The three most important things in sewing.

I know I haven't updated with the creative side of things lately. I've found that I have a lot of gaming things that I can talk about easily and my Monday posts are more difficult to start. To date, I have thirteen draft posts for Thursdays and only three drafts for Mondays. I think my problem is that I just don't know where to begin.

The wedding itself was a little overwhelming at times, even though it was suppose to be just a small one. None of our family lives in the same state as us so sometimes it was rather difficult as we basically handled all of it.

And I, as I am sure I mentioned before, made my own wedding dress. I know not everyone can claim that and for a while there, I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to claim that myself. I was working on it right up until the day of the wedding. It was a little nerve-wracking but to be honest, I was working on costumes for shows right up until minutes before it was needed on stage on opening night. It's pretty much was the same type of stress except that this was for MY WEDDING so the stress level was rather heightened. I will probably not wear this dress again and it will not have to stay out on stage in bright lights but honestly, I think this is the most important item I have ever made.


The dress is not perfect. It is far from it. I know the flaws, I know where it was rushed together and I know I'm going to save it forever. I was mainly afraid it was going to fall apart on me the day of the wedding when I was standing up there giving my vows but it didn't. I knew it wouldn't with all the securing I had done with it but I was still paranoid. It was like I was showing everyone there an example of what I went to college for. If it fell apart, I knew I was going to feel that it was a reflection on my degree. Not to mention that I was so nervous about what my then fiancee was going to think of it. How could I not think that? I had my doubts over if I liked it or not. I had times where I needed to reassess it and it just wasn't doing it for me. How could I not wonder what my fiancee would think or what anyone else would think of it for that matter.

Honestly, I had never made anything that I had stressed over this much but it was made of the three components that I learned about in college that I knew would make it great: Blood. Sweat. Tears. This wasn't textbook stuff that you learned from class. This was in the shop, hands on and working with people who knew more than that textbook had to offer. From them I learned that if an item had those three components, it would turn out great.

Blood.
To be honest, this one is the most noticeable. Inside of the bodice where I was stitching it up by hand, there is a slight mark from my left pointer finger when I had jabbed myself with the needle. Being in such a rush, I did not notice or feel that I was bleeding until I noticed the mark on the lining. When I'm in a rush to stitch, I usually end up putting a lot of effort behind whatever I am doing. I don't know what I think this is going to make it go faster. It's like I go into a superhero mode where my special abilities are strength and speed. Strength is usually not necessary when working with light fabrics but speed is good, as long as it isn't sloppy. If this would have been earlier in the process, I may have only pricked myself, instead of ripping up a line of skin in my finger. It's completely healed now but I'm sure that won't be the last time I get myself with a sewing needle.

Sweat.
Okay, I'm not going to lie. I like the house to be warm. Sometimes, it was just too warm and I would find myself stripped down to a tank top and sweatpants and churning this thing out. And did I mention I was working on this dress all the way up to the day of the wedding too? Talk about sweat putting on the finishing touches. Having family come in for the wedding was great. It was just rather difficult having to balance time between seeing them, working on the dress, working on finishing touches for the wedding and having a moment to do all the daily activities. Also, the room where I kept my dress has no door so I had to hide the dress from my then fiancee whenever he would be around. That was rather tricky.

Tears.
Yes, I cried over this dress. Quite literally to be exact. I remember being frustrated about something in regards to the wedding and seeing tears dropping onto the lining that I was working on. I honestly tried not to work on this dress when I was upset about wedding things because I wanted to be able to look at this dress and have good memories of it. Sometimes, I just couldn't help it though as time was getting short and I was stressed about almost everything wedding related.

I have great memories of this dress regardless of all the frustration that I might have had with it in the past. I love it so much. It's mine. There is nothing else like it out there. I ironed, cut, serged and sewed every piece of it. It's not perfect but I still love it anyway. I've had it sitting on the dress form since I got back from the honeymoon. I'm going to hate to have to take it down in the next few weeks when we start to move but I'm going to keep it safe and maybe I can pull it out and show it to my own children someday.

I can has husband?

Well, I'm back after a three week break that included The Wedding, Honeymoon and Vacation time before going back to work. I know I've kept a lot of wedding details hush hush as to not ruin any surprises for anyone who might have been reading this but now that the wedding has happened, I think I will begin to spill some of the wedding secrets.

