DIY Bouquet (The Good, The Bad, The Ugly)

Wanna hear something crazy? I paid $28 total for the flowers at my wedding*. How I could I accomplish a feat so magnificent? Because the bouquet you see me clutching was the only floral element present the entire day!

Kali Leenstra Photography

I was going to go with a florist, have it delivered, and make things easy. Except I couldn't find anyone that didn't want to charge me $100+ for a silly bouquet! I've always loved walking past the rows and rows of flowers at Pike's Place Market and decided to be brave and assemble my own bouquet. I made sure to pack everything I would need and have it with me at the hotel (floral tape, scissors, pins, and ribbon). Remember to bring a vase with you to store the flowers in if you decide to go the DIY route! I forgot this little detail, but of course the fantastic Hotel 1000 had one delivered right up to my room when I asked.

The evening before the wedding Suavocado and I walked over to Pike's Place to pick out something. I walked up to one of the stalls, saw some white flowers (what are they, Dahlias? Mums?) and said I wanted the whole bunch of them. The girls working the flower booth even gave me a few things for free since it was closing time! I picked out a few different extra things, thinking I would incorporate a few different elements. Turns out this was a mistake since I had no idea what I was doing. If you haven't practiced, and you aren't crafty like myself, just decide to make a bouquet out of one kind of element. The flowers I ended up using really only cost me around $12!

BM Princess Jess and I put the bouquet at around 9:00 the night before the wedding. She took all of the flowers, snipped the ends, and arranged them in a vase. She lifted the arrangement out of the vase and I tied floral tape around it. We wrapped a pretty iridescent ribbon around the stem and secured it with diamond head pins. It wasn't perfect but I was tired and ready to go to bed so we threw it in the vase and called it good.

This was not the prettiest bouquet you will ever see. This shot shows perfectly how absolutely uneven it was and you can see how some of the flowers are already pointing down.

Shaylene Rene' Photography

In the end this was the best choice for me because I didn't have to stress about taking care of a $100+ investment. I still loved it and carried it around like a proud mama, but when it came time to take formals like the one below, and I wanted to put my arms around my grandmothers, I simply set (okay, tossed) it on the ground in front of me.

I think it was passed around from babysitter to babysitter while I ran around direction things. Papacado is the one you see holding it so nicely here.

Shaylene Rene' Photography

Apparently over time I began to use it as a kind of traffic director.

"Hey you, yeah you, cousin X, get in that picture!"

"No, no no! I said bridesmaids should be standing over on that side!"

In the end, the bouquet served it's purpose. I was the bride. I had a pretty dress, a veil, a darling groom, and a bouquet. In shots like this one you can't even tell what a DIY disaster it was.

Kelli Nicole Photography

After the formal portraits at the temple I'm not sure what happened to it. It isn't in any of the bridal part shots, but someone did grab it and set it on the cake table that night. It looked really ragged by then so I gave it away to one of my little cousins. I had intended on giving it away to the oldest married couple in the room, which I think is such a wonderful tradition, but it was so bedraggled by that point I would have felt embarassed handing it over to someone as a gift!

*Although I still paid a good amount for the wedding decor in general, I saved a whole bunch by going the DIY route with non-floral decor. And I get to keep everything (for what purpose I have no idea) now that it is all over!

DIY Stick Based, Moss Covered, Feather and Crystal Centerpieces

Back when we visited the wholesale warehouse for our decor elements, I never thought we would wind up with this...

but I'm not that surprised since Mamacado is truly one of the craftiest people EVER! I don't have step-by-step photos of the process, since Mamacado and Friend Patti were a little busy assembling these just a few days before the wedding to take photos. I did manage to grab a few shots of the basic elements before they were assembled however, which should give you enough of an idea to recreate your own version if you so choose.

Supplies

1. Vases
We originally were going to create these mounds of floral foam covered with moss (it doesn't really make sense to me now either), but Mamacado stumbled on these "vases" for something like $2 each. We had lovely intentions of staining them a kind of bronze color, but that didn't happen, and I think they still look okay.

2. Sticks and Crystals
The crystals are threaded through a thin wire, and were purchased in a huge roll at the wholesale warehouse. We toyed with the idea of purchasing sticks at the warehouse, but the prices are insane! Instead Mamacado and Friend Patti headed out to a nearby abandoned orachard with some wood cutters and snipped away. They then cut lengths of crystal and wrapped them around the sticks.

3. Feathers and Mossy Sticks
The feathers and moss were both found at the wholesale warehouse. The feathers were stripped from their sets to make them go a little bit farther.

