Introduction

When I got engaged during the summer of 2003, I dusted off my wedding planning notebook which was a collective of bridal dress pictures ripped from magazines and wedding ideas I'd gathered over the years, beginning with my formative youth. Yes, I was one of "those girls" whom would imagine up to a certain extent, what I wanted my big day to look like. Little did I know that life would take me down a different road than I ever imagined!

By the time I'd found the man I wanted to get on with the rest of my life with, I was in my early thirties. A far cry from the bride of 26 I had always imagined I would be! My fiance was nine years my senior and had been married before (divorced for ten years prior to our engagement). So after he spontaneously asked me to marry him, after a blissfully perfect afternoon on the solstice that June in 2003, I asked him: since you have done this already once before, what would you [like to] do differently, this time? His pensive answer included only inviting the people he really wanted to share in the specialness of the day (and not because he/we had to invite certain people) and to make the day what we wanted it to be.

I couldn't have agreed with him more!

We both loved fall and decided that fall of 2004 would be the perfect time to have our wedding. This also gave us an advantage with over a year and a half to save and prepared to pull off the biggest and obviously, the most expensive party celebration of our lives. Being older, we didn't expect our parents to help foot the bill. And as I share the details and planning of what transpired, you may agree with our philosophy that there are many benefits in paying for your own wedding yourself, however you choose to pull that off.

Our tale is one of creativity, necessary resourcefulness, ingenuity, and not without its fair share of drama. Since I did my own fair share of idea borrowing for our big day, I am a huge advocate of sharing our wedding details (and instructions) with you so that maybe you can use them as a launching point for your own wedding day plans. Sometimes, it's just one thing that maybe you didn't think of or think could be available to you that you can glean is now, in the grand scheme of things. And as my mantra would soon become throughout our entire wedding planning period, "I'll learn to do it myself!" maybe this will inspire you that all things are possible in achieving your dreams, however cliche that sounds!

Our Engagement

The day my now husband proposed was Saturday, June 21, 2003. It was the summer solstice.

We woked up that morning, a beautiful summers day in the desert, and made rosemary scones with peach butter, which were eaten while we watched "The Dangerous Lives of Alter Boys".

A nap followed after which we went downstairs in the early afternoon to have cocktails.

Egads - We were out of lemons!!!

This meant we couldn't make my favorite, the Lemon Drop.  Boo!

So we set out for Eddie's house (aka "Casa"). While we were there checking on his cats, we sat down to watch "Moulin Rouge" (one of my favorite movies, still, to this day).

We finally tore ourselves away from the flick to head off to the grocery store to buy lemons, commenting to each other what a perfectly blissful, wonderful and lazy day it had been so far in every aspect.

Upon returning to the "Hutch" (my digs) we made proper cocktails: a Lemon Drop for me, Bombay Sapphire martini for Eddie, with homemade Bleu Cheese stuffed olives. While sipping our drinks, we flipped through the days mail and catalogs together.

Then, needing something to nosh on with our beverages, I made a goat-cheese appetizer to enjoy with our drinks. We realized later, along with the perfect day thus far, that the appetizer cwas the catalyst for Eddie to spontaneously pull me into his lap at the dining room table and propose marriage!

I replied quickly, yet emphatically with,"You Betcha!"

Eddie then made me sit in his chair and he got down on one knee to ask me the official and old-fashioned way.

Same answer as before...

I then asked him if this meant I could now, officially, buy wedding magazines at the store?

Yes, yes it did.

And so, it was settled.

And realizing that we were very happy, and not really very hungry any more, we went upstairs to watch "Brazil" on DVD.

Our Wedding Day Vision

One of the first things we had to determine, before we dove headfirst into our plans, was to determine what we wanted our wedding to look like. We both were huge foodies, who loved to cook, eat, drink, entertain and had a penchant for bygone eras. (We both came into our relationship with record turntables AND record collections in early 2003. If you don't know what either are, I'd recommend you Google it!) 

I started to envision a 5 pm wedding ceremony, with an elegant retro-vintage vibe. My soon-to-be husband had introduced me to the Thin Man movies and we fancied ourselves a modern-day Nick and Nora Charles.

