Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Open Letter #1

Dear Obese Mass-Transit Passenger,

First, let me say that I do not hate you for being obese. Perhaps you have a thyroid problem or perhaps you have made a conscious decision to prioritize the enjoyment of food over your physical well-being. Or perhaps you are the fourth South Philly man I have seen that could be 8.5 months pregnant. With twins. Whatever the case, I do not hate you for being obese.

What I really don’t like, however, is the way your eyes light up when you see me sitting alone in a two-seat bench. You seem to think that my fitting easily into my seat is permission for you to take some of my space for yourself. If you were to offer to pay me a third of my fare in exchange for using a third of my seat, I might be amenable, but flopping alarmingly down next to/on me and then saying “Excuse me” as though I had somehow trespassed upon you is not the way to make me a good neighbor.

While I realize that these transit seats were apparently not designed for Philadelphian proportions, the territory allotted for each fare-paying individual is clearly demarcated with chrome or plastic edges. Why must you overflow? In this chilly weather, are you attempting to confer unto me some of the benefits of your negligible surface-area-to-volume ratio? Thanks, but no thanks.

Please know that my primary method of avoiding you, if there is any remote chance of the bus filling up more than halfway, is to sit next to someone whose approach to commuting appears to be less than imperialistic. Even if they are obviously confused as to why I sat next to them rather than choosing an empty two-seater.

I have encountered well-mannered passengers of size who manage to keep their considerable mass to themselves, and they have my gratitude. As for the rest of you, I have bony little elbows, and I’m not afraid to use them.

xo,
Tam

Tuesday, December 09, 2008

You might be crazy if...

-you haven't even considered that you could be crazy.
-you can draw a perfect circle.
-you hatch a plan to die-cut your programs.

This has been a public service announcement from the bell jar.
Thank you.

Sunday, December 07, 2008

...and we're back

I've been seriously slacking here, and a lot has happened in the past couple of weeks. When last I posted, I was waiting to be whisked away for bachelorette weekend at a shore house, which was 36 hours of Rock Band, karaoke, wine, cheese, tax-free outlet shopping, and movies with some of the bestest people in the world. They = awesome.


Thanksgiving was interesting as Mom agreed to give up her "& guest" (since we can't stand her lame boyfriend who is not remotely good enough for her) and I took sister-bridesmaid to take her driving test and finally get her license at 23!

This week I started a new job at the same company, so it's been pretty mentally exhausting, but on Thursday, we got our marriage license! See goofy smiles below, taken just moments after in the hallway at City Hall.


Then yesterday we made our third and final trip out to New Hope, PA to pick up Peter's wedding ring, this lovely piece by Humphrey. It's a stainless steel comfort-fit band tension set with a princess cut sapphire, and I've hidden it in with some wedding stuff, so even if I forget where it is for the next month, I will be sure to find it again.


Our RSVP deadline was also yesterday, so with the exception of my uncle who's been in and out of the hospital all year, our final guest count should be established by Tuesday at the latest, allowing for responses postmarked by the 6th.

Updated to-dos:
My dress alterations - with seamstress; final fitting scheduled.
Fiance's tux - decided conclusively
Attire for male attendants - just one open question remaining. Then guys need to get measured.
The rehearsal dinner - casual, optional, and pay-your-own way. Basically just whoever feels like eating together after the rehearsal.
Contract signing for live musicians - Will be drafted and be accompanied by deposit.
Finish learning to dance - Still no progress
Honeymoon plans (and Peter's passport) - Passport acquired, lodging in London secured, Paris apt to be secured today. Still need Eurostar tix.
Hotel rms for wedding - still need to reserve for ourselves!
Wedding bands - Both in our possession! Yay!
Ask readers to participate - 1 of 2.
Guests/tables - Will be nailed down by Tues, latest.
Reception decor (centerpieces, guestbook, card box, etc) - Still need to finish up bouquet and corsages. I'm considering scrapping the centerpieces, and I'm doing my best to outsource the guestbook and card box. Still contemplating how to do decor for the rest of the house...but that might be what happens to most of the centerpiece stuff I already have.
Programs, table numbers, and other print collateral - Started drafting program copy.
Cake - Give final flavors decision to caterer. Make cake ornaments.
Final payments still to be made to - DJ, shuttles, seamstress, tux rentals, photographer, catering

Unfortunately, I haven't been doing much crafty, lately, or I'd tell you all about it. With just under 6 weeks to go, things are truly winding down.

