Glacier Wedding Eye-Candy

Just sit back and enjoy a "few" wedding day collages :)

 The couple in Two Medicine, where the actual ceremony took place.

 A romantic lace wedding gown on the beautiful bride and a handsome groom in an Air Force uniform.

 Bundt Cakes!

 The Reception Tent

Two of the centerpieces and a cute photo-prop sign...

 Tent Decor

 More Decorations 

 The Bride's Things

 Small Details

 I love watching the photographer work!

And finally, a little bit of scenery :)

Peanut's "Polly Peasant Dress"

Here's the scoop: our friends were married up in Glacier National Park this past weekend, and I was a bridesmaid. I'll post pictures soon (see them here!), but until then, here's the dress I made for Peanut to wear!

I picked up some gauze-like, slightly stretchy, blue gradation material from the remnant bin at JoAnns before Peanut was even born. I had a plan: it would become a gauzy blanket, or I'd make something for my good friend (the one who just was married) with it because I knew she loved those colors. Well, turns out that the remnant was too small for a blanket, and I never could think of exactly what I could make with it for Friend... so I simply made a dress with it!

It's the "Polly Peasant" dress pattern by Sew Much Ado. I've made the newborn size before, and Peanut fit right into a 0-3/3-6month size combo :) 

I added some lace to the bottom, and Peanut was ready to attend her first wedding!

 There's Grizz and I with our little Peanut (the head-bow was purchased at Shopko) and of course, the bride wanted a picture with Peanut, too! Peanut is still a bit selective with her smiles, especially when there are a bunch of cameras in her face, but she's still cute :) Sometimes, we blame her frowns on her big cheeks - the cheeks are too heavy for her to hold a smile!

Be on the look out for more wedding pictures... it was a beautiful day in a beautiful setting with beautiful people!

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July Goal!

Finally, I feel like I can join "A Lovely Year of Finishes" with Melissa and Shanna! I have four table runners/toppers that I started in June, but I really need to finish them by July 20 (or maybe a few days afterwards!). 

My usual wedding present for friends/family is a patchwork Christmas Tree Skirt - the pictures above show a few that I've made, including the one I made for myself (it's so fun to see the skirts in use!). This tradition started because it has always been Mom's go-to-gift. Plus, most of my friends don't have a lot of holiday decorations to start their new life with, so a tree skirt helps them get started in that department!

Well, the friend who is getting married on this month knows how to sew (I helped re-introduce her to this amazing hobby last year), and I think she would have more fun making her own tree skirt. Thus, she gets table toppers/runners instead (still holiday inspired, of course!).

I pulled fabric and I started planning. You can see my scratchings above. Grizz's engineering paper is perfect for quilt planning - it's just glorified graph paper, but it makes me feel official :) The plans originally included embroidered borders, but having never embroidered words before, I decided that trying one new thing (hand-quilting) was enough for this project's deadline!

I kept my fabric choices limited to my stash. Other than the Christmas Fabric (Dear Mr. Claus by Moda), all fabrics are either JoAnns or thrift store purchases. Thankfully I kept some holiday fabrics when I sent most of my stash home with my parents when they visited after Peanut was born. Why did I send fabric home? We have tentative plans of moving back to SD this fall!! Whoop whoop! 

Anyways, enough chatter... the details:

St. Patrick's Day.
Reverse Applique (first time skill!).
Hand Quilted with Embroidery Floss.
Left to do? Binding.

Easter/Spring.
Easy Patchwork.
Hand-quilting started with DMC Floss.
Overcame some early cutting/measuring difficulties.
Left to do? Finish quilting and attach binding.

Fourth Of July
Wonky Star (first time try!).
Left to do? Take out the safety pins and re-baste it... I experimented and tried to pin-baste it without taping down the back fabric - yikes! Since then, Grizz has bought me more masking tape and I can try again! I'm still deciding if I want to hand-quilt this one or machine quilt it... I also need to cut the scrappy binding and attach it!

Christmas.
Neighbor (Bride-to-Be) loved this fabric, so I cut into my fat-quarter bundle just for her :)
Machine-Appliqued the Santa and gift tags.
Left to Do? Baste, Quilt (Embroidery Floss) and Bind.



So, I have a lot left to do, but I have three weeks of nap time and daddy-time-with-Peanut to do it! Wish me luck :)

Also linking up with Fabric Tuesday and WIP Wednesday...

Remembering the Music

Two years later: Remembering the music of our special day... music just adds so much to a wedding ceremony, and we wanted our music selections to be unique yet traditional. 

Here's what went down:

This was actually at the end of the ceremony... instead of having everyone say the Lord's Prayer together, I asked one of my college girls to sing it. I already had a CD with her singing it, so I knew it would be an amazing finish to the ceremony. 

 Our piano player was a good friend of ours who actually married Grizz's cousin. She was a choir teacher, but she is a stay at home mom - their first little one is about 8 months older than Peanut! Anyways, a little back story: about half a year after meeting this amazing piano player who has a wonderful voice to match, a group of us went up to Mt. Carmel near Alexandria, MN for a winter weekend of friendship, snowshoes and xc skis. We held our own church service where this girl sat down and played just about any hymn from the book we asked her to. She also played a gorgeous version of All Creatures of Our God and King - a popular hymn that a Christian artist recently added his flair to. Soooo, when we were deciding what congregational hymns to sing at our wedding, we of course had to include Grizz's now-cousin-in-law playing All Creatures of Our God and King. My college girl lead the songs while the piano played.

