My hope is constant in thee

When James bought my engagement ring back in April/May, he also bought my wedding ring. Last week, James left work in the middle of the day , went home and picked up the ring, and took it down to Robbin's Brothers to have it engraved (I had no idea). He had them engrave it with "My hope is constant in thee," which is the family saying that's engraved in my parents' rings and my sister and brother-in-law's rings.

As far as my parents knew, the saying came from somewhere in my dad's family. It appeared in the old family home, I believe. It was called Artornish (my sister can correct me on the spelling) and I think it was some kind of mansion in Pennsylvania (back when the family was wealthy, none of that money exists anymore - at least, not in our branch of the family!) in the early 1900s. The house burned down, I think, and the family moved out to Arizona, but the saying stayed with the family. My parents didn't know anything about where the saying originated, though.

Then, when I was in Scotland, I found a book on clans and their tartans, and I looked up the McDonald clan. My dad's grandmother's (maiden?) name was Donaldson. (Wow I need to bone up on my family history!) I was just looking for what the McDonald tartan looked like so that I could buy the right one, but there were two distinct McDonald clans: McDonald and McDonald of Clanranald. I didn't know which one to choose, but then I noticed a line on the page about McDonald of Clanranald: the family saying was "My hope is constant in thee."

McDonald of Clanranald tartan, for anyone who's interested

I think it's a nice tradition in my family to have our wedding rings engraved with a saying that goes back deep into our family history.

Anyway, later that day, James casually asked me "what was that saying in your parents' wedding ring?" and I told him. I still didn't know that he had taken my ring to be engraved. (He told me later that the ring was already engraved at that point, he was just making sure! Haha.)

Later in the week, James finally told me that he had taken my ring to be engraved. I, of course, started to cry when he told me, I was so happy. On Saturday, we went to Robbin's Brothers to pick up my wedding band, and to order one for James.

Here they are!

mine!

and his! (approximately, I think his is slightly thinner)

I'm so excited!!

Finally, an Update! Wee!

There have been lots of little developments in the past couple of weeks!

1. I'm learning to write calligraphy. It's not too hard, it's just following the strokes diagrammed in the book, but it will take some practice to get the shapes right on a consistent basis. And I'll need to memorize how to form the letters, rather than looking at the book all the time. Because last night I addressed my mom's birthday card with calligraphy as practice, and it took for...ev...er. Taking 20 minutes per invitation will totes not fly. But I'm sure with some practice I won't have to keep looking at the charts! I don't think there's any way that I'll get good enough that people will think I had the envelopes professionally done, but that's okay.

2. James picked a boutonneire! I pulled a dozen or so pictures that I thought might work from theknot, printed them out, and showed them to him. This is the one he likes best:

So hydrangeas it is! We're thinking that the bridal bouquet and his boutonneire will be white with just a smattering of pink, and the bridesmaids and groomsmen will have pink flowers.

4. James and I have a website! Or will shortly, anyway. We bought the domain this morning: www.james-and-suzi.com. Some jerk bought jamesandsuzi.com three years ago as an "investment" - just by choosing random guy and girl name combinations and buying up a bunch of domain names for $2. He said he'd be willing to sell it to us for $500. Um. No. So we used hyphens, which I think makes it look nicer. Easier to read, at least. Hopefully people won't get confused and go to the wrong website! (And we're hoping that people spell my name right... even my relatives spell it "Susy" or "Suzy" or "Susie" - It's Suzi, people! Please spell it right or you'll never find our website!) (Maybe this will finally get everyone spelling it correctly???) It's going to take some time to get the website up and running, but it will be chock-full of wedding info soon enough. After the wedding, we're planning on using it for a family website, where we can have pictures and a blog and everything in one place, so all our family and friends can catch up easily.

5. James and I settled on a save-the-date magnet, which we'll be ordering tonight. I think it's really cute. Think black background, pink flowers and a picture of us being very cute! It's kind of modern but still feels romantic. I'm excited to get them and send them out to everyone. I like the idea of everyone having a picture of us on their fridges, rather than just some pretty design. Although I did like a close-up of a fresh white dahlia on a white background as a possible magnet, and that wouldn't have had our picture... but I think the one we picked is best.

6. James and I bought something off of our registry this weekend. Ha! It's a kitchenaid hand mixer. I'd been using my brother's cheapie cheapie one for all my baking, and it went caput recently. That thing was weak. Anyway, on Saturday we went to BB&B and picked up a new, amazing, powerful, sexy KitchenAid because I had to make a birthday cake for his brother for that night, and I didn't have time to make all that icing (the cake was 3 layers!) by hand. And the mixer is the best one I've ever used. Top notch.

7. I talked to my mom today about wedding things - James and I have to chose from the caterer's offerings and make a list of the entrees we'd like to serve, then submit it to my parents for approval. Then we have to email the list to the caterer and set up a tasting appointment for when we're back home at Thanksgiving. My mom already has a florist appointment for us at Thanksgiving. And we talked about my flower idea for the isle, and she's not opposed to it - it just depends on how much it would all cost, natch. Also about the caterer: we have to find out about when we can hold the rehearsal. Obviously the Friday before the wedding in the afternoon/evening would be the best, but they have Friday evening weddings there, so it depends. We'll have to find out if we can reserve some time for rehearsing, and hopefully not on Thursday.

