Manolo for the Brides

One: Remember how I made soap using a soap kit from Bramble Berry? If you read the whole post, you may recall that I used regular old food coloring (the sort in the teardrop shaped bottles) so I could enjoy a little more sudsy variety. Because I didn’t want anyone who tried the kit getting mad at me, I wrote: “I don’t recommend you do the same because I’m not yet sure the resultant soaps won’t turn you blue or green.”

However, I am now happy to state that I’ve been using one of my dyed-with-food-coloring soaps for a while not and have not yet turned green.

Two: Check me out over at iVillage! In honor of iDo’s official release, they asked me to create a list of five web sites I think every bride-to-be should visit while planning her wedding. The result is up on the iVillage wedding blog From “I Will” to “I Do”.

Unless the point of the show is to instruct prospective brides in the finer points of carrying out DIY doings, such projects are usually presented on television as a silly idea doomed to failure from the outset because you should leave that sort of thing to the professionals, you silly, incompetent bride-person, you. If they work out, someone carefully points out that if it had gone wrong, clearly the wedding would have been ruined. If the bride, her mother, or her friend is unsuccessful, droll or doleful music is played and the scenes are cut to make it clear that there was never any chance of anything short of disaster.

But is disaster so inevitable? Not necessarily. In fact, if approached thoughtfully and planned intelligently, DIY projects can add tremendously to the intimacy and charm of a wedding without causing undo fuss behind the scenes. Let’s deconstruct a DIY disaster on a recent episode of Bridezillas and see how it might have been done more successfully.

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(Preamble: I’m happy to announce that as of today, The Beard and I have been married for one whole year! He reads this at work, so here’s me saying, “I love ya, loverboy!”)

In case you’ve ever wondered whether I actually read and play with and make all of the books, stuff, and recipes I’ve reviewed here, let me just say I don’t mess around. Yesterday, in my never-ending quest to acquaint myself with all things bridal, I made soap.

Let me rephrase that…I didn’t start with lye and fat and whatever other nasty things are in soap, but I did melt down blocks of colorless unscented soap, mix up different colored batches, add a fragrance, and pour it into molds. So to address any lingering doubts, when companies are nice enough to send me free swag, I test run it, whatever IT is.

In this case, it was a soap-making kit from Bramble Berry, makers of a ton of DIY soap and candle supplies. The soap kit was presented to me as a potential bridal shower or wedding favor–the catch being that you have to have the patience to work with a medium that needs to sit around and dry for hours before you can unmold it.

The directions call for a microwave…something we don’t have. So I just stuck the whole works into a pan and popped it into the oven at about 275. This worked like a charm after I remembered to cut the soap base into chunks. When I did that, it actually melted!

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In a recent article, I talked about how to decide whether to use a professional planner to help create your wedding dreams. It seemed only fair that I also talk about how to decide whether to create most of your wedding from scratch or not.

I’m going to come right out and say that I was a total DIY diva for my wedding. I love to make things by hand, and I hate to spend money on paying someone to do something I’m more than capable of doing for myself. Further, I felt that putting my handwork into the day was part of putting my heart into the event. On top of all that, we had pretty much two shiny nickles to spend on making a day that our friends and families would remember fondly. We just plain didn’t have the bucks to spend on a lot of pros…but even if the budget had been more flexible, I think I would have done the DIY thing pretty much to the level I did. See above in re: putting my heart into the day.

I’ve known brides who have made their own gowns, grown the flowers, deisgned and printed invitations, baked their own cakes, made the wedding feasts in their own kitchens, designed and made all the decorations…I think about the only thing I haven’t seen yet is a bride who cobbled her own wedding shoes. I’m equally sure that somewhere out there is a lady who has done just that.

Still, it’s not for everyone. And that’s why you should ask yourself the following questions when deciding whether or not to DIY and to what extent:

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One piece of advice brides hear over and over again is that choosing flowers that are local and in season is a great way to save money on your florist’s bill. That’s very true. Having orchids flown in from halfway across the globe or insisting on the most delicate of summer blooms in the middle of a stormy winter is going to cost you extra.