Congregational hymns (played with piano and a vocal leader):

• All Creatures of Our God and King - traditional hymn redone by the David Crowder band
• Mighty to Save - Hillsong United

(If you've never heard either of these songs, I suggest you search You-tube!)

We chose to have congregational hymns over having soloists as a way to include the congregation in our special day. However, as I was searching for first dance songs, I found "This Day" by Jadon Lavik. It is not very well known at all, but I fell in love with the lyrics. When I shared it with Grizz, he just up and offered to sing it while playing the guitar. Yes, please!!

Solo

• This Day - Jadon Lavik

 On a side note... it was incredibly awkward to stand up there without him! Well, it was a bit awkward to stand up in front of everyone throughout the ceremony. No one ever talks about that! I resisted the temptation to look out at everyone, as I did not want to see that all eyes were on us. Ugh. Even during the congregational songs... have you ever just stood and stared at your guy and sang for two entire songs? Haha. It's just one of those things I have to laugh about when I think back to that special day :)

 Last but not least, I needed to have the organ playing at least sometime during the ceremony. There's just something so inspirational about organ music in a church sanctuary. I would choose that over a piano any day. Luckily I have an aunt who still plays the organ (it's becoming a lost art!); she gets called on to play at weddings a lot. She played for our prelude, processional and recessional... this is the part we get very traditional!

Prelude:

• Music chosen by organist

Processional:

• Wedding Party - Canon in 'D' (sometimes referred to as Pachabel's Canon)
• Bride - Jesu, Joy of Our Desiring

Recessional:

• Trumpet Tune

That's all folds... the music at our wedding ceremony. I can't believe it's already been two years... it is so fun to look back and reminisce!

*Photography by Black Studios.

Three Wedding Color Cards

 Green Wedding: A picture from a friend's wedding day shows the multiple green hues with silver and black accents. A beautiful wedding :)

 Muted Bouquet: This came from my brother's wedding... with a few tweaks in photoshop!

Muted Glitz: Golds and reds were center stage at my cousin's fall wedding. Perfect for autumn!

The Rehearsal

Grizz and I like our adventures - hiking, camping, rock climbing, etc, etc. So, for our wedding rehearsal, we chose to do an adventure theme! My family is used to fun rehearsals (see pictures below), but to encourage Grizz's side to dress up as well (and to let everyone know we were serious about this theme!), I put on the invites that prizes were involved :)

The rehearsal was at the church of course, but we also decided to have the supper at the church as well. Grizz's mom was great and organized all the food... there's a BBQ place in the "bigger" town nearby that she ordered the food from. We all had so much fun just hanging out in the basement with the food, that we never did get the yard games/camp fire out like it said in the invite. 

Gosh, our friends and families are such good sports! Haha! We had a snowboarding Luigi, a rodeo clown, tennis buddies, backpackers, surfing Californians and lots of hunters!

As always, Mom loves to have fun with my family's last name. Can you guess what it is from what she's wearing on her head? :)

 Sadly, we didn't get a pic of all of Grizz's fam... but here is my family pic!

 And here's all my college girls! We all ran on the XC/Track team and most of us lived together at one time or another during our college careers. (Two of the years had five of us in a house together!) They were dolls and all dressed up too :)

And as promised, glimpses of other family wedding rehearsals...

 Mom finally gave up her dream of visiting Hawaii, and instead brought Hawaii to us at my oldest brother's rehearsal. She even had live fish in fishbowls as centerpieces!

We toned it down a bit for my other brother's wedding rehearsal... just the decorations provided the theme. Go Jackrabbits! (College Mascot)

What They Wore

You've seen what we wore on our big day, but here's just a glance as to what our bridal party and family wore... 

We were so blessed to be surrounded by our friends and family on that special day!!

The Bridal Party

Dresses: David's Bridal

Men's Suits: Halberstadt's

Ties and Vests: JCPenney's

The bridesmaids' bouquets were just smaller versions of mine - complete with lace and ribbon around the stems. The men's boutonnieres were wrapped in a green ribbon - I believe they included the real salal leaves, purple mini carns, green kermit mums and green hypericum with a bit of fake seed bunch that came from the hydrangea stems from JoAnns or Michaels.

I asked my cousin's daughter to be our flower girl. I had searched the internet for flower girl dresses, but most of them were white and satiny - it would not match the soft, flowing nature of my dress or the bridesmaid dresses nor would it match the easy-going style of the wedding. So, I started searching department stores. Lo and behold, this fun purple dresses with some sparkly detail was found at JCPenney's! Luckily the one size left in the store was the size needed for this cute girl! And of course, as with anything at JCP, it was on sale :)

This handsome ring-bearer is our nephew (Grizz's sister's oldest child). He knew all about his job from being a ring-bearer a few months earlier at a cousin's wedding. His perfect outfit came from... Walmart! Or was it Sam's? I don't quite remember. But it was exactly what I was hoping for - and it went so well with the flower girl's dress!

