Centerpieces

I am back bride-blogging with a vengeance now that I’ve got some of the rest of my life in line. Hope you’re ready!

Here’s what we’ve got going on so far when it comes to the centerpieces: tealights, lanterns, and chargers. We’re going with a candle theme as opposed to flowers because a) it seems more in line with the season, b) it’s way less expensive, and c) more in line with our tastes.

Without further ado, some pictures!

$4.99? No. $1? Yes. Aren’t the leaves perfect? They’re just autumn-y enough without being in your face.

Here are the lanterns and chargers we’ve found. The lanterns will wind up being another color because, even though the one in the picture is just what we were looking for, we could only find 4 in that color at the store we were in. So we’ve got to find a spray paint color that’s similar to the one you see here, then paint them all so they match. The chargers make a nice base for it all, don’t you think?

The best part of it all, aside of how gorgeous it’ll all look together (of course), is that we got it all at the Christmas Tree Shop. If you’re on the East Coast, get yourself to one STAT. Our grand total for the centerpieces thus far is a whopping $5.50 per table. We’ll get the candles from the party site, so that’s not a concern. Elegance and coming in well under budget WIN.

They’ll be arranged in a way that makes the best use of the materials, and we might add another touch to fill in some of the space. Can’t show you the finished product until we get to the wedding day!

She’s crafty

That’s a Beastie Boys reference, for anyone keeping track:

And I totally meant “crafty” in the sense of “DIY-ing random stuff because I can’t focus” and not the “adept in the use of of subtlety and cunning” sense.

The FMILs gave me a gift card to Joann for my birthday, so I decided to make use of that and start the pomanders I’d planned for the flower girls. I also got some half-baked idea to make a few to mark reserved pews during the ceremony. Here’s what I picked up:

Two two-packs of 4″ styrofoam balls, two 6″ green styrofoam balls, 3″ round punch, gold satin ribbon, and gold organza ribbon.

I’ll be cutting the 4″ balls in half to make the pew markers. The punch comes into play for those, too– I’ll go over the details in another post. Someone remind me, pleaseandthanks.

I went to the Dollar Tree next door in search of tissue paper for the pew markers, but found these babies instead:

Hello, gorgeouses. Naturally, I could only find two, which is just my luck. But they cost me a whopping dollar each, for 7 blooms on each. Yahtzee!

I started to methodically make a whole through the middle of the ball to thread the ribbon through, using the gold satin for this project. By methodically, I mean I started with a 4″ screwdriver, realized it wouldn’t make it all the way through (math was never my strong suit, friends), then wound up just shoving the stems through until I made a big enough hole. I threaded the ribbon through and tied a knot at the bottom so that it looked like this:

Then I cut all the blooms off the carnation bushes with a pair of wire cutters/needlenose pliers, leaving a bit of stem on there– maybe like an inch or so? Estimation was never really my thing, either. I stuck all the flowers in so that they covered most of the surface of the ball underneath, and voila!

The top makes it quite obvious that I need more flowers, but you can get a better feel for what it would look like finished from the bottom image.

For 15 minutes and 10-ish bucks (once finished), I’m pretty pleased! What do you think? And hey pictures! Thought you might like to see what I see

…And then I quit my job.

My last day at my job was Friday. Well, to clarify: my last day in the office was Tuesday, and my last day working (at home) was Friday.

This really isn’t a surprise to anyone– not family, not friends, not even bosses and co-workers. You probably shouldn’t be surprised, either.

What sort of surprises people is that I’m not leaving to go to another similar position. Oh, no. I’m leaving to work in a bakery. Also, not really a surprise, but no one really expected me to leave my cushy corporate job with benefits and whatnot for a 60% pay cut (based on working 40 hours a week, which I wouldn’t be doing anyway) and no benefits.

And I’m happy. Daddy-O sent me an email on Monday, after I’d given my notice on Friday, to see if I had any “resigners remorse.” Stifling laughter, I told him not a stitch. The FI asked me on Tuesday morning if I was sad that it was my last day in the office. This time, I let myself laugh out loud and told him he was silly– I couldn’t wait.

That’s not to say that I’m glad to be rid of (most of) the people I work with. On the contrary, I’ll miss chatting with (most of) them daily. Sure, there are some I won’t miss, and those were the people who, when they found out I was leaving, acted like it was a personal affront to them and were so rude I couldn’t believe it.

I won’t be missing them. Or the mandatory 55+ hour weeks plus another ~15 hours per week commuting.

The whole process was a little weird and a little unnerving, and it was definitely a bit uncomfortable, especially the part when my team found out when my last day was before I did. Side note: it’s fun to call people out when they don’t handle a situation properly. I suggest you try it someday.

But now I’m free. I’m starting the new position at the bakery (at the end of my street– hello, 2-minute walk to work) on Wednesday, and plan to pick up as many hours as they can throw at me. I’m a little nervous about making ends meet in the beginning and figuring out what I’m going to do about health insurance (thank you, state of Massachusetts [and President Obama for the rest of the country] for making health insurance mandatory and therefore allowing me to maybe go back on one of my parents’ plans until I’m 26), but I know everything will work out.

As J.R.R. Tolkein said, “Not all those who wander are lost.” In my case, I’m in the midst of the next great adventure.

Shenanigans, I say!

