So You're EnGAYged, A Gay Wedding Blog

I know I shouldn’t even be looking at shoes until I have found my dress, but I accidently fell in love with Louboutin’s Glitter Slingbacks.

(StyleFeeder)

I have been lusting after them for months.  Whenever I am in Friendship Heights, I stop in Neiman Marcus to visit them.

There are three obvious problems with these shoes.

1. They are $775, bigger than my dress budget

2. J is 3 inches shorter than me and doesn’t want a large height discrepency between us in photos.  If I wore 4″ heels, I would be towering over her.

3. The ceremony and reception will be in the grass and I don’t want to be sinking.

So I will continue to visit them and maybe buy a cheap pair of slingbacks from Target and glue glitter on them.

I wanted to make a covering for the candles like this so I don’t have to worry about whether or not the jars are ugly.  I tried using card stock (the one on the left) and vellum (the middle and the right). The vellum has a nicer curve, but if folded too hard it cracks and breaks.

1. Mark 1.5″ from the edge of your page so that the paper is 7″ wide instead of 8.5″ (for a pasta sauce sized jar).

Instructions after clicking more!

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Growing up, I swam competitively and my mother told me that if I dyed my hair the chlorine would turn it green.  Therefore as soon as I stopped swimming in college, I dyed my hair red, then black with red streaks, then black for 3 years.  Somehow this is the only picture I have of myself with black hair.  My hair is very dark anyway so there isn’t much of a difference.

At some point before my senior year of school, I was watching Gone in 60 Seconds and decided that I wanted Angelina Jolie blond hair.  So I bleached my hair for 7 months.  The first picture is when I did it myself.  As you can see going from three years of black dye to blond is a terrible idea.

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During the snowpacolypse, I only ventured out of our apartment once.  While out, I figured I might as well try on dresses. So I went to Lord and Taylor and Loehmanns.  Lord and Taylor was a little disappointing.  I tried on the OC dress and the purple Laundry dress. Meh.

Loehmanns was surprisingly good.  They had a large number of Nicole Miller wedding dresses on super sale.  The first one with the funny bottom was originally $2600, but they were selling it for $500.

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Looking at other people’s weddings on the interweb convinced me that I needed white and red striped paper straws with drink flags.  (I am still not entirely sure why I needed them, but I did) So I found red and white striped paper straws that didn’t cost an arm and a leg.  However I made the mistake of not ordering them unwrapped.  It took me two hours to unwrap 500 straws!

The hardest part of this project was deciding what to put on the flags.  I wanted the straws to say cute things, but with inside meaning.  The “la la la love you” comes from a Pixies song (yes I know there is an extra la, but it looked better that way).  We both love the Pixies and had talked about it as our walking down the aisle song.  The second comes from “Push it” by Salt n Peppa, which is our song.

Materials

Straws (Source)
Paper (Source)
Double Tape
Scissors
Paper Cutter

Click on the more link for instructions.

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One of the wedding details I really want to replicate is the string of polariods of J and me hanging from a piece of twine by clothespins. I am thinking of running the twine from the parking lot to the ceremony site, sort as a preface to our wedding. Of course, once I saw this DIY project, I wanted to make the clothespins pretty. Pfft no plain clothespins for me.  I changed a few things from that tutorial, mainly because I wanted to use my Xyron.  I bought it for the Save the Dates at 50% off, but I promised myself that I would use it for as many other projects as possible.

Materials
Xyron
Patterned paper
Clothespins
X-acto knife

Directions

1. Xyron the paper with the pattern side facing up

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Obviously, this is not a new DIY. Originally I wasn’t even going to write it up, however I ran into problems.  Below is the picture of my second try at Pom Poms.  I didn’t even have the heart to take pictures of the first trial.  For the first one, I used 8 pieces of tissue paper as per Martha Stewart directions and it was the saddest, most pathetic looking paper ball.

I was surprised and discouraged.  It seemed like every bride on the Internet had made the Martha Stewart Pom-Pom and not to sound arrogant, but I usually can do DIY projects (see here, here and here).  So after a couple days, I tried again with 14 pieces of tissue paper.  As you can see, there is a big gaping hole along the side and the Pom Pom is oval shaped.

I almost gave up at this point, but after a week I still had 1,000 sheets of tissue paper in my bedroom so I tried again.  Here are my overly detailed directions.

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Once J and I had decided on a carnival theme, we started brainstorming ideas. At first, the wedding took a side show turn and we thought about hiring fire breathers or sword swallowers. However in the space of a week, I saw two blog weddings with Ferris Wheels and when we went to our venue for the first time, they had kid rides set up for a fair the next day. So I began a hunt for an affordable ride for the wedding.

I ended up contacting a total of 21 amusment companies. Out of those, only two came back with “reasonable” prices. Reasonable is in quotes because it is a lot more than I thought we would be spending. We really wanted a Ferris Wheel, but barring that I wanted the least vomit-inducing ride possible. The cheapest Ferris Wheel I was able to find was $3500 with the rest being $5000 or more.

We ended up going with the North American Amusement company because even though they didn’t have a Ferris Wheel, for $4000 we got a Chair Swing, a mini-golf course, and 3 game booths with prizes included. I was super excited to get the contract in the mail this past weekend. The ride has definitely been our hardest vendor search and I am so happy for it to be over. Have you had any struggles finding a vendor?

Our Chair Swing

photo via North American Amusement

The Mini Golf Course

photo via North American Amusement

These dresses are from the 7th shop I have been to and maybe that is a little excessive.  I saw on a local wedding blog that there was a new bridal store in town and to celebrate they had a 50-70% sample sale. Now, I have been very fortunate that all but one sample size dress has fit me so far. So I called and made an appointment because even though they were probably still too expensive, it seemed like I should at least check it out. I showed up for my appointment and realized that because they were a new shop, they had only a very small selection, out of which there was only one dress I thought was interesting at all. However I have learned that I should just try everything on because I don’t know what I like until it is on my body. So I let the consultant dress me up. I didn’t really like any of the dresses, even the one I thought I liked.   On the plus side, my friend made faces at all the dresses I thought were face making worthy.

The most interesting part of the appointment was when the consultant told me two disturbing things. One, that I would be itty-bitty by the time the wedding rolled around because I would be so stressed and two, that the dresses would look better when I was wearing Spanx. First off, I am happy that I fit all the samples, doesn’t that mean I am a good size? Why do I want to be itty-bitty and why is she threatening me this impending starvation stress? And I am not going to be wearing Spanx. If I am paying a couple hundred dollars for a dress, it should make me look like magic all by itself! This will be my most expensive article of clothing ever, especially after alterations, and it should make me look amazing all by itself without the help of Spanx.

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Last week, I finally finished the origami balloons.  I started in September with the goal of making at least 1200 to decorate the inside of the tent.  I ended up folding 4 day-by-day origami calenders.  This is what almost 1500 balloons look like.

photo via me

To be honest, I feel a little lost now.  Have you ever had a craft project that takes so long that when you are done, you don’t know what to do with yourself?

The day after Xmas, J and I bought some string lights on super sale.  I was planning on attaching the balloons now, but J thinks that they will get all smooshy between now and July, especially with the drive to VT.  I just want to get the project totally completed.  Any thoughts?