4. Sparkly Doodads
I wasn't a huge fan of these when we purchased them, but Mamacado insisted we needed some color and sparkle (she was right, as usual). They were also stripped down to smaller sections to be spread throughout the 12 centerpieces.

5. Moss
Several different kinds of moss were used, with this earthy, natural stuff being my favorite.

Assembly

Step 1: Insert floral foam (the soft kind that is fun to poke holes in) into vases.
Step 2: Poke crystal covered branches and moss covered branches into floral foam.
Step 3: Embellish with feathers and sparkly doodads (use hot glue gun when necessary to keep things stable).
Step 4: Use hot glue to cover the base with moss.
Step 5: Stand back and say "Look how pretty!"

The vases came pre-assembled, but there were still more centerpiece elements to be put together at the wedding so I created this little picture guide for my DOC to use.

My only advice in choosing centerpieces like this would be to make sure you have a way to transport them to the wedding! Mamacado and I are definitely glad that stressful experience is over. :)

Remember that these centerpiece elements were chosen as we scurried through the wholesale warehouse picking things out at random. If you want to re-create your own version it would be very easy to switch out some of the elements to make it look perfect for your own wedding!

The Avocado BM Dresses

I've had several questions about the dresses my bridesmaids wore on the big day and so I thought I would write a post highlighting each bridesmaid and what she wore. You may remember that I at first attempted to dress my bridesmaids like clones of each other, but when it proved impossible to find 6 different modest dresses, in varying sizes, for the right price, I decided to let them choose their own. I mailed them each a check for $100 and told them over and over to choose something "fancy."

I had no idea what the majority of them were wearing until the day of, but I was shocked (in a wonderful way) at what they came up with!

I am telling the truth (although you won't believe it) when I say that BM Maggie sewed this dress with her mother the week before the wedding. She looked gorgeous in it, and I can't believe she made something that other girls are paying hundreds of dollars for!

I do not love this photo (why am I making that awful awkward face with one of my best friends?) but I love this outfit! BM Lova got all crafty on me in putting her outfit together. Her dress is from Macy's and she managed to round up a shrug that looked great on top. The crowning achievement is that brooch she fashioned. She told me she found a barrette at Rite Aid (of all places), ripped it apart, and attached it to her dress (her dress originally had a silver embelishment and I was pretty adamant that silver was NOT to be included if possible). The gold peep toes are adorable as well!

Again, more awkwardness from the bride in the poses. I should have hired some type of posing consultant for the big day. BM Princess Jess wore a black dress by Isaac Mizrahi (found at Target), a black cardigan, and finished it off with Isaac Mizrahi shoes (found at Saks). I love that she demonstrated how pairing high and low priced items can still look fancy.

BM Bree's dress was from Banana Republic, although you can find a very similar dress at Nordstrom. But who is looking at the dress when those fantastic shoes are in the shot?

I helped BM Beni Bop scout out this Calvin Klein rip-off on ebay. It was supposed to be the real thing, but after it came with no tags we realized it was probably a fake. Nothing a little dry cleaning couldn't fix though. Definitely a steal of a dress at $75 with shipping.

MOH Shay really spiced things up with this little number. It was from Nordstrom and she definitely came close to upstaging the bride while wearing it. I had to hold some of the groomsmen back by reminding them she hasn't even hit her 20's yet. :) I couldn't find the exact dress on the Nordstrom website, but this dress is very similar.

Would I do it this way again? Definitely. Letting the girls choose their own dresses, and pitching in to help them pay for them was a great way to do things. I think each of them felt confident and beautiful in their dress of choice, and their personalities really showed through in each of their outfits. If someone were to ask me for advice in how to achieve the right look I would tell them to give a few guidelines (I encouraged staying away from casual materials like cotton and encouraged things like taffeta or satin), send out reminders, and to help them in their search by giving them examples of what you like.

The most important thing would be to not set exact expectations for what you want, because likely your girls will fail you. They aren't mind readers you know. If you want something specific, go for something specific. However, if you are on a budget like me, and you know you will be able to embrace whatever look they come up with, go ahead and let your best girls find their own ways to look their best!

Teaser 8: So long! Farewell!

After being showered with ecofetti outside the hotel we hopped in the car and drove away. Wait... we were spending the night at Hotel 1000 that night, why would we get in the car and drive away?

Why, to get shots like this of course!

