Monday, May 6, 2013

The Bouquet Details

If you recall, we are using all white flowers in our wedding:  carnations, roses and hydrangea.

For my bridesmaids bouquets, I've decided to just use carnations and flowers.  Here is my inspiration:

I've been doing some shopping to complete all the elements.  I wanted to have blue ribbon to wrap around the stems and I thought it would be cute to attach a charm to each of the bouquets for each of the different girls.

Just like the ties, finding ribbon in the color peacock was rather difficult.  Here in Manhattan, we have Hobby Lobby and JoAnn, but after combing the ribbon aisles, I could only find, you guessed it, navy blue or turquoise.  I figured that the ribbon needs to match a little better since the bouquet will be held directly up to the dresses, thus I commenced the search for peacock-colored ribbon.  I looked at Michael's when I went to Topeka without any luck as well.  So I turned to my friend, Google, and they pointed me to this website:  ribbonbazaar.com.  I found a color called "peacock" and decided to give it a try.  You can request samples, so request I sure did.

After receiving my samples, I put it to the test:
I bought a 50-yard spool of 7/8" Peacock double-faced satin ribbon for $7.00, but they have a minimum order of $10, so they just charged me an extra $3.  Shipping was $6.20.  I would have thought that $16.20 for a roll of ribbon was crazy-talk if I was at Hobby Lobby, but desperate times calls for matching ribbon. 

For my own bouquet, I have some left over white ribbon that I am going to use.  My bouquet will also have hydrangeas and be a tad bit bigger, but they will all be pretty similar.

Also, for each of my bridesmaids, I was wanting to add a charm on each of their bouquets to help distinguish between everyone's flowers.  I found an Etsy shop that had initial charms, SaintsFlowers, and bought an initial charm for each of the girls.  The total was $4.50 (including shipping) and they shipped quickly, despite coming from Canada and I'm super happy with my purchase!

As for my own bouquet, I want to add a charm to it also.  My grandma passed away three years ago this summer and so I'm going to ask my grandpa for something of hers from her massive jewelry collection so I can carry it with me.  She was an amazing woman, having lived during World War II in Nazi, Germany, came to the United States, and made a successful life for herself and her family.  She is really the first person in my family that has passed away and the first person that I've felt a significant loss for, so it's really important to have a piece of her with me because I know she would've loved to have been there.

With that being said, bouquet supplies are almost ready to go.  We just have to get a bit closer so that I can order the flowers from Sam's Club.  I can't wait!

Saturday, May 4, 2013

Don't Tie Me Down...or Do.

We have ties for the groomsmen!
Normally, I would think that this isn't worthy of an entire post, but like everything related to the color Peacock in this wedding, it has proven to be a bit of a challenge.

I went to three different places looking for ties that would match my bridesmaids' dresses.  The two places in town either had turquoise or navy blue, but no peacock.  Durn.  So then I figured, since David's Bridal is affiliated with Men's Wearhouse, surely they would have ties that match that we could purchase for our groomsmen to wear.  Also wrong. 

Then the power of Google revealed itself to me.  I searched for "ties that match David's Bridal peacock" and found this gem of a website:  bows-n-ties.com. They don't blatantly advertise that they are trying to match David's Bridal colors, but after looking at the color names, it was pretty clear.

So, upon selecting the peacock swatch, these were some of the options that I was given.
I didn't really want a patterned tie.  Since the girls are already wearing different dresses, I thought it would be nice to have some cohesion amongst the groomsmen.  I let Adam pick between the first two and he chose the Elegant Teal Blue Mens Tie.  I wasn't particularly sure that it would match, but they don't charge a restocking fee, so I figured I would just return them if they didn't match well enough and suck up the cost of shipping.

After just a few days, they arrived and we put them to the test.  Luckily, I had picked up MOH and Bridesmaid H's dresses the week earlier when I was in Topeka so I was able to compare the ties against the dresses instead of the tiny fabric swatch.
Not too shabby!  They don't match perfectly, but they match better than anything I had previously found so I considered that a WIN. 

With this obstacle being conquered, Adam and I made a trip with his mom to the tuxedo rental store.  I think Adam was expecting me to pick everything out (since that's pretty much been the status quo thus far), but he forced to start caring when I told him, "this is your deal."  He picked out the Perry Ellis 213 style tux in which I did grant Lindsy-Approval:

Since we had ties for the groomsmen, we just had to pick out ties for the ushers and Adam and then vests and shoes for everyone.  We decided to go with just a standard black vest.  For ties, the ushers are wearing just a standard black tie and I persuaded Adam enough to get a white-ish tie (so that he could match MEEEE!). 
Sources:  Black / White / Teal


And shoes:


So we're all set for the guys!  We sent them to get fitted this past week and we'll pick them up on the Thursday before the wedding!  Adam's mom is paying for the groomsman's tuxes but unfortunately the ushers are on their own with a $120 bill.  :(