Invitations

We're almost done with invitations. Supplies have been purchased, components have been assembled, envelopes have been stuffed. About 3/4 of them are done, addressed, and ready to go--I'm waiting on sending them because of that last 1/4, which consists of David's friends who I've been asking him to call and get addresses from since before Christmas.

I got it all done over the course of the weekend, with the helpful helping help of the wife of one of the lads. Said lad and another friend came out to Cleveland for the weekend for an all-weekend gaming session with David and his brother, and the Mrs. and I bonded over paper cuts and the gross taste of envelope glue.

I took a couple of pictures of the process, for posterity's sake. The last 1/4 I will probably do in the next day or two, and I will probably enlist the aid of my local bridesmaid, Miss O'Molly. And then I will mail them, and once the people who read this blog have received them, I will put up pictures of the assembling process.

I actually hand-delivered a few of them yesterday, to professors and school friends and the like. It was very satisfying.

Boutonnieres

I still have no idea what I want for my own flowers, but I've found some inspiration for boutonnieres.

My first idea was to do something with hydrangea, to echo the bridesmaid bouquets:

credit: A Floral Affair flowers

I don't know exactly what is going on with the stem there--I don't think I'm a super huge fan, but I do like the look of the hydrangea, mostly. The problem is, hydrangea by itself is just too plain.

That's a problem easily solved, though, with the addition of a little lamb's ear or dusty miller--which also echoes the bouquets.

credit: Martha Stewart, lamb's ear and orchid boutonniere

I like that lamb's ear a lot, but not a huge fan of orchids. There's going to be stephanotis in the bridesmaid bouquets, though...

source: The Bride's Guide to Chic

How pretty is that? I still don't like that weird metallic stem thing, but the stephanotis is so pretty, and the dusty miller and eucalyptus both look gorgeous. I love eucalyptus.

So I'm thinking perhaps for the groomsmen we can do a martha-like look with the leaf of lamb's ear or dusty miller and then maybe a spray of hydrangea, and for Dave we can do the same thing, but with stephanotis. I'd love to work some eucalyptus in there somehow, too; it's got that same silvery-green look to it, and it smells divine.

Wedding Invitations

This week is my Easter break, which means I'm in Cleveland allll week. I am so happy about this, I can't even tell you.

Last night, Dave and I went to the store in search of supplies for wedding invitation making. I'm not going to tell you exactly what they're going to look like, because I want people to appreciate them in person when they see them for the first time, but I will tell you some of the things we bought last night:

Steel paper clips
Linen paper
Manila envelopes

Whaaaaaat?

You'll just have to wait and see.

Also, stamps alone are going to run us about $84. Omgsauce. Since when did going to the post office get so expensive?

Living Space

Unlike a lot of couples these days, Dave and I aren't going to be living together until after we're married. Right now, I live in a dorm, and Dave rents from a friend who owns a house, so we're going to have to find a new place just for us before the wedding. Exciting!

A couple of days ago, I was struck with the inspiration to poke around on Craigslist and see what kinds of apartments we might be able to find in Cleveland.

I've lived on my own before, but I wasn't the lease holder for the apartment in that case--I had a financial arrangement with my roommate and even though the managers of our apartment complex knew me, we never ended up getting around to putting my name on the lease (whoops). Anyway, I've never been one of the 100% responsible parties when it came to paying rent.

And other than that, I've only lived in college dorms or with family.

So this whole apartment-hunting, living-out-on-our-own thing is kind of a big deal for me.

I found a listing on Craigslist for a duplex in Euclid that looked pretty much perfect. Not one to let an impulse get away from me, I sent the information to Dave, who agreed that it looked great. He called the number for the listing, and he went yesterday to have a look at the place. He liked it so much that we agreed we'd go ahead and put an application in for it.

Now, here's the problem: someone else got there first. The landlady is going to process that application first, and Dave gets the impression that ours will be processed only if that first applicant changes their mind or the application falls through for some reason.

We really, really want this apartment. It's the upper floor of an older house on the East side of Cleveland. It's a ten-ish minute walk from the lake, it's near some really nice restaurants, a park, and a library. It's spacious (1,100 sq. ft. for a 1-bedroom!), and it's affordable.

So, for those of you who read this that pray, how about throwing in a good word for us with the big Housing Supervisor in the sky? This place looks like it would be pretty ideal.



I mean, come on... look at that kitchen.

Les Fleurs, Deux

I've been continuing to think about wedding flowers. I should be writing a paper, but sometimes I need to take a break and let things percolate, so I don't view this as procrastination... I view it as letting my thoughts settle into something cohesive. It's sort of like sleeping on it, only without the sleep part.

I decided a good way to go about encouraging my history-paper-related thoughts to settle would be to stir up some wedding thoughts instead, so I got on Flickr and started browsing. I collected a mosaic of pictures of most of my favorite flowers and foliage.

As I've mentioned before, my mom is doing my flowers. Sadly, she's also on the other side of the country. This is where this blog can be really handy, because I can collect those pictures and make a mosaic and blog my thinking on wedding flowers as it evolves, and she can probably get a better idea from that than if we were sitting in the same room and I was trying to explain it without pictures or the clarity of thought that comes from actually writing things down.

