Craft-a-thon Tonight!

     It's been a week of wedding progress! On Tuesday we picked up my dress and picked out dresses for the bridesmaids. We had tremendous success at Stacey's; I'm nearly as excited about the bridesmaids' dresses as I am about my own! In order to get a discount (and because I was super-jealous), I ordered the same dress in ivory to wear for the rehearsal dinner. I'm so excited I might not even put a picture up and just let all of you be surprised!

     In other news, we're hosting a wedding craft-a-thon at my parents' house tonight; we will be working on the save-the-dates, picks for the cake, the ribbon dancers, and the cookie bags for the wedding. We will provide our fabulous wedding elves (it's a workshop, right? Ok, dumb analogy) with pizza, beer, and snacks. Should be a good time! Here's some of the art I've created for the cookie bags; I can't quite decide:

I think the rose might be my favorite right now; it's a little more formal than I was imagining, but I like it. Something wonky happened to the typewriters; I swear they're cooler in illustrator.
  
      Finally, I've spent several mornings working on my invites, hoping to come up with a final one. I've created, discarded, and resurrected several ideas and schemes, and here are a few I've been working on:

     The top one is a revamp of the first one Wendi and I worked on; the second is a concept I've been thinking about, but it needs a lot more glitz and some sort of clip art, I think, before I might really like it.

It's HERE.........

     My wedding dress is in! I'm psyched that it's safely finished, and that the long alteration process is about to begin! I'm most excited to see what the corseted back looks like: the one I tried on at Schaffer's was so large that I couldn't really get an idea of what that would look like or how it would feel.

    
     On Tuesday the 27th we'll be going to try it on and also look for the perfect bridesmaids dresses! I feel like finding those will be the last big piece of the puzzle. I had always planned on purple, but the popularity of that choice in a season including 4 weddings before mine is causing me to question my colors. This trip should solidify that dilemma, I hope. So far, only Megan, Breanna, and Mom have signed on for this trip. If you want to come, let me know! Sorry, working people, that it's a Tuesday afternoon. If we find the dress, I'll find a time to go look at them with my two other bridesmaids, Amanda and Arielle.
     In even more exciting news, my sister's coming home from LA this week! Only five more days, Sister! We've got so much planned for the time she's here; I can't wait!

Another Invite Option

I've been working on some more invites, and I'm a little excited about this one. Of course, who knows whether or not blogger will let me put it up; it wouldn't let me upload any of my Photoshop JPEGs yesterday. Anyway, here it is!

I haven't quite figured out how to make the white parts invisible; I'm not exactly an Illustrator wiz, but I'm learning! There are definitely some fonts in here I'm not 100% in love with, but I'll keep working on it. Let me know what you think!

I've had a few hours to play around a little bit, and I added some purple to this one. I started with the flag, but then I thought this might be a solution to my white problem. Does it work? I'd rather have the brown show through, but as an alternative, it's not so bad.

And, because I just can't help myself, I did this one with different central artwork:

Book Club

Allison and I have started a book club/ writing circle and a are currently in the "recruiting new members" phase. If you're in the DSM area or can be contacted via Skype/Facetime, join up! You can visit our website here. (Yes, I've become a little obsessed with google sites). If you're already a member (Meghan & Allison, I'm talking to you) POST SOMETHING. Our name is kind of silly, but I had to come  up with it one the spot when creating the site. Here's the logo I created:


Blogger doesn't seem to be letting me upload JPEGs at this time, so I'll have to add the pretty pictures later!

Detail Updates

Good morning! I'm blogging to you from the front half of our apartment because we have no power to the back half! Yep, that's right, no heat and no hot water on the first night we have snow. Surprisingly, it hasn't gotten too cold in here, but this is throwing a giant wrench in my preparation plans for Jake's work party tonight! I meant to spend this time taking a shower, shaving my legs, and putting my hair in hot rollers. Is this supposed to be some message from God about vanity?

Anyway, I wanted to say thanks to Megan for being the only one to give helpful feedback on my invite situation. I'm feeling kind of stuck on that front; I just can't create anything I really love. I've got a new, half-formed template that coordinates better with my save-the-dates, but it's far from finished. I'll give you a little teaser:

As you can see, it's still very rough. This would be the bottom portion. Now that I'm looking at it, the feminist in me is starting to think that the female bird shouldn't be below the male bird, looking up at him longingly...may have to switch them around. I love the font: Jane Austen. How could it be more perfect? 

In other news, we've chosen a DJ. We went with Complete Music, based in Des Moines. They seem extremely eager for our business. They're constantly checking in with me about things, even though they've already gotten our deposit check. Seems like a good sign. And, their logo's kind of cute.

Thursday, December 29th, we'll be hosting what I've decided to call "Craft-a-thon" at my parents' house. We'll provide food and drink (the fun kind), and hope all our friends will come to help us create the ribbon dancers, cookie bags, cake toothpicks, and myriad other crafts for our wedding. Hope you can come! As an extra incentive, Megan will be back from L.A. and crafting along with us! See you in two weeks, Sis!