Favors

Okay, now here's a pic of my awesome favors!

Photo taken by Ryan Brenizer.


More pics coming soon, but here's what you're looking at: a pint sized mason jar filled with coffee beans from our favorite coffee company called Alpen Sierra Coffee, direct from Lake Tahoe, California. I first discovered the coffee when Joe took me for a trip there. Having lived there for 6 months, he knew the coffee well because he and his buddies used to stop at a place called Syd's every morning for a cup. I couldn't believe how good the coffee tasted, and I'm a total coffee snob (as is Joe, mind you). :-) So, we thought it would be a perfect favor for our guests and truly personal.

Calculating how many pounds of coffee I needed to buy was a bit of a math problem, and math wasn't my best subject! It took myself, my mom, 2 very friendly Starbucks employees and some good ol' internet searching to figure it out. In the end, it took 18 pounds of coffee to fill 60 pint sized jars.

I made the mistake of purchasing quart sized jars from overstock.com. I was seduced by the sale price but when 4 huge boxes showed up at my office, I couldn't believe how big they were! When I inquired about returning them or exchanging them, overstock slapped me with a $60 return fee for shipping! I tried selling them online but that didn't work too well so I eventually threw in the towel and paid the hefty shipping fee. Luckly, the pint sized jars (which ironically were not in stock at overstock.com) were cheaper and so I really only ended up losing about $20 for that stupid return shipping.

I used Ball jars and a few broke from my slippery grip, so I definitely recommending getting more than you actually need just in case of accidents. Joe helped me fill each jar with beans. The apartment smelled so wonderful while we were doing this project!

I purchased 3 different types of fabric with colorful designs using our wedding colors from City Quilters, a great shop down the street from my office. The women there are really helpful, but since I'm such a mathematics moron- I relied on their help too much and bought way too much fabric than I needed. Go figure. I'm sure I'll find some other projects to use it for though...

Anyway, next I had to cut that fabric into circles and let me tell you- that's a lot harder than it sounds! It was easier to first cut squares and then fold the square...and cut from one corner to another in a curve pattern. Unfold that and voila- you've got a perfect circle! We had to test sizes a few times to see what would look best on the jars but we eventually got it down. Joe used a razor blade to cut several layers of fabric at once. I kept handing him my rotary cutter, but he insisted on using the razor blade.

After the circles were done, I placed them over the jar and twisted the rims to secure them in place. I cut green ribbon and tied bows around the jars. I also made tags for the favors...but me thinks that's another post.

More pics to come soon!

More about our awesome cake!

I'm super proud of how incredibly awesome our cake came out.

First, here's a photograph of the cake that I fell in love with online. (Photographer: Unknown) Apparently, this cake is by Jacques Fine European Pastries in New Hampshire.



I brought that pic to our bakery, Le Bonne Boulangerie, and this is what they created:


Photographer: Ryan Brenizer Photography

To save money, we used white chocolate ganache instead of fondant which still has that smooth finish. Pretty close to the original, eh?

Joe (my HUSBAND- yay!) wanted it to be as chocolatey as possible, so we filled it with chocolate mousse and chocolate ganache. Needless to say, it was extremely chocolatey.

Here's another pic of the awesome cake topper from Lollipopworkshop! ...and again, this photo was taken by Ryan Brenizer.


Gosh, we love that thing!

More to come!

11 days left!

agh! so much still to do. and why can't i update this blog every day? craziness!

here's the latest:

i've received a bunch of registry gifts! yay! oh how we love presents, lol. we registered at crate and barrel and target, against my wedding planner's advice who told us to just register at bed, bath and beyond because you can return things there for cash.

we got our engagement photos- yay! i ordered prints and i don't have digital images of them yet, so i guess i can't post them on here until later. sorry about that. the photos with our dog came out especially awesome! speaking of our dog...she's injured her leg and is limping/crying around the apartment. she's gone through this before so i'm going to wait to see if it heals on its own...otherwise, another trip to the vet!

we heard back from everyone but 1 couple. so far- the count is at 57 which i think is a great intimate number!

this past saturday, my friend (and lovely dog walker, dena) and i drove out east to port jefferson to do a cake tasting. the bakery that our venue uses is called le bonne boulangerie. i was seriously disappointed that they had NOTHING for us to taste, especially since i thought that was the whole point of the appointment and i had spoken with the owner as well as the girls behind the counter numerous times about the fact that i was driving all the way out from the city. eventually, we were allowed to taste a pastry with chocolate mousse inside (one of our filling choices) and it was divine. we decided to go with a beautiful design covered in white ganache (to save money by avoiding fondant but still get that smooth finish) and filled with chocolate mousse and chocolate ganache. joe gave me strict instructions because he couldn't make the appointment. he said chocolate, chocolate and oh, i want more chocolate. :-) yes, he's a total chocoholic, but so am i so i went along with it.

