The Gift Not Wanted

By now you’ve probably noticed that the Cotton Candy wedding isn’t your typical formal affair. It probably goes without saying that the some of the more traditional wedding day traditions and accessories such as a garter, cake cutting set and toasting flutes aren’t high on the CCandy must have list. Actually these items are on our don’t need/ don’t want please don’t waste your money on it list.

Mami CCandy apparently hasn’t gotten the memo. For the past 6 months she’s been insisting that it is Sister CC, as the maid of honor, duty to gift us toasting flutes and cake server. Seriously it was out of control we couldn’t go one family gathering without her bringing it up, the most mundane conversations would lead into a discussion about toasting flutes and cake cutting. I’m not sure why she was so obsessed but no amount of reason would change her mind, so it was no surprise when I unwrapped sister CC shower gift and found this-

For a second I thought sister CC had bought me some shoes. Perhaps some cute wedding flats for dancing? Not so much. I opened the box to reveal the sweetest, cutest, champagne flutes ever.

I L-O-V-E, love my flutes and all of the common sense reasons to not have them have since left my brain. Yes they are totally impractical, super breakable and expensive but sister CC was excited to give them to us and for us to use them on our day and so are we!

Lesson learned. If friends and family want to gift you something for your big day let them. It comes from a good place and you may just find yourself loving your new gift!

Tell me Hive have you received a gift you swore you didn’t want/need only to find yourself head over heels in love with it?

The Straw That Broke Miss Cotton Candys Back

Alternative title how the wrong linens cost Miss Cotton Candy 500 bucks and her sanity.

Yesterday I received what I described to Mister CC as barf inducing from our coordinator regarding our linens. I’m not sure what spurred our coordinator to reach out to our rental company to confirm the dimensions of our linens, maybe some sort of wedding coordinator six sense I’m not sure but I’m thankful that she did because come to find the linens we reserved are too short for our tables. Not completely end of the word material but this isn’t really what I had in mind when I envisioned our tables-

Image via Elite Bridal Concierge

The simple fix would be to reserve new floor length linens from our rental company and call it a day. Unfortunately for us our rental company doesn’t carry linens long enough to reach the floor which means in order to achieve our vision of long reception tables we have go through a different rental company and shell out an extra 500 bucks, an outrageously large amount that makes my heart hurt and my bum hole pucker.

Linens we’re supposed to be such a small portion of our budget so to have the cost almost triple on top of increasing catering, a ginormous must buy list and a pile of unfinished DIY and my anxiety hit a boiling point.

I’m ashamed to say I broke and spent my whole drive home, an hour and a half to be exact, in tears trying to decide whether I could come to terms with less than perfect lines or stomach spending the extra money on the correct ones. Once I got home I continued my tear induced madness and buried myself under a pile of blankets for a full blown pity party of one.

Mr CC being a lover of tough love marched into our room and told me I needed to face my problems. He was giving me 1 hour to cry it out after which he expected me up and out of bed and in the living room ready to crunch the numbers to see were we could find the extra money for all our added expenses.

Thanks to Mr CC kick in the pants we were able to shuffle around our budget to afford all the extra expenses that are getting thrown our way and get together a game plan to tackle our DIY mountain. I’m still a little anxious about our ever growing to do list but I trust Mr CC to keep my on track the next 30 plus days and I’m crossing my figures that we’ve seen the end of the unexpected expenses even though I have a feeling we haven’t!

Have you had a bridal meltdown? How do you handle unexpected budget curveballs?

Your Invited!

The Cotton Candy invitations have finally flown the coop and are on their way to their new homes! These beauties were a true labor of love for Mr. CCandy and me. They took up way more time than we ever anticipated and a few tears may have been shed in the process but they were beyond worth it because I’m in deep love with them!

The Invitations were printed on the yummiest pearly shimmery paper and were a combination of inkjet and screen printing. We had initially planned on screen-printing all 3 inserts but struggled with getting a clean burn on the screen and ended up printing the text for each insert on our cheepo ink jet printer and screen printed the color boarder.

Invitation

Map

RSVP

The fabric for the backing was screen printed by us on the most perfect shade of chartreuse fabric and the 3 inserts and fabric backing were stitched together with grey thread.

I originally planned on going with a wraparound label similar to the one we used on our STD but opted instead for fancy labels that we cut using my Cricut and scrap paper. For postage we went with the new Forever Jazz stamp because it had a midcentury vibe and the George Washington $.20 stamp.

At the end of the day we were about 2 weeks late in sending our invitations out which wouldn’t have bothered me too much except for the fact that we received several nasty-grams from guest via facebook about their tardiness. Hopefully their fabulousness will make people forget that they should have received them about 2 weeks ago and get them excited for our wedding!

Anyone else send their invitations late?

Insert pics courtesy of brother CCandy

Shower Time!

I’ve said it before Hive, I have the best bridesmaids on the face of the planet and there is no great evidence of this then the amazing shower that they threw in our honor this past weekend. Bridesmaid S and SD (who happens to be 7 months pregnant with her 1^st baby!) thought of everything from a perfectly coordinated candy buffet, yummy homemade sweets, plethora of tasty wines and spirits to get the party going and even went as far as having a professional photographer to document the day!

Wonderful details!



Plentiful booze thanks to Sister CCandy!

After some drinks, munchies and mingling we decided to play some games. Now I’m not a huge fan of wedding shower games but I did request that we play the my favorite shower game, the toilet paper wedding dress game. Since our shower was coed BM SD mom had the brilliant idea of having the boys as our models, best idea ever!

Our guest were amazingly generous and presented us with some amazing gifts and I’m so grateful to be able to call this group of women friends and family and can’t wait to party down with them at our wedding!

My lovely Bridesmaid! Love you girls!

Gotta get the group shoot in!

all images by Coco McKown

Easy Peasy Favors

This past weekend Mr CC and I had the pleasure of attending a wonderful shower in our honored thrown by my amazing bridesmaids. I had mentioned earlier that I had offered to take the favor portion of the party planning off my bridesmaid plate so the Friday before our shower I got busy cranking out these easy peasy DIY sachets favors.

You may be surprised to know that its bits and pieces of yarn I’ve been saving from my pom pom crafts. For some crazy reason I’ve spent the last 5 months saving all of my yarn trimmings from my poms so when the idea of making scented sachets for the shower came up I knew I had the perfect filler.

To make the scented sachets all you need is a tulle favor pouch and fragrance used in perfume or candle making. With your yarn bits in a bowl take your fragrance and lightly saturate the yarn and give it a quick stir to evenly distribute the fragrance.

Fill your tulle bags about half full and tie it off with a quick bow and you’re done!

We topped ours off with some store bought die cut thank you tags.

In total the entire project took us about an hour to complete and we received rave reviews at the shower!

Anyone else contributing to their shower?