One Final DIY

As the days drew nearer to our wedding, I finished up all sorts of projects. Gifts, signage, printing...it was all done. Except one sort of major thing.

Image via: One Wed

Oh yes, flowers. Do you remember way back when I thought I could grow all the flowers for the wedding myself? Ha. That was a big fat DIY fail. Really it was. There were just so many things to do in the last seven months since we got engaged and my gardening has been pretty hit or miss this year (mostly miss). Luckily, we had a backup plan.

A few days before the wedding, we took snippers, buckets and gardening gloves in the back of my car when we went up to Jeff's family's farm. Our idea was to gather wildflowers and greenery from the farm to use for the table decoration as well as the two bouquets I still had yet to make.

Fail number 2.

New Zealand has been in a pretty bad dry summer this year...really dry summer. The North Island has been declared a disaster area because of the drought and we here on the South Island are about a week out from being declared a drought area as well. Well, all this hot, dry weather hasn't been helpful for wildflowers either. Instead we were assaulted by giant bumblebees (which have been enjoying this hotter weather) as we tramped about looking for anything in bloom.

Luckily Jeff's grandma lives at the farm and she has a great garden. She let us cut a lot of flowers from her place and we managed to find some dog daisies along a trail. We did at least get the greenery we needed.

flowers from the market

lawson fir from the farm

The next day I went to the market in town and got $25 worth of flowers from a lady. I also cut a lot of flowers from the garden next door (no one lives there, so I feel like it was okay a little bit) and every bloom from my own garden. As it turns out, this hodgepodge approach to our wedding flowers worked.

Bouts for the dads, which they didn't end up wearing.

My bouquet

table decor

The last picture here is a little preview of what we did for our table decorations...We got a lot of compliments on it and the flowers survived being cut for anywhere from 1-4 days. Pretty good, I think.

Did you flower vision come together perfectly, or did you have to make it work no matter what?

12 Days Post-Wedding

I know I've been absent for awhile now, but let me just say that I'm back. And I'm a Mrs. now.

Image via: Stickman Couple

While I'm still not ready for recaps as I'm still waiting for pictures to get back to me, I do still have a couple other pre-wedding posts to take care of in the meantime.

I also have decided on a couple other series of posts to keep myself busy on here and will start them soon. Since we're saving for a trip back to the USA, we are trying to save money on anything we can. Food is one of those areas we can save on if I prepare more food at home. As the summer comes to an end, I am not saying no to any fruit or vegetables people offer or ones that I can get for cheap. Bottling and canning food for the winter is high on our priorities. I also am attempting to master making bread at home for sandwiches. I'll be chronicling my food attempts weekly to share with you readers.

Living a sustainable life is a growing concern for us and is something we are working towards at home. We have a lot of projects and plans for our house to make life better for us, so I'll be sharing those projects as well.

In the meantime, I'll tease you with this wedding picture of us just after the ceremony.

Personal picture

I'm really glad to be back on here and looking forward to getting back to a normal blogging schedule again. I've missed everyone the last few weeks!

Getting close...

It's 11 days from our wedding and I am considerably relaxed about everything wedding related. Which is weird. I think I should really be a lot more stressed out. I was two weeks ago. But now I think I've reached a point that what's not done won't get done and everything else will fall into place. So today I spent some time on little things, packing things up and making a final shopping list of small things I need to get. Here's a little preview of projects:

We're having a photobooth!

Instructions for our guestbook

Pie labels for the dessert buffet. Jeff is excited about all the pie.

I think I'm over everything. I'm over the preparation for this wedding and just ready for this to happen! Once my parents arrive, we'll be on holiday and things will get crazy with wedding celebrations and last-minute things. But I really feel confident that everything is done.

Did you get to a point where you think everything is done and you're just over all the preparation?

Having a Video Made

One thing we never thought we could afford for the wedding was a video. I love watching wedding videos. The work done on them today is a bit magical. They capture the essence of the wedding day without boring you with hours of footage. When the opportunity arose to hire a student to film our wedding, we were so happy. The thing is, with so many people missing our wedding because of the distance from the USA, I really wanted to be able to show people more than just pictures. Sean is an newcomer to the wedding film industry (he's still in school), but considering that we weren't going to have any film at all, I think this is a good way to go. So here are a couple wedding films I am adoring right now and I can't wait to show my own wedding video in a couple of weeks!

What I Wore Wednesday

Here's this weeks episode of What I Wore Wednesday (WIWW). I found it hard to dress nice today because I knew I was just working for a couple of hours before coming home to work on chores. But I still did it anyway.

I also might need to find a better way of taking these pictures because my photobooth option on my computer makes it a little fuzzy. Hmm, maybe that program isn't designed to take full-length photos.

So today started off really cold so I wore a sweater over my top. This top I made a few years ago from a really thin sari wrap. I have loved this fabric for ages, but couldn't decide on what to do with it. Until I learned how to use elastic thread for gathering. I went through a phase where I made about a dozen tops with this method. I do like the wider straps on this particular one and it's light enough for summer heat (not that Nelson gets that hot anyway).

Also, in three weeks we will be on our honeymoon! Woohoo! I'm ready for a vacation.

This is it...

I'm sitting in bed (it's my sleep-in day) and I look at my calendar to discover that it is February 1st...

image via: Holidays

That's right. It's the month that we're getting married in. In 25 days (and 4 hours) I will be publicly pledging myself to Jeff. I'm really excited about that.

Image via: Reaction Gifs

Now if only the remaining bits of the wedding would take care of themselves so I could just relax until Feb. 26th.

Did you start to feel anxious when the wedding drew closer? Or were you just ready for it to be today, like I am?

What I Wore Wednesday

Something new for you today, readers. I know you're excited for a non-wedding post! Okay, so the thing is I have gotten into a bad habit the last year or so. I got into the habit of wearing sloppy clothes. Sweats, yoga pants, tshirts and tank tops.

In my defense I was working as a preschool teacher for a big portion of that time and it's much easier to play with 3 and 4 year old children when you're not inhibited by tight jeans and get messy when you're not wearing something very nice. But as the weather has gotten really nice this summer and I finished teaching at the preschool, I found that I was still living in my comfy clothes.

My feelings of self-worth went down as I continued to wear sloppy clothes. I stopped feeling attractive and lost interest in making an effort with my appearance. But enough is enough.

There is a movement in the blogger community to hold oneself accountable on personal appearance for stay-at-home-moms with a pictorial record of what they have been wearing. Forcing themselves to make the effort to dress nicely once a week can make a big difference. So that's what I'm doing.

So no, I'm not a stay-at-home-mom, but I'm still going to do this challenge for the whole year. Every Wednesday I'm going to post a picture of what I'm wearing. I actually started this last week and have found already that I am trying to dress better on other days as well. So here are the photos from the last two weeks:

 

So there you go. Two weeks of dressing with care.