One more Holiday

So today in the office I undertook the very important task of looking up and marking down all of the days in 2012 that the office is closed. (Well what else is one going to do when the office is a ghost town?) As I was happily shading in my calendar I realized something. Something big.

There is only one work holiday left that I will spend as a Miss. And it's three days from now on January second.

HOLYCOWOHMYGOODNESS!

To be fair, there is a pretty big holiday drought between New Year and Memorial day, (not sure why they can't give us Valentine's day or St. Patrick's day or Mardi Gras off....) but we are still approaching wedded bliss at a speed that makes *this post  look like we had all the time in the world!

Despite the growing list of To-Dos and crafts that seems to have a life of it's own in my Google Docs, it is some how reassuring to know that the next three day weekend will be spent as Mr. and Mrs. We may have a BBQ on the forth of July and I can tell people how great my husband is at smoking ribs. If we go to the in-laws for Thanksgiving they will actually be in-laws and I won't have to say, "Oh we're going to Mr. Aardvark's parents' place."  (Note: I refer to them as my in-laws from time to time but feel a little weird about using the title prematurely.) And at Christmas, knowing my grandma, we will get ornaments that say Mr. and Mrs. Aardvark (actually, literally Aardvark because she reads this blog and loves giving ornaments...we may get some that say Ourlastname too but there is a good chance of both).

This all makes me very happy. And it reminds me that their is life beyond the wedding. Remembering that should help keep my head squarely on my shoulders as we get into the really crazy home stretch.

Can you see the light at the end of the wedding planning tunnel? How do you stay focused in the madness?

*As a side note, if you are counting down to my wedding (and who isn't?) here's where we are on that list:

• Starting this week: Bridesmaid weekend (more on this to come—I am SO stoked. SO so stoked to see all my ladies!)
• The following weekend: Mission Find a Suit for Mr. Aardvark…Also, Mr. Aardvark’s and my three year date-iversary.
• Then, our Pre-Cana class the next weekend, as well as a little thing I like to call MY FAVORITE HOLIDAY EVER, AKA HALLOWEEN.

• The weekend after that we are going to Michigan to eat cake and other wedding food, and watch mama Aardvark do a mountain bike race (yeah, she is pretty bad ass (can I say ass on this website? oops! I just did. Twice.).
• Only two weeks after that is Thanksgiving
• By then it is nearly December and the second week of December Mr. Aardvark and I are taking the first real vacation we’ve had since I was in college.
• By the time we come back we’ll be this close to Christmas. THIS CLOSE! (BTW, what are our plans for Christmas??? I have no idea yet! Ahhhh!)
• New Year’s
• Then it’s January and that’s when things “get real.” I have “send Invites” written in my planner that month.  (Thinking about it now, that may be a bit premature, but I will have to reevaluate that.)
• February comes screeching in with its shortened time frame (29 days this year) and has Valentine’s Day, and Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent. Since our wedding is right after Easter, I view Lent as the final countdown to the big show.
• March will be packed with all kinds of last-minute wedding madness, and then…

BOOM: APRIL

Picking Your Seat vs. Having Your Seat Picked For You

No, this is not a post about horrendous invasions of personal space. This is about having a seating chart. Or not.


We spent Christmas at my family's and I really tried to keep wedding talk to a minimum however I could not pass up a chance with most of the major players present to ask: Seating chart? Yes or no? I personally had very mixed feeling on a chart. I know it is the "polite" thing to do so you guest aren't wandering around like confused sheep, or (more likely) stuck next to people they don't know and forced to make awkward conversation because they came in late. On top of that I really like the idea of fun beautiful table numbers and seating cards.


On the flip side, we are celebrating in a brewery, not a ball room. It is a casual atmosphere and people would hopefully be able to figure out a place to sit. The other bonus of this plan is that it saves me from having to make said table numbers and seating charts because as beautiful as they can be I have a feeling they will have a high PIA factor.


All of that considered I was on the fence. Mr. Aardvark had absolutely no opinion on the matter, so there we stayed together on the fence. And thusly we needed input from parental sources.


However team MOM (aka Mama and Step Mama Aardvark) quickly made clear that a seating chart was the way to go. No ifs ands or butts (hehe butts get it! In seats... (oh boy)) about it.


