Wedding Planning: Ryan's Journal
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A Krispy Kreme just opened near my house, and they are definately the weirdest doughnuts I've ever tasted. They're the Wonder Bread of the doughnut world.
September 8th
There are now 22 days, 21 hours and 46 minutes before the wedding. But I'm not obsessing.
Sara gave me this really evil application for my Visor called Countdown, which is exactly what it sounds like. You enter your event date and time and then you can watch the seconds tick away. I've started looking at it several times a day, it's not healthy. It's also 18 days until my birthday. I need to stop looking at this thing.
Anyway, Leigh's triumphant return from Drinking Camp was very fun -- we ended up having Krispy Kremes to go with our quesadillas. If you think that sounds gross, Leigh agrees with you, but I thought they were tasty. And we had a super-productive long weekend and she only hassled me a little bit about not keeping to the schedule.
Our biggest success was actually finding shoes. This was an especially critical task because we couldn't hem the dresses until we had shoes, and I'm running out of time to have my dress cleaned. Even though the only really dirty part is the hem and we're cutting that off anyway (the previous bride must have either been very tall or she wore REALLY high heels), it seems like a lot to ask of a dress, to survive two wedding without cleaning.
Anyway, I really, really tried to find shoes over the summer, but I just couldn't. Apparently there are only three kinds of white shoes in the world -- silly, strappy sandals (totally inappropriate), frumpy pumps with 3/4" heels (ugly), and Dyeables. Clearly the first two were out, and I just couldn't make myself wear a Dyeable made of that nasty bluish-white satin stuff. I'd just feel like I was at a prom again. Speaking of prom, here's an amusing quote from TiaraTown's instructions on how to wear a tiara:
"How about just wear a tiara without a veil? When you choose a headpiece and would like to wear it again in the wedding reception/dinner, a tiara will be a good choice. You even could wear it to a
prom, christmas party, or any special event later on."
Now, most of us go to prom BEFORE we get married, but that's just fine. (By the way, if you like TiaraTown, you'll love Ron's Rhinestones!)
But it was ok that I hadn't found shoes, because shoe shopping is one of Leigh and my favorite activities together, and she hadn't bought any shoes for a whole three months, anyway. Of course, the first day we went looking, Leigh used up all our shoe karma on a killer pair of shiny silver boots with four inch heels that were on sale. But we both found shoes for the wedding the second day we went out, just when I had completely given up and was ready to order some off the JCPenney website, sight unseen. Fortunately, I found a pair that are actually NOT Dyeables (!) for $17.99 (woo hoo!). Leigh found some really cute sandals, and since they have an open toe, we've decided that we need to go get a pedicure before the wedding. I've never had one, so I'm really looking forward to it, except that we're both sure the ladies will laugh at our yucky feet. Oh well.
But wait, there's more! We also found jewelry for Leigh at a very silly store called Mystic Gifts in Half Moon Bay. They sell a lot of incense and flowy skirts and unicorn figurines and books about fairies , but they also have really cool jewelry. She got a choker and two pairs of earrings, and they all go great with her dress. Then we had yummy ice cream and stopped at Michael's to get supplies for the bachelorette party.
No, not those kind of supplies! We're going to start the evening with arts & crafts. We're going to make soap and bath bombs (those nice-smelling things that fizz when you put them in water). And we're not actually making soap from scratch, I hear that's a smelly, annoying process. You can buy blocks of it at Michael's, and then you melt it and add your own colors and scents. And if you want to be evil, you can add little plastic action figures to the soap while it's melted, and then when it cools you have your own little bathroom diorama. So while we were in Half Moon Bay, we got a whole bunch of little molded plastic brides, and fish, and bugs, and martini glasses, and pigs, and monster-women, and snakes, and probably other things I'm forgetting now.
Our final project for past weekend was to start hemming. We have three to do -- mine, Leigh's, and Sara's. We started on Leigh's so we wouldn't have to worry about making mistakes on the wedding dress. [Hey! -Leigh] But we didn't make any mistakes, because Sara is cool and would certainly never sew a sleeve to a bodice the wrong side out. [Hey! -Sara] We made Leigh balance on a milk crate in her heels (which was fun) and pinned the dress to a length just long enough for her to trip on. [Hey! -Leigh] We cut off the excess and then machine-stitched horsehair to the outside of the skirt. If you've never used horsehair before (which I hadn't), it's cool stuff. As far as I can tell, no horses were harmed it the making of the horsehair -- it kind of looks like stiff fishing line woven together into a strip about a half an inch wide. Sewn into a hem, it gives it a nice weight and shape.
After the machine-stitching, we were full of Papa John's cheesesticks (yum!) and it was late, so we called it a night at that point. It was supposed to be my assignment to turn the horsehair under on Leigh's hem and hand-stitch it, but I didn't. Sorry, Leigh. So that task will be added to the long list of tasks for our Saturday Afternoon Sewing Extravaganza.
Next time - the Sewing Party!