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sometimes I think this site can read my mind.

just last night I was telling ben I am going to have to make a flower for my hair myself cause I procrastinated too long it is too late to order one and have it arrive in time for the wedding.

and what happens to show up in my google reader this morning?

how to make a wedding hair flower.

is that excellent timing or what?

similar things have happened with i-pod dj-ing and setting up your own photobooth.

I am getting the impression the universe doesn't think I can pull this off without some major outside help...



[the universe may be right...]

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things learned this weekend in the land of wedding logistics:

-you don't get to sign the marriage license at your wedding like we had hoped. you have to sign it when you get it.
-even in a tiny northern nh town early on a saturday morning, you will have to wait about half an hour to get the license (kinda maybe sorta making you late to meet with your officiant....)
-a lot more goes into a marriage ceremony than we had any inkling of.
-apparently "vows" and "I do's" are not the same thing. (ben says knew this, but I had no idea.)
-it's a small world. our officiant's wife is from the town in georgia my dad's lab is relocating to later on this year.


things learned this weekend completely unrelated to the wedding:

-mosquitos are bastards, every single little one of them. and I have the multiple bug bites to prove it.
-I can apparently get sunburned while sitting in the living room. I mean, I knew I was pale, but this just brings it to a whole new level.

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have dress again.

it fits perfectly.

my seamstress is awesome.

don't know why I ever even worried.



sorted.

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I like boxes.
I like wood.
I like wine.
I like typefaces.

I like this.

[via]

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reflections on a wedding shower

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it was really really nice.

no bow bouquets, so silly games, no awkwardness.
just good friends, awesome family and a lot of damn delicious food.

ben and I decided that we didn't want to ask for typical gift-type gifts twice (wedding and shower) so we asked everybody to bring a copy of their favorite book (or two. or three or four...). (we love books)
(we also threw some up on our wishpot registry for those who weren't avid readers and didn't have a favorite book. more on wishpot later. I have to sing it's praises. it's been fantastic.)

what we ended up with is pretty much our definition of bliss.
some really nice classics, a few old favorites (including a count of monte cristo (!) from my neighbor eileen. its apparently her favorite too. add that to the fact we share a birthday, and we both pretty much rock), my nanny gave us a set of books that my grandfather brought down from canada with him when he moved to connecticut, some books on gardening, cooking, drinking and architecture (all things we love), a couple of books on the history my hometown and, for good measure, some books on americana to remind us of our home country when we go back abroad.

some random snapshots of the day:

Molly making her chocolate-covered strawberries.

the random dog that came to hang out before he went off again in search of his owners. for a second ben and I thought we just  got the most awesomest wedding shower gift ever.

remember these?
bria was a rock star and made some for me.

they looked pretty awesome.

and amy brought a ton of balloons, tied em to books (theme!) and had vases of beautiful yellow lilies scattered about.
looked ever so festive.
also, almost everybody wrapped their gifts in green paper/bags. totally unintentional, but it looked so coordinated!

ben and nanny!

the rain stopped for a bit, so we converged out on the deck.

keeping watch over the tasty snacks.

friends!

more friends!

undercover friends.

delicious chocolate cake (does my mom know me, or what?)

molly's incredible chocolate-covered strawberries.

the afore-mentioned book tower.
this time with yardstick juxtaposition.

I had a few worries, based on previous bridal/wedding showers I had been to, but I should have know with my mom and amy at the helm (combined with molly, bria and our wicked awesome community of family, friends and neighbors) we had nothing to worry about.

it was a great party.

thanks guys!

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wedding shower swag.


oh yes.

that's three feet of books.

a whole thirty six inches.

life is good.

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remember when this dress arrived?
and it was too big?
and my solution was to eat lots of cake?

well, my friends and loved ones managed to talk me out of that scheme, so instead I took the dress to a nice seamstress I found in Cambridge.

I picked it up yesterday after work.
it was still loose.

the whole dress fit much better, and she did a great job, but it was not yet to that point where I can boogie the night away without any fears of it...shifting.

so of course, me being me, I handled the situation beautifully.
by which I mean, I did nothing.
she asked if it was alright, and I said yeah! it's great! and left.

this was my first time at a seamstress, and I was afraid she was going to charge me more if she had to make more alterations, I had just taken the bus in the rain and I was all damp and it had been a long day and I very much wanted to get home and eat dinner.

so I did what I do best. I took the easy, non-confrontational way out.
which is fine. but now I still have a dress that doesn't quite fit me.

hind-sight being 20/20, I should have just said it's great! much better. but...still a little loose here.
she was the sweetest lady and I highly doubt she would have charged me anything else on top of her very reasonable fee.

but I didn't.
so now I'm not sure what to do.

but I am not comfortable with how it fits right now, so I have to do something.

thus, do I:
a) take it back, explain that I a rubbish at business transactions and hope she treats it as an extension of the first appointment and not as a separate visit in which she will charge me again?
b) see if I know any friends/family who have hidden sewing talents?
c) revert back to my first instinct, and eat as many cupcakes as I can in the next three weeks?

(sidebar: as I was typing that last one, all I was thinking about was that scene in How I Met Your Mother where Lily's dress turns out to be too big for her and Robin makes her eat chips and fudge, boot camp style, so she'll fit into it again. I tried to find the video clip, but no luck.)

since I am incapable of making decisions, I am taking the dress down to CT this weekend, showing it to my mother, and making her decide what I should do.

(though I am still leaning towards cupcakes...)

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Liechtenstein anyone?

how awesome are my friends?
fantabulously awesome.

best friend Amy found this article a while back and started scheming. to quote her:
"So here's what I'm thinking for your bachelorette party. Save your beer money...we're going to freakin' Liechtenstein."

dudes.
you can rent out THE ENTIRE COUNTRY OF LIECHTENSTEIN.

and the best part?

