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the renegade bride

“the wild, wacky adventures of a bridal industry insider +newlywed + new homeowner and (in practice)renovation-maven. Whee!”

May 5, 2011 The Perfect Margarita & Good News

I got a great call today— my dress is shipping from NYC and will be here next week. I’m super stoked because my birthday is Tuesday and I’m hoping the divine Dress gods send my dress to me on MY BIRTHDAY!! How freaking cool would that be? (Answer: totally cool)

If you like Margaritas (it’s Cinco de Mayo, who doesn’t) I have a great recipe for making a pitcher of heavenly margarita goodness. It’s really refreshing & very good. Technically, I’d guess this is a “Gold Margarita” or a “Texas Margarita” but I just call it a good margarita, so here you go:

1 cup anjeo tequila  (I like Don Julio’s, but 1800 is also good and not as expensive. You can also use any other kind of tequila you want (respado, silver…just be sure it’s an agave tequila)

2 shots of orange liquor. I like Gran Gala or Grand Mariner more than Triple Sec— a better flavor, in my opinion, but Triple Sec is cheaper. If you want blue margaritas, try Blue Cuaraco, though I hate that stuff)

3 cups of “Simply Limeade”

2 cups of “Simply Lemonade”

The juice from 1 lime, 1 lemon, and one orange.

Mix, mix, mix. Taste. It’s a little on the sweet side until you add ice. If you feel it’s too sweet, that’s easily corrected with lime juice.

It’s delicious, I think.

May 3, 2011 Hair. Teeth. Etc.

Update on the teeth: I used a 7 day whitening kit and I had to reduce it from 30 minutes to 20 minutes each session, but my teeth are definitely whiter. I think I am going to do 1 more round pre-wedding in about 2 weeks. I have 5 weeks left til THE DAY so I think that 2-3 weeks from now, another round will do me well. Has anyone ever done the multiple treatments? Thanks so much for all the tips on products and the sensodyne— life saver, ya’ll. Totally worth it, my teeth look way better and I feel far less self conscious about them!

Update on the Hair: doing a hair trial on 5.9 as a gift from future mom in law. I am having a slight hair dillema, though: all of my time outdoors has lightened my hair considerably. The problem stems from the fact that I’m a natural blonde. My hair grows in a really drab, mousy, dishwater color and then as it hits the sun, it gets lighter. I went in for my color about 3 weeks ago and had a base of a rich brown and then added in some more hightlights and lowlights in shades of blonde and caramel and a bit of red. The sun, coupled with my intense use of biotin– made my growing in hair turn a pretty bright blonde, and the rest of the top of my hair has lightened up. The ends are still darker. As a result, I look a “hot mess” of hair color.

I am trying to decide what to do— knowing I’m going to be spending lots of time outdoors pre-wedding, I think this lightening issue is only going to increase. So, do I not fight nature and when I go in for my hair trial, do some more blonde and light shade highlights, and then when I go for my last pre-wedding haircut (scheduled for 5.31–11 days before the wedding) do I do more highlights and hope it all looks good?

Ugh.

To put it in perspective: here I am with my post WNTW shade, a rich chestnutty brown with some auburn:

Pre- WNTW A few years ago, my hair will get this blonde if I let it, but It’s always really brassy:

So I started thinking, maybe a blend of these two…

But then I couldn’t visualize how I’d look, so I went onto the makeover website, Tazz.

Here’s me with Jennifer Anniston’s hair and a bit of a tan:

Or with a darker brown and some heavier highlights (BTW my hair will not be this long…it’s right below my shoulders IRL)

And one with lots and lots of light highlights and more of an ash tone:

For fun, here I am with Kyra Sedgewick blonde hair:

So, what do ya’ll think? What’s your fave look?

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April 27, 2011 Our Rings

On Friday, we ordered our wedding rings!