Friday, November 21, 2008

Eustress, distress, we all stress...

As we enter the home stretch (less than 2 months to go!), I feel increasingly as though everything is under control. And also as though it will come crashing down into a pile of twitching nuptial rubble at any moment. With me at the bottom.

I'm sure part of this has to do with my amazingly fickle partner in crime who, despite any decision we might have collectively made months ago, could on a moment's notice declare that something is no longer acceptable, that we should in fact start from scratch, and why did we ever think such a thing was a good idea in the first place? Examples: having a honeymoon, having a wedding ring, having the maid of honor sing harmony on our wedding song, parent dances, choosing whether to be walked down the aisle, getting married in the presence of family and friends. You know. Nothing major.

At least he still likes me.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Random

As we approach the T-minus-two-months mark, I feel like I haven't crossed so many things off of my list since the 4 month mark.

My dress alterations - with seamstress; final fitting scheduled.
Fiance's tux - initial foray with solid results complete
Attire for male attendants - initial foray with somewhat less solid results complete
The rehearsal dinner - um.... we think it will be the Thursday before the wedding. Does that count?
Contract signing for shuttles - Done! Sent! With accompanying check!
Contract signing for ceremony musician - Will be drafted and be accompanied by deposit.
Cocktail hour musician(s) - Acquired. Contract & deposit as above.
Finish learning to dance - yeah, about that.
Honeymoon plans (and Peter's passport) - Plane tickets purchased, decided to go with an apartment in Paris, since timeshares fell through. Passport happening Friday.
Wedding bands! - Ordered! One ready for pickup, happening Saturday.
Select readings for the ceremony - Decided to leave this to readers.
Ask readers to participate - Not yet, but we have everything so we're ready.
Registry - A living document, but quite sufficiently done.
Build wedding website - Same as registry.
Finish invitations - DONE. Couple of B-listers still potentially getting invites. 50% response from A-list.
Reception decor (centerpieces, guestbook, card box, etc) - I've thought about this a little more, but that's about it.

Other fun stuff:
Seating chart!


I warned you that it would end up being a large system of stickies. Well each of 10 (or 11) sections the size of the area marked in blue represents a table of ten. Couples were written on stickies twice the height of individual people. Then we just moved and moved and moved people until it all worked out well. Silver dots represent members of the wedding party, black dots represent those who have RSVP'd affirmatively. Some tables are currently set with 11 guests, but we expect someone at those tables to either not attend or not bring a guest, bringing those tables down to ten. Some tables only have nine guests at them, which is okay.

So I guess we really are making progress.

Saturday, November 01, 2008

A Wedding Destination

I take my job a bit too seriously. It's probably true in many senses, but the one I mean to use is that I let it flavor my thinking and strategy in many other areas of my life. So naturally, our wedding would need to have an online destination associated with it, full of useful content and social networking for our guests while giving them answers to wedding FAQs (how do we get there? where are you registered?) and helping them to make attending our wedding greener and more affordable.

A lot to ask of a wedding website? Perhaps.

And let's not forget that it also has to aesthetically match our invitations.

While there are some very serviceable wedding website services out there, some even for free, nothing offered the level of customization that I wanted. Well, let's be honest. Needed. So it was time for me to build website number 4.

It begins with the user experience and information architecture. What will guests want to know, what features will they want, and what supplemental information do we want to provide? My initial list included the backstory of Fiance and myself, who's who in the wedding party, directions, hotel info and nearby attractions for out of towners, gift registry info, details about the actual wedding and any additional brunches/dinners/whatever, and ways to reach out to other guests to share hotel rooms or rides to and from the wedding. There was more, but you get the gist. Then all those ideas were sorted into general categories, and everything was given a name. We're currently considering updating the site to include "Featured" participants of the wedding (readers, officiant, live musicians) and possibly a who's who of the bride & groom's families, since our family trees are somewhat convoluted.

Next, the design. I made a simple sketch of the general layout of a standard page, commonly known in the biz as a wireframe. Then I mocked up the homepage in photoshop, pulling in design elements from the invitation, specifically colors, fonts, the trapezoid shape, and the interlocking squares motif. Sorry folks, no sparkles.


