Here Comes the Bride

Oh man, you guys.  Wedding planning.  Here is my advice to you: elope.  Seriously.  I've finally reached the point where I am happy & exited for my wedding day again, but for several months there I don't think a day passed without me asking the Mister if we could just elope.  Because dang.  It's stressful and expensive and frustrating.  But, in two weeks, we will find out if it will all be worth it.

At some point, I'm sure I had an idea that I would DIY a lot more of this wedding than I actually am.  But I am okay with that.  We aren't doing favors in any traditional sense of the idea.  We are having a photo booth because ERRRRBODY loves a photobooth.  The machine prints double strips of every photo and there is an attendant there who will cut it in half and paste one half in a scrapbook for us and people can write something and that will be our guest book and the photo strip will be the favor.

We decided to hire someone else to put up all bistro lights and navy blue paper lanterns, but I also wanted hot pink tissue paper pompoms hung from the ceiling.  So I'm making those.  I'm following the Martha Stewart Method and I'm using a combination of plain hot pink tissue paper as well as hot pink GEMSTONE tissue paper.  I'm pretty excited about the gemstone tissue paper, but apparently I ordered enough to make that website be temporarily out of stock.

The other thing I did was make faux-milkglass vases.  The Mister & I hit up four Goodwill stores to find a bunch of small glass vases.  Then we went to Lowe's and bought some Rustoleum satin-finish white spray paint.  So, now, here is where I deviated from the majority of online tutorials.  Most of the DIY articles say to just spray paint the outside of the glass.  But I found one tutorial that I now cannot find that suggested covering the outside of the vase with paper and spray painting the INSIDE because then you still have the shine on the outside.  And let me tell you, that is the way to go.

I am LOVING the way these vases turned out.  I ended up with a few duds from the first go-round, but now that I have my technique sorted, the results are spot-on.  The best part is that these vases are going to be full of hot pink peonies, so they don't have to be perfect.  The vases will be on top of navy blue tablecloths along with a bunch of white votive candles.  You can see the prep-work for my pompoms in the above photo, especially the SPARKLY TISSUE PAPER!  Because I interspersed the sparkle paper with the regular paper, the pompoms are not gaudy, but I'm hoping that the glitter will catch the bistro lights and give just a little bit of extra sparkle to the reception.

So that's what I've been working on, wedding-wise.  Today I have a trial run for my make-up.  The girl does airbrush make-up, which I've heard is THE way to go for weddings.  It doesn't smudge or run or sweat off.  And it's looking like it will probably be in at least the 80s on my wedding day, so sweat-proof make-up is the way to go.

And before I leave, here are two photos from the past months of radio silence.

The Mister's aunt & grandmother hosted a lovely bridal luncheon for me in California last January and my mom & cousin came out with me.  This is us at Venice Beach, enjoying the warm weather and sunshine!

And this is from the amazing bridal shower my sister put together for me in Illinois last month.  She is a fantastic party planner and the whole thing was a lot of fun, with the usual games and prizes and super yummy food.  I am in LOVE with that dress that I wore and I want to wear it all the time.

I am running my second half marathon on Sunday and after that, it is All Wedding All The Time.  Y'all ready for this? (please tell me I am not the only one immediately thinking of Jock Jams with that phrase?)