Handmade Autumn Wedding Stationary Suite

Pictured above are the cards and matching envelopes for our wedding invitation and rsvp, as well as our rehearsal dinner invitations.

Here is a close up of the rehearsal dinner invites.  Using the Cuttlebug tool we embossed an ivory panel for the background, and hand cut the pumpkins that were stamped using the "rock'n'roll" and "second generation" stamping techniques.

Leaves and acorns were stamped on the corner of the envelope to carry through the fall theme.

These were our RSVP cards which were mailed with self-addressed stamped envelopes in our invitations.   The leaves were die-cut from patterned paper using the Cuttlebug tool and the edges of the leaves were inked using a sponge tool. 

Hand stamped envelopes for the RSVP cards

And the highlight of the stationary created for the wedding is the invitation itself!  These babies were a ton of work, but with the help of friends and loved ones I think they speak volumes as to our creativity and commitment to having a unique and personal wedding.

Purposeful Neglect

 Jamie and I armed with our glue runners and pounding out the invites on the picnic table at camp.

 Invites in process.

 Elise and Aunt Claudia lending a hand with invitation assembly.

 Enjoying time by the lake and the campfire while my sister was up north from NC for my bridal shower.

 RSVP cards in progress the afternoon Jeff was helping me :o)

 My first bridal shower gift that arrived in the mail from Aunt Mary (slow cooker from Target!)

 Swatch book from when Jeff and I visited Ralph the tailor to pick out tux vest colors.

 The completed invitation.

Jeff and I in our backyard after my bridal shower.

Well, there you have it, in no particular order...some photo sneak peeks at more wedding progress.  So many little bits and pieces that I've been working on are starting to come together, but I want to leave some surprises for the big day so my posts will be, as you may have noticed, farther and fewer between.  Only 68 days till the big day!!!

Lie With Me & Just Forget the World

We'll do it all
Everything
On our own

We don't need
Anything
Or anyone

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

I don't quite know
How to say
How I feel

Those three words
Are said too much
They're not enough

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

Forget what we're told
Before we get too old
Show me a garden that's bursting into life

Let's waste time
Chasing cars
Around our heads

I need your grace
To remind me
To find my own

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

Forget what we’re told
Before we get too old
Show me a garden that's bursting into life

All that I am
All that I ever was
Is here in your perfect eyes, they're all I can see

I don't know where
Confused about how as well
Just know that these things will never change for us at all

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

To the world you may just be one person, but to one person, you may be the world.

After a long stressful day of work, I blasted cds in the car the whole way home.  I found a song that made me stop and smile and think of Jeff and I had a moment of calm.  As I was putting on pjs by the light from the hallway as to not wake up Jeff completely when I got  home, I mentioned I may have found our wedding song.  He told me to pull it up on YouTube so I grabbed my laptop and came back upstairs to share it with him.  Half way through he changed it to another song, and then another and another until we found our top three.  The lyrics above are Snow Patrol's Chasing Cars (not one of the top 3).  This came out when we first started dating, and we'd listen to it cuddled up by candle light gazing at each other in those early honeymoon phase months of gooey cheesiness.  Well tonight, we had one of those heart melting moments listening to love songs and cuddled up in each others' arms.  My favorite place to be is in his arms, wrapped in the warmth and strength of unconditional love and devotion.  We all know that life isn't fair, and life isn't perfect, and that we always want more, bigger, better...what have you.  It's hard to be satisfied when I don't have a career to show for my mountain of debt and almost a decade of higher education...but in so many aspects of my life I am so very truly blessed.  I will not for one second take that for granted, because I'm lucky in love, and forever in his arms is right where I'll be! I'm so happy he woke up long enough to have a moment with me, and it's really those little moments that mean the most.

