Final Days...

We're in the final days before the wedding and I have so many emotions - I am excited, anxious, nervous...  Things are falling into place nicely.  We've received all the items we've ordered - garters, guest books, decor - so now it's just getting things together and actually doing what we've been planning for so long!  I have various appointments throughout the week and I'm excited to get to them! My family starts coming in tomorrow (Tues) and we're going to get the hotel welcome bags together, drop them off, drop off items for the reception, get pampered, and try to relax before Sat!

Yesterday, I spent some time working on items for the welcome bags - I removed water bottle labels and replaced them with collegiate duct tape to represent James and I - VT for him and UW for me!  It is a lot of water but I think it's really cute and makes it more personal!

As I mentioned in my last post, I was anxious about receiving the guest book - it came on Sat and it really cute!  The seller wasn't great, but the product is nice!

Finally, I am really, really nervous about my dress.  I LOVE the dress, from Williamsburg Bridal and Formal, but the alterations have been nerve-wracking!  I didn't even need much done!  I literally needed only the bustle and some embellishment added - no taking in or letting out, not even a hem!  At first, I was confident and things were going well.  I had it fitted and was told the bustle would be done and, if I wanted to, could just pick up the dress in the days before the wedding.  I wasn't too comfortable with that and ended up deciding that I wanted to change the embellishment some, so I met with the seamstress again.  The bustle was supposed to be finished, but it wasn't right - too long on one side and too short in another.  It was to be fixed and again I was told I could just pick it up right before.  That was NOT going to happen - so the next day it was "fixed" and I went to try it back on.  Same problems as the day before.  It was almost as if nothing was done!  We repinned and re-planned.  ...and then the seamstress went out of town (which is fine, of course her life doesn't revolve around me!)  She got back into town and is here for one day before she leaves again.  I am waiting to hear if we'll meet today to try it on before she leaves again.  We better.  It HAS to be right today!  I get married on SATURDAY!  My dress has to be right....

So...here we go!  It's wedding week!  

The Details...

We are officially 2 weeks from the wedding and I am feeling really good - I feel like I have most things done or planned.  This week I've been working on the stationary/printed items.  After we made the seating charts I started the place cards.  I printed them all on cardstock and then just had to cut them out - which required a paper cutter, corner rounder, and scissors.  Talk about TEDIOUS!  Our RSVP is at 165 - doing anything 165 times gets tedious!  I really like how they are turning out though so that's good.  One road bump in completing the place cards - we had no power when I was doing them so I had to stop when it got dark.  I was on a roll and haven't picked them up to finish since....!  

Yesterday I had our programs printed.  I decided to get them printed at Office Max because I needed them divided into thirds and didn't want to have to do it myself - the thirds is hard to get exact and I would have been too perfectionist about it.  Office Max was awesome - took 15 minutes and they were printed and cut.  BEST decision I could have made - so worth the money and avoided frustration.  Now, I just need to round the corners.  I really think rounding the corners makes them look more finished, so away I go - 1,440 corners.  I finished 960 yesterday.  Oh, and I have to bind them with a fastener - not sure how to do that so I will wait until Laura gets here and we'll figure it out together.  (Pics of both the placecards and the programs to come soon...)

Finally, I am nervous about receiving all of the items I've ordered.  I ordered our guest book on May 8th (7 weeks before our wedding).  The seller on Etsy, Envelope Guest Books, listed 2 weeks for production time.  A follow up email listed 4 - 6 weeks.  I still haven't received the guest book (June 15) and the seller now says it will be sent next week.  I hope I get it!  And I hope it's in good condition.  Reading the shop reviews, this is a trend.  LESSON LEARNED - read Etsy shop reviews!!!  (I always do on Ebay but haven't on Etsy...)  I am also waiting on the garter, but that wasn't ordered until June 1.

So I will be working some today and then off to the wedding of our good friends Matt and Emily!  CONGRATULATIONS to them!  I can't believe we're to this point - time has flown by!  Before I know it, people will be in town and we'll be days before, not weeks!

Seating Chart!

I have to admit, working on the seating chart was a part of wedding planning that I was dreading.  I've heard comments from relatives (who shall remain nameless...) at previous family weddings regarding seating, and James and I had already received requests for some people to NOT be seated by others.  So many moving parts and you want to be considerate to everyone.  I just thought this was going to be a complicated, tedious, terrible task.  It wasn't!  James and I tackled it tonight and finished in 30 - 40 minutes, at most.  James was awesome and helped - he even came up with our system.  Our tables are going to be round, so we used coffee filters as tables and I printed our guest list and cut the names apart to arrange on the "tables".  We laid the filters out in the table arrangement and away we went.  We started up front with family and moved out and back from there.  We could easily move the names from table to table and see what we had and where we had room.  Our biggest speed bump was seating numbers.  We can have 8 - 10 people per table and while trying to keep people with other guests they know, we ended up with some tables of 10 (max) and others of 6 (below "min")  Trying to balance and keep things coordinated was a bit challenging at times, but in the end we figured it our pretty easily and finished without major incident.  :-)  Here are some pics of the process:

Of course, we aren't going to keep 19 coffee filters on our floor for the next week, so I wrote out each table name and guests at the table in my master notebook.  I also added a column to the RSVP spreadsheet so all of the reception information is together.  Now to make all of the place cards...

DIY Frustration

I spent 4 - 5 hours tonight working on a DIY project for the wedding - it involved printing, cutting, and corner fancy-ing (not rounding but a more detailed design).  I printed on cardstock - which required feeding individually in the printer - time consuming but not a huge deal.  I printed at my friend Laura's so we chatted.  I got home and cut them all - and noticed that some were not exactly centered.  I decided, it's a small thing for the reception, looks good enough.  I then set out to fancy the corners.  I've used the tool before and it's actually tricky to get it perfectly in the corner - so this was the most frustrating part and a number of them weren't quite in the corner.  Some were thrown out, some were put in the "only if we run out" pile, and some were in the to-be-used pile.  I took the pile I had deemed acceptable to show James and ask about the corners, which weren't all perfect - his comment "what I really notice is that they aren't centered".  The man couldn't care less about half of the stuff I am doing, including if we use these, and he makes this comment.  So I get upset - having wasted my entire night working on them and being a bit frustrated by the corner tool - and throw them all away.  The cardstock wasn't too expensive so we didn't loose a ton of money but I literally wasted my entire Sunday night.  And I was excited about this little added touch that now I won't do.  I am not doing it all over again.  Of course I wanted them to look good but this whole time people have told me not to worry if everything isn't perfect, people won't notice/care.  The first time I go with that and leave something imperfect, I'm told it's not good enough.  Frustrating.