At the wedding fair, there was a catering vendor who had these fantastic plastic forks that totally looked like real silverware. I picked one up and was like OSNAP! These are plastic! WANT!

And I can get them here. Or here. Or here. Booya!

The Save-the-Dates are finished and have been ordered! Wanna see? Sure you do! Even though you're getting one in the mail in the future. Ha.

Here's the front:


and here's the back:


Designed by my favorite Eric in the world. Yay!

more stuff

Sounds like we're going to Vegas. WHAT UP?! Darren's parents have a timeshare there and they're not going to have the time or money to go this year, so they offered it to us for our honeymoon. Amazing.

Anyhoodle. Darren mentioned paper lanterns, so I'm looking into places I can buy them wholesale. So far this place has the best prices. Oh wait, maybe this place does. IKEA has them, but $4 each? Really? Come on.

And finally, iffn' we end up getting tables and chairs for free from Darren's grandma's church (hope, hope), if the chairs are ugly, I'm going to have to get covers. And this is the cheapest place I can find them.

Doo doo doo...

notes

Shoes: received. Fit. Super cute.

Rental company: emailed. Sweet Jesus, I hope their stuff is available that day.

**edit: It is. She's working on an estimate/invoice today (Friday). Wee!
Unfortunately, I was doing my taxes last night and it looks like I'm going to be getting less than half the return I usually get. That sucks, since it was going to go toward the wedding. Argh. I should still be getting enough for the 25% deposit, though. And hopefully Darren will be willing to hold off on buying his new TV and donate more to the wedding fund than originally planned. :( Money is frustrating. I wish I could just blatantly ask for cash gifts only, but some people aren't into that. Oh well. We'll make it work.

Wedding fair: planning on going on Sunday at Darren's insistence. It's $15 bucks to get in, but hey, if we get lucky we could win a friggin' honeymoon. Or if we're really REALLY lucky, a $150,000 dream wedding. Ha!

We're hoping Darren's uncle will do the photography for us. For free! Or really really cheap! Cross your fingers for us...

Ha. PS: I asked Darren about porta potties last night and he told me his mom had called him earlier in the day to ask the same thing. I LOL'd.

I just submitted an estimate request for port-a-potty rental. Hahahahahaha.

Ooh, I just got an email back. That was fast. Looks like two stalls is going to cost about $250. And that's not even for the nice ones, which it says they don't have at that branch! Sigh. We'll see what Darren and his mom and grandma have to say about it. I'm thinking they may not have even considered it yet.

**edit** Doo doo doo. This is ridiculous. Instead of contacting all these places today, I'm just going to list possible options here and deal with it later.

Option A
Option B
Option 3

...

In other news, I bought those shoes. They should be here by the end of the week. This means that all I need is my dress and my wedding ensemble will be complete. Win!

mistake #1

Yea, that flower hair clip I bought? Not what I expected. Good thing it didn't cost much because it's poorly made and sits weirdly- it sticks out super far when it's in my hair. So I'm calling that a wash and looking for something else for my hair. Like these.

**edit** Or, instead of spending more money, I can take the flower apart and reconstruct it so it looks, you know, good.

If I fail at that, then I'll find something else. Heh.

Oh, by the way- 7 months exactly. Go team Darren & Katrina!

let them eat cake

The thing about wedding cakes is they cost a ridiculous amount of money. We want cake because it's delicious, but we don't want to spend $500 on something we'd just tear apart.

The other day I came across a web site, instructables.com, and was browsing their recipe section when I saw something fantastic: Pie in a Jar.

Dude. I could make cake in a jar! I could get several dozen 8 oz jars (10 dozen = 120 jars). Then I could make sponge cake, rip it apart, and put cake chunks in the bottom of the jar, then a layers of strawberries and whipped cream. Simple, summery, and delicious. I'd totally have to freeze them though, so the whipped cream didn't melt. Which is fine; I'd just need to find people who would let me stash jars of cake in their freezers.

Wedding Cake in a Jar. Then we could just put a jar at each place setting. It would serve a dual purpose: dessert/wedding favor. And it would cost much less than having to buy dessert and favors. Brilliant.

Darren doesn't like sponge cake, so we could totally make/buy an angel food cake, frost it with whipped cream, add some strawberries, and use it for the traditional cake-cutting and then eat the hell out of it.

rocks rock

I was thinking more about centerpieces. Right now the plan is to put these daisies into these jars. I'll have to trim the stems. And I'll put ribbon or something around the tops of the jars.

Well, I felt it was lacking. So, long story short, I decided that I'd fill in the empty jar space with rocks. Easy and a little more interesting to look at, plus it will hide any damage I do when I hack off the long-ass stems on those flowers. I figured black stones, since it is one of our colors and is under-represented in our decor thus far. I can buy a 5 pound bag of smaller stones, and a two pound bag of larger ones, and mix em up for jar fillin'. So easy. And cheap. Like the whorish rocks they are.

oh my god, shoes

Lookin' at shooooes. I want green ones.

Initially I was thinking something darker, like these. But given the color scheme I'm going with, the shades of green in my bouquet, etc., I think I'd rather wear something lighter like these ones (which cost more than I really want to spend, and those particular shoes in that shade aren't currently available in my size, but you get the idea).

So I'm browsing current options.

Rumor has it DSW has these shoes available in green in-store.

These ones are decent but also not available in my size (9).

Ooh, maybe these! <- **edit: Yep, after I saw these shoes I could not stop thinking about them. They're the right color, not too formal, and affordable. And I can wear them after the wedding too. Next paycheck, they will be mine!

Uh... yeah. You get the idea.

Happy new year!

Is it too early for a wedding countdown? Seven months and one week!