The mothers having spoken I set out to start the skeleton of a seating chart. The first thing I need was to know how many tables we had and how many they could seat. A couple e-mails later I had the following information:


2 to 4 ppl = 6
4 ppl = 16
6 ppl = 6
8 to 10 ppl = 2


on top of this, there is a bar and six high-top tables. Four of the high tops seat 8 and two seat 2. One of the larger ones will be used for cake and candy buffet (that was a stroke of wedding planning genius to keep small children away from the candy without adult help).


So, there you have it. We have 35 tables at which to seat people, hopefully 175 or fewer people. To save space (and paper and money) I have decided against escort cards in favor of something big that people will read when they come in and then find their seats.  Other than that I have no plan.


Are you doing a seating chart? Why or why not? Do you have any advise for me or ideas on how to simplify the process? Should I make some of those 4 tops into 8 tops?

A very Special Christmas

This Christmas is going to be a very special on for Mr. Aardvark and I. Aside from the fact that it will be the first and, for that matter, last Christmas we spend as an engaged couple, it is the very first Christmas that we will not have to leave our separate seven-hours-apart-ways after!

Ok, to be fair our first Christmas, in 2008, we did not have to go our separate ways after I was living in South Dakota and he was in Minnesota and we had only been dating a few weeks and did not spend it together at all. In fact, I didn't even get anything for Mr. Aardvark! (oops!) But upon coming home from my parent's house he presented me with a vase! A really cool vase. I was impressed and it is still on display in our home.

Christmas 2009 I had just graduated and was about to start my new grown-up job. I had time to kill and Mr. A had vacation so he came and spent all of Christmas week with my family and I. We had so much time, in fact, that we took an additional trip to Indiana to see some of his family too! I remember being pretty sure that we would get engaged that Christmas. I guess you could even say that's when I officially really realized I even wanted to marry him sooner than later.

Not the best picture of me but I love the paper crowns!

Sadly, after that week ended I was in Wisconsin and he was heading back to Minnesota. We were not engaged and we starting our really long distance part of our LDR.

2010 was a short and sweet drive down to see the family and back in only a few days. Mr. Aardvark came but we had to leave early since he had an extra seven hours of driving after I got home. Little did I know that we were this close to finally ending the LDR!

This year there is no LDR! We are engaged and when we get back to Wisconsin, all we will have to do is take down our tree! No sad goodbyes no pouting, just back to our live and wedding planning! I am SO excited.

What are you most excited for this Christmas?

The Dudes' Duds

Hive, I cannot believe it has taken me so long to write this post! After much back and forthing and internet searches and various discussions about how formal or informal we wanted every to look and how much was a reasonable amount to spend, we finally, finally decided what the guys in the wedding party would wear! That includes exactly what Mr. Aardvark will be wearing. We got word weeks ago that his suit had arrived and he should come in so they could see if any alterations need to be made.

Weeks ago we went in. Let me just say he.looked.good. No, good is the wrong word. Great? Smokin'? Those are closer. Now I get a bad blogger mark because I did not bring my camera, but in this world of modern marvels I did have my phone and got these shots:

I guess it's true what they say... Women go crazy 'bout a sharp dressed man.

However, Mr. Aardvark was not the only man needing to be dressed. I knew tuxes we out for the groomsmen and suit rental didn't seem like much of an option either. We were left with only two choices, make them buy suits, or figure something else out. This is where the backing and forthing came into play. We didn't want these guys forking out an arm and a leg on suits, but we wanted them to look nice.

Then, one day I got an e-mail from J.Crew that made everything that much easier. It was an additional 30% off any purchase AND free shipping. So I got to browsing and found this (dreamy model not included):

Image from J.Crew

The color is called faded black and it is actual much more grey than it appears here. It was already on clearance and with an extra 30% off and free shipping we decided it was a no brainer. This is what the groomsmen would wear! Yep, totally jumping on the grey vest trend with both feet. I love the casual class of it and retro vibe.

Inspired by Mrs. Poodle  we (I) decided the guys could BYOP (Bring Your Own Pants) in any shade of black/grey. That way they would have some of the same elements of coordinated mismatch as the bridesmaids! This plan was met by a few raised eyebrows but soon everyone was on board.  In fact the Poodle wedding pictures were so beautiful I even managed to win over a few skeptical parents!

Now, to create a little bit of consistency and tie the whole party together, Mr. Aardvark will also be wearing this vest with his suit! (Because you can do a bit of mismatching in a three piece suit right? (Of course! If it's your wedding you can!!)) I think the whole thing will be the perfect balance of formal but not stuffy. AND I am really excited for black and white pictures with my girls in dark (navy) myself in light (white) Mr. Aardvark in dark (most of his suit) and the groomsmen in the light grey. The balance of it all makes me very happy.

