US meets UK

Yesterday was my last day of work at Carbonfund.org.

I’m really sad to leave, it was a workplace full of fun, exciting people who were all working hard for a cause they believe in. We had our holiday party at the executive director’s home last night and it was such a lovely way to see everyone off.

The team at Carbonfund.org gave Nick and I an incredibly thoughtful, well timed gift. It really warmed my heart and I teared up in the car on the way home. So to the Carbonfunders who check this blog, thank you, thank you, thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Since yesterday was my last day of work, this means my new job is to get ready to leave for the UK. I feel both excited and incredibly overwhelmed since I have a HUGE to do list to get through in 2 days.

Wish me luck and I’ll be seeing you soon on the other side of the pond!

I fell in love with these centerpieces:

they were quirky, different and I loved how the uhule/fiddlehead fern scroll matched the scroll in our invites. There was just one problem, each centerpiece would use three vases, and cylinder vases add up! Currently they’re about $3.99 for the tallest one, but at $12 per tables and multiplied by 13…it just came to be too much. I also wanted many votives on the mantle to give the house a warm candlelight glow. While calculating these with my dad he made the obvious suggestion, why not get a bottle cutter and create vases/votives?

I quickly found ephrems bottle cutter here and purchased it. I figured the $40 would be worth it, as I’m always up to add another craft skill to my repertoire. I told my bridesmaids and friends to get drinking, because we’d need a lot of wine bottles for this project, and many wine corks for another.

There is a less caloric and less liver abusing option though, head to a wine bar and ask for their old bottles.

So with our cases of empty wine bottles in hand we began the process.

Step one: Clean the bottles and soak them to remove the labels. Some will peel off easily, some will scrape off, but you should NOT use the xacto knife. Otherwise you’ll cut yourself like one of my MOH’s did.

Step two: Score the bottles using the bottle cutter. I had my dad do this because he is handy and the sound of scoring glass is equal to nails on a chalkboard. Remember to maintain pressure on the bottle towards the back end of the bottle cutter. The lines should be even and match up with each other at the end.

Step three: Get in touch with your inner pyromaniac. Slowly rotate the scored line of the bottle over a candle flame maintain inward pressure on the bottle (gently gripping and pushing the neck and the dimple/bottom rim toward the center). MOH MB had a great systems of 2 sloooow rotations over the flame combined with step four.

Step four: Break out the ice. Take an ice cube and quickly make your way around the scored edge to quickly cool the bottle.

Step five: Repeat steps three and four as necessary. Often the bottle will sort of slide off the edges.

This takes a fair amount of patience. DO NOT try to force the bottle. You’ll end up with rough edges, glass shards and a ruined bottle. Bottles range in thickness so some bottles will be easier than others. Seriously, only tackle this project if you are either A) blessed with patience or B) willing to learn patience (after my 2nd broken bottle I learned!).

I recommend only tackling a case of bottles at a time, because it does get tiring and they add up over time. The darker colored ones will be used as votives with a floating candle in them for the mantles and the clear ones will be centerpieces.

I’m excited, because I don’t think I’ll ever buy a votive holder again. “Found” elements are important to me and I’m glad I could give these bottles a second chance at life!

Are you planning on DIY-ing your centerpieces?

Okay, well, thats not actually true.

There are actually only a few roses, but many other beautiful flowers! I had selected 2 florists to check out based on their websites and on their wedding wire reviews. I set up an appointment with each and tugged Mr. D’orsay along.

The one thing Mr. D’orsay kept saying was that he didn’t really care about flowers. To be fair, I’m pretty into gardening and flowers, so I knew my way around the florist shop. Whereas Mr. D’orsay always gets me beautiful flowers, even though he may not know their genus and species. So, he focused mainly on the overall/finished looks and I concentrated on the individual flowers (as evidenced by the polyvoreness below).