But what to do if you don’t know what’s in season in your area? Well, a good place to start is right here. This interactive tool allows you to give a very general idea of time of year, region of the US (sorry, non-USian readers, but I’ll be on the lookout for something that covers other parts of the world, too, because it’s fun) where your wedding will be held, or even what color the bridesmaid’s dresses are. It then spits out a list of flowers that match your criteria, with links to pictures of said flowers. As I said, it’s not the be-all and end-all, but it’s a good place to start if you can’t tell a hyacinth from a hydrangea or aren’t certain if iris grows in your area near your wedding date.

Another fabulous way of saving cash on flowers is to do very simple arrangements yourself with a bit of help from handy friends and family members. Real Simple has a great feature showing you how to make beautiful bouquets from grocery store flowers. The one piece of advice I would add to their ideas is that if there’s an open-to-the-public florist’s supply within a reasonable distance, you can get a greater variety of higher-quality flowers without having to pay the middle men. If you need a lot of a particular flower, it also means you’re far more likely to be able to get precisely what you want in the amounts you need.

Still, the tying instructions are clear and simple to follow. Besides, who would ever have thought baby’s breath could look this spectacular?

I admit it. I’ve never liked wedding veils. I just generally don’t. I never even considered wearing one at my own wedding. They aren’t my style.

On the other hand, I’ve known many a bride who wouldn’t have felt she was getting married without one. It’s traditional, after all, and many women consider them romantic. Who am I to say they’re not?

One thing I think a lot of us will agree on, though, is that wedding veils are darn expensive. I wouldn’t argue the price tag on one trimmed with antique, hand made lace and held in place with a tiara richly bejeweled with sapphires and rubies…but it’s easy to plonk down upwards of $150 on a square of tulle with a bit of ribbon trim and a couple plastic combs to hold it in place. That makes my thrify heart wheeze.

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Audrey, who hangs out on Craftster and is is mega crafty herself, pointed me toward a selection of wedding photos posted on the aforementioned boards by one Showmehelen. When I looked at the small sampling of wedding pics Showmehelen posted on Craftster, I immediately became entirely too envious and vowed to begin taking all sorts of creative classes.

See her guestbook, rings, super-fly headgear, bouquet, and decor in the post referenced above. Find advice on replicating the guestbook here. Then go check out her invitations and favors here. Once you’ve done all that, have a second look at her utterly freakin’ stunning post-morning ceremony ceremony garb:

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Or, as I have been so fond of calling them, DIY buckets.

I sat down with a friend this past weekend and constructed my bouquets. While I did print out instructions, we never actually read them. Instead, we just laid out all of the materials at our disposal (which included some $150+ worth of silk flowers, florist’s wire, and florist’s tape) and experimented wildly with differing combinations of color, size, and greenery. I am actually amazed at how wonderfully our efforts turned out, as neither of us had ever created a bouquet. Observe:

Sorry about the pisspoor image quality — my camera is about a thousand years old and photography has never been my strong suit. The first one is the bridal bouquet and is actually quite a bit bigger (and heavier!) than the bottom one, of which there are two. At the last second, I put together a matching tosser in case I unexpectedly find myself facing a herd of rabid female relatives asking me when I’ll be throwing the bouquet. The Beard and I discussed tossing the actual bridal bouquet and then realized that we don’t need to start our lives together facing endless rounds of personal injury litigation.

I will say that the whole bouquet-making process is rather intuitive, as you end up having to use wire to keep your early efforts from falling apart while you look for more blooms and there is no better way to wrap up a mess of unruly stems than with tape that only sticks to itself. The ribbon-wrapping, which I did myself, was somewhat harder as I was using pins to secure the ribbon.

If you plan to follow in my footsteps, I suggest looking at lots of pictures of wedding flowers online and in books like To Have & To Hold: Magical Wedding Bouquets or Creative Wedding Florals You Can Make.

Now, if I can just keep the cats from gnawing on the aforementioned bouquets, everything will be peachy.