Blueprint Magazine featured this article on making your own silk taffeta draped skirt, which of course was also blogged about on weddingbee.com. Amongst a handful of other bridesmaid dresses we’re considering, including Melissa Sweet and Watters & Watters, the gals seemed interested enough in the idea for me to head over to Stone Mountain & Daughter Fabrics in Berkeley and snatch up 2.5 yards of a lovely green silk dupioni fabric. Blueprint recommends silk taffeta, but a) neither Jo Ann nor Stone Mountain had the right shade of green in that material and b) I rather like the look and feel of the dupioni. I then arrived at Jenn’s doorstep with material in hand, and Clara - who was helping Jenn find a pot for her giant new palm tree - and I wrapped her up in it to see if it’d look as good as it does on this model in the photo. Well, I think so - what do you think?!

looking silly, then feeling demure (that top is a clara pick from target!)

the knot looks pretty good even without being ‘cleaned up’:

jenn’s new palm tree, and a whole lot of fabric!

another potential top, this one from kohl’s

and the last potential top, again a clara pick, and again from target:

Of the tops, I like the shape of the Kohl’s one, and the lighter silver color of the blouse directly above.

Don may be spared the task of making a billion planter boxes by hand after all! (May being the operative word. May be spared…)

IKEA (of course) has this planter box that might work, the BJURÖN. It’s made of solid acacia wood and galvanized steel and, while not exactly the color I was thinking of, could work…?

Length: 9 ½ ” |  Width: 5 ” | Height: 4 ¼ ”

The latest Faculty Club room layout I got shows six rectangular tables, which I think measure 10 ft x 45 in (have to double-check my notes but I think that’s right).  My math not so good, but hm…I think we’d want four, maybe five of these per table? Maybe four, since each box would be separated by a small arrangement of flowers and/or bamboo. At $5.99 a box, that’s a whopping $156 with tax, and a whole lotta boxes to play with afterwards!

__ Beef  __ Fish

Hm…does that look too sparse?

__ Beef  __ Fish __ Vegetarian

Decisions, decisions…

I finally found a wedding veil how-to that I may actually be able to follow. Yippee how exciting!

So, I guess that’s a lot of projects, BUT…I’ve decided not to make a monogrammed aisle runner. Maybe just a plain runner. If I can reach anyone at Newman who can help me with measurements.

Eeeeegh, time to hit the sack. Mom’s going to make me a duct tape dressform tomorrow. Wahoo! We couldn’t do it tonight because I had too much to eat at Stonefire Grill. Mmm…

Well I finally got my act together enough to ask my maids if they’d do me the honor. And lucky for me, all three of them said yes!

Here’s a reenactment. Well, sort of.

Part I: Jenn and Clara

Jimmy and I pull up on the gals playing a game of tennis.

I present my first bribe to Jenn. She seems to be okay with it so far.

Next up, Clara. You can see on her face that she wasn’t expecting it. I love a good surprise.

The girls compare notes. “What color is yours?!”

Ahem, girls. So back to the point…will you do it? Will you be my bridesmaids?! Yes, they say! Yes!

Mwah ha ha. They’ll never know what hit ‘em. Here’s what I presented - cute chunky rings, attached to cupcakes made of wool felt!

Part II: Christine

So that was Tuesday. Then, I met up with Christine for lunch at the Faculty Club that Friday. That’s when I hit her up too.

Here’s how it went, though not as many photos because Jimmy wasn’t there for it unfortunately.

I hand over Christine’s invitation. She reads the tag: “Will you be my matron of honor?”

HA HA HA! By the expression on her face here, I think she likes it. Well, I hope so anyway. I would have made Christine a cupcake too, but since she is obsessed with Tillen Farms Pickled Crispy Asparagus, it just seemed so much more appropriate.

Once the initial shock wears off, she too, agrees to be my ‘maid– well technically…MATRON!

We take a shot for posterity in front of the Faculty Club.

Here’s a close-up of Christine’s gift/bribe - wool felt asparagus spears with a cute swirl ring!

And coming soon, a tutorial of how you can make your very own, wool felt asparagus spears.

Unless they choose otherwise, I like the idea of each bridesmaid wearing the dress that she feels suits her best and/or is most comfortable in. I thought at first it might look too sloppy, but after seeing a few photos, I think it could look really nice. The trick, it seems, is to have them all be the same shade…maybe I guess easier said than done.

image from: david’s bridal

Here are all of David’s Bridal’s bridesmaid dresses in green. Some of them are okay, but I think we’d have to order them etc etc, in which case off the rack from somewhere seems better.

