Vintage wedding gown

I am planning (still!) on making my own wedding dress - now that my invites are at the printer, I have time to focus on making the dress. Two months and counting!

However, I did receive a Plan B (a very gorgeous Plan B) last week, due to the graciousness of some good family friends who know my taste well. They rescued a wedding gown from the 1943 marriage of an aunt, which had been residing in someone's attic, boxed up and long-forgotten since the wedding day. That someone had decided to throw out the gown, and it was promptly snatched up by our friends and then gifted to me. How sweet of them!

On to the gown itself: Glorious. Glamorous. Gorgeous. Vintage 1943. 1943!

Ivory silk satin, slinky and smooth but with plenty of thickness. The gown fits me NEAR perfectly, the gown was made for a 'larger' woman (by 1943 standards) who just so happened to be my height and a bit larger in the waist than me. Perfect! The only adjustment needed is nipping in the waist a bit more, but it's a beautiful gown.

Complete with train, elegantly gored skirt falling from the waist, silk bows at the gore points... Long sleeves with a point at the wrist, buttons, slightly puffed sleeve caps (so forties!). The neckline is a sweetheart neckline, which actually sits very high on my chest but I could lower that if desired. Overall a gorgeous, Old Hollywood worthy gown - handmade with love for a 1943 bride, and now it's mine.

That's a mighty fine Plan B in my book. So if I don't get my dress made, I'll be walking down the aisle in vintage. Here's a very similar dress from that era - VERY similar!

Invitations (are expensive!)

I hit a bit of a wall this week with our invitations, I got the quotes back for letterpress and I would be paying about $750 for the whole shebang... so that's a no-go, as we're running a tight ship here!

Plan B - make 'em myself using a collection of nice stock. Talk about stress out of nowhere!

Previews of the new invites soon!

I Love Paper Dolls - or - the Official Invite Sneak Peek

I've been working hard on our invitation design, I'd like to have them letterpressed and I'm just getting to the point where I can start poking around for estimates. Anyway, here's a quick preview of our invites, they have to be formatted to fit into a standard envelope size due to my insatiable desire to have actual airmail envelopes. Also, I like paper dolls. So I made Ryan and I into paper dolls. Working paper dolls.

These are made to be laid side by side for ultimate sappiness (ignore the full bleed aspect of these at the moment). The ink colors are NOT going to be grey and black, they will actually be in red ink with blind embossed details... on ecru paper. Lovely! I did draw these out by hand, then scanned them into illustrator and auto-traced them to create a more letterpress friendly version.

Yes, I drew myself wearing my actual wedding dress design - which I haven't started on yet! Eek!

Save the Dates, FTW!

Check it out. I finally got these mailed out late last week, they were printed up by a local printer after I recreated a classic telegram in Illustrator. The envelopes are pretty swank too - I printed them out with a custom made 'First Flight' stamp that I did in Photoshop and custom airmail stripes. Talk about a lot of printing. I thought my printer was going to choke!



After what seemed like HOURS folding... all of the telegrams were folded up into tidy little packages, and then I printed out the custom seals and applied those. Notice that it's a vintage cancelled airmail stamp? It's all about the small stuff folks. All about the small, neurotic, slightly OCD details.

I was up until all hours of the night stuffing envelopes, and trying to work out the last few addresses. I only had 110 of these telegrams printed up, and sure enough there have been some last minute additions to the guest list... I've been crunching the numbers like a mad woman to make it all work! If I have to print out 1 or 2 more on my printer, I think that will be OK. I just like the QUALITY of professional printing so much more. All I need is a printing press in the basement and I'd be all set!





Here's the only problem I foresee with these save the dates: I have now set my bar way, way, WAY too high for the actual invitations. I didn't think these little guys would be so good looking once I got them assembled, and now it's starting to sink in that I've set a high standard for what must come next... the actual invites. I've got a good idea up my sleeve for those, but it's all about the execution... whether it's my own death-by-folding or the death of my poor inkjet. Ha! I'd really like to have my actual invites done letterpress, so we'll see, we'll see...

Next up, the dress and the invites! Time to get started :)

The "Wedsite" - Officially Up and Running!

I'm very proud of our wedding site, which I designed from scratch to match our theme. I think it turned out beautifully! Go have a look-see, will ya?

ryanlovesjess.com

The First Dance

We will be incorporating quite a bit of Ryan's favorite band, The Smashing Pumpkins, into our wedding as an acknowledgement of Ryan's favorite things. I wanted something sweet and vintage for our first song, and dear Ryan was able to find this wonderful cover of "My Blue Heaven" by S.P.

So dreamy and beautiful... and the perfect tempo for a waltz around the dance floor. We haven't quite figured out how we're going to go about that yet (I'm the dancer, Ryan is... er... not) - but it will still be perfect - just very sweet.

Here's a super cute film that uses the song as it's soundtrack. Love it!

Engagement Photos

Our friend Dave Evans shot our engagement photos over the weekend. You can check out the set on Flickr, I also embedded a slideshow below.


He's still got a ton more to send our way, but we had a great time and I really think that shows through. All images were taken in my house, which I think makes the whole thing extra special.

Ryan and I sure do love one another... and we're so excited to be hitchin' up after 5 years together!

Thanks Dave, you are awesome. Ya'll can catch more of Dave's work on My Old Kentucky Blog as well as various venues on the internetz and in print.