crafty diy domestic goddess

judging from the past few entries, one would understandably gather that i’m an evil whore / depressed with daddy issues / dirty girl. so often i only come here with entries extraordinary enough to entertain. i’m not a "here’s what i did today" kinda gal. unfortunately for me, this means my od persona makes me look batshit crazy.

today, we’re going to add another /.

you may not know that i am also a / crafty diy domestic goddess.

mylove and i got engaged january of 2010. but to have time to save and get our shit together after graduating, we set our date for this october. it’s been a long engagement. and i don’t mind at all because it’s given me plenty of time to plan the wedding. in fact, wedding planning has become my new favorite hobby. seriously. i don’t know what i’m going to do with myself after we’re married. and with each step of the wedding planning process, i’ve had to be a quick study and a little mini expert in that subject before we could make a smart and frugal decision.

seriously.

i know every ceremony and reception venue in our college town. i know how much they cost and what their capacities are. i even know little caveats of their contracts. for example, at the university’s museum of art the caterer can’t serve red wine.

i know every florist in town. met with 3 to compare proposals and estimates. to compare proposals, i had to learn about flowers; what’s in season, what colors are available, and how much they cost.

i know every wedding dress designer in the under $3,000 price range and could accurately guess the designer just by looking at the dress 50% of the time.

i know about tux rentals, day-of timelines, bridesmaid gifts, pintuck linens, photography styles, wedding favors, dj contracts, and chiavari chairs.

seriously.

one of the biggest endeavors has been diy-ing invitations. my awesome maid of honor (that’s moh in wedding speak) has an art degree and all of the awesome talent and software that comes along with it. she has been helping me design our custom wedding invites. and they’re turning out perfectly. it’s very hard to find a design that represents who you are, the wedding you want to have, and mixes a little bit of modern with a little bit of traditional all in one 5×7 rectangle. and in just designing the invites, i’ve spent hours thinking about the little details. what colors did we want to use. mylove is an arborist and kind of a geek so he had to request the specific tree scientific name of the leaves he wanted her to draw. for him they had to be leaves you would see in our college town that would turn our wedding colors in the fall. yeah really. we also had to figure out what font. and what wording. we both didn’t want any of the lame words like share, joy, or celebrate. that’s not us. we came up with:

together with their parents
redgirl and mylove
happily invite you to join them on their wedding day
 
 i think that describes us accurately.

now that we’ve gotten all that down, there’s the business of printing them. that’s what i’m working on figuring out right now. i’ve had to learn about cardstock weights, finishes, and colors. and i’m completely out of my comfort zone of knowledge. i had to google the word ecru. did you know that is a color? i do now! i’ve been trying to find at least a 100lb off-white cardstock with some sort of textured finish. (btw, cardstock = thick paper.) i geeked out when i got my cardstock samples in the mail today. yes. i ordered 10 different samples of off-white textured cardstock. if you have a y-chromosome, they probably all look the same to you. but to me it’s a very important decision! some are too white or too off. some aren’t heavy enough. decisions! and we haven’t even looked at our options for printing and cutting them yet.

all of this wedding-ing has definitely become a fun obsession that few other people share. i have my wedding websites, magazines, and apps for that. and every couple of weekends i satisfy a crafty urge. i made the card box for our gift table. and if you ask why you have to have one, i’m going to ignore you.

i guess that’s enough to bombard you with for now. i’m sure i’ll try to make it a point to tell you more in the future. just know that i’m not just a crazy lady. damnit. well maybe i am. but i’m crazy now about weddings ! 🙂