Favor Ideas

I've never been a huge fan of the wedding favor.  For a wedding guest, most favors are just crap.  Who needs an engraved champagne flute? 

Besides the fact that favors can get expensive, most of the time they aren't very practical.  Edibles are OK, I guess, and something totally wacky gets points for creativity, such as these home made crayons.  And it seems to me, from watching shows like Bridezilla, that favors can be one of those stress-points for brides.  If you're DIYing, you've got 150 ribbons to tie onto 150 boxes that you had to fold yourself.  Ulg. 

But, in the interest of exploring my options, I did some searches for 'green' wedding favors.  And I found some ideas that I actually like.  Not only because of the color green, which is a front-runner in the wedding color contest, but because if I do have wedding favors, I want them to be useful to the recipient and/or good for the environment.  So, a list of ideas for my wedding favors:

Seed Paper: Print programs or menus on it.  Guests take it home and plant the whole thing, which is embedded with flower seeds. 

Herb Pots: If green is going to be a wedding color, these could double as centerpieces.  Paint the pot in the other color themes, and people get to take home fresh herbs.  Plus, two wedding expenses and projects have become one, and I don't have to worry about what to do with the centerpieces when the wedding is over.

Baby Trees: Again, a centerpiece/favor duo.  Planting trees is good for the environment. The only disadvantage I've found is that all the seedlings are usually conifers (read, pine trees), which I'm less visually attracted to. 

And hey, look!  I can even give you guys some engraved champagne flutes too!

Wedding Party

To me, one of the most important decisions in planning a wedding is who you ask to stand up with you.  You want people who support you as a couple.  I want people who are happy to celebrate with us, and who can be bribed with wine (or, in certain cases, whiskey) to help me put together favors and or address invitations.  I'm also conscious of conventions, in that I'm probably not going to follow them.  Our wedding party is only partially complete, and some of the decisions we have to make are influenced by questions such as "How many people do we want, total?"  "Do we have to have an even number of chicks and dudes?"  "Can the sexes be intermingled, or do we have to keep a boys' side and girls' side?"  While I'm not into doing anything just because you're supposed to, it does pose some interesting conundrums.  Is my best guy friend (who also happens to be 6' 4") going to feel awkward standing amidst a group of girls?  How will that look in pictures? 

So this is what we've got so far:
Officient: Gwen Sefrhans - A mutual friend of ours from college who also happens to be an ordained Lutheran minister.
Maid of Honor: Emily Heck - mutual friend from college.
Bridesmaid: Lindsay Renner - my best friend from work. 
Best Man: Dan Gallagher - Paul's brother. 

Everything else is still in decision mode.  It's also hard to ask people to be in a wedding that does not yet have a date.  We have a time-frame, but it's based on the availability of our venue.  So many decisions depend on first making other decisions. 

But no matter who ends up being in the final wedding party, I promise copious amounts of wine or whiskey to get us all through it!

Pinterest

I'm in the phase of wedding planning where I get to surf wedding sites, blogs, and Google image searches and just collect ideas.  Nothing is solidified except the groom.  It's kind of intimidating to decide what kind of people we are, and how much our wedding has to reflect our personality as a couple.  Are we people who's bridesmaid's dresses don't match?  Pop-tunes-played-on-the-cello-for-processional-march people?  Should we have sushi for dinner?  The options are really overwhelming.  Some things that we wanted have already been crossed off the list due to budget constraints, such as having our reception at the Milwaukee Public Museum ($40 a plate appetizers, without the bar?  Yeah, right.)  But as far as colors, music, food, favors...we've got options.   I've been spending a lot of time on OffbeatBride.com, and these ladies have some really crazy/awesome ideas, which only adds to the gigantic pile of thoughts filed under "wedding things".  I needed some way to wrestle all this stuff into a workable idea-box. 

Enter Pinterest.

Pinterest is a website in which you can take ideas from the interwebs and "pin" them onto different "boards", sort of an online cork board.  You add a button to your browser toolbar, and surf away.  Find an image, a poem or other awesomeness and simply "pin it".  The nice part is that it always links back to the original site, so in six months I decide, yes, THOSE are the shoes I want, I don't have to search for that website I found them on in the first place.  This is so much cooler than the file folder I had started on my desktop. 

Here's the link to my Pinterest account.  http://pinterest.com/evee/

The thing I also love about this is that, unlike this blog, my Pinterest account will probably have a life after the wedding. You could use it for house remodeling, fashion, work stuff...anything for which you need a place to collect your brainstorm ideas and organize them into something you can work with.

So, if anyone has some stellar ideas for wedding stuff, email me and I'll pin it!

So This Is A Wedding Blog

We're planning a wedding. 

HOLY SHIT WE'RE GETTING MARRIED! 

This is a blog about planning the wedding.  We will have a regular wedding website for information.  But this is where I go "Hey, look at this cool thing I found!" or "If I have to fold another wedding program I'm going to origami it into a shiv and stab your eye out."  It's a place for me to talk about this wedding without driving those who couldn't give a shit absolutely crazy, and keeping those who are really, really excited about it in the loop. 

There will be swearing.  There will be honesty.  I'm going to try as hard as I can to be fair, sane, and cheerful.  But I have a feeling that it won't all be sunshine and unicorn farts.  I'm hoping I won't turn into a bridezilla.

Cheers!