I'm Miss Moonbeam

Hello all, I’m so excited to be a new blogger here on the bee. After gathering so much inspiration and advice from the hive, I’m just hoping that someone enjoys my two cents. I’ve chosen the Moonbeam moniker as a nod to my nightowl tendencies that will surely be handy in the near future.

I met Mr. Moonbeam 5 years ago in front of a castle in Tuscany at the beginning of our study abroad trip. I offered him grapes and he tried to play coy for a few weeks, but it clearly didn’t last that long. When we got back home it was me to Austin and he to College Station, so we kept the relationship going with many phone conversations and weekends filled with long drives. After college, I went off to Seattle to start my career in architecture and he stayed in Houston figuring out what to do with an English degree. I was in Seattle for a year before he moved out to be with me. We were in Seattle for 9 months together before he finally decided to go for his dream in LA. He moved out here and I followed about 8 months later. So here we are, getting settled in LA and planning a wedding back home in Texas. I’m very excited to be marrying a patient, kind and caring man with a great sense of humor and a love of tall girls.

At the end of our semester abroad

We’ll be getting married in a small town outside of my hometown (San Antonio). This particular small town is home to the parish of the priest who married my parents and baptized me. He also married and baptized many others in my family so we knew where to turn when we decided to get married. We are then going over to a neighboring town for the reception, which will be a BBQ filled banquet complete with homemade desserts and lots of dancing.

I’m really excited to pull off my biggest party to date. I just want everyone to enjoy themselves, feel welcome and know that they were important to us on our big day.

Here we are in more recent times at Malibu Canyon.

I'm a short hair bride

My neighbor cut my hair in exchange for some red velvet cupcakes and brownies. I'm a pretty decent baker and she's a beauty maven. Fair trade, right? So to jazz up my head at the wedding I'm looking into birdcage veils.

These first two are from etsy seller brendasbridalveils.

And this last one is a DIY bride who posted a tutorial on OnceWed.

I really want to make my own, but if I run out of time, it's good to know there are options at the ever-awesome etsy.

Another Centerpiece Idea

Here's a little collage I made in Photoshop to get an idea of what my centerpieces will be like. The weathered wood and teapot were just some images I found on the internet. The flowers and candle were pictures taken by me. And the doily image is from Martha.

I know my Grandma has a couple of silver tea sets, so I can get a good number of silver pieces from that, weathered wood isn't too hard to come by and I'll just find some doilies, get some candles, flowers and ribbons, add placecards and table numbers and I'm all set.

My First Try at a Bouquet.

I loosely followed instructions from The Knot. I used a $5 bouquet of mums from Trader Joe's, I really wish we had those in Texas. Mums have a lot of leaves and small flowers down at the bottom, so you've got to start by stripping all of that away, but keep the little flowers handy.

All stripped, arranged and bound with a hairband and then covered in floral tape.

See, those extra little flowers make a cute rustic arrangement. Just snip them to size and loosely arrange. I used a ceramic measuring cup for the larger arrangement to keep it nice and casual. Keep the stems long until you can see what the perfect height will be in your container.

That same arrangement can be turned into a bouquet, though I would have left the stems longer if I was going to actually need a bouquet anytime soon.

It went kind of nicely with my nightgown. So, I don't know yet, I'm still loving paper and fabric flowers, but man these sure were easy, and at $5/centerpiece or bouquet how can you go wrong. Oh, decisions.

Getting in Shape

Since everyone wants to look great on their wedding day and LA is a really expensive place to live, I've been looking for a solution. I'm normally a runner, but I wanted to start getting my arms in shape, so I found free yoga. It's at runyon canyon, multiple times a day and it's free! I've gone to a couple of classes and those downward dogs are starting to wear out my shoulders, but 'no pain, no gain'.

source

Paper Dot Garland

I've seen this on some blogs somewhere, can't remember where, but I loved the simplicity of this idea. So... clearly I go to paper source too often. But those bags are certainly pretty enough to reuse.

I know everyone's got great little paper punches, but all I had was an x-acto. I cut out a bunch of different sized circles.

I sewed them together using a zig-zag stitch, pulling some thread between each one to make a longer garland. Paper ruins your needles, so keep paper needles and fabric needles separate.

String them up for a little festive addition to your decor. I think I'll hang them around the favor table or something at my wedding.

Paper Flowers Details

Back in my post a little while back about paper flower walls I mentioned that I had adapted a tutorial to larger size for my purposes. Here are my tips on the subject.
Take a letter sized sheet of cardstock and slice off one end. Use an x-acto to fringe the ends of the smaller sheet of paper and then roll it up and tape it to form the flower center. For the petals fold the larger sheet of paper in half, turn a quarter turn, fold in half again. It will be 4 layers. Cut the loose ends off in the shape of a semi-circle. Fold in half again to make a wedge of 8 layers, cut out a bit of the center and cut the petals into desired shape. Open it up and cut out 1/8th of the circle, leaving a flap to attach to the other petals in a cone shape.

