I have a new favorite dessert place.  It’s ideal for me because I can pick up some pick-me-ups from Vanilla Bake Shop on my way home after a long day.

The white on white, oh-so-girly interior.

The aesthetics of these treats are so mid-century yet very now at the same time.

[all images from Vanilla Bake Shop's website.]

If only they’d opened sooner than a few days before my wedding.  If only my wedding cake budget had been higher.  If only my catering budget had been higher so as to accommodate for a dessert bar filled with icebox treat shots and cupcake minis.  If only I could have spent a handful of bucks per favor for a bagful of macarons or other less perishable treats to send home with my guests.

Some treats I’ve inhaled recently, minus the cakes.  I only looked at those.  Sigh.

 
 

Speaking of macaroons, I discovered another shop in town that makes these confections via Daily Candy.  I haven’t had a chance to try them yet, but talk about eye candy that [probably] tastes as good as it looks. If you’ve got favor budget to spare, please consider these gems, and don’t forget to invite me.

It is truly the little things that make a world of difference.  Here are a few of the little things we did right.  Some of them intentional, some of them not, but they all added up to an amazing day.

1.  Spending the night before apart.  It added to the anticipation and excitement.  It also led to a sweet phone conversation before going to bed the night before.  I also got to spend some time with my bridesmaids that day/night before.  My intention was also to spend a little bit of time alone to reflect the night before, but I knocked out before that could happen because of #2.

2.  My bridesmaids planned a primping day for the day before.  At first I was a bit skeptical and didn’t want them to have to all shell out for spa treatments.  It was, however, the best.decision.ever.  We soaked and steamed before our treatments, then soaked and steamed a bit more afterward, lounged/napped, and finally took leisurely showers.  I highly recommend the Burke Williams in Orange.  Yes, at the Block.  I, too, was skeptical of a spa at a “meh” mall at first, but it’s nicer than the other two locations I’ve tried.  We were all the consistency of overcooked noodles after that, so we drove back to the hotel and promptly knocked out.  No night before insomnia for me!

3.  We had our rehearsal the morning before and a rehearsal lunch after.  This was actually dictated by my venue’s availability, but it was great because no one had to worry about it getting too late the night before the big day.  It also left the afternoon and evening free for #2.

4.  I handed everything over, both physically (hundreds of pieces of various DIY projects, anyone?) and mentally, to my coordinator at the end of the rehearsal.  As I handed it all over, I adopted the attitude that I had done all I could at that point, things would go the way they were going to go, and it was out of my hands and in the very capable hands of the awesome vendors I had hand picked from then on.  I also committed myself to relaxing, enjoying, and being in every moment of the next day and a half.  I’m a neurotic control freak worrywart perfectionist workaholic by nature [although I have gotten a lot better].  You, too, can let go and do this!

5.  We didn’t overly worry about the out-of-towners and entertaining them.  They are adults, and I remember there wasn’t so much emphasis on having to spoil wedding guests even a few years ago.  There’s a difference between being good hosts and over-the-top spoiling guests at the expense of stressing yourself out.  Entertaining OOTers can be very tiring and unknowingly stressful, even when you’re not a few days away for your wedding and no matter how fun the times and great the company.  Our parents graciously hosted family from all over the world, and all our other guests found lodging and transportation with no problems on their own.  We spread out spending time with them in the week leading up to the wedding, too, so that we got to see them outside of the wedding but weren’t booked solid with obligations to others in the few days before.  We did casual dinners at restaurants so that no one had to expend extra energy hosting.  We concentrated our efforts on getting face time with everyone at the wedding and making sure they were taken care of on the day of.

6.  Skipping the receiving line, which too often gets way backed up in my opinion, and instead mingling with guests for the entire length of our cocktail hour.  We did our best to stick together and at least say hello to everyone.  Our guests later told us they appreciated the less formal personal time, we got to taste our mashed potato martini bar, and in an ironic twist, all that quality schmoozing helped relax us introverts before the reception.

7. Not taking dance lessons.  I knew I’d never in a million years get the bear to go, I had forgotten everything from my semester of Ballroom Dance in college (I just took it for the easy peasy PE credit), and I didn’t want to spend the money on the lessons anyway.  Beforehand, I was a little sad knowing we’d be doing the jr. high sway and probably look lame-o.  However, because we were the opposite of worried about how well we were dancing, what we looked like, or trying to remember a routine, we were able to share a very touching few minutes and get lost in our own world together.  The wedding planner teared up, guests teared up, I was crying, he wiped my tears, and we even somehow managed a dip at the end.  This is all hearsay, though, as I barely remember anything except his face and the strength of the emotions washing over us during that three minutes and thirty seconds.  Neither of us is usually a sap in public (we hate most PDA), but this happened to us. 
  
