Kickin It Old School

I fought it tooth and nail in the beginning. I hated labels (if you remember) and didn't want them applied to our wedding. Still don't for that matter. The straw that finally broke the camels back (my poor, tired, worn out back!) was when I went for my dress alterations. When I first arrived, Penny (the nicest woman ever who did my alterations) had me change into my gown. And you know what her first comment was? Well, after telling me how great I looked? She quickly followed the compliment with "I love it! It's so vintage!" And that’s all she wrote folks! I quit fighting and just accepted it, vintage would be a part of our wedding.

My name is Megan Henderson, and I like vintage crap.

Soooooooooooo, now that I’ve faced the music, we'll be kickin it old school down south at the Henderson-Pierson wedding. And I can't wait!

We'll be surrounded by a combination of vintage table decor including milk glass bud vases and turquoise mason jars, and country chic (real description, I swear!) burlap table runners will run the length of the tables.

Our people guests (still working on that) will be eating BBQ off of vintage china plates and drinking beer and wine out of pint sized mason jars.

I'm not ashamed. We're Country where I'm from. And the great thing about being Country (Country is being used as a name, dang autocorrect, so yes it does deserve to be capitalized!)? It’s back in style! And THANK GOODNESS, I might add.

It's a trend. I get it. But this trend is sooooo much better then others gone past.

I.e. mustaches:

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I'm not even kidding, this is a real picture from somebody's real wedding. I see regrets in their future when looking back at these pics with their kids.

Tiered wedding cakes with bridges displaying the entire wedding party:

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I think a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, maybe not this one word: NO!

And celebrity weddings that can't make it past the next full moon:

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Really Kim? You MADE that cash money off your wedding and you couldn’t stay married longer then 75 days? It took you longer to wiggle your way into that dress then it did for you to wiggle your way out of that sham of a marriage.

Too harsh? Maybe. But totally deserved.

I can honestly add that I'm pretty sure we won't look back at our wedding pics and cringe. But I guess everybody says that. Let's keep our fingers crossed that vintage is another word for timeless!

Have Your People Call My People

Just kidding, I’ll still answer your phone call. Maybe (sorry Dad!). But seriously, I mean it. I’m booked for the next two months. And after that, I think I’m taking a few weeks off from everything other then my kindle and a chair by the pool. Other then work, I’m not doing nothin’ but reading and being a wife. That sounds really weird. But like I mentioned to Michael the other day, as long as things keep rolling like they have for the last (almost!) three years of our relationship, I’m pretty sure we’ll be just fine.

This weekend starts the final two monthish stretch to the wedding. I’ll be finishing some of the little details this weekend in Seguin (that I can share with you next week!), and next weekend I’ll be in South Padre. Then we go back to Seguin, and then Florida. Me and the car are going to become VERY good friends. I’m sure we’ll be bffe’s after this summer.

There is light at the end of the tunnel though. Hopefully this is the last summer I have to spend on that concrete hell they call Highway 35. And coming to Dallas is how I met Michael, so that’s a good thing….haha it’s a great thing! It’s crazy to think how the little decisions I made along the way has lead me to where I am.

Just think about it. What tiny decision did you make at some point in your life, that if you had done the opposite, your life would be completely different? And honestly, probably not had as good of a life as you have now?

A lot of people are filled with regret when they ask “what if?”

That is the last emotion that comes to my mind (oxymoron anyone? Hint: emotions don’t originate in the mind!) when I ask that question. I’m just glad I had the guts to make the move, or my life would not be as great as it is now, that is DEFINITELY for sure.

Music

Saturday night we had concert tickets to see Jerrod Neiman, Chris Young, and Miranda Lambert. We were late and missed Jerrod, but Chris and Miranda were awesome! They really know how to throw a party/concert.

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This really does pertain to the wedding! I swear. But let’s start at the beginning…..

We had been tossing around a few ideas for our first dance. The top two contenders were “God Gave Me You” by Blake Shelton and “Crazy Girl” by the Eli Young Band. Both had their pros and cons.

“God Gave Me You” would be easier to dance to, but our band doesn’t play it yet, so we would have to make a special request that they learn it; which was doable. Our band’s contract came with the stipulation that they would learn two extra songs at no cost, if we wanted them to play something that they didn’t already know.

“Crazy Girl” (not exactly my favorite since the “crazy girl” would imply ME! But whatevs) is a modern waltz and would be tricky to dance to, but we both like it and the band already knows how to play it.

This wasn’t a decision we were going to kill ourselves over or spend hours/days/weeks agonizing about. Both of us were willing to compromise and would have been fine with either (who'd of thunk it?).

And enter amazing concert by Chris Young stage right.

Saturday night, we entered the pavilion, grabbed a beer, and headed to the lawn with our blanket. We finally found a spot (the place was already packed), spread our blanket, and settled down to enjoy the show. We were just in time to watch the Chris Young part of the show. He was starting to wrap up and play his last song, when I leaned over to Michael and said, “This would be a fun song to dance to”. He leaned back on his elbows, got this look on his face, and then said, “Yeah, I like it”. And just like that, decision made!

I’m excited! We actually both whole heartedly agree on something! Now we just have to make sure the band can learn it. Keep your fingers crossed!

Even when we go to non-wedding events, we get wedding stuff done. We are so efficient!

Delegating

It means trusting someone enough to complete the task without oversight. It means I am no longer responsible for completing the task. It means to stop being a control freak.

It means taking it off the TO DO LIST and stop freaking WORRYING ABOUT IT!

It seems so easy in theory, but the actual execution sure is a b!atch.

