Project Wedding Dress - It Begins

I mentioned in a past post that, inspired by the incredible Kimi, I'm going to attempt to make my wedding dress. In fact, it seems that all of the women in my family and David's family will attempt to make my wedding dress together over the holidays (how cool is that?) This sounds more ambitious then it is, since my mom sewed all of our clothes when we were little, and my sister and I have been sewing and designing our own clothes since we could reach the machine - we just haven't done much of it in recent (busy) years. Project Wedding Dress starts this weekend, as I crawl out of my sickbed to go fabric shopping, or more precisely, to go shopping for fabric swatches.

So this is where you come in, you creative and crafty readers. I'm looking for heavy silks and interesting lace. Where in San Francisco should I be going shopping? On my list so far are Britex (those colors, swoony delicious), and Satin Moon Fabrics. Where else should I shop?

Current handmade wedding dress inspirations: this handmade wedding dress via Once Wed , Another drop dead amazing dress from Down to My Soul via Peonies and Polaroids

Team Practical, You Are Excellent

Thank you ALL for your fantastic inspiring comments and links and good stuff today. It made me feel like the luckiest girl in the world. Now it turns out I'm not so much burned out as I am sick. That's probably why everything I type turns out like "grumblefishgog" and I delete it immediately. So, now I'm going to go do what the picture suggests, and cuddle up. Once I feel better I'm trusting that the good ideas in my head will come out better on the page.

But! I leave you with this. One of the most awesome comments of the day came from Amanda, who writes the excellent blog First Milk. I'm not sure why she's not one of the stars of the blog-o-sphere already, but she should be. Girl's got sass, and man can she can write. So while I take a bit of time off and feel better, go read and leave comments.

Photo via Courtney, of her wedding (it's what we have to look forward to afterwards, she says. Excellent!)

Needing Inspiration...

I've been feeling burned out and having a hard time writing lately, and today I got a wonderful email from a reader, it said:

Dear Meg,

I've never written a "Thank you!" email to a blog I love before, but...THANK YOU! I am getting married next September, and I am just so grateful for your inspiring posts in a land of Monique Lhullier-obsession!

You don't have to reply. I just wanted to say, Keep 'em coming. You have no idea how much fist-pumping your posts are being met with.
Laura

It made my day. Fist pumping, that's something I can get on board with.

Sometimes, I think, the best way to combat burn out is by being grateful. So, I wanted to say thank you to each one of you readers. Thanks for your wise comments, your kind emails, for sharing your amazing weddings with me, and for your general support. I read every single thing you send me, even though I've run out of time to respond to each one. Thanks for making me feel ok that the wedding industry en masse sometimes makes me want to stick a fork in my eye. Thanks for helping me trust my gut, even when it seems weird or different. Thanks for sticking with this little blog.

And, if you're feeling particularly generous today, I'd love it if you'd leave me something inspiring - a cool link, or something that's giving you a spring in your step. It doesn't have to be wedding related! Because I could use the inspiration.

Sponsor Introduction: Kali Kraum Photography

I'm so pleased to introduce our newest Practical Sponsor - Kali Kraum Photography. Kali is a local San Francisco photographer who particularly enjoys photographing down to earth creative couples. Her photos are dreamy (I wish the above photo was of me), but it gets even better than that. Kali works hard to run a green business - she buys carbon offsets for each bride and groom, but (here is where it gets crazy cool) she also plants a tree in each couples honor. All together now... awwwww.... San Francisco couples, check out Kali's work here, and her blog here.

Shower Me With Love

When we first got engaged my father gave me Miss Manners: On Weddings (a book I’ve previously recommended as being indispensable). While the book is not, by and large, written for the bride, it does open with a list called “Things A Bride Need Not Trouble Her Pretty Head About.” Trust me, this list gets more hilarious and informative the farther into the planning process I get. The very first item on this list is this:

“Do not worry about who is going to give you a shower. The shower is a lighthearted nonessential element of and engagement (as opposed to, say, the fiancé, who is essential and whose heart should be fixed at this point). In any case, it is voluntary on the part of the bride’s friends. They either throw one or they don’t, but she can’t demand one.”

