Just under a month!

Ohmygod! We are at just under a month! Our Wedding Part I happens on September 25. Part II will happen on October 3 (the first's for family, the second for friends).
Many things are done and most other things are almost done or cannot be done until the week of. We will buy cheesecakes for Part I (and one non-cheese cake as per Shira's request), we will finish the favors, which include edibles, we (well, AJ) will hang fairy lights in the trees. My father will finish designing the beautification of the yard (and I will prohibit him from doing the physical work himself); we WILL finish tidying up the house before 40 people descend on it; we will do many other things that I cannot think of right now.
In the meantime, I need to finish hemming Shira's dress, help Rahel find a tie (she's wearing a suit!), hope my bolero comes in time, finish writing the ceremony and our promises to each other, figure out the sand thingy (we're doing a 4 people unity thing which will include the both of us and the girls), make sure the vendors are on track (and pay them), and try and do as much of this as I can before leaving for Burning Man next week. AJ's already left. He'll be gone until September 8th, which leaves us, what 17 days? Right. 2 weeks to finish everything while still maintaining life, and our sanity.
But it feels ok, like we're getting there, and then we have years and years to relax together. (um, yeah, we tend to come up with big projects on a regular basis...)
One month to go!

I've not updated in a while (bad blogger!), but in my defense, life's been busy. School's back in session, but the girls' school is not-go figure. So I have been working full time and dealing with bored kids who are sooooooooo ready to go back to school (in my opinion, of course). Anyway, what with work, home life, kids, getting ready for Burning Man, and getting ready for a wedding in (ohmygod) just about 6 weeks...yeah, life's busy.
However
We have been getting things done. The music is all but done (Rahel's done a great great job with it all), the card box is in process (Shira's working on that), both my skirts are done, one for the family wedding and the other for the friends' wedding, my corsets, I hear, are coming along nicely. My dad's feeling better and the work on the garden's coming along; it's going to be beautiful! The girls' outfits are just about done. The lawyer/prenup thing is progressing. We've finished the programs. That was a big one. AJ, mostly, worked on that. A lot. It started as a simple project mainly because I felt the need to cite the sources we were using (English teacher that I am). And the project grew and grew until its final form was a booklet of silver paper pasted onto blue and with black words printed on it. We also pasted pictures of ourselves on one page, and created a crossword puzzle with trivia about us (well, the internet helped with that part).
Here's the finished product:

The other big piece we finished, and one on which I mostly worked, is the center pieces. I got the idea here: http://offbeatbride.com/2009/01/diy-ornament-bouquet but changed it around a bit. Instead of a bouquet, it's a centerpiece, and that means construction had to be different. I played with it a while and finally found the right way to do it. We also experimented with different sizes of ornaments so the result is a mix of sizes. My niece Abbey helped with this project and it was fun to hang out with her a bit.

This will sit in the middle of a pewter dish with black and blue marbles on it. I'll post pics when it's all done.

Things still to do:

Finish the prenup stuff
Pay the vendors the balances
Finish putting favors together
Rewrite the ceremony a bit as we've talked to our officiant and have a better idea how it's all gonna go.
Finish the earrings the girls and I will wear
Finish working on the yard decorations (closer to the date)
Talk to the photographer about shots we want
Do seating chart for the friends' wedding
Do the technical paperwork for, you know, getting married
Find a frame for the guest book explanation sheet
Write the individual parts of the ceremony

I'm sure there's more that I am forgetting...

Weekend Craftiness

Ah. I have the house to myself this weekend. The girls are with their dad, AJ is away for the weekend, SO, I am taking the weekend to finish some DIY-ness before school starts up again.

This morning I finished these:
My bouquet. It still needs to be fluffed out just right, but this is pretty close:

My two daughters' bouquets, along with mine (the girls are my bridesmaids):

The boutonniere for AJ and our best man:

I got the idea from this post at offbeatbride.com: http://offbeatbride.com/2010/02/crystal-bouquets. Thank you, Megan!
And now that's done, I am going to finish my skirt! And then, the center pieces! And then...well, it'll probably be the end of the weekend by then.

In other news, we're figuring out the music for the actual ceremony. The first song (processional?) will be Metallica's "Nothing Else Matters" in a classical, instrumental, cello version by Apocalyptica. Yay!

Photographer worries

So we got our photographer a few months ago. The process was...fine. I mean, it took a couple of weeks, lots of phone calls, and quite a few visits to different websites, but we found him. We spoke on the phone several times, got the details down and decided we like him. We signed the contract, gave him the deposit, and answered some more questions. Last we heard was "your wedding is on track as far as my part. Do your thing and we'll talk when we get closer to the date." Great!
A couple of weeks ago we wanted to run some ideas by him and to get some more information. We sent an email; no response. We sent another one a few days later, still no response. Yesterday I sent yet another email....nothing.
Should I be worried? I'm getting a bit worried. If I don't hear from him today, I'll call him this afternoon. If he's bailing on us, that'd be bad, but I would rather know now, 8 weeks out (eeee!) while we have time (barely) to find another one.
In other news-We're getting married 8 weeks from tomorrow!!!

Squeee!

I do not squee often, but this calls for it:
Our wedding bands arrived this morning! Squeeee!!
They are plain 14k white gold bands. Mine's 3mm wide and AJ's is 6mm wide.
We put them on to make sure of sizing, showed the girls, and took the rings right off again. They are now in our bedroom, in plain sight as we worried that if we put them in a "safe place" we'd forget where that was.
Pictures will come when we have them on our rings for real.
Until then, again I say Squeee!

Tassels

I forgot to add a picture of the tassels that will hold the Chuppah onto the poles. I made them from ribbons and beads I had around the house.
This is a crafty house; we have lots of material lying around. It just all happened to come together nicely for this project.

yay!

Chuppah

As many of you know, I quilt. I love to quilt. I quilt quite often.
I've made quilts from crib to king size ones, table runners, one big gigantic 3 yard square quilt. I've made them for weddings, babies, birthdays, Bat Mitzvas and just for fun. I've given them away to loved ones, sold a couple, and given more to charities. I made my first one when Rahel was a baby (14 years ago) and have easily made 40 since then.

My latest creation is this:

and a close up:


It is a faux crazy quilt, made almost entirely from scraps from my (way to extensive) fabric stash. The only fabric I bought specifically for this project is the silver fabric.
The quilt measures 65 inches squared

I am quite pleased with the way it came out, and very very pleased about its use: it is the Chuppah for our wedding.
AJ and I will be married under it, two months from today!