Hotels

Finding a hotel to block some rooms in for our wedding was so, so much harder than I thought it would be, but there's a happy ending to this saga!

Our reception hall is in downtown St. Louis, making hotels expensive. Even a room at the Drury Inn was $160, and we wanted to keep the price under $120 and hopefully find another option under $100. I called about 12 different hotels, which took forever, because with most of them they transfer you to their national sales people, and you have to yell into the phone which city you're getting married in and blah blah blah...way more time consuming than I thought it would be. I also scratched any hotel off the list that required us to take on any financial responsibility for the unbooked rooms, which was only 1 or 2 anyway.

So get this....Ryan and I almost got in a tiff over 2 different Holiday Inns....there were 2, one right on the highway and very conveniently located, and one that wasn't so conveniently located. The one right off the highway would not answer their phone, and when they did they were always really confused and not helpful at all. Their manager never returned my phone calls and I could never even get a group rate from these people, so I was sick of dealing with them. The not-so-conveniently located Holiday Inn had the nicest people ever on staff, the rate was decent and they were great to work with. I wanted to book with them because I was beyond frustrated with the other Holiday Inn and Ryan wanted to book with the other one because of their location. Grrrr. I finally told him to figure out what other hotels to look into because I could not deal with those people anymore.

Which lead to the discovery of the Courtyard St. Louis Downtown by Marriott. Cue heavenly light and angelic singing. The location was perfect, the parking was free, the people were wonderful and helpful and the rate....oh the rate. $79 for a room with a king bed and a sleeper sofa, $95 for a room with 2 queen beds. Way better than we were expecting! They're holding 15 rooms for us Friday night and 15 rooms for us the day of the wedding. If we don't fill up those rooms by June 25th, then they are no longer reserved, and if we do fill those up, we can start another block (depending on availability of course). So a happy ending! I'll be staying here with my family Friday night and then I think Ryan and I might stay at the Renaissance by Marriott a couple blocks away Saturday night. I wanted to book a block with them, but the location wasn't ideal and parking was $14/day.

Anyway, the Courtyard's lobby was recently redone and the entire hotel is lovely.



The rooms are simple but comfortable. We stayed in a Fairfield by Marriott in Boston last spring and the rooms looked a lot like this.


I am so, so glad to have this crossed off our list, and at such a great rate and in such a nice hotel.

What did you do for hotels for your wedding?

Addressing the envelopes

So Ryan and I have been discussing envelopes lately. Exciting, no? We found some aqua ones we dig that I need to order, and I mentioned that there were some cute red oval printable labels on Paper Source that we could use. Following is the approximate conversation that ensued:

Me: So Paper Source has these red oval printable labels we could use for the envelopes, they'd be like $20. They have cuter ones but they are stupid expensive.

Ryan: Do we really need labels? You could spend that $20 shopping on our honeymoon (OK I totally added that sentence). I mean, why don't we just hand write the addresses on there?

Me: Long Pause. We can't afford calligraphy, that's like $2 an envelope.

Ryan: No, I'm saying we can write the addresses on there.

This is when I noticed a huge problem. Having been immersed in blogland since day 1 of wedding planning, it had never occurred to me until that exact moment that you could actually hand write addresses on to envelopes yourself without teaching yourself calligraphy.

I know. Ridiculous. I was too embarrassed to say that to Ryan, because really....that had never occurred to me. That's embarrassing.

So, I'm going to sweet talk my sister/maid of honor Alli into handwriting some addresses for me, because her handwriting is lovely, and I'm going to do my best to write addresses as neatly as possible. My handwriting is passable if I slow it down.

There's our game plan...handwriting. And it'll be just fine....and free.

How are you addressing your envelopes? Have you had any crazy moments like I did?

Toss

My sister and maid of honor Alli was nice enough to put together a toss bouquet for me last weekend, since there is no way in hell I am tossing the satin flower bouquet I have slaved (I mean labored over with love) (they're almost done by the way, I'm just waiting for some feathers I ordered off Etsy to arrive!). I had a bunch of flowers laying around from before I really figured out exactly what I wanted for my bouquets, and I figured these would make a nice toss bouquet. (Want to make these super easy organza flowers for yourself? Here's a tutorial!)

The flowers were conveniently already sewn onto stems, so Alli just arranged them into a bouquet-ish shape, wrapped the stems in floral tape, and then did a ribbon wrap with some Martha Stewart ribbon we got at Big Lots for $1. Alli is a perfectionist and she is bothered that so much of the stem is showing...but I think it looks fab.


My room is such a mess, I'm sorry you have to look at it....and I've set up a sewing area on my desk, and when you sew you have to press things all the time, so I drug the ironing board and iron up from the basement and I just keep it in my room now. Classy. Also I've been in St. Louis for the past 3 weekends and cleaning is high on my priority list for the weekend.