Reasons why I love this photo:

1. I wanted something iconic, something to end our wedding album with a bang.
2. I had pretty high expectations about this photo. These are the photos that inspired it*:

I think Kelli did a pretty amazing job!
3. Kelli was exhausted by this point. It was somewhere around 8:00 PM and she had been shooting me (all by herself!) since somewhere around 7:00 AM. Actually we were all exhausted, as I had been going non-stop since about 5:30 AM that morning.
4. There is a shot of me as a senior in high school, standing in this same park, with this same view of Seattle that That Groom absolutely adores. My mom gave a huge print to him as a gift once, and it just might be his all-time favorite photo of me. I love that we can replace my old senior picture with one of the two of us.
5. I would imagine all brides become attached to the city they are married in, and I love that this is our shot of the city we got married in.

Until I get my Dvd(s) of pro-pics back, that wraps things up for now. I hope you have enjoyed my teasers, and I can't blame you if you want to head over to Kelli Nicole and check out all of the teaser shots (all 144 of them!) on her blog!

*John and Joseph Photography and Photogen-Inc

Teaser 7: Photobooth Shenanigans

I hate doing things that are "in" or cliche or could possibly be considered a fad as the years pass. I still haven't decided if the photo booth can be deemed any of those things, but there is somethign you should know. I actually don't care because photo booths are the best thing weddings have seen since the tradition of serving wedding cake began. I guarantee you there is no chance I would ever have been looking at photos like this without it:

Reasons why I like this photo:
1. My Great-Grandma is over 90 years old. I haven't seen her look this young in a long time.
2. She used to tell me stories of dancing on the pier while listening to big band music in the 20's and 30's. She told me once that she was the one that everyone wanted to dance with. I think the fake pearls, the purse, and the little hat remind me of that time period.
3. I hope to be able to show my daughters this photo one day and tell them "This grandma? She used to send me books because she and I both loved to read, and gave me a pair of semi-precious earrings I have always treasured, and she led a glamorous life sailing the Caribbean and traveling the world after she retired." I think you can sense her glamour in this photo.
4. Our photo booth? It was free! Jaquilyn Shumate brought her husband and took the pictures in exchange for a meal (and they must have done a fabulous job of coaching people and helping them feel natural because it shows in the photos). The camera and lights were provided by my mom, and the camera lens and backdrop were provided by Kelli. I got the hookups!

This is the first set of photos that make me a little bit sad and glad. Glad, because they are so hilarious (all of them!) Sad, because we only made out with 53 photos by the end of the night! With 75 guests that showed up, this means that less than half of our guests must have made their way over to it.

I don't want to end on a sad note, but this is the first time I will write about a wedding regret: Not doing a good enough job of spreading the word about the photo booth. I should have posted about it on the wedding website, included "tickets" for it in the ring ceremony program, and talked it up every single chance I got!

I just started to get really sad thinking about it. Then I scrolled back up again and looked at that photo of my Great-Grandma and began to smile again. :)

Teaser 6: Receptioning

Choosing this photos was really difficult to me. Do I choose one of the many details I had been slaving over for so long? What about the first dance shot, or the cake cutting, or the toasts?

You might be thinking "Hmmm what a strange choice." Well, here are the reasons I love this photo:

1. This moment was completely unexpected, and in no way planned for by me. The best man was our MC and suggested we play a little game to break the ice around the tables while people ate dinner. I wasn't so excited about the idea, as I didn't want the reception feeling like a game show with contests and prizes, but I liked his suggestion of having everyone in the room try to guess how to spell my new husbands middle name. The best man threw a little twist in the game when he revealed that it was actually the entire room competing against ME!
2. So the emotion you are seeing in my face is pure shock and disbelief. I actually spelled his middle name correctly! It must be a sign of true love or something, because my husbands middle name is MIECZYSLAW. Not only is it crazy authentically Polish, but it is made-up Polish (Shhh! Don't tell the other Poles, apparently they don't make up names all the time like we do in America!)
3. This, to me, is true photojournalism at its best. It's real and open and honest and it captures every single thing I was thinking and feeling in that moment.
4. I must have reapplied my lip gloss just before this shot was taken. I think it looks nice. :)

Think you can stay strong and keep it a surprise for just a little bit longer? If not, visit the rest of the photos by Kelli Nicole here.

2 Dresses and 2 Veils

I didn't talk much about my dresses and my veils before the wedding because I didn't want to get my hopes up that it would happen and then not have things work out the way I wanted them to. Confused yet? What could hold me back from wearing the second dress? Prepare for a long post in all of the explaining, but as always, I will fill it with pictures to keep you reading. Let's start with what I did know first.

Evelyn and this veil were always going to happen. This veil just happens to be Mamacado's, stashed away in Grandma's closet, with no hopes of ever being worn again. That is, until Mrs. Avocado and her crafty sister put two and two together and realized the veil had been worn once within the last 10 years while a fun round of dress-up was played and photos were taken. A little bit of digging and... YES!