As soon as I read this, I thought to myself, “Oh, well, that’s some advice I can get on board with.” As far as I was concerned, the last thing I needed was other parties to stress about. So, I promptly forgot all about bridal showers. I’d never been to one anyway (have I mentioned that our rather avant-garde, overly-educated friends are not currently the marring types?) So, I had nothing much to obsess about.

It’s funny how the moment you (finally) totally let go of all our preconceptions in the wedding planning process* things just fall into place. So, as soon as I’d completely forgotten about bridal showers, I of course promptly had two. The first shower was this weekend, and it was thrown for a few of my east coast friends by a dear friend from college in New York City. When she decided to throw the party, she asked me what I wanted my “theme” to be for the gifts. My eyes went wide with panic. I’m not so good with registries, so the idea for picking a theme for gifts felt totally beyond me. My friend helped me sort through the options: Did I want gift cards? (No, I did not. It felt like asking for cash, and many of our friends are poor/in grad school) Did I want things from my registry? (No, I did not. We don’t really have a registry yet.) Did I want gifts themed by hours of the day? (No! Did I mention our friends are avant-garde artists?) So after much thought, we decided that what I did want was books – lots and lots of books. Books were perfect for me because 1) I can’t own enough of them 2) They come at lots of different price points and 3) My friend throwing the shower happens to be a super-talented book editor.

So. There we were. A book shower. I was pleased, but I still didn’t have much in the way of expectations. I bought plane tickets and a new shirt. The day of the shower I tried to get my hair to lie down nice and flat. Then, David and I rushed out of the party-throwers way, and ran off to a huge demonstration for gay marriage rights**.
By the time we got back to the apartment, I was shocked: a giant cheese-ball had been made from scratch, Deviled Eggs had taken over the counter space, a pink cake had been procured from Magnolia bakery, rose petals and tiny silver wedding bells had be-strewn every surface of the house, champagne was being handed out, and there were piles of craftily wrapped presents.

The shower itself was an absolute delight. Friends from every part of my New York life all showed up at one apartment. Almost no one knew each other, but everyone seemed delighted to be there. We all drank, we told stories, we admired the enormous cheese ball. Three or four people said they’d never been to a wedding shower before. We all pondered if we should do something silly or embarrassing. Should I sit on a big chair? Should we make something out of toilet paper? We decided no, maybe we should just have another drink and talk some more. Then we got to the presents. I’m not sure I’ve ever had more fun opening presents. Even though almost no one properly recorded their purchases in the registry, I didn’t get a single double book. Everyone bought something that reminded me particularly of them. Cookbooks, political science books, novels, coffee table books, all there. Then we had cake, and more champagne. And is if all that wasn’t enough, my dear friend passed on special candy bars to everyone with our initials, our engagement date, and our wedding date. And then we all trooped out into the fall night to meet all of David’s friends at a dive bar.

What’s the lesson of all this, other then showers can be loads of fun? Well for me it was, when you relax, and stop caring about what your style is, or what your wedding philosophy is, and just let people do what they want to do, they will help you celebrate your wedding in ways you never would have imagined. So just let it all go a little bit. Trust your friends and family, get rid of your expectations, and enjoy the ride. People love you more than you know.

*Desaray wrote an excellent post about just letting go in ceremony planning over at Dingmoonment.

**hint: start your wedding parties by doing something good for the world. It will make you feel grateful and happy.

Photos: The invite!, crafty present by my crafty friend Lauren who also took the photo, some of the books I received

Scattered, but back

I'm just back, tired and happy, from a whirlwind trip to our beloved New York City. We flew out for a bridal shower that a dear friend insisted on throwing for me. At first, I was a bit apprehensive about the concept of a shower... it sounded so 1950's. But now that I'm back, a little older and wiser, I can tell you that it was fantastic. If getting married is more joyful than this marvelous weekend, then one's head must actually explode from all the love and delight.

