a grey's wedding.

Grey's Anatomy has been one of the only shows I've ever watched religiously ever since the first episode. I love the medical/soap opera combination... I also enjoy seeing the products that my company makes in each episode (I'm a nerd like that). Tonight's episode added another element to the formula that made me enjoy it even more! That's right... weddings!

Here's the synopsis (at least for the wedding part of the plot):

Meredith and Derek are getting married and Izzie throws herself into planning the wedding in hopes that it will help her avoid the side effects of chemotherapy. Meredith wants a simple wedding, and her and Derek joke that they want to get married in their scrubs and hold surgical instruments as her bouquet. Izzie tells them a large, traditional wedding is a requirement, and sets up a makeshift bridal boutique in her hospital room, forcing Meredith to try on poofy white dresses against her will. Meredith obliges because she feels bad that Izzie is sick. All in all, it made for a pretty entertaining episode!

I'll admit though, I was a little surprised when Meredith came out in "the" dress. I was envisioning her in a modern gown with no beading or tulle and made of luxurious fabric, like this one from Melissa Sweet.

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Instead, she walked out in this dress.

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I'm not sure what to think of it. It's a pretty dress, I just don't think it really fits her personality on the show. What do you think?

Whether you think the dress fits her style or not, I don't think anyone can argue that her hair and makeup in this picture are gorgeous! File it away in your inspiration folder!

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Thank you Grey's Anatomy for being my unexpected source of wedding inspiration today. I don't know about you, but I hope they are going to show the actual wedding on the show!

the mail came today.

And amidst the bills, Macy's coupons, and junk mail came, there was this envelope.

Inside of the envelope was a pretty little invitation... to my very own bridal shower!

The fact that we are getting married feels a little more real everyday!

Is anyone else really excited for upcoming events leading up to the big day?

something old.

Every bride knows the little rhyme that tells them what they must carry with them on their wedding day. I thought I'd share one of my wedding day items with you all and the story behind it.

One of the first (of many) photos I had clipped out of a wedding magazine was this bouquet from Modern Bride.

I fell in love with the cameo that the bride had attached to her bouquet, in honor of her late grandmother.

My lovely future-mother-in-law must have seen this picture in my wedding binder, because a few months ago she gave me this beautiful cameo and told me that I could attach it to my bouquet just like I'd seen in my inspiration photo.

She told me that she wore this on her wedding day, which made it even more special to me. And I'm honored to be carrying it with me down the aisle as my "something old".

What are you using as your "something old"?

the bout' test.

As I mentioned previously, I have been considering making the boutonnieres for the groomsmen. I had bought some flowers last week to have around the apartment, and since they are on their last leg, I thought I'd use them to test out my bout-making skills. I had some fake hydrangeas as well from some of our other wedding projects, so I used a stem of the flowers and a leaf to supplement the real button mums. After about 2 minutes, here's what I came up with.
It works, but I think it needs some more color. I tried adding a fuchsia feather. Still not loving it, but it proves that more color is better!
I think I'll do another trial, next time with purple button mums. Possibly two mums and less hydrangea, with some hypericum berries if I can find some. I'll leave out the feathers.

What would you do to improve the bouts'? Do you think they have potential?

cake-spiration.

In true bridal form, I've changed the inspiration for our wedding cake a bit since my first little sketch. The reason for the change is simple. I found new cake-spiration that is just sooooo much prettier.

Photo by tm photography.

See what I mean? These cakes make a statement. They say "look at me, I'm simple and pretty and modern and classy and perfect" all at the same time. I didn't know cakes could talk, but these three have spoken to me!

At first I was afraid that my mom (aka the cake baker) would be overwhelmed with having to make three cakes instead of one. But after she saw the gorgeous cake display, complete with cake pedestals and gum paste flowers, she agreed that they would make a beautiful display at our reception. With the baker on board, we set out to find the cake stands.

This proved to be a more difficult task than I had imagined! I looked on eBay, other online shops, Macy's, and a lot of other stores, but none of them had what we were looking for: white cake pedestals (two 12" and one 14"), preferably more modern looking, for under $25 a piece. The only ones I could find were from Macy's Martha Stewart collection, and while I liked them, they didn't seem to be of the best quality. In fact, we were ready to pay for two of them at the store when my very observant fiance noticed that the plate surface on one of them was crooked. As in, so crooked the cake might slide off. That would NOT be good.

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The Mr. and I were at TJMaxx last week when we came across some 12" white cake pedestals that were just what we'd been looking for. There was only one problem... there were only two of them! (Refer to the cake-spiration above... two cake stands most definitely will not do!) Since we liked the stands so much, we bought them. Then we decided to make a night out of it and drove to about 5 different stores to see if another store had a 14" stand, or even another 12" since we could probably make it work. Unfortunately, none of the stores had them.

