St. Patrick's Day

So instead of drinking bad beer dyed with green food coloring (ok...I admit. I love this, and the green almost makes the beer bearable. ALMOST), or eating cabbage and corned beef, Craig and I made biscuits and gravy for his school's FFAFF (free for all food Friday).

Originally, someone else was planning on making biscuits, and because of our love affair with B&G, Craig wanted to bring gravy.  We've eaten a lot of B&G in the past few years together, but had never actually attempted making our own til now.

I made the biscuits with this recipe.

Craig made the gravy loosely following this recipe

Both recipes were easy and would be very easy to manipulate.  I only wish Craig had left me some for this morning's breakfast!

Wedding music WINNING

With all the silly autotunes songs out there, would it really be that weird to play a few of them at the reception?

Photographer(s)

I knew that choosing the photographer(s) for our wedding was something that was very important to me.  It's one of those important details that I was willing to "splurge" on, considering you only get one chance to capture the events and feelings of this huge event.  While I know that posed photos are a mainstay of wedding photographs, I wanted our photographers to have a more photo-journalistic style.

Luckily Craig also felt this was an important component of our wedding.  When we though of what we'd like out of a photographer, the first thing I thought of was that I wanted someone who could make us feel comfortable--if you don't feel comfortable, it shows in the pictures.  We also wanted to be able to have printing rights and digital copies of all of the photos.  Our first thought was that our friend Zach, who is an awesome photographer, would do a great job.  You can see his work here.  Then we considered the facts that we didn't want Zach to be "working" the whole time at our wedding, and we didn't want to put a ton of pressure on him, considering he has no wedding photography experience.  So, we decided to find professionals.

Deciding where to start when finding photographers was daunting.  Of course, there are all those facebook ads (at least on my page) for Portland/Seattle wedding photographers--and all of those people charge crazy amounts.  Then there's the Craigslist people who just are in general awful photographers.  We wanted to find someone who would give us digital files, had good editing skills, and could work with our budget considering the number of hours and travel to the venue.  Some other things we'd love to have in our photographer (but probably would not be within our budget): 2 photographers, free travel, complimentary engagement session, and full day coverage.
 
My first choice (with little to no research or hesitation) was a girl by the name of Katy Weaver.  I'd seen her photographs on facebook, and they were awesome--and she was VERY affordable.  Even better, she is an OSU student!  We really liked her style, and the fact that she is "less established" meant that we could have gotten a great deal on a very talented photographer. Unfortunately, she was already booked by the time we decided to contact her.

After that, we googled photographers in our area with little luck, and decided to try Flickr.  Looking under a Portland wedding photographers group, we found several that we considered, but we narrowed it down to two photographers: Gina Emerson, and Mosca Photo.  We loved both of their styles and photo processing, as well as the packages they offered.  After a lot of discussion and comparison, we decided to go with Mosca, although I know we'd both be happy if we had chosen Gina.

After meeting Alice and Josh (our TWO) photographers, we signed the papers, and put down a deposit.  So exciting!  These two are so spunky, up for anything, fun, and very talented.  I still think it's funny that we went with Mosca, considering Craig had said he wanted our photographer to be a fly on the wall...(Mosca means fly in Italian).  There are so many great photographers out there--we really got lucky to find a great duo in Alice and Josh.  I think that things really did work themselves out really well in this case, and I'm so excited to schedule our engagement session with them!

Getting all set up

Going to be Gocco'ing our save the dates soon!  So excited!  Our wonderfully talented friend, Seyoung, has illustrated an AMAZING save the date for us that's just perfect for our wedding theme.  I'm so excited to get started on it!  I've ordered the ink, some extra screens and bulbs, and ink blocker, so all we'll have to get now is the paper.  We're planning on printing the save the dates on Monday the 21st, so I have something to look forward to in the next few weeks!  I cant show them off yet, so here's a link so you can enjoy some of Seyoung's work in the meantime:)

http://spwrinkle.tumblr.com/
http://www.society6.com/studio/spwrinkle/foxes_in_love/prints

Hairpiece

So I've been swooning over the cute rosebud hair clips people have been selling on Etsy...and decided to make one for myself.  It was fairly easy, although it did take a little time and patience.  I used ivory and green reclaimed fabrics from random things I had picked up from thrift stores...something old (and cleaned), right?  So here it is:

Sorry for the blurry pictures, but I think you get the idea.  I think they are cute--and have a "vintage" feel to them, which was what I was going for, and which will also suit the wedding theme:)

Bridesmaid Dresses

I knew right away that I wanted to let my bridesmaids pick out their own dresses, but so many details came up when trying to make the look cohesive.  I thought letting them pick out their own dresses would be easy!

