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.

Wedding Night

Since this was our mini-wedding, we had a mini-moon. We spent our wedding night at The Georgian Hotel in Santa Monica. It's an awesome 1930's art deco lovely right on Ocean Blvd. After our post wedding nap, we walked around the promenade and found some dinner, but we ended up choosing not the right place and as we weren't floored by it's awesomeness no need to mention it. But then we walked to whole foods to get some bubbly and some berries (we had leftover cake in the room). We got back to our room to find the bed turned down, chocolates on the nightstand and ice in the bucket. Perfect!

In the morning we went for a run on the beach, along the waterline. It was gorgeous! After that we met up with some family for breakfast at swingers. Yum.

Menswear

We took advantage of the Men's Wearhouse sale and got all the guys outfitted.

Mr. Moonbeam's suit had gone on sale since he first tried it on, which was awesome. He also picked up a shirt with french cuffs so that he can incorporate his grandfather's cufflinks and we got him a solid colored ltie. He's so excited to have a subtle pinstripe, flat front pants and a slim modern fit. I'm excited that the gray has a bit of a warm undertone to match all of our fall colors. And his light gray will stand out against his groomsmen. They'll be outfitted in this charcoal gray number that was part of the buy 1 get 1 free deal. And since there were 5 groomsmen and you had to buy an even number of suits, Mr. Moonbeam got an extra (black pinstripe). Now I've just got to find some suitable shirts and ties for the groomsmen to pick up and discuss the shoes. Brown or burgundy, we'll see.

Married (legally)

We had our civil ceremony mini-wedding this past Saturday and it was quite enjoyable. We were at Point Dume in Malibu, this past weekend had some huge waves and it was a bit overcast. Fog doesn't look as good in pictures, but it would have been sweltering in the sun.

Then we headed to Duke's Malibu for some yummy lunch followed by some fantastic bundt cakes made by my Uncle Jim. Chocolate and lemon poppy seed.

It was just the casual, low-key day that we wanted. We get the professional pictures in about 2 weeks, yeah!

Now for the BIG day in November. The guest list will be approximately 10 times the size of Saturday's. Oh boy!

Getting Close

Oh man! The family was in town the week before my July wedding and we did some sightseeing along with some wedding stuff. We scoped out fabric stores for wedding dress and flower girl fabrics and played around with flower making techniques.

These are organza with singed edges via this tutorial. I don't know if I had the wrong fabric content or just did it wrong, but they just burned at the edges, didn't curl up and left a bit of ash. So, I washed the ash off and dried them inside of small egg cups to shape them and that ended up working out.

On the tourist side of things, we did the San Diego Zoo yesterday, very cool place and they seem to have a private party area, if you're really into animals . We also did the beach and I've been showing the fam some of our favorite restaurants. Burgers at The Counter, hot dogs at Pink's, tacos at El Cholo. Oh, and a nice homecooked meal from my Uncle Jim. Homemade lasagna finished off by lemon cupcakes.

I called up Duke's just to check on my reservation and asked about their cake-cutting fee. They don't have one, so I can just bring in a cake and add a little something nice to the wedding, for very little $$$. Another thing I've looked into is a beach wheelchair for the grandparents. It's hard to walk on the sand and if I can make it so they don't have to, even better. You get them from the lifeguard stands at the major beaches, their first-come first-serve and you just leave a credit card for them to hold onto.

The Church

I'm getting married at Our Lady of Grace Catholic Church in LaCoste, Texas. My pictures don't do it justice. It's got some great gold accents on the walls of the apse. The pews are a pretty dark wood and there's some tiffany blue accents around the church, along with some nice stained glass. And a wedding can do a pretty good job filling it, I've never liked the big empty churches at weddings.

My Wedding Dress Lace

This is the lace my Mom will be using to make my wedding dress. It's the lace from my Grandmother's wedding dress.

And, oh yeah, my Mom wore it too.

It might be my favorite part of the wedding. Maybe I can talk Mr. Moonbeam into recreating my Dad's tux look too! Gotta love brown velvet detailing.