While those movies were done in the 1930's, we loved the cocktail element they portrayed and how people actually dressed up and looked sharp when the occassion (and there were many) called for it. We were both smitten with the gorgeously tightly fitted, double-breasted suits of that era for men. Wouldn't it be great to have a tuxedo that looked like that?!

Early when we had just started dating, we watched the original "SpyKids" movie together. If you have not seen that movie, the beginning of the movie starts with how the parents met and their dramatic wedding day. I instantly fell in love with this fictional couples wedding cake: a tall-tiered number, bright yellow with bold flowers piped in frosting across the sides and a Day of the Dead wedding couple figurine for the cake topper.

It indulged my love of bright colors, being untraditional in the usual-boring-typical wedding cake look, and the Day of the Dead figures incorporated my Mexican-American fiances heritage while providing a fun and funky element. When we first watched the movie and saw the wedding cake, we agreed that should we get married someday, we wanted our cake to look JUST.LIKE.THAT.  (Right after we were engaged, I bought my first official wedding planning magazine and a DVD copy of the "SpyKids" movie!)

Plans and ideas began to take shape and form off of our initial concepts.

A vintage, Spanish-inspired wedding venue perhaps? (Old Laurelhurst Church below...)

And while we didn't want to go completely Mexican (no Mariachi bands, thank you!) in our wedding plans and themes, we did want to incorporate some elements into the ceremony and the overall scheme including a Day of the Dead bridal couple cake topper...

I imagined 1950's inspired cocktail dresses for each of our wedding attendants to wear and for those dresses to have elbow-length gloves as a key accessory.

We knew we wanted food to be an important focus at our reception dinner.  Meanwhile, I was dying to have Chivari ballroom chairs for the ceremony and reception, my favorite since childhood.

I also wanted silver beaded glass Belmont plate chargers for the dinner portion of the reception.

Together, we envisioned a three or four-piece jazz band playing during dinner and a post-ceremony cocktail hour with a bar that served signature cocktails. We preferred a formal sit down dinner instead of a dinner buffet and wanted to make our wedding a throwback to a bygone era of long ago: a time when manners and etiquette and formality meant something and was appreciated.

We knew we wanted a smaller wedding (no more than about 75 guests invited) and that we wanted it to be a representation of the two of us.

Finally, we had an outline for the rest of our plans to begin falling into and expanding into place!

Copying is the Sincerest Form of Flattery

I love color. I'd originally spied these bright, vivid and modern Claudia Calhoun invitations in a Martha Stewart Wedding's magazine I believe. I found a shop that carried them and they were kind enough to send samples out for me to see.

Unfortunately, the colors in the magazine were much brighter (due to typical photography and printing inconsistencies) and the actual items in person, more dull in color. I was dejected at first. Until I saw the other sample the salesperson had included in my sample package. They were gorgeous!

Simple, classy, elegant and very expensive looking.

Actually, they were quite expensive in reality...

 

The were letterpressed and boy, did I want them so badly! But alas, we couldn't afford them. They were gorgeous, though. I'd never considered chocolate/espresso brown wedding invites before (I know, I was thinking hot pink and red so why was this a stretch!) because frankly, I wasn't big on the color brown in my clothing choices or in my home decor choices. Yet, these exuded the very feel and image we were going for with our wedding: vintage/retro cocktails from the 1930's - 1950's.

Hence, these beautiful Claudia Calhouns became my crafty "gateway drug", so to speak, and began what would become my mantra throughout our wedding planning days: If we can't afford it or find it, we'll do it ourselves.

(Apologies in advance for the quality of the pictures to come, they were taken way after our wedding celebration and many of the items you'll see are from the scrapbook I made to keep a sample and memory of everything created for our big day.)

Below you'll see the final version of the invite I created off of the Calhoun version above. I found a DIY paper supplier called Envelopments that has nearly everything under the sun paper-wise to make your paper goods. I found a dark brown matte cardstock that was very close to the Calhoun model and a beautiful Citrine metallic paper to mimic the ink printed on the Calhoun as well. For my lettering, I learned how to emboss, and that is an addiction within itself!

