shoes!

ok moving on from the photos..

shoes! uh! you wouldn't think this would be that difficult, finding the perfect wedding shoes. but I need to whine for a sec about the shoe industry: what the HECK is with making shoes for big feet with ridiculously high heels? Ok I wear a size 10. And technically my feet would fit a 10.5 perfectly but that size. does not exist. *she said in a quiet voice full of rage* So my whole life I've been squishing into shoes that are Just A Little Too Small.

Adding insult to injury, the few styles that are available in size 10 usually have 3 - 4" heels. ... Ok I'm only 5'7.5" but most girls I know with size 10 or bigger feet are even taller, more like 5'9" or 10". ... not that we should be afraid to stand tall.. but personally I am just not a fan of towering over people (and to be perfectly honest.. I prefer not to elevate the ghetto any higher than necessary).

Also there's that whole thing about being able to walk in really high heels. Not so much.

So generally I feel most comfortable in a 2" maybe 2.5" heel. And then I bought a sample dress that came at a length that's going to require me to wear definitely nothing higher than 2", better would be 1.5".

I think you can guess from the above rant that I am not having so much success in this department. Because I'm not really interested in "wedding shoes." I could probably go to Coloriffics and find a pair of ivory satin 1.5" heels in my size and they would look fine with my dress. Oh wait except I was just on their site and they explicitly state that shoes shown with 1.5" heel are size 8 and bigger sizes come with higher heels. WHAT.

Anyway I just really really want a more fun pair of shoes! I want to be able to wear them again after the wedding and always remember that I wore them at my wedding..

there's also the dilemma of working with my dress. It's a really pretty dress and I don't want to go Too casual/crazay and well, ruin it. BUT. one does want a splash of color.. a touch of vintage.. a bit of fun..

soo HALP!

here are some shoes I LIKE but they're either too high or just not quite right.




oh my word I've just been looking on endless shoe for these images and I just found these!! so cute! and only 1.25" heels! and there's a BUTTON ON IT. hmmm...

ok I'm still on the hunt but those are really tempting me.

got some photos!

Well, I finallllyyyyy got to talk to Meg. We caught up on gchat and she apologized for being incommunicado but agreed that it was probably best if we found a different photog for the wedding. She did post the jpgs online for us to download - but we're still waiting for the entire lot, she said she'd get them to us on CD at some point. Sooo we're kind of back to square one on the photog front, but we'll see what Gerardo (MOB's friend) says in August, maybe he'll want to do it. If not I've found a few other leads on not terribly expensive photographers.

I'm trying to upload a couple engagement session photos but it's taking forEvAR so I'll come back later and post them. thx k bye.

mmmmkay here's a couple! I added the color tinting myself, just to give them a little oomph. still waiting for the full CD of all the photos she took, hoping there are a few goofy candid shots in there..

we ended up sitting on a lot of animal statues that day haha

you can't really tell but we're sitting on the back of a giant eagle in this pic


wanted a few fun underground shots but the ones down by the trains didn't really come out.

engagement photos: uncheck

wellll I was hoping to share a couple of our engagement photos with you guys but, umm, I can't seem to get a response out of our photographer. I'm going to give her a call soon but I've tried email, gchat and facebook and she hasn't responded to anything.. and she's online all the time! So.. yeah. that's where we are on That. I have not called her yet, mostly because I hate calling people and I always put it off.. So I will make that my goal for the week, and hopefully will have an update on that soon.

In other news, I had a meeting with a woman about being our day-of coordinator and I liked her. She's going to draw up a proposal and we'll see if we can afford her - I think we can, she's trying to branch off into her own business so I'm pretty sure she's going to give us a good deal, as one of her first solo clients. It will be really nice to not have to worry about stuff the day of the wedding, and also not have to ask one (or more) of our guests to handle a lot of the coordination. I'll just need to make sure she understands exactly what I want to happen - actually more importantly, Not happen. There are a lot of traditional weddingy type stuff that we're not doing (like the bouquet/garter toss), gotta make sure everyone's on the same page.

