Wedding Wednesday- 31 More Good Ideas for ONE Month Out!

from followpics.net/christmas-cinnamon-roll-wreath/‎

Alright people! We are exactly one month out today! So rather than just do one great idea, I figured I would do 31. I probably won't have another chance to trot out the fun ideas I come across on my blog hopping (which is almost over too! I mean, I am watching them slowly wane from my interest- once you have made your decisions, it just isn't as fun). I especially love that Offbeat Bride, and there a couple on here that I have left at the side for quite a while. So anyway, drink this in people, because it is almost over!

Ok!  Off we go!

1. This isn't technically only for weddings (It would be awesome for like holidays too) but for a brunch wedding it would be really cool. I can easily explain why we did our wedding the way we did (we want to dance), but if you aren't dancey, I think a brunch wedding would be so cool.

from offbeatbride.com/2012/07/washington-garden-food-wedding

2. Comic book postcards as your guest book. Very cool. I especially love the way they are displaying them. 

from offbeatbride.com/2012/07/unity-sandwich

3. A Unity Sandwich! As opposed to sand or candles or that business. The Boy HATES those, but we would do this if we could. Just amazing. Lifetime commitments do look like sandwiches. 

from kotaku.com/5930485/

 4. A Tetris Invite- This is Genius!! Would be very cool for a gamer wedding.

from indulgy.com/post/u4sqPheVT1/must-take-wedding-photos

5. This picture of guys getting ready. I just think this is pretty sweet. 

from offbeatbride.com/2012/07/nerdy-wedding-invitations

6. Dinosaur bone motif- I just think this is adorable- very tongue and cheek without being overly cutesy. 

from www.examiner.com/slideshow/wedding-activities-for-kids

7. Kids packs- I like this wayyy better than the coloring books that A) they don't use and B) are usually perpetuating a bunch of heteronormative silliness. I mean, if you are at a wedding for a heterosexual couple, some of this business is hard to avoid, but I think there is no reason to treat it like the only option. Or even something they should aspire to? If you just give them notepads, they can use it however they want!

from whengeekswed.com/blog/2012/04/16/hidden-spiderman/

8. This. I am pretty sure this was described as "something for the groom" but I think this could be awesome for anyone! Think of all the weirdness you could have crawling out of your wedding cake! This idea truly has a ton of potential.

from www.mazelmoments.com

9. This is probably the last time I will post a picture of this wedding, the dream one, on the blog. Yet another picture of it has been circulating around the internet, and it seriously has to be the prettiest yet. This is the reception that launched a thousand paper lanterns. Still, come on people! This is amazing!

from www.uncommonplaceblog.com/2012_07_01_archive.html

10. Having a wedding at the cheesy astro turf oasis in the middle of Joshua Tree. Just so creative and bizarre. I love the kind of intentional cheesiness of it all, but Joshua Tree is also so beautiful, so you get a very strange combination. 

from www.pinterest.com/cocobeancoco/updos-low/‎

11. Bride with each bridesmaid pictures- I really love these, because they turn out so much sweeter than the big group pictures. Melissa did these for her wedding, and I really thought they were great. 

from tiedbowblog.wordpress.com/tag/wedding-chair-signs/

12. Pictures on the back of the bride and groom's chairs. I saw another one in a magazine wherre the pictures were of the bride and groom as kids. I thought that was such a sentimental idea without being saccharine or overly agressive in its cuteness.

from www.pinterest.com/demomorty0/

13. Engagement pictures that prominently feature pets (and maybe nothing else)- this engagement pic is so cool because it isn't trying to hard. But putting them in a studio-like space, the photographer avoids some overly domesticated , Beidermeier style intimacy- but it is still intimate!

from offbeatbride.com/2010/08/guestbook-alternatives

14. A Blue French Horn as your Guest Book- Perfect for the exceptionally avid How I Met Your Mother enthusiast (or french horn players, I guess). 

from www.pinterest.com/vanityscare/engagement-pix-to-copy/‎

15. Another great engagement picture- God Bless Neon shoe laces- also, couples which are not equally matched in their eccentricity- I totally get that!

