Tissue paper pom poms

Just got the engagement photos from Kelly today (whee!), which were taken over 3 weeks ago, so I thought I'd best get my butt back on this blogging wagon. Traveled, painted furniture, worked, end of quarter craziness, blah blah fishcakes. I did read Miss Manners' Guide to a Surprisingly Dignified Wedding and even went through it a second time to mark up all the things I wanted to blog about. Oh, and I also started the intermediate skirt sewing at Sew Fast Sew Easy so that I can take their advanced dressmaking class.

The traveling was to Michigan, to visit Mama G!! I'm pretty sure this was my first time to the Midwest ever, though my knowledge of geography is so hazy that that might be wrong. I had such a fun and relaxing time; Mama G is the best hostess ever, she had this adorable welcome basket all ready for me, which include an ornament in the shape of Michigan among other lovely smelling soaps and lotions. We went through two watermelons, visited Zingerman's and found foodie heaven, found an awesome curated and cheap vintage shop and...made the test wedding crafty project!

These were made based on the instructions from Martha Stewart. Here's what we learned:

1. The rectangle of tissue paper you fold up should be proportionally longer than it is wide. This is because you'll fit in more folds for the same width, which will result in a thicker cluster of paper.
2. Cutting the edges to be sharper triangles rather than rounded scallops looked better, in our opinion. Not too sharp, though, otherwise the points will flop too much.
3. Again, fluffiness and thickness were important to the point where we thought it looked better to tie together two halves rather try to one big pom pom sphere from the same sheets of paper.
4. Having a gradient of colors really gives the whole thing more depth.
5. Without cutting down the tissue paper, the pom pom ends up looking huge but once you're outside, the big ones look better hanging in the tree. 

This was our favorite one. There are 3-4 different colors here and see how the shape is a bit oval because it's 2 halves stuck together?

I need to scope out how these pom poms will be hung at the venue. I know there's at least one big tree in the yard that's close to the house...but I can't remember others. I also don't know whether we can hang things inside the house itself. As for colors, I think we'll stick to the red-orange-yellow colors. The blue is a bit too hard to find and as Mama G said, I have to be a bit careful that the colors don't veer too much into primary color mode. If I can find tablecloths that are the right blue, that would pull it all together.

More table decorations

"Coral" table decor out of drinking straws at design*sponge.

Individual cupcake stands at hello hanna, via not martha.

I think putting together a template for these shouldn't be too difficult, it's the cutting them out with the curves that would take awhile.

My sister the bridesmaid

My sister is now a junior (like whoa!) at a Division 1 school on a tennis scholarship. We used to fight all the time when we were little, from my end because I was always jealous of the attention she got from everyone else for being the younger, cuter one and resentful that I always had to be the bigger person because I was her older sister. Ah, Confucian culture.

I remember very clearly when I was around 11 and just had another fight with her that my dad took me aside and told me, "Look, I know she's annoying. But she's 7. She can't help it. It's going to be like this for another 4 years but it will get better after that, just you wait and see." (implied subtext: please try to make it easier on your mother in the meantime) My mother always hated that we fought so much, she would try to impress upon us that someday she and our dad won't be here anymore and we would only have each other to truly rely on.

My dad was right (as my mom will be, too), as so often happens. Ergh, that part of growing up where you realize that your parents are far smarter and wiser than your smug teenage self ever considered giving them credit for! Anyway, my relationship with my sister really improved vastly once I left for college. I'd come home and be surprised at the funny, creative person she was growing into.

Now that she's at school, she'll email me once in awhile to ask for advice on one thing or another (even though she ignored my advice about making sure she worked really really hard for the first semester so she wouldn't fall into the trap of spending the rest of her college years working to make up for it, ahem) and I like playing that big sister role, because I can help make her way a little easier than it was for me, figuring things out more on my own.

I also know that I can rely on her to help me when I ask; she was one of the few that helped Dan and me move in to our first apartment together, mostly by driving a second car because she's a far better and more confident driver than I am, and she also drove all the way out to Princeton from eastern Jersey at the beginning of August in order to ferry me to and from an appointment with the caterer.

This is all to basically say that she's earning her bridesmaid status plenty (though I've told her there are no expectations of planning a bridal shower or bachelorette party or any of those sort of 'extra' events). Happy birthday, sis (I am terrible with dates and birthdays but the technology of scheduling things ahead of time when you do remember and before you forget what day of the year it is, to the rescue!).

Cotton cady Erica dress from J.Crew, in "fresh mint"

This is the dress we've bought for her as a bridesmaid dress. Simple, elegant, and pretty close in color to the shade of blue I'm trying to tie things to, though this is a bit greener, I think. We bought it now because it's on sale (listed at $80 currently, I think we got it for $90? Maybe $100? Original price was $225!) and we had such trouble finding anything nearly as close when we spent almost an entire afternoon at the mall that the chances of finding something if we waited until next spring, when she won't be home for spring break due to the tennis season, would be pretty slim.