I felt like Florist J really listened to what I wanted, and understood the look I was going for. Whereas Florist F seemed to take a page from my book and kind of ran in her own direction. I think that there are pluses and minuses for each style; I just happen to be a control freak, detail oriented, type A person. So I clearly preferred Florist J’s style.

However, when all the estimates were said and done, Florist F was over $1,000 less than Florist J. Not surprisingly, I got over my neurosis quickly and decided that Florist F was best. To be honest though, it wasn’t all about the money, both my mother and Mr. D’orsay liked Florist F a ton! I know they’ll do a great job and I have every confidence in their designs.

I did just get a direct mailer about a florist in the mail as well, but there is no time to meet with them before I leave. How do these companies find me?!

I’m just going to send them a lot of polyvoreness…once I get good however. You can see my first failed attempt below:

Purple

In case you’re wondering whats going on, I love the little purple bouquet, I would just want it fuller, and with cymbidium orchids and celosia (both green) thrown in. Celosia is the brainy looking stuff in the red bouquet. I love how structured and clean that one is, its just a shame there don’t seem to be many purple flowers like that. If I had magical powers I would make all the flowers in the red bouquet purple and leave a few of the celosia green. However, throughout the course of wedding planning I learned that I’m not God. Go figure

How did your experiences with your florists go? Did you have an original plan and how well did you stick to it? Are you dysfunctional on polyvore as well?

From the title, you may suspect I’m part of a team of superheroes…

You’re right! I have an amazing team of friends who all came together before we left to help out with a few of the DIY projects. Invitation stamping/embossing/assembly, placeholder cork construction, and even turning wine bottles in vases/votives (tutorials to come).

We first headed to a wine bar in the area to ask if they had any empty wine bottles we could have. They told us to head out back and have a free for all with the recycling bins. So yes, the day began with “dumpster diving”. Though thankfully, it was more of a pick the ones on top and “OH! I see a clear one!” dive. This is just one more reason I’m so thankful to have MaryBeth as one of my maids of honor.

Everyone broke off into teams, MOH MB, BM Rachel and Mr. D’orsay developed a near fool-proof system for stamping/embossing the invitations. My dad whipped out tons of different tools/techniques for turning corks into place card holders and my work friend Danielle and I went for team bottle break. My other friend Elena came a bit later and helped me to sand down the rough edges post cut on the wine bottles/vases/votives.

I am just so thankful to have such a supportive, loving and wonderful community of friends. I’m glad we had the time to get together before I left to start tackling these projects.  They truly were my lifesavers and I’m glad we have a really fun time.  I couldn’t have done it without them!

Do you have a “superheroes” to help with your projects? What are your best tip for brides with DIY projects?

Was a bit tougher than I thought it would be.

Because catering is such a large part of the budget, its a huge decision. We had fallen head over heels for our photographer and made him the priority of our budget. Hence the DIY centerpieces, different DJ (who is still AWESOME) and a few other things that needed to be shifted around.

Caterer A was the least expensive (by only $2-300) and the food was so so. It wasn’t bad, but I didn’t leave thinking “that was really good!”. Caterer B was super delicious, but we ended up switching in chicken, and switching out the beef. Which of course, then I started to worry and think, will people be upset if there is no beef”?

Thank goodness I had Team US to whip my brain back into shape. The people attending our wedding will be there to love and support us, not thinking beef vs chicken! I felt pretty silly after that, because I don’t even eat beef or chicken! I wish I had pictures to show you of the food since it was all quite lovely. We even get two sauces for the salmon; they were both so good I just couldn’t decide!

The winner seems to be Caterer B, the coordinator was friendly, the food was great, and they also offered to organize all the tent, table and chair rentals for us. I’m at the point where if someone can take something off our plate, then I’m happy to let them. I’ve got to think about moving to England for 6 months!!!

