Wedding Planning!

The journey towards a wedding is very exciting and stressful at the same time. Our son Blaise and Marissa Coe announced their engagement right after the New Year. We started making wedding plans with them and seeing it was an intrastate wedding plans needed to be made with two families. It was decided that they would have a courthouse wedding in Ohio with a reception for friends and relatives there and a separate reception in Wisconsin for this contingent. I was happy to have that decided early as to more time we have the easier it is to plan. Well a little over a week after they announced they were getting married, I fell ice skating and broke a kneecap. :( This is what I looked like.

Good thing though for the wedding planning, as I am able to spend countless hours cruising the internet for idea and price shopping. That continues with my sending pics of ideas to my future daughter in law for review for a few weeks and giving certain ideas a heads up or a thumbs down. Hot meal or cold picnic lunch? Cake or cupcakes? Real or silk flowers? Suits or Tuxedos and on and on...Flowers ordered, brides bouquet started....that continued until tax season got in the way and I had some major bookkeeping to do. April 15th has come and gone. Undid my work on the brides bouquet as it just seemed to be getting too big. Liked it this time as the size was much better. This is what it looked like.

The color of the flowers I had ordered for the bridesmaids are too dark so they need to be sent back and needed to be reordered in a lighter shade. April 26th, 2012 Flower Day. Today is the day I recruited my friend Linda Griswold to come help me do the bouquets. I figured we could get them done in one day if we both worked at it. The new calla lily had a wilder look and was larger than the original ones that I had ordered for the bridesmaid bouquet so I had to reinvent the bouquet, so it wouldn't be larger than the brides. It was an all day project,but I was happy with the way they turned out.

April 27th: Now it time to decide on what our groomsmen are wearing. We decided on suits as they are the most economical and practical for a courthouse wedding with park receptions. I decided on a Black tone on tone pinstripe from Men's USA. They gave me a good deal on suits, shirts and ties. It looks like this. The group sales crew are awesome to work with and I would highly recommend them. Everybody's suit is the same, as I gave myself a headache trying to buy them each a separate suit that looked good and was practical for all the uses and coordinated for a wedding. They gave me such a deal that I decided to get the shirts, ties and pocket squares from them also.

When the suits arrived they don't look quite like I expected but they are a wonderful Italian made suit with a very rich look. It is the typical pinstripe with the stripes being a muted shade of white. We need to get all our groomsmen home for the weekend for a fitting session. Blaise's was not shipped, but fortunately he and Kent wear the same jacket size so we could fit him and confirm that he needed a long size. Dane's needs to be sent back and they sent a regular instead of a long for Beau so his needs to be sent back, too. Kent's pants will have to be altered and and they all will need to be hemmed. My mother-in-law volunteered so I gladly took that offer up and sent her home with two pairs of pants. The royal blue ties and pocket squares were not the right shade of blue, so I went back to the internet and ordered multi-colored ties that I had found early in the planning from from another source. It is really hard to match shades of blue so hopefully the multi-strip will look great!

May 9th: Two weeks until the wedding! We are so excited! This week is the week to sew my mother of the groom dress. Yesterday I made a run to Plover to find some fabric to make the girls some sashes for their dresses. As I don't have a pattern I wasn't sure how much fabric it took, so decided if I have left overs maybe I will use it to make pocket squares for the groomsmen. I was able to find a fabric that was very close to the color of the bridemaid dress with a little glitter in it. May 18: This week has been a bit stressful. The replacement suits were supposed to have arrived last week but for never got shipped. Last Friday I called and I didn't get to talk to my rep. Monday this week I called and my rep still wasn't able to provide me with a tracking number but she promised me they would arrive from Los Angles on Thursday. Tuesday they still didn't provide me with a tracking number. Wednesday, I was finally able to get the tracking number and the relief was awesome when I saw my package was in Des Moines, IA. I chased my UPS truck down at Walmart so I could get me package five hours earlier. Good thing. Blaises suit needs the sleeves shortened so I took them to get them altered. My mother of the groom dress is finished! Now I just have to make a jacket to go with it, two sashes for the girls, and two pair of suit pants to hem. We know what next week in Ohio will entail. May 25th: Wedding day! I will just post a few pictures of recent activities for all those close family members who can't be with us.