Setting up the template took ages and didn't hold up to initial cross-browser testing, but eventually I got it hammered out and went on to develop the content and functional bits. For example, the screenshot (with blurred personal information to protect the not-so-innocent) on the left shows our wedding party. Each member is clickable which expands a layer showing their role in the party and a mini-bio. In this image you can also see the navigation on-state, which highlights the user's current location. That, by the way, is quite annoying to set up. That strange conglomeration of letters at the footer is the middle of a flash animation that has resolved in the first screenshot (thus the blurred out-ness).

Not to be forgotten are a couple of third-party applications that are connected to my home-grown site. (Part of good project management, and any good management really, is to know when to DIY and when to outsource.) An installation of phpbb3 powers a message board encouraging guests to connect with each other for fun, for the earth, and for their wallets, and a link to the previously mentioned buyourhoneymoon.com registry helps guests to gift us our Eurostar tickets or dinner in Montmartre. For some cosmically ironic reason, my future mother-in-law sent me an email to let me know how much she loves our website...especially the registry. Which I'm pretty sure means that she thinks I built it, not that she likes what's on it.

Now back to the part where I take my job too seriously. I knew when I designed the response cards that there was more information I wanted from our guests, but in the interest of giving the important stuff enough space and getting it back correctly filled in, I let it go. But it seems that now that we have affirmative responses, it might be a good time to find out where people will be lodging (our reserved hotel or elsewhere, if at all), when they will be arriving (important for delivering out-of-town info packets), and whether they will take advantage of our shuttle between the hotel and the wedding both before and after. Well what better way to collect this info than through an online form? And what better way to prompt them to let us know than with a highly stylized html email? And how great if we also took the opportunity to a) show off, and b) confirm receipt of their RSVP and give them a save-able reminder of their meal choices?

I can't imagine.

So, project-the-next: design and build an html email that is dynamically filled from the guest list database holding responses and meal choices and that offers a link (tagged with the respondent id #) to an online form that preloads their name and email and asks them for the additional info. Really, I might make it less complicated than that, since this plan is almost as difficult as building the online RSVP system that I wanted earlier but could not squeeze out of the fiance. But we'll see.

Have I totally lost my mind?

Guest list update

A quick update for anyone interested (and you know you are):
-There have been a total of 9 postal delivery days that we could possibly have received responses.
-On one of those 9 days, we received none.
-Today, day 9, we received the first RSVP from someone biologically related to either the bride or the groom.
-Of 62 invitations sent, we have received 17 responses, equaling just over 27%
-32 of 104 invited guests have responded on those 17 cards, which is to say that over 30% of our guest list has RSVPed.
-Over 50% of those attending have chosen the salmon. Obviously we didn't make everything else sound good enough.
-Of those who selected the non-meat meal, none are vegetarians (I think).
-100% of responses are "accepts"!

It really validates our guest list method to know that we've invited people that we want to attend and who also want to be there. Or maybe the "declines" are just dragging their heels about letting us know. :)

Saturday, October 25, 2008

Hardcore DIY Invites (Part 5)

The final week of invitation assembly was, I won't lie, grueling. It was still loads of fun, and really not much work in relation to the value of the product, and I don't regret a minute of it. But yes, it was hard.

On Monday night, when we first got back from Vermont, I put the finishing touches on files for printing. That's pretty light lifting. But the second night, I stayed late at the office to make uninterrupted use of the laser printers to print the response cards and inserts. When I got home, I then cut them all down to their rectangular sizes: exact quarter pages for the response cards, and a variety of sizes for the inserts. I also began cutting the inserts down to trapezoids from the rectangles. See inserts on the left (though the photo actually shows all of the inserts after they've been cut into trapezoids).

On Wednesday, I was able to confirm (slightly earlier than anticipated) the start time of our event with the venue, so printed the invite fronts (again staying a bit late so as to have uninterrupted use of the work laser printer). Upon arriving home, I cut those into rectangles slightly smaller than a quarter page and also cut the majority of the inserts into their proper shapes. At this point, I called in the cavalry (mom and little sister) who would be coming to my assistance on Friday night. Being the total control freak that I am, I wanted to finish as much of the "finer" work as I could, to ensure that if anything was going to be irrevocably messed up, it would be messed up by me.

