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Here you see three of my five bridesmaids (one junior, two regular) trying on their finished dresses at our shower last weekend. You may notice the slightly different color of the junior bridesmaid lace, which was an aesthetic decision forced upon us by joannes, which discontinued the line of fabric we were using and forced us to scrounge for scraps left over from the other dresses and to purchase champagne lace rather than ivory after my plus-size sister turned out to need three times, rather than twice, as much fabric as the other girls.

I have another junior who is in Spokane, and one regular bridesmaid (who was supposed to be throwing the shower) who had taken violently ill, poor thing, before making any substantive arrangements besides inviting two dozen people to my parents’ backyard. This left us with less than twenty-four hours to throw together a half-decent shower for ourselves. Thanks to the tireless efforts of my family and friends, we pulled it off, and a grand time was had by all.

And here we see two handsome fellas trying on their freshly-tailored pants. Cheap, “classic” fit pants become cheap, actually flattering pants with an afternoon of sewing on my mom’s part, at least for these two skinny guys!

I would love to share more of the projects that are going on for this, but honestly a lot of it will be a surprise for me too! I am just making a ton of doilies for the tables and a garter for my leg (which we probably won’t toss, since it seems a tad vulgar to us), plus the program and a “survey form” that we are having people fill out in place of a guest book. I was blessed enough to find Wendy Alexander and her friend Ronnalyn who have excellent taste, a bunch of furniture and cool stuff for us to use for decorations, and who love decorating for things like this. I had seen their work at various recitals and productions where they decorated the lobbies to wonderful effect. I can’t wait to see what they come up with! How lucky am I to just show someone my pinterest board and have someone say, “Oh, we can do something like that. Now don’t think about it again until you get there and see it.”

In addition to the fabulous job my mom is doing making these bridesmaid dresses from scratch, I am adding a few details of my own. It was determined that we needed to add something at the waist to highlight the girls’ lovely waistlines. So, a trip to the fabric store and a lot of furious crocheting later, I made each girl a unique belty thing!

They will each also have a borrowed amber cameo pin from my late Grandma Linda’s estate. I will be wearing one on my dress, too, albeit in black. I won’t put up a picture, since Andrew might see it!

Anyway, I just thought I would point out one of the many little details that might be missed if you didn’t know about them. More to come as I think of them, perhaps.

Now lest you be confused, this is me, the bride, trying on a dress that will be worn by my bridesmaid Natalie, who, aside from being 3/4 of an inch taller, is otherwise virtually the same size as me. It hasn’t been hemmed in this picture, nor indeed in real life, but all of the dresses save one are finished. The junior bridesmaids have a different pattern and champagne lace rather than ivory over the champagne satin.

This is part of Andrew’s wedding garb. He will also have a tie with a vintage tie clip and, like the groomsmen, a pocketwatch. The groomsmen will be in the same thing, sans jacket. Andrew, my barefoot boy, will also be wearing a custom pair of softstar RunAmocs in brown… at least for the ceremony.

One of the first things we did after getting engaged was hit up a few stores to register. After a few hours of wandering around and scanning stuff, we started getting a little loopy and scanning just plain silly things, so I thought I should be clear and toss out there that if we only get one thing off that list, I hope it is the fancy rice cooker.

Gotta stay true to my roots, you know? Onigiri party for everyone!

Addresses obtained: 62%

Invitations sent: 62%

People I still have to figure out how to get ahold of: 14%

People I emailed, but who haven’t gotten back to me with their address: 24%

RSVPed so far: 7.6%

Days left until the big show: 83

Things left to do: A billion, maybe?

I am getting a little bit nervous about all this!

I sewed these ties for Andrew’s groomsmen. One of them has already made known that he doesn’t like stuff choking his neck. One of my bridesmaids has expressed a similar concern about necklaces, so I’m not quite sure what we’ll do about that. Anyway, I like the ties. I was picturing the star one for Tyler, Andrew’s nephew (and I guess my own nephew, soon!), and ringbearer. I don’t know whether he will actually carry a ring on the tacky little polyester pillow or just accompany his sister Bella down the aisle. Maybe I will make a cool pillow. That could be nice. Anyway. Just a quick note before school.

Speaking of pictures, here they are. Pictures, that is.

It was so great to be able to spend the afternoon with our friends and get some great photos into the bargain. Thanks, guys. Everyone else, check out http://nathanphotos.com/ and then hire him for all your nathanphoto needs.

In the mail came, at last, our beautiful paper mentioned in our previous episode. The velum address label on brown paper envelopes is, I think, quite nice. We have received half of the addresses we need, but I figured we might as well get started. Somewhere in the process of putting all those little decorative bits on, they ended up uncentered on the label. So I trimmed them down, making them a cool custom shape in the process. Now, as for return address labels, I couldn’t find velum in that shape, but how about circles put on the flap to double as seals?

My research says the post office is more or less cool with that, even though it goes against their ‘guidelines’. The internet even houses a conspiracy theorist that says the government takes pictures of the front of your mail, so you should always put your own address the back so The Man doesn’t know where you live. So, bonus round, I guess.

My industrious and illustrious mother, meanwhile, has sewed the first of the bridesmaids’ dresses, with which I am completely thrilled. This, however, deserves a post to itself, complete with pictures and anecdotes.

On the topic of other things for us to post about, the fabulous Nathan Nichols, assisted by his newly-affianced Ria Bonano, took us out for some engagement photography around campus yesterday. Having been on the other side of the camera, the only picture I have really seen is this gem, snapped by Ria on her phone while we worked. We had a lot of fun, though, and I am looking forward to seeing how they turned out.

Last week, I received a wedding invitation from our dear friends Nick and Danae, who are getting married a week before us. A month after us comes Rachel and Luke, and, as of a few days ago, it seems like newly-engaged Nathan and Ria are going to sneak in at the end of August. Hazards of being in your early 20s, I guess. In any event, the arrival of this first invitation functioned as a bit of a boot to the butt, telling me that, since they are getting married just a week ahead of us, I had one week to get out the invitations for our own shindig. To which I replied with a heartfelt “Frick”.

So I turned to my dear friend Internet. Before long, I had found these nifty vector things:

And this lovely, free, vintage font. From there it was just a matter of putting the one in the other in Inkscape (I love working with vectors!) and harassing Andrew into updating this site to match our new theme. The background I found while dinking around with Japonizer.

Visual style established, we now needed some actual physical paper to mail to people, which is currently in the mail to us. I never have been much for Save the Date cards; they seem sort of pointless in a six-month engagement where we already have the date, venue, and time established. So I, with no authority whatsoever, declared Save the Date cards to be out of fashion, spent two days scouring guests’ facebook pages and my parents’ Outlook contacts for their email addresses, and sent out an email saying “Hey, guys, consider this your save the date. Also, put your address in this google docs form so we can spam you with real paper”. Which makes sense to me, but I had to convince Andrew that the paper part was still necessary and my Mom that the Save the Date wasn’t.

All we need now is to get some engagement photos taken and for the paper to arrive, and then we can just go nuts with printing it all and stuffing and stamping envelopes. Fun times! If you got that email and haven’t filled in the form, please do so so we can send you your invitation on the double quickfast!