project: evolution of (wedding) hair (pt.2) !

much to my mother's disappointment, i will not be wearing a full length veil. i tried several on and none of them worked for me. i think if my hair was darker i may be more open to the idea, but the super blond hair + pale skin + long white veil just didn't mesh.

i have spent many, many hours looking over etsy for inspiration. for a while i thought i might try my hand at making a veil myself, but after a disastrous DIY ring bearer book project i decided to keep my crafting jobs at paper goods and kids crafts.

i talked to my hair stylist and then bought a few pieces off of etsy. it was way too hard for me to just choose one and go for it. i tried to buy items that i would wear on non-wedding days as well, so if they don't work out i can still enjoy them. or give them away to a fellow bride! i like to share.

bought from: Bungalow

i bought this cute veil first, but it was pointed out to me how a headband might hurt after a few hours. this is still in the running though! its adorable and exactly the size i was looking for!

bought from: Cultivar

i also couldn't resist these clips in our wedding colors. i LOVE the grey flower. i would wear these every day, so if they don't make it into the wedding hair they will still be put to good use, and they were very affordable.

the owner of sirens is also creating a few pieces for me to choose from using vintage materials! i can't wait to see what she comes up with. she also makes gorgeous little tophats that are so amazing! if i was a little less hippie i would totally try to pull off that look.

this chapter is closed. i will have worry free wedding hair and i can move on to my next issue: rsvp cards were due yesterday and we are still missing 26 replies!

project: evolution of (wedding) hair !

in case you haven't noticed i am not a "natural" blond, and haven't been since i was a wee little girl:

three year old me

two years old and i already love big glasses :)

somewhere around the age of seven my hair started to get darker and darker. by the time i hit 18 i was in the dirty-blond-almost-ugly-brown category. on my 18th birthday (i wasn't permitted to dye my hair before then), i died my hair black and stayed that way for many years.

i'm eighteen
and i don't know what i want

when i finally got bored of black i started experimenting. my hair has been so many colors! pink, red, REALLY red, red and black, black and white, brown-ish, stripey, etc etc etc.

this would be "really red"

maid-of-honor-gina and i in a photobooth. its hard to tell but my hair was "stripey" at this point

trying to get some sort of dark natural red going

current hair (photo: sarah yates photography)

in a perfect world i would get my hair done every five weeks. my roots start to become annoying at the five week mark, but by six weeks they really bother me. when i hit eight weeks (like i did this month), i want to pull my hair out. luckily i managed to squeeze in a couple of hours at my favorite salon, with my favorite stylist, and all is well in my world of hair.

we had a bit of extra time to play with some wedding styles. two days later, my hair is still curly! i love it... never in my life have i had anything but straight hair. apparently super bleached out hair can hold a curl much better than my natural super-fine-baby-hair.

after fifteen minutes of curling and arranging my look turned out hilariously retro and i LOVE IT! i'm not sure this is the exact look we will go for at the wedding (my hair will be, ahem, longer and fuller and more flowy with some subtle help) but it is super cute and will hopefully be styled similarly at a little photo shoot planned for next month.

freshly bleached and curled retro hair. pretend i am not looking
super tired and standing in the whole foods parking lot.

next post: evolution of (wedding) hair part II! veils and flowers and other hair-y things.

computer issues

my four year old super-trusty and amazing powerbook g4 died on wednesday. i bought it on brodie's first visit to see me, the week we officially "started dating." we had planned on buying a new laptop after the wedding, but i guess that just wasn't how it was meant to be! silly me didn't back up any files. like, ever. all of our wedding plans are on there. our budget. 5000+ photos from the last four years of our lives. 10,000+ mp3s. my client hours and information. and all of my precious sticky notes!!!

we picked up a new macbook pro the same day but tonight we need to go buy a firewire cable and see what information can be saved from our old hard drive. hopefully, i can at least get the wedding budget and my sticky notes. i used sticky notes for EVERYTHING! we also bought an external hard drive and the new plan is to back everything up daily. is that unrealistic? ok, weekly. or, as often as i remember...

i have been having a great time with photobooth:


less than two months to go until the wedding, DIY projects are going smoothly, all of the invites are out and replies are rolling in. excitement! we are in a good place. and if i could please restore my wedding budget files, i would be truly happy.

project: backyard party !