These are the pictures I found:

(Source: 1. dried wedding bouquet, 2. Peonies Floating in Thin Air!, 3. plumeria "celadine", 4. Tuberose (Polianthes tuberosa), 5. Green Maple Leaves, 6. rosa-lírio, 7. Women... It's for you! I'm in love with you this morning!, 8. Lady's Mantle (Alchemilla vulgaris), 9. the madonna lily, 10. Turkey Run - Lamb's Ear, 11. Hydrangea, 12. Wild Welsh Poppies, 13. B_W Dusty Miller)

This is resized to fit on the page, but if you click the link here you can see the mosaic full-size.

Top row (L-R): Peonies (one of my all-time favorite flowers), Plumeria, Tuberose, Maple Leaves
2nd Row (L-R): Stargazer Lilies (tied for top-favorite flower with peonies), Roses
3rd Row (L-R): Lady's Mantle, Madonna Lilies
4th Row (L-R): Lamb's Ear, Hydrangea, Poppies, Dusty Miller

In a nutshell, I like lush, large, fragrant blossoms, the smooth, cool green of tree leaves (it isn't just maple leaves; I have similar feelings about oaks and aspens), and the smooth, fuzzy, silver-green of lamb's ear and dusty miller.

While searching, I also found a picture on Flickr that immediately became my newest vision for bridesmaid bouquets:

(Credit: Flickr - Epressions Floral)

Hydrangea, stephanotis, dusty miller (according to the picture description... but I think that looks more like lamb's ear than dusty miller). Picture this with a green-tipped or white hydrangea instead of blue-tipped. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.

In my imagination, the guys have boutonnieres that probably involve lamb's ear or dusty miller, and maybe a small poppy or mini-cluster of hydrangea blossoms.

Blogs I Read

When I am procrastinating--I mean, when I am thinking about wedding things because those things Need To Be Thought About, what I generally do is browse the Internets and read blogs in which other people write about their weddings and put up pictures of pretty flowers and what have you.

These are some of the things I read:

WeddingBee - The online bible of do-it-yourself wedding stuff. It's a blog! It's a community! It's a DIY paradise! And all this can be yours for free. Sigh. I live vicariously through the Bees.

Offbeat Bride - I wouldn't say we go as far off the beaten track as most of the people on this site, but there are some really great and fun ideas on there, and some really gorgeous photos. Dave likes to read it too, especially when they post recaps and photo galleries from crazy theme weddings (Star Wars wedding anyone? Of course Slave Leia can officiate!)

Vintage Glam Blog - It's pretty and wonderful and I love it and I want it. I want it all.

Also, even though it isn't really wedding related, I read RetroThing, because it has... well.. fun, retro things on it. You never know when inspiration might strike, or where it might come from.

Ceremony

It's very trendy these days to write your own vows.

Well, without offending anybody who did that, it's just not our thing. We're both good writers, but we also have spent years and years in schools where sometimes it seemed that the only objective was to instill in us a sense that compared to the literary greats, we are not so.. well.. great.

Or, as Dave put it, "if a pre-written ceremony was good enough for my favorite writers, it's good enough for me."

Of course, the question still remained as to which pre-written ceremony we'd use, as of course every denomination seems to have one. Even here, though, there wasn't too much digging around. We discussed it once or twice, confirmed that we agreed about this as we do about most things, and that was that--the Book of Common Prayer it is.

Most people would be able to leave it at that, but we are not Most People. Oh no. We are, very proudly, English Majors. Not for us the modern Book of Common Prayer, with its standard spellings and newfangled edits of a word here and there.

Did you know, for instance, that there are slight differences in the Book of Common prayer depending on whether you are Episcopalian (USA), Anglican, Episcopal Church of Scotland, Church of Ireland, Church of Wales, or Anglican Church of Canada? And that's to say nothing about the fact that, like most reference books that have been in print for a while, there have been multiple editions.

So, knowing what sort of thing we had in mind, I asked myself.. to which Book of Common prayer do we wish to refer? Surely nothing so new as the 1956 edition, or even 1900. Something from the 1800's, perhaps? No, not even that.

Illumination came to me one day as I was thinking about the British Literature Survey class in which I first set eyes on my intended. In the first semester of that delightful two-semester course, as part of our coverage of Medieval and Renaissance Literature, we have to read the Book of Common Prayer.

The original Book of Common Prayer, as penned by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer.

Thanks to the wonders of the Internet, this Book is of course still available, even if it's considered a wee bit archaic by most people now. It's exactly perfect for us, and we intend to use pretty much the whole "forme of solemnizacion of matrimonie", although I still need to find out if we'll be allowed to have a communion service in the chapel, since the written policy is that absolutely no food and drink are allowed. I wonder if the Body and Blood of Christ get an exemption.

I'm very excited about our wedding ceremony. I think it will suit us exactly.

The Booke of Common Prayer - 1549 Edition