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Oh, Oh, I think my slight mexican themed wedding might be getting kinda loco.  We really didn’t want an actual themed wedding… we just love mexican food and wanted a mexican menu, which we have…. thanks Audrey!  Then I thought the tissue flowers would be perfect in place of what was going to be chinese lanterns. But now I found all these incredible food cans in which I can put flowers and place on my picnic tables.

So I think i’ve officially gone fiesta crazy… oh well. How cute are these going to be with flowers in them?

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A bridal bouquet- a symbol of fertility, thrown to the ladies at the wedding for the belief that the woman who catches it will have good luck or be the next to get married. I have never been a huge fan of carrying around a heavy bunch of flowers all day, so I was torn on what to do with my bouquet.  Its not that I don’t like flowers, I LOVE flowers and I think brides look lovely with their colorful(or not colorful) bouquets. I think a bunch of flowers is the perfect compliment to a pretty white dress. But as I will be walking down the aisle for 3-5 seconds, then immediately after the ceremony starting to party with friends and family at which point I will need both of my hands for food and drinks, I feel like my lovely bouquet is going to feel left behind, in the dust, on the grass. Therefore this is one detail I am ok with not going too overboard on.

That being said, I am still going to have one. My mother will shoot me if I don’t and I know my bridesmaids will want some pretty flowers for themselves.  So, i’ve turned this into crafty-funtime with mom and we are going to make my bouquet.  Obviously there are a lot of brides who think exaclty as I do about this and have given making their own flowers a go, becasue there is a lot of info on the interweb about how to do this yourself. There are quite a few ideas as well about having a bouquet that is not made out of flowers at all.

here are some of the most inspiring ideas i have found

From THE WEDDING CHICKS, this do it yourself, eco friendly bouquet

also from THE WEDDING CHICKS, this lovely one made of antique brooches

This one I found on Etsy made by Momichka, who has loads of ideas for non floral bouquets in every color

I’m still going to make mine with flowers and possibly Brendens as well. I need to search for the best info.. but here’s a step by step by Elizabeth Anne Designs

i’ll probably check a million more sites before I start… i’ll let you know how it goes.

More pictures of pretty bouquets made with flowers

Winter time is here, the wedding season has slowed to a very pleasant crawl and that means its time for wedding planning obsessivness. And let me tell you there is a whole lot of that going on here lately. Google is my friend and so are many, many great wedding planning blogs.

A few of my best online friends right now are:

The Wedding Chicks

Green Wedding Shoes

Style Me Pretty

Once Wed

And I keep ending up on Martha Stewart somehow everytime I find a great Do-it-Yourself idea.. who knew that the lady really knows what she’s talking about? …everyone but me

My new decorating idea I am very excited about…  Tissue Paper Flowers.  I was going to hang chinese lanterns all over the ceilings and in the tent. Because I live so close to China Town and decorate my backyard with them every year, it just seemed like the easiest thing. But then I re-discovered the Tissue Paper Flower… a decoration that has been used for celebrations in Mexico for over 200 years. How perfect for our slightly mexican themed wedding to have  traditional decorations that are also very easy and fun to make.

I would also guess that this tradition has always included a bunch of ladies sitting around a table, eating tasty food, sipping on cocktails and gossiping while folding hundreds of sheets of tissue paper. So I will be honoring this part of the tradition as well, because I will definiely need some help with these and my friends will do anything for a cocktail party.

There are one million ‘how to’ sites about how to properly make these flowers. For this post I will turn to Martha again because I love that she has a cute napkin holder idea in the same post. And if I were crazy enough, I would make those too… but i’m not.

click the photo to find out how to make Tissue Paper Flowers

We are so excited to have our friend Jennifer Rowsom photographing our wedding for us!

She is an amazingly talented photographer whose work we have admired for a long time and we are excited to have her capture all the important, memorable moments from our day.

to see more of Jennifer’s work click here

Checklist item #13 – Arrange for decor, chair covers and linens.

Well who knew that picking table linens could cause so much craziness and complete obsession? Probably a lot of DIY brides who, like me, do not enjoy white tablecloths and are looking for something a little unique. I had no idea I would spend so much time contemplating this decision. Thing is, our wedding is in a rustic little clubhouse and I wanted to stick with the countryish feel of the place without going too country overboard. We also have about 10-15 picnic tables outside and how do you decorate a picnic table?? Well, google has a lot of ideas about this, all of which are antique-y and cute and wonderfully expensive.

I love the antique tablecloth, but unless I find a stack of these in my grandfathers basement, i don’t think i will be going with this option.

I came accross Sharon’s Antiques and Vintage Fabrics today and she has an amazing collection of patterned tablecloths from the 50′s, but again, I’m talking picnic tables here, so lovely, but no can do.

My mother and I went on a ‘queen street fabric store shopping extravaganza’ and found some really fun fabrics for the picnic tables, check em out

I know, i know the hawaiian parrot one is a little crazy, but we are getting married on an island and it would be fun to do an over the top island theme.  don’t worry, its already been opted out based on that it is just going to be too hard to get everything to match it. I do like the little yellow flowers, it is very country and can then be brought inside as well on maybe the dessert table?? I’m still looking, but this was a good start.