The reasons why I wanted to let them pick out their dresses included: making sure everyone looked good, having happy bridesmaids, comfort, let the girls choose their price range, let them pick something that they may wear again, save me a little stress.

Of course, those weren't the only reasons, but they were the big ones.  I didn't realize that just picking a color wasn't enough.  After googling some images, I realized that even if the dresses didn't match, something matching would definitely tie everything together and make it cohesive.  Since there are really only 2 big items that most bridesmaids wear (dress and shoes), I figured letting the girls pick out whatever shade of green they wanted for their dresses would be easiest (on everyone)--no worrying about a slight difference in the "same" shade, or different materials looking like different shades, etc., but I want to make the shoes the similar component.  I will have my girls wear cream/beige/champagne colored shoes. 

 I emailed each of them, letting them know my wishes, and that they can choose any style (as long as it's tea/knee length), material, price range, etc., and also stipulated that the green not be any sort of radioactive color.

Here's the inspiration board I put together for them via Polyvore (awesome website for this):

bridesmaid dress colors by sillyme118 on Polyvore.com

J Crew strapless bridal dress
$50 - jcrew.com

Dress
$55 - eshakti.com

J Crew strapless dress
$225 - jcrew.com

Wedge shoes
$50 - delias.com

Marc by Marc Jacobs high heel shoes
$330 - net-a-porter.com

House of Harlow 1960 open toe shoes
$240 - endless.com

Kg shoes
160 GBP - kurtgeiger.com

Cole haan flat
$128 - colehaan.com

Shoes
$40 - shopruche.com

eShakti - Shop Women’s designer fashion dresses, tops| Size 0-26W...
$55 - eshakti.com

I love that this shows not only ideas on color and styles, but if one of my girls HAD to have one of these styles, they could easily see the price and where to buy it.  Polyvore is amazing.  They should have the same thing for wedding dresses...and Etsy!

Anyways, I can't wait to see what each girl picks out!

Ina at the gym

If you know me, you know that I'm a huge Ina Garten fan.  Her and Anthony Bourdain are amazing, talented people.  Because I don't have TV here at home, the only times I get to indulge in Ina/Tony is at the gym--yes, when I'm working out.  I usually head to the gym after class, so most days, I'm there before Ina and Tony are on (1pm PST), which just means I'm reading, watching something else, or trying not to think about how  much longer I should workout for.  Well, today was one of those lucky days when I got to get on a machine, sweat like a pig, and switch between the Travel Channel and Food Network.

Today, Ina was making finger food for a friend's party, which gave me so many ideas for our rehearsal dinner menu.  We're "self catering" our rehearsal dinner because it will be out in the middle of nowhere (the place we're getting married), cheaper, more laid back, and most of all, because we want to show our closest friends and family our appreciation for them and their support.  Three of the recipes from Ina really stood out to me, though.  We are planning on doing a BBQ, but I was thinking that adding some finger foods from Ina's show today would be an awesome way to add a little something special to the dinner.  Here's what she made, with links to the recipes:

Tuna Tartare:  I dont know about you, but this looked simple to make, and has gotten rave reviews...plus, it's TUNA!

Smoked Salmon Tea Sandwiches:  I love tea sandwiches--they're easy to make, delicious, and can be made ahead of time!  Besides...if you think herbed butter doesnt sound amazing, then you're probably just crazy.

Flower Cupcakes:  These are just simple cupcakes--vanilla with cream cheese frosting.  They're simple and beautiful, and I love the idea of putting cute little pansies on top!  This would be perfect for our natural, outdoorsy wedding theme!  One of the reviewers of this recipe even suggested filling these cute cupcakes with lemon curd, which I thought would be a brilliant way to make this a light, summery dessert.

I know most people wouldn't consider making a meal for 40-50 people, but I'm really excited about it.  I know it will be a challenge with all the other stressful things going on, but I think this has the potential to be one of the most rewarding aspects of the entire weekend.  Keeping on budget and finding the time to prepare everything will definitely be my biggest challenges.