So here are some Nordstrom dresses that I thought could work. I assume the gals will want longer dresses for the weather so mostly concentrated on those. All but the last dress are right about $100. Not many of them come in the right shade of green, so unfortunately for me/fortunately for them [?] all but the last again are pictured in some shade of brown.

Aaaand, some Bluefly dresses.

Nicole Miller apple green silk tie-front dress, sale: $106.24

BCBGMAXAZRIA sandalwood jersey gathered gown, sale: $146.20

A.B.S. fuchsia satin wing-back gown, sale: $110.49

I know that this last one is fuchsia (huh, I guess that’s the right spelling), but that might be kind of cool amongst the sea of brown and green. Wouldn’t it?

I’m with this weddingbee.com blogger, I want my makeup (and face and body) to look like Zhang Ziyi’s!

That’s not too much to ask, is it?!

Then again, I wouldn’t mind having Jessica Alba’s look (ya ya, face/body too):

image from: askmen.com

Oh cool - all it takes are 11 steps to get that look.

And finally, this one’s just for Jimmy, who would drop dead on the spot if he could marry Natalie Portman (cradle robber!):

image from: askmen.com

Pew lanterns, definitely pew lanterns. Purty!

image from: kristin spencer photography

Newman’s pews aren’t so lantern-friendly, so we’ll have to rig something to make the lanterns hang. I’m thinking maybe the Martha Stewart wire card holders idea might work.

I think there are 10 rows of pews, so potentially 20 mini lanterns to buy. Yikes, plus potentially 20 battery-operated LED tealights if Newman won’t let us use real ones. Hm, someone might not have budgeted for any of this…

Oh well, here are top results of places that sell the mini lanterns:

• weddingaccents.com: $3.30 ea for qty of 12-23, plus $10 shipping
• americanbridal.com: $3.40 ea for 12+, $3.25 ea. for 24+, plus $19 shipping
• bridesandbells.com: $2.70 ea for 12-23, plus $17.50 shipping
• amazon.com (angelo gifts): $2.99 ea, plus $12.95 shipping
• hotref.com: $3.00 ea. and free shipping
• myweddingfavors.com: $2.31 ea for 12-23, plus ? shipping (no tax)
• theweddingfavorbar.com: $2.67 ea for 12-23, plus ? shipping (no tax)

…aaaaaaaaaaand, I think that’s quite enough to choose from for now.

Apparently I’ll have to make a trip to a few flower marts much closer to the actual wedding date to see what’s actually available/in season, but my top two floral picks are the ranunculus and the tulip. I freaked out last night about all the stuff there is left to do, including everything floral - centerpieces, bouquets, and boutonnières - and therefore resumed my initial research on flowers this morning.

As such, I got overzealous and made another board.

images from (clockwise from top left): costco, flowerbud, <not sure>, flowerbud, marthastewart.com, marthastewart.com, rebecca thuss, costco

Thankfully it seems as though I still have a good enough amount of time since we’ll be ordering the flowers ourselves and arranging them with the help of Jimmy’s mom, but here’s what I learned about my two top-runners.

Ranunculus means “little frog” in Latin (heh heh heh) and was so named because it is a species of buttercup that grows where frogs abound - in moist, marshy spots. The flower is said to symbolize radiance and charm, and well, need I say more…(bat bat bat). I knew nary a thing about this flower until all this wedding business came along, but I grow ever fonder of it every day.

Tulips are said to represent perfect love. I’ve always liked them for their clean simplicity and color variety, with red and pink being my favorites. Maybe even purple. But not for the wedding. The tulip reminds me of family. It’s a favorite of my gramma’s, and I recall seeing lots of photos my dad took of us amongst tulips when we were younger. Or maybe they were of my mom and gramma amongst tulips. At any rate, lots of photos…with tulips.

The Faculty Club offers the use of long rectangular tables and/or rounds, and Jimmy and I are lovin’ the idea of having a cheery stretch of bright green grass down the center of those long rectangular tables.

Since “inspiration boards” seem like such the thing to do, here’s my first crack at one. I bring you– well, I bring me, since frankly no one reads this thing but me –I bring me…my one and only, wheatgrass inspiration board:

images from (clockwise from top left): nancy liu chin designs, nancy liu chin designs, marthastewart.com, <tbd>, cynthia martin, silvanie farmar bowers, theknot.com, vingtdeux, weddingbee.com

To top it all off, a wheatgrass centerpiece is a completely do-able DIY project! Apparently wheatgrass can grow to centerpiece height within 7-10 days of planting them from the seed! How fun is that?!? These are the resources I’ll be using:

• DIY Wheatgrass Centerpieces
• Grow A Wheatgrass Centerpiece
• A collection of wheatgrass centerpiece photos