from www.geekosystem.com/eye-of-sauron-cake-always-watching/

16. Eye of Sauron groom's cake- Wow I wish I had thought of this! THis cake is AMAZING. Now I just think we need to have a Lord of the Ring's themed party so I can make this cake. Just about the most evil cake ever, in a good way. Seriously, one of my girlfriends with babies needs to have a Lord of the Rings themed 1st birthday party so their kid can eat the eye of Sauron!

from offbeatbride.com/2012/07/jenga-guest-book‎

17. Jenga block guest book- Just, cute. I would prefer a settlers of Cattan Guest Book. Maybe Uno. Or Pirateer.

18. Cookie Bouquet! Another genius sweets-related Idea- It is so sweet and they look delicious!

from www.pettipond.com/image_bf4.htm

 19. Ok, I am not a hot pink person, but I will happily respect any person's commitment to color. The inside of this skirt is just so cute. A great way to spice up a boring white dress.

from weddinggawker.com/?s=harry+potter

20. Harry Potter Engagement Pictures. This is sooooo good. This is why you can't spend too much time on blogs after a decision is done and over with. How do you live with yourself when you realize that you didn't think of a Harry Potter themed engagement shoot? 

from www.pinterest.com/ugotj/baby-shower-ideas/‎

21. Fruit Monster-  I love this guy. Way better than your regular fruit display. The three eyes and strawberry ears are my favorite part.

from www.pinterest.com/coffeehit/wood/‎

22. These signs. I like the mix of fonts and colors on this particular one. 

from www.pinterest.com/smorey10/late-night-wedding-snacks/‎

23. I know I used these before, but they are so cute! You have to appreciate cinammon roll lollipops! (its funny that cinamon rolls came up twice in one post!)

from ruffledblog.com/handcrafted-saskatchewan-wedding/

24. A beautiful Prego bridesmaid! I mean, I have a couple pregos in the mix, and i love the look they did for this girl! I just want them to feel cute too!

from www.chicagoillinoisweddingphotography.com/

25. I go back and forth on loving this and thinking like it looks like a sea of hung up used tissues.My Dad's dog would love it! 

from indulgy.com/post/FKWaFJZFT1/up-fingerprint-guestbook

26. These guestbooks- Probably the Boy's favorite thing we got for the whole wedding. It's very cute!

from etsy.com

27. Brides with Bettie Page bangs. I miss my blunt bangs, but I hear having them for your wedding leads to all kinds of annoyances and such.  Still, this girl looks adorable.

from www.pinterest.com/nannasoozanna/the-groom-and-his-men/

28. Suspenders!  I love them, I love this picture, and I love the commitment of the two guys on the left.

from ruffledblog.com/coral-savannah-wedding/

29. Polka dot bridesmaid dresses- I love some pattern. In Pam and Carlo's wedding, we wore black and white patterned dresses and they were so cute. People shouldn't be afraid of patterns!

from www.pinterest.com/duvadesigns/‎

30. Quilting details. So pretty!

from www.etsy.com/blog/en/2012/featured-shop-sibo-designs/‎

 31. This veil. Just beautiful!

Alright people!! We only have 31 days to go!! It's almost the end of Wedding Wednesday!

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Wedding Wednesday- Final Thoughts on Gift- Giving

from www.amazon.co.uk/The-Monster-Factory

Alright, one of the other things I couldn't really talk about during the process of preparing for the wedding was gift giving! This, to me, is a very important part of any event, because I just genuinely love giving presents. I feel like it gives me an opportunity to show people how much we love/ appreciate them, so we spent a lot of time/ discussion on what would be a good gift to give. 

As a bridesmaid, you basically always get the same gift- the jewelry you wear for the wedding.