Not giving up so easily, Mr. M stopped at a few more stores on Monday night on his way home from work (since he works an hour away, there are plenty to choose from along the route) and still, no luck. He stopped at one final store on Tuesday after work (probably the only one left in the northwest Chicagoland area) and FINALLY found one more 12" cake stand. He proudly pulled it out of the bag when he got home. I never thought I'd see my future husband be so excited about a cake pedestal! In fact, he didn't even know what one was before our little search! It was pretty cute.

Here are the cake pedestals in all of their glory, just waiting to hold some fondant-covered goodness on our wedding day.

Oh yeah, and one more thing... they were only $14.99 a piece!

Did anyone else have trouble finding cake stands? Where did you end up finding them?

one musical selection down, many more to go.

I have no clue what song we will dance to for the first time as husband and wife. I have no idea what song I'll walk down the aisle in the last moments before we get hitched. The only song that I have written into the little excel spreadsheet that is our playlist is for the father-daughter dance.

Before getting engaged, I had always imagined my dad and I dancing to "Daughters" by John Mayer. I've always loved John Mayer, and I think that the song is perfect for a wedding dance with daddy. Bonus points are in order as well for it not being overdone and overplayed. I thought for sure this was the song that we'd be playing for the father-daughter dance.

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That is, until my dad mentioned that he'd really like to dance to "It's a Wonderful World" by Louis Armstrong. At first, I didn't know what to think. Of course it's a classic song for the occasion, but this song has some history for my family.

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When I was about 13 years old, my very favorite aunt, who was pretty much the coolest person I had ever known, passed away from breast cancer. I don't even think she was 50 years old. It was really hard on my family, especially my dad. He and his sister were always very close, and they even shared the same birthday (but they weren't twins!). My aunt's favorite song in the entire world was...you guessed it....It's a Wonderful World. It was played at her funeral and every time it's played at a family event, you'll see tears in people's eyes.

I had never even considered playing this song at our wedding, mainly because I didn't want people to be sad during an occasion that is supposed to be happy and fun. But after my dad asked about it, it made sense to me. Weddings are a time to celebrate the marriage between two people, but they are also about joining two families together. This song has an immense amount of meaning to our family. Also, we'd like to somehow honor my aunt at the wedding, since we wish more than anything that she could be there with us. What better way to honor a person than to play a song that will remind everyone of her?

So it's been decided. My dad and I will be dancing to It's a Wonderful World, and my aunt will be looking down on us, happy to be a part of such a special day.

Which song would you choose?

my first DIY donation.

I have a ton of DIY projects finished for our wedding, with plenty more to go in the next few months. But this weekend, I made my first DIY donation. That is, someone else is going to DIY it for me!

You see, we've been searching for green ties for the groomsmen for a long time now. The tuxes for the boys have pinstripes, so I don't want anything crazy going on with the ties. Just a plain tie in a mossy green color will do. Finding plain green ties is a lot more difficult than I thought it would be! We're looking to give the ties to the groomsmen as a gift, along with some green socks and another rather large surprise (that will be the topic of another post), so while we want them to be nice, we do not want to spend a ton of money on them. As you can imagine, finding nice quality, inexpensive, plain mossy green satin ties is an even more difficult task!

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Since I like to sew, I decided I'd find a pattern and make the ties myself. I deconstructed an old tie to use as a pattern, found green fabric at JoAnn's along with the rest of the supplies and went to work. Sadly, the my first tie did not look at great as I'd wanted it to. So I tried again. That one didn't turn out either. It was stiff (which I could fix by changing the interfacing) but I also couldn't get the lining to look like I wanted it to, which bothered me even though no one would know by looking at them from the front. Plus, making the ties was not fun AT ALL. I don't have a long enough cutting mat, which made the tedious task of cutting the fabric even more annoying. The fabric was nearly impossible to fold in a straight line to make nice lines along the sides of the tie. The entire length of the inside of the tie had to be hand sewn. Did I mention yet how much I hate hand-sewing? I hate it! Overall, the ties were a huge pain in the you-know-what to make, and in the end they didn't even look very nice.

My future mother-in-law was visiting this past weekend for Easter, and asked how the ties were coming along. I showed her the two that I had made, and expressed to her how much I did not enjoy making them. Then she suggested we talk to a friend of hers, who is a retired seamstress and is also doing my dress alterations. She called her up and asked if she would have time to make the ties for us. Luckily for our groomsmen (and for my sanity), she said YES! I am so happy to have this project off my plate! And I can't wait to see how they turn out when made by a real professional!

Did anyone else struggle with a DIY project and ultimately give it up to a professional?