Floral inspiration!

I was playing around on theknot.com and got hit by a couple ideas for flowers for the ceremony.

First, I don't have any pictures on my work computer of the aisle leading up to the actual ceremony site by the edge of the lake, but it's a winding brick path that goes through some trees. There are flowers and bushes planted too, scattered about. It's lovely, but it could be dressed up a bit more, to make it fit more with the wedding. And this seems to be a neat way to do it:

Now, I don't know about the bucket, but a little cluster of flowers hanging from shepard's staffs that are spread out along the aisle? That sounds lovely to me. It'd be a way to incorporate the wedding decorations into the aisle as well as ceremony site, to make the aisle and the site blend together better so it's not like you're strolling down a garden path and then - wham! - you're in the middle of a wedding. I think it would help make the whole area more festive. Thing to consider: buying extra flowers, ribbon, and containers for flowers, plus needing to rent the shepherd staffs.

Once you walk down the aisle, you enter the tent, which is the actual ceremony site. It looks like this:

I really want to emphasize flowers and outdoors and garden themes, and keep tulle to a minimum - unlike the bride in the above photo. I mean that's nice and all but it's not really me. Anyway, I found two options for this part of the aisle.

One:

Lovely. Simple. Elegant. But also: how difficult would these be to make? How expensive?

Another option, which I kind of like more:

Okay, I know what you're thinking: these are pretty hideous and look more like an autumn wedding than a June wedding. But what if the pots were painted something other than gold, say.. white? And the plant inside wasn't dead-looking grass, it was pink hydreangeas? I think that would look beautiful. After the ceremony maybe the Auletto's people could take the flowers inside and decorate the reception area with them. And during the reception we could give the flowers to people for things like knowing trivia about James and I. Or whatever. And then they could plant a part of our wedding in their yard. It'd be nice! But things to consider: the potted plants might constrict the aisle too much, and buying enough to line both sides of the aisle might be prohibitively expensive. But still. It might work.

Another problem with this idea: my idea was to have peonies be the featured flower, not hydrangeas, although I do want to include hydrangeas. In that regard, the first idea might be best because it could include all wedding flowers, not just one. And the first idea would probably make more sense with the hanging flowers from the aisle. Right? Because they're much more similar - both hanging and all - rather than one hanging and one potted. So maybe the first option, then. Sounds good! I'm glad we talked this out. :D

Dreams and crafts

I had a dream about my wedding last night. This actually isn't too unusual. It's happened before, and like before, I was generally unprepared for the wedding in my dream. In this most recent wedding dream, I was standing at the end of the aisle (the wedding was in a church as opposed to the real-life outdoor/garden setting), getting ready for the rehearsal, when I realized that I didn't have a salon lined up to do my hair the next day. I went to my favorite salon in town and all of the stylists were kids from my high school class, and I was like "Whaaaat is going on, these people can't do my hair!" And I had a general sense of I've messed up and I didn't do a good job about getting the whole wedding organized. There was more to it than that, but I've forgotten it all by now.

James and I did a little wedding planning activities this weekend - a lot less than we'd intended, but still, we're making progress. We went to a stationary store in town to see if they sold the kind of cardstock we'll need to make our own invitations. They didn't sell any card stock at all, but the owner recommended a paper company nearby that could probably meet our needs. We went there the next day, but they were closed because it was a holiday weekend. Boo. We stopped in at Office Depot on Monday for other reasons but checked out their paper supply while we were there - nada. But we also went to Michael's over the weekend and found some rubber stampers for making our own invitations. One is a hummingbird, and one says "Thank You!" which we'll use for the thank you notes, obv. We want to use the hummingbird and the peony on all our wedding stationary. The peony because that's my favorite flower and that's the flower I want to feature in the wedding, and the hummingbird because there were three hummingbirds flying around when James proposed. And we saw three hummingbirds on our anniversary! Hee! And this way we'll both have an input on the wedding stationary - I'll have the pink peony and James will have the green hummingbird.

We also bought a caligraphy kit. I want to learn how to do caligraphy so that I can address the envelopes myself. I certainly wouldn't pay someone else to do it and I don't want to just use ordinary handwriting. This might be slightly insane on my part, since I'll have to address about 150 envelopes by myself... but it'll be an interesting challenge. :D

This weekend, we'll have to visit that paper company. And we need to place an order online for the peony stamps I found - which is a surprisingly uncommon image for a stamp, because I've only found it in one place. We need to get on with save the date cards, since there will be a lot of people coming from California and they'll need the advance notice. We also need to finalize the bridal party. And I need to stop waffling on bridesmaids dresses and just pick one. And we need to finish our song list and send it to the band leader. And we need to set up cake tastings for when we're home at Thanksgiving. And florist appointments. And hairdresser appointments? Dang, lots to do!