new blog!

Like I mentioned in the last post, I've been toying with the idea of starting a new blog since this one was so much fun. Well, earlier this week, I jumped right in and formed Mischief and Madness. It's my outlet for displaying all sorts of pretty things that inspire me: art, design, fashion, film, and, of course any new DIY projects I'm working on. And get this - my new blog will be updated daily. No more of this posting once in a blue moon for me. So, if you're at all curious, or just need to look at something pretty during the day, feel free to check it out. Maybe I can even convince Jesse to guest post on there every once in a while. Cheers!

Farewell!

This is the final post of our wedding blog. You probably guessed the same since we haven't updated this thing in months. We're loving our first year of marriage and are ready to move beyond our wedding to the rest of our relationship together.

Jesse and I just want to say thank you to everyone who's stopped by to check out our little blog and to those of you who have taken the time to leave us so many nice comments. We have no plans to take this little shindig down, just in case any of our planning experiences can be of use to any future brides or grooms-to-be.

We both really enjoyed our time posting. In fact, I've been turning over the idea of starting a new non-wedding related blog for some time. If that plan ever actually happens, and I have enough design-y, crafty goodness to share, I'll make sure to post a link here.

In the meantime, good luck with your own planning!

Thanks again and much love,
Jesse and Deanna

wedding video

I think I've mentioned this before, but Jesse and I first met years ago at art school. One of our closest friends there (and Jesse's roommate for several years) was a very talented video major named James Favata. James is awesome for many reasons - he once completely painted himself red for a photo project, he used to work at a picture people in the mall and would hang random people's portraits on their college fridge, and he and our friend,Chris, inadvertantly are the reason Jesse and I met one fateful night.

The main reason that James is awesome, though, is because he offered to shoot our wedding video. And he did a seriously great job. If you live in the Washington D.C. - Baltimore - Philadelphia area and are looking for a videographer (wedding or otherwise), check out his website - he's a cool guy.

And now, a little snippet of our wedding day! Watching this the first time brought all of the emotions from that morning right back. The music used throughout the video was taken from either our ceremony or reception playlist. Enjoy!


Jesse and Deanna's Wedding from JPstudios on Vimeo.

Thanks Katherine!

During our super-long engagement, I developed a pretty hardcore wedding blog addiction. I used to check brooklyn bride, style me pretty, a practical wedding, and weddingbee at least every day (and several other bridal blogs more sporadically). My absolute favorite and most inspiring blog, though, was the inspiration-board-a-day extravaganza, snippet & ink.


So, I was incredibly honored when Katherine of Snippet & Ink asked to include our little soiree as one of her "featured weddings". Our post went up over the weekend, and I'm so touched by all of the wonderful comments readers have left. So, thank you so much for the shout-out, Katherine, your site is seriously one of the best out there.

P.S. - Since getting married I've gone cold-turkey on my wedding blog addiction.....almost. And I promise to finish up the last detail post before the next century. Work has been crazy and I'm a pretty terrible blogger.

detail post #5: last minute diy projects

Well, now that we've finally wrapped up our never-ending wedding and honeymoon photo extravaganza, I guess it's time to finish up the detail posts as well. This one chronicles the remaining d.i.y. and design projects we finished right before the wedding - sorry if it's kind of a hodge-podge. After this post, I'll cover our flowers and music and then I think we'll actually be done!

(as always, click each image to enlarge)

Programs

Although The Martha tried to entice me with her ribbon-bound, hand-sewn, double-stuffed booklets of information, by this stage of wedding planning I had finally learned how to "just say no". We kept them simple. So simple that they really don't need any explanation at all. We had white card stock on hand, so that's what we used. We designed them in Photoshop and printed them out with our own ink-jet printer. One particular note of interest, though - it was *Jesse's* idea to use the polka-dot pattern - I've finally won him over to the polka-dotted dark side...mwah ha ha.

Garland of Ancestor Wedding Photos

(the photos from our parents' weddings)

We wanted to do something to honor our parents' and grandparents' weddings and although I loved the images of other weddings with tables filled with framed photos, I'm kind of obsessed with garlands.

