What To Do... The Reception Card

I might be alone here, but creating my invitations has definitely been my favorite part of planning. I love paper and I love beautiful design. Receiving wedding invites in the mail is one of my all time favorite things. I had considered designing them myself, but after a few test runs with engagement party invites and save the dates, I wisely chose the supremely talented Margot of Atelier Isabey to design them for me. Due to our long engagement, I had to put it off for sooooo long. I could not wait to get started.

I am in the middle of round two of revisions. Can I just tell you how exciting it is to see Margot's email and know that there is a magical little PDF just waiting to be opened? I can't really show you what we are working on, but here is my primary inspiration from her samples.


The first invitation that she created for me had all of the details for both the ceremony and the reception on one card. I liked this because it didn't need to buy a "reception card," which seemed a little unnecessary anyway because we aren't inviting anyone to the ceremony but not the reception.

However, the more that I looked at the card, the more I thought, "Gee, thats a lot of text!" The font was also a little on the small side and making it bigger might make the font even more overwhelming. The problem is that we are already over budget and, although the cards are affordable, its just another thing putting us in the red.

I need help! What would you do?

I'm a Sucker

I bought my rehearsal dinner dress yesterday. Until hitting "add to cart," I hadn't really thought about what I would wear to that particular event. After we booked the location a year ago, I kinda stopped thinking about the rehearsal dinner altogether.

Then I saw a cute white dress on one of the one million wedding blogs that I read and I started thinking that it might be fun to wear white for the RD. I headed over the Anthropologie, which is my go-to place for... almost anything, and the first white dress that I saw was this one.

The fabric looks so nice and light. I love all the little details, it's white and they had it in my size. What really inspired me to hit "add to cart," however, was the name of the dress- La Jolla. La Jolla, California is where Mr. Peacock proposed. I have been known to impulse buy things based on their name and it has usually served me well. I have purchased shoes (awesome vintage black and white polka dot peep toes), lipstick and a pricey handbag all because we shared a first name. I had been pretty good about laying off the impulse buys thus far for wedding purchases, but I'm a sucker for a good name.

Anyone else been guilty of the wedding impulse buy?

Visiting The Mothership

My mom is a crazy cupcake baker. She makes them whenever she has an excuse and they are always absolutely delicious. When this little gem popped up in my google reader right before Easter, I knew we had to make them.

The only problem was that we needed fondant to make those little ears and neither of us had used it before. I knew that you could buy it buy the box rather than make it yourself, but that was the end of my knowledge. We found that Wilton sold it online, but where to buy it in the store? Oh wait, the Wilton headquarters and company store just are minutes from my parent's house! Neither of us had ever been, so this seemed like a great excuse.

Behold what greeted us when we arrived:

Pans!

Icing! Sprinkles! Dye for fondant!

Cake tiers and stands!

Tschotskies!

We had such a good time. These pictures do not do the store justice. Baking supplies were EVERYWHERE. The trip almost- almost- got me thinking that I could make my own wedding cake. Then I remembered the super deal that I got on my cake and that my sanity was worth the extra money.

Just in case you were wondering, here are our little cupcakes!

Oh Boy, It's Really Happening!

Our Save the Dates are in the mail! Its really official. Mr. Peacock and I are getting married. This proves it:


The flash is broken on our camera so these pictures aren't the best :( The color of the envelopes is closer to the color in the first picture than the latter. We worked so hard on the design of those silly cards, I am so darn proud of them.

The only downside is that we left our last name off of them. Initially, these were only going to some very close friends and family rather than to the entire guest list and we liked the design better without the last names. Then our parents weighed in on this decision and the list grew and grew. Most of our list won't notice, but we are worried about a few great aunts and uncles. They may know me as one of "Dianne's kids" rather than by my actual first name. These people are also unlikely to do further investigating on our website to find out exactly who is sending them mail. However, since they were already printed and about to be stuffed, I pretended like it didn't bother me.

That's me, Miss Peacock, spreading confusion through the Chicago suburbs.

Anyone else have an "oops!" moment with their printed stuff?

150 Days

There are 150 days left until our wedding. 150 days left to the wedding. 150 days left to the wedding. I will be silently chanting that all day long.

Mr. Peacock and I have been engaged since December of 2006. At the time, we had quite a few question marks looming. Both Mr. Peacock and I were thinking about going back to school. Rumors were flying around his office that his company was going to be acquired. If the acquisition happened, there was a good chance that we would be packing up and moving to either Manhattan or California. Otherwise, we wanted to put our house on the market and move closer to downtown. It was all a little too exciting. I got nervous and put shoved the wedding date into 2008, under the impression that I would appreciate the extra time to plan. My best friend is getting married in June, 2008 and since we would be in each other's bridal parties, it might be best to space them out a bit. The date was set for September 2008.

Mr. Peacock in me in our silly, just engaged bliss

At first it was fun. I had my pick of the vendors which helped since both my church and reception sites are very popular places. I had a few vendors tell me that it was too early and they weren't interested in talking to me yet, which wasn't as much fun, but it made it easier to weed out my growing list of options. My list of DIY plans also kept growing, since I had almost two years to get it done. We were getting toasts and congratulations left and right. I couldn't tell our engagement story enough. Being engaged was so exciting for those first few months. Then it really started to drag.

Friends and friends of friends also started getting engaged and choosing dates well before ours. Then they started getting married before us. One friend just got engaged in March and is planning a May wedding. She didn't need 22 months to plan, only 6 weeks. I wasn't expecting it, but I was insanely jealous. I just wanted to be married. I have never liked the word "fiance" and around the one year engagement mark I really started to hate it. It just seemed silly to use it at that point. Every time the sun came out on a Saturday I would kick myself for not picking that day. Then I just started kicking myself EVERY Saturday. Who cares if there was a snow storm? I would be MARRIED! I didn't, and I really still don't, get what's so great about being engaged. I just want to be Mrs. Peacock, darn it!

But, as I got closer to the 150 day mark, things started to look up. My mom and Mr. Peacock's mom started asking about shower dates. I set the date for my alterations. The bridesmaid's dresses were ordered. My shoes were purchased (yay!). The ball was rolling. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. It is finally happening! I actually woke up this morning excited. I know these next five months are going to go by so quickly and I really can't wait.

Has anyone else felt this way? Did any married bees look back and appreciate their long engagement?

My Sweet Dad

After our very successful cake tasting trip, Mr. Peacock and I went to my parents' house for a visit. I started complaining that the photo of our cake on Martha Stewart's website was too small to really see the detail. I wanted to send the image to our baker but I wasn't sure it would help. My dad is a computer genius so he started playing around with the photo in an attempt to stretch it out, but it was so pixilated that it looked like a big mess. I resolved myself to the fact that I would just have to hope for the best.

I went out shopping with my mom for a bit and came home to my dad, smiling. He ran to his office and came back with the MS Weddings Fall 2003 issue that had originally featured my cake. The cake had taken over an entire page, so it was much easier to see the detail. Dad scanned in the image, printed it on photo paper and voila! A perfect example to show my baker. He was so sweet about the whole thing, it almost made me think that he is enjoying this wedding planning thing!

I wanted to mention that that particular issue is full of goodies. There are a few MS images that regularly appear on blogs and knot bios- I was surprised at how many came from that issue! I highly recommend visiting your local library a call and spend some time with the back issues. That Martha is a genius (and Darcy Miller, of course). Here are just a few of the pages that I scanned in. I would have done the entire magazine but my legs started to cramp up from standing over the scanner.