Did I tell you guys we officially booked the caterer? Well we did. We went with The Purple Onion, they have our $100 retainer and a signed contract.

I'm really excited I can talk about bridesmaid dresses now! Kara's married! haha. I mean I'm super excited she's married just because it's awesome for her. Their wedding was beautiful, I had a great time being part of it, and obviously I wish them the BEST. But then yeah, I'm also glad she's free to talk about my wedding now haha. Bridal party: look for an email from me soon about dress stuff. :) I just ordered some swatches of dupioni silk to try to narrow down the colors..

and then, what else is new... Oh yes I built us a wedding website! :-o I decided I didn't really love the weddingwire.com site so I went through Google Sites and just built a new one. and then I paid $10 for our very own domain name, which will be good through June 2010. I will not be revealing the website URL here, it'll probably go out with the Save-the-Dates.. [speaking of websites MOM I need to show you what I did with ours because it's super easy actually, I think you could easily set one up for your artwork if you want.]

hopefully checking off the list within the next month: DJ and Officiant. no official meetings are set up yet but.. we're getting close.

I think I found my hair salon

Oh man I just happened to stumble upon this review when I was looking at Yelp.com for restaurants that could work for the rehearsal dinner.

SanDee's Hair Studio. Look at the pictures of the place! omg! Amazing! I've just sent her an email asking if we could book the place for the morning or afternoon of the wedding day.. such amazing potential for photo ops!

On the rehearsal dinner front, this place looks pretty neat, but I have no idea if it could accommodate us. I sent them an email, we'll see! Maybe it's just me but a dinner with wine pairings sounds Awesome.

This place also looks gooood, I'd be interested in doing some in-person recon there. mmm indian buffet... Their website says they do "onsite dosa parties." I don't want to sound like an idiot and ask them what the heck that means - anybody know? Wikipedia tells me what a dosa is, still not quite sure how you make a party of it... oh dang I just realized that website only shows locations in Gaithersburg and some other place in MD... phooey! I guess there's a difference between "Woodland" and "Woodlands." :-(

engagement photos: check

Zach and I went to the zoo on Friday for an engagement photo session! We had a lot of fun. Not sure when we'll get the photos back from Meg but when we do I'll be sure to share! :) It was hot out, and Zach and I were pretty awkward in a lot of the photos haha. Probably shocking since I'm historically not too shy around a camera - but we're not really into a lot of PDA so getting all lovey-dovey for pictures in an extremely public and crowded place was a little strange at first. Meg was like, "umm, you might want to look like you actually like each other.." LOL. But I have high hopes that there will be at least a few where we look pretty and happy. :)

We decided it was probably a good idea to try to interview at least one more person for the job of officiant, so we're trying to line up another meeting with someone who lives a little closer to our venue so he/she maybe won't charge mileage (I'm also concerned about all that single-occupant-vehicle driving for A.C. to come down from Hyattsville, MD for the Friday night rehearsal, drive allll the way back home that night and then repeat the next day). However, one woman gave me a Thumbs Down on weddingwire.com - I'm being dramatic, she may just be booked that day or something, but I sent an inquiry to her through the website and I got no message back, just a thumbs-down symbol next to her name that says "Declined by Vendor." Soo.. that was awesome. :-P

So I've tried another lady, who lives in Herndon, and she said she'd be happy to work with us. I explained that we live in Arlington without a car and though we could borrow a car if necessary, it would be easiest for us if we could meet somewhere metro-accessible. Her response was a little odd: "Vienna Metro is the closest for me. I can let you know when I will be in the area." Wait so we're just supposed to hold our breath till you have some other reason you'll be coming to the area? You're really not going to try to make an actual appointment? Really? Sooo that was not really the answer I was looking for. I wrote back asking if we could try to set an appointment. I guess I probably wouldn't mind except that A.C. has had someone ask her about our date so I'd like to be able to tell her soon whether we plan to hire her or not.