As I think I've mentioned before, I've never been much into wedding planning before I got engaged. I've known people whose goal actually was to just get married and had it all planned out before they even met the guy. I was more of the dream up adventure stories type, not the day dream up possible wedding scenarios (because apparently for me the adventure stories were more exciting). Again, I thought I was going to be the crazy cat lady and never be married so it took a little to get use to the idea that, "Oh, hey, getting married. Need to plan lots of things now." Everything seemed to work out though for the wedding so I'm rather pleased that I didn't have a specific plan for all wedding things since it might have taken away from letting the moments happen.

One of the things I'm probably going to go into a lot of detail here is the dress. How it developed over time from the concept to the final product. I feel rather lucky to say that, "Yes, I did make my own wedding dress" as I know not a lot of people can say that. Posts will probably start to get a little photo heavy come Mondays when I start talking about it. For right now, I'm just going to go over some of the preliminary wedding planning that we did at the beginning.

From the start, here's how we kind of figured out what we needed for the wedding.
1. People.
We needed someone to officiate, someone to be on either side of us and some family/friends at the wedding.

2. Place.
This was up in their air for at least six months in our two year engagement. Should we have it in his home state? My home state? Or where we live now? (And all of these are states away from each other.) We weighed pro's and con's and narrowed it down to where we live now and in the long run, I think it was a smart move. We ended up doing most of the wedding planning ourselves so that was a little difficult but everything worked out in the end.

3. Time/Date.
Okay, to be honest, this is something I had kind of figured out ahead of time. Not the exact date but I had narrowed down the 2012 weekends while at work one day to figure out what would work best before I was even engaged. I guess you could say this was all the  pre-engaged wedding planning I did though we didn't even use any of the weekends I had narrowed down.

These were the main three. As I divulge more details I'll fill how all three of these simple things went together to create something awesome.

A list of songs I probably won't play at my wedding.

Sometime last week, I was trying to find music to be played before the ceremony and then at the reception afterwards. My external hard drive where I've kept a multitude of music up and died on me the week or so before, which has left me in a bit of a pickle as I was planning on pulling all of my music from there. I thankfully do have a list of every song that was in there as I was getting slightly obsessed with organizing everything on that harddrive (no idea of the pictures and other things though, which is sad) so I can pull some ideas off of that list but I still have to go out and buy songs off iTunes when I find one that I really want.

Surfing around iTunes the other day and trying to find more wedding music has brought me across many jems and made me realize that there probably are some really great romantic songs that maybe I'm not going to play at the wedding even though they are wonderful songs. Songs that have made the list here just have that something in it that could be taken as being a little odd if you listen to the lyrics/put them into context. So, for my own reference...


For those of you who are worried about that sort of thing, SPOILERS FOR TITANIC, CASABLANCA and ROMEO & JULIET (because I care about 16th century theatrical spoilers)

Romantic Songs I Probably Won't Play At My Wedding

10. Celine Dion - "My Heart Will Go On"
I cannot tell you how many times I have seen this song on various wedding albums in the past few days. It's a nice song but I can never hear it out of the context of Titanic and SPOILERS, because Rose never gave him a turn to get out of the water and hang out on whatever float-y thing she was on, he DIED. That's right, he up and dies on her and sinks away to the bottom of the ocean so I can't really see this song as being the best thing to play at your wedding, personally. Then again, I was never a big fan of the movie because I knew HE DIED from the song that was played on the radio incessantly that included movie clips. THANKS A LOT SPOILER SONG.



9. Michael Buble - "Haven't Met You Yet"
I actually saw this on a wedding album and was a bit confused. The song to me goes like this, "I haven't found anyone yet but it's okay because I'm still hopeful and perky about it. HORRAY!" How that belongs on a wedding album confounds me. "I have not met you (AKA The One) yet but I'm still going to marry this person until the right one comes along?" I...don't...I don't get it but that's how I see it personally.



8. Mercyme - "I Can Only Imagine"
Thought the song was about Jesus & Heaven. The end.



7. Henry Mancini - "Love Theme From Romeo & Juliet"
Probably the best known of Shakespeare's romantic tragedies but I'm not the biggest fan of R&J and while people like to try to romanticize the story and the love, they die at the end. Dying doesn't really come off at romantic to me. (See #10 above.) It's not exactly something I want to emulate in my relationship. I'm not okay with the dying at a young age part. This is also pretty much the reason why I didn't want a Honeymoon Suite named after these two. It sounded like a horrible idea but clearly something that everyone else thinks is awesome. I absolutely love Henry Mancini but I cannot play this at the wedding.