Now the inside, this was the hardest part, but I think we have decided on  Do-it-Ourselves Burlap table runners. Again, totally country, I can still have tones of fun colorful lanterns and multicolored flowers and vases because the table will be on the plain side. We will see how Do-it-yourself-y brenden and I are before we commit to this option. Sometime soon on a chilly winter day we will do a test.

But as I mentioned, I do not love white table cloths, so they will be off-white, beige, whatever you call it.

There are a lot of great DIY posts online about making your own burlap table runners. Here is one I found on Style Me Pretty And another on Living with Lindsay

The Bridesmaid Guide by Kate Chynoweth

my Maid of Honor just picked this up at a bargain book store and we are pretty excited to get together for some champagne and read what this little guide book has to say.

martha Stewarts creative way to keep the little buggers busy during your reception. A couple brought this over last night and I thought it was brilliant.. a scavenger hunt with cameras and all of the ideas on there are fun and simple for kids to find at almost any wedding. You can just print out the PDF from the Martha Stewart website.  its almost enough to make me want to invite more children to our wedding.

and more brilliance from Martha Stewart (who knew?) Personalized waterproof baggies with ties, so that your guests can take home flowers at the end of the night.

I know i’ve had this in a post somewhere before, but now i’ve decided that I definitely need to order these for our wedding day. We were not going to have a head table at first, so i didn’t think it made sense to have personal champagne flutes, even though they are crazy cute, there just would not be a proper place for them. But now we are going to make a head table and now there will be a place for our personal, day of the dead champagne flutes. i won’t admit that i changed our entire seating idea just so i had an excuse to get these.

available from Laserbird on Etsy

We are getting stuff done. it is not easy. I’ve never really thought about it before, obviously because i’ve never planned a wedding before, but its hard to plan for something that is so very far away.  My list says that my bridesmaids should have their dresses picked out by now… but how are they to know what they want to wear to a party in a year from now?? You know they are just going to change their minds in a few months. And how can i decide on tablecloths 11 months in advance, I’m not even sure what my favorite color is this year.

We made the planning process a little easier when we went to the island to attend our favorite event of the summer, The Jambo. This country music event, featuring some of the cities finest is always held inside and on the porch of our little clubhouse and this year marked its tenth annual.

As always, it was a heck of a lot of fun.  Brenden and I had a chance to see the clubhouse again in full swing; all lit up and full of people and music and dancing.

(these photos are from a few years back, but you get the picture. )

The big yellow circus tent was up and it is amazing.. you could have a whole wedding under there and we plan to light it with millions of christmas lights. Let’s not forget our generator. (this is a photo from someone else’s wedding that i found)

And to add another check to the list, we found our caterer… Audrey Demers, The queen of  island catering. We had a lot of concerns about having an island wedding, being that there is no kitchen, hardly any taps, you have to get there by boat.. just a few obstacles. But Audrey put us at ease with her all knowingness about island events and obstacles and she was full of fun and helpful ideas. Thats not even touching on her amazing culinary skills and creative menu ideas, we are so very excited to start planning our menu with her.

She gave us the amazing idea of hiring a charter to get all of our guests to the island for the day which would be so much more fun than taking the ferry.. but we will see what happens when we look into it.

We have picked our place to stay on the island, a  B&B  where we would like to chill out on a mini honeymoon for a few days after the wedding… but as everyone over there is on island time, I think we may be waiting a while to find out if it is available. No worries, i’m just excited to chill anywhere and ride bicycles around and eat deliciou food for a few days, away from the city.

and i’ve decided that my florist will be one of the wonderful neighbourhood markets that adorn our street corners in toronto.

picture courtesy of: http://www.flickr.com/photos/9961203@N07/3409237122 (thank you!)

 A few things that we are still missing, that I am excited to do:

The rings!!!! da da da da

The Officiant, i’m still not sure how you find there, do you google them? do they have websites? are they on facebook?

Music and photographer. hmmmmm

359 days to go, so i figured its about time to get down to some serious planning.  I know so many people that are gettin hitched waaaay after us and are waaaayyy more prepared.. so i think its about time we at least pretend to get down to business. I found this checklist online.. you know the ones that tell you what you should have organized based on how far away your wedding day is. So i’m looking at the 9-12 months to go and checked off what we have planned and circled what needs to be planned.  We are not doing too bad actually.

August 13th, 2011, Around 3pm on Wards Island in the Clubhouse. About 100 people. As budget as possible.. total DIY.  Let me show you our little blue clubhouse again

What we need to organize, according to “The Perfect Wedding Guide Checklist” is:

Our officiant:  no idea. i always dreamed I would get married in Vegas, by Elvis.

I have not a clue where to look.. lets put that off a while longer.

Wedding rings: thats fun, some local, hand made, eco friendly number using different metals. Where i’m going to start- Made you Look & Etsy

Wedding dress: under control.  Some little 50′s number… can’t show you, but i’m getting it made.

Arrange Decor: I think I have finally narrowed it down to exactly what we want and nothing more… now I just need to find it.   Where i’m going to start- Antique shops and china town.

Entertainment: ? We have Big ideas.. stay tuned

Flowers: No color theme here… whatever i can get from a local farm or even the corner store

Wedding cake: PIE!  Where i’ll look first, only the best, Wanda’s Pie in the Sky

I plan to have this entire list checked off by the end of september, …we’ll see.