Once again, I find myself calling shenanigans on the wedding industry. Here’s what happened this time.

I found out a while ago that the stylist I’d been going to since high school left the salon I’d been going to ever since I could remember. Though I wasn’t what you’d call a regular, I always went there for updos for proms, then the military balls at the FI’s school. I always loved what she did, and joked for the past 5+ years that she better be one of my first calls when I got engaged.

Now I need to find a new stylist to do my hair on the wedding day. I’d been putting it off for a while since I didn’t really need my hair cut and was really nervous (don’t ask why…I really don’t know) about finding a new person to do my hair. Ladies, back me up on this one– once you find someone you like doing your hair, you want to stick with her/him, am I right? Yes.

MOSH was looking for a new salon, too, since she’s now in my neck of the woods and doesn’t want to travel all the way back home to her old stylist. She went to a place not too far away and told me she had a great experience. I figured I’d try them out. My haircut came out great (not that I really did much but clean up the ends), and at the end of the appointment, the stylist gave me a “menu” of their prices and services.

And that’s when it all went wrong.

Silly Leah, she looked at the “bridal hair” section. And saw that for a hair trial and day-of updo, it would set her back $175. For hair. Thinking that was a little steep, she decided to look at how much updos usually run and saw that it was $55+.

Now, I know– math really isn’t my strong suit– but for 2 times doing someone’s updo, doesn’t the math figure that would be $110? WHERE DOES THAT EXTRA $65 COME IN???

This, friends, is why I’m calling shenanigans. Because the B-word or the W-word are stuck in front of regular old services, the prices get jacked up like there’s no tomorrow. The sad part is that a lot of women (and men) will pay the prices blindly. We’re guilty of that in some respects, I agree. But to tack on an extra $65 for an updo is absolutely ridiculous.

The new plan is to maybe try a hairdo for a wedding we have coming up in June. Maybe at the same salon, maybe somewhere else. If that comes out all right, I’ll go back the afternoon of the wedding and have it done again, NEVER MENTIONING THAT IT’S MY WEDDING DAY.

I know, I know… it’s going to be hard. But you know what? I’m not paying an extra $65 just because I’m getting married and “I deserve to be the most beautiful version of me.” That’s utter crap. The FI and I are getting married, no matter what I look like or how much it costs to get my hair done.

And that’s all that really matters.

Has anyone else been babmoozled by the bridal industry? What’s your story?

It’s all in perspective

I work in Excel documents and databases all day long. I’m more of a Word (hell, even Photoshop) person, so that should tell you how much fun I think it is. You knew that much already, though.

I’m working with the FI now to clean up his customer data to make a mini-database so he can quickly and easily organize his growing client base. He’s said he feels bad asking me to work on it, since it’s what I do all day. I have to keep telling him I don’t mind at all.

What? After doing something mind-numbing and frustration-inducing all day, why on Earth would I want to do it again after work (after I did more work after work)?

I want to do it because it actually matters. Working on his database makes his job running the business a hundred times easier. It makes it easier for me to put together some marketing campaigns to build the business. It makes the likelihood that he’ll be profitable much, much higher.

At work, I’m just another vendor number working for the monster software company launching their email campaigns. With the FI, I’m his marketing manager. And his fiancee, but that’s not business-related. We’re in this together, though, and we have to use our joint talents to make it work to the best of our abilities. It’s real life. They’re real customers– I’ve met some of them before.

And that makes all the difference.

SOMEONE ELSE PICK THE FLOWERS!

Please, for the love of all things holy, don’t make me do this.

You see, I have a very simple idea in mind for the flowers for the wedding and it goes something like this: cheap, orange, simple.

I’m glad you noticed that “cheap” was criteria #1. Here’s the thing (I sound like one of my campaign managers). Flowers die. They don’t taste good like food, they don’t make you say “I LOVE THIS SONG!” like a good DJ and booze, and while they can add a lot to the decor of a wedding, they add a ree-donk-u-liss amount of money that frankly, I’m not willing to spend. ‘Cause it would be better spend on plane tickets to Munich.

I had the idea in my head that we’d just do the flowers ourselves– order a whole ton off the web, gather a few of the artsy ladies coming to the wedding, and throw together some hand-tied bouquets, boutonnieres, and a couple of corsages. I would pay someone to do the arrangements for the ceremony, and maybe the corsages if they proved to be too tricky among us talented ladies.

Then the FI got involved and told me that us doing our own flowers was a surefire way for me to want to pull my hair out. And he’s probably right.

But then I started looking around online and realized just how expensive bouquets are. Over $100 for a handful of flowers tied together? What I’m looking for really isn’t that complicated. Grab a handful of stems, wrap some floral tape around them, wrap the stems with ribbon. No cascades, no extra greenery, no fancy touches.

In a perfect world, I’d have black-eyed-beauty calla lilies as my bouquet and the FI’s bout, and everyone else would have fiery-orange (I think they’re called rust, actually) callas. But those are some expensive flowers. Roses work. So do mums. And other flowers that may have fun textures that people wouldn’t necessarily think of.

But if anyone comes at me with a gerbera daisy, they better run. That’s my only 100% no-way flower.

I’ve gotten so many recommendations for florists, too– I think I have about 6 I have to call. I just want the flowers to magically show up at the ceremony, for free.

Is that too much to ask?