I bought a block printing kit! I may use it on the programs, we'll seeee... I also bought a handheld sewing machine for no reason in particular, I'm still too intimidated to use it but one of these days I'm going to give it a try on a hem or something....

I'm considering going back on my statement about doing electronic invites. I may switch it so we do electronic save-the-dates and then actual invites - but then have people RSVP online via our wedding website. Is that too complicated? WeddingWire.com's wedding website has a tool you can add for collecting RSVPs, so I know we have the capability, not sure everyone's going to be crazy about typing in the long url.. which doesn't exist yet so I can't tell you what it is, but it's usually something like weddingwebsite.com/andrewsandporter or something like that. easy if I sent the invite electronically, then you just click the link to RSVP. ...well we'll think about it. But the Reason I'm considering switching is because I found a really neat invite from an etsy seller - not gonna tell you what it looks like because if we go with that, I want it to be a surprise. I sent off for a sample, so we'll see what it looks like in real life, see what Zach thinks (haha he doesn't care)...

happy easter :)

couple things: Zach bought a tux! There was a wicked sale going on at Dessy Group, a $450 tux for $150. We jumped on it rather hastily, bought it online, hopefullyyy he likes it when it arrives. If he doesn't, I have faith that we could sell it pretty easily and find something else. Here's the link to the tux: https://www.dessy.com/tuxedos/black/ Pretty sharp right?

Also, I found out I was wrong, the farmers market at Courthouse in Arlington issss open year-round, so I'm going to go check them out and see if I can talk to someone about what's available in March. I still want to check out the Alexandria one too, we just have more options now.

I've been playing in buttons this weekend! The more robust flowers look Much better, but yeah I needs more buttons!! I pretty much exhausted my supply of the best sized ones, all I have left are mostly the tiny ones, or really grungy ones, and then a lot that would really be best as the accent on top rather than layering..

I'm having dress withdrawals. I want to see it again! So I'm probably going to go get it from Jessika some evening this week and then take it to this shop in Georgetown who said they mayyy be able to convert the neckline for me. I guess it depends on the way the dress was built, so we'll see.

Also I'm thinking I might try to make my veil.. Birdcage ones look fairly easy to make! Supplies are pretty cheap.. I may buy a fancy fascinator (example) from an etsy seller but.. maybe I'll make that myself too. I've got time to experiment, if I can't do it, I know I can find what I want on etsy.

new plan: jars! not cans

OK I think instead of doing those sort of labor-intensive daffodill planter things with the cans and the moss, and my ten million other random crafty project ideas I've seen around the blog world.. My new idea is just to Simplify and have just bunches and bunches of glass jars (mason jars, jam jars, whatever else comes in glass jars jars), and fill some with fresh cut flowers, some with button flowers (and instead of water we'd fill them half-way or so with loose buttons), and some with candles. eh? We'd put several jars on each table to make the centerpieces, and then hopefully we'd have enough to scatter around on the buffet table, at the bar, etc.. And if I/we FEEL like it when the time comes, we can paint or in some way decorate some of the jars (like these lacy luminaries).. Or maybe not.

For the tables, I was thinking stick with the white linen the Hall provides, and then possiblyyy make our own little linen table accents or whatever you call them. Not quite runners, I'd just want them to be in the center of the tables, to put the jar-vases on.. maybe doilies, maybe brightly colored but not too tacky looking hankerchiefs.. maybe just plain linen squares or rounds.. maybe a combination of all of the above! I dunno! I'm thinking I need to take a trip to a few thrift stores and/or Michael's/Joann Fabric and see what can be found in the way of inspiration.

Also it's coming into yard sale season, I'm about ready to go trolling if anyone wants to join me!

Also a note on the button bouquet - I realized after looking back at the original inspiration for my button bouquets, the ones for sale on Etsy actually have many many more buttons per stem than mine do, which probably helps make the bouquet look a bit more full when you put them together.. So I'm going to go back and add more buttons and see how that works for me.