We went to our favorite jeweler, Elizabeth Gregory, and picked out bands. I really ought to have taken pictures, but I’m negligent and I didn’t. This one is really similar (it might actually be the one, I just don’t exactly recall) to what we picked out for Don:

It’s from Novell and in palladium

Mine is a channel set band (but not an eternity band as shown below, but the closest I could find in the look of mine):

It has diamonds and is set in palladium.

It’s an odd thing, but once you order the bands all the sudden it feels all the more pressing– it’s no longer this far off thing: it’s six weeks away. In six weeks, we’ll be married. That’s crazysauce. Crazy awesome, yes, but crazy nevertheless!!

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April 26, 2011 Compasses. When did ya’ll become a theme?

Compasses, somehow, are now a theme in my wedding. I have become obsessed with them, and find their alluring appeal call my name on the regular. I guess it started out with the fact that our wedding is a destination wedding, so I liked the idea of there being a compass on our map. And then I thought, hey, I like compasses—how about compass place cards? And now…I’m stretching it a bit further by having a compass charm on my bouquet I can later convert to a necklace, and compass cufflinks for Don.

Whilst checking through ideas for the compass thing and finding a great set of cufflinks, which I did, I stumbled upon this idea— making cufflinks and charm with a map of Hawaii inside…

I like these a lot, so I contacted the etsy seller  and ordered them!. I don’t think it will be too removed to add maps in at this point. Right? Well, maybe. It might be too many themes going on. Not that anyone will really pay attention to my map cufflinks.

I got the compass place cards ordered, I love these and think they are so fun. I think that in order to pull all these ideas together I may make little boxes for the welcome bags for our guests that are wrapped in vintage-hawaii maps, so that it all pulls these ideas together.

Yay for maps!

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April 25, 2011 House Post: Stage I: landscaping

Well, here we go with before & after stage one: landscaping. Tis the time of year to get out there and actually accomplish landscaping tasks, so here’s a little show and tell of what we’ve accomplished thus far:

Here’s the front of the house before:

We had crazy holly bushes and bushes that had not been trimmed for a very long time…


Very clearly overrun with weeds

First, we trimmed. Trimmed up the overgrown holly trees that are at least 60 years old, and did some low-branch trimming on the red cedar. We pulled up and out some overgrown, ill-conditioned, and diseased bushes. Then, we planted shade-loving hosta, native ferns, and some cute groundcover:

We dug up concrete rounds from the backyard– our entire neighborhood has them– and they are from the Ready Mix concrete company and were used as testers for the strength of concrete. They’d give them away by the lot, apparently, so we reappropraited ours as garden edging:

Our trees pretty much cover the sun. Even with all the trimming we did, more is needed– but it’s just late in the season for trimming and I didn’t want to kill such old, established trees, so we let the shade work for us.

On the opposite side, we had one diseased shrub that had to go. I am trying to rehab the other one, so I left it in and while it looks a little rough now, I think with constant hedging and love, I may be able to save it. I added a hosta and some ivy to fill the space, and we’re going to add a windowbox where there’s a ledge built in soon.

In the backyard, we had more crazy bushes that needed trimming, another holly (so many holly trees!) and a redbud crippled with termites:


So, we cut the diseased redbud down and cut down the ancient holly that looked like a storm was going to take it out (and the back of our house). and cut out some bushes that were in bad condition:

We’re going to build a patio where the holly once was, but for now we have some potted herbs

I planted a rosebush, some hydrangea, and a viburnum.  We weren’t able to trim up that pepperberry well because a birds nest is in there with little eggs– and I didn’t want to hurt anything 🙂

So, landscaping is complete! Woohoo!!

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April 18, 2011 hair…what to do?

Recently, my wedding planning deliberations have become all the more scattered, and it seems that I have a million different ideas going on all at once. Yay! I love crazy kaleidoscope ideas. They make me feel kind of dizzy but hey, dizzy can be fun, right?…right?