To make these, we scanned in each wedding photo (or a photo of each couple from around the time that got married if they didn't have formal wedding photos taken), cropped them, transformed them all into black and white files, and printed them on glossy photo paper. We then designed the frames in Photoshop and added name plates so that all of our guests would know who they were looking at. We printed the frames on cream card stock and cut out ovals with an exacto knife. We folded the frames in half like a top-folding greeting card and taped the photos to the interior with double-sided tape. We made two loops out of thin rectangles of card stock which we glued to the back of each frame and then threaded pink ribbon through. Since we weren't allowed to nail or tape anything to the walls of our reception site, we tied the ribbon ends to two lamps that were jutting out from the wall above our beverage table. See the finished product here.

Paper Circle Garlands

(part of one finished garland laid out on our kitchen floor)

Finally, I was able to unite two of my favorite things - polka-dots and garlands - together at last! We made several long strings of paper circle garlands to hang from both the ceremony gazebo and above the dance floor at our reception site. I got the idea after seeing this website. Colorful garlands always remind me of vintage circus tents and summertime, which is a definite positive in my book, plus they seemed cheap and easy to make.

To make ours, we bought several meters of thick embroidery string and a couple of large sheets of heavy-weight paper in our wedding colors from the local art supply store. Since they didn't sell paper in every color that we wanted, we also painted a couple of sheets of thick bristol paper on both sides with acrylic paint to finish off our color palette. After the painted sheets dried, we attacked each of our papers with a handy 1 3/8" circle punch until we had piles of colored circles covering our living room floor. Then we glued little rectangular tabs in the same color to the top of each circle and folded each tab in regular increments along the embroidery string. We ended up making four really long garlands and sprinkled some of the extra circles without tabs on side tables at the reception. Making the garlands turned out to be a pretty mind-less task that we worked on while watching movies (1 completed garland = about the running length of 1 movie). The supplies for this project probably cost about $8 total - score!

My Head Band

Up until the week before the wedding, I had no idea how to accessorize my hair. I'd practiced several up-dos and had a general idea of how I would wear my hair for the wedding, but it looked a little plain without any adornment at all. I'd tossed around all of these ideas for months, but none of them looked quite like what I had in mind. The veils got nixed because they seemed like they'd make my dress look over-formal and fussy. I tried a couple of fake flowers but they ended up looking like frilly tumors blooming out of the side of my head. Finally, during my last hair practice, I played with wrapping one of my silver beaded necklaces around my hair and everything clicked. It was the exact look I was going for - a simple little bit of extra shine.

My headband was EXTREMELY easy and cheap to make. I bought some small silver beads and a spool of thin silver elastic at the craft supply store and used a spool of really thin copper wire and two tiny silver brackets that I already owned from past necklace experiments ( those can also be bought at any craft store for a couple of dollars). First, I attached a bracket to the copper wire and strung enough beads on until it was just short of encircling my head. I tied off the other end of the wire with the second bracket and looped a short amount of elastic between the two brackets and then attached a piece of a third bracket at the center of the elastic to cover the its tied-off ends. You could use only elastic and beads, but the copper seemed stronger than the elastic, and I couldn't find elastic thin enough to fit through the bead holes. I think this project took me all of 5 minutes to make and about $5 worth of supplies. Finished product here.

Stuffed Birds

This was another project I completed in the last week leading up to the wedding. It was one of those projects on my list that I saved for the very end because it wouldn't make or break the look of the reception if I ran out of time. It would just be a nice extra touch if it did work out. I'd fallen in love with Ann Wood's ubiquitous birds like so many other brides before me (they were even part of the first gigantic inspiration board that I made ages ago), but we had absolutely no wiggle room in our budget by this point. If we had, I would have just bought several of hers and called it a day. Instead I figured I'd experiment and see if I could make my own on the cheap.

As you can see, mine are a lot more sloppy and no where near as cute as their inspiration, but they also didn't break the bank, so I'll call this project a success. I raided the local thrift shop for clothing and pillow cases in fabrics that complemented our wedding scheme because that ended up being much cheaper than yards of new fabric. I stuffed each bird with the insides of an old pillow and used wire and hot glue that Jesse already owned for their legs. It took one evening of experimenting with different patterns and several failed attempts to come up with the body shape that I had in mind. I completed the cutting, sewing, and stuffing of each bird's body while watching a movie or a couple of tv shows and tackled about one each night. I attached all of their beaks (felt, sewed or glued together), sewn eyes, and wire legs during one more evening of movie watching and added accessories (felt hat, mesh veil) to the bride and groom bird over the coarse of one morning. So I guess it took about a week of sporadic work to make all of the ones shown above + one extra legless bird that I tied to our card cage. All of the supplies (cloth, stuffing, felt) cost between $10 - $15 total, so this was a project cheap on money but not on time.