Because he is a good sport Mr. Aardvark agreed to model the vest for you! We are still waiting on alterations so the suit is not available for photo yet, and Mr. A could not be convinced to remove his D.A.R.E. t-shirt but these vest are so cool it still looks great!

I adore the tortoise shell buttons! I think it will look smashing under a dark suit.

Haha... He's had this t-shirt since jr. High.... Ohhh guys and the clothes they hand onto!

Now we just need to find him some shoes!

Are your guys wearing tuxes? Or something different?

Cool Under Pressure.

Alternate title: Mr. Aardvark Rocks.

So, you may have noticed I was MIA last week, or maybe you didn't notice because of all the other amazing bees posting amazing posts. Either way, I was on a family vacation with Mama and step-dad Aardvark as well as Mama Aardvark's parents. We were visiting my uncle in France. The trip was amazing, it was a great chance to spend time catching up with family we hadn't seen in awhile and see the beautiful Alps and country side. We ate amazing food, we drank (LOTS of) amazing wine, and we met some of the most fantastic people.

That being said, everyone was looking forward to a little "me time" and a quiet Sunday after our Saturday flight home. Fate had other plans. Apparently there was/is a huge strike going on and our flight out of Lyon (along with all the other flights) was canceled. Of course being in our vacation bliss, we hadn't been watching or reading the news and went to the airport, returned our rental car and only then realized we were in a pickle.

The Lyon airport is also a train station, so we could try to take the train somewhere to catch another flight or we could re-rent a car and drive to a place where the planes were flying. We decided to try the car route. It took three tries at three different rental car places. (turns out there were other people who also wanted to rent a car to get out of there!) And we ended up having to rent two cars since there were six of us and all the vans were gone. (We ended up giving a ride to a fellow stranded passenger so as to reduce the guilt of scoring two cars when there was a mad rush.)

Now, this is the part where Mr. Aardvark rocks my socks. You may imagine, this situation has potential to be stressful. He was calm cool and collected. He even drove through the mountains through the snow and got us to Geneva safely. He did so even after a week with crazy (and wonderful, but also crazy) people he was not (yet) related to!

We ended up having to spend the night in Geneva which was beautiful. It was a nice little side adventure and it totally reinforced how lucky I was to have a guy who was such a trooper.

Also, Mrs. Funnel Cake was not lying when she said Switzerland was expensive! I wish we could have had more time in Zurich than just a mad dash through the air-port. It would have been great to meet up.


What are your favorite things about your partner? Have they ever saved the day?

Mooning

There is something about the word mooning that makes me chuckle.  Even the word "honey" in front of it cannot erase this image from my mind:

Fine, tasteful, art by yours truly.

Ok, maybe not that exact image, but one similar. However, I am going to (attempt) to put my third grade sense of humor aside to tell you about the very exciting honey moon Mr. Aardvark has planned!

First let my say a HUMONGOUS thank you to my soon to be Aardvarks-in-law. The mister's parents have a time share in Hawaii and it's one of those cool ones where you can swap around and stay pretty much anywhere in the world. And, being the amazing people they are, the offered it to us as a wedding gift! Pretty darn amazing!

Well, as soon as we got the catalog our little minds kicked into overdrive. The world was quite literally open for us to explore. Mr. Aardvark quickly drew up a list of criteria for us. (I should note, I put Mr. A in complete and total control of the honeymoon and all of the planning.)

~Someplace neither of us has been
~Someplace you cannot drive to (in his mind this meant physically drive to and included all of South America and Canada.)
~Someplace where we can get a passport stamp
~Someplace with great food
~Someplace not too hot because both of us get crabby when it's too hot.

Our heads were swimming with ideas of far off places like Cypress (my first choice) or Thailand or the Canary Islands or Madagascar! We would get really excited about one place and then find another, even more exciting, exotic place.

I should note here that, with both of our jobs, we had a week for our honeymoon. More would have been amazing, but honestly I am grateful to have any time at all!

At about the six month mark we started looking into airlines to go to these places and realized it would be at least a day of travel each way. That, plus time changes, plus the fact that we wanted to at least have a little bit of our post wedding brunch (aka not leave a 5am on Sunday) meant our honeymoon would not really start until Tuesday. And since we needed a day to drive from Michigan to Wisconsin on Sunday following our moon, we'd need to leave our exotic paradise on Friday (or in some cases Thursday!).  On top of all that, the tickets were not cheap. 

