyed the chance to have a little extra time talking to guests and I still think that people would have been excited when I entered the ceremony even if they *gasp* had already seen what I was wearing. I mean, they already knew what I looked like. Hopefully.

+ First looks are a personal preference, not a revelation. The first look didn't do anything special for me or D. I kind of knew that would be the case. I was very glad to get a hug, but it wasn't a life changer and it would have been logistically simpler just to catch a ride over to the venue together. Some people love theirs, so maybe we're cold hearted creatures.

+ I'm sad we didn't have video, but I'm mostly over it. There was no way we could have worked it into the budget so it wasn't really a decision.

+ I'm so glad we splurged on a DJ and a photobooth. We considered tackling each one as a DIY and neither would have been nearly so successful for us and the cost wasn't that crazy. The photobooth made me so happy. We micromanaged the non-dance music in a big way, but our DJ* was wonderful and totally on board and we let him have free rein of the dance portion of the evening which made our lives much simpler.

+ Our wedding planners** were a necessity, given the nature of our wedding (short set up and tear down window, bringing EVERYTHING into the venue ourselves). I couldn't have done it without them.

+ People are exactly who they always are, even at a wedding. We have a portion of the family that is chronically late (it's a cultural thing, not a rudeness thing) and I originally sat them where it would have been easy to slip in quietly. Then we worried that they might notice they were over at the edge and we put them in prominent seats on one side of the aisle. As expected, they were late enough to miss the entire ceremony and it was kind of a bummer to see the empty seats on half of our aisle. Not a big deal, but it would have been easy to avoid.

+ I love our posed family photos and I wish we'd gotten a few more. I kept the list as small as possible because we have a huge family and I wasn't sure how long it would take, but with a very detailed and organized list we knocked it out really quickly and could have had more taken. We honestly only took the family portraits because we knew our parents would want them, but they're some of my favorites from the day.

+ I wish I had done a better job figuring out the serving part of the dessert buffet, but it took up all of 15 minutes of the evening, so whatever. I was really glad we had take out boxes and none of the cake went to waste. I was sad that we didn't pack even more cake for ourselves because I definitely would have eaten it for a week.

+ Annnnnd ... the one that counts - I wish I had asked our wedding planners to order a stack of pizzas once I realized the food service was going to be super slow. It wouldn't have been classy and it probably wasn't necessary, but I do think it might have made me relax a little faster. I couldn't really calm down until I saw that everyone had a chance to eat. The food is the ONLY thing that still bothers me a year later.

If you guys have any questions or deep planning thoughts, leave it in the comments and I'll try not to talk your ear off. I could have written enormous novels on how we went about selecting music, making the invitations, organizing seating, etc. I just hate to overwhelm the blog with something that was a (highly emotional) blip in our lives.


* Brady of PropsFX here in Southern California, who was so sweet and enthusiastic and happy to work with our very eclectic mix of music. I can't recommend him enough. Also, super affordable.

** Angel, Anna and Michelle from Events of Love and Splendor. Angel went to college with one of my dear friends, and she and her team were wonderful.

Year one

{9-10-11 ceremony}

I'm still not used to saying "husband" but I can say that I love being married to this guy.

I meant to get my dress hemmed up so I could wear it on our anniversary. Totally did not happen. Next year?

I have a few wedding related bits floating around in my head, reflections on the process now that we're a year out. Don't worry - nothing too long, and it won't be a photo extravaganza or a mush fest. If I were more organized, I'd have gotten this whole week scheduled and set up. I didn't, so I'll see what happens. For those of you who are done with weddings, tomorrow will be weekend photos, featuring Circe.

{meta}

Whenever I see a post where people are stressing about social media at their wedding, I think of this photo. I love it. 

You can always click on the "wedding" tag to see more posts about all things wedding related. And over on 100 Layer Cake you can see our wedding post, read more about our logistics, and see tutorials for the dip dyed napkins and streamer backdrops.

Celebrating

Emily and I have been friends since college, and she's one of the most amazingly generous people I know - the sort of friend who shows up at your house with takeout and champagne on a Wednesday, just because you're having a bad week. I knew that a traditional shower would make her exceedingly uncomfortable, but her friends and I wanted to plan a party that would honor her, show her how much we love her and celebrate this moment in her life. It wasn't a surprise (surprises are a complete no-go, for both of us) but we kept all the details completely secret.

