FINALLY – I have made a firm decisions!! The flower girls!

Drum roll please….. the final dresses!

From little-flowers.com

Now, the decision I have not made – what color?!?  I’m thinking cream dress with either a chocolate, burnt orange, or avocado green sash – with either a matching or contrasting flower.  Regardless – these dresses are adorable!! It doesn’t take much to make these ladies look cute! Now the big question – what on earth am I going to have my ring bearer wear?  I don’t like tiny tuxedos – but what are my other options?

I have the pleasure of working with an insanely creative Art Director. We will call him Eriq Mum. He has worked with Dinsney Pixar, Madonna, Intel, Dreamworks, and the list goes on and on. I asked him if there was a chance his excellence would possibly help me design my wedding invitations. I kid you not, this man is GENIOUS. His response:

“I would love to help. We can do something slick, personalized, and fun. No payment necessary – my wedding gift to you. All I ask in return is a big ass box of assorted Sees Candies chocolates and some gourmet cupcakes or various treats from the Sweetface Bakery on Union Street. Surprise me. I am free beginning mid-end of February. You can pop by my studio and we’ll work on it here.”

Buds, lets just say I nearly fell out of my chair. I don’t have pictures yet, but I was so excited I had to share the news, I’m thinking about having him go with honeycomb motif as seen on StyleMePretty:

Mum bee…. bzzzzz

Trying to decide on programs.  Trying to decide on wording.  Trying to keep in theme.  Speaking of themes, not sure what mine is still – right now it is “fall” but trying to tie in honeycomb.

Here are some inspiration photos for my programs.  I LOVE the idea of a program/fan combo.  Classic, chic, and color palette friendly.

From theknot.com

So, I cannot decide if I should do favors for each room. I am inclined to say “yes” because I am feeling guilty because everybody paid so much to get to my wedding because all of my guests with the exception of 7 (out of 250) are from out of town and I think it would be a nice gesture. I have been trying to think of cute and clever things to put in the rooms when I came across THIS!!! What cuter, easier, less expensive thing could I we possibly include? For $9.99 you get the template in the color of your choice which you can edit yourself. As you can see, this is for a baby shower – but how perfect! A little friendly game of do you really know us well enough to have been invited to our wedding “how well do you know the bride and groom”?! I’m going to buy the paper, print them myself, and get the golf pencils for 10 cents each!

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Gift for your maids.  Standard right?  Monogramed bag, framed picture, gift certificate, and a variety of other things they will most likely never use.  I wanted to do a Portland themed gift – something they would ACTUALLY use.  And then it dawned on me – from the homepage of threaddesign.com:

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Ah, the age old favor dilemma. Will people leave them in the hotel and never think twice about it? Are they worth it? Are they required? What is the protocol. We have decided to do a do-it-ourselves/caterer combo. Here is what we have come up with…. one word: FOOD.

From stylemepretty.com

We are buying 200 of these very inexpensive brown boxes – about 30 dollars for 100. We are having our caterer fill each one with one slider, french fries, a bottle of water, and a packet of advil (see earlier post on signature cocktails).

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Now, honestly, I am not one to complain – I’m really not. I’ve heard time and time again that, “wedding planning is so stressful”, or that “you will spend every waking minute planning”. I can see how it might be stressful, so many decisions to make, vendors to deal with, etc. But we enjoy spending this time planning. So far there has just been one small hiccup.

Mum Dude and I decided to do a wedding website and to have this completed before we sent out our STD’s (with the website URL included). Last minute I decided to include a video slideshow to introduce our guests to the immediate families. We both come from divorced parents so lets just say there are several parents involved. I sent an email to all the parents saying, “the website is FINALLY done – check it out”.

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Bridesmaids dresses. I love planning – but I have one small problem… I really battle with trying to make everybody happy. I know, I know, this is OUR wedding, but I want the maids to love what they are wearing. However… this is much easier said than done.

For example, I have one maid who is 5″11′ and although she isn’t full figured, she also isn’t small boned. In contrast, I have a maid who is 5’5″ that weighs about 115 lbs with a slight frame but a not-so-slight ‘top section’… ha. Then, there is my sister – no ‘top section’, insanely tall (picture supermodel). How can tiny Mum Maid and Supermodel Mum Maid possibly wear the same thing and still look fantistic. The answer, I have decided, is THEY SIMPLY CANNOT. The solution?

Threaddesign.com – their new Party Collection offers various fabric, color and style choices without looking bridesmaidy, which I have found is also hard to avoid.

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Mum Bud likes cocktails – so does Mum Dude. And although most people have a blast at weddings, sometimes they can make people a bit nervous. This is why God invented signature cocktails for weddings. Our isn’t actually going to be “signature” just anything that tastes good, looks good, and is Orange.

Here are a couple pictures I have found for inspiration and to give our caterer, love the idea of mason jars – about a dollar/piece (plus cute ribbon to tie around the neck of each jar.

From instyle.com, Leann Warnest Photography, jupiterimages.com

I’ve searched high and low through blogs, valleys, and magazines and I still have not found the flowers I envision. I want something modern (ie- branches with buds, tall, simple, not too frilly). However, I can’t seem to find a picture of what I am looking for anywhere. Our general color scheme is “fall” – golds, deep red, deep pinks, but primarily avocado green, burnt orange, and chocolate (you may already have made the assumption that I have trouble making decisions). Although Mum Dude is very involved in planning, he doesn’t really care about flowers.

So far this is what I have:

See? No branches. If anybody happens to stumble across a branch image – please – let me know!

Now to the spending part. The situation is as follows:

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