I originally wanted to have a local paper printer do raised-ink printing (very tactile) on our invites and envelopes. I would provide the paper, they provide the service. However, I soon found out that this was a frustrating request. No one would touch the project! I heard every excuse in the book except the real reason, which I suspect was that the job was too small for them to bother with (we only needed 70-75 invitation sets printed).

So that is how I learned to emboss. And as you'll see in other posts, I got pretty darn good at it, too.

Fortunately with the Citrine metallic paper, it didn't absorb the ink jet ink on our trusty Epson Stylus Photo R300 printer very quickly. Which meant I could shake on my own custom blend of embossing powder (part gold, party pewter), then tap the excess off, and have the powder remain on the printed out portion of the paper. Hit it with the embossing heat gun while keeping the gun moving so as not to burn and warp the paper too much, and presto, a beautiful raised invitation that looked an awfully lot like the Calhoun version.

I did that over 75 times alone just for the inside of the invite. I'd also end up embossing all the response cards...

As well as all the envelopes associated with the invite suite.

For the return address for the back of the vellum outer mailing envelopes, I had a rubber stamp made in the same font as on the invites and response cards and again used the embossing powder and the heat gun. For the star motif invite seal(actually the star on the center of our china pattern) we took a picture of that, made an image of it on the computer and I had a rubber stamp made of that, too, and embossed a bazillion of those. They sealed up the pocketfold envelopes the invitation was attached to in the center and also were affixed to the center of matching brown folded cards which were used as thank you cards for wedding gifts and the like. (For the thank you cards, I used a silver metallic Gelly pen which showed up beautifully on the dark paper.)

I swapped services with a co-workers partner whom had gorgeous handwriting. She wrote each guests name on the back of the pocketfold invitation in metallic silver Gelly pen and I did some sewing repairs on a blouse my co-worker had needing repair.

On the vellum mailing envelope I handwrote out each guest name and address using Gelly pens in burgundy metallic ink. It was a dark maroon-brown color that looked perfect with the invites and stood out on the vellum for the post office.

I still get comments to this day about how beautiful our wedding invitations were and I'm still quite pleased with how well everything turned out! You didn't see a lot of colored wedding invitations back in 2003-2004 for more formal weddings like you do today. I do like that they still hold up over time and don't look dated or passe as some styles can unfortunately do.

A Wedding Date Trumps A Ring. Really.

I have lots of older women friends, and not many my own age. No complaints in that department. It's probably because I am the oldest in my family and always wanted an older sister of my own! One of these wise, older friends gave me a piece of wisdom that I think bears repeating if you are looking to get engaged or are engaged to be married: You don't need a (engagement) ring but you do need a date.

Setting a wedding date really solidifies that you are both making plans for the future. It gives you your deadline, your end-date, and it tells the world that you plan to go in the direction of this goal. And while there is a percentage of people who have a date and end up calling the wedding off, you tend to hear more about people with a ring and no date, whom never end up sealing the deal than vice-versa, right?

When we got engaged in June, my fiance couldn't afford an engagement ring, or at least, the ring I hoped to have. So, we waited until the end of the year when we knew he'd get his holiday bonus from work and could make that happen. Delayed gratification. In the meantime, we each wore inexpensive but simple silver bands, engraved on the inside with our aliases for each other until that time. And that worked out very well for us. It meant we both had an "engagement" ring of sorts to wear for a period of time (my fiance continued to wear his silver band up until our wedding day) which completely summed up the team partnership we had regarding our relationship from the start.

Waiting until the end of the year when he got his bonus check meant another important thing for us: my ring was then completely paid for (including my wedding band which we tucked away for the future ceremony) once we placed the order for it. And how nice was it for me to know that I was wearing a beautiful engagement ring that was already paid for?

Yep, priceless.

We Heart Blue Nile

We bought my engagement and wedding band on Blue Nile. Yep, the online jewelry retailer you may or may not be familiar with.

I had some images of rings I'd liked from their website. I was fancying a pear-shaped center stone with side stones and hoped it would have a more vintage-inspired band design.

