Supporting Martha

I just wanted to say that I've bought my first copy of Martha Stewart Weddings because I had money to burn, and I need ideas for flowers and because I need to support Martha's various wedding related enterprises:

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That's all I wanted to say this time.

Wedding dress disaster (literally)

Ages ago (well, who am I kidding, I do it all the time) I used to search through the internet looking for funny things, and ages ago I also loved the movie Titanic, so one day I found this funny website called etiquettehell.com, which I can't access anymore, but the story I want has moved to another website: KissTheBride.com.au - where it can be found here in its entirety:

Titanic Wedding Disaster

But in a nutshell, the bride wanted her bridesmaids to wear dresses like Rose Dewitt Bukater (Kate Winslet) does in Titanic and her mother-in-law said she'd make them. The dresses looked like this:

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except she wanted them with a blue underskirt (not coral). After a while, the mother of the bride realised that it was a month before the wedding and the mother-in-law hadn't done anything towards making the dresses.
The on the wedding day with the bridesmaids, junior bridesmaid and flowergirls waiting at the church for the dresses to arrive. Apparently they did arrive, shortly before the wedding ceremony was due to start. This is what they looked like:

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Isn't it beautiful?

Dress drama

Check me out! I'm blogging from my iPhone. Only took me four years to realise there was an app to use Blogger and I didn't have to do it via Safari. I'm so clever!
*cough* hmmm.
Was half-listening to the news tonight and heard something about a wedding gown shop going into liquidation and hundreds of brides being thrown into limbo.
And guess what?
The shop was one of the shops I went to, to try on wedding gowns. I actually tried on three but none fit and made my ladies (my boobs FYI) look flat. And they are anything but flat because at the time my bub was still booby-fed and well, yeah. They were definitely not flat. And because I was so cut that I had to try on size 54 wedding gowns, I decided trying on wedding gowns was not my favourite thing to do and refused to try on another for six months.
And to think, had the assistant pandered to my ego (which I thought they were MEANT to do), I could have been in the same boat as these brides who are FREAKING out that they have no dress to wear to their weddings.

Airy fairy (lights)

Recap:
The other day I was having a stress because I didn't know how I was going to decorate a huge mega space in which I can't stick things to walls (and rightly so because it is a veeeery old building) and I threw up a few options of what I (*cough* me and the Man) can do to decorate it to make it seem less like a massive room and more interesting. And I feel better about the decoration side - I think I'll be spending all my spare dollars (and time) begging, borrowing and stealing fairy lights and I'll figure out some way to hook them up to make an effect like this:

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The above picture was on another post of mine - Decorating a huge mega space without really knowing how... - which had a lot of my decorating ideas on it BUT the original picture comes from another blog called West Aussie Wedding. I am trying to be good in crediting where I have borrowed (stolen) my pictures from.

This photo was taken outdoors. Our reception will be indoors with the windows open as I suspect that it might be a bit warm. But then again, just because its the beginning of December doesn't mean it will be summery.

But I am getting beside the point.

Today I was thinking that I was almost certainly positive that I wanted fairy lights as the main decoration. Then I realised I had no idea of the dimensions of the reception space, so I had no idea of how many fairy lights I'd need. D'oh!

So as ours is a 'destination wedding' where its not in the same town as we live in, I was wondering how in fact I'd find out this information without having to drive to the reception space with a tape measure. I spent all day racking my brains, then thought 'Ah! I'll ring the people who hire it out! Brilliant'. And so I found my rental agreement form with their phone number and rang them up and the lady on the other end said she wasn't sure. Then she said 'Oh! It's on the agreement form!' and went to get one to look at it.

Then I looked at the piece of paper in my hand.

Which had a floor plan of the hall on it COMPLETE with dimensions.

I felt a bit stupid for wasting my time wondering.

Oh well!

Decorating a huge mega space without really knowing how...

Trying to think of budget ways to decorate the wedding reception like the tables and the foyer and the actual reception space and I don't know what else. I did write it down.
Actually forget BUDGET ways to decorate - I don't know how to decorate it at all!
Because the reception space *thinks* is more than 100 years old - maybe 115... we can't stick things to the wall except for hooks that can be attached to the picture rail.
So basically I have no idea of how to decorate this enormous space.
Ideas I've had so far are:

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Tissue paper pompoms

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Geometric paper garlands

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Origami balloons

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Fairy lights

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Tulle draped from the ceiling (lighting rig)

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 String ball lights (for want of a better/proper name for it)

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Lanterns. I like lanterns. A lot.

This is just decorating the general space. I have a foyer to decorate too for when people are arriving and just hanging out having a beverage before the wedding reception begins properly. 

And the reception has to match the ceremony location (this is not something I've told must happen, it is something that my inner Bridezilla wants - sometimes I have to listen to her).