We may need to bring this to the tailor to get it fixed up a bit when her body changes a bit from all the working out during the season. Luckily no changes need to be made to the length. My mother is verrrry nervous about the whole strapless thing, so maybe we'll add some kind of strap to soothe that. I think a thin halter-style ribbon strap in red might work, so that it doesn't disturb the pretty neckline, and then metallic or red flats, and maybe a little red flower pin at the waist and/or headband. She's got a pair of cute red rose earrings that could work with that, so then maybe just a necklace or bracelet to finish of the accessorizing.

Hanging decorations roundup

I really need to either post these more quickly instead of letting everything sit for a whole summer or stop collecting quite so many.

Puffy paper lanterns from not martha. I really like the texture of these, a bit like those soft fabric flower poms.

Cupcake liners as tiny little paper shades on twinkle lights at ikea hacker.

Loopy-Loo simple paper garland is IS.LY

Flower pom tutorial from Jen at Me, Myself, and Bride.

And how to store all these lovely garlands? Roll them around a toilet paper roll with slits cut at each end to catch the ends of the garland.

Photo props

At the wedding showcase our caterer put on a few weeks ago, they had people from Fun Photobooth there with their full setup. They were really nice and we got a sample strip to take away with us. I think this would be a bit of an extravagance on the budget though, so I'm thinking a more ghetto setup with just a digital camera on a stand and a backdrop with props scattered. Maybe even use the webcam on a laptop.

It'd be nice to have physical photos though, especially to have guests put together in a guestbook. The Photojojo store is now carrying the Fuji Instax Wide Format Instant Camera which could work really well as a Polaroid substitute. It's a bit expensive for more or less a toy, $80 for the camera and $22 for film (20 exposures), but perhaps I can wrangle it as a birthday/Christmas gift of some kind. Though, I think I'm going on a cruise in the Caribbean with my parents for my birthday and I'd really like a new digital camera for that occasion (thinking of the Canon S90 right now, just based on not martha's recommendation).

I've posted before about the chalkboard message board that could go in the photo booth as a prop. They are now also carrying these photo paddles to add whimsy.

$10/paddle or $30 for pack of all 5

Can be held up by subjects or photographer for changes in scale.

On a more serious idea, I love, love the group panorama shots by A Beautiful Day Photography in Seattle (aka Conan O'Brien's wedding photographer), a new sponsor to A Practical Wedding.

I sent Kelly an email yesterday about this, I hope it's not offensive to ask about something that another photographer does. The thing is I think most of the wedding photos will just stay in an album or book and only be hauled out occasionally, but with a big group shot like this, I wouldn't feel self-conscious displaying it prominently on a wall.

Last quick thing: Miss C wrote a post about whether hiring a videographer would be worth it and the comments on the post all support asking a family friend to capture important moments in the ceremony and throughout the day to have a low-key video that could then be edited together. I like this idea, I think I'll ask someone(s) to be the Flip cam person and then also ask for help getting a video edited together. I have plenty of clips on my computer that I'm overwhelmed by trying to put together.

Color scheme designer tool

If you're stuck on picking colors, here's a neat color scheme designer tool, via Creature Comforts.

I actually now have paint chips that I'm using as references. My sister helped me pick them out to match some fabric scraps I kept from when I interned with Mod Green Pod several summers ago. They're lovely, wonderful people. I am still hoarding the fabric and wallpaper they gifted me when I finished my internship because I love the colors and modern designs so much.

Cherry/stilton Butterfly Jubilee (photo is a bit dark)

Honey/raspberry Butterfly Jubilee (just the honey color)

The paint chips we picked out were Valspar High Noon, Valspar Caramel Honey, and Olympic Rum Runner, which look like this all together:

I imagine the actual colors that come together will be a bit brighter in effect overall, since that's what I gravitate towards, but I really like these colors all together. It's not too different from that palette Amy sent over to me. That dusky blue color is really hard to find, though.

Flower project roundup

Coffee filter flower tutorial at design*sponge.

Fabric flowers roundup at Giver's log, via not martha.

Crepe paper bouquet tutorial, via Creature Comforts.

Bonus! Little roses from straw wrappers (I hope no one actually does this on a massive scale, that would be a bit sick, but cool party trick to learn, perhaps), via not martha.

Ok not projects but other flower ideas: centerpieces of flowers in water, from the Blooms By the Box blog.

I'm still all over that apothecary chic look but I like the simplicity of these.

Apparently this is just a flower wallpaper but it'd be pretty as strands of real flowers against a wall, wouldn't it? From A Cup of Jo.

Cupcake centerpieces! From This Little Journey. I don't think we're doing the cupcake thing in full but these are so cute.

Ok this is just to remind myself--we have these single serving Martinelli's apple juice jars at work and I could potentially collect them and use Goo Gone to get rid of the labels and clean them up to use as bud vases.