As soon as I pull my wits together, I'll be back with the full scoop.

DIY versus the WIC

A commenter wrote this on my recent post on economic uncertainty:

I definitely have made sure not to buy into the WIC, but at the same time I don't think I can do the DIY route either. My new career is more travel intensive (and 8 weeks before our wedding it will be at its most intense period). I don't craft. I'm not a designer (I can barely sketch!) and I don't have friends or family who are designers or seamstresses. While I really like this post, I feel like the opposite of the WIC is the DIY movement. I guess I don't really feel part of either.

I’ve been thinking about this ever since.

First of all, I don’t consider myself to be part of the DIY movement. I’m part of the do-it-together movement, but do-it-yourself? No way. I’m always reading long little essays about things people lovingly crafted by hand for their wedding days, and I’m fascinated, and then tired by the end of the post. I work really long hours, and have more than a few side projects (achem, blog, achem), so I just don’t have that much time to get things done. We’re taking on projects for our wedding, selectively. We pick projects based on what we care about, what we like to do, and what we can save a bunch of money on. Basically, we have no time, but we’re really cheap. Since David and I produced theatre together before we started dating, much of this feels natural. We designed our Save The Date’s, sure, but we used found internet images, and we’re printing them at home on our color printer. It’s creative, but not very labor intensive. My mother, sister, and I are going to attempt to sew my wedding dress, but we’ve been sewing for years, we’re keeping it simple, and we have relatively low expectations. All this helps.

As the DIY movement has reached new heights of coolness (hello etsy!) the bar keeps getting higher and higher. It’s important to remember that we can do things on our own without being professional crafters. The tips I talked about when I did my DIY flower dry run help. In sum: think about what you like, don’t follow the rules, and just go for it. Everyone is going to be far too nice to tell you that you screwed it up, and the aura of confidence covers up a world of flaws.

Which brings me to my second point: Maybe we should all just lower our expectations on this wedding stuff. I was pondering DIY vs. WIC and it occurred to me that there is a very real third option – it’s the old fashioned route. Yesterday we talked about smaller and simpler weddings of a generation ago. I don’t think our grandmothers would tell you that their wedding was DIY (though some part of it probably was. Weddings had been less professionalized a few decades ago). I suspect our grandmothers would tell us that they just worked with what they had, and made do. My paternal grandmother took a taxi from Alabama to California to marry my grandfather when he was released from a prisoner of war camp after WWII. She told me that he told her to get a white satin dress, so she bought the only one she could find and refused to let it out of her sight the whole trip. The only wedding picture we have up in our home is theirs. It was a really meaningful wedding, but I can tell you right now that they didn’t think about colors, let alone favors.

So. Where does that get us? Bride in Exile made an excellent point yesterday when she pointed out that weddings are more complicated today since most of us have people flying in from all over. For us, this meant that we really wanted to feed everyone. But, that said, regardless of where people are traveling from I think we need to lower our standards. Our guests want to see a wedding that genuinely celebrates who we are. Just because they bought a plane ticket doesn’t mean they expect us to throw them a party just like the last 5 weddings they attended. What is important is that your wedding day is really happy, and is the start of a fantastic lifelong partnership. The trick is figuring out what will make us happy, and what is just extra fluff. If you can’t DIY your dress, can you buy a white suit off the rack? If you can’t DIY your Save The Dates can you skip them altogether, and drop people a note or a give them a call? If you don’t have time to DIY confetti packets, can you just let people throw confetti by the handful?

What do you think? How can we collectively ratchet down wedding expectations? What is the middle ground between DIY and WIC?