The few things I have delegated to someone else to complete, I feel like I have spent so much time worrying if they are actually going to get done, that it would have been easier to do them myself.

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This is how Michael probably feels. Oh well. 2 months to go…..

Brooch Bouquet Tutorial

This is ultimately how I wanted my brooch bouquet to look. I read a few tutorials and decided that this one and this one were very helpful. In the end, this one was what worked for me.

If you know me, you know that I’m a short cut taker. I like to get the job done as quickly and efficiently as possible. Reading both of the tutorials, it seemed like a lot of work was involved in the initial steps of twisting many strands of thin floral wire around each brooch to strengthen the “stem” and hold the brooch in place. What I couldn’t figure out, was why people did this, when there was a much thicker wire right next to the thin gage wire, that would be able to hold the same brooch up with only one strand versus what seemed like a thousand?

(Ummm…..duh? Of course I’m going to use the thicker wire. No brainer.)

Being the efficient person that I am, I snatched up a couple rolls of the thicker gage and went to town. Instead of twisting it around the pin of the brooch, I simply pulled Earl out and glued an L shaped piece of wire to the back. I made sure that the long side of the L, which would be the stem, was at least a foot long. I wanted to make sure there would be enough length to play with when making the actual bouquet.

So I rinsed and repeated about a bajillion times. And there were a couple casualties. I found on one or two of the silver brooches, that if they sat too long, the glue could just be peeled off (that big one in the left hand corner was one such casualty). It seemed like the weight of the brooch overpowered the adhesiveness of the glue. Oh well; can’t win them all.

The next step is where it gets a little dicey. I read one tutorial that instructed to create a few mini bouquets, and then combine them. This did not work AT ALL for me. I found the easiest thing to do was combine the larger brooches to create a mini bouquet, and then secure them with duct tape. I slowly added two or three brooches around the sides, and would wrap with duct tape again. I never tried to add more then four at a time, because it got a little tricky when trying to tape them. It was basically a huge puzzle where I had to fit all the brooches together.

You can see all my supplies in this picture. They included needle nose plies, wire cutters, duct tape, thick floral wire, and Earl, just incase.

Once I had assembled the bouquet, I cut about eight strips of burlap six inches long by two inches wide. I used these to hide the bottom of the bouquet that would have shown all the stems. I folded them over, and then used duct tape to secure the two loose ends at the base of the bouquet, where the stems all came together.

Don’t mind Earl, he’s just hanging out.

Then, I made sure everything was wrapped nice and tight in duct tape. You can see I chose a very bright colored tape. I covered the stems in burlap, making sure it folded over the bottom and covered up the wire at the bottom.

Then, I wrapped the bottom in twine! None of that girly, phoo phoo ribbon crap here. I started at the top of the bouquet, working my way all the way to the bottom. Once I reached the bottom, I worked the twine back to the top.

Once the twine made it back to the top, I secured the loose twine with my hot glue gun. I tried using corsage pins like the tutorial suggested, but couldn't get them to go in all the way.

I left a loose piece of twin because I’m still debating adding my Aggie ring to the bouquet for the night.

And that, my friends, is how you make a brooch bouquet.

Burlap Picture Display Tutorial

Normally, people have pictures of the couple from when their babies all the way thru the engagement displayed somewhere near the entrance, usually at the sign in/gift table. I thought that this was something we could easily incorporate into our wedding. It would be sweet and sentimental, and all the things I’m usually not.

Image via Etsy Seller ShabbyLikePearls

Image via Etsy Seller BelleVieHomeAccents

Why not just use one huge frame to display all of them? Seemed like a good idea to me. I already had plenty of the little things adding stacking up (glasses, utensils, PLATES!), and I wouldn’t have to worry about all these picture frame’s that I would have to buy, store until the wedding, and then pack back up again.

I gathered my supplies:

$4 frame! that I painted blue/burlap/foam board for backing/cork board/twine
*not pictured Earl

The frame opening was 2 foot by 2 foot, so I first cut the foam board to these measurements. I then mod podge’d the hell out of the cork board and the foam board and let it sit overnight with some assistance.

Next, I hot glued the burlap to the back of the foam board, making sure that the front was pulled tight over the cork board side so that the burlap didn’t hang loosely. After Earl’ing (aka gluing if your not following along) all four sides, I cut two pieces of twine and ran them parallel to each other on the front (burlap side), and then glued them to the back (foam board) at the top as well as the bottom.

Then, I added some cute little clothespins and tried it out!

Here it is in action! Works great! And now we have something after the wedding that we can use to display pictures. We really don’t have anything on our walls now, so that will be awesome later. Especially when we move into a house that’s bigger than a shoe box. Whenever that might be….

Does anybody like it? Or does it look like a 3 year old put it together?

Taking Inventory

Yep. It’s one of those things I should have been doing all along (which would have made things easier), but instead I just kept buying and stashing it away. This past weekend I took a mad dive into all the boxes I had stacked in the shed/second bedroom/corner of the living room and started unwrapping.

1 turquoise table made by a homeless man named Red (true store!):

20 dozen pint sized mason jars ready to be claimed:

200 napkins wrapped and (mostly) tied:

1 program basket and 1 card basket:

27 large blue mason jars and 8 pint sized jars:

120 milk glass bud vases:

And stacks and boxes of plates and china sets:

#FAIL: After spending 2 hours unwrapping, counting, and repackaging the bud vases, I couldn’t bring myself to repeat for the china.

#DOUBLE FAIL: The plates are sitting on a stack of 75 napkins I still need to tie.

I feel like our house is turning into an antique shop! Slap a big FOR SALE sign on it and watch the old ladies come running!