Typical First Post

Because everyone in my life is probably sick and tired of me talking about wedding stuff, I need an outlet. For the next two months I will use this space to share the little details that I'm excited about, DIY projects, full on budget meltdowns, and, if I'm honest, probably lists - lots of lists. I have lists that include making more lists. Sometime I'll have to post a picture of my ridiculous bridal book that always gets me laughed at. That's another thing this blog will include - pictures. Because I can never get enough of them. After the wedding, there will be recaps and honeymoon posts. As of right now, I intend to keep this going through my first year of marriage, but let's just take it one day at a time. Contrary to what my wedding may lead you to believe, I'm not super good at making commitments.

Now that the logistics are out of the way - onto the wedding stuff!

Yesterday was a DIY day. When, at the end of the day, I sat down to show my ever supportive fiance my accomplishments, I was overcome with a wave of... pride? Joy? No. Disappointment. I spent hours working on projects yesterday, and I felt like I had very little to show for it. A few pieces of photo paper that I printed out and a small box. I felt like at any moment he was going to say, "THAT is what you did all day?" He did not, of course, say any such thing. I certainly thought it to myself though. Oh well. I am just going to have to accept that the hours of detail work I put in will more than likely go unnoticed by 99% of our wedding guests. Maybe that's part of the reason I decided to put everything down in writing. That way, if I get too busy or forget about details on The Day, I'll always have documented evidence, and clearly blog evidence is irrefutable.

Enough talk. Time for pictures.

My poor dining room table. There is no dining going on here. It started with invitations. (Which, by the way, I have the damn coolest invitation suite I have ever seen. Maybe after they have gone out, I will post about them here - I don't want to ruin the surprise first!)

Sorry for the filter, Instagram turns us all into wannabee photographers!



Invitations are now put away neatly and ready to be mailed this week, but they have been replaced by a crafting explosion!

I started out the day by making a box for our ring bearer to carry. [Side note - our ring bearer is my nephew, and his is possibly the most handsome, charming boy on the planet. All of the ladies at our wedding better watch out, because this kid has got swagger for days.] Our wedding has a theme (Italian Film Festival) and I had been trying to think of something he could carry to incorporate that. I had originally considered having him carry something sort of like an Oscar envelope, but I was just afraid it was too small and would get lost or ruined or something. What I ended up doing was getting a small, plain wooden box and just jazzing it up some by incorporating our colors (burgundy and champagne).

While the overall theme is Italian Film Festival, a sort of underlying recurring theme has developed along the way. One of our favorite movies is Love, Actually. Instead of table numbers, we're having table names (just to make things extra complicated for our guests, obviously), and one of them is Love, Actually. I'm walking down the aisle to Craig Armstrong's original piece, Portuguese Love Theme, from the movie. We are using a few other songs from the soundtrack in our recessional and the Anniversary Dance at the reception. It wasn't something we planned, it's just kind of turned out that way. So, when it came time to decide what to put on the box, Clinton made the executive decision that it should be a quote from the movie. I knew right away that I wanted the quote spoken by the Prime Minister (played by Hugh Grant, what a dreamboat) as a voiceover in the airport.

"Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion's starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don't see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often, it's not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it's always there - fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know, none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge - they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I've got a sneaking suspicion... love actually is all around."

So, with that decided, I set out to create a couple of options. I made one photo that is on a film strip - we ended up using this one for the final product. I also made another one that is a play on the movie poster - I liked it, but the other one looked better on the box, so we decided to put it on the inner box (yes, there's a box inside the box. Deal with it.) just because I didn't want to part with it.


Not the actual product, but close enough. I just bought a small, plain wooden box from Michael's.




572 coats of paint later: The Final Product. (okay, maybe only 4 coats and 2 layers of Mod Podge.)





The little tag has our names and wedding date. Sorry, too lazy to rotate! This is getting long enough for a first entry anyway.

The original poster, for reference.

I also made a whole bunch of table signage yesterday, but I'm going to save that for another post because it will be a lot more pictures and a lot more words. For now, I leave you with the immortal words of a fictional, aging pop star, Billy Mack.

I feel it in my fingers, I feel it in my toes
Love is all around us
And so the feeling grows
It's written in the wind,
It's everywhere I go

Thanks for saying what I can't always put into words, Billy. It is everywhere I go.