Sooooo, hair. I’m torn between doing something that is a side chignon type thing or doing something that is intricate and crazy as an updo. I have ideas in my head for the latter, but whenever i google “Crazy awesome updos” I end up with a lot of strange images that are either crazy or awesome, but never really both.  I can’t find much to illustrate that category, but i think this one would fit:

These are the side chignon-type things I’ve found and saved:

I like the idea of making it be structural/architecturally interesting, sligthly messy, and still elegant…and I’m having issues with that.

I love how her hair looks almost like ribbon, but fear it could be too out there…

And this seems really pretty and beachy, but is almost too casual.

I like this too, but wonder if it’s too much curl action around the face.

Audrina’s hair inspired all this side bun stuff. I admittedly wear my hair to the side a lot nowadays, and I’m worried that my wedding hair will look too much like my regular, ordinary hair…is that even a valid concern?

I like this too, but I’m worried it’s too meh.

I feel like there’s all this hair pressure because i’m not doing a veil. I tried on quite a few and I couldn’t find anything that suited. Now I’m working on the idea of a cool hair fascinator. I don’t want to wear something that will totally obfuscate the hairdo I’ll have. Sigh, i maybe am overthinking this but I feel all this crazy pressure and indecision is giving me an ulcer. Thoughts? I guess the main issue at hand is that I don’t really get to do a trial run on my hair in Hawaii— I have to make all the decisions here and then pray some. And my control freak ways are really starting to trickle through…help me!

April 14, 2011 Teeth. That are Yellowish

All these stupid teeth-whitening commercials make me feel like my teeth are inadequate and yellow.  As a result, I started researching possible means by which to whiten my teeth. As I cannot afford “Zoom” Whitening, here’s my options:

1. Whitestrips. Do they work? Are they worth the investment? Can I just buy the kroger brand (these are all questions I expect you to answer, of course)

2. Paint teeth with white-out the morning of the wedding (they WILL be pearly then, right?!)

3. Wear fake teeth set for wedding photos. I see these in movies all the time, so I could totally rock some fake teeth. Maybe I could get all twilight-y and wear some fangs.

4. Paint over teeth with gold paint or write on them “I love you Don!” on the uppers and lowers so that it’s covering up the yellowishness with a sweet and thoughtful message.

Sigh. I saw a groupon for $200 ZOOM whitening but honestly, peeps, our coffers are low. I found a knock off store brand of the whitestrips for $14.99– a vast price difference from Crest’s $45 asking price. Jerks. They know how important white teeth teeth are to me on my wedding day…

So, advice? Thoughts? Totally should do the white out thing, right? How classy!!!

April 12, 2011 Update: AKA, where oh where have you been?!

So, in the past few weeks:

We…bought out house! We closed this past Friday, and I have some handy-dandy before pics to share:

And I’ll be sharing the fun “Afters” as we get through them. We closed last Friday and got started right away on Saturday, trimming up trees, bushes, and cutting down a few dead trees, tearing down a wall in the kitchen (oh my) and it’s all been much, much fun.

Hopefully tomorrow we will be ordering our kitchen. I am a big fan of Ms. Martha Stewart, queen of all things lovely, and once we saw these cabinets at Home Depot we were pretty much sold.

We both have an action packed wedding weekend so we’re not going to be able to get much done this weekend, which makes me kind of sad. Since we live nearly an hour from our new abode, it makes working on the new house hard during the week. I’m optimistic that we’ll be able to catch up next week after this crazy weekend passes.

In wedding news, we have entered into “less than 2 months away” category of joy. I had to send my ring in to be resized (a downfall of losing 40 lbs since I got it) with some requests for repairs and found out that the entire. ring. has.to.be.recast. Like starting over from mold, metals melted down, new, new, new. This is kind of exciting on one hand, because I am an anal-retentive control freak and while I love my ring to pieces, it drove me crazy that it was about 1/16 of an inch offset at the crown. That wouldn’t bother 99.9 percent of people out there, but me…woah, nelly, it made me sad. So now it will be perfect, perfect.