While we would love to be able to tell people we were honeymooning in Cypress, was it worth it to have only three days there? On top of that, would we really get to know the culture of the place or the people if we were staying at a beautiful, fancy, resort? Do we want grand adventure after the stress of wedding planning?

The answer to all of the above questions was N-O.

We would love to go to all of the places above, but ideally, we would go for more than a week and go for more action adventure and less R & R. We briefly contemplated staying in our own timezone and going WAY south or WAY north, but decided to heck with it. What we really want is easy. No currency change, not language barrier, nothing but hanging out and being married.

With this direction change Mr. A found an amazing place in the mountains of central California. However, this place was booked solid so he shifted is focus and found an even more amazing place in Oregon.

We will be staying at The Pines in Sunriver. There are tons of things to do outside, we will be there in April which means there may be some winter like activities. Crater Lake is just a hop skip and a jump away. It is really perfect. Enough of hearing me blabber on though! How about some pictures?!

Image from Western CPE

Image From Travel Video News

Can you say breathtaking?! As for wear we are staying, The Pines looks so cozy and beautiful!

Image from Diamond Resorts

Cozy no? And check out the spiral staircase! Also fire places and decks! I am relaxed just looking at it!

Image from Diamond Resorts

And right on the river! Ohhh I am Sososososo excited. I think this will be wonderful. And wonderfully us.

Where are you going on your honey moon? Did you totally have a change of plans? Can you recommend any great places to eat near Sunriver?

Don't be Such a Tule

Alternate title: The non-perfectionist guide to veil making.

You may or may not remember that I was feeling totally overwhelmed with veil options. Well hive, I made a choice (literally I made it! (Har har puns are fun!)). I decided to go pretty traditional with a fun twist. Props to you if you pick up on the twist. I will be wearing the home made veil for the ceremony and Step-mama-Aardvark's cute short veil for the reception.

Anyone who has any interest in being totally shocked by my wedding day look (Mr. Aardvark) should probably not read this post...Or only read about half way. 

Ok, now that we have that out of the way, one more disclaimer. I am not a perfectionist. Not even close. I am a Better-stop-now-before-I-totally-ruin-it-cause-it's-pretty-good-right?-ist. That is the approach I used when I made this veil. I did do extensive youtube "how to make a veil" research and took my favorite bits from each one. I have to say, I am pretty pleased with how it turned out. If you are not interested in a $200 dollar veil, perfect edges, or perfect symmetry, I recommend this project and tutorial.

What you need:

Tule (or other light weight fabric of your choosing)

Yarn

Thread

Needle

Sewing Machine 

Comb 

Scissors 

Any doodads you want to jazz it up after you're done.

Step One: Take a piece of brightly colored yarn and measure the length you would like your veil. If you would like a blusher, include this in the length. As a side note, I do not recommend booty tooching while actually measuring (only for photos). I do recommend adding extra length because you are better safe than sorry. 

Cut the yarn to length.

Step Two: Use the yarn to measure the tule. I had purchased 10 yards of 108" wide tule. That may have been about double what I needed and caused a lot of confusion. I would get a rough idea of how much tule you need before ordering. Bridesmaid OT was a champ helping with this whole thing! I would still be tangled in tule if it weren't for her!

Cut the tule to the same length as the yarn. This is one part that doesn't have to be perfect because it will be cut off later.

Step Three: Fold your now cut tule in half "hotdog style" aka longwise.(You know from grade school fold you paper like a hotdog or like a hamburger). If you are having a blusher, fold it both ways (into quarters) for less cutting. Pin the tule so the folds stay put. Then, "draw"half of the curve you would like for the end of your veil with yarn. It is key that the center of the curve (shown to the right in this picture) is on the folded edge (not the open edge). This will ensure a nice curve when you unfold it and not two weird humps. 

Cut along the curve.

Step Four: Ok, major blogger fail here, I didn't take any pictures of step four. So you will just have to visualize with me. Anyway, once I cut the curve I needed to figure out how long I wanted the blusher compared with the rest of the veil. I did this by unfolding the whole thing, placing it on my head and adjusting until I was happy with the front to back ratio. (Full disclosure, this was the most difficult part of the whole thing. With large amounts of light colored tule it was really easy to lose track of the orientation.) Once I had the blusher segment where I wanted it (plus a little extra length) I had Bridesmaid OT pin a little piece of yarn on the top of my head where I will eventually put the comb to hold the veil in place. Then we removed the tule from my head, and used the yarn marker as our guide as we pinned from edge to edge. If it helps you visualize, our finished product looked like a large vertical oval that had the top 1/4 folded down. 

