Let's get some shoes!

Oh, shoes. My best friend... and oldest enemy. As much as I salivate over gorgeous stilettos, sophisticated Ferragamo flats and hip, chunky-heeled sandals, I can almost never wedge my size 12W tootsies into any of them. For my girlfriends, shoe shopping is a fun, relaxing way to spend an afternoon... but for me, it's more like days of scouring the internet for something even remotely cute. So of course, I had to get a head start on looking for wedding shoes!

I knew I was in trouble the moment I laid eyes on the Kate Spade Charm slingbacks. Fuschia satin... multi-colored glitter... be still, my beating heart!

 

Unfortunately, this love was not meant to be. Even if I was willing to go all out and splurge on these shoes that I'll probably never wear again - except to work and the grocery store and while doing laundry and like EVERYWHERE, obviously - these works of art do not come in wide widths. 

Heartbreak! I briefly considered foot reduction surgery, but thought I'd give DIY a shot first. After all, a pair of fuschia slingbacks in my size can't be too hard to find, and I could always give them the glitter and Mod Podge treatment at home, right? Faux Kate Spade, here I come!

Inspired, I ran to Paper Source for all the necessary supplies. After dinner tonight, as I started laying down newspaper and rifling through drawers for masking tape, Mr. M stifled a groan. 

"What's the project this time?" he asked.

I yanked an old pair of heels out of my closet and held them up triumphantly. "I'm going to glitter my shoes!" I said. 

Mr. M backed away slowly. "Yeah.... great... glitter! Okay. I'll be in the bedroom playing video games if you need me. Uh... good luck with that."

"Pssh! I don't need luck," I replied, "these are going to be AWESOME."

Approximately five hundred coats of Mod Podge and glitter later:

Meh. I'm not in love. They're definitely sparkly! But the glitter is a little bit lumpy, the tape peeled off funny so all of the lines are uneven, and despite my best efforts, there are still little glitter-less patches here and there. These shoes might be okay for an evening at the club, where lights are low and people are drinking.... but I don't think I want to walk down the aisle in shoes that look like they were made by a moderately talented kindergartener.

Deflated, I went back online to see if I'd missed a potential shoe candidate in my earlier searches. And that's when I found this:

It's the "Romance" shoe from the Glass Slipper collection at DSW. It's not quite as stunning as my first love from Kate Spade, but it hits all the relevant marks - fuschia, glittery, slingback-ed and available in wide width! I snatched them right up, of course. They'll be here in a few days, so please cross your fingers for me! 'Cause if these don't work, I might have to investigate that foot reduction surgery after all.

Paper Flowers Tutorial #2: "The Gardenia"

This next flower is really simple to assemble, once you get the hang of folding the center petal. I've been calling it the gardenia, even though it's really more of a rose. Hey, like I said before - I'm a bride, not a flower... talkin'... guy.

Um. Right.

Well, anyway, let's get started.

Step one: Punch out five large flowers. (I've been making the center petal gold, but you don't have to. That's just what I like to do!)

Step two: Take two flowers, including your the flower you'll use as the center one, and curl each petal diagonally. (The pink arrow indicates the direction you should be holding your curling apparatus.)

When you're done, your flowers should look something like the two flowers on the right here:

Step three: Curl the petals of the three remaining flowers towards the flower's center. (The green arrow indicates the direction you should be holding your curling implement - basically straight across the petal.)

When you're done, your flowers should like the three flowers on the left in the picture above.

Step four: This is the tricky part... and also the part that I forgot to take a picture of. Please refer to my handy diagram below to see how to turn the center flower into the center rosebud:

After you get each petal folded around it's neighbor, you'll have to hold the finished bud closed for ten to twenty seconds while the glue sets.

Step five: Apply glue to the second diagonal-fold flower shape.

Place the gold bud-shape into the center of the glued flower, then one at a time, fold up each glued petal and attach it to the central bud. In this step, you are pressing the flat part of each petal against the bud and tucking the curled part around the neighboring petal. The finished product should look like this:

(Again, you'll need to hold the petals closed for ten to twenty seconds while the glue sets.)

Step six: Take the remaining three flowers. (Fig. A)  Flip them over. (Fig. B)  Bend each petal towards the center of the flower and crease. (Fig. C)

Step seven: Assemble the gardenia by dotting glue in the center of each remaining flower shape and stacking them, remembering to affix each flower on top of the next with the petals off-set.

Almost there....

 

Getting closer....

 

Voila! Your gardenia is finished. Allow the glue to dry, then go in and add a little bit of extra curl to some of the petals with your fingers. Beautiful, no?