We ended up with an intimate and leisurely lunch for twelve, with good drinks, plenty of food and lots of talking. Absolutely no games, and I don't think anyone missed them. I didn't get as many pictures as I normally would, because I was busy hosting, but here are a few snippets. And for those of you who want details, I'll give additional info at the bottom.

{invitation}

{welcome table}

{drink tags}

{getting started}

{china - photo from Emily}

{dessert}

{cat in a globe!}

:: I made the invitations using a wash of watercolor and some gold accents, which set up the color scheme for the party. The text and envelopes were grey and I used patterned gold paper to line the envelopes.

:: Our apartment is upstairs and in the back of the building, so I set up the welcome table at the top of the flight of stairs so guests could see it as they arrived. It made it easy to spot the correct apartment and it gave me a location for the drinks (my apartment is a decent size, but there aren't all that many places to set up various stations!).

:: Do the drink tags look familiar? D made the template for Thanksgiving dinner, and we used it again but printed them out on some leftover watercolor paper that I had used for the invitations. I love drink tags because it lets you keep track of your glass as you move around the party.

:: Appetizers - roasted asparagus wrapped in prosciutto, dates stuffed with chevre and wrapped in applewood smoked bacon, rosemary and sea salt roasted almonds and a selection of marinated olives and cornichons.

:: Food (not pictured because we were busy eating) - Several varieties of grilled cheese sandwiches and a large salad. We had a seated meal, which I think makes conversation so much easier. Grilled cheese sandwiches are sort of a thing for us, so I was determined to make them even though I knew it was a little impractical because they had to be grilled at the party. It worked out fine.

:: The table decorations came together very randomly. I'd seen this post and marked it because I know D would kill for a squirrel candleholder (and now I've ruined that surprise - oh well). And I like to tease Emily about turning into a crazy cat lady, so I thought it would be funny to incorporate cats into the decor. The closest thing I could find at the party store was "baby jungle cats" so I sprayed them gold and stuck them in these globes that I already owned (they're from CB2 and I bought them before the holidays) along with a little confetti.

:: My philosophy with party decorating is that you want a few high impact areas rather than trying to hide or modify your entire space. I made liberal use of gold fringe backdrops and crepe paper (more info on the lanterns coming soon, I promise) and I bought the cat figures, but that was it really. D made the letters for me after I mentioned I wanted some but completely ran out of time. He just printed them out, traced them on cardboard and then wrapped them in crepe paper.

:: DESSERT! Clearly, the most important part of a party. I made an ombre cake (you'll have to pop over to E's post to see it) mostly because I've had various images of those marked for ages and this is the best possible excuse for that sort of craziness. A good friend made a dulce de leche and mexican chocolate crepe torte that was to die for. And we also had white chocolate chip cookies (because they're E's fave) and brownies to go with the ice cream. Because yes, we had a full ice cream sundae bar with homemade hot fudge and salted caramel. Except it ended up being more of an ice cream free for all because I ran out of time and just plunked everything down in the middle of the table and let everyone pass it around. It's more fun that way, right?

Whew. Sorry for the extreme wordiness. I had so much fun planning and thinking of ways to make it perfect for Em. And now I can't wait for the wedding!

Update - drink tag template is available here. And the invitation tutorial is right here. Fringed lantern tutorial is here. Cherub's cup drink recipe is here.

Wedding, thankful

I send thank you notes for lots of things, because they are pretty and it was drilled into my head at a young age, but even if you don't normally, you MUST for your wedding. For weddings, you are almost never opening the gifts in front of the giver. That means the giver who doesn't receive a timely thank you note has to sit around wondering if their gift arrived. Then they worry that maybe it didn't arrive and you are thinking they (the givers) are jerks for not sending a gift. Then they think they should call and check but if you did receive it and just haven't sent a thank you note then everything is awkward. It's a bad place.

{thank yous}

You should really have a thank you note system in place as early on as possible. We combined it with our guest list, making a spreadsheet that had everyone's names, addresses and response along with columns for "gift" and "TY sent". D and I have it as a shared Google document, so either of us can access it from anywhere. We made our thank you notes as soon as we set up our registries (D printed them on the gocco and I love them).

