 Bridal Attire for Ceremony: It took me less than an hour to find my dream dress. Basically, my dress looks like the Jim Hjelm's I was lusting over that were way out of my price-range. It is pearl (champagne) with an ivory french lace overlay, trumpet shape, strapless. I didn't think I'd like strapless, but let's face it, it's hard to find a dress these days that has some sort of strap! It looks great, I felt like a bride, and it was the first dress I picked, 2nd one I tried on. It was THE DRESS! I am so glad that I get to wear it twice!!! My shoes were somewhat easy to find considering I wear a size 11. I found them at Shoe Carnival and they worked perfectly with my dress. The morning of our wedding, our cat, Pancake, climbed underneath my dress while I was putting it on. The results were extremely cute! See below photos...   Bridal Attire for Reception: I will certainly be wearing my wedding dress again but it will be bustled the whole time I think since I already took my walk down the aisle! I did, however, get new, cooler shoes for the reception that are in one of my wedding colors. I plan to have my toes painted to match too! I bought these Colorifics Plum-colored shoes that I found on Shoebuy.com for under $70. Hair & Make-Up for Ceremony: My make-up trial went perfectly so I knew my wedding day make up would be perfect. My wedding day hair was also beautiful!!! I love having talented friends! Cynthia Sally (MUA) and Ryan O'hara (hairstylist) did a phenomenal job on making me look like a beautiful bride!!! For the Ceremony, I wanted Ryan to emulate a hairstyle picture that I showed him that featured a redheaded chick with her hair in wavy curls half-up/half-down. I had him add orchids in the back. He did EXACTLY what I wanted him to do!     Hair and Make up for Reception (aka Part II): For the Reception, Cynthia Sally is doing my make up again and Kasia Wolny will be doing my hair and semi-perm lashes. I would like to wear my hair straight, slightly swooped under and my bangs back and poofed-up top of my head (something with volume)...held back with some fresh orchids tucked into it.    Our Wedding Bands Since we work with our hands (he plays percussion instruments, I draw all day and do floral design) we opted for very simple platinum bands. Mine is 5mm rounded, his is 5mm beveled. They are sweet!     The Flowers (Round 1: Courthouse Chic) Corsages and Bouts for parents made of white dendrobium orchids.  My Dream Bouquet: Purple Vanda Orchids, Fuchsia Phaleanopsis Orchids, Callas in Magenta and Eggplant, purple Lisianthus and white cymbidium orchids hand-tied into a Euro-style bouquet and wrapped in my late Grandmother's scarf with one of her vintage rhinestone buttons accenting the handle.     Reception Flowers (aka Flowers: PART II): These flowers will be incorporated into the bouquet and/or centerpieces for the wedding reception: Hydrangea in white and purple, callas in hot pink and eggplant, lisianthus in lavender and purple, stock in magenta, medium purple, lavender and dark purple, dendrobium orchids in Bom and Royal Crown-which are 2 variations of a white-purple two-toned coloration, Mokara orchids in Jaguar hot pink spotted and Calypso fuchsia color, Cymbidium orchids in a darker pink shade, Phaleanopsis in hot pink or white with magenta center, Vanda orchids in violet and fuchsia, Freesia in purple and magenta, magenta peonies, and carnations in purple (for tight clustering only--I hate them otherwise) with some foliage.             Our Color Scheme: B&W with accents of analogous Purples, Fuchsias and Magentas, only in the flowers COLOR PALETTE INSPIRATION: Nocturne Color Palette  The Cake for the Reception: The cake will be ivory iced with detailing piped on in snow-white icing with Vanda and dendrobium orchids instead of roses for a POP of color! The cake is going to be 1 layer of chocolate and 1 layer of white cake with custard filling. We did our tasting in January--and it was sooo yummy! Our Venues for the Wedding Ceremony: Ceremony on November 14, 2008 at 11:45 am: Dupage County Courthouse in Wheaton, IL Our Post-marriage Luncheon was held at Maggiano's in Naperville, IL   Our Reception Venue: Our reception is to be held on February 27, 2009 at Meson Sabika's Pavilion in Naperville, IL.         Reception Linens: For our Reception at Meson Sabika's Pavilion we needed chair covers and runners. The Chair Couture came to the rescue with great selection and pricing! I love working with Czarina and her sister--they are sweet as pie! I have seen there work in person at numerous other events so I can say their linens are GORGEOUS. The venue has white tableclothes, so we are using those. The Chair Couture will be providing Raspberry-colored napkins, black runners, white chair covers with black sashes, a raspberry tablecloth for the cake table, and black and raspberry swags to accent the sweetheart, gift and escort card tables. It is going to look stunning!!! I can't wait!!! ALL THINGS D-I-Y!