Rehearsal Dinner Booked

Lindsey helped Jeff and I investigate some options for places to hold our rehearsal dinner when she was here over the weekend, but all along I had been hoping to go to the Raindancer.  I love its consistently wonderful food and service, its proximity to our venue is convenient, and it has some history with us--we have spent many evenings there for special dates and occasions.  Yesterday, when Jeff was out and about with his dad he took it upon himself to stop in and look into it.  And he reserved our date!  I was so pleasantly surprised that he did that for us and I'm so excited to make more memories there--this time with so many of the people we are closest too! 

Productive Wedding Project Weekend

This Saturday Jamie and Meaghan came over to help me with some wedding projects.

We added more flowers to the grapevine kissing ball bouquets so that they would look more full all the way around instead of having a "front side" that would be impossible to keep it at because they spin! We also worked on the table numbers!

On Sunday I got Jeff to help me adhere the photos of our grandparents on their wedding day into this old window.  I'm going to use it as a decoration in the foyer near the guest book at the venue, and also as home decor and a reminder of successful marriages in our family that inspire us. 

Lindsey came over Sunday afternoon and helped me make the burlap banners for our gift table and our sweetheart table.

I also finished cutting out the table numbers, which are leaves that will later be attached to real white pumpkins.

After Lindsey and I finished the banners, I looked in my "wedding closet" to determine our next task to tackle.

Fortunately she was up to the challenge of the boutineers, which has been intimidating me for awhile now.

She came up with a way to incorporate all of the elements that I wanted to and she really impressed me!

Meeting at the Venue-May 15th

The offices at the Perthshire

On yet another rainy Tuesday, Jeff and I used my week day off to visit our venue, The Perthshire in Amsterdam, NY to go over a list of questions we had accrued since we booked the place, and to settle on a package so we would know where we were with expenses.  Phyllis was great with us and patiently answered all of our questions.  She even graciously lent us umbrellas so we could walk around the grounds to the "honeymoon suite" which is an out building on the property available to me and my bridemaids to get ready together on the morning of the wedding.  It was exciting to walk hand in hand in the rain with my future hubby at the place we will be married in just five short months! 

Picking up my dress-April 24th

Me in the David's Bridal dressing room with my dress bustle fixed!!

Jamie under my dress (without me wearing it) inspecting the bustle points. 

Success!  A cleanly and professionally done bustle.

My dress all packed up and ready to go home!

Yesterday, Jamie took the afternoon off from work to go with me to pick up my dress from David's Bridal.  I was surprised that she even let Meaghan join us and picked her up from school a little early so we could have a girls' afternoon of shopping and dinner at Panera Bread--my favorite!

We were pleased to find that they did a wonderful job removing all the previous bustle points and adding a new set that were cleaner and easier to use.  They also got the small spot out of the front of the dress that I had found on the last visit.  While I was relieved and should have been happy that it was all taken care of, I still looked wistfully at a dress on the mannequin on my way out the door, and I still think, "What if?"  "what if I hadn't been so hell-bent on getting this dress with my mom and my sisters on my trip to North Carolina?"  then I wouldn't have my dress shopping experience over in three hours after I'd waited my whole life to try on wedding dresses...and I wouldn't have had to fix all the mistakes that store had made because I would have bought it here in Albany.  I know I can't dwell on it, and that I should take comfort in knowing they (my mom and sisters) helped me pick it out...but I am still hung up on not wanting that part of the wedding process to be over.  I'm not really happy with the dress anymore.  It would be a frivolous waste though, to start over now and have to re-spend that money when I just got the dress paid off.  I don't even think that's an option.  So I'm going to sulk a bit more, and then I will readjust my perspective and learn to love it. 

Thankfully, after our trip to David's my mind was taken off the depressing dress situation with craft store shopping!!  I was able to find more floral stems to add to my kissing ball bouquets to fill them out a little more around the top on all sides at Hobby Lobby, and then we went to Micheal's and they had the wedding bubbles 36 pk on clearance for 1/2 price in my color--turquoise!  Imagine the luck!  Follow all that with dinner at Panera Bread, and a run into Staples for fun stationary to surprise the girls at work, and it was a great girls day!