while we were out east, i picked up some local wine to put in the guest baskets/gift bags. can't wait to put those together!

i had my last fitting with a brand new bra! yay! everything looked great and i pick the dress up this friday! i need to drive into the city with my car to pick it up. speaking of the car...joe promises that he'll drive into the city this wednesday to pick up the boxes of mason jars that have been sitting next to my desk at work for the past month. they are for our favors and i can't create the favors until i get those jars home! ugh.

i still have SO much left to do. i'm having trouble focusing at work because i can't stop thinking about all the stuff that needs to get done. this morning, i suddenly remembered that joe needs to get his pants hemmed on his suit and we need to get a marriage license!

more manana!

falling behind schedule

agh! so much left to do! i'm kind of freaking out about everything. plus, work has seriously picked up and i'm going insane there too. agh! i'm actually starting to have panic attacks too! not good!

here's what's been going on:

i went for my 2nd bridal fitting. that went okay, but it was the first time wearing my new shoes and i was standing under hot lights and my feet swelled up! here's the thing- although i won't be under hot lights for the wedding- i'm pretty sure that i'm going to be super anxious and my feet will swell up then too! so i realized pretty fast that i need to have a back up pair of flip flops to wear before and after the ceremony 'cause those nice shoes are only stayin' on my feet for 30 minutes tops. also at the fitting- asked them to make a shawl for me out of the remaining material. my next fitting is on oct 9th, so i'm excited to see how that turns out! i'm also having corset issues, but i'll tell that story another time. haha.

favors! all of the elements i've ordered for it have arrived and i just have to bring those boxes home (they're next to my desk at the office) and start putting everything together. SO excited about those.

a few of my friends/family have told me they never got their invitations. and after all my hard work, that's so annoying! errrrr! not sure why that's happening but i'm fuming about it.

joe and i went to our venue for one last final meeting. we picked out our menu (yay!) and the table linen colors! we decided to go with ivory table cloths with chocolate brown napkins. the pink tablecloths were just way too pink- it seemed like a baby shower color...and they had no apple green...and we didn't want to go with all chocolate brown because it would dark the room quite a bit.

this sunday, we meet with the rabbi. he has to approve the ketubah writing. oh and i have i mentioned that we still don't have our wedding rings yet? and we still haven't received all of our engagement pictures! agh!

okay...more later!

memory board

ok, so i read about how to make a memory board myself and i got to it! i bought a cheap canvas at michaels along with some fabric, batting and ribbon in our wedding colors. i used a staple gun to attach everything to the wood frame on the back, then trimmed all the left over fabric and ribbon. it's important that the ribbon be kept taught because that's how the photos will stay attached.

so...i'll be glueing some buttons where the ribbons cross, but here's a pic of what it looks like so far:
and ok, here's another engagement pic...i was chopping joe's back. :-)


more soon!

Engagement Pics!

we only got a preview of the set... i'll just post 2 for now. :-) Our photographer is Ryan Brenizer!


isn't our dog super cute?


this photo makes me want to gobble her up! :-)

groom attire

There's been a lot of talk in my household lately about what Joe should wear. This, of course, affects the Best Man and Joe's dad. I asked all the women to wear chocolate brown (one of our colors), so naturally, I asked the guys to wear brown too.

Joe thinks he looks bad in brown, ugh. He's crazy...he actually looks quite nice in it.

In addition to color, there was all the talk about whether or not to wear a suit or a tuxedo. Joe's fairly traditional and wanted the tux, but I referenced some photo of Brad Pitt where he looked really cool. I don't even like Brad Pitt, but nobody can deny that he is a good dresser.

Anyhoo, Joe was impressed by the suit on Brad. This pic convinced him to wear a 3-piece brown suit. Thanks, Brad!

Final touches on invites

So, now that we got the calligraphy back and the direction cards from the venue, we had to really glue those invites to the brown card...something we should have done over the weekend but didn't do.

i glued. joe placed it on the brown card because i kept messing that part up.


and yes, he's in his boxers. :-)

he smashed those cards down pretty hard to make sure they wouldn't unglue...


so hard, in fact, that he kept scaring our poor doggie. here's a blurry pic of her running away from the loud sound of joe's banging.


isn't she beautiful, even blurry? :-) yeah...we love her lots.

now we have text!

so once again, this project was mine and mine alone. joe was pooped so he headed for bed while i conquered our text. i made a few mistakes, but luckily we've been printing enough that it'll be okay.

i decided to do our names in green and the rest of the text in brown. so first, i inked up the master screen (a new one)!


again, i used the ink blocking material that came with my gocco.



here they are drying all over my apt!



here's a close up...you can see some errors, of course. tomorrow i print the birdies! anyway, the pink worked out A LOT better than the green!! :-)

invitations take deux

so i redid the background this morning...i think it's still too dark. the white paint started leaking all over my hands, and i just wanted to be done with it.

i started with the floral stencil printed out on a laser printer and cut it to size.

then i burned a master screen and inked it up generously.



after i stamped the cards (using the back of the old ones so i didn't have to buy new paper), i left them out to dry. i really need to get some drying racks, i think.


later today i have to do the text again, ugh. then the birdies! wish me luck!

