#681: balloon.

the bridemaids took balloons down the aisle for this pretty wedding.


photo by michele waite via 100 layer cake.

brillz.

#680: the paper crafties.

i love crafting.

but i'm not the type who can REALLY craft. i mean. i love the people who can REALLY craft. like, the serious crafters out there who can REALLY create REALLY amazing stuff.

but i'm not one of those.

i'm more of a... wannabe crafter. you know. the kind of crafter that gets an a for effort.

that kind of thing.

but i guess i didn't care. because we still ended up with sort of a paper craft extravaganza...thing.

our card box and our programs:


uh huh. that's right. paper baggies for the pompoms:


our centerpieces:


part of our placecard table:


here are our placecards, appropriately blurrily photographed by a friend:

(remember way back when when they were just frosh? sigh.)

most of them ended up finding cozy homes as such (photographed by a friend):


the paper experience worked for us because...well, i love paper. and i love to craft. craft-extraordinaire-WANNABE i may be, but those jitters came second to just doing something i really enjoyed doing...so that the end result would be a personal, connected, and meaningful one.

which it was.

and that's the a's and z's of it, yo. simple, huh.

all photos by max wanger unless i said it wasn't.

#679: a framer.

the latest. by max.

#678: all of it.

photo by steep street via once wed.

the hair. the green. the glasses.

yes.

#677: not for me.

but maybe for you?


$348.75 stella mccartney (o.g. $1,395) via the outnet.

#676: the flowers. and kismet.

we used real flowers for only a few things: my bouquet, the bms' bouquets, 3 orchid bouts for our moms and my grandmother, and two flower bundles to present to the parents.

total cost: $50.

so very nice.

my plan all along had been to stop by the whole foods behind my house the night before the wedding and just buy the flowers they had available there.

but a couple of weeks before the wedding, i found out that the flower mart was literally two blocks from where i worked. i always knew it was close, but having never been, i had no idea it was THAT close. so i walked myself over during lunch one day to check it out and promptly scrapped the whole foods idea. it'd be so silly to go retail when the wholesale route was staring at me in the face.

the day before the wedding, the hubs and i went to the mart to select and purchase our wedding flowers. and we had 1.5 hours to do it.

i didn't have any colors in mind or the names of the types of flowers i wanted to use for our bouquets. and no pictures of inspiration with me. instead, i was hoping really really hard to be inspired by whatever was there that day. (flexibility is cool like that.)

we weren't walking around for more than a few minutes when i came to a place that had an assortment of peonies. light pink peonies, bright pink peonies, and lavender-pink peonies. they were all blooming differently and i thought they were amazing looking. so i began to look through the bunches to pick the best ones. of course.

when all of a sudden, the owner was like "hey!"

turns out, the shop owner was my dad's friend. someone i hadn't seen in over ten years. i was like WHAT?! and he wouldn't take more than $50 from us for the 10 bunches or so that we bought. and then he threw in 3 orchid bouts for the moms and grandma for free. i was like WHAT?! but there was no saying no. and so we graciously said thank you and left the flower mart feeling uberly lucky and happy.

sometimes, when it's meant to be, it's just meant to be i guess.



the bouquets look pretty homemade, huh. my bms and i wrapped them up the night before the wedding with flower tape and some ribbon i had laying around at home. i will never know how florists make the bottom of bouquets so perfectly round and lavishly thick. mine was far from round. and way far from thick.



see what i mean? the bottom was all jaggedy and triangular.

but i don't know. i still loved the way our bouquets looked. the light pink color matched my bms' dresses quite well (my sister, the MOH, in the jeweled green/blue above. one of my bridesmaids in coral below.) and, well, i wore white, so anything would've worked. but the slightly darker lavender pink color was nice.




oh, and then here's one of the two bundles i made with the bright pink peonies for our parents. wrapped with a cut up ralph's paper shopping bag.



all pinks. all peonies. all DIY.

who knew.

all photos by max wanger. some given an extra crop by me.

#675: my hair. and the piece.

i never had a hair trial and so i never knew what my hair was actually going to look like on the day of our wedding. it's probably because i knew i was going to be doing my own hair and makeup and could never be bothered to do a hair trial...for myself. dunno why. maybe, something to do with like laziness or something?

sans a hair trial, i carried a color copy of my inspiration to the bathroom on the morning of and...just wung it.

first, i blow-dried my hair and set in the same curlers i've been using since 10th grade.

then, while the curlers were doing their thing, i did my own makeup. complete with lovely fake eyelashes. they were looooooooooooooong and lovely and made me feel a little crazy and slightly glamorous.

and THEN, when the curlers cooled, i took 'em out and threw a million bobby pins at my sister who then pinned and pinned. whilst she pinned, i stared. at the gigantic fake eyelashes that were glued yay close to my eyes.

and then we all had a joyous hairspraying party to ensure my hairs wouldn't become loose.

and of course. the headpiece. well, you all know the story behind that.

i don't have any professional pictures of myself getting ready but here are some pics of the result. none from the front -- because i'm shy.

there's really no lesson here. just pretty pictures. but if anything, i hope this inspires those of you who are getting your hair and makeup done only because you think you HAVE to as opposed to NEEDING to. to give it a second thought.

for me, DIY was 110% the right decision.






all photos by max wanger.

#674: our cake topper.

we didn't really have a cake topper. in fact, we didn't really have a cake. remember?

anyways, i thought that was that. done and done. but then something happened.

a couple of weeks before the wedding, we received one of our most favoritist wedding gifts, from a dear dear dear (three times, dear!) friend of mine who lives in ireland. she couldn't make it to our wedding and instead sent over something that squeezed the juice from my eyeballs.

i knew there had to be a place for it somewhere in our wedding. and it took me all of 2 seconds to figure it out.

on the day of, i had one of my bridesmaids put my friend's gift next to our cake. as a kind of cake topper. but the kind of cake topper that didn't go on top of the cake.

like this.


photo of our cake and 'cake topper' by max wanger.

p.s. it's wanger. not wagner. just sayin.

p.p.s. our venue ended up providing the cake table, a cake knife, a cake server, and cake stand...with no instruction from me. cool, huh.

#673: bits and pieces.

it's been almost five months and the nitty gritty details are starting to escape me. oops. i should have written down all of my feelings, reviews, and other stuffs as soon as it was over...or even a month after it all happened...but. i'm not that diligent. and it got busy.

but it's all good. because our photog caught all the details that needed to be captured.

plus, you know, i will forever remember what i need to remember.


us. by max.

so i've been thinking about how to go about recapping. and i've decided i'm just going to wing it.

peace.

p.s. totally don't fit into my wedding dress anymore. nope.

#672: well hello.

guess who got wedding pictures today.

guess who's going to be doing recaps and fulfill other bloggerish obligations.

guess who has almost forgotten how to write html codes.


photo of us...by the ridiculously talented max wanger.