Then I was going to keep Evelyn and change into this veil. The sassy birdcage from Something Bold just didn't look right worn over my face, but looked perfect flip back with a flower from Easter Yu.

But there was also a second dress lurking in my closet, calling out to me to be worn. The same day I tried on my Grandmother's dress from the 1950's I also attempted to zip up my mom's wedding dress. If the last person to wear it had been my mother I think there would have been no problems, but after my parents were married my practical Aunt decided to wear the same dress (to marry her brother-in-laws brother!), adding on poofy 80's sleeves and taking it in around the ribcage and at the bust. So the first hurdle was zipping the gown up AND being able to breathe.

Luckily pre-wedding stress knocked an inch or two off of my frame and a few weeks before the wedding I was finally able to zip the dress up and move around a little bit. The dress was sent off to the dry cleaner in an attempt to make it look a little whiter so that hurdle number 2 could be tackled.

2nd hurdle = would the dress be white enough? You see, I was never going to wear Evelyn in the temple for the sealing ceremony. I chose an off-white gown knowing it complemented my skin tone best, but with the knowledge that white clothing (including dresses) are worn inside of the temple. Elder John A Widtsoe, a leader in the LDS church, explains it best:

“In the temples all are dressed alike in white. White is the symbol of purity. No unclean person has the right to enter God’s house. Besides, the uniform dress symbolizes that before God our Father in heaven, all men are equal. The beggar and the banker, the learned and the unlearned, the prince and the pauper sit side by side in the temple and are of equal importance if they live righteously before the Lord God, the Father of their spirits. It is spiritual fitness and understanding that one receives in the temple. All such have an equal place before the Lord” (John A. Widtsoe, “Looking toward the Temple,” Ensign, Jan. 1972, p. 58).

My mom had worn the dress in the Seattle temple to be sealed to my father 24 years previously, so it wasn't an issue of modesty or style, but the dress had been hanging in my grandma's closet unpreserved for all of that time and the fabric would never be the brilliant white it once was. I cleaned the gown and packed it up knowing that I might walk into the temple and be told by one of the kind ladies that it hadn't been taken care of well enough, and that I would have to wear something else. (If you are wondering, my something else would have been the very plain and simple temple dress I will always wear when I visit the temple form now on).

Luckily that didn't happen, and so I was able to be sealed in the same dress that my parents were sealed in, in the same building. My mom wasn't as excited about the idea as I was, but it meant a lot to me to have her say that morning, as she was helping me get dressed in the dressing room "I didn't realize how much it would mean to me to have you be sealed in my dress."

Photographs of any kind are not permitted in the temple after the building is dedicated, so I do not have any photos to show you from the actual wedding day. Again, I knew this before we were married, so I begged Mamacado to do an After Wedding Shoot with us on the last day of our honeymoon, since we would only be relaximooning about 45 minutes from my house!

Before you look at these photos, I know Mamacado would be whispering in my ear to type "Make sure they know those aren't the sleeves I chose!" I also realize that my poor little chest is smashed beyond recognition because the dress is such a tight fit. Mr. Avo couldn't even look at this photo without laughing!

Here I am wearing my mother's veil, her dress, one of the fabulous cocktail rings I collected in Italy this past May (I also gave one to each of my bridesmaids!), the pearls Mr. Avocado gave me the morning of our wedding, and the earrings my parents gifted me for the wedding*.

I think the texture on the bottom of the dress is so beautiful. I don't think you see many soft and floaty dresses made like this for the price my mom paid. Her wedding was very simple and I think she said she paid around $200 for this dress!

The veil and the dress go together so perfectly. If you click on the photo to enlarge and zoom in you will see that the bottom of the veil is yellow with age! I liked it that way though, and insisted that we not get it cleaned as I thought it added a little vintage quality to the dress.

So now you are overwhelmed and you forgot what this post was about. Let's do a quick review of the different looks I wore on my wedding day.

I started out the morning with a first look moment wearing this:

A dress that used to look like this, BTW:

Then I went inside the temple and changed out of Evelyn and into my mom's dress and was sealed wearing this (minus the veil)*:

Then I went back to the dressing room and emerged from the temple wearing this:

Once we arrived at Hotel 1000 I did a quick veil switch and spent the rest of the night looks like this:

I loved fitting in so many different "looks" throughout the day. Bet you didn't realize I was such a quick change artist!

Do I need to brag once again? Kelli Nicole Photography. The other love of my life.

*All photos of me in my mom's dress by my amazing mother!