JaxTeach's PJ-- SBP/CG/UK Upper December 14, 2007 *After Wedding Update 12/15*

[mbrooks]

Everything looks great! I really love your brooch.

 

[Hillary12.8.07]

Everything looks awesome! I love love your colors, the blues and purples are beautiful. Your menu card really shows how awesome the colors look together!
We got our Precious Moments figurine in the mail today, but its completely smudged up, so I've got to call them tommorow and see what to do, I'm so sad!
You're table set up is really pretty too! I can't wait to see pictures of how it all comes together!
We're getting so close!!! I hit 100 days last week and was SO excited! Time is flying!

 

[shasess]

Just read through your entire PJ, Awesome!!! Everything looks so great. Your new tiara is beautiful!!!!

 

[Lisacope]

I really want to do invitations similar to yours and I am on the fence about DIY. Are you able to order the invitation parts as a "set" on cardsandpockets? I have an inkjet printer but I suppose I could get them printed at Kinko's if I couldn't print on my printer. Do you know about how much your invitations will be when you get done with them?

 

[JaxTeach]

I really want to do invitations similar to yours and I am on the fence about DIY. Are you able to order the invitation parts as a "set" on cardsandpockets? I have an inkjet printer but I suppose I could get them printed at Kinko's if I couldn't print on my printer. Do you know about how much your invitations will be when you get done with them?

I haven't put all my invitations together yet so I'm not sure how big of a hassle it's going to be! I purchased the envelopes (invitation & response card), navy pocketfolders and silver mattes on Cards & Pockets. It was $63 including shipping. They arrived very quickly! As far as I know, you have to purchased everything seperately. I bought the cardstock I'm using for the actual invite and the inserts at Michaels. I would guess I spent under $100 total, including the glue to put them together and a few other things.

Oh yeah, you can order a "test kit" from Cards & Pockets. It's under $15 (which I wasn't thrilled about!). It includes a pocket folder, RSVP card, invitation card stock, matte, and envelopes. You might consider getting that first to see if it will work for you.

I printed a few test invitations on my inkjet printer. I guess it depends on how heavy and what kind of cardstock you use. The test invites printed nicely on the inkjet. I have heard of people having problems because their inkjet won't print on paper that is thick.

 

[caryndisneydiva]

wow! i just read your entire trip report! you're getting married a few weeks before me! i love that you guys were engaged at castaway cay! that is so great! my df and i met when we were working at the BoardWalk during my WDW college program in 2002!

i got my dress at davids as well. it was SO EASY! i loved that experience! that planning tool is neat as well! happy planning!

 

[JaxTeach]

wow! i just read your entire trip report! you're getting married a few weeks before me! i love that you guys were engaged at castaway cay! that is so great! my df and i met when we were working at the BoardWalk during my WDW college program in 2002!

i got my dress at davids as well. it was SO EASY! i loved that experience! that planning tool is neat as well! happy planning!

I tell ya, that College Program has ways of working magic! Luckily, no magic was worked for DF while he was a CP or I wouldn't be writing a PJ! Congratulations on your upcoming wedding! Thanks for reading.

DF is out of town this weekend visiting his parents. Since DF is out of town, I get to play in my wedding dress. I tried everything on together last night to see what I want to change/keep.

Tonight I've decided to dye my crinoline finally. This has been on my mind for a while and thought I should just go for it. I have 4 different crinolines for the record (2 will be on eBay soon). I've finally decided to wear a 3 hoop skirt closest to my body and then a super full crinoline over it. I'm wearing the hoop skirt with the smallest hoop on the bottom. It is really just to keep the crinoline off my legs so I'm not sweating to death underneath.

To dye my crinoline I followed the basic directions I found online at several sites. I decided to dye the hoop skirt first since I could cover it up if it was terrible. I drenched it with HOT water. Then I poured the "dye bath" into the washer and said a prayer that my washer would not stain. I let the skirt agitate for 30 minutes. After that, I ran a normal wash cycle. Repeated the same steps for the full crinoline.