 
 
 
 

  
[right click + view image if you really want to see how emotional we got.  images 3-10, 16 copyright m. norwood photography.  all other photos courtesy of my friends cee, weemo, and winnie.]

8.  Not documenting the little things that went wrong in my blog or real paper journal right after the event.  We feel utterly and truly blessed that nothing big went wrong, but there were the inevitable little snafus.  Yes, we talked about it between us. Yes, I have regrets on things I wish I’d done differently or better.  Yes, I vented to friends in person and online (I guess my chat logs are a written record, but I usually don’t reread those), but that’s where I stopped, mostly because I was too lazy to write it down somewhere.  Now that about a month has passed since the big day, those little things
that annoyed me in the days and week or so after (NOT the day of
because I didn’t let myself think about or stress about them that day)
are already fading from memory.

These were my tiny tokens of appreciation for the lovely ladies who have been such a great part of my life these past years.

• Professional hair and makeup, including tip.
   

• All fabric and materials for their dresses.
   
• T-shirts that fit each of them to, well, a tee.  Tee hee.  Alright, that’s enough.
  I got them at neighborhoodies.com ["LAist" printed with skyline in background], Chop Shop [designerd is a word!], and The Paul Frank Store at South Coast Plaza [Julius + Hypercolor technology = too cool].
  I then wrapped them with found items lying around the apartment – trace paper, twine, big circle stickers from Paper Source, and mini Uglydolls.  OK, so I bought the Uglydolls.  I had to.  They’re blue!
  
   

[All photos except the last two (who said, "OBviously?"  HMMMM???) copyright M. Norwood Photography.]

The piles. And this isn’t even that bad.  I spent a good half day organizing and compiling all this fun into the neat, compact piles pictured here.  Initially, it was a truck bed full and mid-size sedan’s worth of haulage that we painfully unloaded the next morning.
 
Everything is boxed or bagged up neatly and ready to return/donate/sell.  Whee!  Now to document and post it all…

 
[Do not fear, beer connoisseurs!  There is Newcastle and Sam Adams in that Pacifico box.]

Dear Bartender [singing:  I'm with the baaaaar-tender...],

Thanks to you not following your boss’, my coordinator’s, and my directions NOT to put all the white wine on ice, we now have cases of white wine (the husband prefers red) as shown above (and then some, not all of it fit in the picture) due to our liquor supplier not being able to take back bottles with water-damaged labels.  We also have multiple bottles of mixing liquors we will never use (TWO bottles of triple sec with barely more than a few shots poured from each?), as we’re more of a carbonated liquid + liquor type mixed drinkers, unless we throw the type of party at our place we are wont not to do (the wedding was an exception, and we didn’t have to clean up afterwards).  Ah well, we have a fully stocked bar at home now, so thank you anyway.  You also were quite friendly, kept the drinks flowing and our guests happy, and your boss/our caterer did an overall awesome job, going over and beyond in many areas.  Cheers to you!

Cheers [again],
potato + bear

[The ghetto fabulous cups are another story for another day.  Photo copyright M. Norwood Photography.]

Dear Guests,

Thank you for your generosity in contributing to this pile.  This pile only represents maybe 1/3 of the boxes we received.  In fact, we need to make yet another trip to the ILs’ soon to pick up the remaining boxes.  We will try to get on those thank you notes in order to express our gratitude to you individually as soon as they’re all unwrapped. While we appreciate your generosity in the pictured regard, we need to thank you even more for witnessing our vows, celebrating with us, making the party fun and lively, and making sure that other pile a few photos above wasn’t quite as large.  We honestly had the time of our lives, and our day wouldn’t have been as beautiful without each and every one of you there.  Thank you for your love and support throughout the years as well.

Warmest regards,
potato + bear

In the end, all the DIY and semi-BYO was worth it.  We got lots of comments from our guests on how they noticed and loved how the personalized touches brought everything together, and we did save quite a bit of green.  Some guests thought I had even baked the cookie favors from scratch.  Nope, sorry, Diddy Riese did, but you can assume what you want!  Also, I did have help from the bear and other friends on a lot of the DIY projects, so all that time spent doubled as some good bonding time.  yAy for happy endings!

It sounds so cliche, but our wedding day was truly such an amazing, poignant, and fun day!  We just got back a few days ago, so we’re still trying to get our heads back on straight.  BUT…I’d  hate to leave you all hanging, so here are few random teasers from friends’ cameras, for your viewing pleasure.

Getting married in the shade of lovely bamboo. . .