RSVPs!

ok, so we're seriously behind schedule. especially since we decided that we want to redo the invitation and make the background light pink. joe and i have had a lot of stuff going on (outside of the wedding) and we decided to go for a drive tonight, just to get out of the city. as a result, we're even more behind schedule, agh!! to make matters worse, joe isn't feeling well again and he has to be up at 5am tomorrow for work...so, guess who had to make the rsvps all by her little self? :-)

i started mixing paint.


then painted the master screen and inserted it into the gocco.


i used the gocco ink blocking material to make sure the paint wouldn't overlap into other areas. it's grey and sticky. i didn't think too hard about which colors i wanted to put where this time. i just wanted to get them done, haha. i figured i should use brown for the text this time though. :-)

here are some drying!

gocco invitations

omg, it's been way too long since i posted. so much has happened!

first of all, we started making our invitations. now, i'm a total gocco newbie. for those of you who don't know what a gocco is, let me update you. a gocco is a japanese screenprinting machine that's no longer being manufacturered, so you have to buy them by auction only. i paid about $250 for mine on ebay and it came with a variety of ink colors too. i did one test with the machine to make sure it worked (made thank you cards) and then i basically spent the next month just learning everything i could about the machine and tips and tricks, etc.

so...first we printed the background of our invite. green was the one color we didn't have, so my fiance got work mixing blue, yellow and a bit of white paint together.



that blue thing on the coffee table is the gocco.


so, basically they looked like this:


i sure wish i had invested in those drying racks!



ok, then we both came down with the flu! so...almost 2 full weeks later, we began the challenge of printing the text.



we fell in love with that apple green color when my fiance mixed it, but the next day i realized that it would make our text super hard to read. whoops!

our names were supposed to be in a really pretty pink!


obviously, that didn't really work. :-( so in the end, we printed all the text in brown.


here they are once again drying. *sigh*



after this, we still have to print the little 2 birdies in pink! agh!!!


here's my fiance working on the stamping process. he looks stressed...and uh...that's because the process was pretty stressful for us...especially in our tiny 100 degree apartment! (not to mention the fact that we're both just pretty stressed in general right now).



tomorrow we print the r.s.v.p. cards!

rabbi & photographers

so, a lot has been accomplished in the past few days!

1) we talked to a rabbi. my fiance isn't jewish but he doesn't really identify with any religion. he believes in god and jesus...but isn't sure what he is. AND my mom really wants us to get married by a rabbi and well, it would feel familiar to me so i like the idea. luckily, joe says since my mom is paying for this whole freaking thing, we should do what she wants. haha. so we're going to have an interfaith ceremony leaning towards judiasm. we'll have a chupa and joe will break glass, etc. in fact, we're also going to have a ketubah (jewish marriage contract)!

2) we met with one photographer tonight. and we liked him. tomorrow night, our planner is taking us out on the island to meet with another one and on monday, we meet the third.

on another note- i'm starting to freak out about my weight and how much i need to lose. i went to a nutritionist to lose some, but i fell off the wagon. :-(

it's late! bed is calling me!

moving right along

so excited today!

i bought all my paper supplies for my save the date cards! inspired by kelly and terell's stds (in a previous post), i designed my very own! now i just need my future mother-in-law to send us the childhood photo we're waiting on! she's in georgia for the holidays and promised me that she'd mail the photo from there. ugh. as soon as they're printed and ready to go, i'll post a pic here!

also, my planner's been helping out with our website! right now, we have a pretty slowish song on there. i wish we could somehow connect it to a fast one... i'm just afraid our site and stds are too blah. :-( i want people to be just as excited as we are! maybe it's the color theme i'm still not happy about? this whole autumn color thing is throwing me off kilter. orange and browns are so blech. aren't they? i like brown...but with pink and blue and things like that. and joe hates brown all together. i tried to keep our stds as neutral and earthy as possible since we're still deciding.

oh and it looks like we'll be able to get a rabbi to marry us! which my mom will be VERY excited about. she didn't think it was possible to find a rabbi to marry a couple on a friday night. but my planner's well connected!

now i just need a photographer...

bedtime.