Picture: Me rocking my DIY bouquet

A 1927 Practical-Offbeat Bride

There is something about weddings from our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents generations that I find so grounding. Weddings were usually smaller and simpler. Everyone spent much less, but expectations were lower too. There were no favors, and often there were no bridesmaids, no seated dinner, and no wedding colors. There was just a bride and a groom and a hurry to get started on the actually-being-married bit. So it's with that spirit that I have to share this incredible article that reader Alison sent me. The wedding in question is her great-grandmothers. Not only is it practical (at home) but clearly this is a bride with, as they would have said, some spunk. Miss June VanBuskirk got married at 5am on June 1st, because she was determined to be the first June bride of the season (that being her name and all), which really should qualify her to be a 1927 Offbeat Bride. The article, with all of it's great 1920's language follows.

WINFIELD HOME SCENE OF FIRST JUNE NUPTIALS

Miss June VanBuskirk Bride of Robert Bennett In Early Morning Wedding at Home of Bride’s Parents.

Wedding bells pealed forth for the first June bride of the season at five o’clock this morning at the home of John VanBuskirk at Winfield when Miss June VanBuskirk and Robert Bennett were united in the holy bonds of matrimony.

The couple entered the beautifully decorated rooms to the strains of Mendelssohn’s wedding march played by Miss Naomi Bender of this city, an intimate friend of the bride. Rev. William O’Donnell of the Evangelical church tied the nupital knot, using the beautiful double ring ceremony.

The bride was attractively attired in a gown of white georgette crepe with slippers and stockings to match and wore a bridal veil of tulle. She carried a shower bouquet of white rosebuds and lilies of the valley.

Immediately after the ceremony the bridal couple and guests proceeded to the dining room where a tasteful wedding breakfast was served.

Mrs. Bennett is the accomplished daughter of Mr. and Mrs. John A. VanBuskirk, of Winfield. She numbers a host of friends in this city as well as in her hometown, having attended Sunbury High School, graduating with the class of 1925. For the past year, she has been employed by the Quaker Manufacturing Company at Lewisburg.

Mr. Bennett is the son of Mr. and Mrs. John W. Bennett of Winfield. He also is quite known among the younger set of this city, having been employed here several years ago. At present he is engaged as a mason with the Lewisburg Construction Company.

The newlyweds have gone on an extended honeymoon tour during which they will visit Pittsburgh, Baltimore and other points of interest.

Upon their return they will reside with the bride’s parents until they go into housekeeping in the very near future at Lewisburg.

Their many friends extend congratulations and best wishes for a long and happy wedded life.

Alas, there was no photo from this wedding. This is a found wedding photo (love those!), via Lovedaylemon on Flickr

Erika & Kevin's Upstate New York Wedding

So I tried to make Erika's wedding shorter for your reading pleasure, but I just couldn't. Every single bit of their story is so inspiring to me, and makes me feel a little bit more relaxed about wedding planning. So, without further ado, I give you a wedding that inspires and delights, I hope it makes you half as happy as it makes me, since that would be very happy indeed. Erika, take it away...
We got married in Beacon, New York (in the Hudson Valley, about 70 miles from our home in Brooklyn) on September 20, 2008. We got married at the Howland Cultural Center, a 19th-century Victorian building that is the former library of Beacon.
We gathered in front of the Howland with friends and family as they arrived. This was great because it gave us an extra hour to talk with people. It also took some of the pressure off: I was not one bit nervous during the ceremony and we had a lot of fun up there. We had a wedding party of two: our lifelong best friends stood up with us as best man and best woman.
The ceremony was secular for the most part, but we opened with Namaste. We asked three friends to give readings, and the best woman sang a Kinks song. We had written our vows on cue cards, which only my brother knew about, so when he pulled them out and handed me and Kevin our sets of cards, we got a great laugh from everyone! What made our wedding creative, thrifty, and sane:
We started off knowing that we wanted to keep things relatively small and relatively local. I didn't want to overplan or overthink, and since we had a relatively short engagement -- 9 months. When we found the Howland, things just started to fall into place. When we were up in Beacon signing the contract at the Howland, we had lunch down the street at this great little lunch place, Homespun Foods, and pretty much on the spot asked the owner Jessica to cater our wedding. We loved her approach to fresh, local food, and Jessica actually suggested ways we could save money on the food, saying "I don't think people should go broke to have a nice wedding." We had a delicious buffet of Mediterranean foods including couscous, lentil, and white bean salads, and a spicy shrimp dish, and delicious spreads, olives, dolmas, cured meats, etc. Jessica was also the one to suggest we ask friends to do bartending shifts to save money on staff. I was a little nervous about that, but in the end our friends loved it!One couple told us that they loved bartending because people would come to the bar for a drink and stay to chat, so they ended up talking to more people than they would have otherwise. We decided to forgo champagne and instead had a bourbon toast (I grew up in Kentucky and my whole family likes bourbon, and Kevin and I have a long history of drinking bourbon together, which goes back to our second date).