The only sad part: I won’t have my ring for my wedding.

Yeah. I found that out today. We thought it would be 6 weeks, but they told us it’s going to look more like 10. That means we will not have my sweet ring in Hawaii. A bit of a bummer since I’d not planned on getting a band, and I’d really wanted to have my ring blessed. Now I need a band and can’t have my ring blessed, and I feel like a total whiny who-ha for complaining about it, but I am going to complain about it anyway.

In happier news, I get my invitations tomorrow or the next day (I think) and they are going out in the mail. The cool thing about knowing who is coming to your wedding way before you send invites: no pressure for RSVP deadlines. The invites are more like a cool party favor. I like this. Along with them comes the menu cards and cool custom map we had made. I can’t wait to see them and hold them in my hands, and will be sure to squee appropriately when I do.

So, here’s the major bridal updates:

– Had my lingerie shower: Yay! It was awesome and so much fun.

– Invites are done and soon to be sent, menu finalized

– we bought a house

Here’s the major to do’s:

-favors. (not sure what to get.)

-programs (hurrumph)

– SHOES

– ceremony music

I’m sure there are other things but I don’t know what they are because I feel like I’m totally overwhelmed. This is normal, I know, yet I keep telling myself that and there’s no resolution in sight.

Next blog post: shoes & flowers 🙂

 

 

March 14, 2011 Place setting idea: Little Compasses

I am aggresssively striving to accomplish as much “wedding stuff” as possible in the next few weeks before April hits and brings along with it wedding season and house renovation season. So, expect a lot of wedding-y posts tempered with home-design posts.

I found these little darling compasses from Laura Hooper (whom I love) and I thought to myself, oh, perfect…

But instead of a table assignment, I’m thinking maybe the date or something— thoughts, guys? I think it would be cute for each compass to sit at the actual plate of the guest:

Imagine, if you will, the following: silver chargers on charcoal gray linen (probably pintuck, not crinkle taffeta):

I am debating using white linens just for contrast, but I’m thinking most of our flowers will be white on the table. I am still tweaking my ideas for the tabletop, it really depends on how many guests we end up with at the reception:
with yellow napkins with a ruffle I am thinking of making:

My challenge now is A)finding those little compasses so that I can customize then, and B) making the napkins. Yay, fun!

 

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March 10, 2011 Making Decisions about things: Rehearsal Dress, and Invites

Well, I feel MUCH less emo today than yesterday, and having cried it out over a glass of wine, I feel like an entirely new woman. Wedding, watch out– you’re on notice that I’m totally motivated to not let anything get me down.  I feel like every bride has the kind of day that I had yesterday, so I know I’m not alone. But anyway, let’s just talk about something prettier and happier: rehearsal dinner dresses and invitations! 92 days til THE day, so it’s about damn time that I get my act together!

Whilst searching for shower attire (this Saturday, woo!) I stumbled upon this little number repinned by a friend of mine on Pinterest, a darling little dress from e-shakti.com:

Cute, right?! I love this site because they can make pretty much any dress custom, and I ordered mine Saturday and it’s going to be here next week. Woot! I think it’s perfect and I’m glad I didn’t opt for white. And I am now addicted to that site and want everything on there. Their prices are super reasonable, they give a $20 gift cert for signing up as a member, and I got an additional $10 off when I was shopping with a pop up coupon. Yay, thrifty!

So, that gets marked off my list.

This week, I proofed our invites. I can’t wait to show them off, but I am holding off til after we send them out. However, I will share that we’re working on some really cool letterpressed maps that I think will make a great keepsake for our guests. I was inspired by the Laura Hooper maps:

I love these maps and think they are just awesome.  I can’t wait to see the proof for our map…and I think I’ll share it when we get it!

Yay, happiness!

 

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