WARNING: Rebecca D. shows flagrant disregard for the rules of punctuation... She uses ellipsis with wild abandon... Punctuation interventions have been done to no avail... If you are offended by such irreverence to the rules of grammar... The very glue that holds our society together... STOP READING NOW... Move on... There is a little button at the top that says "next blog"... You would be well advised to use it... You were warned...

Broken Record...

Friday, June 29, 2012

For some reason I have zero motivation to blog right now... I guess I am as sick of talking about the wedding as you guys are of hearing about it by now, and other then the wedding, my life is pretty boring right now. All I seem to be doing is catching up on all the stuff I put on hold while working on the wedding and trying to avoid saying "yes" to anything new right now.

Ok, I lied... My life is still all weddings all the time... It just is... In fact the theme of this summer seems to be weddings. Several of our girlie's friends are getting married as are the adult children of several of our friends. So all I have to talk about is weddings right now... Sorry if all this wedding talk makes me sound like a broken record... I guess it's the season we are in right now.

As I type this one thought keeps popping into my mind... There is a rant post I have been wanting to do on wedding gifts but have been holding back. Why you ask? Well, I don't want to sound ungrateful... Here is my question for you... What do you view as proper etiquette on wedding gifts and/or what do you personally do for wedding gifts?

Here is why I ask, Katy and Jed didn't receive much in the way of wedding gifts...  Aghhh... That last sentence sounds horrible to me... I am really not ungrateful at all for what they did receive, I am just curious about why people don't seem to give wedding gifts like they used to.

I was taught as a child and believed that there are certain rules or guidelines to gift giving. Here is what I have always believed, how much you spend on birthdays and other "annual" events is flexible based on how well you know the person and what family traditions / local customs apply to where in the country you live. (Believe me, location does seem to impact gift giving... Big time.) When it comes to "showers" (baby-bridal) it is also based on how well you know the person but I always tried to aim for a gift of at least $25 in value. (More based on how well you know the bride/mom-to-be.) 

These days I always try to get them something off their registry. Because they actually want and/or need the stuff on their registries...  I didn't always do this, but have started in the last few years because let's face it, almost everyone registers at Target and and the like and it is so easy to get them what they really want.

But when it comes to weddings, graduations, and other once in a lifetime events, the very nature of the event seems to require a bit more. Our personal rule of thumb was if we attend the event to either buy them a gift or give them cash in a minimum of $50 value. It has always been our view that our gift should at least cost as much as it cost to feed us at the wedding. If we receive an invite to a wedding we can't attend we just generally pick something off their registry that lets them know we are thinking about them, but let me just say, I don't think this is necessary, but rather just something I think is nice to do. I may catch a lot of flack for this next sentence, but I do think it is obligatory to give a gift if you attend the wedding.

Now I want to go on the record here and say, this is all coming from me... Katy and Jed never have so much as uttered a negative word in front of me about their lack of wedding gifts... In fact there was one card that had $20 in it that wasn't signed and when Allison pointed out the fact that they didn't get very many gifts Katy said (with a smile) that maybe that card was collectively from everyone else.

Sorry if this post offends anyone... That is not my intent, I am truly just curious about the question I asked above: What do you view as proper etiquette on wedding gifts and/or what do you personally do for wedding gifts?


Thanks for listening,

Sorry About That...

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Apparently while I was out of town for a few days someone tried to hack my blog... Blogger shut it down until I verified some info... Thank you Carrie for letting me know!

Now back to your regularly scheduled program...

Thanks for listening,

Why I Need A Break...

Monday, June 25, 2012

About a week before the wedding the person who was going to cater it informed me she was double booked and would not be able to cater the wedding for us. She was doing this as a gift to Katy & Jed and we were only going to cover her expenses, but as you can imagine this caused me a lot of stress... Until an amazing woman put on her hero's cape and swooped to my rescue. Her daughter was one of Katy's bridesmaids and is getting married in three weeks, so she is all kinds of busy, but she put everything on hold for a week to work on my stuff... She was sent from the Lord!

One thing she put on hold was the last minute planning for her daughter's shower which was today, a mere week after Katy's wedding... I called her up this week to see what I could do to help her with the shower, and she said, without hesitation, decor. She told me for months she had been picking up anything she found in the wedding colors and had no idea what to do with all this stuff. So Thursday morning, after seeing off the last of our out-of-town guests she dropped off her pile of random orange and green stuff...