6. Traditional - "The Water Is Wide"
I don't know why but this showed up a few times on different wedding albums that I looked at. The Wikipedia article on the this song pretty much confirmed it to me that it's not that sweet at all.

"O love is handsome and love is kind
Bright as a jewel when first it's new
but love grows old and waxes cold
And fades away like the morning dew."

Ouch. That's not very nice.


5. Whitney Houston or Dolly Parton  "I Will Always Love You"
What is with this song being on almost every wedding album? It's a beautiful song sung by either of those lovely ladies but it's not a wedding song! She's saying I love you, yes but there's also another word in that song that makes it a little bit less wedding related: Goodbye. And SPOILERS for the movie - they don't get together at the end. How horribly sad!



4. Willie Nelson - "Always On My Mind"
I'm not sure about this. This one always sounded like an "I'm Sorry," song to me not a "First wedding dance! YAY!" song.


3. George & Ira Gershwin "Someone To Watch Over Me"
The Gershwins has some great romantic "I am in love," songs. This is not one of them. "S'Wonderful", "For You, For Me, Forever More", "Embraceable You", are a few though. This is another one of those songs in which you're still looking for love but you're more mellow about it than "Haven't Met You Yet".
(By the way, even though I am an old movie fan, I haven't seen this movie. Shame on me. SHAME.)



2. Dooley Wilson - "As Time Goes By"
Again, another song that I can never take out of context of Casablanca.  I've seen the movie, I know the plot and I know the song. I cannot separate it from the romance that Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman have/had in the movie and, again, SPOILERS -- THEY DON'T HAVE A HAPPY ENDING!



1. Meatloaf - "I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)
Okay, so I actually haven't found this song on any wedding albums (yet) but it pretty much tops my list of romantic songs I would not play at my wedding. It's a cool song but everyone seems to be confused as to what 'THAT' actually is. Sometimes, I'm actually confused too but it's a neat song and I sadly mourn the loss of my Meatloaf album from my external hard drive.




If you know of any other Romantic Songs that you don't feel would be appropriate played at your wedding (or that had been played), drop me a comment. I'd love to know what they were.

Mawwwwwwwage. Actually, it's a wedding that brings you here together, today.

I know I haven't mentioned it yet, but I am getting married in a few months. I still have a lot of planning to do in regards to it and oh, I am making my own wedding dress. (I'll post pictures of the process later.)

Right now, we're working on favors. We've gone through many ideas in regards to a 'theme' for our wedding and I think we're just going to try to make the day into something that we will enjoy.

I'll be honest with you: I never wanted to get married. I never dreamed about having a wedding day. I never dreamed about who I was going to marry because I was convinced I was going to live with lots of cats and be one of those eccentric women until I died. Of course, I may be one of those women until I die but now I am getting married so I need to figure all this stuff out.

I've considered that someday (ten plus years from now) perhaps I should make my own daughters (if I ever have any) think about their wedding day since I've had so much trouble decided on things for my own but I've decided that they (whatever women they may grown up to be) should make their own decisions on things. School was my main concern growing up and then it was college and work. Not boys. Not relationship and definitely not marriage.

Personally, I don't understand the big hoopla over the wedding day. Maybe it's just me but wouldn't you be excited to spend every day with your companion, not just the very first one? True, this is the day you are pledging in front of others that you will keep a vow to your partner but isn't this something you already agreed to on the day you got engaged?

We have been singularly devoted to each other since our first date. There were no others in our relationship that we dated or had short flings with. Of course, we have our ups and down over the past few years but I enjoy the time we have spent together and I am excited to see what else it will hold.

As for these wedding 'themes' and so forth? People can assume we're having a Steampunk Wedding, Classical Wedding or a full out Geeky Wedding but really, what we're doing is a wedding that shows who were are and what we enjoy. Those styles we like? In the wedding. Those dorky things we enjoy? In the wedding. There's no label we're putting on it. I can't say I'm a big fan of labeling everything anyway. It's just gonna be our day and we want to have some fun to it.