We had just two vendors, er, wedding elves. (Actually, my husband hated the word "vendor" and refused to use it during the wedding planning. I told him about wedding elves.) I planned to DIY most of the flowers, but I did order a bouquet for me and one for the best woman from a florist. The florist ended up going out of business the month before my wedding! And didn't tell me! So, two weeks before the wedding I made the decision to forget the professional bouquets. We bought 10 dozen white roses and used them for centerpieces and bouquets. Kevin made my bouquet on the morning of our wedding, and the stems were wrapped with my grandmother's handkerchief. I have no regrets about not having the professional bouquet: what I ended up with was much more special.
My dress was low on the budget priority list, and I ended up with an aqua blue silk Nicole Miller dress that I bought at Macy's. The men all bought vintage suits in the East Village and they looked smashing! Kevin's attire included a vintage 60s Bill Blass pocket silk. Uh-huh.
Some other details that made our wedding so lovely:
We didn't want to do the traditional thing where only the best man and the maid of honor get a chance to toast, so we opened up the floor to everyone else after they gave their toasts. We thought we might get a couple more people up there, but we ended up with something like ten toasts! I thought my heart would burst, I was laughing and crying so much. It was totally overwhelming and the wonderful things people said in their toasts kept going through our heads for days afterwards.

We rented a great apartment for the weekend and hosted a rehearsal dinner there. The apartment belonged to an artist-and-designer couple and was absolutely gorgeous. It also saved a lot of money because we brought in take-out food. It was also nice to have a private place we could hang out in all evening. And Kevin and I wanted to stay together the night before the wedding. We woke up early and had coffee and breakfast in bed, just some quiet moments to appreciate each other before the Big Event. It was nice to really spend the whole day together.

The other thing is that our wonderful caterer packed up all of the leftover food and we took it home at the end of the night. We brought it with us the next day when we met up with people again at the Dia:Beacon museum, and after wandering around the museum for a while, we had a picnic for 30 people on the lawn of the museum. With leftover wedding cake too! It was a totally spontaneous post-wedding lunch, and it didn't cost a thing and we didn't have to throw out all the leftovers and it meant we got to spend even more time with people

In the end, we came in just under our $10,000 budget -- and that includes the apartment rental, rehearsal dinner, and car rental for the weekend, everything!

All photos by Dova Studio

Prop. 8 News

I know quite a number of you care about what is going on with Prop 8 in California - and some of you really care, since its your marriages that are being legislated away. So, I had to pass on the most informative article I've read so far: The Law and Prop. 8 (which just happened to be written by my better half's Constitutional Law Professor.)

And, now that I'm done informing you, the front page article from the San Francisco Chronicle today just feels good: Prop 8 Backlash Grows. Now that we're done feeling sad, lets start getting angry, because we've got work to do.