Happy Sigh

At the risk of sounding somewhat ridiculous I have to admit that it was love at first sight. Trustworthy Google pointed me in the right direction (http://perfectdetails.com/2420.htm?Category_Code=flats) of these amazing wedding shoes that fit all of my criteria to a T. Instantly I knew they were THE ONES.
Huge. sigh. of. relief.
Just looking at them makes me giddy. I can't wait to see them in person.
And, the fabric is dyeable! Do you think I should dye them ivory (classic, sweet, timeless) or, should I dye them one of my wedding colors--lime green? I think a hint of lime peeping from under the dress would be super cool and fun. What do you think?

Shop till you drop

There are several things that I consider awesome under any circumstances--going to the movies, eating gummi bears, laying out by the pool on a 95 degree day, outlet shopping...

Pause on that last one. Shopping is for me (like most ladies I know) a thrilling hunt for (highly-discounted) treasure. Nothing really compares to that high you get when you find that amazing, figure-flattering, oh-so-gorgeous 75% off dress among the racks of JCrew. Nestled between last season's madras shorts and mismatched bathing suit pairs. Somehow that really just makes my day. One of my favorite activities (seriously) when visiting my home town is perusing the shoe store that sells pretty top-quality shoes for $15-$25 (mostly samples or worn-once returns).

Come to find out that shopping is not always so euphoric. Huh?

Over the weekend A and I had a mission to find three items at the Houston shopping mecca--The Galleria. Shoes for me to wear at the wedding, shoes for A to wear to nice occasions, and lime green and blue ties for the groomsment to wear at the wedding (and keep as a gift). After three to four hours of scouring Macy's, Saks, Dillards, the other Macy's (yep, did I mention this mall is ridiculous), Banana, Nordstrom and various random shoe and men's stores--nada. We even stopped for a pizza break and that didn't help my mood. Shopping when you have an extremely narrowly defined goal and extremely picky people (guilty) is torture.

And A was very amused at my short attention span for this particular style of shopping. He explains this is how men feel while shopping at any time, since women shop for fun and men shop to find things they NEED. Shopping for needs is not fun, it's frustrating!

So anyhow. We found none of the three items and to salvage the day, we stopped at FedEx/Kinkos to do a bit of productive wedding invitation prep.

This picture is of A helping to size the paper for our pocket folds (cute). Isn't the paper an awesome color???

Anyhow, I have decided that we may just stick with our backup plan for the groomsmen's ties, which are plain lime green ties to be worn with a traditional two-button tux and ivory shirt/vest. I think this will look great and the men probably don't want lime and blue ties as gifts anyway.

As for my shoe situation--the hunt continues. Am currently considering an option of either ivory low-heeled sandals or lime green ballet flats (which I'm sure exist although I haven't seen them yet). Or perhaps ivory ballet flats with a DIY green flower pinned to the toe!

Yay for fun new things with a $0 price tag

My office and home computer have an annoyingly bo-ring selection of fonts. This is clearly upsetting to my vision of having wonderfully modern and cool wedding stationery. Be still my heart--I have located (thanks to the amazing powers of Google) this amazing website, www.1001freefonts.com. And yes, they deliver exactly what they say--free fonts! I vaguely knew that this sort of thing existed and now that I am fully aware of how dumbly easy (and completely free!) it is to download and begin using these amazing fonts--I feel silly for not having discovered this before.
A quick tutorial for those who are skeptical of the easy-ness of this amazing free font magic (this would be helpful to the me of roughly 20 minutes ago):
1. Go to www.1001freefonts.com and search around for the font of your dreams
2. Click "Download font" (this takes approx 2 seconds!)
3. Select "Save" (and create a new folder on your desktop or wherever) and then open the zipped file (if you don't have WinZip you will need to download)
4. Right click on the .tff file and select Extract
5. Extract to the C: drive (somewhere that you will remember)
6. Now, go to your Start Menu-->Control Panel, and click on the Fonts folder
7. Go to the File Menu (at top) within the Fonts folder, and select "Install New Fonts"
8. An "add fonts" meun will appear. Select the file that you saved somewhere on your C: drive and click "OK"
9. Done! Next time you open Word, your new font will be in the drop down menu. Success!

I just downloaded Dragonfly--it is a super cute cursive-y font. And I've mocked up our goody bag stickers with Adine Kirnberg Script (see above). Now, I am armed with the font-power to make my stationery vision come true! So fun for $0!

Variations on a theme

I am a huge fan of theme parties. Give me a pirate eye-patch or some eighties oversized t-shirts with those cincher clip things at the hip. Love it. Sign me up. Theme parties = guaranteed fun times.
So I'm struggling a bit with a 'theme' for our wedding, or whether a theme is really needed at all. What do you think? Have you been to a wedding with a subtle or not-so-subtle theme?
Before you start thinking I've lost my mind, let me explain. I'm not talking about a Victorian princess wedding with huge bustles and powdered wigs or anything--just something that Martha might approve of, like an apple-themed wedding in a rustic apple orchard in Washington. Or, a sweet nautical-themed wedding in Nantucket. Or similar.
The main reason I am hoping to come up with a somewhat subtle theme is that I think it could add a very personalized, meaningful touch to the day. And it would be a way to unify all of the hundreds of moving parts which are all starting to seem somewhat muddled in a huge tornado of blue, green and tulle. I want to have a clear, unified look for the day so that the pictures will all look like they came from the same wedding. But not too matchy matchy.
So far, the only visual that the guests have seen is the save the date (btw, which looks really super cute on my friends' refrigerators!). I might be able to use the flowers and leaves from the save the dates on the other stationery (programs, table cards, etc). Plus, the DIY invitations are coming together really nicely (more on that later) and my mom is hand painting blue hydrangeas (my fave flower) on every invitation! I love the blue/green flowers--so pretty. We had also thought about incorporating some fish somewhere (maybe on the table numbers, to tie in A's love of anything fishing-related) but I'm wondering if the look will be too visually scattered, with hydrangeas, fish, plus the H crest (!).
I am probably worrying too much about this, but I want everything to look great. Should we drop the fish idea and stick with the florals?

Shoe search

You would think it would be somewhat easy to find appropriately dressy, non-frumpy low-ish heels to wear with a wedding dress. for less than $80. i am not super picky--they don't even have to be dye-able white satin. they could be gold or silver or nude or even a light color blue. does everyone either wear super high stilettos (um, can see blister nightmare occurring) or ug ballet flats (or worse--flip flops. but may be excusable if you are married on/near a beach)? My search has included my closet, my mom's closet, multiple shoe stores and malls and the internets (alllll of the internets). Have even considered a DIY shoe project involving feathers. Not much luck.
OK I will step down from my soapbox (um, shoebox?) now. But seriously, I want to be comfortable and I am nearly as tall as A with any kind of heel on. Of course I am used to being taller than everyone else, but on my wedding day I want to look petite (well as petite as 6' can be) next to A in pictures. Is that so much to ask?
Other considerations--I have heard that the guys' tux shoes will add height. Yay! Also, my dress was ordered so that it would be just long enough with a roughly 1-1.5" heel.
Enter Zappos.com. Clearly the best selection of wedding appropriate shoes for a low-ish heel. Believe me, I have looked. Unless you are considering spending $200 or more (oh, Louboutin how I wish my budget could afford you), this is the place to be. Am considering purchasing these dyeable shoes which are slightly more than I wanted to spend, but not sure if I will really need to dye them. My dress is a light ivory (not white).
Thoughts? Do you like these shoes? Should I dye them ivory?