Final Dinner Menu:

• Field greens salad with mandarin oranges, strawberries and a raspberry vinaigrette
• Chicken Piccata
• Grilled Salmon (with choice of lemon dill caper sauce or fresh fruit relish)
• Seasonal Grilled and Oven Roasted Vegetables
• Oven Roasted Rosemary Potatoes

MMMMMMM, I’m hungry just thinking about it!!!

When Mr. D’orsay saw how stressed I was getting about wedding planning, he offered to help share the work load.

He asked what was stressing me out the most and thus I gave him the task of finding a caterer. I often take for granted that I’ve had a bunch of event planning experience, and that for people who haven’t done it before, it can be more overwhelming than it naturally is. So we had an awkward of balance of me becoming a nag about catering and Mr. D’orsay trying to squeeze info emails and appointment set ups in between a pretty hectic work schedule (further complicated by the Us/Uk time difference).

So we learned an important lesson: if I want other people’s help I should properly delegated the said task. I had 2 choices, I could either adopt the mentality of “its just easier if I do it myself”, or I could dig out my  organizer manual and remember how to “set people up for success”. Because one of the guiding principles that I often thought of in my old job was that “if you can do it all yourself, you’re doing it wrong”.

Our wedding really has become much more of a communal project, Mr. D’orsay and I talk about the projects together, make the decisions together and are really planning this hand in hand. Not only that, Team US has been a true bunch of lifesavers. I organized a crafting for my final full weekend in town and so many of my dear friends came to help. This way, they’ll have such an intimate role in the wedding, who knows, they could even receive the invite they made! The best part is, they were excited about it too, and I got to catch up and reconnect with dear friends before I left.

Have you found it hard to ask for help? Who are your biggest helpers?

Day 2 mini travel extravaganza – NYC :

My parents, Nick and I all headed up to NYC the very next morning after our philly excursion. VERY early the next morning.

When we first made plans to go to meet Nick’s mother and Sarah I didn’t fell nervous at all, just excited. As the time grew closer though, I realized that actually I was getting very nervous! This may sound odd, but I hadn’t really ever met anyone’s parents that I had really cared about before. On the other hand, I suppose I’ve never felt the way I do about Nick with anyone else before, so it was only logical that I’d feel that way about meeting his family.

The other tough part, you see, is that until Monday I had never met a single family member of his. That’s right, we were engaged and not one person from the UK had really met me in person. Which I think added to some of the stress, because I really wanted his family to like me since we didn’t get a chance to know each other over a long period of time.

However, there was very little to worry about, because everyone got along fabulously! I’m so happy that our respective sides get to meet prior to the wedding, I had horrible visions about people not getting along.

How was the “meeting of the parents” for you? Were you super nervous? Had you at least met the family before you became engaged?

Hello all,

I made a bit of an important decision, I’m going to apply to publicly blog.

Hmmm, you maybe confused, isn’t THIS a public blog? Well, yes, but I mean a group blog, with a wider audience. I made the decision for a few reasons.

I won’t have a job in England even though I’ll be helping Nick and his brother out I’ll need something more to occupy my time. Not to mention that I have ton’s of DIY elements to my wedding and I think my tutorials could help other brides out. Additionally, I feel like I’ve seen many other posts by girls on public blogs and they’re also either trying to plan an international wedding, or plan from another country.

I think the last one is especially important, because Nick and I will be planning much of this wedding from England. Although I’ve tried as hard as I could to plan as much as I could before we left TONS remains left to be done and I feel like there are probably a fair amount of international couples in the same boat.

This means my style might change a little, and I’ll be asking questions like, “were you nervous to meet your fiance’s parents?”, and you’ll think to yourself, “silly Christiana, I’m not engaged!” But hopefully you’ll keep checking back and commenting <3

So wish me luck!

Lies.

Day 1 of travel extravaganza:

Nick and I headed up on Sunday to Philly to visit my friend Megan and her fiance Aaron. Megan and I were both campus organizers in AZ and she is one of my dearest friends that i met while I was out there.