As gifts came in, we never separated a gift from the gift card/invoice until the thank you note was written. The pile of boxes cluttering up our apartment really provided an extra push.

As we opened gifts, we noted them in the gift column and then checked off the TY column only after the note was written, addressed and stamped. I also stapled the gift note to the invoice and then noted the date the thank you was sent in the upper right hand corner. Then I filed all the invoices together.

It was a little obsessive, but I feel fairly confident that we didn't miss any thank you notes. Except for one be-ribboned bundle of spatulas that must have gotten separated from its card at the wedding. That still haunts me.

If you need a little tutorial on writing your notes, Mouse has a great one. I do differ a little in that I don't mind saying "thank you" directly but I whole-heartedly agree about referencing the gift in a personal way and she provides some excellent templates.

I love that the timing worked out so that this post will take us on into Thanksgiving week. It's my favorite holiday, we announced our engagement over the meal last year, and this year we're hosting for the first time. I'll probably be posting about prep next week. I take it seriously.

Wedding, the dessert buffet!

On to happier food topics!

We decided on our cakes months before the wedding. Vanilla Bake Shop is our favorite LA bakery (I'm sure I just managed to offend 90% of my LA readers - bakeries are a divisive topic) and their custom wedding cakes are gorgeous, but way out of our price range ($800 minimum!). Their standard cakes are amazing and we figured out that 6 cakes (two 12" wide and four 9" wide) would easily serve our 140ish guests. They did.

We settled on flavors, I measured all my cake stands (this forced me to take inventory and it was embarrassing - let's just say what you see here is less than half of what I own) and picked out 6 that would work well together and then we did nothing until the week before the wedding, when we ordered the cakes. It came out to $420 total.

To fill it out (and because D is very much a cookie person rather than a cake person) I made 4 batches each of 4 different types of cookies, plus brownies, and spent about $80 on ingredients. I knocked out the dough in a few hours (I have a KitchenAid and an affinity for speedy assembly line baking). Baking the actual cookies sucked a bit, because it was so dang hot the week before the wedding. In light of our food disaster, I was so, so grateful that I didn't blow off the cookies, as tempting as it was at the time.

I knew that I could trust our wedding planners to set up our dessert buffet, but I was secretly hoping I'd find time to do it myself. You guys know how I feel about cake stands. While our friends hung our streamers on Saturday morning, I arranged the table, leaving notes so that it would be clear which cakes and cookies were going where. It was totally OCD. I loved it.

And of course, Michelle and Anna executed it perfectly. Michelle picked up the cakes for me (which eliminated a big logistical hurdle!) and drove them to the venue and then put everything out. I slipped out to see the final product just as guests were starting to arrive and nearly cried. I mean, the cookies were arranged in swirls. It was a work of art.

{dessert buffet - photos by melissa of happy confetti photography}

It didn't last for very long, of course. In lieu of appetizers, lots of guests decided to start on cookies prior to dinner, and I could only applaud their wise decision. I would have joined in, eagerly, had I not been sequestered in the bridal suite.

We bought bakery boxes so that people could take home leftovers and it was a great move. There is always cake left at weddings and it kills me to see it get thrown away. We offered up the boxes at the end of the night and there was barely a scrap leftover. We smuggled out a couple bags of cookies and a piece of cake for our honeymoon.

For desserts, we spent $420 on cake + $80 on cookie ingredients + $30 on bakery boxes (I bought 80 boxes and we could have gone with 40 and it would have been fine - it seemed to be about one box per family and not everyone took anything home) + $40 on vintage cake servers + $15 on industrial cake knives. That was calculated to feed 150 people and it was more than enough.

It got a little chaotic after we cut the cake. Having six different cakes is a little tricky. In retrospect, I should have picked out one person to cut and serve each cake and then had an empty table nearby for the cut slices to go on. This would have made it much smoother. Heads up to anyone planning a dessert buffet sans caterer. I finally get the cupcakes at weddings craze.

And I know it is so cliche, but the only taste of cake I got that night was the ceremonial photo op bite. Sad.