The actual crinoline didn't come out as well. I think it is because it has soooooooo much tulle that the solid material kept getting twisted up. It has a very faint tie dye look, but I don't think it will be noticeable.

Now the test tomorrow is to see if you can see the crinoline through my dress.

Here are a few pictures of the process and finished product.
Dye Bath

Hoop Skirt in Washer

Hoop Skirt after Dye

Crinoline after Dye

Crinoline Tulle

Final Product (after washing)

Crinoline Tulle after washing

 

[Hillary12.8.07]

I think it looks great!! It turned out really well, and it's not too dark so I wouldn't think it would show through your dress.
Where did you find your directions by the way?? I've been thinking about doing this too, I saw pictures on theknot w/a girl w/a red crinoline and loved it. I want to do either pink or the wine color. Seeing yours turn out so well gives me confidence that it's not a bad idea!

 

[JaxTeach]

I think it looks great!! It turned out really well, and it's not too dark so I wouldn't think it would show through your dress.
Where did you find your directions by the way?? I've been thinking about doing this too, I saw pictures on theknot w/a girl w/a red crinoline and loved it. I want to do either pink or the wine color. Seeing yours turn out so well gives me confidence that it's not a bad idea!

Yep, the Knot bio intrigued me as well! I love the lime green crinoline... but that wouldn't for me. I think a wine color would go really well with your colors. I think I'm going to let me niece dye her's pink even though there is nothing else pink in our wedding. She's a pink girl so she would like that.

The biggest tip I've read while researching is to take the time to untwist it while it's in the wash cycle (which you have to restart over and over for 30 minutes). That prevents the tie-dying. Right now I'm running the washer with bleach... hopefully there are no permanent stains.

Here are the two sites I used for guidance:

http://www.weddingbee.com/2006/12/18/unexpected-color/

http://www.theknot.com/co_profileview.htm?profilename=coloredslipbio&MsdVisit=1

Good luck! Let us see how it turns out if you go for it!

 

[JackieSparrow]

I'm sorry I'm late with this comment, but I really want your engagement pic dress!! I love it! Nice choice!

Can't wait to see the pictures!

 

[JaxTeach]

I'm sorry I'm late with this comment, but I really want your engagement pic dress!! I love it! Nice choice!

Can't wait to see the pictures!

Thank you! I didn't actually wear the dress for our pictures. I didn't think it was very *me*. I thought I'd be uncomfortable taking pictures in something I wouldn't wear normally. So I opted for a black button down and skirt with flip flops.

So my crinoline has now dried and I tried it on with the dress. Can you tell I love putting my dress on when DF isn't around?? He doesn't know about the 2nd dress, so it stays hidden. I'm posting a cropped pic for that reason!

I am very relieved that you cannot see the blue through the dress.

 

[jasonandlisa]

Your crinoline looks great! What a clever idea!! I love it

 

[JaxTeach]

Your crinoline looks great! What a clever idea!! I love it

Thank you! I love my purplish/blue crinoline!

It's been a while since I've updated my PJ! A lot has happened in the last month.

We are just under 2 months out now and it's all starting to feel real.

We received our engagement photos from Randy Chapman a couple of weeks ago. Here are a couple of pictures from our session:

We've done a lot of wedding work recently since my parents were down visiting. We've finalized our budget and surprisingly everything we've planned on is a go now. That is certainly a relief!

I had my mom take some pictures of my niece and I in our wedding attire. I'm very happy to say that my dress is becoming fairly loose! Unfortunately, it's in the top area!

I've also settled on shoes. I'm used to wearing heels everyday so the only issue was that I am naturally the same height as DF. With heels I'm going to be significantly taller. These shoes are by Coloriffics... They're called Total Eclipse. I can't decide whether I want to dye them or not.