Since Jesse doesn't like the look of things plopped on top of a wedding cake, we decided to arrange the bride and groom birds beside our cake instead and add the other three to our sweet heart table centerpiece. A lot of the kids at our reception seemed enthralled by the birds, so I'll take that as a thumbs up on this project.

Getaway Vehicle

(documenting the first practice ride)

This wasn't a d.i.y. project at all, but I thought it could use a little bit of an explanation (if you haven't already fallen asleep from the rest of my over-exposition). I'd heard stories and seen photos of a tandem bike that Jesse's family owned, but had never actually seen it in person. Apparently they'd stuffed it in their attic a decade ago never to ride it again. I was determined to make it our getaway vehicle, especially since it was a vintage red Schwinn, even though it took many months of convincing to get Jesse on board. You see, he knows my clumsiness first hand. He was sure that this idea would end up a folly of skinned knees, torn clothing, broken bones or worse. But we took it out for a spin around the block with no major mishaps and I bought a short 2nd dress so that we wouldn't have to worry about my long train getting tangled in the spokes. After some cleaning and a replacing of the breaks he was convinced and the bike was ready to go.

Our ride was one of my favorite parts of the day. After all of the craziness (although fantastic craziness) of that morning and afternoon, it felt like a little bubble of peaceful bliss to escape for a few minutes and pedal down the wooded paths of the community center all by ourselves. I'm also happy to report that we didn't fall once! Now I just have to figure out a way to steal it and bring it back to our tiny apartment in Philadelphia.

Up Next: Flowers

detail post #2: the favors

Jesse and I knew from the start that we didn't want to go the tchotchke route with our wedding favors. I wouldn't have much use for a picture frame or mug engraved with another couples' name and wedding date, so why would our guests? We did want our favors to be fun and kinda silly, but also include something edible, because not everyone likes "silly", but who doesn't like free eats?

We fell in love with the carnival grab-bag feel of the favors used at these two weddings, and decided to completely steal their ideas and pass them off as our own.

our inspiration

L: martha stewart's weddings winter 2006 via oh happy day R: knottie academy beldam

(click to enlarge)


our favors

(click to enlarge)

And a breakdown of what's inside and where they came from for anyone else who wants to be "inspired" as well:

1. The zip lock bags were ordered in bulk from lemelange.com.

2. We used a free online generator to make a personalized crossword puzzle and then I redesigned a prettier version using Adobe Illustrator. We printed them out with our trusty ink jet printer on cream card stock with the answers on the back.

3. #2 pencil from staples (for filling out the crossword). Jesse was awesome and sharpened at least 75 pencils beforehand.

4. The Wilbur chocolate factory is right next door to our ceremony site in Lititz, so we had to include a bag of Wilbur buds (like larger versions of Hershey kisses).

5. Two swirly candy sticks in complementary colors bought from the local penny candy store in bulk because they're pretty and not everyone likes chocolate.

6. The boys got fake moustaches* (ordered from www.dealextreme.com) and the girls got see-through paper glasses (ordered from oriental trading). We would have included both in everyone's bag, but we were determined to stick to our favor budget and figured people would trade with their friends if they wanted to.

*A note about the moustaches - their original backing was kind of ugly, so Jesse designed new cards to stick them to - I think he did a super fantastic job. Also, I heard from a few guests that not all of their sticky backs came off. They were really, really cheap, so it was to be expected, but I saw enough guests wearing one to know that most did work.

7. Jesse also designed some cards with different retro cameras on the front and instructions on the back for uploading digital photos to our flickr site. We printed those with a laser printer and included one in each bag.

So, that's it. Jesse designed the tags that we stapled to the tops of the bags. They served double-duty as escort cards as well as favor tags, so that when the guests entered the reception, they could pick up their favors and figure out which table they were assigned to at the same time. I love combining two projects into one.