Philly is fantastic city, with great architecture, museums, nightlife and delicious food. Unfortunately though, we didn’t see any of that because rain was pouring down constantly. However, we did see 2 bars/restaurants, wet pavement, a bit of a steeler’s game and lovely catching up and conversation.

We first hit up Monks Cafe which I found on tripadvisor, which is pretty much my bible of where to go. We had nice food and yummy (but expensive!!!!) beer. I’ve always wanted to check out the mutter museum, and so we tried to head there next. However, we got all sorts of turned around in the rain (by we I mean me) and headed a few blocks in the wrong direction. Meg asked a few cops where the museum was, but they had NO IDEA what she was talking about. Finally, we figured out the proper direction to head in, to find the museum closed. boo that.

The we trudged/sloped our way through the wet streets in the direction of the car and became so cold we just stopped in the first bar we saw (The Bards). We then devoured seriously yummy Guiness bread pudding and fries with curry sauce. We all caught up on each others lives and reminisced about the “old days” and the crazy summers we had as canvass directors. I felt bad for Nick though, because Nick’s experience with the canvass was waiting for me to get home from work, or coming out to pizza night.

We headed home about 8 pm, but because of PTDT (post turkey day traffic) we didn’t get back till after 11pm!!!!!! (Baltimore to Philly should be about 1.5 – 2 hours).  Nick still had some work to finish up for NM shop (which he runs with his brother).  You can check out all the cute holiday additions to that site here.

The following morning we awoke bright and early to catch the bus to NYC to meet Nick’s mum and sister, stay tuned for days 2 and 3 of our mini travel extravaganza!

Nick and I did our first “black friday” excursion the other day.

For those of you in the UK, black friday is kind of like your boxing day. Except it happens the day after our Thanksgiving; which is great because you can buy Christmas gifts for people on super duper sale. There is a catch however:

You must wake up VERY early; at stupid o’clock, 5am type of early, maybe earlier? Since I can’t afford to buy anyone on my list electronics we didn’t head to Best Buy, Wal-mart {evil} or stores that people seem murderous over. Kmart had a deal going on (and they opened at 6am) so Kmart was our first stop. BUT it turns out Kmart likes false advertising, so instead of the gifts they showed on TV being on sale, or the gifts they had on their website; they had other, crappier of this gift category on sale. I wish I could tell you what I was hunting for, but my cousins check this blog, so it shall remain nameless.

I forgot to mention that when we arrived at Kmart, about 5:45am, there was a decent sized line there…at KMART. Seriously? So we tried the Target across the street, which was PACKED. I was able to find nice gifts in the category I was searching for. Nick and I had the brilliant idea of being able to buy his family tons of cool DVD’s, Blue Rays, or electronics; but we realized that our plan was foiled by those stupid DVD zones and such. Plus the electronics area was mobbed, they literally had a cop at the register.

So far, we’d had a bit of a disappointing run, we’d saved a few dollars, but not the kind of money we should have saved for getting up at stupid o’clock. In search of supplies for all our wedding DIY festivities we headed to AC Moore in Glen Burnie, strike one. No brown embossing powder. Next we headed to Joanne Fabrics where I had a nice 20% total purchase and a 50% off one item coupon.

Well, we found brown embossing powder (on sale at 40% off), TomBow adhesive, and a heat gun (needed for embossing). From the sales and coupons we saved half of our total purchase, which was worth getting up early for. Although, we did notice 6 heat guns at Joannes a few days ago and 6 when we went on black friday, so we’re pretty sure we could have slept in and it would have been alright.

The other best sale of the day wasn’t really a black friday sale, we stopped by DSW to return a pair boots I had; we were able to get a different pair of boots, a pair of chucks and received $26 back! Crazy!

We also took our recycled cardstock to Kinkos (who did a WONDERFUL job), and embarked on our fist adventures in embossing (more on this later)!