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?

Progress!

Hive I owe you a huge apology! I’ve been such a fail Bee blogger the past couple of weeks with only about 3 post in the past 2 weeks. We’ve been in invitation hell thanks to our May send out deadline but I’m happy to say we are making progress! Supplies have been bought, and they are fabulous if I do say so myself!

Fabric to back our invites has been screen printed.

And Mr. CCandy has been busy at work sewing over 100 buttons onto our belly bands. If anyone is interested in a how-to for these let me know and I’ll get one together.

We’re making progress and have a plan in place to get these suckers done and out the door come the first week in March! Wish us luck!

Anyone else pushing to meet a tight wedding deadline?

Invitation Inspiration II

About 3 weeks after sending our designer Kristen the inspiration pics for our invites we received our custom proofs. I had begun to get a little nervous about the outcome of the invites since I hadn’t given Kristen any specific details regarding wording, sizing and color but I was ecstatic when I received our proofs. Kirsten worked her magic and was able to pull all the elements I loved into 3 separate invites for us to pick from.

Each invitation was sized to fit in a #10 envelope and had some Mid-century flair featuring our font Festiva with sewing and craft touches to unite our handmade modern. The first one was inspired by the Style Me Pretty invite I sent her and echoed the look and feel of our STD’s.

Invites designed by Kristen Pon with In the Now Weddings

Invite number 2 was inspired by our love of concert posters.

Invites designed by Kristen Pon with In the Now Weddings

Last but not least was our third choice with had a simpler elegant feel to it and I was really drawn to the simple wording of the invite.

Invites designed by Kristen Pon with In the Now Weddings

After some discussion back and forth Mr CCandy and I finally decided upon Invite #1. I really love the frame shape that Kristen created and really love all the different sewing elements she included into the design.

Our Final Invite Suite!
Invites designed by Kristen Pon with In the Now Weddings

We received the final design last week and were now in a race to get these bad boys screen-printed and assembled in time for our 1^st week in May deadline!

What do you guys think? Anyone else up against a time crunch to get your invites out the door?

Invitation Inspiration

I always assumed I would design and assemble our wedding invites. Why wouldn’t I? I designed our o’ so pretty save the dates I should be able to tackle the invites no problem. Except for the fact that we were about a month and a half behind schedule in sending them out because It took me so long to finish the design and let’s not forget the many many hours spent in front of my computer, Time that could have been better spent on other projects that are now behind schedule. So I’ve compromised and have handed over the design of our invitation suite along with all of our paper products to the professionals and Hive I couldn’t be happier!

For the past couple of months I’ve been working with our coordinator Amanda design associate Kristen and the whole processes has been a breeze. We started off by emailing her a hodge podge of inspiration pictures along with some pics of our STD, font choice and signature pattern.

First up were these fabulous invites by Pinkpolka Wedding Design. I love the bold pattern and simple layout.

Image Via Stylemepretty.com Photo by James Design Studios Invite Designed by Pinkpolka Wedding Design

I love the vintage flair and colorful details of this free download from the Wedding Chicks.

Image via Weddingchicks.com Invitation designed by Susie of Zee Studio Photo by Julie Harmsen Photography.

Up next was a scan of a page from my absolutely favorite Magazine ReadyMade. I love the mix of tyle faces and the mix of color.

Scan by me of ReadyMade magazine

Our most random inspiration pics was one of Mr CC and I favorite concert posters. The poster is one of our favorites largely because of its vintage feel and even thought the poster itself has nothing to do with the rest of our inspiration images I loved the feel of it and wanted to bring that into our invites.

Last but not least was the one design element that I was set on having from day one. A couple of years ago I received a gift from Anthroplogie with an adorable button ribbon. I loved it and filed it away as inspiration for a future DIY. For our wedding I plan to use the button ribbon as our invitation suites belly band.

Image Via Effortless Anthropologie Blog

Once I sent our inspiration pics to Kristen I waited impatiently while she worked away creating 3 unique designs for us to choose from and man did she ever deliver!

Next time I’ll share with you our 3 proofs along with our final choice!

Anyone else going the custom design route for your invites?