Jesse picked up so much design slack the last two weeks before the wedding because I got swamped with illustration assignments. I was so happy with everything that he created for this project that I wish I had given him all of the design duties from the get go.

Even if our guests didn't notice his killer design and typography skills, I think some of them still enjoyed the contents.

(various guests' photos - click to enlarge)

next detail post: the table cards

Guest Attire

I can't believe our year-and-a-half-plus engagement is finally six weeks away from it's end! We haven't posted in forever, mainly because we've been busy working on craft projects for the wedding and don't want to spoil them for the guests. So, I thought I'd post about something fun instead - guest attire!

photo from Martha Stewart Weddings Spring 2006, via bklynbride

So far, whenever anyone has asked what the dress code for the wedding will be, I've replied very vaguely "garden party attire" or "summer semi-formal", two expressions that don't help people out very much. So, in an attempt to be more helpful, I've written this post.

According to a recent post on weddingbee.com (one of the numerous wedding blogs I read and will be glad to give up after July 12th), the two more formal terms for what I have in mind are:

Informal - Suits, or dress shirts with or without ties, and slacks for men; short or tea length party dresses for women.

Dressy Casual - Similar to the above, but khakis are also appropriate for men (but not Jeans), and sun dresses and skirts are included for women.

But, seriously, we love all of our guests and if they showed up in Halloween costumes we'd still welcome them with open arms.

I wish I remembered whose blog I stole this from, but I *heart* the kid dressed like the paper bag!

Registry Info

Having our friends and family attend our wedding is gift enough, especially since most are flying in from all over the country - which is already a super luxurious gift to us. But, Jesse and I thought we'd register at one store anyway. So, now there's a new link on the right side of the page with the beginnings of our target registry. There are still a few more things we're going to add to it, but since we're now in *double digits* until the wedding day, we thought we should post it as soon as possible. If we decide to register anywhere else we'll add it to the list, but we probably won't...because we like to keep things simple like that.

Hey, mister postman bring me a dream....

I should give you fair warning.....this is a post about stamps. Yep, stamps. A microscopic detail of wedding invitation planning that really shouldn't warrant a blog post. I certainly have never given them much thought before. I knew from working on my sister's invitations that the USPS makes wedding-themed stamps, so I just automatically thought "good enough - done". Until the devil, Martha Stewart, and her extreme obsessive compulsive disorder sunk her teeth into me.


Exhibit A in my defense: a spread from her Spring 2007 issue showing the "art" of arranging stamps on an invitation envelope. The Martha even suggests buying vintage stamps off of eBay to coordinate with your colors if the current offerings don't match. Thankfully, my perfectionism has never reached those sisyphean limits. As much as I love all things vintage, I wasn't even tempted...well, maybe a little, but not enough to start looking or anything.....

Other brides use services like zazzle.com to custom design their own stamps that are actually certified by the USPS. But, that costs extra money and my cheapskate tendencies override my perfectionist tendencies every time.

A month ago, though, all the stars aligned for me. On an otherwise average day, as Jesse tossed me a stack of letters, my eyes immediately darted to the top right corner of the top envelope. There rested a beautiful 1 inch x 1 inch square of perfection. Drum roll please! I give you the post office's crowning achievement - the "Beautiful Blooms" collection!

Yeah, I know, completely not worth the hype. But, they fit the exact fun, summery mood of our wedding and coordinate perfectly with our colors! Jesse can't understand my enthusiasm for a detail so microscopic. I think it's just that this one tiny detail fell into my lap perfectly without me having to lift a finger, whereas the rest of the wedding planning has been so complicated. So, to the dear USPS, who I usually curse, I now salute you. Next, we just have to design our invitations....

Let me introduce....

......the newest member of our household! We've named him "Someday" for self-explanatory reasons. Jesse bought him from a 25 cent (50 cents thank you very much, she doesn't know how spoiled she is-Jesse) vending machine in our grocery store because he knows how much I want a dog. Yeah, it's not really the same.....but I still like him.