{cake cutting - photo by melissa of happy confetti photography}

Right after I typed that I realized that it isn't true. I did get to eat some of the leftovers back in our hotel room at 3 am with my bare hands, and was joined enthusiastically by several of our friends. So that works too. Just make sure you get someone to package something for you. And maybe remember to include forks.

And because I'm still obsessed with our cake topper ...

{by day - photo by melissa of happy confetti photography}

{by night - photo by melissa of happy confetti photography}

It lives on our bookshelf currently, and I think it's probably the one piece of the wedding decor that we'll keep forever.

Just because it fits in here ...

I was digging through my archives for something else, and stumbled on this post from last year. It's relevant to wedding stuff, and since I've ended up making this a wedding week, I'll add it in here.

If you'd like a (mostly) unedited rant about the insanity that can occur leading up to a DIY wedding, it's here.

Wedding, the food

So, this is the part I've sort of been dreading telling you about.

We looked at so many catering options. The food was very important to us. We had hoped that a restaurant wedding might be cheaper, but our group size was awkward – too big for any of the regular group rooms and not quite big enough to justify the cost of a Saturday night buy out. It came down to a close race between my favorite local barbecue place and our beloved Border Grill in truck form. We did a tasting at the truck and it was amazing. They are so responsive and pleasant to work with and we made the call easily. Throughout all the sucky parts of wedding planning, we kept reminding ourselves of how excited we were about the food choice. It felt like it was us, something from our lives in LA that we would be able to share with our families and friends. And it was affordable!

{BG truck - photo by melissa of happy confetti photography}

And this is the sad part, the part of our wedding that still kills me. The BG truck didn’t come through for us. It was just a perfect storm - they had a couple of staffing issues on a single day and it ended up making them late and short staffed. As in, half the staff we were supposed to have. The food was amazing, but it was painfully slow. People were waiting for well over one hour once they decided to brave the line. My dad didn’t even eat until close to 10 pm. As we walked through the reception, greeting people and smiling and chatting, I kept seeing all those people waiting for food and it was incredibly stressful. We pushed the schedule back and then eventually ended up just doing the toasts and first dance while people were still waiting in line for food, because it became clear that it wasn’t going to get any better.

This was hard – I love the Border Grill and I’d made it clear in all our emails that my top priority was to have really great tasting food, plenty of it, and quickly. I paid for 160 people instead of the 140 + vendors that we actually expected, just to be absolutely sure that we would be fully staffed and not run out of food. We went over time estimates of how long it would take for orders to get out and D designed check off menus specifically to make the food service run more smoothly.

{check off menu! - photo by melissa of happy confetti photography}

I didn’t sleep the night of the wedding and it was mostly because of the food situation. Extreme? Maybe, but for me, food is a huge part of every gathering. As a hostess, I always worry about having enough food and usually end up with twice as much as I need. Providing an ample and timely meal is a sign of respect and appreciation for people that have traveled to be with you. I was ready for things to go wrong at the wedding and I was ready to shrug them off. But this was something I couldn’t let go of and there wasn’t any way to fix it. I’m still upset by it when I think about it, although I no longer feel like I’m going to start crying if I talk about it.

I thought for a long time about posting this, because the BG staff have always been wonderful to us and they were genuinely dismayed with the staffing situation at our wedding. I don’t want to slam them. Becca used them for her wedding and it was wonderful. I think they got hit with more staffing issues than they could handle and this wouldn’t normally happen. But I can’t do my wedding over again and I can’t apologize adequately to all the guests who had to wait in line for food instead of dancing. And this was a huge part of my wedding. So there it is. A big thing that went wrong that I probably won’t ever be over entirely.

I should note that our guests were almost universally awesome about the situation. They used the line as a social area and took early advantage of the cookie buffet and reassured me that they were fine. But I’ll just say it – I would not have been fine waiting for hours for food when I expected to have it at 7 pm. So either our guests are more patient (or less prone to low blood sugar) than I, or they are just incredibly nice. I’m going with the later.

