I'd rather dream of the wedding than dream about my job!

I had a dream the other night that I went to a flea market/art fair/consignment sale. It was huge, and held on some sort of farmstead. That's not important. What's important is that nearly everything there was the perfect decor for my wedding, and was reasonably priced. Which is unusual for that kind of sale. There was a lot of nice jewelry, too, but that was priced just like art fair jewelry usually is... too expensive.

So that's my dream. It was a nice one. Better than the one I had a week or so ago, where I sat up one morning and realized that the wedding was a week away and I was only as prepared as I am now. Even that wasn't so bad, though - I felt in control even if I was working round the clock.

Now- time to go ribbon shopping! Ta ta.

Things are happening...

Ignore the clutter.
Watch this space.

Wedding Porn

That's what it is. Gratuitous photos of weddings, weddings, weddings. And just like real porn, they make you feel somewhat inadequate; ashamed and alone, sobbing into your pillows at night. Ok, not quite so dramatic as all that, but I spent last night scouring my google reader for inspiration on colors. I have also sent the last year emailing myself blog posts that I thought would be useful, and then filing them away into folders according to the topic. So I had that backlog to look through, too. My plan is to amass a quantity of pictures showing the colors I like, and then letting C look through and pick his favorite combinations, and we decide from there what our "colors" should be. Frankly, at this point, my eyes are bleeding and I hate the very idea of having wedding colors. What's wrong with just choosing whatever color strikes my (our) fancy at the time, so long as it goes fairly well with what we've chosen before? It seems to me like wedding colors are just a thing you "do" and I may rebel.

wedding prototypes

These are some trials I've worked up for potential paper based decorations... I'm really excited about them. I'm picturing the paper chains lining the aisle, and perhaps draped along the long tables with some ivy. The hearts might look nice hung above the cake table... and the books will probably have numerous uses! These are all things I can be working on way, way ahead...
Can you tell I'm starting to get excited here?

Crowdsourcing. The wisdom of crowds.

You know, in order to crowd source, you need a crowd. I really need to tell more people about this blog.

However, in the meantime, I'm trying to decide what we will use in place of an altar area, as we aren't getting married in a house of worship. I love the idea of having the ceremony outside, but I know it might rain in April, so it has to be something that could be easily put together indoors or outdoors. So I thought we could use an garden arch (purchased in part with an amazon.com gift card I earned taking surveys), and then drape it with ribbons or flowing fabric (Imagine the photo on the right, only floor length and hanging from the arches). So I found a couple of contenders... what do you all think?

First off - a little reminder of what we're working with here.
The lovely terrace where we might have the ceremony:

The lovely interior where we might also have the ceremony:

With me still?

Now for the arches.
In this corner, a lovely little three dimensional number.

Its got a lot going for it. The three of us (the officiant, Mr. Adorable, and I) could stand underneath during the ceremony. However, its the most expensive, at just under a hundred dollars.

And in this corner, the champion (price-wise).

This one is a clear winner on price. Its only 36 dollars. As far as garden arbors go, that's pretty low. So I am drawn to it strongly. I could see it with a wall of ribbons hanging from the back, fluttering in the breeze.

And finally, this corner holds my favorite:

I love the square(ish)ness of the corners, and... I just like it alot. Its priced moderately, at 68 dollars, but I'm quite drawn to it. Again, with fluttering ribbons, or perhaps the floaty, drapy fabric angle.
I like the idea of being married under an arch like one of these - its evocative of a chuppah - a Jewish wedding canopy. As a little girl, I didn't dream of my wedding much. But when I did, I pictured it looking a lot like the wedding scene from Fiddler on the Roof. So it would be particularly meaningful for me. And I floated the idea by Mr. Adorable, and he's for it. He's the best of all possible future grooms. His opinion is generally either "I'll defer to your judgement" or "I want you to be happy." Makes planning pretty easy. He has yet to weigh in on the "which one" issue, but he's fully on board with the idea. He's so loveable.

Sunrise, Sunset.

So...
I havent been doing much wedding planning lately, since I started thinking there was far too much time before it was really necessary. I started thinking I was crazy to be doing any planning at all at this stage. Plus, I've been trying like mad to pay off my credit cards, so there hasn't been much money for doing things like silly wedding planning, I told myself.

However, this weekend was the going away party for a dear friend of mine, who is moving to Japan. And I decided that I need to do a better job of keeping people updated on what's going on. Maybe its narcisistic of me. But I don't care (is that irony? Or just appropriate?). And I need to start sharing this with people, so I actually have a reason to post.

So today I'd like to talk about sneaky ways I'm earning wedding money.
As previously stated, I'm paying down my credit cards. Yay me! And I'm also trying to save for this whole wedding thing. Its not easy, since Mr. Adorable was out of work for a while - damn the economy, and the economically worthless English Degrees that we both hold! - and has now gone back to school again for further certification. But I've been doing a couple of things that I really hope will pay off in the end.

First, I enter every giveaway I can think of. Maybe this will net me nothing in the end. But it costs me nothing but a few seconds of my time, and usually no personal information is even exchanged - most wedding blogs offer giveaways where all you have to do is leave a comment to be entered. I may never win anything, but nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?

Next, I participate in some services that allow me to earn points by either taking surveys, or clicking on links in emails. I can then use the points to get gift cards from certain merchants, like amazon.com or target. Takes a few minutes of my time each day, and sometimes I even get products to evaluate at home. Once I got a bottle of mouthwash, another time a shampoo. And once, a t.v. pilot. Anyway, I just traded in some points for an amazon gift card, which I hope to use to buy an wrought-iron arch (the sort that's found in gardens) to use as a sort of homage to a chuppah. Or maybe I'll break down and use it to buy books.

To the garden!

This weekend I am going to SCRAPBOOK GARDEN in Wichita.

This was one of my mother's favorite places in the world. She was crazy scrapbook lady. Also crazy card making lady. And crazy camera lady.

She was a lady of many crazies.

I will be gathering wedding project ideas (including looking for inspiration for one particular project that I will tell you all about soon), and looking for sticker remover - you know, that stuff that loosens the adhesive without damaging the paper underneath. This is because I've started collecting pretty books, which I will hopefully incorporate into awesome wedding decor one day.

Source

However, many of them have price sticker or even worse, a library bar code! Can't be having that. Bad enough that they'll have a "discard" stamp on them. So special, expensive, archival quality adhesive remover it is.

Stuff smells like oranges.