I've decided to keep the plastic egg he came in as his home because it makes him look like a future dog who lives in a space pod. He's joining the other pet Jesse made me:

.....the very cute, but still un-named blue bird.....

and they live on the wall above my desk along with the other inspirational odds and ends. If I take any more of these tiny creatures in, I'll start to have a faux pet menagerie, which is kind of sad and a little creepy. Guess I'll just have to get a real one soon!

p.s. - How come Jesse's not adding any posts? I'm sure he could come up with something slightly more wedding related then my weird fake pets to write about. Hm...me thinks he's left our little blog for his more exciting Turnbull blog. Oh well, as long as I get him for the rest of his life....ha ha ha (evil laugh).

Another wedding for the Turnbulls

Last weekend, Jesse's brother, Dan, married his fiance, Brook, in the backyard of their parents' home. After a whirlwind two weeks of planning, much of the time spent pruning and gilding the backyard, the ceremony went off without a hitch! One caveat of the day was seeing Peter, the pastor who will be officiating our ceremony, perform a really lovely ceremony. So, thanks for the "test drive ", Dan and Brook, now we're even more excited for him to marry us! Here are a two photos from Saturday (click on the images

to enlarge them):

The bride and groom

All of my future in-laws from L to R:
Jesse's Dad, Brook, Will, Dan, Jesse & his super bright tie, and Jesse's Mom

no, we're not in hibernation

Sorry for the long delay in posting. I had some laptop trouble that Jesse fixed at the beginning of the week, plus we've both been busy with work and class planning for the fall semester at MICA.

But, we haven't completely thrown wedding planning to the wind! We've scheduled a menu sampling at our reception site in about three weeks (yum!). During that time, we'll hopefully be able to finalize details at The Barn, which means we'll finally be able to confirm our wedding dates as July 12th. We've also started reviewing our photography choices and possible ceremony musicians, but don't have anything concrete decided yet. I got one BIG planning step out of the way, but it's large enough to merit its own entry, so stay tuned....

New Haircut

As soon as it started to get really hot outside, I knew that it was time for my long hair to go. I had never intended for it to grow as long as it had anyway, but I'm kinda lazy about going to the hairdressers. Plus, it's still a year away from the wedding, so it'll have time to grow if I decide to do something with it that requires it to be longer.

***Yeah, so this post and the next one aren't really wedding related, but since this is the best way for me to send news and show pictures to lots of family and friends at the same time, they're going up. Plus, I can make every detail of my life wedding related these days if I try hard enough.

Birthday Cake!

My Birthday was Saturday and Jesse surprised me by making this awesome cake! Neither of us are huge cake fans, but I think it was more about the making it than the eating it. The bear mold came from his mom, who used to make him all kinds of elaborately shaped cakes when he was little (i've heard about cakes shaped like transformers, mickey mouse, wolverine, and his own little teddy bear cake at least, although there are probably others, too). And the little molds to make the tiny bear's cake came from his friend, Dave, who makes tons of beautiful cakes and cookies. So, thanks for the help, Jesse's Mom and Dave! I helped him decorate it and suffice it to say, we won't be decorating our own wedding cake, although we did have a lot of fun.

Andrea's Wedding

Here are a couple of photos of my sister, Andrea and her new husband, Brent at their wedding, which was held in her backyard over the weekend. Since it was outside, of course we got thunderstorms all morning and even a tornado watch. Thankfully all of the rain cleared up just in time for the ceremony and all of the guests pitched in for a last minute set up. Her mother-in-law spent the whole year preparing their backyard by planting specific flowers and moving trees around and her father-in-law built the bamboo arch himself. I applaud them both - the space looked like an oasis. Congratulations, Andrea! Now my family just has one more wedding to go, let's hope it goes just as smoothly (my fingers are crossed).

yeah, now i'm even drawing brides....

This post has nothing to do with our own wedding plans, but it does have to do with brides, so it's going up.

This is an illustration I finished up over the weekend for the Baltimore Citypaper. It's being paired with a bridal gown sample sale listing in their "calender events" section. Their art director, Joe, is really awesome and since he knows that I'm engaged he thought I'd have the most fun with the assignment. And he's right since I've already been spending too much time looking at tons of pictures of wedding gowns on the web, why not chalk it up to "research"?

In other news, Jesse and I are making our second attempt to go to Lititz this weekend to start looking at churches. Let's cross our fingers and hope some decisions get made!