 

 

 I tried to get them jewelry that was really cool and special- I bought them from Jennifer Jones Jewelry on Etsy ( you can find her shop here- http://www.etsy.com/shop/JenniferJonesJewelry?ref=seller_info). The ones for our wedding were in all of our colors and had all sorts of neat vintage earrings on them. I felt kind of torn about them once I got them, because they were so my style and not the girls, necessarily, but I think they liked them. I had spent a long time deciding which bracelet for which girl, and at least my sister-in-law Elizabeth wanted to know why I picked hers for her, so that kind of curiosity was fun.

etsy.com

  

I would highly recommend Etsy to brides who are looking for cool original jewelry that perfectly matches the style of their wedding. We were going for a kind of light late 40's/ 50's feels for our bridal party, so I went with these big retro looking studs for their earrings. I found them at a wide variety of stores, almost all of whom were pleasant and easy to deal with. Every girl got different flowers for their ears, and I think they were a nice simple foil to the otherwise kind of busy get ups. Plus, I figured that the earrings might actually be wearable again, even if the bracelet wasn't.

My mom and I had decided that we would pay for the girls' hair, so that pretty much ate up the bridesmaid budgets, but the boys were getting such a fun gift that I wanted to get the girls something fun too! So I had the idea, thanks to think geek, to get them all weird cookie cutters (the original idea was to get them all ninjabread cookie cutters like the top picture!). I decided that since many of them are more functional adults than I am, I would try to mix in silly and sentimental cutters with ones that they may actually use. The only person who got all silly ones was Elizabeth, because she is 17 and therefore is at about the same maturity level as I am. The cookie cutters reminded me of many of the times that my MOH and I made cookies with our Nana.

I think cookie cutters work because who doesn't like making cookies? Even better ones that have some silliness and joy? It is one of my favorite things to do, and I weirdly have silly baking memories with a lot of my bridal party. Something like that also offers you the opportunity to give everyone equal but personalized gifts.

etsy.com

The last thing I gave the girls was a pez dispenser with a disney princess theme. Over the years, the boy and I had joked about an elaborate wedding at Franklin High School track with Celine Dion on a crane that was Disney Princess/ sin themed. I had a couple of throwbacks to that wedding planned, but the biggest one was that each of the girls got their pez dispenser (my brother had bought me the set about 5 years ago) and a little cupcake charm (also from Etsy) to attach to their bouquet. The cupcake charms were cute, but they were kind of a fail, because they fell apart all day long- mine even fell apart at the altar!

 

The boy had a much easier time choosing the gifts for his groomsmen (I want to point out here that we used the tissue paper as wrapping material... which I will be doing for the rest of my life). He and his brother (and their friends) had played with legos together since they were kids, and the legos have been making more and more of a comeback over the last year. My brother is also into legos, so really the only person who wasn't crazy into it was The Boy's oldest brother Johnny. I am pretty sure they had pulled him over to the dark side by the end of the wedding.

  

The legos were a pretty big hit, except for Pete who wanted us to get him a different set. He had helped me wrap them all, but he did such a good job keeping them all a secret. He is awesome!

  

For guys, there are less accessories you need to provide, but leave it to us to make it more complicated. We bought them all robot socks, which I think looked a little bit more like monsters than robots. We also got them their bow ties and suspenders, since the odds are they won't be getting much repeat usage out of them. 

 

Despite Jim's face in the picture, they mostly seemed pretty pumped about wearing the bow ties. I thought they looked pretty sharp and adorable, so I am glad I took a stand for the bow tie. 

The last group we wanted to really give something great to was our parents. It turns out there aren't many traditions or guidelines of what you give to your parents (much less stepparents) for your wedding so we tried to have a good time with it. But all of our parents had been ridiculously helpful, supportive, and enthusiastic en route to our wedding, so it was very important to me that we put some thought into their gifts.

 

Because we had two big Harry Potter fans on our hands, we gave both our Mom's Harry Potter wands! Well, technically MIL got a Molly Weasley wand and my Mom got a McGonagal wand. I think they liked them a lot. If you want to buy someone a wand I would highly recommend this store- http://www.etsy.com/people/SticksAndKicks. We also got The Boy's parents a family tree from Etsy, which I thought turned out really beautifully.

etsy.com

My mom was the only parent we instantly knew what we wanted to get her- she has wanted this kind of Hawaiian bangle for a long time, so I saved up to get her one for the wedding. We debated between this number and another one with flowers on it, but my Aunt Ann felt like she would like this one better. I also got a set of coral print for my mom's husband, who is big on the scuba diving. 