Paper Flowers Tutorial #1: "Lily"

After I'd researched all of the various ways that one can make paper flowers, and finally settled on the paper punch method, I got down to business - and found that making these gorgeous little flowers was actually pretty easy! Today, I'm going to do a tutorial on how to make the first - and easiest - of the five flowers. I've been calling this one "The Lily." (Even though I think it really looks more like a mum. But hey, I'm a bride, not a botanist.)

Step one: Remove cat from crafting table.

Step two: Gather your materials. I used the "Retro Flower" punch by EK Success in four sizes: XL, large, medium and small. You'll also need some glue - I've been using Paper Source's PVA glue, but hot glue would probably work, too. Finally, you'll need something fairly thin and cylindrical for poking and rolling. (Insert dirty joke here.) No, seriously though! I'm using an eyeshadow brush from Sephora, though anything relatively small and round will do.

For paper, I suggest using cardstock - it holds the curls and folds better, and will probably make a sturdier finished product. These flowers will all work with regular paper, too, but I prefer the look of cardstock.

Step three: Punch out your shapes. For the lily, you'll need two XL flowers, two large flowers, one medium flower, and two small flowers. I'm using shimmery gold paper for the smallest flowers to add a little bit of contrast, but you could keep it as monochromatic - or as multicolored - as you like.

Step four: Begin bending the petals inwards towards the center... like so:

Step five: Crease and release. Repeat until all petals have been creased.  They will look something like this:

  

Step six: Begin folding petals one by one down the center of the petal. 

They'll look like this when you're done:

Step seven: Take one of the XL flowers and dot the center with a little bit of glue. Place another XL flower on top of the first flower, making sure to align the petals off-set so they overlap each other like this:

Step eight: Keep going! Dot the center with glue, add the two large flowers, the medium flower and the two small flowers. Each time, make sure that you're positioning the flowers perpendicular to the previous flower.

As you build the flower, it gets more difficult to glue the smallest layers into the center of the lily - so use that poking tool to smush 'em down!

And.... ta-da! You've got yourself a paper lily!

Family ties

As clueless as I can be about women's fashion, I am even more hopelessly clueless when it comes to men's fashion. Last weekend, I found myself asking strangers at Old Navy whether they thought a navy blue sweater matched the sort-of-gray, sort-of-olive khakis I was buying for Mr. M.

So it goes without saying that picking the groomsmen's attire has left me pretty stumped. The bridesmaids were so much easier - short navy blue dresses with straps, easy as pie! But the men's sartorial choices seemed endless. Tuxedos were too formal for our early morning wedding, but tan suits were too informal. Black suits? Too depressing. Navy suits might work, but then is that just too much navy all at once? And then there are all the different shades of navy blue to worry about - better to just nix the navy suits all together.

We finally settled on gray suits. Gray looks nice on everyone, and it's versatile enough that hopefully our groomsmen will be able to wear their suits again. We're planning on rounding up the groomsfolk during the next Men's Wearhouse BOGO sale and sending them out in pairs to buy their suits. (Nb: I'm not actually sure that this will work - does the free suit have to be the same size at the suit you pay for? If yes, this brilliant scheme will be foiled, since our guys are all different sizes.)

But hey, deciding on a suit color meant that I could finally get down to the fun part of dressing the guys: tie shopping! We're "gifting" the ties to the groomsmen, so we needed to find something affordable... but at the same time, you know, it's our wedding. We didn't want to skimp so much that the dudes had to walk down the aisle sporting some $5 sidewalk vendor ties. Luckily, we found the perfect solution: TheTieBar.com.

Their ties are fantastic, and every single one is just $15. They have extra-long ties and boy's ties, too, so we were able to get the perfect fit for every guy in our party. And, most important, they look and feel awesome - not cheap at all! (I know, I know... I totally sound like a commercial for The Tie Bar. But they really are awesome! And no, I wasn't compensated for this review. I'm just really excited about getting a good deal!)

The wedding party will be wearing the ones on the right; Mr. M will be standing out and looking gorgeous in the lighter pink tie on the left. Rrraowr!

Weighty Matters

Last week, Mr. M and I met up with our awesome photographer, Daniel Krieger, for an engagement photo session. We started out at our favorite swanky cocktail bar in Brooklyn, where the bartenders mixed us up some beautiful - and yummy - cocktails while Daniel took pictures. Then we headed out on a walk around the neighborhood, where the trees had finally burst into their full autumn splendor.