Step Five: Set your sewing machine to the largest stitch size. For a high volume veil (which I am making) sew from one edge to the other along the fold leaving about a 1/4 inch allowance. If you want your veil to be less poofy, don't go all the way to each edge. It is important to note, DO NOT double back over your stitches during this step. It will really mess with step six.

Step Six: Take hold of the bobbin thread. If you don't know which is the bobbin thread, give each a gentle tug, it's the one that moves. Pull the bobbin thread, this will cause the fabric to gather. Make sure it is (more or less) evenly bunched.

Once you have it gathered down to the approximate size of your comb (or head headband or whatever you are attaching it to, sew another row of stitches on top of the first one, making sure to double back when you start and finish this will ensure it won't unravel.


At this point, you pretty much have a veil.  As you can see below.

Please ignore the non-veil part of this photo AKA the mess.

For a little extra fullness, I repeated the measure, cut, sew, and gather steps (minus the length of the blusher) and stuck an extra later under the long part of the veil 

Now, if you like the ruffly look of the gathers, you can skip this step, but I wanted to clean it up a bit. I took one of the extra pieces of tule

Last Step: Stitch the comb onto the veil. Make sure the teeth of the comb point to the end of the veil and the top lines up with the top end of the blusher.

If you happen to have oddly shaped furniture in your guest room, because you Christmas tree is taking over your living room, you can see what the veil looks like there. 

Or you can put it on your head...

I may add beads or something to the comb just to jazz it up a bit.

 Side view. I didn't get a great shot of the blusher on me, but I really like it. Looking at this veil on me was a pretty powerful moment. It was my first, OMG, I'm a bride! moment. My heart raced, I teared up, the whole nine yards. This just got real folks. This was going to be a major part of my bridal look.

Artsy shot

I should also add that I threw on on of Mr. Aardvark's white T-shirts so I could get the full white on white bridal look. 

I wasn't able to get a picture of the bottom edge, but is just barley sweeps the floor when I have my shoes on. If you can't tell by the picture above, I am pretty excited. 

What do you think? Are you making a major part of your day-of look? 

Pretty Maids All in a Row: In the Bag

Dream Team, please divert your eyes as this is a post about a surprise for you! Unless you are looking for cool DIY, in which case I will have to get out my memory eraser when you are done!

Image from Top 10 Kid.com From Men In Black

OK, Everyone else,

If you recall, the gifts I posted about before are not totally complete, they need something inside... One of those somethings are bracelets! 

I am not a supper bead-er, and I can't make those really cool woven bead things, but I can stack them attractively on a string. I figured since all of my girls have totally different neck lines on their bride's maid dresses, and since they all have totally different concepts reasonable earring sizes, bracelets made the most sense. 

While I was in California for work, I had some free time and I wandered into a bead shop. I don't know about you, but I would spend hours in bead shops and way too much money! There is just something so enjoyable about the texture and sound and sparkle.... Love it! Anyway, I managed to come out of Kendra's Beads with a small handful of treasures. 

A day or two ago, I decided it was time to get cracking and make these bad boys. I dumped out all of my supplies and quickly realized it had the potential to turn into a big mess. 

I am usually moderately organized at best, but I was pretty pleased with my bead sorting solution:

After sorting the beads, what followed was A TON of trial and error. I lover some symmetry, so once I had half a bracelet that I liked it was just a matter of replicating that on the other side. However it took me quite a lot of unstringing and re-stringing to get an acceptable length.

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.

At long last, I got a length and pattern that made me happy. Then I begged Mr. Aardvark to help me tie the last knots. 

(I tied the first ones on the first clasp and tucked the string into the beads, however I was at a loss as to how to finish them! Who better to save the day than my very own, former boy scout, knot expert!)

He was a trooper and tied all of them!

Next, I decided to give hand modeling a go and realized I was just super awkward.

Ok, maybe we would be better off just showing them laying out flat. They are all a little different and I really like them! I am kicking myself for not buying extra clasps because I have TONS of extra beads.

As a side note, the middle larger green beads are glow in the dark! I did not realize this until I got them home. I didn't even knot glass could glow in the dark but now I like them even more.

Are you gifting your ladies day-of jewelry?