So Thursday night, I attached all of the vellum invite fronts (see left), numbered all of the response cards (and wrote-in the number invited, as you'll see later) according to the ordered guest list, and addressed all 60-odd envelopes, pairing them to their respective response cards. You may or may not know this trick, but you number the response cards so that if someone doesn't put a return address on their response envelope, if they forget to fill in the "names of attending" line, or if they just write illegibly, you still know whose response you've received.

As flashy as we wanted to be with the invites, I've already mentioned the ways I've managed to conserve paper in the construction, and we didn't want to go the inner-envelope route. So the names of those invited were written directly on the sapphire blue envelopes in silver ink. It may be worth noting that I got a total of about 6 silver pens and markers, compared them all in regards to ease of writing and silver tone, and then selected the favorite to address all invitations.

On Friday, mom checked my envelopes against the guest list to be sure I'd gotten everyone's names and addresses right while little sister and I put stamps on all of the response envelopes, put my address labels on the front of the response cards, and inserted the inserts into the die-cuts on the back of the invites (see left). When mom was done checking against the list, I re-addressed a few envelopes that I'd done a bit too close to the bottom of the envelopes while she started inserting inserts, and little sister put return addresses on the back flap of the well-addressed sapphire envelopes.

At the time, I was under the impression that the invites would need 59 cents of postage to mail, so I figured I'd spring for the 63 cent stamps that would match my envelopes. They didn't have those at the post office I had tried, so they would be the last step of the process.

On the left is that response card I mentioned earlier. We could have added many more questions for our guests to answer (where will you stay, when are you arriving, enter your email to be added to the mailing list, what is your quest, etc), but the more blanks, the more complicated it is, and the greater the likelihood of someone not filling it out correctly. The line that reads "Yes, ___ of ___ will be attending" is designed for us to fill in the second blank letting them know how many people are invited (in case the front of the envelope wasn't clear enough) and for the recipient to fill in the first blank saying how many are attending. This discourages people from writing in more guests than were invited. As we've already found, it doesn't stop them from wishing for more guests or from asking for more, but at least they have an idea of how futile their request is.

Response numbering, pretty stamps and our address labels on the response envelopes. They actually matched the silver of the envelopes better than it looks in the photo.







Here, the whole invitation suite stacked up: the response card tucked into the flap of the envelope, behind the invite, facing the back flap. Basically any way you pull it out, you shouldn't get pieces falling all over the place.



When the invites were done, stuffed and nested into their envelopes, I insisted on pulling them all back out and checking to be sure the numbers on the RSVPs lined up with the names on the guest list, because I'm just that crazy. I would absolutely not permit little sister to start sealing them up until after I checked the invite process I'd put together. And, to make a long story even longer, on Monday morning when I was ready to leave the house with my un-stamped invites to go to work and the post office, I somehow realized that I'd misspelled the last name of someone in my wedding party. It was a near thing, and Fiance offered to re-check all of them against the list (which was right) in the evening, but I managed to let it go.

So, to the post office they went, where the nice man informed me that they weighed exactly 1.00 ounces and I had to rethink my entire stamp strategy. The next day, people started receiving them, and two days after that, we got our first RSVP in the mail. Yay!

Who knew I had this much to say about the finalization of the invites? Wedding web site will have to come next.

Friday, October 24, 2008

Hardcore DIY Invites (Part 4)

What's new:
-the invites are done after a grueling and family-assisted push that lasted from Monday the 13th through Saturday the 18th
-most of them went in the mail on the afternoon of this past Monday
-they weighed in at exactly 1.00 oz. allowing me to send them with 42 cent stamps
-many arrived at their destinations on Tuesday, including the one I sent to our house
-we got our first RSVP hand-delivered on Wednesday after I hand-delivered an invite
-the rest of the invites for which we had been missing addresses or guest names went in the mail today
-we got our first RSVP in the mail today!!

There will now be at least 3 people attending our wedding.

Coming soon: photos of the final invite construction and assembly. And also the wed-site, which launched this past Monday in preparation for the Tuesday receipt of invites and has been suffering minor revisions ever since.

Whew!

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Who sits where and why

I photographed one of my best friends' wedding in Vermont, this weekend, and a lot of the last couple of weeks have been prepping for the trip (including getting lots of other stuff out of the way). With her permission, I'll be posting some of the results here.