I took a picture of our final program prototype. I keep going back and forth between these and a tri-fold. I see a lot of the tri-fold programs, so I think I like this one best.

And I put our engagement photos in our album to help us select which pictures to mail with our invitations.

I bought some other gifts for our family at the new Disney Character Premiere when we were in Orlando, but I didn't take pictures of them. We still need to purchase our Lightscribe CD burner so we can make our favor CDs. Then we will have to start putting our gift boxes together and favors... and then it will be December 14 and it will all be over!

I put together all of our wedding invitations last Friday night and mailed them Saturday morning. I ran to Walgreens before mailing them to get copies of 2 engagement pics to included in the envelope. Here is my final invitation product:

I also finished up our 2nd (and maybe last?) newsletter. It is a whopping 8 pages long... I had a little too much fun making these!

After mailing our invitations, I decided to do a bit of shopping. I wanted to buy DF's wedding band and my honeymoon wedding band (I'm not wearing my e-ring or real wedding band to Paris). I pulled into the mall parking lot not wanting to buy something from an overpriced mall store. DF and I bought my diamond online (best decision ever!) and had it set at Jared. Jared chipped my stone and I do not trust chain jewelry stores at this point. I got on my cell phone and looked up jewelry stores. Luckily there was an indepedent store nearby. I found our bands there!! They gave me a great price and had the bands ready in 30 minutes. They are just plain white gold bands, but I am so glad to have that of "The List!"

I love the box... it looks like a treasure chest.

We are going to purchase a few bottles of wine for our dinner. I am not a "wine person" so I bought a few bottles that I know CG can offer us to try them out. I want to serve California wines. I need a white wine to drink since my best friend suggested I will need a little something after the ceremony. Does anyone have any suggestions?

I ordered a photo book from Shutterfly Sunday and it arrived today. I got it for free-- didn't even pay for shipping, so I was happy about that. I will post pictures later. For something that was free, it's nice and I think we'll have it on the guest book table at our wedding dinner.

We have a lot of work to do yet, but everything is finally coming along. I can't believe we're under 2 months now!!

Oh yeah, Figment! I saw a cute dessert in someone else's PJ and asked our WP about them. We got a price today ($15pp) and I think we're going to have these at our dinner. I think it will be a nice way to incorporate one of our favorite things-- Epcot-- into our wedding.

 

[padisneyfour]

I loved reading about your plans. We are planning a escape VR for our 20th anniversary so its nice to see an intimate pj - I love the figment dessert! Your colors are beautiful. I planned on the blue and may add some purple now too. Enjoy your day

 

[caryndisneydiva]

i'm so glad your budget worked out and you got everything you wanted! your skirt looks great! did you put the crinoline and hoop under it for that pic?

 

[JaxTeach]

i'm so glad your budget worked out and you got everything you wanted! your skirt looks great! did you put the crinoline and hoop under it for that pic?

Yep... I have the 3 hoop (with just the bottom hoop in) and the super full crinoline on in that dress pic.

 

[caryndisneydiva]

Yep... I have the 3 hoop (with just the bottom hoop in) and the super full crinoline on in that dress pic.

you're my hero! i don't want to look like a cake!!!

 

[JaxTeach]

I loved reading about your plans. We are planning a escape VR for our 20th anniversary so its nice to see an intimate pj - I love the figment dessert! Your colors are beautiful. I planned on the blue and may add some purple now too. Enjoy your day

Thank you! I never thought I'd have a wedding-- it was just never my *thing.* I'm so glad we are having a real wedding... it has been so much fun to plan! I definitely foresee a post-wedding planning depression in my future!

 

[M&M126]

Wow I love everything! Dress, crinoline, invitations! Very fun

 

[JaxTeach]

Wow I love everything! Dress, crinoline, invitations! Very fun

Thank you! It's great to hear kind words when the stress is finally setting in... 1 month to pay Disney, 2 months until the wedding... it's gone by so fast!