Do a lot of taping at the back to put the center into the cone of petals. Wrap some wire around the center and curl the petals into a pleasing shape. Cut out and fold some leaves to add some texture to the wall.

In the future, I'll probably get some white tape for the back, though it doesn't really matter since the back of these won't be on display.

All Done!

The July Wedding Professional Pics

All photos taken by my fabulous photographer Leasa Eisele. My sister and I both got our dresses from Anthropologie, of course. I made my own little hair flower out of some fabric and lace I had lying around. I made my bouquet out of homemade crepe paper carnations and my Mom finished it off with some ribbon. I got the beach mats and parasols down in L.A.'s Chinatown. I painted some little flourishes on the parasols using acrylic paint so that they would tie into my invites. The officiant was chosen for his ability to grant us a marriage license without having to go the LA county clerk's office and wait in line. He turned out to be great and very easy to work with. He's got ceremonies you can choose from on his site after you've booked him. We chose his 'modern companion' ceremony because it was more about mutual love and respect for each other as individuals who want to be with each other. We then went to Duke's Malibu for lunch because they would host up to 25 people without the cost of a private room or 'event menu'.

Cost Breakdown (rough estimates):

Officiant: $550 (remember no LA county clerk's line)
Photographer: $100 (she's just starting out and she's so nice and easy to work with)
Decorations: $125 (beach mats and parasols in Chinatown, sand buckets to hold cold water from Target, shepherd's hooks from Home Depot, made poms out of trace paper)
Lunch: 20 people for $400 (Duke's doesn't charge a cake cutting fee, so my Uncle made some bundt cakes for dessert, no charge)
Dress: $100 (Anthropologie)
Groom's outfit: $40 (new shirt from Gap, old pants from some discount designer store, my hat from a vintage shop in Italy)
Invitation: $25 (paper and envelopes from Paper Source and I used those cute new love stamps)

Total:$1340

Centerpieces Test 1

Here's a go at the centerpieces, I played around with folding trace paper to wrap on the votives and I made some table numbers out of one of the images I just got from the photographer of my small July wedding. Her name is Leasa Eisele, you can find her here.

The table number process involved taking a great beach photo and grunging it up a bit. I used this process to start, added this texture (last one shown) and used this font.

I love BittBox

They have free vector drawings, textures, brushes and even a few fonts. They're going to be really helpful in my invite and favor designs. Just scroll through their freebies, there are a lot but it's worth it to check out all they've got. I used these ornaments and this font to create some labels for my favors (recipe card boxes). There are all different kinds of styles including very spare looking leaf silhouettes and some great modern florals along with some of the older looking things. Most of these are .eps, .svg (whatever those are) and illustrator or photoshop files. So if you don't have some Adobe going on, I wouldn't know how else to use them, but if you or a friend have the skills these can really help you out.

Couples Retreat

When you're getting married in the Catholic church there are often some sort of classes your priest will want you to take. They stress the importance of marriage as a sacrament, being loving to each other and being open to having children. So, we went the 'get it done' route and did the weekend retreat through the Catholic Engaged Encounter of Los Angeles. It is open to non-Catholic couples as well and there are a lot of things taught that apply to any couples. It's a really couple-centered weekend, there aren't any of those group ice-breakers, you're just supposed to spend time with each other and begin or continue discussions on major things in a marriage. We're not terribly religious and probably could have done without some of the 'God is the other partner in your marriage' stuff, but we did get to spend an entire weekend talking to each other about our love and our goals for the future. I'd recommend it, if only to serve as a great reminder about the importance of the actual marriage in all of this frenzy over the wedding.

Invitation Inspiration

This one from Weddingbee's Ms. Apple Cider is a fantastic suite, but my major takeaway is this wood-embossed paper. I'm thinking I'll purchase it from here.

This is another do-it-yourselfer featured on Style Me Pretty. Also a gorgeous suite, but my fave is the kraft paper cd-cases, which you can purchase from stumptown printers.

I'm thinking a trace paper belly band or interior envelope of some sort. Image credit.

And since I'll be married in a picturesque little church, I'd like to create a line-drawing similar to this one out of the photos I have of the church and other 'place' details. Like the stencilling and stained glass inside the church.

And for addressing the envelopes, I'm loving those wrap labels everyone is doing these days, it really elevates the label, but it's still totally user friendly. Here are some nice ones via Idiy.

Paper Flowers

Clearly, this is inspiring. Chanel's spring 2009 show was a crazy explosion of paper flowers, and I must try to have a piece of this at my wedding. So here are some shots of my small test run 15"x20" flower wall. It took me a good bit of Saturday to get this going, but now I'm getting the hang of it and the flowers are flat until taped and assembled, which is good if your wedding is in a different state. It uses this basic technique, but blown up to 8" circles, and shaped a bit more.