For starters, though, please see this photo of Fiance in his "traveling hat" outside of our B&B, the morning of the wedding:



Meanwhile, during the six plus hour drive between my dad's house in New Jersey and our charming B&B in Barnet, VT, Fiance and I finalized the guest list and began our seating arrangements. We're expecting a fairly high acceptance rate, mostly because we're only inviting people that we're pretty sure really want to attend the wedding.

So, by setting up our ideal table assignments ahead of time, when we get those inevitable declines, we'll know exactly who to pull up from the B-list to round out the gatherings. We've tiered our B list into basically it's own A, B, and C lists, so if a college-age friend declines, we know that we have an opening at a table of college-age people and can invite someone appropriate from the B:A list. This way, hopefully not too many of our seating arrangements will need to be redone from scratch, though I'm sure it can't be entirely avoided.

While we had originally thought to identify "core" couples that we could build tables around (and that is how we started trying to do them), we found that we eventually tended more towards "themed" tables with certain social groups of guests gathered together. This might be a little less exciting and dynamic than the sort of mixed-bag personality matching that we'd thought to do, it's not only easier but will more reliably result in everyone having a good time. I think we've still mixed people in enough that you'll need to get up from your table to go chat with at least *someone* that you've been looking forward to seeing, but that you haven't been abandoned with a pack of wild strangers.

For the finalization of the chart, there's plenty of fancy software you can use, but I expect we'll do it the old-fashioned way, which will end up looking a lot like this:

Originally via ffffound.com

Anyone have any experience/advice on how to decide on seating assignments?

Saturday, September 27, 2008

Bling-fest

Okay, I've been on a quick vacation from wedding-land for the last 10 days dealing with health issues, birthdays, and generally scraping my life back into a more cohesively shaped pile of goo after the whirlwind that had been the past month (or more) of late nights at work. Envision this like the making of scrambled eggs.

So without further ado, if you didn't note my engagement ring from my "inspiration" boards, here it is:
I've had this ring for just shy of a year now, and it far exceeded any hope/expectation I'd had for an engagement ring. Fiance spent months working on the design with one of his Co-Best-Ladies and then having it custom made by a local Philadelphia jeweler. After a few rounds of review, he was able to pick up the finished product while I was away in Australia and presented it to me just a week or two later (of course, I couldn't just have it. I first had to agree to marry him). It's a princess cut stone in the center with a trillian on each side, set in a triple trellis setting. The 2.5mm platinum band is more flat than round and tapers to a knife-edge as it mounts the trellis.

For quite some time, I envisioned this as my wedding band, complete with responsibly mined sapphires and recycled or responsibly mined platinum. This lovely piece is from Brilliant Earth who are a major player in the realm of eco-friendly jewelery. I've had some trouble with loose stones on my e-ring, but a channel setting like this one doesn't rely on prongs, and rarely has any problems. One jeweler I spoke to referred to channel setting as "virtually indestructible." However, this particular ring would leave a significant gap between itself and my e-ring, due to the width of my stones in comparison to the band. It is possible to get a channel setting contoured to curve around the shape of an engagement ring, and I tried on a few with diamonds, today.

The last time I was having my setting tightened, I found this beauty from Hearts on Fire. Hearts on Fire is mostly about their special cut of diamond, which isn't especially relevant to me, since I want sapphires, but this setting really appeals to me. It's called the Felicity Queen Anne band, and it's meant to contour around the matching "solitaire" engagement ring which is shaped very much like my custom ring!

See the contour here. I only wish I weren't so enamored with the idea of a "virtually indestructible" setting. Also unfortunately, my wedding band will need to be platinum, if I plan to wear it with my e-ring, because any other metal would cause the two rings to gnaw at each other.

Fiance, however, has no such restrictions, and will probably wind up with something lighter, harder, and cheaper than gold or platinum. Sapphires were his idea in the first place, so he'll definitely have some as well. The first number on the left is from Absolute Titanium which has a fun selection of tension settings in addition to more traditional settings. Tension settings are actually one of the major benefits of going with a non-precious metal, since it requires a metal much harder than gold or platinum to safely hold a stone that way.


For example, this is a stainless steel ring from Teno which is quite lovely, modern, and still masculine.