. . .while our guests become baked potatoes.
[Such horrible hosts!]

We did it!

We greeted our guests at the mashed potato bar during cocktail hour.

Alright, alright.  Full frontal [face] shot.

Look, ma!  No dance lessons!

And finally, a teaser from our awesome photographer, Michael Norwood.

I picked up the dresses today, and they look fabulous!  She pressed them for me, so the silk dupioni is beautifully crisp rather than very wrinkly like in my previous post.  The quality of work is good, and she nailed the design from one image each of the front and back that I provided.

Sorry, LA girls, Laura Bravo is out of north OC, but worth the drive.  My two local bridesmaids who live in K-town didn’t mind the two drives they had to make down on Saturday mornings (no traffic time!), though.  I found a few other seamstresses closer to LA proper, but they were around $75-90 for labor on the dresses only. Still not bad at all, for a custom dress, but we couldn’t beat $50 per dress.  One caveat, though, the cost will definitely depend on your specific design.

She prefers to measure your girls (or you) herself, but she did make my NYC bridesmaid’s dress from measurements her NYC tailor took, and we e-mailed them to Laura.  She then has the dresses pretty much done a couple of weeks before the wedding, and your bridesmaids come in again to try them on.  Ours fit my bridesmaids perfectly, and the only adjustment we needed was to the length of the sash, which she left long on purpose in case we wanted to tie them into bows as I hadn’t specified.  This saved my girls some money, too, since alterations are pretty much included.

Laura gets very busy in during the summer months, so I’d advise going to see her months in advance.  Especially since you need time for either you or her to shop fabric and notions.  I brought her the fabric, lining, and zippers at our first visit for the quote, and had her provide boning, interfacing, and other notions that I didn’t feel confident shopping since I cannot sew for the life of me.  If you give her a swatch or an idea of what you want, she will shop it for you, but she prefers brides find their own fabric so that she knows it’s exactly what you want, and not just what she happened to find from her sources that is as close as she ccould get.

Lastly, it’s best to call her after 7 PM on weeknights, as she does this from a workshop behind her house.  She rarely checks e-mail, and only gave it to me for purposes of getting her my OOT bridesmaid’s measurements.  She prefers to do fittings on weekends, but she is very flexible and easy to work with.  I am definitely using her in the future for custom dresses and would highly recommend her.

Laura Bravo
Midway City (adjacent to Westminster)
714.897.5635

5 days ago:

The sashes will be shortened, the dresses pressed, and ready for me to pick up tomorrow.  I have already picked up the one OOT’ers completed dress.  We used Watters #7415 as the main inspiration for the dresses.  The seamstress did an awesome job at $50 per dress including labor, lining, boning, and any other “hidden” materials I didn’t shop.  A hookup at work got me both colors (a beautiful aqua and a Duchess
Blue that looks gray in these photos) of dupioni silk for a very
reasonable price.  Each dress came out to less than $100.

I think I may officially be wedding planned out.  Let’s just say there was a bit of wedding-related drama a few times today, during the work day, while I was trying to meet a deadline on my biggest project.  I was holding it together and really truly not that stressed out until today.  I have noticed that wedding blogs, message boards, and even my pretty porn don’t really do it for me anymore [although that doesn't necessarily mean I'm frequenting them that much less...addiction is hard to break].  Not like they used to, at least.  Good thing we’re almost there.

Stress is a great motivator for me.  I’ll freak out for a bit then get into the super-potato-production-mode zone.  Ask any of my studiomates.  I get into this zone where I’m super efficient and produce at a decent if not high (for me) quality.  Apparently, I’m in neither freak out nor super-potato-production mode this time.  I’m in lazy bride mode.

I had grand plans to finish up the last bits of my half-done DIY projects.  Cut this, fold that, lay this out, rubber cement that.  Or to figure out some of the many details I need to pass along to my coordinator.  Cut this check, look over that, revise this list, call people regarding that.  Instead, this is what I have accomplished tonight:

1. Stayed late at the office finishing up for the deadline.
2. Dropped by a friend’s in order to be an eyewitness for Week 0 of her Houseplant Challenge.  Oh, and to pick up some things for the wedding from her.  Whee!  Something WR was accomplished!
3. Did the car shuffle with the bear.  Meh to pseudo tandem parking.
4. Loaded 70 pounds of river rock and 21 “vases” into my trunk to give my florist tomorrow.  OK, another WR task accomplished.
5. Chatted online with the friend I just saw during #2.
6. Made some ramen at the unholy hour of 10 PM.  Bloatage tomorrow morning, here I come!  Mama brand Tom Yum Shrimp, to be exact.  Yay for sour/spicy/savory/salty/overall yummy.
   
