Wedding planning kicking into high gear…

 Just over 5 months until the wedding, and shit is getting real.

Been doing a lot of wedding stuff, i’ll list them for you, since you know you’re totally curious.

Invitations
– Ordered some samples from cardsandpockets.com, the envelopes didn’t quite work from there, so we ended up having to go to envelopes.com for the majority of it.  I ordered the wrong color sample in the pocketfold, but structurally and visually, it’s looking really great.  Designed the invitation itself ourselves, with some online inspiration from big-city design houses.  it’ll come as all blank papers, and we have to print it, cut a few of the pieces to the right size, and then assemble.  We’re planning on making it a ‘family’ thing, where we get the stuff cut and printed, then invite the parents over, sit around, assemble invites, shoot the shit, etc.

– HOLY CRAP stamps are expensive.  Each invite needs a 66 cent stamp, along with a 45-cent stamp inside for the RSVP card.  Just those two stamp orders, for 125 invites (we have about 103 parties, but good to have extras) was over 130 bucks, and that’s not even counting shower invites, rehearsal dinner invites, any of that jazz.,  But in general, holy bageebus, that’s a lot of money.  (not the last time i’ll say that)

Money
– Speaking of money, i got my W2 from my main job, and so I started doing my taxes, and turns out I’ll be getting WAY more back than I thought.  i was assuming like 800.  between federal and  state, it’ll be over 2000.  Most of that will go to wedding fund, a little to savings, and a little for fun money.  But that’s a huge weight off my shoulder.  

DIY Lighting
– So I’m doing a lot of the lighting for our wedding.  We’re not allowed to bring in any open flames, so it’s all LEDs.  We had found a place that let you rent uplighting for $19 a unit, which wasn’t that bad, but still a couple hundred bucks.  I started looking into centerpieces, which we’d said we wanted to be paper lanterns lit from the inside in our wedding colors.  So I started learning about circuits, and went from a single LED to a strand of parallel LEDs in series with 3 AA batteries in a separate component, soldered together on top of a coaster.  Made a few mock-ups, one in purple, and one in blue (only color i had left that fit the power requirements)

 This is the purple one, with some ugly wiring, but these are running off of a set of 3 AA batteries, that should give me about 10 hours of run-life.  Much monger than I need them to at the reception.  That’s 6 5mm LEDs mounted on a coaster (Schlafly, one of my favorite breweries, particularly in st louis)

Here’s what it looks like when I put a similar setup (this time in blue) inside a paper lantern.

Then there’ll be some flowers coming out the top of that thing.  And it’ll be purple.  used up all my purple ‘sample’ leds on the coaster.

Then, the next thing that came up, was uplighting.  Throwing a beam of light up a wall to bring color without a bunch of infrastructure.  Again, 19 bucks per light to rent them.

To build them:  

10 cents per LED x 15 = $1.50
4 cents per resistor x 15 = $0,60
mason jar = already have
power cable = scrounging from friends’ old cell phone chargers

voila, you have an uplight for $2.10 in materials.  i made a test last night with 8 or 9 working LEDs (a few burned out because i soldered them wrong)   First what it looks like without lights:

voila.  gotta clean  up the wiring, probably paint the coasters.  find a way to weigh down the jars (beads, probably. sad might be conductive) .  Might add a bit of a diffusion filter, but otherwise, boom.

Ordered 400 LEDs, 400 resistors, 25 battery packs (the centerpieces run off battery packs), and started begging my friends for all their old cell phone chargers that I can cut apart and solder back together… gonna be like an assembly line in here soon.

Food
– Had a tasting for our rehearsal dinner food, that went well.  Have a tasting for our reception food this coming week, her parents are coming as well.

Then, on Friday, we go to SAN FRANCISCO.  My best man, Nic lives out there with her Matron of honor, Joanna.  It’s Carolyn’s birthday, and she couldn’t remember ever celebrating a birthday without jo, so i said "hey, we got the credit card miles…" so we’re going.  leave friday, come back monday.

went to the gym for the first time in a while.hope it sticks this time.

I think i might have more to talk about, but i’m fairly beat.  have a great time, peeps, i’m sure as the wedding gets even closer, I’ll have more and more to yap about here.  I do read all of you, whether i comment or not.

mwah.