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!: Our Wedding Ceremony Luncheon Favors and Signs: Mary, my MIL, bought some tasty Lindt Chocolate Truffles that we put into sachet bags that I got from work (Wilton) and I made cute tags for them with Canon in D sheet music as an accent outlining them and then accented everything with ribbon. I also made these for our Maggiano's Luncheon to make our table more unique!    Here are the invitations! There are 2 types--the 1st one is for "old people" and family members--the 2nd one is for friends and people with a sense of humor (even though it looks like we're flipping the bird, we're really showing off our wedding rings on our ring fingers! Lol. The story there is Matt flips off the camera in about 60% of the photos he is in. The nice part about the front is the photo can be taken out and displayed in a frame or on the fridge sans card. The idea behind the collage in the background is sheet music with our vows in scripty font over the music. Matt's thing is music, my thing is design...these showcase both. I had the photos printed on matte photo paper by Ritzpix and picked them up at my local Wolf Camera. The card itself is white resume cardstock that was printed on both sides at Kinko's and scored so I can easily fold them. I hand-assembled the rest--adding photo corners on the outside and inside to hold the 2 photos. The inside of the card includes the announcement of our marriage as well as the info on our upcoming reception. The reply postcards I designed and had printed B&W double-sided by Vistaprint. They worked out perfectly and now we can hope to get back 120 of them before Jan 15th!! As for the envelopes, I did the lettering on all of them and am happy with how they turned out. Now if we could just get the rest of the addresses we need we'd be set! After all is said and done, the 120 invitations cost less than $3.00 each including postage.  Table Numbers, Table Number Stands, Menus, & Misc. Signs: I designed our wedding signs, menus and table numbers in Adobe Illustrator CS4. They turned out awesome, and I cannot wait to print them. We named our tables after Art and Music terms (Matt has a music degree, I have a fine arts degree--so its very "US")...plus, not naming them numbers will lessen the "I got shafted and have to sit at table 16" feeling...LOL! You know it's true! Oh, and total PITA was recreating a bar of music from our first dance music...It is some chords (I think) from Hallelujah (our first dance). Matt insisted that I not just toss a bunch of notes on the bars since too many music majors would be at the wedding and know I just arbitrarily through notes on a page--so, I painstakingly copied and rendered the bars! I realllllllly love Matt. :) Obviously. Some of the random signs below include the bathroom baskets, guest book sign, dollar dance signs (which will be attached to bubble bowls with ribbon and stood on pillars so MOH and BM do not have to hold them), 16 round table numbers (8 musical terms, 8 art terms), kid's menu and regular menu. Yeah, obviously being unemployed and getting a new Mac for Xmas has allowed me to let my creativity flow...plus it feels good to be designing. I also made the table number stands since I hate the plain metal tall ones reception facilities typically have. I bought wire at Blick Art Supply and then bent and curled it and added some beads and a clear glass stone for weight purposes. They look really cool and will add to the decor, rather than clash with it. I decided to make a seating chart rather than have to make a ton of escort cards. I think seating charts are nice and clean and still get the point across. :) I made this 16x20 and printed it at FedEx Office and put it in a frame I already had.    Favors for the Reception: I DIY-ed 175+ favor cones made of recycled sheet music to hold candy as our favors. I used a variety of ribbon colors for accents. They will be filled with chocolate candies wrapped in magenta and purple foil wrappers--including mini Reese's PB Cups, Caramel Hershey's Kisses and Milk Chocolate Balls. All of the candy I ordered from www.candywarehouse.com which cost less than $100 for enough to fill 150+ favors. What is great is you can search for candy by color- and there are surprisingly a lot of choices in our colors! I can't wait to assemble them. When they are displayed at each place-setting at the reception, they will be accented with a single dendrobium orchid head. Yay! Exciting!      Favors for Kids at the Wedding: Each family with kids will get an Origami Kit that includes an instruction book and 55 pieces of origami paper. I figure this will be a way for the kids to QUIETLY keep busy at their tables! We'll see how it goes. I wrapped each kit with music note wrapping paper and a colored ribbon...they look great! When I find out which family-kids are coming, I will make a tag for each one too. Fun fun DIY project!!!     Thank You Cards: I made these on VistaPrint--they say "The Janes' THANK YOU". I love my awesome idea to hold a piece of white foam core in a bunch of different ways--it allowed me to add text digitally after the fact in any font/phrase we wanted! Love it! Highly recommend!  |