Oh, and a side note - Our wedding had all disposable plates and glassware. Yes, this killed me a little, both aesthetically and environmentally. I probably would have been willing to suck up the cost of the rentals, but I didn't want to have to handle the logistics. When you rent plates, everything has to get rinsed off and then re-packed at the end of the night. This would have meant hiring a lot more staff, at which point it would have made sense to consider just hiring a more expensive caterer and renting plates directly from them. It ended up being a spiral of costs and decisions and we went the easy route – figuring out how many plates and cups we needed (the truck supplied the food trays for their food) and buying them (and later returning the unused ones). AND IT WAS FINE.

Wedding, my favorite thing

If you are worried that the whole photobooth thing is played out, please stop yourself. Things that are genuinely awesome CANNOT be played out. And the awesomeness of the photobooth long pre-dates wedding blogs anyways. I have shoeboxes full of photo strips to prove that.

The photobooth was the best discretionary money we spent at our wedding, hands down. We considered DIYing it, to save a bit of money, but honestly? I'm so glad we didn't. We put it right by the dance floor and shelled out for an extra hour so that it would be there the entire night and it was in use nonstop.

The week before the wedding we bought a basic photo album and left it out so that people could put photos in there and leave notes. Flipping through that book the next morning (at 5 am, because I couldn't sleep) was the best.

A fact: photobooths inevitably devolve over the course of the night, in the best way possible.

I looked at all the local photobooth companies I could find and the rates vary a lot, as do the services. We ended up going with Red Cheese Photobooth, mostly because they were the best about responding to my emails quickly. Our total came out to $1024, which is off putting at first, but when you consider what we might have spent trying to set one up ourselves (and the inevitable trouble shooting it would have involved) we have no regrets. We knew we wanted the instant gratification of prints for our guests as well as digital copies for ourselves later and this was perfect.

* As with everything wedding-related, I didn't get any discounts related to the blog and any review I give you is only because I think it might be useful to some of you. *

Wedding, logistics + budget

I have a looong post up over on 100 Layer Cake right now, giving my take on wedding planning/budgeting. We ended up not really having a wedding budget. Yep. Hop over and check it out and feel free to ask questions in the comments. If you like, I can expand on the budget stuff over here sometime in the future. We did put a lot of thought into our non-budget, as weird as that sounds.

Wedding, make up

{getting ready - photo by melissa of happy confetti photography}

I did my own hair and make up for the wedding, mostly because I was too lazy to figure out any other arrangement (I don't live near my wedding venue, so I couldn't just enlist my regular hairdresser) and partially because I was too cheap to want to pay for it.

If you don't own any make up, I think it probably works out to be cheaper for you to get it done. If I had bought everything fresh it would have cost waaaaay more than paying for the service. Instead, I just used my own modest stash with some very minimal additions.

My secret weapon was samples. I went to Sephora and Nordstrom and asked for samples of primer and foundation (neither of which I normally wear, so it didn't seem to make sense to buy them). They'll give you little pots of samples that last for quite a few applications.

Moisturizer - Neutrogena Healthy Defense (my usual)

Foundation primer - Hourglass Veil mineral primer (sample)

Foundation - Chanel Vitalumiere (sample, but it was so good I ended up buying some later)

Concealer - Laura Mercier Secret Camouflage (my usual)

Setting powder - Laura Mercier Loose Setting Powder (my usual)

Highlighter powder - Make Up Forever Star Powder in pale peach (sample)

Cheeks + lips - Benetint (my usual)

Fake lashes - $10 kit from the drugstore with lots of individual lashes + glue

Eyeshadow + smudgy liner - kit from Smashbox (my usual, kind of like this one)

Mascara - L'Oreal Voluminous (my current usual - I switch whenever I run out)

So I basically spent $10 on my make up. I did re-up my Benetint at Sephora, because I was almost out and I felt bad about making the salesgirl give me all those samples. But I would have done that without the wedding, so I'm not counting it.

Using your own products has a triple advantage - it's cheap, it's easy (other than the false lashes, which had me a little stressed - I would recommend practicing in advance or putting them on way early in the morning before crunch time) and you know you'll look like yourself.

{hair + makeup - photo by melissa of happy confetti photography}

I don't think my hair was quite as successful. I dithered between down and up and finally decided on a low side ponytail. I had my hair blown out on Friday morning ($35 + $10 tip at Dry Bar) so I wouldn't have to deal with it on Saturday. But I'm not great at doing hair. I wanted it a little looser and with more volume but I couldn't make that happen and I ran out of time to keep fussing with it. It was perfectly fine, just not magical. I still don't know that I would have paid to have it done, because that always seems like a crapshoot as well, if you don't have your usual stylist. At least I didn't look like I was going to prom.