I had the hardest time shopping for my dad- I got him an embroidered tissue, and we got his wife a necklace charm of her dog Big, but we needed to do something else. We talked about getting them a nook kitchen table, or a hammock, but eventually we got them a gift card for a verizon store, because they both have ancient phones, and my Dad's was truly terrible. It was a more practical gift than I usually get, but once I thought of it I was pretty proud of the idea.

Ok, so now that I do this, I realize that a lot of this would probably not be that helpful for brides making plans. So, my advice for the gift-giving is to take your time with it. I am not sure it even makes some of those wedding checklists, but it is worth your time to start putting thoughts and money aside as you go. I think it is also great if you can connect the gifts to the larger goals of the wedding, because you usually give them on the night before- they help set the tone, so if you are going traditional, do traditional gifts! If you want a serious party feel, do shot glasses or something silly like that! These people, in theory, are the closest to you of anybody, so think about them and want they might want or need. I feel like it is an important part of of the wedding to show people you appreciate them, and honestly one of my regrets is that I didn't do that more, so I am glad we had this chance. It really is worth the effort, I promise!

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Edwardian vintage wedding dresses - a guide.

Dear Reader

The Edwardian period was just ten years from 1901 to 1910. But it is still popular today: just look at the international success of Downton Abbey. (The period after the death of Edward until the First World War is often included, too.)

Original Edwardian vintage wedding dress (with 1930s satin slip), £1250

Fashionable Edwardian brides aspired to the 'S' shape, which was created by whalebone corsetry. The corset design (called The Health Corset) although restrictive, was at least not as damaging to their health as corsets of the Victorian era. The waist circumference was gradually reduced by tighter lacing, until they reached their smallest size which - shockingly - could be as small as 16 inches.

I look for dresses with a reasonable waist size (not 16ins!) then I have a few clever techniques for increasing the size further. For example, adding lace from the same era. This can bring the waist to about 26 or 27ins - which of course is still very small fitting and not for everyone, but hopefully doesn’t require a corset!

Original Edwardian vintage wedding dress (with 1930s satin slip), £1250

And there are other features which may need modification: first, the front of the bodice is often loose-fitting, or 'pigeon chested’. Secondly, Edwardian wedding dresses often have high necks usually supported by tiny ‘bones'. These can be removed or adapted to give a softer neck shape.

I am not at all against changing vintage dress to make them work in a modern context,  as long as it's done sympathetically and the dress looks better for it! 

I am also a fan of Edwardian style headdresses. The fashion was for delicate circlets made from wax flowers, see my post here. I've definitely seen a trend amongst my clients for fresh flowers instead of diamante - which I think is a lovely change. I will always love a well made side-tiara but it’s nice that girls are rediscovering real flowers. And circlets are definitely a trend right now.

Original Edwardian vintage wedding dress (with 1930s satin slip), £1350

I'd also like to show you a Heavenly Vintage Bride from a few years ago. Her name is Millie, and she wore a beautiful late-Edwardian dress for her Beatrix Potter themed wedding. 

Millie’s dress is wonderful fine lace called ‘Tambour’ lace, which is embroidered cotton net. This was usually worked by hand using a frame and hook.

There's lots more lovely images from Millie's wedding on the LoveMyDress wedding blog (a great blog, if you haven't seen it before.) Check out Millie's feature, here.

I'm a huge fan of this style of lace - or any cotton lace, actually! And it’s so good for vintage collectors and wearers as it stays strong for many years. 

Many veils were also made of Tambour lace such as those shown here. I am in the process of having some lovely veils made to complement my dresses, using a special sewing machine which replicates this style of lace.

As soon as my new veils are perfect, I'll let you know: you'll see them here first! I've included some pictures of two wonderful original Edwardian dresses which are both available now. If, like me, you love the dresses from this period, then do check out these vintage Edwardian dresses here. 

Hope you've enjoyed this post - and see you soon!

Love 
Helena
Heavenly Vintage Brides

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