"If the idea of renting an entire country wasn’t weird enough, you’ll be shocked to hear what you can do with your rental. Renaming city streets and town squares, printing your own temporary currencies, and carving logos into the snow on the mountainside is just the beginning."    (emphasis mine)

we would be able to print our own currency!

we could print Bethany Bucks! (TM pending)

so, who's willing to fund this little adventure?
it's only $70,000 a night!

anybody?

...


hello?


...

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consider this under consideration.

  

[via]

(plus, I covet her dress...)

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alright.

at long last.
the moment you've all been waiting for.

our invitation post.

I've got my 80's itunes playlist going and a hot cup of tea brewing.

let's do this.


so about 4 weeks ago, ben and I discovered that we had done pretty much nothing regarding the inviting of people to our wedding.
we were down at my parent's in CT, staying with them for the weekend while we attended the wedding of one of ben's college roommates (btw, bartenders make g+t's much stronger than I usually make my own. a little discovery I made that saturday night at the reception..), and the conversation went down pretty much like this:

Mom: Have you guys given any thought to invitations? You only have a couple of months left.

Bethany: Nope.

Ben: We should do something, huh?

[Ben and Bethany look up letterpress invitations online, cause letterpress is wicked cool and we like paper.]

Ben: Holy. These aren't cheap, are they?

Bethany: And have you seen those estimated shipping dates? We don't have 4 weeks!

Ben: Hmmmm. Wanna make our own invitations?

Bethany: Yeah, ok! How hard could it be?


and thus the invitation-designing saga began.

Ben had the idea previously of making our own envelopes. ones that could be folded from a single sheet of 8.5" x 11" paper, and where we could print a map on the back.
so he went off to figure out how to fold the paper to make a cohesive and sturdy envelope.

I took it upon myself to draw the map.

it took longer to create the envelope than to draw the map.

but both looked kick-ass.
ben created the sheet so that when folded correctly (lots of trial and error) it looked like a vintage airmail envelope.

the envelope pre-folded

envelope folded. [ben couldn't remember my address, thus the hand delivered, gin bottle instead of stamps, invitation]

I drew the map of the location of the wedding.

since it's in northern NH, it pretty much went like this:
-road A
-road B
-a few buildings
-river
-wedding venue
-LOTS of trees

not the best scan, but there ya go.

using my mom's scanner/printer (and all her ink...) we printed about 120 of these babies.

and then we had to fold them.

that took a while...

while I had been finishing up the map, ben was creating the rsvp's based on an idea I had seen somewhere...

mad libs!

behold:

my mom's been reading them all out to me as they arrive at my parents house.
we've been getting a kick out of them.
we know a lot of creative people.
they are fabulous.

with the envelope/map and rsvp card sorted and out of the way, we just needed the actual invitation.

I was on it.

monday night.
4 hours.
bootleg photoshop.
booyah.

and printed on this fabulous watercolor paper we got at blicks:

forgive the non-edited photos. the bootleg photoshop finally caught up with me...

the back is also cool, but not nearly as so. something about having to be actually informative, or whatnot.

who said designing wedding invitations was hard?

and let's finish with some more pictorial eye candy.

oh wait! I almost forgot!
we also went all crazy with the stamps.
cause we can't do things, you know, the easy way.
it had to match the vintage airmail "theme" (in the roughest sense of the word) and it had to be cool.
none of this single stamp thing.
multiple stamps of smaller denominations!!
which meant bethany going to the post office.
to get many many stamps.
905 stamps to be exact.
and therefore meant some really funny looks from the guy working the deck at said post office...

("hi! I need some stamps."   "ok, how many?"   "142 one-cent stamps please"   "ok...well I'll have to go the back to get those..."   "wait! I have more. also 272 four-cent stamps and, actually, you know what? just take the list"   "......")

but, I will admit. they looked pretty freakin fantastic when all was said and done.

ok, now onto the eye candy!

back of the invitation

opening up the envelope

look! an invite!

laid out all pretty

all the pieces

 

and there ya go.
how to design, print and post all your wedding invitations in a week and a half.
with no prior planning what-so-ever.
cause that's how we roll.

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oh, and yeah.

should prolly add getting our marriage license to the to-do list.

it's the minor things the slip through the cracks.

(thank you amanda for reminding me, cause I would have totally forgot...)

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a teaser until I have time to do a full post on our invitations.

gotta get some work done this afternoon, after all.

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exactly one month to go.

should prolly start working on that "to do" list...

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speaking of to-do lists (see post below), there's a slight chance that if I post ours and publish it to the world (or, more accurately, the two people who read this. hi mom!), the things on it might actually get done...

things we still need to get/buy/steal/rent
-fabric: some for the photobooth backdrop and some to toss over a table with drinks on it in-between the ceremony and dinner
-beverage holders for said drinks (possibly from venue?)
-speakers for the music
-shoes (I swear, I'll eventually find some)
-wedding bands
-a few things I am probably forgetting

things we still need to do/finish up/start (we're not that unorganized....)
-finish making yarn pom poms
-finalize music playlists
-meet with the justice of the peace (but that's scheduled! so it's like it's practically done)
-compile our lawn games/make signs for them
-a few things I am probably forgetting


totally doable.


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this bundle of adorableness greeted me from my inbox this morning:

our invitations are delicious and nutritious!


[p.s. now that almost everybody has received their invitations, I am going to post them here. you know, to brag a little. cause they're so awesome.]

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"Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that." 

-Martin Luther King Jr

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