I had planned on having a full two hours to get ready, which is an insane amount of time, for me. But it was lucky because we ended up behind schedule so we actually had less than an hour. I had a few of my close girl friends with me and we drank mimosas and made ourselves up, and everyone helped each other out as needed. It made me wish we'd had more time to luxuriate in it all. That's really what you need for a wedding - a 40 hour day so that you can do everything you want to do, slooooowly. Someone get on that.

The wedding, morning

The night before the wedding we'd stayed up late with our officiant and witness, rehearsing the ceremony and laughing while I obsessively ironed tablecloths.

The wedding morning dawned and we immediately decided to order room service. I adore room service. It was heavenly. We lay around and talked and then ate and then finally decided to get moving. I got up to finish the tablecloths, D ran out to pick up coffee and creamer for the reception.

Around 10 am D called me to tell me that it was raining. Being So Cal natives, we're used to early morning gloom that clears up, but this was real rain, pouring. And then I talked to my family and found out it was hailing. Sweeeet.

Our rental company told us that yes, they could tent the space but it would mean squashing things together and it would cost an extra $1000 and we'd have to let them know in the next 45 minutes, please.

We spent 45 minutes panicking a bit and checking the hourly forecast and soliciting reluctant opinions and we finally decided to cross our fingers and wait. It was still raining. We were supposed to arrive at the venue to set up our streamers at 11 am, which would have left us an hour to work before heading back for a leisurely getting ready time. I actually had "12 - 1 pm - RGS takes a bath" as a line item on our schedule. Ha.

Eventually the rain cleared, although the skies didn't, and we headed over to the venue to set up a bit. Just an hour and a half behind schedule. Luckily our schedule was fairly well padded.

D and our friends hung the streamers and I fussed with the dessert table and then we all ended up hanging out there for longer than we should have. At 2 pm I realized we better make it back to the hotel because we were supposed to be ready at 3 pm. I am pretty fast at getting ready, but 45 minutes didn't quite cut it, due to those darn false eyelashes.

And that is how I ended up attending my own wedding without shaving my legs. Not exactly how I pictured it.

The week before the wedding, moments

There was some family time, some alone time (and then together time!) in the kitchen, craft projects to finish, an impromptu night out with my ladies and time with our beloved out of town friends who served as our officiant and witness.

{succulents, short and stout}

{wedding cookie baking}

{napkins packed}

{instrument of destruction}

{girls night}

{mandatory lunch break}

My goal all along was to finish everything by Monday evening. Our house guests would arrive on Wednesday, so I would have all day Tuesday to relax and regroup.

Uh, no. Life totally took over.

I realized we were a little behind on Saturday and decided to beg a friend's cleaning lady to come take care of our apartment. Best decision ever. I know that our friends wouldn't judge my unscrubbed bathtub, but it was so nice to have everything cleaned much more thoroughly than I would have done.

I made 12 batches of cookie dough on Monday afternoon and then the weather promptly heated up and I couldn't bear to turn on the oven. I was finally forced to do so (and finagle my officiant into helping me shape cookies) on Thursday when I realized that we'd already printed the dessert menus and it would be a huge pain if I just decided to forget about the cookies altogether. Yes, I realize that people would have been able to figure it out even if the menus were inaccurate, but I couldn't stand that. And it seemed sort of wasteful to just leave my fridge filled up with unused cookie dough.

We were definitely working right up until Thursday evening, although not too frantically, until I gave myself my second horrible glue gun burn of the week. It was disgusting and took a huge chunk of skin off my middle finger. I still had a massive hangover from Wednesday night which I finally realized was probably partially genuine hangover and partially a low level panic attack. At 9 pm we realized we hadn't eaten (or, more importantly, fed our guests) so we took a break and went out for sushi.

I was fairly stressed out on Friday just because there was so much stuff to remember and I was so worried I would forget something. Something clicked after the rehearsal on Friday afternoon and I let go a lot. I mean, I still obsessively decided to hand iron all our painted tablecloths on Friday night, but I at least prioritized and spent the most time on the ones I cared the most about. Progress, right?