7. Surfed some interesting internets that are interesting to me and a few friends, but very few others.
8. Blogging.

Now I am waiting for the bear to finish up something so I can help him practice for tomorrow.  I give up.  Maybe another day…

Good night.*

*Good thing I’m blessed to not have sleeping problems when stressed.  I am very, very grateful that I’m made this way.

Our table numbers/menus are done!  I did a simple tent card, since three sides are perfect for a pic of me [at the same age as the table number], a pic of him, and the menu.  It’s great since it can stand on its own, too. No need to find, buy, rent, or borrow any of those [mostly] banal table number holders out there.  Yes, yes, there are creative, beautiful stands for table numbers that don’t have to break the bank, but this lazy bride didn’t even want to bother searching, budgeting or wasting even one extra brain cell on it (they are a rare resource, since bridal brain has kicked in, after all).  I have a large ream of beautiful, bright white cardstock that I bought for under $20 at Kelly Paper for miscellaneous paper projects such as this, so I set out to do something using only my computer, that paper, an inkjet printer, and minimal other supplies. I came up with the following.

Tower o’ numbers:

Tri-cornered goodness:

Sides 1+2:  Fatty McTaterstein + Bow-eating Bear

The Menu

And now for the how to on what has probably been the easiest DIY project to date. 

• I laid out an 11×17 (tabloid) sized sheet in Adobe Illustrator.  I wanted to get 2-3 out of each sheet of paper but still have each table tent a decent size.  I ended up with 2 per 11×17, landscape oriented sheet.  Each table tent, flat, measured 17″ wide x 4.5″ high.  Since the printer I was planning on using doesn’t print full bleed, the artwork took up about 16″ wide by 4.5″ high each.  The extra, blank half inch became a tab to which I affixed double stick tape to hold the thing folded together.
• My wonderful former roommate printed them out for me on her Epson inkjet printer that can print up to 11×17 size.  The one at work broke a few days before I finished designing the layouts, of course, and my company decided not to replace it until we move (a month after the wedding).  And yes, I had my boss’ permission since it was only 10 pages total (20 tables, 2 numbers per sheet).
• A friend and I cut each one out, to get the full bleed look. 
• Said friend and I scored each into thirds, plus a little score line at the end for the 1/2″ tab.
• I folded each, used double stick tape on the tab, which was stuck onto the back of the other end.  Voila!
• Bonus tip #1 – Find a larger format inkjet printer if you can, over a color laser.  The color lasers at Staples and Kinko’s just don’t cut it when you’re trying to print photos.  I did some test plots there before bugging my old roomie, but the photos came out horribly.  Photo printers (I know, still technically inkjet) work even better, but it’s hard to get a hold of one that can print up to 11″ x17″.
• Bonus tip #2 – If you don’t have access to anything that can print pages this large, you can also do tall, skinny table tents made of an 8.5″ x 11″ sheet of paper folded in thirds.
• Bonus tip #3 – If you’re as cheap as me, buy a ream of 11″ x 17″ and have Kelly Paper cut some of it down to 8.5″ x 11″ for you.  They’ll usually do it for free as it’s just cutting it in half.  You get double the number of sheets, if you cut the whole ream in half, for less than the price of buying two reams of 8.5″ x 11″.

I’m really happy with the way they turned out.  Especially since this is the first DIY project that the bear has truly been impressed with.  My only concern is if it comes in contact with something wet or someone spills, but I figure that my guests will have already found their tables by then.

It fits like a glove!  I am so glad as I have horrible visions of SDBG (that’s Strapless Dress Boob Gap) in my head, especially since I have virtually no chest.  Now all she has left to do is do the bustle and steam it.  I’ll pick it up a few days before the wedding.

With the detachable train [how I'll wear it for the ceremony]:

[Not me.  It's the bride from whom I bought the dress.]

Without the detachable train, unbustled [how I'll wear it for pre-ceremony photos].  The sweep train on my dress is a little bit longer.

[Again, not me.  This is knottie ctnjbride.  Unfortunately, she no longer has a bio up.]

The front.  Yes, that is finally me in my actual dress.

[I had to hide the no-makeup face.  Bleh.]

The back, bustled [how I will wear it for the reception].

[Hmm...that left elbow is mighty ashy.  Time for some exfoliation.  The top of the back was still hand basted, so it'll be cleaner when the dress is done.]

Eeeeeeee!  I feel so bridal and comfortable in my dress.  I am so excited to wear it in a couple of weeks.  Stay tuned for a full review of the tailor to come after I pick up my dress.