Then I have the table centrepieces to figure out, and FLOWERS ARE SO EXPENSIVE. Plus 80+ chairs to make look pretty as the current chairs at the venue are about 60 years old (no lie) and *might* be replaced before Wedding Time, and might not be. And usually people hire seat covers for them, and I don't really want to spend $300+ on having someone put a pretty sash on the chairs.

So if anyone's out there reading this blog - do you have any ideas on how to decorate a massive function space where I can't actually stick anything to the walls. 

Help? Help please?

Tutorial: How to make fabric flowers

Once upon a time I was a bridesmaid in a wedding and the bride decided that all the bridesmaids would carry bouquets just like the one you see here.
All the flowers were made of wood.
Have no idea where the bride got the flowers from, and although she told me, my baby girl was five weeks old when I was a bridesmaid and I have no idea of a lot of things that happened at the end of 2010. Even now I find a lot of toys and clothes that were given to us and have no idea where they came from.
Anyway.
In keeping with my Martha Stewart theme, and because I was quoted $210 for a bridal bouquet, I am flirting with the idea of making a bouquet of flowers out of fabric. I am thinking of doing this for a lot of reasons, such as saving money, getting the exact colour that I want, being able to keep my wedding flowers, saving money etc.
I was looking around the internet and I've found a lot of tutorials telling me how to make flowers out of any conceivable material - paper, cloth, leather, metal, cling wrap, old chip packets*, anything and everything.
So I am going to try out a few tutorials to see if the flowers that I produce actually look realistic (as this is a big factor for me) and whether they are easy to make, because while I love to craft, I also don't have enough time to spend a full day to make a single flower.
So the first tutorial that I came across was over at ehow, and it was a tutorial to make flowers that look like roses or camellias. I am a fan of both type of flower, so I had a go. I am going to copy the instructions here after I've translated into Australian-ese, but the original tutorial is here in all it's imperial glory. I've added pictures that I have taken as the original tutorial didn't have images.

How To Make Fabric Flowers

Ingredients:

scraps of fabric, scissors, thread, hand-sewing needle, button (optional), fray-check (optional)

Method:

1. Cut two 10x10cm squares of fabric, two 7.5x7.5cm squares of fabric and two 5x5cm squares of fabric.

As you can see, my squares are not 'square'. Straightness of sides will not matter.

2. Fold each square of fabric in half, then fold it in half again.

NOTE: I did not take a photo of the folded squares. However, you want the squares to be folded into a rectangle and then into a square. 

Why didn't I take a photo of this??

3. Trim the unfolded edges of the fabric into a scalloped shape. (The scallops don't have to be perfectly even to make a nice flower shape.)

The wonky sides on the squares get trimmed off here. It doesn't matter how unevern you cut the scallops (which as far as I can tell is a half circle, half square shape, the shape of a guitar pick), as petals are not all identical in nature.

4. Unfold the fabric, then cut slits between the scallops toward the center of the flower, without cutting the petals all the way apart. These slits will make it easier to fluff out the petals and make the flower more three-dimensional.

The scallop unfolded

I cut each slit to be about half the width of the narrowest part of the scallop. Not sure if it was too much or too little.

5. Place the two large flower pieces on top of each other. Pull the petals of the lower flower up through the slits between the upper petals, to make the flower petals fluffier.

Any the wiser of what it's meant to look like? Me neither. But you can see that this red shape has at least seven roundy petal bits. I angled the petals so they overlapped.

6. Repeat step 5 with the pair of medium flower petals, and the pair of small flower petals.

All of the petals paired up and ready to be assembled into a beautiful camellia/rose.

7. Stack the flower petal pairs on top of each other, with the largest petals on the bottom and the smallest petals on the top. Make sure the petal pairs are centered.

Stacked and ready to go.

8. Stitch the layers of the flower together through the center, using a few small hand stitches. Add a button to the center of the flower if you wish.

I used blue thread for contrast and used about six stitches to secure the petals together. Then I wrapped the rest of the thread around the bottom of the flower to make the petals bunch together and look more realistic.

The finished flower. I didn't add a button this time, but perhaps next time I will.

Epilogue:

I confess, this time I cut my squares the wrong size which threw the flower out of whack. Instead of two squares each of 10cm, 7.5cm and 5cm, I cut the largest at 12.5cm (5 inches), and didn't cut the smallest square as specified in the tutorial. This was due to me wanting to make this flower before going out for a walk with my housemates. If I was to do this again, I'd follow the instructions more carefully. 

I do like these flowers, and I am not intending for everyone at the wedding to go 'ZOMG! Those are not real flowers?' but I also want them to look semi-real.

So what do you think people - do these flowers look OK?

*OK, didn't find a tutorial for making flowers out of chip packets, but I am sure I could find one if I really tried hard.

I'm so crafty...

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Found this today. It made me laugh and I thought I'd share it.

It's true. Making people is a pretty crafty pursuit.