She admitted she had no plan for all this stuff (including, lawn ornaments and about 35 handmade paper butterflies, that had to be included because they were made by the brides grandma) and that she was over-budget so could we try to work with what she had... We kinda felt we were on one of those HGTV challenges...

So we raided some of our supplies and with about $18 worth of various stuff from Wal-Mart here is what the shower looked like:

 Food & Dessert tables




Some tablescapes...

Little favors we made from silk flowers she dropped off...

The welcome table...

In the basket were little packets to be opened and have wishes for the bride written on, she is to open them on the night before the wedding then put them with pictures of the shower in the little album to the left.

So that is what Allison and I have been doing for the last several days... We are officially spent and have decided to escape to my parent's cabin on the island for a few days...

I'll be back late Wednesday afternoon to see Katy & Jed off on their honeymoon. So enjoy your week while I disappear offline for the next several days!

Thanks for listening,

Pintrest Wedding Inspirations...

Friday, June 22, 2012

The wedding was a mostly DIY affair... Some things turned out just like we wanted, some were better, and some details were scrapped in the interest of time and sanity! I wanted to share with you our Pintrest inspirations for Katy & Jed's wedding, and how we interpreted them...

Katy's colors were purple, spring green and brown... We used them as an inspiration, but added lots of other colors too!

Pintrest Inspiration Photo:


Our Wedding:


Pintrest Inspiration Photo:


Our Wedding:


Pintrest Inspiration Photo:


Our wedding:


Pintrest Inspiration Photo:


Our Wedding:

We did get Katy's bouquet professionally done... We gave the florist the inspiration photo and made the necessary flower changes... I think it looks rally close, but the important part is that Katy loved it!

Pintrest Inspiration Photo:


and


Our Wedding:


Pintrest Inspiration Photo:



Our Wedding:

I did the layout for the fans, and even though there were about seven steps in the construction of every single fan, these were a big hit and lots of people took them home with them!

Pintrest Inspiration Photo:


Our Wedding:


Pintrest Inspiration Photo:


and


Our Wedding:


Jed cut the wood discs, and we planted the purple flowers into the little green pails we found in the dollar area at Target... We did the doilies on the jar but realised after we had the whole room set up we had forgot the doilies on the wood... It was one of the details that didn't seem worth the stress to undo what we had done to include.



Pintrest Inspiration:


Our Wedding:


Here's a close-up of the sign on the left:


Pintrest Inspiration Photo:

This was one that a lot of stuff got dropped in order to find time to sleep! I have an old barn window mirror that was going to go behind and have the little fanned circles attached to it... But it was left at home. I even had a multi tiered serving tray ready to go but forgot the treats that went on it...

Our Wedding:

and:


It may look empty now, but we put the presents on this table too and that filled it up pretty quick.

Pintrest Inspiration Photo:


and:


Our Wedding:

Allison decoupaged those little birds on the top of the cake, and I frosted the last cupcake at 2:59 AM on the day of the wedding! (I didn't have to get up until 6:00 AM, so I was fine... I think...)

All the inspiration photos were found on Pintrest...
Let me know if you need/want any direst links and I'll get those for you.

The last of our out of town guests left this morning, so hopefully life starts to wind down a little!

Thanks for listening,

A Peek...

Sunday, June 17, 2012

Thanks to my sweet friend Laurie, I get to give you guys a peek at my day today! (PS. It was wonderful!)

I am mostly giving you a peek at the ceremony & wedding party...
Drop Back by for all the little details of our "pintrest" wedding!

Paul walks Katy in... Isn't she lovely?

Pastor Adam did a great job!

We were all really impressed by how Christ filled and interesting he made the ceremony!



Don't they all look good?




The Gents...

The Ladies...

I love these girls and I love the bond they all have!

Boots!

Do I look happy here? (hint: I AM!!!)

Our sweet flower girls!
They were like the rainbow sprinkles on top of an amazing day!

First dance
(to "You and Me" by Lifehouse)
You can hold her closer Jed, she's your wife now!

Father / Daughter dance
(to "Find Your Wings" by Mark Harris)

Allison's maid of honor speech...
It was so sweet.

Dakota's best-man speech...

That's it for now...

Today was wonderful!!!!

But since I only had three hours of sleep..

I am off to bed...

Thanks for listening,