 Aren't they cute together?! I'll share the pillow details later... I made it with an old hankerchief. And yes, they are indeed playing with our rings. In my mind, why have a ring bearer, if he doesn't carry the rings? (Yes, this is a risk. At one point, we didn't know where the pillow went... my brother found it up in the balcony from when the kiddos were playing up there earlier!)

 Our Family

Our Family

I picked out purple and green for our wedding colors - thankfully Grizz agreed! Very early on in the planning process, I decided that I didn't care what shade of purple was included in the wedding. To me, the multi-shaded details of both colors add to the feel of our wedding... I think at one point, I described it as a "vintage cottage garden" - ha!

Also, by not limiting yourself to just one shade of a color, you have access  to so many more opportunities to cut expense! Take the flower girl and ring-bearer outfits as well as the men's ties... these were all purchased at non-wedding retailers which equaled huge savings for us as well as for the kiddos' parents! The fake flowers and the ribbons for were purchased on sale at craft stores - I didn't have to worry about what shade they were, which took a lot of stress off the planning process as well.

I know that my way of thinking may not work for every bride... some weddings are more fancy and need all the colors to match... but I know that I loved having the freedom to mix and match!

What We Wore

I told you that you might be seeing some more wedding pics :) I know, I know, it was over a year ago (a year and three days, ha!), but I just feel like reminiscing...

Gosh he looks good ;) 

Grizz picked out black suits from a local store that he, the groomsmen and the fathers all bought. (Buying suits costs about the same as renting tuxes AND you get to keep them!) I found the ties at JCP - the groom and the groomsmen had matching striped ties, while the ushers and the fathers had small squares in the same color on their ties. The vests were also purchased at JCP.

My dress was found at David's Bridal. My criteria? White. Lace. Straps. And it had to have a fun back - during the ceremony, that's all that the guests get to look at! :) The sash  is different than the one that the dress originally came with, but it was bought at David's as well.

You gotta have fun shoes! These purple beauties were bought online from Sears. Yup. Sears. They were on sale for $25. I had originally found ones for cheaper in the actual store, but they were half a size too big :( 

I was surprised with how hard it was to find colorful dress shoes at a reasonable price. Sears pulled through! 

My veil. 

I loved it. I tried using one from JoAnns - you know, one of those pre-made ones? It was too floofy and too short. I also wasn't going to shell out $100 or so for a boutique one... it's just a length of tulle with some edging! So, I went up to my closet at my parents' home and took out Mom's dress and veil. It was perfect! There was a lace edging already on it (I think Mom said they glued it on). However, it was attached to a wire loop, since she wore it under a crown of daisies. Thus, there were also a few spots of yellow pollen.

We cleaned it up and took it off the wire loop. Mom attached it to some ruffled white fabric, and I attached it to a comb. I also glued on some pearl and crystal beads. It worked!

Another important feature of the veil was that there was a blusher (you know, the thing that you can wear over your face as you walk down the aisle?) That was a must. BUT! I almost forgot to put the veil down! Right before walking down the aisle Dad turned to me and asked "Weren't you going to have the veil down so I have to lift it up later?" Thankfully I had schooled him earlier in the whole lifting it up at the end of the aisle so he could remind me - he saved the day!

My necklace. 

Another favorite detail. Mom wore it at her wedding as well, but the fun doesn't stop there. It belonged to my great-grandmother. Isn't it beautiful? I believe the pendant is a lavalier style (Wikipedia). The pendant belongs on a gold chain, but I put it on a thinner, silver one... my ring as a touch of two-tone as well. 

This necklace itself could count as my something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue (the pendant is old, the chain was new, the necklace was borrowed from my grandmother and the pendant has a very small blue stone on it!)

 The bouquet. 

I had so much fun with the flowers - a lady from church who used to work with Mom did most of our flowers, but Mom and I did help a little. I bought fake flowers from JoAnns and Michaels - all on sale and with coupons, of course! And we bought the flowers from a grocery store chain that has a floral shop- I didn't know before that you can order and buy bunches of flowers from floral shops! Anyways, I'll show more decorations later that included more of the fake flowers, but here's what was in my bouquet...


Daisies - I asked for ones with a green center
Kermits (sometimes called baby mums) - Green
Wax Flower - White
Mini Carnations - Dark and Light Purple
Lisianthus (sometimes called a paper rose) - Purple... we didn't know until they arrived that some of the buds would be purple on the outside but green in the middle - perfect!
Hydrangea (fake) - Green.. these weren't the whole heads, just little snips attached to florist wire

Greenery: Veregated Pit, Letherleaf Fern, Salal Leaf (most of this was used in boutonnieres) and Hypericum (these are small green-seedy-things). There's also a bit of green plant in there that you will see more of later, but was actually found out in a country ditch. It was a perfect addition, though!


 So, there you have it. What we wore on our wedding day. Perhaps there's something in there for you or someone you know who is planning a wedding... or perhaps you're like me and you just love weddings :)