My most recent discovery is TitaniumRings.com which has a great selection of - you guessed it - titanium rings. My favorites so far are the Cassandre and the Krystalle for tension settings and the Mars and single stone Facia for simple settings. All four are available with sapphires, though they're pictured with clear stones.

Anyone have any recommendations as we go through our ring search? Time grows short!

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

The countdown continues

As of today there are only 4 months until the wedding.

Big things still on the to-do list:
My dress alterations
Fiance's tux
Attire for male attendants
The rehearsal dinner
Contract signing for shuttles
Contract signing for ceremony musician
Cocktail hour musician(s)
Finish learning to dance
Honeymoon plans (and Peter's passport)
Wedding bands!
Select readings for the ceremony
Ask readers to participate
Registry
Build wedding website
Finish invitations
Reception decor (centerpieces, guestbook, card box, etc)

All at once it seems like so much and not so bad.

Monday, September 15, 2008

Inspiration

I don't think that I'd ever been familiar with the concept of an "inspiration board" before I started wedding-planning. I'm familiar with the concept of collage, and I've seen what we call "mood boards" in the design industry which are similar, but usually a little bit more literally related to the final product, since the result of that is a design, rather than an event. Anyway, here are my two attempts at inspiration boards in my chosen color palette. I've starred items that are really being used for our wedding or from vendors that we are using.

Bridesmaid dress*: Bari Jay, New York Public Library: Fête, Wire and crystal branches*: White Aisle, Cake: Rebecca Thuss
Purse: via Style Me Pretty, Non-floral bouquet*: me, Gown: via Style Me Pretty, Aisle decor: Fête
Sweets: via Style Me Pretty, Invitations*: me, Engagement ring*: Fiance, Cathedral and lighting: via Brides Cafe, Eco-friendly wedding band*: Brilliant Earth, Necklace: Museum of Modern Art via Brooklyn Bride
Candles: via Brides Cafe, Glassware: Pottery Barn, Winter scene: Three Winks Studio, Dresses: via Brides Cafe

The first one is more silver-focused, while the second one allows for much more brown.

Glen Foerd Mansion*: Conroy Catering via me, Cotton puffs: via Style Me Pretty, Gown: Maggie Sottero, Fiddlehead fern bouquet: via Brides Cafe
Bridesmaid dress: via Rebecca Thuss, Photo: via Brides Cafe, Blue Satin Chanel nail polish: via Nitrolicious, Men's wedding band: Etsy seller ShadeJewelery
Comb tiara: White Aisle, Jacket: Wilsons Leather, Engagement ring*: Fiance, Blue Mica Prius: Toyota
Shoes: Kenneth Cole via Zappos, Photography*: Tiffany Atlas, Sapphire earrings: Unknown, but similar to these.

How'd I do?

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Hardcore DIY Invites (Part 3)

Okay, at long last the great invite caper. For previous posts on invitations, try this. This was phase one of construction, which centered around the core structural component. After this will come the vellum overlay and inserts.

Here we go:

This is my sister and the table covered with our initial crafting equipment. You can see the bone scorer, precut stardream-type cardstock, the first folded invites, the slicer, and my special archival bookbinding glue. The cardstock was custom cut by my dear friends at paperandmore.com who took my exact specifications and, for $5, saved me the headache of having to cut all those straight lines for myself. Sadly, they do not die-cut.



The slicer was used to die-cut the slits in which the inserts would sit. I got this, somehow, at Pearl Arts and Crafts on South Street for like 7 dollars. It's big enough to cut 8.5x11 paper, and has an extending arm for measuring, if you need it. I didn't, for this.



Here is a closeup of what I did with the slicer. I carefully calculated the length of the slits and their distance from each side of the final folded piece, did a little addition, and marked off the ends of the die-cuts with little slivers of post-it paper tacked to the underside of the clear slicing guard. This way, I knew just where to start and stop my cut. Whether I actually did start and stop is another matter.



After being die-cut, each piece was scored, using a template I originally intended to use to make the die-cuts. We found that the straightest template was the one I stopped in the middle of. Little sister did most of the scoring, marking two folds creating two card-sized panels and one roughly quarter inch flap for gluing.