Simple, easy, pretty, and thanks to Alli, DONE. These organza flowers took so little time and they were just sitting around going to waster, so I'm glad we could use them.

I have more organza flowers that are not sewn on to stems and I'm going to use them for pins/corsages for the moms and grandma. I'm going to glue a pin onto the back and sew ribbons onto the back, so the ladies can wear them as a pin or as a corsage...and if they pick the pin option then they can just cut the ribbons off. I do want to put pearls in the middle of the ones the moms/grandma will be wearing instead of the aqua or red beads, I think there's a higher chance of it matching better.

Can you bear to toss your bouquet or are you doing a separate toss bouquet? What are you doing corsage-wise for the women in your life?

Dads and Grandpa

My dad has carried a handkerchief as long as I can remember. If we skinned our knees or had a runny nose when we were little, the handkerchief was there. When I got a little older I'd embroider dad a set for Christmas or his birthday, so I knew I wanted to do something special for the wedding. Ryan's dad occasionally carries a handkerchief and Ryan mentioned that his grandpa would like one as well.

I bought a set of 3 Charter Club handkerchiefs at Macy's for $10, and I bought red and aqua embroidery thread at Hobby Lobby for $2. I could've gotten away with way less thread, too, since embroidery thread has 6 strands in it and I separated it to use 2. So one piece of thread could go 3 times as long (the stitches were thick and sloppy looking with all 6 strands, 2 definitely looked the best).

I typed up the words I wanted in the font we used for our invites. It's called Tagettes and I downloaded it for free from DaFont.com. After washing, drying and ironing the handkerchiefs, I traced over the typed up words in with a pencil so I'd have something to go from.

After that I just used a simple outline stitch, and that was it, really. I got all 3 done in 3 days, it took about 1-1.5 per handkerchief. (Here's a good tutorial on stitches, the one I used for these was an outline stitch).

Anyway, here's the one I made for Ryan's grandpa:


And I made 2 of this one, one for Ryan's dad and one for my dad.



I am thrilled with how they turned out. They are not perfect, but I love that they don't look machine stitched, they look handmaid. I hope the dads and grandpa like them as much as I do!

Also I really miss having these to work on already...anyone need any embroidery done? I can really only do the cross stitch and outline stitch!

Does your dad carry a handkerchief?

Oooo la la!

I sewed my garter...months ago and I'm just now getting around to blogging it. Oops!

Future Hubs: Please vacate the premises immediately.





















So Ryan and a bunch of his runner friends are on this running team they call "Omega Falcon" and their colors are royal blue and orange. Since almost all of the Omega Falcon runners will be in attendance at the wedding, I had to the garter in those colors, right? Right. But I have love in my heart for dotted swiss, and the challenge was to mix that girly fabric with the sporty colors. I found some dotted swiss tulle at Hobby Lobby for the low low price of $4 a yard and picked up 1/4 of a yard for almost nothing. The ribbon I also got at Hob Lob when it was half off for like $1.

Ta da! Please ignore how pasty my legs are.


Making this was super unscientific and very much a trial-and-error process. I basically cut material in rectangles and sewed it to a piece of elastic until I got what I wanted. The piece of tulle is much longer that the elastic, and when I sewed the 2 pieces together I stretched the elastic out with 1 hand while sewing, so when I was done sewing the elastic contracted and gave the tulle that nice gather.

It's nothing fancy by any means, but it'll do. I keep seeing other garters on the blogosphere that I want to attempt (like this one), but I think I just need to let this project be. My friend Melissa did mention that she might have me sew her garter, which opens that realm of exploration back up!

Did you ever finish a project and were then tempted to do it all over thanks to too-much-inspiration?

Cold Feet?

As the wedding gets closer and closer (shout out to Bowie Bride, she's a week after me!), more people are asking me if I'm getting nervous.

I'm not nervous though, not a bit. If we run out of beer (God forbid) there's a discount liquor store down the street. If someone doesn't like something....too bad. If people get lost with the aid of the directions and map that we're providing, not my problem. If there aren't enough seats in the church, the pastor can add chairs in the vestibule. I'm just not nervous about this stuff, I'm not under the impression in any way that it's going to be a "perfect" day. I'm sure we'll think it's perfect no matter what happens.

Because we're getting married. This has been quite the revelation lately! We're getting married and I am not in the least bit nervous about it. The vows and the commitment part, what Ryan and I will be promising each other....no nerves there.

Have you gotten this question yet, and if so, what do you say? Are you nervous?

Ryan hates it when I brag on him, so I really try not to do it often.

But I can't help it.

I called the restaurant that we were hoping to have our rehearsal dinner at yesterday. Every time I called, I kept getting a busy tone. I was browsing the internet to see if there was another number when I found out that the restaurant had closed, putting us back to square one with the rehearsal dinner.

I told Ryan and he said "I am going to find us a place so you don't have to worry about it, you have enough to do."

Love my involved groom.