Hitched, part 1 - Projects

Apologies to subscribers if this has hit your feed twice, I've had some trouble with this post.

During my 1 year blogging break (what, you haven't heard of the 1 year on, 1 year off blogging schedule?) I got married.  After six months of rest and recuperation from crazy wedding prep, I'm finally ready to talk to you about it.

First off, I should say that my wedding was held at a county park up in the foothills.  We had the ceremony to one side of the site, then had a bbq lunch on picnic tables at the other side.  The only vendor that we used was Andy's BBQ, a local business in San Jose.  Our DJ, photographer, officiant, and all the other hands helping with the event were friends and family.  This was the best compromise we could work out between what we wanted to pay for our wedding (nothing) and what we wanted to have at our wedding (everything). 

So!  You already know that I made table runners, which I have been working on turning into a queen size quilt top (almost there - one more row!):

From the BAMQG Winter Retreat show & tell

Before becoming a quilt, the table runners decorated our wedding picnic tables, along with a row of flowers in miscellaneous bottles and jars that I collected for the event.  The flowers were purchased the day before at a local farmer's market, and they were all arranged by my bridesmaids, groomsmen, bridesmaids' and groomsmen's dates and families, and by wedding guests who arrived early.  Seriously, thank you everyone who did that, and I hope you had fun!

The best man's parents, decorating tables.

But the table runners weren't the end of my wedding projects.  I also made my hair fascinator (it felt lame to call it a hair clip so I looked up the wedding word).  It unfortunately got taken out of my hair for a second before the ceremony and then was forgotten in the dressing room.  My Chief Bride Dressing Assistant (with five bridesmaids you gotta get creative with titles) dashed off to grab it and put it on me before the reception, but sadly there aren't any good pictures of it on the day.

This is mostly a picture of my ear.  Note my "something blue."

I still have it, though, so I took a new picture for you guys.  Nevermind my hair, I sort of pulled it into shape like it was on my wedding day, but I didn't have enough hands to do it properly by myself and I skipped putting in hair pins so it immediately started falling apart:

My Head of DIY Bridesmaid made my bridal bouquet.  She totally nailed the wild look I was hoping for, saving the day after I made a mess of things:

Head of DIY also helped me make petal baskets for each of my flower girls, since I couldn't find something at the store that matched what I had in mind.  It was all white roses and tulle and nothing that was even actually a basket.  On the other hand, the actual baskets were all way too rugged and chunky.

Inspiration struck when I saw some hats at Michael's made from straw braid.  The material was just what I had in mind for the baskets, except that they were large-brim hats.  I just had to snip some fishing line to undo the brims and then I cut them unwrapped braid off of the crown.  We straightened out some of that braid from the brims and sewed them to the crowns as handles, then covered all of the edges with ribbon.  After that we sewed a few flowers on each one, matched to the flowers that the girls wore in their hair.  The girls spread real rose petals so that cleanup would be easier - since it was outdoors we just gathered up what landed on the isle runner and left the strays. 

Cuteness overload!

Speaking of the flower girls, the sum total of my instructions for flower girl attire were "White?  Yeah, white sounds good.  Dress them in white.  And make them look cute."  White... check.  Cuteness... check.  My big sisters handled these outfits totally on their own.  Queen of Embarrassing Toasts even made the lovely headbands and added the flowers to the dresses.  And yes, my nieces are all redheads.  In fact, my sisters are five for five on having redheaded children who are girls.  Good job, guys.

Whew.  I have a bit more to share, but what could top that cute picture?  I had better save it for another day. 

To be continued...