This one below was in the running for a longest time because the band was like a metal ribbon. As the months continued, I realized it wouldn't look quite right with the simple platnium wedding band we'd plan to buy for me.

Peeve: It drives me bonkers when someone has a wedding ring and engagement ring that do not compliment each other. They don't have to be identical bands, but please, put some thought into it! I knew someone once who had a beautiful three-stone, vintage-looking engagement ring who then ruined its beauty by putting a masculine, yellow gold band with five diamonds across the top for their wedding band.

And then, for some reason, I got it into my head that I wanted the sides of my engagement ring band to be made up with alternating-shaped smaller diamonds. I had seen a couple styles I liked, but when we went to a few of the nicer jewelry stores in Las Vegas at the time, I didn't like anything that they showed me. Also, we got some quotes on diamond accented bands and center stones and they were a lot more than we had budgeted for and in reality, could afford.

Remember, there is a huge mark-up in fine jewelry and with a box store, you're also paying for the staff, decor, utilities and on-hand inventory.

We went back home, a little shellshocked from the sticker prices and I jumped on the internet again and searched through the Blue Nile web site. They actually had the very band style I had been seeing in my mind and wanted but that the local stores didn't offer.

When my husband got his holiday bonus that December, he went to the BlueNile web site and started reading up on diamond cut, quality, everything. He knew the ring style I hoped to have but still checked to make sure it was at the top of my list now six months later. It was. I remember he asked me, "What's more important to you, size or sparkle?" For me, it was a balanced combination of the two (and based on what we could afford, too, natch). Between our budget and his newly accquired ring knowledge, he was able to build my actual ring on the site where we could review and edit before finalizing the sale.

Let me share a few reasons why we felt 110% comfortable buying my engagement ring from Blue Nile: first, I had purchased a diamond three-stone pendant as a thirtieth birthday present to myself two years earlier from them. It was the best experience! Their very friendly and helpful customer service when I called about a question, the quick and secure delivery, beautiful presentation and absolute quality all won me over. Also, it was hard to beat their prices. (My experience has proven that Blue Nile isn't selling cheaper quality jewelry like you find in the lower-end mass jewelry stores in the malls and like.) Especially since we saved a ton of money by not having to pay local sales tax. (Blue Nile also provides apprasils for the diamond jewelry it sells to you, even if it is under a carat in weight. This was very handy when we added both rings to our home owners insurance policy.)

My ring arrived and I absolutely love it! It looked even nicer in person than I could have imagined. My center stone was just under a carat in total weight. The pear-cut makes it actually look much larger than it is. The side stones really compliment it, too! (Note: while pictures of pear shaped gemstones are always shown pointing downward, I prefer to wear my engagement ring with the point facing away from my body, so, outward not inward.)

When we'd ordered my engagement ring, we'd ordered a simple platinum wedding band to accompany it. It was beautiful, too. The wedding band went off to the safe deposit box for safe keeping while we continued with our wedding plans and details.

As we got closer to our wedding date, Eddie pulled our purchased and paid for wedding bands out of the safe deposit box. I remember, I saw the boxes on our dresser that afternoon, and almost opened it up to see the band again and try it on for fun. However, for whatever reason, I didn't.

On the day of our wedding, in the afternoon at the "official" ceremony as we liked to call it, I was completely shocked and happily surprised when Eddie slipped a different wedding band on my finger. It was the diamond wedding band that complimented my engagement ring and that I had secretly wished we had purchased, instead!  He told me after our ceremony, that he knew how much I loved "the sparkles" and that he thought it was only right that I have the band that matched, instead. He added that the woman at Blue Nile customer service was most helpful in getting the ring swapped out for him, prior to him taking it to the safe deposit box.

I'm so glad I didn't open the box that day because it was another wonderful surprise and special moment that I will always treasure. And still to this day, I really, really, really LOVE my wedding set. It is well-made, sparkles like you wouldn't believe, and I still get compliments on the style from strangers. We also love that we didn't break the bank for it like we would have if we'd paid full-retail, and then, that we were fortunate to have it paid for when we bought it.

I also love that if I just want to wear my wedding band without the engagement ring (which doesn't happen very often, actually) I still have something that sparkles on my ring finger!