The week before the wedding, family work day

I had high hopes for the week before the wedding, despite having been involved in several weddings and theoretically understanding that those days are almost always chaotic, despite the best laid plans. Ours would be different! I would get massages and go out to dinner with friends!

All in all, we didn't do so badly. The weekend before the wedding was crazy, but we had planned for that. We had tons of last minute errands, I had a bridal shower, we had an entire day blocked out for our families to help us with wedding tasks.

So on Sunday, we packed my mom's house full with people and set to working. We pocket folded 150 napkins. We sorted succulents gleaned from friends and family over the last few weeks. We cleaned and filled nearly 150 glass cylinders for centerpieces. All we had to do was keep it organized and shell out $70 for pizza. It was a pretty good deal.

{succulent prep}

{succulents to be arranged}

{succulent prep}

We chose succulents specifically because we could arrange them a full week before and then keep them neatly in boxes which would transport easily. It made things sooo much easier in the days before the wedding and they held up perfectly.

Selling!

Okay, now that the wedding is up and you can see everything, we're ready to clear it out of our apartment.

I've listed a bunch of it over on the 100 Layer Cake Marketplace (such a great resource). If you're getting married soon and possibly need anything, check it out. And feel free to ask me any questions you might have. I'm basically selling everything for materials costs + a little bit of labor added in. Nothing like what these projects would cost if they were commissioned, but if you'd prefer to save money and make them yourself, stay tuned for the tutorials all week.

Streamer backdrops. These were used in the ceremony space and behind the dessert table and I think they gave us the biggest bang for our buck, impact wise.

Hand dyed napkins. 132 are left - they've all been washed well and I've weeded through them to make sure that there aren't any stains.

My beloved paper flowers. There are lots of little arrangements that we used for the dining tables, as well as a few large show stoppers and the cocktail table centerpieces. Some of these have spaces in them for the vases we used.

The painted tablecloths we made for our accent tables. We have several sizes and patterns.

The painted picture frames. We had two large ones that we used for the dessert menu and the seating chart and some smaller ones that we used for bar menus and signage. I love the large ones in particular, because we had to do some hunting to find ones that were slightly ornate and they look gorgeous painted.

Our kraft paper table numbers. We have 1 - 21, I have no idea what happened to 22.

Loads of glass cylinders that we used all over our venue + lots of candles in straight sided glass cylinders. We were so lucky with these - we found an event planner on CL that was retiring, so we got a great deal on these vases and we're looking forward to passing that savings along. Cheaper than wholesale, guys!

A lot of these items are either heavy or bulky, so they won't necessarily ship well. I'm happy to look into shipping for you, but in several cases it would make the items prohibitively expensive. I can arrange for pick up in either LA or OC.

The wedding

{entrance - photo by melissa of happy confetti photography}

Our wedding is up over on 100 Layer Cake. There'll be posts up over there this week (including a few tutorials!) and I have posts lined up here, for the wordy bits that wouldn't quite fit. Feel free to settle down and hang out for a while. It's going to be a busy week.

The weekend, briefly

Road trip!

{velvety hills}

{barlata happy hour}

{remedy coffee}

{vineyard}

{in the vineyard}

{ceremony drinks}

{wedding table}

{driving the 5}

The wedding was way up north in wine country, so we had lots of driving to do this weekend. I know we could have flown, but with all the time you spend waiting in airports it doesn't end up being the biggest advantage. And with the car, we were able to make stops for important things like happy hour with friends and the Tapatio chips I've been dying to try (verdict - good, but INTENSE).

The wedding was beautiful (and they served prosecco + lemonade for the ceremony and I love having ceremony drinks) and it's always good to catch up with people we don't get to see often enough.

Driving long distances like this feels so quintessentially Californian. I have a love/hate relationship with cars in general and usually opt to take the bus here in the city, but I have to admit that I have a weakness for road trips. It is just so unbelievably beautiful out there. I even love the long empty stretches with nothing but truck stop diners and windmills and the sun beating through the windshield and the gritty feeling you get in your hair when you stop for gas and the wind gusts around you. There's something magical there.