You may wonder why the flap is important at all. Well, there are two reasons: first, the look of two naked edges glued flat together seems significantly less elegant and finished than a naked edge to a fold. Second and more importantly, the inside of the piece needs to have lots of open room for the inserts to slide into, and the folded tube shape is less likely to glue itself flat than the edge-to-edge shape.

This is an above view of several nested pieces of cardstock before gluing. A note on folding this stardream-style cardstock: score well and fold slowly. This will give you nice shiny folded edges. Unfortunately, I learned this too late, so mine are a little rough and cracked, but I've resigned myself to hoping no one notices. I'm sure not redoing them with fresh paper just for that.

Using a rubber stamp I got at AC Moore, and a clear embossing ink, I stamped a standard distance from the top corner of the non-die-cut side of the card. I generally just "eyeballed" this, getting a feel for the placement with my fingertips in relation to the edges of the cardstock.

Then I used a silver embossing powder to cover the still-wet ink.



After lifting the cardstock to tap off the un-stuck powder (and gently brushing off some reluctant powder with a brush), sometimes it would be perfect, as above.



Other times, I'd get little mutant lines or missed spots and need to add more dust. You can see both problems in the image above.



Either of these situations could be handled with a fine brush.



Once that was all taken care of, we had to melt the powder. Yes, this is a straightening iron. You can see that the left side is shiny and melted while the right is powdery, as before. This takes a few seconds, but is very very cool to watch.



Here you can see a finished embossing.



Here, a bunch of embossed cardstock, folded and waiting to be glued.



These were glued on three sides...the long side with the flap and the two short sides to keep people from tearing them open like greeting cards.



Next, the glued cards were pressed between Deathly Hallows, Half-Blood Prince, Women in Rock, Mists of Avalon, Infinite Jest, and Billboard's Top 40. This is to keep them folded flat while the glue bonds. You may see the blank card in the stack to the upper left...that's because I originally forgot that the cards should be embossed before gluing! Not a big deal, and we were able to emboss them after gluing, but the glue tended to melt a bit and need to be redone. Plus the stardream-style cardstock tends to warp a bit when you heat it for embossing, so the pressing is needed to flatten that out, as well.



Here, you can just see the difference between the freshly glued cards (left) and the pressed ones on the right which are much flatter.



After a night spent between heavy books, I have a good number of invite base pieces!

In the end, I sorted them into four piles: Use these first, Not great but okay, Might be salvageable, and No way - For experimenting only. The first stack covers the A-list plus a little bit. If we get too far into the B-list, I will get nervous. I had a lot more in the last pile than I expected to have, so if you tackle something like this for yourself, definitely prepare for a high "spoilage" rate. Overall, I had about 80% in the first two stacks and 20% in the others. But, each time I start a new step of the process, I can experiment on some of the duds until I get the hang of it, which should hopefully save me from much additional spoilage. Besides, the worst is over. I did these in installments over a few nights and, as mentioned, had some help from Little Sister.

This was not quite as nerve-wracking as I'd expected, and a lot easier than I thought it would be to handle without hordes of sweatshop workers.

Ever embarked on a mass hand-crafting adventure? How did it go?

Sunday, September 07, 2008

The joys of delegation

It's been an insane week, around here. Insane. My sister sure picked a great week to stay with us, as I have practiced probably the worst hostessing of my entire life. At least I hope it doesn't get any worse.

In any event, she helped me get started on the mass-production of our invitations (which I will get into in another post, soon!), and shouldered the responsibility for MoB-wrangling, which includes helping my mother find a dress (and possibly other accessories) and keeping my stepmother as calm as possible. She can get a bit rabbity.

So, without further ado, the dress my mom will wear for the wedding:

c/o Jasmine Bridal. I recently used my internet juju to identify the Jade collection by Jasmine Bridal as a tasteful but not frumpy line of dresses that my mom would probably look good in. She's about 5'1" and works at Home Depot, so this was a bit more challenging than it would be for my stepmother, who, I hate to say, is a bit of a social x-ray, for such an awesome lady.

So, they put in their order for the dress, on sale, and my sister and I will be subsidizing it to keep it within a reasonable budget for mom. However, they didn't choose a color yet, and swatches of their top two choices (some kind of teal and "cranberry") will be sent to me for the final decision.

Moral of the story: Little Sister = Secret Weapon.

Who's yours?