the plan for our rehearsal dinner has once again changed direction. we originally wanted to throw a backyard party, an ultra-casual gathering at our neighbors house. then i noticed our lovely tree. and our cute fence. and i decided we had the time and resources to get our (rented) backyard nice and cleaned up before the wedding. we are now looking at a scaled down version of a rehearsal dinner, in our tiny backyard. still super casual, still in a yard, just smaller and a bit more personal. hopefully, this will be the last change, i want to send out invites by the end of the month!

in preparation for the event we have been working hard to get our landscaping sorted out. when we moved into our house (a year ago this month!) our landlord promised some yard work come springtime. we are well into summer and that work never happened. now i get to decide.. do i call him up and bother him about his promise? or just go ahead and lay down some rocks and pathways myself? he said we can do whatever we want to the space while we are waiting for him.. and we have been waiting a long time.

we spent the last two weekends raking, pulling weeds, and planting. we started a small garden, and i turned half of my hanging lanterns into hanging planters.

the begining of our small garden. basil, peppers, chives. also, our many baby succulents for other wedding purposes!

votive candle lanterns and hanging planters. next weekend we plan to have the entire length of fence finished.

baby succulents!

lovely lovely hanging planter from ikea. a great deal at $10 (marked down from $30) we plan to pick up a few more this week.

project: jar lanterns !

b and i finally got around to our lantern-jar project this evening. we made a (small) dent in the 100-ish jars we have collected. we managed to make twenty hanging jars in about twenty minutes. we plan on making the rest as soon as i soak the labels off. which means the dinner dishes need to get done, so i can use the sink. if only those dishes would do themselves.

hanging in our lovely tree, beside my favorite windchime.

and again.

on our fence. i put all of the nails at the same level, but the wires are all different lengths. i love the effect!

shower, pt. 2

i already talked about the utter embarrassment of opening gifts in front of people (how do normal people handle birthday parties year after year?!) but i'll try to get over that and move on to more important matters. like cupcakes. and wine.

i made all of the cupcakes for the shower the morning before. and they were perfect. is it weird to make food for my own shower? probably, at least my mom thought so. fortunately, i love to bake, love cupcakes, and pretty much insisted that i would make them all myself. just another trial run before the actual wedding. i made 48 red velvet cupcakes with a simple buttercream frosting. it took about an hour to mix and bake all of the cupcakes, and about 20 minutes to frost them all. my skills are improving! and even though there were 24 people at the shower ALL 48 cupcakes were gone gone gone within three hours. i love it!



the lovely, lovely white wine sangria. this was totally destroyed within the hour and the ladies had to keep refilling. at one point i saw people dipping their cups in to eat the fruit floating on top, it was amazing. i was a key player in this whole sangria business.. i had two cups before any guests arrived and about four more during the party. i wanted to be good and toasted to get through the day and it totally worked.

gina made salads. annette grilled food.

can you guess how many peppermints are in the jar? the winner of this game got a cute starbucks mug and giftcard.

so many ladies wore such beautiful dresses! i love all of these shades of blue and green together.

looking back on the day through photos, i definitely had a good time! i am smiling in all of the pictures, and my whole body didn't turn red until i had to sit down to play a game and open things. yet i can't believe i have to go through all of this again in august...

after the shower we headed here to look at suits for b, then over to the cat and fiddle for dinner and drinks and darts, trader vics for more tropical drinks, and akbar for cute boys, michael jackson on the jukebox, and more drinks, drinks drinks.

i am pretty sure all that drinking suppressed my immune system as i have now been sick for ten days and its a little bothersome. but it was worth it, oh yes, so worth it.

ps. all of the 'round one' invitations are out and we had our final tasting last night and OMGOMGOMG we will be married in 66 days!!!

shower pt. 1

despite all the nervousness i had a great time at the bridal shower and all weekend. of course, this week i am sick sick sick. haven't eaten in almost thirty-six hours and feverish. no energy to type. read blogs. finish invites. return emails. etc etc etc.

i know there are at least a few relatives waiting to hear the story of the shower, but until then i leave you with this lovely shot:

that would be me sitting in the chair covering my face, maid-of-honor-gina holding up a silly lacy thong and my mom laughing hysterically at my embarrasment becaue she bought me said thong. so ridiculous! more details later, just as soon as i can stand up without feeling faint and get the rest of these invitations out...