It was a good thing I had a drink or two, I think, because I spent a lot of the session really nervous about whether or not I would look extra-chunky in the finished pictures. While a lot of the time, I can look in the mirror and be happy with what I see, I really hate the way I photograph. I have a lot of bad angles, you know - pretty much everything that isn't a straight up Myspace photo shot from above - so I worried about almost every pose. A profile shot? Ugh, better suck in the stomach. Craning my head up to kiss Mr. M? Might as well just shine a spotlight on my double chin! 

While I've lost thirty pounds since our engagement, and I'm much happier about the way I fit into clothes and how much healthier I feel, taking our engagement pictures made me realize that I need to step it up on a couple of fronts before the wedding. First, I should probably stay the course with my weight loss program. With eight months to go before the big day, I can probably shed another thirty pounds - and hopefully, that will make me a little more confident about my body in general.

Second, though, I think it's important for me to get to a place of peace with my body. Sure, I've got a tummy and a pair of flabby arms and chubby cheeks that get extra chubby when I grin wide - but I've also got a fiance who loves me just the way I am and tells me I'm beautiful every day. That doesn't mean I don't need to continue to strive to be as healthy as possible - for myself, for Mr. M and for our future little M's - but I also need to stop obsessing about my imperfections. I can't help where the camera focuses, but I can control where I focus - on the love pouring out of Mr. M's gorgeous face, the tender way we hold each other, the beauty that he sees in me. 

Paper garden escort cards

Once I had decided that paper flower escort cards was the way to go, I had to figure out how to make them happen without breaking the bank. Although they're one of the DIY projects that I'm most excited about, I didn't want to spend hundreds of dollars on pre-made flowers from Etsy or the pricey kits from Paper Source. I considered borrowing a Cricut machine from a friend, but after watching some instructional videos, I realized that it would take an awfully long time to cut out enough petals for 200 flowers with the Cricut. Yikes! Time to find a plan B.

I came across these video tutorials on YouTube and knew instantly that paper punches were the way to go! So I scampered on down to Paper Source to pick up some pink and gold cardstock and ordered four EK Success Retro Flower punches from Amazon - one each in XL, Large, Medium and Small. When they came in yesterday, I spent a good part of the evening following the video tutorials and doing a little bit of experimenting on my own. This is what I came up with!

Aren't they gorgeous?! I got through about fifteen last night. They're a bit time-consuming but not super tedious, and luckily we still have eight months before the wedding, so I think a few more crafting sessions (while watching Four Weddings, of course) should get the job done. When it's time to do the seating chart and write out the escort cards, we'll attach some little paper flags with everyone's name and table assignment. Scattered around our card table's display of ferns and jasmine vines, I think these will be absolutely beautiful! 

Love is a decision

This weekend, Mr. M and I attended our long-awaited (and long-dreaded) Catholic Engaged Encounter retreat. Long story short: it was amazing.

There were some parts we weren't crazy about, of course, like the creaky beds in our monastic cells or the stale croissants at breakfast. (Luckily, there was a McDonald's across the street! When we pulled into the parking lot of the retreat center and spied the Golden Arches, the knowing look that Mr. M and I gave each other was proof positive that we're a hundred percent perfect for each other.) But the weekend's bright spots eclipsed the not-so-hot ones by far. Some of the bonding we did was over silly stuff - like sneaking out for breakfast at 6:30 a.m. before anyone else was awake, or Mr. M crawling out onto the balcony to let me into my room after I accidentally locked myself out of it. But most of it was real, honest, emotional re-connection.

Living it up, monk style!

Our fellow fiances and fiancees were a smart, honest, fun group of people. Though most of the work we did was just with our own intended, there was a group session on Saturday night where we all sat around in a circle and discussed relationship issues that we'd written down and stuffed in the anonymous questions box earlier in the day. There was a really broad range of experience in the group, and it was really cool to hear other folks' thoughts on some things that come up in a lot of marriages. The two older married couples who led the discussions throughout the weekend were also fantastic. They did a lot of very honest sharing about their lives together, and I really appreciated their willingness to open up and tell us about how they have worked to create successful, happy marriages.

I was nervous, before the weekend, that Mr. M and I would be put through some sort of Spanish Inquisition about our living arrangements or subjected to a lecture about burning in hell if we ever even thought about using contraceptives, but that kind of thing never really happened. There was a discussion about Natural Family Planning and a couple of mentions in the written materials about the supposed benefits of not living together before marriage, but the judgement I expected was nowhere to be found. (Phew!)

All in all, the time we spent there was worth every minute and every penny. We loved it so much that we signed up to volunteer to be one of the presenting married couples someday in the future! It was so lovely to take some time out from our daily lives and just share with each other. I couldn't recommend it more highly!