Monday, September 01, 2008

Project Planning the Wedding

I've recently said that if I were exposed to solar radiation and one of my existing abilities were enhanced into a super-power, I would have amazing spacial perception and be able to judge sizes and distances and to fit most anything into most anything else. What this means in real life is that I love all kinds of puzzles, I'm very visual, and I can pack a car trunk like nobody's business.

Even being able to pack things efficiently has kept my DIY projects from totally taking over the house, but it's really the other two aspects that inform the wedding project plan. For those of you who don't know what I mean by "project plan," a project plan is typically a process document that includes a list of tasks, how long each is expected to take, any dependencies between tasks, what resources (including people) are required for each task to be completed, and budget associated with each.

To be honest, I don't have a project plan for the entire planning process, but I have a few sketched-in plans for specific things. For the invitation assembly process, which is rather involved, I started with an excel sheet listing all the details of each step.


But, as mentioned, I'm a visual person, so I wanted to graphically see how they all fit together (like a puzzle, no?), so the spreadsheet became something more like a project plan.


Now, this isn't a real project plan by any means, as I don't really know who or how many people will be helping make the invitations nor just how long things will take. But I can see from the project plan that there are a few groups of related tasks (which could help me split helpers into teams), there will need to be at least two separate sessions of assembly, and that I have plenty of time in which to address envelopes.

My second plan grew out of the realization that I have only 20 weeks left until the wedding and more than a dozen DIY things to finish up. So the plan is really a to-do list that tells me when I'm supposed to have finished things. None of the tasks are really dependent on each other.


What special tools and processes do you use to keep organized?

Saturday, August 30, 2008

How it all happened: Part 3 - The End of the Beginning

Previously in this series:
Part 1 - First Impressions
Part 2 - The Shell Game

So, Peter walked us back to the dorm after the winter formal, and a kissed him good night on the cheek. A few days later, I realized that my boyfriend really wasn't even a part of my life and, hello, he'd actually already broken up with me twice and then come begging back. Quite enough of that.

The winter show came and went, Peter serenaded me via his blog, and we decided to have dinner together. I cleverly engineered for us to cook dinner and watch a movie at his place on "Thursday," which of course just happened to be Valentine's Day, and he equally cleverly convinced me to go for "coffee" with him the day before our date.

"Coffee" was had in the form of hot chocolate and warm apple cider. Dinner and a movie turned into dinner and two movies (or was it three?), many hours of talking before falling asleep, and then omelettes and skipped classes the next morning.

Not that everything was perfectly smooth sailing from then out, but there were no major pitfalls. About 5 and a half years later, we committed to the next stage of our evolution as a couple...

But that's another story.

Next in the fabulous saga: a trip to the other side of the world, and a proposal (proposition?) in our own figurative backyard.

Thursday, August 28, 2008

Lucky 13

Below, see the 12 pairs of shoes I have either returned or am about to return all of which were purchased in search of the perfect wedding shoe:










And perfect pair #13:

Oh, DKNY Blyss, how do I love thee?

PS. I did also purchase these awesome Nine West rain boots that I fully plan to wear with my dress any time I am outside of the wedding venue. But they were never seriously in contention for being the all-night shoes, so they don't count as part of the search, really.

I've mentioned a few times what a big internet junkie I am, and this is just further evidence in support. Of the 14 pairs of shoes listed here, only one was purchased in person from an actual store with a front door and a register. I even bought one of the online pairs twice! And returned it twice! My first wedding shoe purchase and last purchase were both from Zappos.com and everything in between (except for the one bricks and mortar purchase) were from Endless.com, which is run by Amazon. Both offer free shipping and free return shipping, and Endless offers free overnight, while Zappos is usually just a couple of days (and if you ask them any customer service question, they're likely to upgrade you to free overnight).

So, if you think it sounds like a hassle to return (for free) 11 pairs of shoes purchased online, just think of all the time and walking I saved myself from having to physically hunt down those shoes, or a comparable assortment. Not to mention the effort it would have taken me to get out of the office during shopping hours. Did my cubicle neighbors laugh when I'd get 3 pairs of silver shoes shipped to me and then try them on at work? You bet. Was it worth it? Absolutely.

Anyone else have an online shoe-shopping story?

Images from Zappos, Amazon, Nordstrom, or Bizrate.