Our Wedding: You're the world to me...

After the ceremony, we snuck back into the ballroom for some portraits!

Here's a little music for your viewing pleasure:  the first part of our Social Hour playlist, which we could hear drifting into the ballroom from the lobby where our guests were mingling...

The Spin Invites

Two weeks ago, Mr. Spin arrived at my house with a lovely gift bag complete with blue tissue paper and purple ribbons...

Our invitations had arrived!  Since all of our guests have had plenty of time to see them, I'm ready to share them with the blog world.  But first, I'll take you through how obsessive compulsive I was about these things.  I'm an English teacher, aspiring writer, scrapbooker, and snail mail pen pal- paper goods are A BIG DEAL to me.  I'm also a believer in the idea that an invitation can set the tone for a whole wedding- it's the first thing your guests see and that picture and image get connected to your big day.  I keep every invitation, and I get excited when I see how the invitation "matches" the wedding- the poppies on my friend C's invite matching her bright bridesmaids dresses, my friend T's invitation matching the place cards and the icing decorations on her cake, my friend K's table numbers utilizing the same navy stardream paper as her invitation envelopes and the bridesmaid's pashminas matching the embossed pink flowers.  This is what happens when you're wedding obsessed, folks.

Finding "the perfect invitation" for a simple, elegant, Southern wedding wasn't easy.  Some of the contenders:

Dogwood Branch by Wedding Paper Divas... my venue has some dogwood accents, and it would've been nice to use a dogwood motif on paper since the real thing will be gone by the wedding day, but I didn't think it was obvious enough that these flowers *are* dogwoods.

Royal Cascade by Wedding Paper Divas... beautiful, but the colors weren't quite what I was looking for.

Verbena by Wedding Paper Divas... I was lovin' the purple and blue hydrangea-esque flowers, but not digging the modern fonts.

Hydrangea by Paperwhites Press... great, but completely over budget for the Spins, and I wanted more than one color on my invitations after the Verbena almost won me over.

So here it is, our invitation suite designed by Mr. Spin's talented cousin who owns her own invitation shop.

The materials and art are by Envelopments.  I knew that I wanted floral invitations and our main wedding flowers are hydrangeas.  We wanted to incorporate our wedding colors, periwinkle and purple.  Mr. Spin got really excited when he found Envelopment's shiny "Zircon" cardstock.  Mr. Spin's cousin suggested the matching envelope liners and I think they make a huge difference, especially since we didn't use inner envelopes.  The font used for our names and "Please Respond" is called Lily Wang and can be purchased from MyFonts- it's on sale now for 12.95, which makes me kind of sad that I paid the regular price two weeks ago.

Mr. Spin was also happy to find stamps in one of our wedding colors, and I enjoy seeing those purple pansies when the response cards land in my mailbox!  I also made a directions/additional information card using ivory cover stock, my own inkjet printer, and a Fiskars paper cutter.

So far we have 27 guests who can come and 3 who can't make it.  I've also been amused by the comments some of our friends have written on the cards- including some full-fledged letters on the backs!  After five years of dating, everyone is ready for this wedding, I guess.

Blog Heroine: High Tide or Low Tide

I have a new wedding-blogger heroine: Chardonnay of High Tide or Low Tide. The reason? Her diy flowers, which she and her family assembled the day before the wedding.

Here's her bouquet in action:

There are also some nice close-ups of her flowers, including her gorgeous centerpieces, in her details post.

Inspiration Board: My Wedding in Textures

Inspiration Board: Letters to Juliet, Sophie and Charlie

Here's my second Letters to Juliet inspiration board. I wanted to incorporate Tuscan sunflowers and the light colored suit Charlie is wearing when he and Sophie meet for the first time. I like to think that being in love with Sophie would loosen him up enough to see it as a great wedding look :)

Sources: Sophie and Charlie on the balcony, floral arrangement from Elizabeth Anne Designs, Sunflower arrangement from Country Living, gelato from Love Luck and Angels, Invitation suite from Pepper Design,

Vintage Bentley, Centerpiece from Kristen and Dale's wedding at Style Me Pretty, Bride and groom from Trendsetting Wedding

And another shot of Sophie and Charlie because they are one of my new favorite movie couples:

Teen Hollywood

back to the drawing board on flowers! - UPDATE with some new ideas & incpiration

Yesterday morning consisted of: receiving the estimated cost of our flowers, hyperventilating, my mom reminding me that I can't really remember what the centerpieces at most of the weddings I've been to, further reminding me that filling, good tasting food is MUCH more important at a Southern wedding than pretty flowers, and deciding that we are going to DIY the centerpieces. I will still use a professional florist for the bouquets and other personal flowers because they will be in so many photos.

Goodbye, beautiful centerpiece FI and I fell in love with after seeing on Style Me Pretty...

and back to the drawing board. When I mentioned my love of milk glass and feasibility of finding lots of vases at thrift stores, Mom raided the cabinets and we have a lot of milk glass vases already. So now I'm thinking of doing something like this:

but in these colors (and imagine that the tree stump becomes a mirror or tray and the camera becomes one of our table numbers, which are going to be in picture frames)...

Project Wedding

I totally think that my FI, mother, MOH and I, even our complete lack training as florists, could still pull these off, with a little help from our friends. It might even be fun, and I think that FI and I will feel more ownership of our wedding if we can look at our centerpieces and know that we designed them, found the supplies for them, and created them together. Mr. Spin is going to check out the "discards" room at his workplace (he sells interior design products) to see what treasures may be found there.

Ruffled blog has a tutorial on how to diy vases that look like milk glass with regular glass vases and glossy white spray paint. Ebay may also prove to be a valuable resource - a search for "milk glass bud vase lot" turned up a lot of 17 vases for just $25!

I may incorporate a Mason jar into the centerpieces... even though our venue is elegant ballroom, Mason jars are so Southern and Mr. Spin got so excited when he saw them in the vase aisle at Michael's. I think we could make them look classy next to the milk glass, maybe with some submerged hydrangea heads and a floating candle? Weddingbee's Mrs. Labrador proved that Mason jars can look elegant in the right setting! I think our friends & family would love seeing them on the tables, too- a little nod to our country upbringings and especially Mr. Spin's home county (which has a noted history of MOONSHINING!)

We can do this. I know we can. I'm so inspired by bloggers like Weddingbee's Mrs. Tulip and Mrs. Cola who have done their own centerpieces... they prove that do it yourself flowers can be done, and done beautifully.

Today's tasks, then: pricing out wholesale flowers online. While watching Bridezillas and My Fair Wedding, of course (it's becoming my Sunday ritual).

And a task for the rest of the week: having our florist send us an ITEMIZED proposal (she just left me a voicemail with the grand total for the wedding), and perhaps shopping around for other potential florists who may be able to truly give us what we want for less money.

FI's task for the week: talking to our potential officiant, his family minister.

Joint task for the week: figure out who from our list will be invited to the wedding and decide how many out of town guests we will invite so we can start blocking hotel rooms.